Guy Deverell. Volume 1 of 2

CHAPTER XXXIII

Lady Jane and Beatrix play at Croquet

"Good morning, Monsieur Varbarriere," cried the Baronet, who divined truly that the fattish elderly gentleman with the bronzed features, and in the furred surtout, had observed them.

"Ah!" cried Monsieur Varbarriere, turning toward them genially, his oddly shaped felt hat in one hand, and his field-glass still extended in the other. "What a charming morning! I have been availing myself of the clear sunlight to study this splendid prospect, partly as a picture, partly as a map."

Lady Jane with her right hand plucked some wild flowers from the bank, which at that side rises steeply from the walk, while the gentlemen exchanged salutations.

"I've just been pointing out some of our famous places to Lady Jane Lennox. A little higher up the walk the view is much more commanding. What do you say to a walk here after breakfast? There's a capital glass in the hall, much more powerful than that can be. Suppose we come by-and-by?"

"You are very good – I am so obliged – my curiosity has been so very much piqued by all I have seen."

Monsieur Varbarriere was speaking, as usual, his familiar French, and pointed with his telescope toward a peculiarly shaped remote hillock.

"I have just been conjecturing could that be that Gryston which we passed by on our way to Marlowe."

"Perfectly right, by Jove! what an eye for locality you must have!"

"Have I? Well, sometimes, perhaps," said the foreign gentleman, laughing.

"The eye of a general. Yes, you are quite right – it is Gryston."

Now Sir Jekyl was frank and hearty in his talk; but there was an air – a something which would have excited the observation of Monsieur Varbarriere, even had he remarked nothing peculiar in the bearing of his host and his companion as they approached. There was a semi-abstraction, a covert scrutiny of that gentleman's countenance, and a certain sense of uneasiness.

Some more passed – enough to show that there was nothing in the slightest degree awkward to the two pedestrians in having so unexpectedly fallen into an ambuscade while on their route – and then Sir Jekyl, with a word of apology to Lady Jane, resumed his walk with her towards the pleasure-grounds near the house.

That day Lady Jane played croquet with Beatrix, while Sir Jekyl demonstrated half the country, from the high grounds, to Monsieur Varbarriere.

The croquet-ground is pretty – flowerbeds lie round it, and a "rockery," as they called it, covered with clambering flowers and plants, and backed by a thick grove of shrubs and evergreens, fenced it in to the north.

Lady Jane was kind, ill-tempered, capricious; played wildly, lazily, badly.

"Do you like people in spite of great faults ever, Beatrix?" she asked, suddenly.

"Every one has great faults," said Trixie, sporting a little bit of philosophy.

"No, they have not; there are very good people, and I hate them," said Lady Jane, swinging her mallet slowly like a pendulum, and gazing with her dark deep eyes full into her companion's face.

"Hate the good people!" exclaimed Beatrix; "then how do you feel towards the bad?"

"There are some whose badness suits me, and I like them; there are others whose badness does not, and them I hate as much as the good almost."

Trixie was puzzled; but she concluded that Lady Jane was in one of her odd moods, and venting her ill temper in those shocking eruptions of levity.

"How old are you, Beatrix?"

"Nineteen."

"Ha! and I am five-and-twenty – six years. There is a great deal learned in those six years. I don't recollect what I was like when I was nineteen."

She did not sigh; Lady Jane was not given to sighing, but her face looked sad and sullen.

"It all came of my having no friend," she said, abruptly. "Not one. That stupid old woman might have been one, but she would not. I had no one – it was fate; and here I am, such as I am, and I don't blame myself or anything. But I wish I had one true friend."

"I am sure, Lady Jane, you must have many friends," said Beatrix.

"Don't be a little hypocrite, Beatrix; why should I more than another? Friends are not picked up like daisies as we walk along. If you have neither mother nor sisters, nor kith nor kin to care about you, you will find it hard to make strangers do so. As for old Lady Alice, I think she always hated me; she did nothing but pick holes in everything I said or did; I never heard anything from her but the old story of my faults. And then I was thrown among women of the world – heartless, headless creatures. I don't blame them, they knew no better – perhaps there is no better; but I do blame that egotistical old woman, who, if she had but controlled her temper, might have been of so much use to me, and would not. Religion, and good principles, and all that, whether it is true or false, is the safest plan; and I think if she had been moderately kind and patient, she might have made me as good as others. Don't look at me as if I had two heads, dear. I'm not charging myself with any enormity. I only say it is the happiest way, even if it be the way of fools."

"Shall we play any more?" inquired Beatrix, after a sufficient pause had intervened to soften the transition.

"Yes, certainly. Which is my ball?"

"The red. You are behind your hoop."

"Yes; and – and it seems to me, Beatrix, you are a cold little stick, like your grandmamma, as you call her, though she's no grandmamma of yours."

"Think me as stupid as you please, but you must not think me cold; and, indeed, you wrong poor old granny."

"We'll talk no more of her. I think her a fool and a savage. Come, it's your turn, is not it, to play?"

So the play went on for a while in silence, except for those questions and comments without which it can hardly proceed.

"And now you have won, have not you?" said Lady Jane.

"Should you like another game?" asked Beatrix.

"Maybe by-and-by; and – I sometimes wish you liked me, Beatrix; but I don't know you, and you are little better than a child still; and – no – it could not be – it never could – you'd be sure to hate me in a little while."

"But I do like you, Lady Jane. I liked you very much in London, you were so kind; and I don't know why you were so changed to me when you came here; you seem to have taken a positive dislike to me."

"So I had, child – I detested you," said Lady Jane, but in a tone that had something mocking in it. "Everything has grown – how shall I express it? – disgusting to me – yes, disgusting. You had done nothing to cause it; you need not look so contrite. I could not help it either. I am odious – and I can't love or like anybody."

"I am sure, Lady Jane, you are not at all like what you describe."

"You think me faultless, do you?"

Beatrix smiled.

"Well, I see you don't. What is my fault?" demanded Lady Jane, looking on her not with a playful, but with a lowering countenance.

"It is a very conceited office – pointing out other people's faults, even if one understood them, which I do not."

"Well, I give you leave; tell me one, to begin with," persisted Lady Jane Lennox.

Beatrix laughed.

"I wish, Lady Jane, if you insist on my telling your faults, that you would not look so stern."