Mohawks: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3

"Why should I not live at least to sober middle age, as my father did?" he asked himself, and then turned to Judith, the chosen companion of those future years of happiness and virtue.

How beautiful she looked in the neat simplicity of her black silk hood, the sober propriety of her satin mantle and cambric neckerchief! She had attired herself thus modestly in honour of the rustic temple, and looked as she had never looked at a fashionable assembly, in the reckless exhibition of her charms.

Lavendale thought of a couplet of Pope's as he looked at her.

To him his love was fairer with lowered eyelids and modestly veiled bosom, and arms hidden in long black gloves: how delightful a contrast to that painted hag of quality, Lady Polwhele, whose wrinkles no white lead could disguise, and whose Court finery looked hideous in the searching wintry sunshine! Mrs. Asterley, too, was as fine as brocade and ribbons could make her. Miss Vansittart wore a braided cloth gown, and a furred military spencer; and had a masculine air which contrasted curiously with Irene's simple dove-coloured hood and mantle, with pale blue ribbons, altogether girlish and innocent-looking.

The five ladies made a display which gave the villagers enough to think about all through the somewhat drowsy service and the particularly prosy sermon; after which the quality walked between two rows of bowing and curtsying Lubins and Biddys, to the lych-gate where the coaches were waiting.

Never had Lavendale felt in a serener frame of mind than on that Christmas Day. After the return from church he and Lady Judith explored the old house together, and planned what alterations they would begin next summer when they returned from their foreign tour.

"And can you really be contented to live three parts of the year in Surrey?" he asked: "to live a sober domestic life with a small establishment like this, you who at Ringwood had the state and retinue of a princess, and had your house filled always with a succession of the most distinguished people in Europe? Can your fiery spirit subdue itself to narrow means and domesticity?"

"My fiery spirit is passing weary of pomp and splendour and bustle and frivolity," she answered. "Fashion and rattle, coquetry and high play, served very well to divert my thoughts from an old love and an endless regret. But now I have my old love again and nothing to regret: fashion, cards, dice, lotteries, the flatteries of rakes and profligates may go hang – I can live without them all. I want nothing but love and Lavendale."

He took her through the library, on his way to introduce her to his old friend Vincenti.

She stopped in the middle of the room, and looked about her with a half-wondering interest.

"What a vast, sober, solemn – rather gloomy room!" she exclaimed, with a faint shudder.

"Think you so, love? It has no gloom for me. It was my father's favourite room, and my mother's: I have spent many a twilight hour with her before bedtime, have said my evening prayers at her knees on yonder hearth. It is more associated with her image than any other room in this house."

"Then I can understand your fondness for it; but I confess that for me it has a melancholy aspect. It will not be my favourite room. That sunny parlour facing southward will make ever so much brighter a nest, if you will let me furnish it in the French fashion, like Lady Bolingbroke's room at Dawley. And now take me to your ancient philosopher, of whom you have told me so much."

Vincenti received the beautiful stranger with a stately courtesy, at once foreign and old-fashioned, and altogether different from the flippant touch-and-go of the "pretty fellow" period. Judith sat with him for nearly half an hour, talking of Italy, which she was to visit for the first time with Lavendale.

"I fancy it a land of romance and of opera, and that I shall hear the reapers singing a chorus as they stoop over their sickles, and see a cluster of dancers at every turn in the road; and that the innkeepers will all address me in recitative, and the postboys will all roll out buffo songs," she protested laughingly.

"That playhouse world is not Vincenti's Italy," said Lavendale: "his country is the land of science and philosophy, of Galileo and Giordano Bruno, of Vesalius and Sarpi."

The Christmas dinner exhibited a profusion which would have shocked Lady Dainty, but which was the only idea of hospitality when George II. was king. Hams and turkeys, chines and shoulders of veal, soup and fish, jellies, mince-pies, and the traditional plum pudding, with Burgundy and champagne in abundance; and even, for those who were coarse enough to ask for it, strong home-brewed ale, ale of a dark tawny brightness, betwixt brown and amber, the very look of which in a glass suggested a swift progress from uproarious mirth to drunken stupor.

Lady Polwhele drank the home-brewed with the gusto of a chairman or a ticket-porter.

"After all, there is a true British smack about a glass of ale that beats your foreign wines hollow," she said, as she finished her fourth tumbler.

Lady Judith only sipped her champagne, just touching the glass with her ruby lips, smiling at Lavendale as she sipped. She sat in the place of honour at her host's side, and amidst that profusion of beef and poultry they two dined upon nectar and ambrosia, and were only intoxicated with each other's looks and smiles, and stolen whispers unheard in the clatter of voices.

For the evening there were cards and music; and anon the hall-doors were flung open to the cold night, and the village mummers came trooping in to perform their Christmas fooleries, and to be regaled afterwards with the remains of the feast. Then came Christmas games in the great hall: blindman's buff and hunt the slipper, at which last game Lady Polwhele disported herself with a vivacity which would have been particular even in Miss Hoyden.

"The Dowager forgets that though 'tis meritorious in her to appear five-and-twenty, 'tis foolish to try to pass for five," murmured Judith, in her lover's ears, as they sat in a recess by the fireplace, watching those juvenile revels.

Buxom Mrs. Asterley rivalled the Dowager in exuberance, and contrived to be caught and kissed at blindman's buff oftener than she need have been, in the hope of rousing some lurking demon of jealousy in her husband's breast. But Captain Asterley only resembled Othello insomuch that he was not easily jealous; so the harmony of the evening was not interrupted by his evil passions.

Next morning came the fox-hunt. Lady Judith and her lover both rode to hounds, and his lordship sent a couple of led nags in their train, while he contrived to find a decent mount for Miss Vansittart. Judith rode as straight as an arrow, and, reckless in this as in all things, went at the biggest fence with a careless easy grace which delighted her lover.

"I did not know you were a hunting-woman," he said, as they rode neck and neck across a field.

"I am an everything woman. I should have died of the spleen at Ringwood, if I had not hunted."

"You did not while I was there."

"You were there; and I had something else to think about."

"And yet you seemed so cold, so indifferent," he said, slackening his pace as he grew more earnest.

"I had so much to hide, love, I had need to put on a show of scorn. Come on, sir; we shall lose the hounds if you talk to me."

The Christmas week was nearly over. It was the thirtieth of December. Lord and Lady Bolingbroke had joined the party: the lady something of an invalid, but infinitely gracious and devoted to her husband, who loved her passionately, yet delighted in boasting of his old conquests in her presence, a self-glorification which she suffered with much good-humour. Nor was she offended at his exuberant compliments to his old flirt, Lady Judith, whom he reminded how pleasantly they had got on together at Ringwood Abbey, when his wife was nursing her gout at the Bath. He had elegant compliments even for Lady Polwhele, whose white lead had been laid on thicker than ever in his honour, and whose family diamonds blazed upon a bosom of more than Flemish development. He had not succeeded in bringing the poet. Mr. Pope had an invalid mother in his house at Twitnam, and could not trust himself away from home for above twenty-four hours at a time. There was some disappointment at his non-arrival, yet a general feeling of relief. Those bright observant eyes saw too deep into the follies and pettinesses of society.

It was in the after-dinner dusk of that thirtieth of December, and while his guests were all talking and laughing in a joyous circle round the hall fire before repairing to the tea-tables in the adjacent saloon, that Lavendale visited his friend in the laboratory. He had stolen away from that light-hearted circle while Judith was occupied with Bolingbroke's gay badinage, and now he sank with an exhausted air into an old oaken settle opposite the table at which Vincenti sat reading.

Here there was no gloaming hour of rest and respite from daily cares. The student lighted his lamp directly daylight began to fade. He could brook scarce a minute's interruption of his studies. The lamp shone full upon Lavendale's face.

"How pale and tired you look!" said Vincenti. "I hope you are not ill?"

"I hardly know whether I am very ill or only very tired," answered Lavendale. "I ought not to have hunted the other day. I have not been my own man since. My London doctor told me I must never hunt; but I have no faith in physic or physicians. However, the fellow was right so far. I am not strong enough for a tearing cross-country gallop. And my blood was up the other day, and my second horse was fresh as fire. It was a glorious run: Lady Judith and I were with the hounds to the last, though three-fifths of the field were left in the lurch. No, I must hunt no more."

"You will be wise if you stick to that resolution. Do you think if I had squandered my strength upon follies as young men do that I should be alive to-day? I have garnered the sands of life, my lord; I have measured every grain."

"I too will turn wiser. My days are precious to me now. Vincenti, do you remember drawing my horoscope t'other day?"

"Yes, I remember."

"And I told you not to show it to me, d'ye remember? A foolish, nervous, brain-sick apprehension made me shrink from the knowledge of my fate. But now I think I should like to see the result of your calculations: not that I promise to believe implicitly."

Vincenti's brow darkened.

"I would rather not show you the horoscope," he answered curtly.

"Why not?"

Vincenti was silent.

"And you had rather not tell me why not, I suppose?" said Lavendale, with a faint laugh.

"No, there could be no good – I can scarce define my reasons."

"Do you think I cannot guess them? The fate foretold was diabolically bad, and you would spare me the knowledge of evil."

"There was nothing diabolical – nothing exceptionally bad – nothing – "

"But the common lot of man," interrupted Lavendale – "death! Only the common lot; but for me it is to come earlier than to the lucky. It is to fall just when I am eager to live – just as the gates of paradise are opening to me. I am standing at the gate – I see that paradise beyond, with the sun shining on it, the sunlight of passionate, happy, satisfied love – for me the unsatisfied. I am so near, so near – 'tis but one step across the threshold and I am in the enchanted garden. But there lurks the king of terrors – there stands Apollo with his fatal shaft: I am not to taste that ineffable bliss, the cup is to be snatched from my thirsting lips – that was what the stars foretold, was it not, Vincenti?"

"'Tis your own eagerness shapes the fear that torments you."

"Tell me that I have guessed wrong, that the stars promise long life."