Book: A Strange Story, Volume 1.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> A Strange Story, Volume 1.
It was a solitary human form, seated amidst the mournful ruins.
The form was so slight, the face so young, that at the first
glance I murmured to myself, "What a lovely child!" But as my eye
lingered it recognized in the upturned thoughtful brow, in the sweet,
serious aspect, in the rounded outlines of that slender shape, the
inexpressible dignity of virgin woman.
A book was on her lap, at her feet a little basket, half-filled
with violets and blossoms culled from the rock-plants that nestled amidst
the ruins. Behind her, the willow, like an emerald waterfall, showered
down its arching abundant green, bough after bough, from the tree-top to
the sward, descending in wavy verdure, bright towards the summit, in the
smile of the setting sun, and darkening into shadow as it neared the
earth.
She did not notice, she did not see me; her eyes were fixed upon the
horizon, where it sloped farthest into space, above the treetops and the
ruins,--fixed so intently that mechanically I turned my own gaze to follow
the flight of hers. It was as if she watched for some expected, familiar
sign to grow out from the depths of heaven; perhaps to greet, before
other eyes beheld it, the ray of the earliest star.
The birds dropped from the boughs on the turf around her so fearlessly
that one alighted amidst the flowers in the little basket at her feet.
There is a famous German poem, which I had read in my youth, called the
Maiden from Abroad, variously supposed to be an allegory of Spring, or of
Poetry, according to the choice of commentators: it seemed to me as if the
poem had been made for her. Verily, indeed, in her, poet or painter might
have seen an image equally true to either of those adornments of the
earth; both outwardly a delight to sense, yet both wakening up thoughts
within us, not sad, but akin to sadness.
I heard now a step behind me, and a voice which I recognized to be that
of Mr. Vigors. I broke from the charm by which I had been so lingeringly
spell-bound, hurried on confusedly, gained the wicket-gate, from which a
short flight of stairs descended into the common thoroughfare. And there
the every-day life lay again before me. On the opposite side, houses,
shops, church-spires; a few steps more, and the bustling streets! How
immeasurably far from, yet how familiarly near to, the world in which we
move and have being is that fairy-land of romance which opens out from the
hard earth before us, when Love steals at first to our side, fading back
into the hard earth again as Love smiles or sighs its farewell!
CHAPTER V.
And before that evening I had looked on Mr. Vigors with supreme
indifference! What importance he now assumed in my eyes! The lady with
whom I had seen him was doubtless the new tenant of that house in which
the young creature by whom my heart was so strangely moved evidently had
her home. Most probably the relation between the two ladies was that of
mother and daughter. Mr. Vigors, the friend of one, might himself be
related to both, might prejudice them against me, might--Here, starting
up, I snapped the thread of conjecture, for right before my eyes, on the
table beside which I had seated myself on entering my room, lay a card
of invitation:--
MRS. POYNTZ.
At Home,
Wednesday, May 15th.
Early.
Mrs. Poyntz,--Mrs. Colonel Poyntz, the Queen of the Hill? There,
at her house, I could not fail to learn all about the new comers, who
could never without her sanction have settled on her domain.
I hastily changed my dress, and, with beating heart, wound my way up the
venerable eminence.
I did not pass through the lane which led direct to Abbots' House
(for that old building stood solitary amidst its grounds a little apart
from the spacious platform on which the society of the Hill was
concentrated), but up the broad causeway, with vistaed gaslamps; the gayer
shops still-unclosed, the tide of busy life only slowly ebbing from the
still-animated street, on to a square, in which the four main
thoroughfares of the city converged, and which formed the boundary of Low
Town. A huge dark archway, popularly called Monk's Gate, at the angle of
this square, made the entrance to Abbey Hill. When the arch was passed,
one felt at once that one was in the town of a former day. The pavement
was narrow and rugged; the shops small, their upper stories projecting,
with here and there plastered fronts, quaintly arabesque. An ascent,
short, but steep and tortuous, conducted at once to the old Abbey Church,
nobly situated in a vast quadrangle, round which were the genteel and
gloomy dwellings of the Areopagites of the Hill. More genteel and less
gloomy than the rest--lights at the windows and flowers on the
balcony--stood forth, flanked by a garden wall at either side, the mansion
of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz.
As I entered the drawing-room, I heard the voice of the hostess; it
was a voice clear, decided, metallic, bell-like, uttering these words:
"Taken Abbots' House? I will tell you."
CHAPTER VI.
Mrs. Poyntz was seated on the sofa; at her right sat fat Mrs. Bruce,
who was a Scotch lord's grand-daughter; at her left thin Miss Brabazon,
who was an Irish baronet's niece. Around her--a few seated, many
standing--had grouped all the guests, save two old gentlemen, who had
remained aloof with Colonel Poyntz near the whist-table, waiting for the
fourth old gentleman who was to make up the rubber, but who was at that
moment spell-bound in the magic circle which curiosity, that strongest of
social demons, had attracted round the hostess.
"Taken Abbots' House? I will tell you.--Ah, Dr. Fenwick, charmed to
see you. You know Abbots' House is let at last? Well, Miss Brabazon,
dear, you ask who has taken it. I will inform you,--a particular friend
of mine."
"Indeed! Dear me!" said Miss Brabazon, looking confused. "I hope I
did not say anything to--"
"Wound my feelings. Not in the least. You said your uncle Sir
Phelim employed a coachmaker named Ashleigh, that Ashleigh was an uncommon
name, though Ashley was a common one; you intimated an appalling suspicion
that the Mrs. Ashleigh who had come to the Hill was the coach maker's
widow. I relieve your mind,--she is not; she is the widow of Gilbert
Ashleigh, of Kirby Hall."
"Gilbert Ashleigh," said one of the guests, a bachelor, whose parents
had reared him for the Church, but who, like poor Goldsmith, did not think
himself good enough for it, a mistake of over-modesty, for he matured into
a very harmless creature. "Gilbert Ashleigh? I was at Oxford with
him,--a gentleman commoner of Christ Church. Good-looking man, very;
sapped--"
"Sapped! what's that?--Oh, studied. That he did all his life. He
married young,--Anne Chaloner; she and I were girls together; married the
same year. They settled at Kirby Hall--nice place, but dull. Poyntz and
I spent a Christmas there. Ashleigh when he talked was charming, but he
talked very little. Anne, when she talked, was commonplace, and she
talked very much. Naturally, poor thing,---she was so happy. Poyntz and
I did not spend another Christmas there. Friendship is long, but life is
short. Gilbert Ashleigh's life was short indeed; he died in the seventh
year of his marriage, leaving only one child, a girl. Since then, though
I never spent another Christmas at Kirby Hall, I have frequently spent a
day there, doing my best to cheer up Anne. She was no longer talkative,
poor dear. Wrapped up in her child, who has now grown into a beautiful
girl of eighteen--such eyes, her father's--the real dark blue--rare; sweet
creature, but delicate; not, I hope, consumptive, but delicate; quiet,
wants life. My girl Jane adores her. Jane has life enough for two."
"Is Miss Ashleigh the heiress to Kirby Hall?" asked Mrs. Bruce, who
had an unmarried son.
"No. Kirby Hall passed to Ashleigh Sumner, the male heir, a cousin.
And the luckiest of cousins! Gilbert's sister, showy woman (indeed all
show), had contrived to marry her kinsman, Sir Walter Ashleigh Haughton,
the head of the Ashleigh family,--just the man made to be the reflector of
a showy woman! He died years ago, leaving an only son, Sir James, who was
killed last winter, by a fall from his horse. And here, again, Ashleigh
Summer proved to be the male heir-at-law. During the minority of this
fortunate youth, Mrs. Ashleigh had rented Kirby Hall of his guardian. He
is now just coming of age, and that is why she leaves. Lilian Ashleigh
will have, however, a very good fortune,--is what we genteel paupers call
an heiress. Is there anything more you want to know?"
Said thin Miss Brabazon, who took advantage of her thinness to wedge
herself into every one's affairs, "A most interesting account. What a
nice place Abbots' House could be made with a little taste! So
aristocratic! Just what I should like if I could afford it! The
drawing-room should be done up in the Moorish style, with
geranium-coloured silk curtains, like dear Lady L----'s boudoir at
Twickenham. And Mrs. Ashleigh has taken the house on lease too, I
suppose!" Here Miss Brabazon fluttered her fan angrily, and then
exclaimed, "But what on earth brings Mrs. Ashleigh here?"
Answered Mrs. Colonel Poyntz, with the military frankness by which she
kept her company in good humour, as well as awe,--
"Why do any of us come here? Can any one tell me?"
There was a blank silence, which the hostess herself was the first to
break.
"None of us present can say why we came here. I can tell you why
Mrs. Ashleigh came. Our neighbour, Mr. Vigors, is a distant connection of
the late Gilbert Ashleigh, one of the executors to his will, and the
guardian to the heir-at-law. About ten days ago Mr. Vigors called on me,
for the first time since I felt it my duty to express my disapprobation of
the strange vagaries so unhappily conceived by our poor dear friend Dr.
Lloyd. And when he had taken his chair, just where you now sit,
Dr. Fenwick, he said in a sepulchral voice, stretching out two fingers,
so,--as if I were one of the what-do-you-call-'ems who go to sleep when he
bids them, 'Marm, you know Mrs. Ashleigh? You correspond with her?'
'Yes, Mr. Vigors; is there any crime in that? You look as if there were.'
'No crime, marm,' said the man, quite seriously. 'Mrs. Ashleigh is a lady
of amiable temper, and you are a woman of masculine understanding.'"
Here there was a general titter. Mrs. Colonel Poyntz hushed it
with a look of severe surprise. "What is there to laugh at? All women
would be men if they could. If my understanding is masculine, so much the
better for me. I thanked Mr. Vigors for his very handsome compliment, and
he then went on to say that though Mrs. Ashleigh would now have to leave
Kirby Hall in a very few weeks, she seemed quite unable to make up her
mind where to go; that it had occurred to him that, as Miss Ashleigh was
of an age to see a little of the world, she ought not to remain buried in
the country; while, being of quiet mind, she recoiled from the dissipation
of London. Between the seclusion of the one and the turmoil of the other,
the society of L---- was a happy medium. He should be glad of my opinion.
He had put off asking for it, because he owned his belief that I had
behaved unkindly to his lamented friend, Dr. Lloyd; but he now found
himself in rather an awkward position. His ward, young Sumner, had
prudently resolved on fixing his country residence at Kirby Hall, rather
than at Haughton Park, the much larger seat which had so suddenly passed
to his inheritance, and which he could not occupy without a vast
establishment, that to a single man, so young, would be but a cumbersome
and costly trouble. Mr. Vigors was pledged to his ward to obtain him
possession of Kirby Hall, the precise day agreed upon, but Mrs. Ashleigh
did not seem disposed to stir,--could not decide where else to go. Mr.
Vigors was loth to press hard on his old friend's widow and child. It was
a thousand pities Mrs Ashleigh could not make up her mind; she had had
ample time for preparation. A word from me at this moment would be an
effective kindness. Abbots' House was vacant, with a garden so extensive
that the ladies would not miss the country. Another party was after it,
but--'Say no more,' I cried; 'no party but my dear old friend Anne
Ashleigh shall have Abbots' House. So that question is settled.' I
dismissed Mr. Vigors, sent for my carriage, that is, for Mr. Barker's
yellow fly and his best horses,--and drove that very day to Kirby Hall,
which, though not in this county, is only twenty-five miles distant. I
slept there that night. By nine o'clock the next morning I had secured
Mrs. Ashleigh's consent, on the promise to save her all trouble; came
back, sent for the landlord, settled the rent, lease, agreement; engaged
Forbes' vans to remove the furniture from Kirby Hall; told Forbes to begin
with the beds. When her own bed came, which was last night, Anne Ashleigh
came too. I have seen her this morning. She likes the place, so does
Lilian. I asked them to meet you all here to-night; but Mrs. Ashleigh
was tired. The last of the furniture was to arrive today; and though dear
Mrs. Ashleigh is an undecided character, she is not inactive. But it is
not only the planning where to put tables and chairs that would have
tried her today: she has had Mr. Vigors on her hands all the afternoon,
and he has been--here's her little note--what are the words? No doubt
'most overpowering and oppressive;' no, 'most kind and attentive,'--
different words, but, as applied to Mr. Vigors, they mean the same thing.
"And now, next Monday---we must leave them in peace till then--you
will all call on the Ashleighs. The Hill knows what is due to itself; it
cannot delegate to Mr. Vigors, a respectable man indeed, but who does
not belong to its set, its own proper course of action towards those
who would shelter themselves on its bosom. The Hill cannot be kind and
attentive, overpowering or oppressive by proxy. To those newborn
into its family circle it cannot be an indifferent godmother; it has
towards them all the feelings of a mother,--or of a stepmother, as
the case may be. Where it says 'This can be no child of mine,' it is a
stepmother indeed; but in all those whom I have presented to its
arms, it has hitherto, I am proud to say, recognized desirable
acquaintances, and to them the Hill has been a mother. And now,
my dear Mr. Sloman, go to your rubber; Poyntz is impatient, though he
don't show it. Miss Brabazon, love, we all long to see you seated
at the piano,--you play so divinely! Something gay, if you please;
something gay, but not very noisy,--Mr. Leopold Symthe will turn the
leaves for you. Mrs. Bruce, your own favourite set at vingt-un, with
four new recruits. Dr. Fenwick, you are like me, don't play cards, and
don't care for music; sit here, and talk or not, as you please, while I
knit."
The other guests thus disposed of, some at the card-tables, some round
the piano, I placed myself at Mrs. Poyntz's side, on a seat niched in the
recess of a window which an evening unusually warm for the month of May
permitted to be left open. I was next to one who had known Lilian as a
child, one from whom I had learned by what sweet name to call the image
which my thoughts had already shrined. How much that I still longed to
know she could tell me! But in what form of question could I lead to the
subject, yet not betray my absorbing interest in it? Longing to speak, I
felt as if stricken dumb; stealing an unquiet glance towards the face
beside me, and deeply impressed with that truth which the Hill had long
ago reverently acknowledged,--namely, that Mrs. Colonel Poyntz was a very
superior woman, a very powerful creature.
And there she sat knitting, rapidly, firmly; a woman somewhat on
the other side of forty, complexion a bronze paleness, hair a bronze
brown, in strong ringlets cropped short behind,--handsome hair for a man;
lips that, when closed, showed inflexible decision, when speaking, became
supple and flexible with an easy humour and a vigilant finesse; eyes of a
red hazel, quick but steady,--observing, piercing, dauntless eyes;
altogether a fine countenance,--would have been a very fine countenance in
a man; profile sharp, straight, clear-cut, with an expression, when in
repose, like that of a sphinx; a frame robust, not corpulent; of middle
height, but with an air and carriage that made her appear tall; peculiarly
white firm hands, indicative of vigorous health, not a vein visible on the
surface.
There she sat knitting, knitting, and I by her side, gazing now on
herself, now on her work, with a vague idea that the threads in the skein
of my own web of love or of life were passing quick through those
noiseless fingers. And, indeed, in every web of romance, the fondest, one
of the Parcae is sure to be some matter-of-fact She, Social Destiny, as
little akin to romance herself as was this worldly Queen of the Hill.
CHAPTER VII.
I have given a sketch of the outward woman of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz. The
inner woman was a recondite mystery deep as that of the sphinx, whose
features her own resembled. But between the outward and the inward woman
there is ever a third woman,--the conventional woman,--such as the whole
human being appears to the world,--always mantled, sometimes masked.
I am told that the fine people of London do not recognize the
title of "Mrs. Colonel." If that be true, the fine people of London must
be clearly in the wrong, for no people in the universe could be finer than
the fine people of Abbey Hill; and they considered their sovereign had
as good a right to the title of Mrs. Colonel as the Queen of England
has to that of "our Gracious Lady." But Mrs. Poyntz herself never
assumed the title of Mrs. Colonel; it never appeared on her cards,--any
more than the title of "Gracious Lady" appears on the cards which
convey the invitation that a Lord Steward or Lord Chamberlain is
commanded by her Majesty to issue. To titles, indeed, Mrs. Poyntz
evinced no superstitious reverence. Two peeresses, related to her, not
distantly, were in the habit of paying her a yearly visit which
lasted two or three days. The Hill considered these visits an honour to
its eminence. Mrs. Poyntz never seemed to esteem them an honour to
herself; never boasted of them; never sought to show off her grand
relations, nor put herself the least out of the way to receive
them. Her mode of life was free from ostentation. She had the advantage
of being a few hundreds a year richer than any other inhabitant of
the Hill; but she did not devote her superior resources to the
invidious exhibition of superior splendour. Like a wise sovereign, the
revenues of her exchequer were applied to the benefit of her subjects, and
not to the vanity of egotistical parade. As no one else on the Hill
kept a carriage, she declined to keep one. Her entertainments were
simple, but numerous. Twice a week she received the Hill, and was
genuinely at home to it. She contrived to make her parties proverbially
agreeable. The refreshments were of the same kind as those which the
poorest of her old maids of honour might proffer; but they were better of
their kind, the best of their kind,--the best tea, the best lemonade, the
best cakes. Her rooms had an air of comfort, which was peculiar to them.
They looked like rooms accustomed to receive, and receive in a friendly
way; well warmed, well lighted, card-tables and piano each in the place
that made cards and music inviting; on the walls a few old family
portraits, and three or four other pictures said to be valuable and
certainly pleasing,--two Watteaus, a Canaletti, a Weenix; plenty of
easy-chairs and settees covered with a cheerful chintz,--in the
arrangement of the furniture generally an indescribable careless elegance.
She herself was studiously plain in dress, more conspicuously free from
jewelry and trinkets than any married lady on the Hill. But I have heard
from those who were authorities on such a subject that she was never
seen in a dress of the last year's fashion. She adopted the mode as it
came out, just enough to show that she was aware it was out; but
with a sober reserve, as much as to say, "I adopt the fashion as far as
it suits myself; I do not permit the fashion to adopt me." In short,
Mrs. Colonel Poyntz was sometimes rough, sometimes coarse, always
masculine, and yet somehow or other masculine in a womanly way;
but she was never vulgar because never affected. It was impossible
not to allow that she was a thorough gentlewoman, and she could do things
that lower other gentlewomen, without any loss of dignity. Thus
she was an admirable mimic, certainly in itself the least ladylike
condescension of humour. But when she mimicked, it was with so
tranquil a gravity, or so royal a good humour, that one could only
say, "What talents for society dear Mrs. Colonel has!" As she was
a gentlewoman emphatically, so the other colonel, the he-colonel,
was emphatically a gentleman; rather shy, but not cold; hating trouble
of every kind, pleased to seem a cipher in his own house. If the
sole study of Mrs. Colonel had been to make her husband comfortable,
she could not have succeeded better than by bringing friends about him
and then taking them off his hands. Colonel Poyntz, the he-colonel,
had seen, in his youth, actual service; but had retired from his
profession many years ago, shortly after his marriage. He was a
younger brother of one of the principal squires in the country;
inherited the house he lived in, with some other valuable property
in and about L----, from an uncle; was considered a good landlord; and
popular in Low Town, though he never interfered in its affairs. He was
punctiliously neat in his dress; a thin youthful figure, crowned with a
thick youthful wig. He never seemed to read anything but the newspapers
and the "Meteorological Journal:" was supposed to be the most weatherwise
man in all L----. He had another intellectual predilection,--whist;
but in that he had less reputation for wisdom. Perhaps it requires a
rarer combination of mental faculties to win an odd trick than to
divine a fall in the glass. For the rest, the he-colonel, many
years older than his wife, despite the thin youthful figure, was an
admirable aid-de-camp to the general in command, Mrs. Colonel; and
she could not have found one more obedient, more devoted, or more
proud of a distinguished chief.
In giving to Mrs. Colonel Poyntz the appellation of Queen of the
Hill, let there be no mistake. She was not a constitutional sovereign;
her monarchy was absolute. All her proclamations had the force of laws.
Such ascendancy could not have been attained without considerable
talents for acquiring and keeping it. Amidst all her off-hand, brisk,
imperious frankness, she had the ineffable discrimination of tact.
Whether civil or rude, she was never civil or rude but what she carried
public opinion along with her. Her knowledge of general society must
have been limited, as must be that of all female sovereigns; but she
seemed gifted with an intuitive knowledge of human nature, which she
applied to her special ambition of ruling it. I have not a doubt that if
she had been suddenly transferred, a perfect stranger, to the world of
London, she would have soon forced her way to its selectest circles,
and, when once there, held her own against a duchess.
I have said that she was not affected: this might be one cause of
her sway over a set in which nearly every other woman was trying rather to
seem, than to be, a somebody.
Put if Mrs. Colonel Poyntz was not artificial, she was artful, or
perhaps I might more justly say artistic. In all she said and did there
were conduct, system, plan. She could be a most serviceable friend, a
most damaging enemy; yet I believe she seldom indulged in strong likings
or strong hatreds. All was policy,--a policy akin to that of a grand
party chief, determined to raise up those whom, for any reason of state,
it was prudent to favour, and to put down those whom, for any reason of
state, it was expedient to humble or to crush.
Ever since the controversy with Dr. Lloyd, this lady had honoured me
with her benignest countenance; and nothing could be more adroit than the
manner in which, while imposing me on others as an oracular authority, she
sought to subject to her will the oracle itself.
She was in the habit of addressing me in a sort of motherly way,
as if she had the deepest interest in my welfare, happiness, and
reputation. And thus, in every compliment, in every seeming mark of
respect, she maintained the superior dignity of one who takes from
responsible station the duty to encourage rising merit; so that, somehow
or other, despite all that pride which made me believe that I needed no
helping and to advance or to clear my way through the world, I could not
shake off from my mind the impression that I was mysteriously patronized
by Mrs. Colonel Poyntz.