Book: Lucretia, Volume 1.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Lucretia, Volume 1.




That Sir Miles should have been blind to the position of the lovers is
less disparaging to his penetration than it may appear; for the very
imprudence with which Lucretia abandoned herself to the society of
Mainwaring during his visits at Laughton took a resemblance to candour.
Sir Miles knew his niece to be more than commonly clever and well
informed; that she, like him, should feel that the conversation of a
superior young man was a relief to the ordinary babble of their country
neighbours, was natural enough; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, had
crossed his mind and rendered him more touched than he liked to own by
Vernon's remarks, it had vanished upon perceiving that Lucretia never
seemed a shade more pensive in Mainwaring's absence. The listlessness
and the melancholy which are apt to accompany love, especially where
unpropitiously placed, were not visible on the surface of this strong
nature. In truth, once assured that Mainwaring returned her affection,
Lucretia reposed on the future with a calm and resolute confidence; and
her customary dissimulation closed like an unruffled sea over all the
undercurrents that met and played below. Still, Sir Miles's attention
once, however slightly, aroused to the recollection that Lucretia was at
the age when woman naturally meditates upon love and marriage, had
suggested, afresh and more vividly, a project which had before been
indistinctly conceived,--namely, the union of the divided branches of his
house, by the marriage of the last male of the Vernons with the heiress
of the St. Johns. Sir Miles had seen much of Vernon himself at various
intervals; he had been present at his christening, though he had refused
to be his godfather, for fear of raising undue expectations; he had
visited and munificently "tipped" him at Eton; he had accompanied him to
his quarters when he joined the prince's regiment; he had come often in
contact with him when, at the death of his father, Vernon retired from
the army and blazed in the front ranks of metropolitan fashion; he had
given him counsel and had even lent him money. Vernon's spendthrift
habits and dissipated if not dissolute life had certainly confirmed the
old baronet in his intentions to trust the lands of Laughton to the
lesser risk which property incurs in the hands of a female, if tightly
settled on her, than in the more colossal and multiform luxuries of an
expensive man; and to do him justice, during the flush of Vernon's
riotous career he had shrunk from the thought of confiding the happiness
of his niece to so unstable a partner. But of late, whether from his
impaired health or his broken fortunes, Vernon's follies had been less
glaring. He had now arrived at the mature age of thirty-three, when wild
oats may reasonably be sown. The composed and steadfast character of
Lucretia might serve to guide and direct him; and Sir Miles was one of
those who hold the doctrine that a reformed rake makes the best husband.
Add to this, there was nothing in Vernon's reputation--once allowing that
his thirst for pleasure was slaked--which could excite serious
apprehensions. Through all his difficulties, he had maintained his
honour unblemished; a thousand traits of amiability and kindness of heart
made him popular and beloved. He was nobody's enemy but his own. His
very distresses--the prospect of his ruin, if left unassisted by Sir
Miles's testamentary dispositions--were arguments in his favour. And,
after all, though Lucretia was a nearer relation, Vernon was in truth the
direct male heir, and according to the usual prejudices of family,
therefore, the fitter representative of the ancient line. With these
feelings and views, he had invited Vernon to his house, and we have seen
already that his favourable impressions had been confirmed by the visit.

And here we must say that Vernon himself had been brought up in boyhood
and youth to regard himself the presumptive inheritor of Laughton. It
had been, from time immemorial, the custom of the St. Johns to pass by
the claims of females in the settlement of the entails; from male to male
the estate had gone, furnishing warriors to the army, and senators to the
State. And if when Lucretia first came to Sir Miles's house the bright
prospect seemed somewhat obscure, still the mesalliance of the mother,
and Sir Miles's obstinate resentment thereat, seemed to warrant the
supposition that he would probably only leave to the orphan the usual
portion of a daughter of the house, and that the lands would go in their
ordinary destination. This belief, adopted passively, and as a thing of
course, had had a very prejudicial effect upon Vernon's career. What
mattered that he overenjoyed his youth, that the subordinate property of
the Vernons, a paltry four or five thousand pounds a year, went a little
too fast,--the splendid estates of Laughton would recover all. From this
dream he had only been awakened, two or three years before, by an
attachment he had formed to the portionless daughter of an earl; and the
Grange being too far encumbered to allow him the proper settlements which
the lady's family required, it became a matter of importance to ascertain
Sir Miles's intentions. Too delicate himself to sound them, he had
prevailed upon the earl, who was well acquainted with Sir Miles, to take
Laughton in his way to his own seat in Dorsetshire, and, without
betraying the grounds of his interest in the question, learn carelessly,
as it were, the views of the wealthy man. The result had been a severe
and terrible disappointment. Sir Miles had then fully determined upon
constituting Lucretia his heiress; and with the usual openness of his
character, he had plainly said so upon the very first covert and polished
allusion to the subject which the earl slyly made. This discovery, in
breaking off all hopes of a union with Lady Mary Stanville, had crushed
more than mercenary expectations. It affected, through his heart,
Vernon's health and spirits; it rankled deep, and was resented at first
as a fatal injury. But Vernon's native nobility of disposition gradually
softened an indignation which his reason convinced him was groundless and
unjust. Sir Miles had never encouraged the expectations which Vernon's
family and himself had unthinkingly formed. The baronet was master of
his own fortune, and after all, was it not more natural that he should
prefer the child he had brought up and reared, to a distant relation,
little more than an acquaintance, simply because man succeeded to man in
the mouldy pedigree of the St. Johns? And, Mary fairly lost to him, his
constitutional indifference to money, a certain French levity of temper,
a persuasion that his life was nearing its wasted close, had left him
without regret, as without resentment, at his kinsman's decision. His
boyish affection for the hearty, generous old gentleman returned, and
though he abhorred the country, he had, without a single interested
thought or calculation, cordially accepted the baronet's hospitable
overtures, and deserted, for the wilds of Hampshire, "the sweet shady
side of Pall-Mall."

We may now enter the drawing-room at Laughton, in which were already
assembled several of the families residing in the more immediate
neighbourhood, and who sociably dropped in to chat around the national
tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or
three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for in
that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in the
houses of our rural Thanes. Our country seats became bustling and
animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families
resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates. The Continent was
closed to us; the fastidious exclusiveness which comes from habitual
residence in cities had not made that demarcation, in castes and in talk,
between neighbour and neighbour, which exists now. Our squires were less
educated, less refined, but more hospitable and unassuming. In a word,
there was what does not exist now, except in some districts remote from
London,--a rural society for those who sought it.

The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus. But first we must cast
a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to be the first object
to attract a stranger's notice. It was a long, and not particularly
well-proportioned apartment,--according, at least, to modern notions,--
for it had rather the appearance of two rooms thrown into one. At the
distance of about thirty-five feet, the walls, before somewhat narrow,
were met by an arch, supported by carved pilasters, which opened into a
space nearly double the width of the previous part of the room, with a
domed ceiling and an embayed window of such depth that the recess almost
formed a chamber in itself. But both these divisions of the apartment
corresponded exactly in point of decoration,--they had the same small
panelling, painted a very light green, which seemed almost white by
candlelight, each compartment wrought with an arabesque; the same
enriched frieze and cornice; they had the same high mantelpieces,
ascending to the ceiling, with the arms of St. John in bold relief. They
had, too, the same old-fashioned and venerable furniture, draperies of
thick figured velvet, with immense chairs and sofas to correspond,--
interspersed, it is true, with more modern and commodious inventions of
the upholsterer's art, in grave stuffed leather or lively chintz. Two
windows, nearly as deep as that in the farther division, broke the
outline of the former one, and helped to give that irregular and nooky
appearance to the apartment which took all discomfort from its extent,
and furnished all convenience for solitary study or detached flirtation.
With little respect for the carved work of the panels, the walls were
covered with pictures brought by Sir Miles from Italy; here and there
marble busts and statues gave lightness to the character of the room, and
harmonized well with that half-Italian mode of decoration which belongs
to the period of James the First. The shape of the chamber, in its
divisions, lent itself admirably to that friendly and sociable
intermixture of amusements which reconciles the tastes of young and old.
In the first division, near the fireplace, Sir Miles, seated in his easy-
chair, and sheltered from the opening door by a seven-fold tapestry
screen, was still at chess with his librarian. At a little distance a
middle-aged gentleman and three turbaned matrons were cutting in at
whist, shilling points, with a half-crown bet optional, and not much
ventured on. On tables, drawn into the recesses of the windows, were the
day's newspapers, Gilray's caricatures, the last new publications, and
such other ingenious suggestions to chit-chat. And round these tables
grouped those who had not yet found elsewhere their evening's amusement,-
-two or three shy young clergymen, the parish doctor, four or five
squires who felt great interest in politics, but never dreamed of the
extravagance of taking in a daily paper, and who now, monopolizing all
the journals they could find, began fairly with the heroic resolution to
skip nothing, from the first advertisement to the printer's name. Amidst
one of these groups Mainwaring had bashfully ensconced himself. In the
farther division, the chandelier, suspended from the domed ceiling, threw
its cheerful light over a large circular table below, on which gleamed
the ponderous tea-urn of massive silver, with its usual accompaniments.
Nor were wanting there, in addition to those airy nothings, sliced
infinitesimally, from a French roll, the more substantial and now exiled
cheer of cakes,--plum and seed, Yorkshire and saffron,--attesting the
light hand of the housekeeper and the strong digestion of the guests.
Round this table were seated, in full gossip, the maids and the matrons,
with a slight sprinkling of the bolder young gentlemen who had been
taught to please the fair. The warmth of the evening allowed the upper
casement to be opened and the curtains drawn aside, and the July
moonlight feebly struggled against the blaze of the lights within. At
this table it was Miss Clavering's obvious duty to preside; but that was
a complaisance to which she rarely condescended. Nevertheless, she had
her own way of doing the honour of her uncle's house, which was not
without courtesy and grace; to glide from one to the other, exchange a
few friendly words, see that each set had its well-known amusements, and,
finally, sit quietly down to converse with some who, from gravity or age,
appeared most to neglect or be neglected by the rest, was her ordinary,
and not unpopular mode of welcoming the guests at Laughton,--not
unpopular; for she thus avoided all interference with the flirtations and
conquests of humbler damsels, whom her station and her endowments might
otherwise have crossed or humbled, while she insured the good word of the
old, to whom the young are seldom so attentive. But if a stranger of
more than provincial repute chanced to be present; if some stray member
of parliament, or barrister on the circuit, or wandering artist,
accompanied any of the neighbours,--to him Lucretia gave more earnest and
undivided attention. Him she sought to draw into a conversation deeper
than the usual babble, and with her calm, searching eyes, bent on him
while he spoke, seemed to fathom the intellect she set in play. But as
yet, this evening, she had not made her appearance,--a sin against
etiquette very unusual in her. Perhaps her recent conversation with
Dalibard had absorbed her thoughts to forgetfulness of the less important
demands on her attention. Her absence had not interfered with the gayety
at the tea-table, which was frank even to noisiness as it centred round
the laughing face of Ardworth, who, though unknown to most or all of the
ladies present, beyond a brief introduction to one or two of the first
comers from Sir Miles (as the host had risen from his chess to bid them
welcome), had already contrived to make himself perfectly at home and
outrageously popular. Niched between two bouncing lasses, he had
commenced acquaintance with them in a strain of familiar drollery and
fun, which had soon broadened its circle, and now embraced the whole
group in the happy contagion of good-humour and young animal spirits.
Gabriel, allowed to sit up later than his usual hour, had not, as might
have been expected, attached himself to this circle, nor indeed to any;
he might be seen moving quietly about,--now contemplating the pictures on
the wall with a curious eye; now pausing at the whist-table, and noting
the game with the interest of an embryo gamester; now throwing himself on
an ottoman, and trying to coax towards him Dash or Ponto,--trying in
vain, for both the dogs abhorred him; yet still, through all this general
movement, had any one taken the pains to observe him closely, it might
have been sufficiently apparent that his keen, bright, restless eye, from
the corner of its long, sly lids, roved chiefly towards the three persons
whom he approached the least,--his father, Mainwaring, and Mr. Vernon.
This last had ensconced himself apart from all, in the angle formed by
one of the pilasters of the arch that divided the room, so that he was in
command, as it were, of both sections. Reclined, with the careless grace
that seemed inseparable from every attitude and motion of his person, in
one of the great velvet chairs, with a book in his hand, which, to say
truth, was turned upside down, but in the lecture of which he seemed
absorbed, he heard at one hand the mirthful laughter that circled round
young Ardworth, or, in its pauses, caught, on the other side, muttered
exclamations from the grave whist-players: "If you had but trumped that
diamond, ma'am!" "Bless me, sir, it was the best heart!" And somehow or
other, both the laughter and the exclamations affected him alike with
what then was called "the spleen,"--for the one reminded him of his own
young days of joyless, careless mirth, of which his mechanical gayety now
was but a mocking ghost; and the other seemed a satire, a parody, on the
fierce but noiseless rapture of gaming, through which his passions had
passed, when thousands had slipped away with a bland smile, provoking not
one of those natural ebullitions of emotion which there accompanied the
loss of a shilling point. And besides this, Vernon had been so
accustomed to the success of the drawing-room, to be a somebody and a
something in the company of wits and princes, that he felt, for the first
time, a sense of insignificance in this provincial circle. Those fat
squires had heard nothing of Mr. Vernon, except that he would not have
Laughton,--he had no acres, no vote in their county; he was a nobody to
them. Those ruddy maidens, though now and then, indeed, one or two might
steal an admiring glance at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him
not with the female interest he had been accustomed to inspire. They
felt instinctively that he could be nothing to them, nor they to him,
--a mere London fop, and not half so handsome as Squires Bluff and Chuff.

Rousing himself from this little vexation to his vanity with a conscious
smile at his own weakness, Vernon turned his looks towards the door,
waiting for Lucretia's entrance, and since her uncle's address to him,
feeling that new and indescribable interest in her appearance which is
apt to steal into every breast when what was before but an indifferent
acquaintance, is suddenly enhaloed with the light of a possible wife.
At length the door opened, and Lucretia entered. Mr. Vernon lowered his
book, and gazed with an earnestness that partook both of doubt and
admiration.

Lucretia Clavering was tall,--tall beyond what is admitted to be tall in
woman; but in her height there was nothing either awkward or masculine,--
a figure more perfect never served for model to a sculptor. The dress at
that day, unbecoming as we now deem it, was not to her--at least, on the
whole disadvantageous. The short waist gave greater sweep to her
majestic length of limb, while the classic thinness of the drapery
betrayed the exact proportion and the exquisite contour. The arms then
were worn bare almost to the shoulder, and Lucretia's arms were not more
faultless in shape than dazzling in their snowy colour; the stately neck,
the falling shoulders, the firm, slight, yet rounded bust,--all would
have charmed equally the artist and the sensualist. Fortunately, the sole
defect of her form was not apparent at a distance: that defect was in the
hand; it had not the usual faults of female youthfulness,--the
superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness of colour,--on the
contrary, it was small and thin; but it was, nevertheless, more the hand
of a man than a woman: the shape had a man's nervous distinctness, the
veins swelled like sinews, the joints of the fingers were marked and
prominent. In that hand it almost seemed as if the iron force of the
character betrayed itself. But, as we have said, this slight defect,
which few, if seen, would hypercritically notice, could not, of course,
be perceptible as she moved slowly up the room; and Vernon's eye,
glancing over the noble figure, rested upon the face. Was it handsome?
Was it repelling? Strange that in feature it had pretensions to the
highest order of beauty, and yet even that experienced connoisseur in
female charms was almost as puzzled what sentence to pronounce. The
hair, as was the fashion of the day, clustered in profuse curls over the
forehead, but could not conceal a slight line or wrinkle between the
brows; and this line, rare in women at any age, rare even in men at hers,
gave an expression at once of thought and sternness to the whole face.
The eyebrows themselves were straight, and not strongly marked, a shade
or two perhaps too light,--a fault still more apparent in the lashes; the
eyes were large, full, and though bright, astonishingly calm and deep,--
at least in ordinary moments; yet withal they wanted the charm of that
steadfast and open look which goes at once to the heart and invites its
trust,--their expression was rather vague and abstracted. She usually
looked aslant while she spoke, and this, which with some appears but
shyness, in one so self-collected had an air of falsehood. But when, at
times, if earnest, and bent rather on examining those she addressed than
guarding herself from penetration, she fixed those eyes upon you with
sudden and direct scrutiny, the gaze impressed you powerfully, and
haunted you with a strange spell. The eye itself was of a peculiar and
displeasing colour,--not blue, nor gray, nor black, nor hazel, but rather
of that cat-like green which is drowsy in the light, and vivid in the
shade. The profile was purely Greek, and so seen, Lucretia's beauty
seemed incontestable; but in front face, and still more when inclined
between the two, all the features took a sharpness that, however regular,
had something chilling and severe: the mouth was small, but the lips were
thin and pale, and had an expression of effort and contraction which
added to the distrust that her sidelong glance was calculated to inspire.
The teeth were dazzlingly white, but sharp and thin, and the eye-teeth
were much longer than the rest. The complexion was pale, but without much
delicacy,--the paleness seemed not natural to it, but rather that hue
which study and late vigils give to men; so that she wanted the freshness
and bloom of youth, and looked older than she was,--an effect confirmed
by an absence of roundness in the cheek not noticeable in the profile,
but rendering the front face somewhat harsh as well as sharp. In a word,
the face and the figure were not in harmony: the figure prevented you
from pronouncing her to be masculine; the face took from the figure the
charm of feminacy. It was the head of the young Augustus upon the form
of Agrippina. One touch more, and we close a description which already
perhaps the reader may consider frivolously minute. If you had placed
before the mouth and lower part of the face a mask or bandage, the whole
character of the upper face would have changed at once,--the eye lost its
glittering falseness, the brow its sinister contraction; you would have
pronounced the face not only beautiful, but sweet and womanly. Take that
bandage suddenly away and the change would have startled you, and
startled you the more because you could detect no sufficient defect or
disproportion in the lower part of the countenance to explain it. It was
as if the mouth was the key to the whole: the key nothing without the
text, the text uncomprehended without the key.

Such, then, was Lucretia Clavering in outward appearance at the age of
twenty,--striking to the most careless eye; interesting and perplexing
the student in that dark language never yet deciphered,--the human
countenance. The reader must have observed that the effect every face
that he remarks for the first time produces is different from the
impression it leaves upon him when habitually seen. Perhaps no two
persons differ more from each other than does the same countenance in our
earliest recollection of it from the countenance regarded in the
familiarity of repeated intercourse. And this was especially the case
with Lucretia Clavering's: the first impulse of nearly all who beheld it
was distrust that partook of fear; it almost inspired you with a sense of
danger. The judgment rose up against it; the heart set itself on its
guard. But this uneasy sentiment soon died away, with most observers, in
admiration at the chiselled outline, which, like the Grecian sculpture,
gained the more the more it was examined, in respect for the intellectual
power of the expression, and in fascinated pleasure at the charm of a
smile, rarely employed, it is true, but the more attractive both for that
reason and for its sudden effect in giving brightness and persuasion to
an aspect that needed them so much. It was literally like the abrupt
breaking out of a sunbeam; and the repellent impression of the face thus
familiarized away, the matchless form took its natural influence; so that
while one who but saw Lucretia for a moment might have pronounced her
almost plain, and certainly not prepossessing in appearance, those with
whom she lived, those whom she sought to please, those who saw her daily,
united in acknowledgment of her beauty; and if they still felt awe,
attributed it only to the force of her understanding.

As she now came midway up the room, Gabriel started from his seat and ran
to her caressingly. Lucretia bent down, and placed her hand upon his
fair locks. As she did so, he whispered,--

"Mr. Vernon has been watching for you."

"Hush! Where is your father?"

"Behind the screen, at chess with Sir Miles."

"With Sir Miles!" and Lucretia's eye fell, with the direct gaze we have
before referred to, upon the boy's face.

"I have been looking over them pretty often," said he, meaningly: "they
have talked of nothing but the game." Lucretia lifted her head, and
glanced round with her furtive eye; the boy divined the search, and with
a scarce perceptible gesture pointed her attention to Mainwaring's
retreat. Her vivid smile passed over her lips as she bowed slightly to
her lover, and then, withdrawing the hand which Gabriel had taken in his
own, she moved on, passed Vernon with a commonplace word or two, and was
soon exchanging greetings with the gay merry-makers in the farther part
of the room. A few minutes afterwards, the servants entered, the tea-
table was removed, chairs were thrust back, a single lady of a certain
age volunteered her services at the piano, and dancing began within the
ample space which the arch fenced off from the whist-players. Vernon had
watched his opportunity, and at the first sound of the piano had gained
Lucretia's side, and with grave politeness pre-engaged her hand for the
opening dance.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.