Read Ebook: Broken to Harness: A Story of English Domestic Life by Yates Edmund

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Ebook has 1720 lines and 154312 words, and 35 pages

"Good to myself, you mean. It is the greatest pleasure I have in life to give you pleasure, Marion."

"Mr. Allingford!" she said, half rising. He had used her Christian name for the first time.

"Forgive me if I call you Marion," he went on, noting with relief that her ladyship was talking charity bazaar to Jack, and so assuring him from interruption.

"I mean, give me the right to do so. You see I'm awfully in love with you; I can't help loving the sweetest girl I know. You must have seen how I cared."

"Lately, yes--I have suspected it," she answered in a low voice.

"Do you mind? I can't help it if you do. I'll love you anyway, but I want you to be my wife, to care for me just a little; I don't ask more."

"I think you must speak to mamma."

"But I don't wish--I mean, can't you give me something to go on--some assurance?"

She blushed and looked down, repeating the phrase, "I think you must speak to mamma."

Her head sank lower, he had her hand in a moment, and wondered if he might venture to kiss her, screened as they both were by her sunshade, but hesitated to do so because of the ominous silence at the other end of the balcony.

"If you have nothing better to do this evening," said Lady Steele's voice to him, "come to us. Sir Peter and I are dining at home, and if you will partake of a family dinner with us we shall be delighted."

He bowed his acceptance.

"Come, Marion," her ladyship continued. "We have spent a charming afternoon, Mr. Allingford, thanks to your hospitality. We are at home on Thursdays after September; Mr. Carrington, you must come and hear more about my bazaar." And they were gone.

Jack stepped to the bell. "Well, Bob," he said to Allingford, "is it brandy and soda or champagne?"

"Champagne," replied that gentleman.

"Then," remarked Carrington, after ordering a bottle of '80 "Perrier"--"then, Bob, my boy, let me congratulate you."

"I think I deserve it," he replied, as he wrung his friend's hand; "for I believe I have won for my wife the most charming girl in London."

"I am awfully glad for you," said Carrington, "and I consider her a very lucky young woman."

"I don't know about that," returned Allingford, "and I'm sure I don't see what she can find to care for in me. Why, we hardly know each other. I've only met her in public, and not over a couple of dozen times at that."

"Oh, you will find it much more fun becoming acquainted after you are engaged. Our English conventions are beautifully Chinese in some respects."

"God bless you, mother!" he replied; "good night, dear;" and passed into his room.

Then he sat himself on the side of his bed, and began leisurely to undress himself, smiling meanwhile.

"Bring back a wife, and beware of swells, eh? That is the essence of Harding's advice. No, no my darling old mother; you and I get on too well together to change our lives. An amusing time a wife would have with me,--out half the night at the office, and she shivering in the dining-room waiting my return. Wife, by Jove! Yes; and thick fat chops, and sixteen-shilling trousers, and the knifeboard of the omnibus instead of the cob to ride on! No; I think not. And as for swells--that old republican, Harding, thinks every man with a handle to his name is an enemy to Magna Charta. I should like to show him my old godfather walking into an idiotic peer of the realm!"

And, very much tickled at the idea, Churchill put out his candle and turned in.

At the very first sign of the season's breaking up, Sir Marmaduke Wentworth was in the habit of leaving his town-house in Curzon Street, and proceeding to his country-seat of Bissett Grange. Gumble, his butler and body-servant, was the first person officially informed of the intended flight; but long before his master spoke to him, that far-seeing man had made up his mind, and arranged his plans accordingly. "Flitherses gone to-day, eh!" he would say to himself, as, in the calm, cool evening, he lounged against the jams of the street-door and looked up to the opposite house. "Shutters up, and Flitherses hoff! Some German bath or other, no doubt; elber-shakin' for the old man, and forrin' counts for the young ladies. Lord Charles leff last week; he'll be takin' his rubber at Spaw now as natural as at the Club. The old Berrin has been sent away somewheres; and I'll bet a pound in two days my guv'nor says Hoff!" And he would have won his bet. So soon as there was the slightest appearance of a move among the people of his circle; so soon as he found "shall have left town" given as an answer to an invite to one of his cosey little dinners; before Goodwood afforded the pleasantest excuse for the laziest of racing and the happiest of lunching; while flannel-clad gentlemen yet perspired copiously at Lord's, defending the wickets of Marylebone against the predatory incursions of "Perambulators" or "Eccentrics;" when Finsburyites were returning from their fortnight at Ramsgate, and while Dalstonians yet lingered on the pier at Southend,--old Marmaduke Wentworth would give his household brigade the order to retreat, and, at their head, would march down upon Bissett Grange.

When the photographer attempted to explain, the ear-pressure was intensified, and the "Go away, man!" uttered more loudly; at the third repetition, the photographer wrung his ear from the old gentleman's fingers, and ran away abjectly.

"Collodion and Clumpsoles; or, the Homes of the British Aristocracy in the Camera: being Reminiscences of a Peripatetic Photographer," therefore, contained no view of Bissett Grange; which was to be regretted, as neither The Hassocks, the Rector's residence, nor The Radishes, the seat of Sir Hipson Hawes, the lord of the manor, both of which figured extensively in the photographic publication, was to be compared with Marmaduke Wentworth's ancestral mansion. The elm-avenue extended from the lodge to the house,--nearly half a mile,--and through the trees you saw the broad expanse of the park, covered with that beautiful soft turf which is in the highest perfection in Sussex, and which afforded pasture for hundreds of dappled deer, who would raise their heads at the sound of approaching footsteps or carriage-wheels, and, after peering forward earnestly with outstretched necks at the intrusion, would wheel round and start off at a peculiar sling trot, gradually merging into the most graceful of gallops.

Immediately in front of the porch, and only divided from it by the carriage-sweep, was an enormous flower-bed, sloping towards the sides, and culminating in the centre,--the pride of the head-gardener's soul. Right and left of the house were two arches, exactly alike. Passing through that to the left, you came upon the stables and coach-houses, of which there is little to be said, save that they were old-fashioned, and what the helpers called "ill-conwenient;" and that the fine London grooms who came down with their master's hacks and carriage-horses in the autumn--Sir Marmaduke was never at Bissett during the hunting season--used to curse them freely as a set of tumbledown old sheds, fit only for jobs and fly-'osses. And yet the old quadrangle, environed by the stable-buildings, with their red-tiled roofs and their slate-coloured half-hatch doors, each duly bearing its horse-shoe and its hecatomb of mouse and stoat skeletons, was picturesque, more especially of an evening, when the setting sun gleamed on the quaint old clock-turret, ivy-covered and swallow-haunted, and steeped in a rich crimson glow the pretty cottage of old Martin, erst head-groom, now a superannuated pensioner Martin, who was never so happy as when babbling of bygone days, and who "minded the time" when the stables were full of blood horses, and when Master Marmaduke rode Saucy Sally over all the raspers in the county.

Through the other arch you came upon the gardens of the Grange. Immediately before you lay a broad expanse of lawn,--such smooth, soft turf as is only met with in England, and only there in well-to-do places. Short, crisp, and velvety was the grass, kept with the greatest care, and rolled and mown with the most undeviating punctuality; for Sir Marmaduke was proud of his lawn, and liked to sit out there in his high-backed rustic seat on the hot August evenings, placidly smoking his cigar, and occasionally raising his head to be fanned by the soft sea-breeze which came blowing over the neighbouring downs. He would as soon have thought of allowing a servant to take a liberty with him as of permitting any one to drive a croquet-iron into that lawn, or to attempt to play any game on it. Between the house and the lawn ran a broad gravelled walk, passing down which you came upon the orchard and upon the fig-garden, which was the glory of the county, and was enclosed with an old red-brick wall, which itself looked ripe and ruddy. To the right lay the kitchen-garden,--a fertile slope of land in the highest state of cultivation, dotted every here and there with huge lights and frames, and spread nets, and overgrown cucumbers, and bursting marrows; for though Sir Marmaduke cared but little for flowers, he was a great fruit-grower, and, next to seeing his pines and melons on his own table , his great gratification was to bear away with them the prizes from the Horticultural Shows in the neighbourhood. Beyond the orchard was a large field, known as the Paddock, whither thee croquet-players and the archers were relegated, and where the turf was almost as smooth as that of the sacred lawn itself. Over all,--house, lawn, orchard, kitchen-garden, and paddock, and far away across the surrounding downs--there was a delicious sense of calm and quiet; a feeling which was heightened rather than lessened by the inhabitants of a rookery established in the tall elm-trees bordering the Paddock, and who, as they sailed over the grounds of the Grange, would express their approbation by one single solemn caw.

The house faced the avenue, and was a queer, odd, square block, by no means picturesque, but quaintly ugly something like an old-fashioned child, whose decidedly curious features, out of all drawing and impossible to be admired, yet have something humorously lovable in their expression. A staring red-brick house of Queen Anne's time, that ought to have been formal, and perhaps had been at some period or other, but which had undergone so many changes--had had so many gables put on here, and windows let in there, and rooms added on wherever they were wanted--as to lose all trace of its original design, and to have become of a composite style of architecture which would have driven Mr. Ruskin mad. It was the only gentleman's seat for miles round which was built of red brick, and not that gray stone which always looks weather-beaten and time-worn; instead of which, the Grange had a jolly, cheery, comic expression, and when the sun gleamed on its little diamond-shaped, leaden-casemented windows, they seemed to twinkle like the eyes of a genial red-faced old gentleman at some good joke or pleasant dish. A comfortable old house in every sense of the word, with an enormous number of rooms, large airy spacious chambers, queer little nooks and snuggeries, long passages with pannelled partitions dividing them from other passages, partitions with occasional square windows or round eyelet-holes cut in them, wide straggling staircases with broad steps and broad balustrades, which no boy had ever yet been known to pass without sliding down them on his stomach. A couple of queer turreted chambers, like the place where the yard-measure lives in old-fashioned work-boxes, and a set of attics, low-roofed, and rather worm-eaten and mouldy-smelling. These were not inhabited, for the servants had their own quarters in the western wing; a bit of eccentric building, which had been thrown out long after the original structure, and gave to the old mansion, from the back view, a comical lopsided appearance; and when the rest of the house was filled, the bachelors were sent to what was known as the Barracks, or the Kennel, a series of jolly little rooms shut out from the respectable portion of the building by a long passage, where they kept up their own fun till a very late hour of the night, where there was always an overhanging smell of tobacco, and whence, in the early mornings, there came such a roaring and clanging of shower-baths, and such a sound of hissing and sluicing and splashing, that you might have fancied yourself in the vicinity of an army of Tritons.

"Halloa!" suddenly shouted Sir Marmaduke from his vantage-ground on the rug.

Every body looked up.

"Who are they, Sir Marmaduke?" asked Lyster languidly.

"What the deuce is that to you, sir?" roared the old gentleman. "Friends of mine, sir! That's enough, isn't it? Have you finished lunch."

"I haven't had any," said Lyster. "I never eat it. I hate lunch."

"Great mistake that," said Mr. Vincent, wiping his mouth. "Ought always to eat whenever you can. 'Gad, for such an omelette as that I'd get up in the middle of the night."

"Perhaps, Lyster," said Major Stone, coming back from ringing the bell, "you're of the opinion of the man who said that lunch was an insult to your breakfast and an injury to your dinner?"

"He was a confounded fool, whoever he was," broke in Sir Marmaduke. "I hate those fellows who talk epigrams. Halloa, Gumble, is that you? Tell Mrs. Mason two gentlemen are coming down to stop. She must get rooms ready for them, and that sort of thing."

"Yes, Sir Marmaduke," said Gumble. "In the Barracks, Sir Marmaduke?"

"God bless my soul, sir! how should I know?" said his master testily. "What do I keep a housekeeper for, and a pack of lazy servants, who do nothing but eat, if I'm to be worried about things like this? Tell Mrs. Mason, sir! Do as you're told!"

And exit Gumble, whose admirable training and long experience only prevented him from bursting into a guffaw.

"Though you refused Captain Lyster, I don't think you'll mind telling me who these gentlemen are, Sir Marmaduke?" said Barbara, leaving the table, and advancing to the rug.

"No, my dear; I'll tell you any thing. Besides, they'll be here to-night. One is Mr. Beresford, and the other a learned professor. There, I've thrown them among you to worry their reputations before they arrive; and now I'll be off to my study. And don't any of you come and bother me; do you hear? If you want any thing, ask Stone for it. Come, Russell."

And, followed by the lawyer, the old gentleman left the room, after patting Barbara's head with one hand, and shaking his clenched fist, in a serio-comic manner, at the rest of the company.

"What very strange people my cousin does get hold of!" said Miss Lexden, commencing the onslaught directly the door was closed. "Which Mr. Beresford is it, do you suppose?"

The question was general, but Mr. Townshend answered it, by saying pompously,

"Perhaps it's Mr. Beresford, one of the Directors of the Bank of England, who--"

"God forbid!" broke in Lyster, suddenly.

"Amen to that sweet prayer," said Barbara, in a low voice. Then louder: "Oh, dear, let's hope it's not an old gentleman from the City."

"No, no; don't fear," said Major Stone, laughing. "You all know him. It's Charley Beresford, from the Tin-Tax Office."

"Oh, every body knows Mr. Beresford," said Vincent; "capital judge of cooking; on the committee of the Beauclerk."

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