Cashel Byron's Profession: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

In the month of May, seven years after the flight of the two boys
from Moncrief House, a lady sat in an island of shadow which was
made by a cedar-tree in the midst of a glittering green lawn. She
did well to avoid the sun, for her complexion was as delicately
tinted as mother-of-pearl. She was a small, graceful woman, with
sensitive lips and nostrils, green eyes, with quiet, unarched brows,
and ruddy gold hair, now shaded by a large, untrimmed straw hat. Her
dress of Indian muslin, with half-sleeves terminating at the elbows
in wide ruffles, hardly covered her shoulders, where it was
supplemented by a scarf through which a glimpse of her throat was
visible in a nest of soft Tourkaris lace. She was reading a little
ivory-bound volume--a miniature edition of the second part of
Goethe's "Faust."

As the afternoon wore on and the light mellowed, the lady dropped
her book and began to think and dream, unconscious of a prosaic
black object crossing the lawn towards her. This was a young
gentleman in a frock coat. He was dark, and had a long, grave face,
with a reserved expression, but not ill-looking.

"Going so soon, Lucian?" said the lady, looking up as he came into
the shadow.

Lucian looked at her wistfully. His name, as she uttered it, always
stirred him vaguely. He was fond of finding out the reasons of
things, and had long ago decided that this inward stir was due to
her fine pronunciation. His other intimates called him Looshn.

"Yes," he said. "I have arranged everything, and have come to give
an account of my stewardship, and to say good-bye."

He placed a garden-chair near her and sat down. She laid her hands
one on the other in her lap, and composed herself to listen.

"First," he said, "as to the Warren Lodge. It is let for a month
only; so you can allow Mrs. Goff to have it rent free in July if you
still wish to. I hope you will not act so unwisely."

She smiled, and said, "Who are the present tenants? I hear that they
object to the dairymaids and men crossing the elm vista."

"We must not complain of that. It was expressly stipulated when they
took the lodge that the vista should be kept private for them. I had
no idea at that time that you were coming to the castle, or I should
of course have declined such a condition."

"But we do keep it private for them; strangers are not admitted. Our
people pass and repass once a day on their way to and from the
dairy; that is all."

"It seems churlish, Lydia; but this, it appears, is a special
case--a young gentleman, who has come to recruit his health. He
needs daily exercise in the open air; but he cannot bear
observation, and he has only a single attendant with him. Under
these circumstances I agreed that they should have the sole use of
the elm vista. In fact, they are paying more rent than would be
reasonable without this privilege."

"I hope the young gentleman is not mad."

"I satisfied myself before I let the lodge to him that he would be a
proper tenant," said Lucian, with reproachful gravity. "He was
strongly recommended to me by Lord Worthington, whom I believe to be
a man of honor, notwithstanding his inveterate love of sport. As it
happens, I expressed to him the suspicion you have just suggested.
Worthington vouched for the tenant's sanity, and offered to take the
lodge in his own name and be personally responsible for the good
behavior of this young invalid, who has, I fancy, upset his nerves
by hard reading. Probably some college friend of Worthington's."

"Perhaps so. But I should rather expect a college friend of Lord
Worthington's to be a hard rider or drinker than a hard reader."

"You may be quite at ease, Lydia. I took Lord Worthington at his
word so far as to make the letting to him. I have never seen the
real tenant. But, though I do not even recollect his name, I will
venture to answer for him at second-hand."

"I am quite satisfied, Lucian; and I am greatly obliged to you. I
will give orders that no one shall go to the dairy by way of the
warren. It is natural that he should wish to be out of the world."

"The next point," resumed Lucian, "is more important, as it concerns
you personally. Miss Goff is willing to accept your offer. And a
most unsuitable companion she will be for you!"

"Why, Lucian?"

"On all accounts. She is younger than you, and therefore cannot
chaperone yon. She has received only an ordinary education, and her
experience of society is derived from local subscription balls. And,
as she is not unattractive, and is considered a beauty in
Wiltstoken, she is self-willed, and will probably take your
patronage in bad part."

"Is she more self-willed than I?"

"You are not self-willed, Lydia; except that you are deaf to
advice."

"You mean that I seldom follow it. And so you think I had better
employ a professional companion--a decayed gentlewoman--than save
this young girl from going out as a governess and beginning to decay
at twenty-three?"

"The business of getting a suitable companion, and the pleasure or
duty of relieving poor people, are two different things, Lydia."

"True, Lucian. When will Miss Goff call?"

"This evening. Mind; nothing is settled as yet. If you think better
of it on seeing her you have only to treat her as an ordinary
visitor and the subject will drop. For my own part, I prefer her
sister; but she will not leave Mrs. Goff, who has not yet recovered
from the shock of her husband's death."

Lydia looked reflectively at the little volume in her hand, and
seemed to think out the question of Miss Goff. Presently, with an
air of having made up her mind, she said, "Can you guess which of
Goethe's characters you remind me of when you try to be worldly-wise
for my sake?"

"When I try--What an extraordinary irrelevance! I have not read
Goethe lately. Mephistopheles, I suppose. But I did not mean to be
cynical."

"No; not Mephistopheles, but Wagner--with a difference. Wagner
taking Mephistopheles instead of Faust for his model." Seeing by his
face that he did not relish the comparison, she added, "I am paying
you a compliment. Wagner represents a very clever man."

"The saving clause is unnecessary," he said, somewhat sarcastically.
"I know your opinion of me quite well, Lydia."

She looked quickly at him. Detecting the concern in her glance, he
shook his head sadly, saying, "I must go now, Lydia. I leave you in
charge of the housekeeper until Miss Goff arrives."

She gave him her hand, and a dull glow came into his gray jaws as he
took it. Then he buttoned his coat and walked gravely away. As he
went, she watched the sun mirrored in his glossy hat, and drowned in
his respectable coat. She sighed, and took up Goethe again.

But after a little while she began to be tired of sitting still, and
she rose and wandered through the park for nearly an hour, trying to
find the places in which she had played in her childhood during a
visit to her late aunt. She recognized a great toppling Druid's
altar that had formerly reminded her of Mount Sinai threatening to
fall on the head of Christian in "The Pilgrim's Progress." Farther
on she saw and avoided a swamp in which she had once earned a
scolding from her nurse by filling her stockings with mud. Then she
found herself in a long avenue of green turf, running east and west,
and apparently endless. This seemed the most delightful of all her
possessions, and she had begun to plan a pavilion to build near it,
when she suddenly recollected that this must be the elm vista of
which the privacy was so stringently insisted upon, by her invalid
tenant at the Warren Lodge. She fled into the wood at once, and,
when she was safe there, laughed at the oddity of being a trespasser
in her own domain. She made a wide detour in order to avoid
intruding a second time; consequently, after walking for a quarter
of an hour, she lost herself. The trees seemed never ending; she
began to think she must possess a forest as well as a park. At last
she saw an opening. Hastening toward it, she came again into the
sunlight, and stopped, dazzled by an apparition which she at first
took to be a beautiful statue, but presently recognized, with a
strange glow of delight, as a living man.

To so mistake a gentleman exercising himself in the open air on a
nineteenth-century afternoon would, under ordinary circumstances,
imply incredible ignorance either of men or statues. But the
circumstances in Miss Carew's case were not ordinary; for the man
was clad in a jersey and knee-breeches of white material, and his
bare arms shone like those of a gladiator. His broad pectoral
muscles, in their white covering, were like slabs of marble. Even
his hair, short, crisp, and curly, seemed like burnished bronze in
the evening light. It came into Lydia's mind that she had disturbed
an antique god in his sylvan haunt. The fancy was only momentary;
for she perceived that there was a third person present; a man
impossible to associate with classic divinity. He looked like a well
to do groom, and was contemplating his companion much as a groom
might contemplate an exceptionally fine horse. He was the first to
see Lydia; and his expression as he did so plainly showed that he
regarded her as a most unwelcome intruder. The statue-man, following
his sinister look, saw her too, but with different feelings; for his
lips parted, his color rose, and he stared at her with undisguised
admiration and wonder. Lydia's first impulse was to turn and fly;
her next, to apologize for her presence. Finally she went away
quietly through the trees.

The moment she was out of their sight she increased her pace almost
to a run. The day was too warm for rapid movement, and she soon
stopped and listened. There were the usual woodland sounds; leaves
rustling, grasshoppers chirping, and birds singing; but not a human
voice or footstep. She began to think that the god-like figure was
only the Hermes of Praxiteles, suggested to her by Goethe's
classical Sabbat, and changed by a day-dream into the semblance of a
living reality. The groom must have been one of those incongruities
characteristic of dreams--probably a reminiscence of Lucian's
statement that the tenant of the Warren Lodge had a single male
attendant. It was impossible that this glorious vision of manly
strength and beauty could be substantially a student broken down by
excessive study. That irrational glow of delight, too, was one of
the absurdities of dreamland; otherwise she should have been ashamed
of it.

Lydia made her way back to the castle in some alarm as to the state
of her nerves, but dwelling on her vision with a pleasure that she
would not have ventured to indulge had it concerned a creature of
flesh and blood. Once or twice it recurred to her so vividly that
she asked herself whether it could have been real. But a little
reasoning convinced her that it must have been an hallucination.

"If you please, madam," said one of her staff of domestics, a native
of Wiltstoken, who stood in deep awe of the lady of the castle,
"Miss Goff is waiting for you in the drawing-room."

The drawing-room of the castle was a circular apartment, with a
dome-shaped ceiling broken into gilt ornaments resembling thick
bamboos, which projected vertically downward like stalagmites. The
heavy chandeliers were loaded with flattened brass balls, magnified
fac-similes of which crowned the uprights of the low, broad,
massively-framed chairs, which were covered in leather stamped with
Japanese dragon designs in copper-colored metal. Near the fireplace
was a great bronze bell of Chinese shape, mounted like a mortar on a
black wooden carriage for use as a coal-scuttle. The wall was
decorated with large gold crescents on a ground of light blue.

In this barbaric rotunda Miss Carew found awaiting her a young lady
of twenty-three, with a well-developed, resilient figure, and a
clear complexion, porcelain surfaced, and with a fine red in the
cheeks. The lofty pose of her head expressed an habitual sense of
her own consequence given her by the admiration of the youth of the
neighborhood, which was also, perhaps, the cause of the neatness of
her inexpensive black dress, and of her irreproachable gloves,
boots, and hat. She had been waiting to introduce herself to the
lady of the castle for ten minutes in a state of nervousness that
culminated as Lydia entered.

"How do you do, Miss Goff, Have I kept you waiting? I was out."

"Not at all," said Miss Goff, with a confused impression that red
hair was aristocratic, and dark brown (the color of her own) vulgar.
She had risen to shake hands, and now, after hesitating a moment to
consider what etiquette required her to do next, resumed her seat.
Miss Carew sat down too, and gazed thoughtfully at her visitor, who
held herself rigidly erect, and, striving to mask her nervousness,
unintentionally looked disdainful.

"Miss Goff," said Lydia, after a silence that made her speech
impressive, "will you come to me on a long visit? In this lonely
place I am greatly in want of a friend and companion of my own age
and position. I think you must be equally so."

Alice Goff was very young, and very determined to accept no credit
that she did not deserve. With the unconscious vanity and conscious
honesty of youth, she proceeded to set Miss Carew right as to her
social position, not considering that the lady of the castle
probably understood it better than she did herself, and indeed
thinking it quite natural that she should be mistaken.

"You are very kind," she replied, stiffly; "but our positions are
quite different, Miss Carew. The fact is that I cannot afford to
live an idle life. We are very poor, and my mother is partly
dependent on my exertions."

"I think you will be able to exert yourself to good purpose if you
come to me," said Lydia, unimpressed. "It is true that I shall give
you very expensive habits; but I will of course enable you to
support them."

"I do not wish to contract expensive habits," said Alice,
reproachfully. "I shall have to content myself with frugal ones
throughout my life."

"Not necessarily. Tell me, frankly: how had you proposed to exert
yourself? As a teacher, was it not?"

Alice flushed, but assented.

"You are not at all fitted for it; and you will end by marrying. As
a teacher you could not marry well. As an idle lady, with expensive
habits, you will marry very well indeed. It is quite an art to know
how to be rich--an indispensable art, if you mean to marry a rich
man."

"I have no intention of marrying," said Alice, loftily. She thought
it time to check this cool aristocrat. "If I come at all I shall
come without any ulterior object."

"That is just what I had hoped. Come without condition, or second
thought of any kind."

"But--" began Alice, and stopped, bewildered by the pace at which
the negotiation was proceeding. She murmured a few words, and waited
for Lydia to proceed. But Lydia had said her say, and evidently
expected a reply, though she seemed assured of having her own way,
whatever Alice's views might be.

"I do not quite understand, Miss Carew. What duties?--what would you
expect of me?"

"A great deal," said Lydia, gravely. "Much more than I should from a
mere professional companion."

"But I am a professional companion," protested Alice.

"Whose?"

Alice flushed again, angrily this time. "I did not mean to say--"

"You do not mean to say that you will have nothing to do with me,"
said Lydia, stopping her quietly. "Why are you so scrupulous, Miss
Goff? You will be close to your home, and can return to it at any
moment if you become dissatisfied with your position here."

Fearful that she had disgraced herself by ill manners; loath to be
taken possession of as if her wishes were of no consequence when a
rich lady's whim was to be gratified; suspicious--since she had
often heard gossiping tales of the dishonesty of people in high
positions--lest she should be cheated out of the salary she had come
resolved to demand; and withal unable to defend herself against Miss
Carew, Alice caught at the first excuse that occurred to her.

"I should like a little time to consider," she said.

"Time to accustom yourself to me, is it not? You can have as long as
you plea-"

"Oh, I can let you know tomorrow," interrupted Alice, officiously.

"Thank you. I will send a note to Mrs. Goff to say that she need
not expect you back until tomorrow."

"But I did not mean--I am not prepared to stay," remonstrated Alice,
feeling that she was being entangled in a snare.

"We shall take a walk after dinner, then, and call at your house,
where you can make your preparations. But I think I can supply you
with all you will require."

Alice dared make no further objection. "I am afraid," she stammered,
"you will think me horribly rude; but I am so useless, and you are
so sure to be disappointed, that--that--"

"You are not rude, Miss Goff; but I find you very shy. You want to
run away and hide from new faces and new surroundings." Alice, who
was self-possessed and even overbearing in Wiltstoken society, felt
that she was misunderstood, but did not know how to vindicate
herself. Lydia resumed, "I have formed my habits in the course of my
travels, and so live without ceremony. We dine early--at six."

Alice had dined at two, but did not feel bound to confess it.

"Let me show you your room," said Lydia, rising. "This is a curious
drawingroom," she added, glancing around. "I only use it
occasionally to receive visitors." She looked about her again with
some interest, as if the apartment belonged to some one else, and
led the way to a room on the first floor, furnished as a lady's
bed-chamber. "If you dislike this," she said, "or cannot arrange it
to suit you, there are others, of which you can have your choice.
Come to my boudoir when you are ready."

"Where is that?" said Alice, anxiously.

"It is--You had better ring for some one to show you. I will send
you my maid."

Alice, even more afraid of the maid than of the mistress, declined
hastily. "I am accustomed to attend to myself, Miss Carew," with
proud humility.

"You will find it more convenient to call me Lydia," said Miss
Carew. "Otherwise you will be supposed to refer to my grandaunt, a
very old lady." She then left the room.

Alice was fond of thinking that she had a womanly taste and touch in
making a room pretty. She was accustomed to survey with pride her
mother's drawing-room, which she had garnished with cheap
cretonnes, Japanese paper fans, and knick-knacks in ornamental
pottery. She felt now that if she slept once in the bed before her,
she could never be content in her mother's house again. All that she
had read and believed of the beauty of cheap and simple ornament,
and the vulgarity of costliness, recurred to her as a hypocritical
paraphrase of the "sour grapes" of the fox in the fable. She
pictured to herself with a shudder the effect of a sixpenny Chinese
umbrella in that fireplace, a cretonne valance to that bed, or
chintz curtains to those windows. There was in the room a series of
mirrors consisting of a great glass in which she could see herself
at full length, another framed in the carved oaken dressing-table,
and smaller ones of various shapes fixed to jointed arms that turned
every way. To use them for the first time was like having eyes in
the back of the head. She had never seen herself from all points of
view before. As she gazed, she strove not to be ashamed of her
dress; but even her face and figure, which usually afforded her
unqualified delight, seemed robust and middle-class in Miss Carew's
mirrors.

"After all," she said, seating herself on a chair that was even more
luxurious to rest in than to look at; "putting the lace out of the
question--and my old lace that belongs to mamma is quite as
valuable--her whole dress cannot have cost much more than mine. At
any rate, it is not worth much more, whatever she may have chosen to
pay for it."

But Alice was clever enough to envy Miss Carew her manners more than
her dress. She would not admit to herself that she was not
thoroughly a lady; but she felt that Lydia, in the eye of a
stranger, would answer that description better than she. Still, as
far as she had observed, Miss Carew was exceedingly cool in her
proceedings, and did not take any pains to please those with whom
she conversed. Alice had often made compacts of friendship with
young ladies, and had invited them to call her by her Christian
name; but on such occasions she had always called themn "dear" or
"darling," and, while the friendship lasted (which was often longer
than a month, for Alice was a steadfast girl), had never met them
without exchanging an embrace and a hearty kiss.

"And nothing," she said, springing from the chair as she thought of
this, and speaking very resolutely, "shall tempt me to believe that
there is anything vulgar in sincere affection. I shall be on my
guard against this woman."

Having settled that matter for the present, she resumed her
examination of the apartment, and was more and more attracted by it
as she proceeded. For, thanks to her eminence as a local beauty, she
had not that fear of beautiful and rich things which renders abject
people incapable of associating costliness with comfort. Had the
counterpane of the bed been her own, she would have unhesitatingly
converted it into a ball-dress. There were toilet appliances of
which she had never felt the need, and could only guess the use. She
looked with despair into the two large closets, thinking how poor a
show her three dresses, her ulster, and her few old jackets would
make there. There was also a dressing-room with a marble bath that
made cleanliness a luxury instead of one of the sternest of the
virtues, as it seemed at home. Yet she remarked that though every
object was more or less ornamental, nothing had been placed in the
rooms for the sake of ornament alone. Miss Carew, judged by her
domestic arrangements, was a utilitarian before everything. There
was a very handsome chimney piece; but as there was nothing on the
mantel board, Alice made a faint effort to believe that it was
inferior in point of taste to that in her own bedroom, which was
covered with blue cloth, surrounded by fringe and brass headed
nails, and laden with photographs in plush frames.

The striking of the hour reminded her that she had forgotten to
prepare for dinner. Khe hastily took off her hat, washed her hands,
spent another minute among the mirrors, and was summoning courage to
ring the bell, when a doubt occurred to her. Ought she to put on her
gloves before going down or not? This kept her in perplexity for
many seconds. At last she resolved to put her gloves in her pocket,
and be guided as to their further disposal by the example of her
hostess. Then, not daring to hesitate any longer, she rang the bell,
and was presently joined by a French lady of polished manners--Miss
Carew's maid who conducted her to the boudoir, a hexagonal apartment
that, Alice thought, a sultana might have envied. Lydia was there,
reading. Alice noted with relief that she had not changed her dress,
and that she was ungloved.

Miss Goff did not enjoy the dinner. There was a butler who seemed to
have nothing to do but stand at a buffet and watch her. There was
also a swift, noiseless footman who presented himself at her elbow
at intervals and compelled her to choose on the instant between
unfamiliar things to eat and drink. She envied these men their
knowledge of society, and shrank from their criticism. Once, after
taking a piece of asparagus in her hand, she was deeply mortified at
seeing her hostess consume the vegetable with the aid of a knife and
fork; but the footman's back was turned to her just then, and the
butler, oppressed by the heat of the weather, was in a state of
abstraction bordering on slumber. On the whole, by dint of imitating
Miss Oarew, who did not plague her with any hostess-like vigilance,
she came off without discredit to her breeding.

Lydia, on her part, acknowledged no obligation to entertain her
guest by chatting, and enjoyed her thoughts and her dinner in
silence. Alice began to be fascinated by her, and to wonder what she
was thinking about. She fancied that the footman was not quite free
from the same influence. Even the butler might have been meditating
himself to sleep on the subject. Alice felt tempted to offer her a
penny for her thoughts. But she dared not be so familiar as yet.
And, had the offer been made and accepted, butler, footman, and
guest would have been plunged into equal confusion by the
explanation, which would have run thus:

"I saw a vision of the Hermes of Praxiteles in a sylvan haunt
to-day; and I am thinking of that."

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