Part 1 (1/2)
Christina.
by L. G. Moberly.
CHAPTER I.
”THE LITTLE PRACTICAL JOKE.”
”Don't be a silly a.s.s, Layton. Do I look the sort of man to play such a fool's trick?”
”My dear fellow, there's no silly a.s.s about it. You, a lonely bachelor, and not badly off--desirous of settling down into quiet, domestic life, would like to find a young lady of refined and cultured tastes who would meet you with--a view to matrimony. I'll take my oath you are as ready as this gentleman is, to swear you will make an excellent husband, kind, domesticated, and----”
Further speech was checked by a well-directed cus.h.i.+on, which descended plump upon the speaker's bronzed and grinning countenance, momentarily obliterating grin and countenance alike, whilst a shout of laughter went up from the other occupants of the smoking-room.
”Jack, my boy, Mernside wasn't far wrong when he defined you as a silly a.s.s,” drawled a man who leant against the mantelpiece, smoking a cigarette, and looking with amused eyes at the squirming figure under the large cus.h.i.+on; ”what unutterable drivel are you reading? Is the _Sunday Recorder_ responsible for that silly rot?”
”The _Sunday Recorder_ is responsible for what you are pleased to call silly rot,” answered the young man, who had now flung aside the cus.h.i.+on, and sat upright, looking at his two elders with laughing eyes, whilst he clutched a newspaper in one hand, and tried to smooth his rumpled hair with the other. ”The _Sunday Recorder_ has a matrimonial column--and--knowing poor old Rupert to be a lonely bachelor, not badly off, and desirous of settling down into quiet domestic life, etc., etc.--see the printed page”--he waved the journal over his head--”I merely wished to recommend my respected cousin to insert an advertis.e.m.e.nt on these lines, in next Sunday's paper.”
”Because some wretched bounders choose to advertise for wives in the Sunday papers, I don't see where I come in,” said a quiet and singularly musical voice--that of the third man in the room--he who a moment before had flung the large cus.h.i.+on at young Layton. He was sitting in an armchair drawn close to the glowing fire, his hands clasped under his head, his face full of languid amus.e.m.e.nt, turned towards the grinning youth upon the sofa. Without being precisely a handsome man, Rupert Mernside's was a striking personality, and his face not one to be overlooked, even in a crowd. There was strength in his well-cut mouth and jaw; and the rather deeply-set grey eyes held humour, and a certain masterfulness, which dominated less powerful characters than his own.
In those eyes there was a charm which neutralised his somewhat severe and rugged features, but in Rupert Mernside's voice lay his greatest attraction; and a lady of his acquaintance had once been heard to say that with such a voice as his, he could induce anyone to follow him round the world.
Why he had remained so long a bachelor had long been matter for speculation, not only to the feminine portion of the community, but also to his men friends; but thirty-five still found Rupert Mernside unmarried, and the manoeuvres of match-making mothers, and of daughters trained to play up to their mothers' tactics, had hitherto failed to lead him in the desired direction.
”My dear Rupert,” his young cousin said solemnly, after a pause, ”you are a bachelor--the fact is painfully self-evident; you have enough money to--settle down and become domesticated. There are hundreds--no--thousands of young women in the world, who would 'meet you with a view to matrimony.' It seems a crying shame that you should waste your sweetness on the desert air--when you might be blooming in a fair lady's garden.”
”You utter young rotter,” Mernside e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, laughing as he rose, and stretched himself, ”if you are so keen on matrimonial advertis.e.m.e.nts, why not put one in on your own account?”
”Awful sport,” Layton e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; ”think of the piles of letters you would get from every kind of marriageable woman--old and young. And you might arrange to meet any number of them at different places, and have no end of a ripping time. You only have to ask them to meet you with a view to matrimony; the matrimony needn't come off, unless both parties are satisfied.”
”Silly a.s.s!” Mernside exclaimed again, with a laugh that mitigated the words, ”one of these days you'll find yourself in some unpleasantly tangled web, my boy, if you play the goat over matrimonial advertis.e.m.e.nts. Better leave well alone and come up to Handwell Manor with me. Cicely wants a message taken to the Dysons.”
”Cicely's messages are like the poor--always with us,” the younger man answered flippantly; ”no, thank you, Rupert; on this genial and pleasant November afternoon, when you can't see half a mile ahead of you for the mist, and the country lanes are two feet deep in mud, I prefer the smoking-room fire. Besides, I have letters to write.”
”I'll go with you, Mernside”; the man who had been lounging against the mantelpiece straightened himself, and flung away the end of his cigarette; ”Cicely won't be down till tea-time; she is spending the afternoon in the nursery, looking after the small girl. Confounded nuisance for her that the nurse had to go off in a hurry like this, for my respected sister was not intended by nature for the care of children.”
”Fortunate she has only one,” Mernside answered; ”what would she have done with a large family party?”
”Managed by hook or by crook to get a party of nurses and nurserymaids to mind them,” laughed the other man; ”she's the dearest little soul alive, but Cicely never ought to have been a mother, though I shouldn't say that, excepting to you two who are members of the family, and know of what stuff Cicely and I are made.”
Mernside and Layton joined in the laughter, and the younger man said lazily:
”Cicely's just Cicely; you can't imagine her less perfect than she is, and you, Wilfrid, being merely her brother, are not ent.i.tled to give an opinion about her. Rupert and I, as cousins, see her in a truer perspective. Bless her sweet heart! She makes a perfect chatelaine for this delectable castle, and the small heiress couldn't have a sweeter guardian.”
”Hear, hear,” Mernside murmured, touching Layton's shoulder with a kindly, almost caressing touch, as he and his cousin, Lord Wilfrid Staynes, went out of the room, leaving the young man in sole possession.
Left alone, Layton stretched himself again, yawned, lighted a cigarette, and, strolling to the window, looked at the not very inviting prospect outside. Bramwell Castle stood on the slope of a hill, and on even moderately fine days, the view commanded, not only by the window of the smoking-room, but by every window on that side of the house, was one of the wildest, and most beautiful in the county. But, on this Sunday afternoon in November, nothing more was visible than the broad gravel terrace immediately below the house, and a gra.s.s lawn that sloped abruptly from the terrace, and was dotted with trees.
Everything beyond the lawn was swallowed up in a white mist that drifted over the tree-tops, and clung to the dank gra.s.s, blotting out completely all trace of the park, that swept downwards from the lawn, and of the great landscape which stretched from the woodlands to the far-away hills. Park, woods, and hills were visible to Jack Layton only in the eyes of his imagination; he could see none of them, and, with a s.h.i.+ver and a shrug of the shoulders, he turned back into the warm fire-lit room.
Thanks to his close relations.h.i.+p to Lady Cicely Redesdale, the mistress of the house, to whom he had always been more of younger brother than cousin, he had _carte blanche_ to be at the Castle whenever he chose, and to treat the house as if it were in reality, what he a.s.suredly made of it--his actual home. Both to him--and to Cicely's other cousin, Rupert Mernside--the late John Redesdale, her husband, had extended the fullest and most warm hospitality; and since his death, it had still remained a recognised thing that the two cousins should spend their weekends at Bramwell, whenever Lady Cicely and her little daughter were there. The kindly millionaire who had married the lovely but impecunious Cicely Staynes, one of the numerous daughters of the Earl of Netherhall, possessed a host of hospitable instincts, and the Castle had opened its gates wide to Cicely's relations and friends. Only one reservation had been made by honest John Redesdale. No man or woman of doubtful reputation, or damaged character, was allowed to be the guest of his wife; and the shadier members of Society never set foot within any house of which the millionaire was master. Jack Layton, strolling idly now across the smoking-room, whose panelled walls and carved furniture had been Redesdale's pride and joy, glanced up at the mantelpiece, over which hung a portrait of the dead man.