CHAPTER V.

EASTER HOLIDAYS.

The Easter holidays were here, and Sir Thomas Dudgeon and family had gone down to Stammars for a fortnight. The baronet was like a boy released for awhile from the tyranny of school. He had always loved the country; but never had it seemed so sweet and pleasant to him as it did now, after he had been penned up for a couple of months in the great wilderness of London. He spent hours with Cozzard every day, and together the two men visited every nook and corner of the property, and renewed acquaintance with every horse, dog, and cow on the estate. Sir Thomas's speech on the Sugar Duties, being a maiden effort, had been listened to with kindly attention by the House, and had been commented on in favourable terms by one or two of the morning papers. Amplified and embellished with tropes and similes not found; in the original, it had been printed, in extenso, in the _Pembridge Gazette_, and had formed the basis of a ponderous leader in the editor's best style. Sir Thomas began to feel as if he were a power in the realm. Really, as he sometimes whispered to himself, his wife's estimate of his abilities might not be such an exaggerated one, after all. He had been complimented so often about his speech, that, insensibly to himself, he began to regard it as being altogether his own composition, and to forget or ignore Pomeroy's share in the transaction.

The ball at Stammars came off in due course, and was very successful. It added greatly to the popularity of Sir Thomas among his constituents. Husbands and fathers in Pembridge were as amenable to feminine influences as they are supposed to be elsewhere, and Lady Dudgeon judged rightly that all the ladies would work for her after she had hinted that a similar gathering would probably be held at Stammars every year during Sir Thomas's parliamentary career.

Lady Dudgeon's correspondence had got greatly into arrear during her two months in London. As soon as the ball was over she devoted a week to letter-writing. She had many things to write about, and she did not spare any of her numerous correspondents. She had much to say respecting the fashions and foibles of society in town, the drier details being plentifully garnished with gossip and anecdotes respecting mutual friends, or such notabilities of the day as her ladyship might have been brought into casual contact with in the course of a ten minutes' crush on an aristocratic staircase. But the ball and its eccentricities were not forgotten; and could certain of the Pembridge ladies have seen how mercilessly their "dear Lady Dudgeon" ridiculed them in her letters to her fine friends--their manners, their conversation, and their toilettes--they would never have forgiven her to the last day of their lives.

Captain Dayrell came down for the ball, and stayed the remainder of the week at Stammars. Neither he nor Lady Dudgeon had given up the campaign as hopeless. It was part of the Captain's creed that young ladies, especially in matters matrimonial, did not know their own minds for a week at a time. Because he had been refused in March, that was no reason why he should not be accepted in April or May. He had felt considerably annoyed when Lady Dudgeon had told him the result of her conversation with Miss Lloyd. He hinted to her pretty plainly that she had committed an egregious blunder in broaching the subject to Eleanor at all, instead of leaving him to fight his own battle with that somewhat obstinate young person. "A meddlesome old cat" was the term he applied to her in his own thoughts. To do her justice, however, her ladyship was laudably anxious to atone for her error; therefore was Captain Dayrell invited down to Stammars, where he would have the field entirely to himself: even Mr. Pomeroy would be out of the way, Sir Thomas having given that gentleman a week's release from his not very onerous duties.

"You will have to do your spiriting very gently, Captain Dayrell," said her ladyship. "Miss Lloyd's refusal was a very decisive one."

"So long as there is no prior attachment--and you assure me that there is not--I will not permit myself to despair," said Dayrell. "I tell your ladyship this in confidence. But if it could in any way be hinted to Miss Lloyd that I have accepted her decision as final, and, while deeply hurt by her rejection of me, have no intention of troubling her further, I think my cause might be somewhat benefited thereby."

"Pardon me, but I hardly see the force of your suggestion."

"My dear Lady Dudgeon, it is one of the characteristics of your sex to regard a rejected suitor with a certain amount of tendresse. They say to themselves, 'Here is something that might be mine if I would only hold out my hand to take it.' So long as it is there for the having, they don't care to accept it; but when they have reason to think that they are about to lose it, they will sometimes make a snatch at it rather than let it go altogether--or, perhaps I ought to say, rather than let it fall into the hands of another."

In this matter Captain Dayrell judged Eleanor by himself. He was twice as anxious to win her, now that she had declined his attentions, as he had been before. Not that he would ever have dreamed of asking Miss Lloyd to become his wife had she been other than the heiress she was. He knew too well what was due both to himself and to society.

The suggested hint was duly given to Eleanor. It made her intercourse with Captain Dayrell, during his stay at Stammars, more easy and pleasant than it might otherwise have been, but beyond that it had no effect whatever. When the captain went back to town he was not quite so sanguine of success as he had been a week previously; but being of a persevering disposition, and having no belief in the immutability of a woman's _No_, he was still very far from considering his case as hopeless.

Olive Deane had three days' leave of absence from her duties at Easter. She went by invitation to spend the time with her aunt and cousin at Pembridge. She had seen neither of them during the two months she had been at Lady Dudgeon's. Matthew Kelvin had once or twice sent his chief clerk to transact business with the baronet, but had never put in an appearance himself. Could it be that he dreaded the possibility of meeting Miss Lloyd? was the question Olive sometimes asked herself; but it was a question to which there was no likelihood of her ever obtaining an answer.

Olive's heart fluttered strangely as she knocked at the familiar door. Absence had in no wise weakened her love for her cousin. Watered with her secret tears, its roots seemed only to grow stronger and to cling more tightly round her heart. "Why should my life be made miserable for the love of this man?" she sometimes asked herself. "He cares nothing for me--he never will care anything for me." But in other moods she would say: "He will learn to love me yet. Such a love as mine must have a magnetism in it strong enough to draw to itself the object of its desires."

But how was it possible that her cousin could grow to love her when she was separated from him by weeks and months of absence? She must devise some scheme that would bring her under the same roof with him again; that was her only chance. Once let Miss Lloyd become engaged either to Mr. Pomeroy or Captain Dayrell--once let Matthew Kelvin realize the fact that, safe in the love of another man, Eleanor was for ever beyond his reach, and she--Olive--would not stop another day at Stammars. Some excuse she would find, some reason she would invent, which would make her once more an inmate of her cousin's house. Now, to-day, when she took her aunt's hand and kissed her, she peered anxiously into her face to read whatever signs might be written there. Was her health much worse than usual? Was there any prospect that before long this poor ailing creature might need her services as nurse? Surely--surely, she could not linger on in this way for ever! She wished no harm to her aunt; but one cannot always help one's thoughts. To-day, however, Mrs. Kelvin looked pretty much as she had looked for the last three or four years--neither better nor worse.

She received her niece very kindly. Matthew was out on business, so there was time for an hour's confidential talk before he came back. One of Mrs. Kelvin's first questions had reference to Mr. Pomeroy; was he comfortable, and did he suit Sir Thomas? Then she was interested in hearing Olive's account of the gay doings in London, and genuinely pleased to find that Lady Dudgeon and her niece agreed so well together.

After that the old lady began to talk about her son. There had been a change in him of late, and it troubled her. He was not bodily ill, she thought; but he seemed to have something on his mind. He was restless and irritable, and seemed to crave for company and excitement more than he had ever done before. When he was talking about one thing he always seemed to be thinking about another.

"He has not read a line to me for I don't know how long," sighed the old lady. "I can see that his heart is not in it, and so I don't care to ask him."

Mr. Kelvin came in while they were still talking about him. His face brightened the moment he saw Olive, and her heart whispered to her, "He is glad to see me!" He shook hands with her, and patted her cheek as he might have done that of a child.

"Your roses were always white ones, Nolly," he said, "and London smoke has certainly done nothing to turn them into red ones."

Olive's anxious eyes were not long in verifying what Mrs. Kelvin had said about her son. He certainly looked more worn and anxious than she had ever seen him look before. He seemed to have grown five years older in a few weeks.

"Will he tell me, I wonder, what has gone amiss with him?" whispered Olive to herself. "Can his anxiety have anything to do with Eleanor Lloyd? or is it common business cares that are troubling his mind?"

From whatever cause Mr. Kelvin's anxiety might spring, he made an effort this evening to put it behind him, and partly succeeded in so doing. He assumed a cheerfulness, if he felt it not, and his mother was only too ready to believe that it was genuine. It struck Olive, however, that she had never seen her cousin drink so much brandy-and-water as he did this evening, and then he would finish up with champagne, toasting Olive in one bumper and his mother in another. After that he went out for a stroll and a whiff in the quiet streets, and had not come back when the ladies retired for the night.

"Your coming, dear, seems to have done Matthew good," said Mrs. Kelvin to Olive, as she kissed her at her bedroom door. "I have not seen him so bright and cheerful for weeks as he has been to-night. But I dare say my company is a little dull for him at times, and the house would be all the brighter for him if you could be here always."

If she could be there always! How the words rang in Olive's ears when shut up in the solitude of her own room! She could not go to bed till she heard Matthew come in, so she put out the candle and drew up the blind, and sat gazing out at the chilly stars till she heard her cousin's footsteps on the stairs.

Mrs. Kelvin never came down to breakfast, a fact of which Olive was aware. She judged that if her cousin had anything particular to say to her, he would say it when his mother was out of the way; so she took care to be down to breakfast betimes next morning.

Kelvin was moody and distrait. After a little commonplace conversation, he lapsed into a silence that seemed deeper than common, and one which Olive did not care to break.

"Do you see much of Miss Lloyd?" he said at last, with a suddenness that was almost startling.

"I see her nearly every day--generally at luncheon," said Olive, quite calmly. She had expected some such question.

"Is she well and happy?"

"Quite well, and, as far as one person may judge of another, quite happy."

Silence again for a minute or two. When Kelvin next spoke, it was with his eyes turned away from Olive.

"She is young, handsome, and presumably rich, consequently not short of suitors--eh?"

"I see so little of Miss Lloyd, except at breakfast or luncheon, that I am hardly in a position to answer your question. There is, however, one gentleman who visits at the house, and who seems to be looked upon with favourable eyes both by Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd."

"Ah! And who may he be?"

"His name is Captain Dayrell. He is said to be cousin to Lord Rookborough."

"Good-looking, of course?"

"Not bad-looking, certainly." Silence again.

Olive Deane knew quite well that in speaking thus of Captain Dayrell to her cousin she was not confining herself to the narrow limits of the truth. She knew quite well--for she was not blind, like Lady Dudgeon--that if the attentions of one man were more pleasant to Miss Lloyd than those of another, that man was John Pomeroy. But instinct warned her that it would not be wise on her part to mention Pomeroy's name in any such relation. That Miss Lloyd should receive the attentions of a man like Captain Dayrell would seem to her cousin no more than natural under the circumstances; but that Miss Lloyd should encourage the suit of a penniless adventurer like Jack Pomeroy would have seemed an altogether different affair. Matthew Kelvin's pride would have revolted at the thought of Pomeroy winning that which he himself had failed to gain. He was just the man to have warned Sir Thomas, and have got Pomeroy discharged, so that the affair might be broken off; but in the case of Captain Dayrell no such mode of procedure was possible. However distasteful such a state of affairs might be to him, he could only submit to it with such grace as there might be in him.

It was characteristic of Olive Deane's crooked method of reasoning, that she fully believed that should her plot result in a marriage between Eleanor and Pomeroy, her cousin would, in time to come, be far better pleased than if no such scheme had been hatched by her busy brain. Would not Matthew Kelvin's revenge be far sweeter to him if the woman who had rejected him so contemptuously should marry an adventurer like Pomeroy, who could have no other object than her supposed wealth in trying to win her for his wife, than if she should become the promised bride of Captain Dayrell, who, though he should be told Miss Lloyd's real history at the last moment, might still be chivalrous enough to make her his wife? In any case, thus it was that Olive reasoned with herself, and for this reason it was that John Pomeroy's name was never mentioned by her in connection with Miss Lloyd.

"That was a devilish scheme of revenge that you suggested to me one morning in my office! I have had no peace of mind since I agreed to it."

"You talk as a woman might talk. I certainly gave you credit for more strength of purpose," said Olive, with the slightest possible touch of contempt in her voice.

"Strength of purpose has nothing to do with the point in question," he said, harshly. "For the first time in my life, I have wilfully tarnished my professional honour, and that is what annoys me so greatly."

"A few weeks more, and the necessity for concealment will be at an end. Captain Dayrell will propose to Miss Lloyd--will win her consent to become his wife. After that you can strike your blow as soon as you like."

Kelvin did not answer, but sat staring moodily into the fire. Olive regarded him furtively for a little while, without speaking.

"I certainly thought that I should have seen you at Stammars on the evening of the ball," she said, after a time.

"I had an invitation, but I did not choose to go. Too much of a tag-rag-and-bob-tail affair for me."

"Your absence was commented upon both by Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon at breakfast next morning."

"What does that matter to me?"

"Shall I tell you something else?"

"Just as you please."

"After Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon had left the room, I rose from the table and went and sat down for a few minutes in one of the deep window recesses. Miss Lloyd and Captain Dayrell rose too, and went towards the fire-place. I suppose from what followed that Miss Lloyd had forgotten that I was in the room. Said the Captain to her: 'Who is this Mr. Kelvin, whose absence from the ball Sir Thomas seemed to regret so much?'--'Oh, a mere nobody--a provincial attorney,' answered Miss Lloyd."

"She said that, did she!" muttered Kelvin.

"'Oh, by-the-by,' continued the Captain, 'I want to consult a lawyer on a point of business while I'm down here, and I daresay this fellow of Sir Thomas's would do as well as anybody else.'--'Yes, I should rather like you to see him, Frank,' said Miss Lloyd.--'Why him in particular?' asked the Captain.--'Because this very man--this country attorney--actually had the audacity, no very long time ago, to ask me to become his wife!'--'Confound his impudence!' said the Captain, and then they both laughed, and left the room."

A deep flush mounted to the face of Matthew Kelvin. He got up from the table, and went and rested his two elbows on the chimney-piece, and stood gazing into the fire without speaking. The lie just told by Olive, but which he had accepted as truth, had evidently touched him to the quick. Olive, playing with her tea-spoon, watched him narrowly.

"Do you think of telling Miss Lloyd before long that she is not Miss Lloyd?" Olive ventured at last to remark.

"No, not yet--not yet!" answered Kelvin. "Now that I have kept the secret so long, it shall not be told till the eve of her marriage with this man. I leave it for you to let me know when the proper time has come. Let her suffer--as she has made me suffer."

With that he left the room. Nor, during Olive's visit, was the subject again alluded to between them.

All too soon, to Olive's thinking, did her visit come to an end.

"You must steal another holiday before long," said her aunt to her as she was putting on her bonnet on the morning of her return to Stammars. "Matthew has brightened up wonderfully while you have been here, and I can't tell you how thankful I am for it." Matthew himself kissed her as he handed her into the fly that was to take her back. He had not kissed her since that never-to-be-forgotten day at Redcar, now long years ago. How strangely her heart thrilled to the touch of his lips! "Oh! that I could be with him altogether, never to leave him more!" she murmured. She lay back in the fly and cried all the way to Stammars; but already in that crooked brain of hers the embryo of a strange, dark scheme was beginning to take shape and consistency, although as yet she herself was hardly aware of its existence.

Gerald, too, had his holiday at Easter. Not that he wanted it, or even asked for it. To know that he was under the same roof with Eleanor, even though his chances of seeing her might have been few and far between, would have been holiday enough for him. But Sir Thomas's offer was made in such a way that he could not refuse to accept it. He had no suspicion that the prime mover in the affair was Lady Dudgeon, who thought that, by isolating Eleanor as much as possible, she was materially increasing Captain Dayrell's chances of success.

The demon of Jealousy was tugging at Gerald's heart-strings as he left Stammars for London, and all by reason of this same Captain Dayrell. He knew perfectly well that that gentleman, and he alone, had been specially invited to Stammars. He had met the captain once or twice at luncheon, and had seen enough of him to know that he might prove a most formidable rival. Before leaving Stammars he would fain have seen Eleanor, would fain have given her some hint more pointed than any he had yet given as to the state of his feelings, and have tried to win from her some sort of promise in return. But, either through accident or design, he found himself unable to see her even for five minutes; and he was compelled to go away without one word of farewell, but with the bitter knowledge--and bitter indeed it was to him--that his rival was expected to reach Stammars that very day in time for dinner.

"What may not such a man accomplish in ten days!" muttered poor Gerald to himself, as he was being borne Londonwards in the train. "On the one hand, a good-looking, polished man of the world--a roué, doubtless, but how is Eleanor to know that?--full of bright talk and ready wit, and with an adaptability about him that makes him seem at home anywhere; on the other hand, an ardent, impressionable girl, bred in the country, lacking in knowledge of the world and its ways, with a sort of high-flown sentiment about her which Dayrell would know at once how to twist to his own advantage. In an encounter such as this, which of the two is likely to come off victor?"

Of a truth, poor Gerald was very miserable. He did not know, as we know, that he had himself supplied Eleanor with a suit of invisible armour, welded by Love's deft fingers, which would have rendered her proof against the assaults of a hundred Captain Dayrells. He blamed himself in that he had not yet told her of his love--told her by word of mouth--not dreaming that he had already told it in divers other ways, with a silent eloquence which is often more persuasive and powerful than any words.

Gerald spent three days in London with Miss Bellamy and Ambrose Murray. Then he ran over to Paris with a view of seeking a little distraction among his old acquaintances in that gay city. But nothing could distract him for long at a time from his own jaundiced thoughts. The image of Captain Dayrell was a nightmare to him during the hours of darkness, and as a black shadow that never ceased to haunt his footsteps by day. His light-hearted Parisian friends told him that he was one of them no longer, that English fog had so permeated his system, that there was no longer any esprit left in him: he was triste and distrait; and, in a much shorter time than he had intended, he returned to England.

Gerald's first question to the servant who opened the door to him was--

"Is Captain Dayrell still here?"

"No, sir, he went back to town two days ago: and master and missis and the young ladies are gone to a juvenile party, and won't be back till late."

"Miss Lloyd and Miss Deane, are they both at home?"

"Yes, sir. Miss Deane came back four days since. Miss Lloyd was to have gone with her ladyship to the party, but had a headache."

After eating a little dinner hurriedly, Gerald went in search of Eleanor. Unless her headache had compelled her to remain upstairs, he thought that he should probably find her in the back drawing-room. And there, in fact, he did find her. Her headache was better, and she had been playing a capriccio by Schubert. When Gerald opened the door she was still at the piano, sitting with downcast eyes and a finger pressed to her lips--thinking. The noise of the opening door broke her reverie. There was a start of surprise and a sudden blush when she saw who it was that came into the room. She rose from her chair, advanced a step or two, held out both her hands, and said--

"I am so glad you are come back again!"

As Gerald took her hands for a moment in his, he saw that there was a tear trembling in each corner of her eyes, blue as the skies on an April morn. He saw, too, or thought he saw, behind those tears, Love, that, suddenly surprised, had not had time to hide himself. All her being seemed suffused with an indescribable tenderness. The black thoughts that had coiled themselves round Gerald's heart from the hour of his leaving Stammars till the time of his return, his jealousy of Dayrell, his doubts as to whether Eleanor really cared for him--all vanished in this moment of supreme joy, like mists before the rising sun. It was impossible that he should doubt any longer. An impulse that was uncontrollable, that swept away the floodgates of thought and reason, came over him. He was still holding her hands and gazing into her eyes. He drew her to him--close to him. He wrapped his arms round her, and pressed her to his bosom, her face upturned to his. He bent his head, and touched with his lips the blossom of hers.

"Oh, my darling! if I could but tell you how much I love you!" he murmured in her ear. "If I could but tell you how happy it makes me to see you again!"

Her face was rosy red, but the moment he had kissed her, the violet of her eyes seemed to darken, and a strange, fathomless look came into them, such as he had never seen before. Then the tears fell, and for one brief, happy moment--while the secondhand of a clock might have marked six--she let her head rest where he had put it. Suddenly the great hall bell clanged loudly. The family had come back. Eleanor started, as the fawn starts from the covert when it hears the hunter's horn. For a single instant her eyes met Gerald's. An instant later he was in the room alone.

He stood for a little while like a man suddenly roused from sleep, who hardly knows where he is, or what has befallen him. "Was it my darling herself that rested in my arms, and whose lips I kissed just now?" he said. "Or have I suddenly lost my wits and only imagined it all? No! It must be true--it shall be true At last she is mine--mine for ever!" Then, like one who feels himself to be still half asleep, he walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

Hardly had the door closed, when Olive Deane stepped from her hiding-place behind the curtains of one of the windows, from which spot she had been an unseen witness of the foregoing scene. Her pupils were away, and she had nothing to do. She had gone into the back drawing-room at dusk, before the lamps were lighted, and had sat down on the cushioned seat, that ran round the inner side of the large bow window. Presently a servant came in to light the lamps, but went away again without perceiving Olive. Sitting there, behind the partially-drawn curtains, she was, as it were, in a tiny room of her own; and there she might probably have remained the whole evening without being discovered, had she chosen to do so. In fact, when Eleanor came in a little later, and sat down at the piano and began to play, Olive neither spoke nor stirred, but sat watching her rival with jealous, hungry eyes, and made no sign. Thus it fell out that she became an uninvited witness of the scene between Eleanor and Gerald.

There was a look of triumph on Olive's pale face as she stepped out of her hiding-place. In her black eyes there was an unwonted sparkle. "Checkmate at last!" she said. "Before long, I shall be able to tell Matthew that the hour of his vengeance has come. What will he say when he knows that the accepted lover of dainty Miss Lloyd is no gentleman, such as Captain Dayrell, but a beggarly adventurer, without money enough to pay for the clothes he wears? Surely his revenge will be twice as sweet as it would otherwise have been. As for her--one short hour will strip her of name, wealth, position, and of the man to whom she has given her hand--for Pomeroy is not the man I take him to be if he does not cast her off the moment her real story is told him. Fine feathers make fine birds, Miss Eleanor Lloyd. We shall see how you will look when you are stripped of yours. Before three months are over, you will be grateful to anyone who will obtain for you a situation at forty pounds a year."