Chapter IX

The mellow Autumn came,
And with it came the promised guest.

There’s not an hour
Of day or dreaming night, but I am with thee;
There’s not a wind but whispers of thy name;
And not a flower that sleeps beneath the moon,
But in its hues or fragrance tells a tale
Of thee.

Thou canst not teach me to forget.

How slight and almost imperceptible a change of position, how small and almost unintentional a step in advance, will sometimes suddenly open our eyes to the inevitable tendency of a course of conduct which we have been, up to that point, pursuing in blind security! Lady Gayland, acute and clear-sighted as she was for others, was in her own case often the creature of impulse, acting without consideration, upon the first generous feeling, and reasoning upon its collateral bearings when too late to retract.

The carriage had been checked a moment for admission, at the spot where the lodge leading to Somersby-park was situated, on the great road. “Ah! _nous voila donc, Miladi_,” exclaimed Angelique to her mistress, thus breaking the confused reverie in which that lady had long been indulging.

“_Nous voila donc_, indeed,” thought Lady Gayland, as the iron gates opened to receive them; “and strange indeed that it should be so:” and for the first time all those reasons which rendered it so peculiarly strange, that she should, under such circumstances, be Castleton’s guest, forced themselves upon her attention the more irresistibly, that they had been so long suppressed or avoided. True, the ostensible motives of her visit were plausible enough. Her early acquaintance with Lucy, and subsequent renewal of it, under circumstances which had entailed a continuance of that protection of her, which, in the first instant, she had beneficially extended, the exclusive confidence which Lucy had reposed in her, the helpless dependence which she had expressed upon her advice and assistance; the anxiety with which she clung to her companionship as her best hope of happiness,--all these would have rendered her presence of the utmost service to any but the wife of Castleton.

Castleton’s manner to her in London had never been such as necessarily to excite suspicion that his feelings were not subdued. The two strongest exceptions to the general discipline of his deportment have been given--the one, their first meeting at Lady Delacour’s ball--the other, his anxious inquiry at the opera after a certain gentleman whom he had left at Naples. But his usual manner towards her was calm, apparently unconstrained, and even common-place.

Lady Gayland, as she never occupied herself much with the concerns of others, was not perfectly aware of the rapidity with which the heartless and the fickle can sometimes, in the sunshine of society, force the artificial growth of indifference; yet she had heard instances, when, without explanation, hands that had last been pressed to throbbing hearts, had next met in the lifeless contact of common courtesy, and lips which had last tremblingly faltered forth a passionate farewell, when next seen had without emotion been compressed into a cold and simpering greeting.

But though Lady Gayland knew that such things had been--though there was nothing obtrusively obvious in Castleton’s manner to herself, to contradict, and every thing in the mere act of his subsequent marriage to confirm, the idea that he furnished another instance of the easy forgetfulness of man, yet had she no internal conviction of that kind by which to regulate her conduct.

To those gifted individuals who unite acute sensibility with keen observation, and have ever brought those rarely united powers of the mind and heart to bear upon the conduct and character of a beloved object, there are open many hidden sources utterly unmarked by the million, from which the most infallible impressions are derived. It may be the accent of a casual word, dropped in common conversation, or the character of a stolen glance, darted through mingling crowds; which in spite of intervening years, and altered circumstances--opportunities apparently neglected, and other engagements since contracted, in defiance of all probability, and in opposition to almost undeniable evidence,--will vibrate to the inmost recesses of the heart, the certain consciousness that all is not forgotten. And such a consciousness had Lady Gayland sometimes, in spite of herself, felt that Castleton had not even yet become indifferent to her. All the scattered indications from which she collected this conviction, and which she had hitherto as much as possible driven from her mind, now presented themselves one after another to her recollection, as her carriage whirled rapidly towards the front of the house.

“And why, then, am I here?” she asked herself, now the question came too late. Half the debates in the secret conclave of the human mind are conducted after the question has been put and carried; and reason often returns after the event, in company with repentance, instead of sticking (to speak parliamentarily) to his, proper _pair_, decision.

In this instance, Lady Gayland’s somewhat tardy self-inquiry, “Why am I here,” was answered by Lucy, who, as the door of the carriage opened, rushed down the steps to greet her with--

“O how delighted I am to see you! how good it is of you to come, and even sooner than we expected you!”

Castleton’s reception of Lady Gayland was exactly what might be expected from a practised man of the world, who had had time, since seeing her carriage from the window, to prepare for appearing as glad to see her as became him, without betraying how much more than that quantum of satisfaction he might feel.

As Lucy, at his desire, conducted Lady Gayland to her own apartment, she repeated, as she clung fondly to her arm,--

“I’m so very glad you are come; and so, I can assure you, is Castleton also, though, perhaps, you don’t think he shows it enough; but he has been rather dull, poring over books morning and evening, for we have had sad wet weather: but now you are come, you can talk to him as he likes, and he will soon be gay again.”

When Lucy was returning, having left Lady Gayland in her own room, an accident occurred which led to much conversation in one part of the house, though its effect was not immediately known in the drawing-room. In passing through the gallery she met Lady Gayland’s maid, Ma’amselle Angelique, whom she had not seen since their drive from Hornscliff to Mayton. In the good-natured impulse of the moment, Lucy, only recollecting that the person before her had once been kind to her, when she needed kindness, seized her hand with warmth, saying,

“How do you do; I am very glad to see you again.”

At first Angelique drew back confused, thinking there must be some mistake.

“Pardon, Miladi, ce n’est que moi.--Mon Dieu! mais est il possible! la petite de _poni chaise_. Ah! milles pardons, miladi, si j’ose un instant me rappeller de vous.” And with her best curtsey she passed on, leaving Lucy, with the returning consciousness that she had betrayed herself in a manner that would not be pleasing to Castleton.

Angelique began at once to touch upon her discovery to her mistress, but there she found her garrulity more suddenly checked than it usually was on indifferent subjects. At the same time, as Lady Gayland knew that, by making a mystery, she would only increase the desire to communicate, she laid no injunctions of silence upon her attendant, who, accordingly, as soon as dismissed, went down into the housekeeper’s room, with--

“De ting if the world the most astonish! Je suis petrifie. I was made a stone. Je n’en reviens plus--and I never come back from it more.”

This of course led to much further cross-questioning and gossipping, and Castleton had first the happiness of finding how generally the story was known, when, some little time afterward, he found fault with his housekeeper for some deficiency in her duty, she excused herself under the pretence of having meant to please “my lady.” And when Castleton rather pettishly replied, that he desired she would not think of consulting my lady on that sort of subject, he was punished by her impudently adding,

“To be sure, my Lord, I don’t suppose my Lady is like to know what’s what.”

When, upon this, he indignantly asked what she meant by such impertinence, to get herself out of the scrape, the blame was, naturally enough, laid on Mamselle Angelique, both as a strange servant and a foreigner, and the whole story thus came out.

During the social intercourse of the succeeding days, the effort was equally made by Castleton and Lady Gayland, so to conduct the course of their conversation, that Lucy might be enabled to bear them company. But it evidently, to all parties, was an effort; and not always a successful one. Sometimes irresistibly borne along by the current of old recollections, Castleton and his guest were launched into the wide sea of imagination--an element into which Lucy was not fitted to follow them; she, therefore, was soon stranded by the way, and sat watching them in silent security.

But there was one casual circumstance that contributed to throw Lady Gayland more exclusively into the society of her former friend. Whilst they were in the house, of course wherever she was, there Lucy was likewise. But, as has been before observed, Lady Gayland was passionately fond of riding: Lucy, on the contrary, never much used to it, and always timid on horseback, was at present prevented from attempting to mount, by reasons which are understood in all families. But Castleton had upon their marriage provided her with a delightful horse, and this she now pressed Lady Gayland to use. This, to one who had all her life been an inveterate horse-woman, was too tempting an offer to be refused, and accompanied by Castleton, she made the trial of the new horse, which seemed to have been attended with great success, for from that time their promenades were repeated daily,--the weather continuing as propitious, as it had been unfavourable before the arrival of the visitor.

What shall we call that state of sympathy, which, while it seems too serious to settle into a mere flirtation, is as yet by no means systematized into a _liaison_? But call it what we may, that is the peculiar stage, when there is nothing so dangerous as a _tête-a-tête_ on horseback. Whilst every advance is still attended with doubt and incertitude, the attempt is encouraged by apparent facilities of retreat; in a room, the moment, which must come sooner or later, when the door will have to be opened and closed behind one of the parties, is always a matter of dread, and in anticipation, checks many a hasty move; but here there is no such awkward epoch to come. All is every instant changing around. An affected stumble on the part of the horse, may conceal a real false step of his rider; and an ill received hint, may be obliterated in a canter.

But to speak seriously, there is something in a _tête-a-tête_ ride through a fine country, which, when a predisposition to confidence between man and woman has existed, considerably tends to ripen it. As to Castleton and his guest, their relative situation was such, as to leave them nothing to confide. They had neither of them any designs to advance, but if they could not thus avail themselves of the advantages of the present, it was unfortunate that they should have so apt an occasion to regret the past, for it was thus they had wandered in other days, beneath southern skies, with brighter prospects, and with better hopes.