Chapter VII: Hurdell Hall

'Welcome to Hurdell Hall! My sister Lucretia--Lady Puddicombe and Sir Paget, Lucretia--Sir Paget, our mutual friend Poole, you know.'

Thus did Sir Harry Hurdell introduce Eveline and Sir Paget, with much _empressement_ and effusiveness, to his home in Hampshire, when the carriage duly deposited them, with Mademoiselle Clairette, Sir Paget's valet, and 'no end' of trunks and boxes in a van, at the porte cochère.

Situated in the northern district of the shire, where the woods are chiefly hazel, birch, alder, and willow, where flocks of deer scour the coppice, Hurdell Hall is a fine example of the old Tudor architecture, and, as Eveline saw it for the first time with the rays of the evening sun casting dashes of golden light upon its ogee gables, mullioned bay-windows, its long gravelled approach, and stately terrace, she thought what a charming picture it would make, with its background of oaks, which in Hampshire seldom rise into lofty stems, but have branches that are usually twisted into picturesque outlines.

Below the terrace lay a kind of pool, in which a couple of swans were floating lazily, each with one leg tucked up under a wing, and where the snow-white water-lilies gleamed in the sunshine.

Nor was the inside of the Hall--which was to be associated with events never to be forgotten by Eveline--any way inferior to the outside. There were stately apartments furnished with every modern luxury in the way of upholstery, and others where the furniture spoke of an old, old past, and of generations of Hurdells who had long since been gathered together in the old family vault; panelled corridors adorned with busts of Roman emperors and gods; stuffed tropical birds and horns of gigantic size; cabinets, swords, daggers, helmets, and armour; and where portraits were hung of knights and dames in brilliant colours; one of Sir Harry, who accompanied the Royal Bluebeard to the field of cloth of gold; another who had been the comrade of Sir Horace of Tilbury in many a field in Flanders; and the Hurdells of later times in powdered wigs, toupees, and long stomachers.

There was also a charming little Gothic private chapel, which had now a luxurious divan around it, as the present Sir Harry, not being much addicted to devotions, had turned it into a billiard-room, and a most commodious and excellent one it was, as the niches were tall enough to hold cues and the basin of the font was admirably calculated to hold the balls.

Sir Harry was rather handsome, but _blasé_ in aspect and bearing; there was an indolent and rather lascivious expression in his eyes, the light colour of which it is difficult to define; he had a transparent nostril and short upper lip, with long tawny moustache, and a face which, though difficult to say why, was not a pleasing one.

His sister Lucretia, his senior by several years, was somewhat his counterpart in appearance, and, nearer her fortieth than her thirtieth year, was still very handsome, but handsome in a faded way; and she received the young wife of old Sir Paget with considerable effusiveness, kissing her on both cheeks _à la Francaise_; though Eveline, fair, soft, and timid even in friendship, felt oppressed rather than soothed or pleased by the society of this somewhat _blasé_ and disappointed woman of the world, with her cold, steely eyes, ashy-tinted hair, thin lips, and caressing manner; and Eveline soon discovered she was vain, shallow, selfish, and not unaddicted to white lies when they suited her purpose.

Perhaps the creature she cared most for in this world, after herself and her brother, was a little, wheezy 'King Charles,' with a blue ribbon and silver bell adorning its neck.

While the gentlemen were smoking and idling in the billiard-room--the same place where Philip of Spain, _en route_ from Southampton to marry Mary, had made his devotions--she entertained Eveline with afternoon tea in a charming little room dark with oak-panelling, with rare old oak furniture, and hangings of ancient tapestry that testified to the industry of white-handed Hurdells in generations past.

Something of _ennui_, at least, in the young face of her new acquaintance did not fail to catch the attention of the sharp Lucretia, who knew from the first that Eveline's marriage had been an ill-assorted one; yet, she said, after a pause,

'You long to join the gentlemen, I think; they are not far off--only at the end of the corridor.'

'Pardon me, I am more pleased to be with you.'

'Thanks, dear; but I fear that you and Sir Paget are a pair of regular love-birds, and must go through a systematic amount of billing and cooing every day.'

Eveline smiled faintly, but made no response. Did Miss Hurdell mean this as a sneer? she thought; it seemed so.

'Dear Sir Paget!' said Miss Hurdell again, a little irrelevantly. 'I thought love-matches were out of fashion now.'

'She _is_ mocking me,' thought Eveline, yet the rather aristocratic face of Lucretia was as inscrutable as her manner was suave to sweetness.

'All who know Sir Paget respect him--he is a thoroughly good man,' said Eveline, feeling the necessity of saying something.

'"Women always like wicked fellows," says Lefanu, in one of his novels. It is contrast; but it has been my experience that they do.'

'No right-minded woman would endorse this opinion of our sex, I am assured.'

Miss Hurdell laughed at Eveline's gravity, and refilled their cups of dragon-blue china.

'I always hated the idea of being married,' said she.

'Why?' asked Eveline.

'Because it would make life--I thought--so tame.'

'How odd!'

'Ah, no doubt you think so. I didn't care about being engaged and all that sort of thing; but no, I never would have married.'

Sooth to say, she had never had an offer, or been engaged, in her life.

'It is so nice to be a _fiancée_--the object of daily attention.'

'Then you must have been engaged to know all this, Miss Hurdell.'

'Like yourself, dear, of course--but call me Lucretia. A girl has more freedom when engaged than before it; though the envy of her female friends, she can be more natural with her gentlemen friends, and may say many a merry and rantipole thing she dared not have said before. Goldsmith was right when he makes Dr. Primrose declare that courtship is generally a happier state than marriage. To me it seems to turn the butterfly into a caterpillar.'

Eveline knew what to think of these novel views, but she sighed as she thought of what her own existence was now.

'To me,' resumed the fair Lucretia, 'it always seemed as if, when the wedding-ring was slipped on my slender finger, I should have nothing left to live for; that my existence would belong wholly to another person.'

Eveline set down her tea-cup and looked at the speaker with something of mute wonder. In society she had met with many strange persons, but none who had such odd views as the mature chatelaine of Hurdell Hall.

'But you would have your husband to live for,' she urged gently, but certainly not thinking of her _own_.

'A very commonplace style of living, I should think.'

'Not if one marries for love,' said Eveline softly.

'As you married' (old was on her lips) 'as you married dear Sir Paget.'

Eveline felt her colour rise, yet she only said, 'But--but to marry with any doubt in one's heart would be deception.'

'Well,' said Miss Hurdell, raising her eyebrows, 'if a woman may not deceive her own husband whom has she a right to deceive?'

This was a new view of the matter to poor Eveline, who began to have rather a horror of her hostess.

'There goes the dressing-bell, dear--we dine at eight,' said Lucretia, rising; 'let me conduct you to your room.'

Once there, Eveline was free to give full vent to her own thoughts. She would never see that lonely grave in the desert where Evan Cameron lay; but to her mind it was sacred, as of old was the place whereon the angel of the Lord alighted.

'Oh for some news--news of how it all came about! If Allan would only write to me--or to Olive; he surely will tell her. This is more than I can bear!' and interlacing her slender white fingers--a way she had contracted now when alone--she pressed them with palms outward, against her throbbing forehead, as if she meant to break them.

Alas! she was to learn too soon tidings of another dire calamity, and _why_ Allan was unable to write to any one.

There was no trace of all this deep emotion in her soft face when she descended to the drawing-room, with a velvet dress of that blue which so suited her pale complexion, cut square at the neck, and having elbow sleeves with lace, and rich mosaics set in gold clasping her white neck, and exquisitely rounded arms that were so white and taper.

There could be no two opinions about her rare beauty, and Sir Harry Hurdell and his fast friend--fast in more ways than one--both acknowledged it at a glance, as their sharp and critical eyes took in every detail of her witching face, her rounded girlish cheek, her sweetly curved mouth, with its short upper lip, her nose and delicate nostrils.

Sir Harry Hurdell was very sceptical of the purity of all women. He would not have believed in that of his own mother had she been alive; so he was perhaps to be pardoned for deeming that Lady Puddicombe 'was just like the rest,' whatever that might mean.

He was intensely gratified and glad that the girl was so young and lovely, and that her husband was so old and so common-place: thus he resolved, in his own phraseology, 'to enter stakes for the filly--to make his innings if he could, or the devil was in it!'