LUCIUS DAVOREN

OR

PUBLICANS AND SINNERS

A Novel

BY THE AUTHOR OF

‘LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET’

ETC. ETC. ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. III.

LONDON JOHN MAXWELL AND CO. 4 SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET 1873 [All rights reserved]

LONDON: ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.

[Pg iii]

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

[Pg 1]

LUCIUS DAVOREN

Book the Third.

CHAPTER XIII. HOW GEOFFREY ENJOYED THE GARDEN-PARTY.

While Lucius Davoren was thus occupied at the east end of London, Geoffrey Hossack was making the best of an existence which he had made up his mind to consider utterly joyless, so long as adverse fate denied him the one desire of his heart. For him in vain warm August skies were deeply blue, and the bosky dells and glades of the New Forest still untouched by autumn’s splendid decay. For him vainly ran the bright river between banks perfumed with wild flowers. He beheld these things from the lofty standpoint of discontent, and in his heart called Nature a poor creature.

[Pg 2]

‘I would rather be mewed up in Whitecross-street prison, or in the Venetian Piombi, with Janet for my wife, than enjoy all that earth can give of natural beauty or artificial splendour without her,’ he said to himself, when his cousins had bored him into a misanthropical mood by their insistence upon the charms of rural life, as exemplified at Hillersdon Grange.

‘I’m afraid you have no soul for Nature,’ said Belle, when she had kept Geoffrey on his feet for an hour in the cramped old-fashioned hot-houses, where she went in desperately for ferns and orchids, and imitated Lady Baker on a small scale.

‘I’m afraid not—for Nature in flower-pots,’ answered Geoffrey, with an unsympathetic yawn. ‘I daresay these Calopogons, and Gymnadenia, and what’s-its-names are very grand, but I’ve seen finer growing wild in the valleys on the southern side of the Rocky Mountains. You English people only get nature in miniature—a poor etiolated creature. You have no notion of the goddess Gea in her Titanic vigour, as she appears on “the other side.”

‘Meaning America?’ said Belle contemptuously, as if that western continent were something too vulgar for her serious consideration.

The sun shone upon Lady Baker’s fête as gaily[Pg 3] as if fine weather had been a matter within her ladyship’s power of provision, like the luncheon from Gunter’s, or the costumes for the tableaux vivants. The lady herself was radiant as the sunlight. Everybody had come—everybody worth receiving, at any rate. She gave Geoffrey a smile of particular cordiality as she shook hands with him, and murmured the conventional ‘How good of you to come early!’

Belle and Jessie were speedily told off for croquet: a sport for which Geoffrey professed an unmitigated dislike, in a most churlish spirit, his cousins thought. Thus released from attendance on these fair ones, he roamed the vast gardens at large, finding solitudes in that spacious domain, even on such a day as this. In these secluded walks—where he only occasionally encountered a stray couple engaged in that sentimental converse which he slangily denominated ‘spooning’—Mr. Hossack indulged his own thoughts, which also were of a spooney character. Here, he thought, Janet Davoren had been happy in the brief summer-tide of her life; here she had felt the first joys and pains of an innocent girlish love; and here, alas, had given that peerless blossom of the soul, a girl’s first love, to a scoundrel. The thought of this filled him with a savage jealousy.

[Pg 4]

‘I wish I had fired that shot out yonder instead of Lucius,’ he said to himself. ‘Egad, I’d have made sure my ball went through him. There should have been no shilly-shally about my fire.’

Luncheon found Mr. Hossack more attentive to the various Rhine wines than to pâté de foie gras or chicken-salad, or even the wants of the damsel who sat next him. He was out of humour with all the world. His artfully-worded advertisement had appeared several times, and had produced no response. He began to think the Fates were opposed to his happiness.

‘I suppose if a man is pretty well provided for in the way of three-per-cents he must hope for nothing else from Fortune,’ he thought, as he punished her ladyship’s cabinet hocks.

Luncheon over, Mr. Hossack conducted his damsel to the sunny greensward, where enthusiastic archers—seven-and-twenty ladies to five gentlemen—were stringing their Cupid bows for a grand match. Here he shunted her into the care of one of the five male archers, all of whom looked ineffably bored, and anon departed, whither he cared not—anywhere, anywhere out of this world of luncheons, croquet, flirtation, and frivolity.

Wandering at random, he came by and by to an[Pg 5] obscure outskirt of the Mardenholme grounds, given over to the cultivation of huge rhododendrons, where there was a little wicket-gate opening into a green lane. He made his escape from Mardenholme altogether by this gate, glad to get away from the polite world, as represented by the croquet-players and toxopholites, and above all by those exacting first cousins of his, Belle and Jessie.

The green lane was rustic and secluded, well sheltered from the westward sloping sun by spreading boughs of chestnut and sycamore, with here and there the grander bulk of an oak, making an oasis of deep shadow in the afternoon sunlight. Altogether a pleasant lane, even for the indulgence of saddest thoughts.

It was on the side of a hill. Right and left of him stretched undulating meadow-land, small enclosures between those straggling unkempt hedges which make the glory of English landscape, and below, almost at his feet as it were, lay a little village nestling in a cup-shaped valley, so snugly sheltered by those gently-sloping meads, so fenced from north and east by those tall screens of foliage, that one might fancy the bleak winds of winter must roll high above those modest roofs, ruffling no leaf in those simple gardens; that hails and snows and[Pg 6] frosts must waste their fury on the encircling hills, and leave this chosen nook unassailed; that even the tax-gatherer must forget its existence.

There were about half a dozen cottages, the perfection of rusticity—gardens running over with roses, beehives, honeysuckle; a village inn, so innocent and domestic of aspect that one would suppose nothing could be farther from the thoughts of its patrons than strong drink of any kind; a little high-shouldered old church, with a squat square tower and crumbly whitewashed wall; a green burial-ground, all ups and downs like the waves of the sea, overshadowed by two vast yews, whose never-withering foliage canopied those rustic graves from January to December.

There was a little patch of greensward in the midst of the scattered houses, and some feet below the churchyard, no two edifices in this village being on the same level. Here a meditative donkey cropped the soft herbage at leisure, and here on the bosom of a crystalline pool swam half a dozen geese, untroubled by forebodings of Michaelmas.

It was altogether a deliciously rustic picture, and Geoffrey, for the first time since his return to Hampshire, felt reconciled to Nature.

‘This is better than all the tigered orchids in[Pg 7] Lady Baker’s collection,’ he mused, as he perched himself on a stile and took out his cigar-case for a quiet smoke. ‘Why do great ladies cultivate lady’s-slippers and pitcher-plants when for less money they might surround themselves with model villages and happy peasantry? Has the rôle of Lady Bountiful gone quite out of fashion, I wonder?’

He lighted his cigar and meditated upon life in general, dreamily contemplating the cottages and wondering about their inmates, as he had often wondered about the inhabitants of the dull old houses in the dull old country towns. These cottages seemed above the ordinary level, cleaner, brighter, more prosperous-looking. He could not fancy wife-beating or any other iniquity going on within those homely plastered walls. Those twinkling diamond-paned lattices seemed transparent as a good man’s conscience, and in most of these dwellings the outer door stood wide open, as if the inmates invited inspection. He could see an eight-day clock, a dresser decked with many-coloured crockeryware, a little round table spread for tea, a cradle, a snug arm-chair, a wicker birdcage, a row of geranium pots—all the furniture of home. He felt that he had alighted upon a small Arcadia.

While he sat thus musing, slowly smoking, very[Pg 8] loth to go back to the civilised world, pert country cousins, and tableaux vivants, and tepid ices, and classical music, and general inanity, the door of that solitary cottage whose interior did not invite inspection was suddenly opened, and a child came skipping out—a child who wore a broad-brimmed Leghorn hat, with long yellow tresses streaming beneath it, and a pretty holland pinafore, and displayed symmetrical legs clad in blue stockings—a child after the order of Mr. Millais.

Geoffrey made as if he would have fallen off the stile; the half-smoked cigar fell from his hand. For a few moments he sat transfixed and statue-like, and could only stare. Then, with a sudden rush, he darted across the little strip of green, and clasped this butterfly child in his arms.

‘Why, it’s my little Flossie!’ he cried rapturously, smothering the small face with kisses, which the little maiden received without a murmur. Had not Mr. Hossack endeared himself to her by all the arts of bribery and corruption, in the shape of costly French bonbons, éditions de luxe of popular fairy tales and German hobgoblin stories, and mechanical white mice that ran across the floor, and mechanical mail-coaches that, on being wound up, rushed off at breakneck speed to nowhere in particular, and came[Pg 9] to grief after a few headlong journeys? ‘It’s my precious little Flossie! My darling, where’s mamma?’

‘Mamma, mamma!’ screamed the child, looking back towards the cottage. ‘Come out and see who’s come.’ And then, turning to Geoffrey again, she said with childhood’s candid selfishness, ‘Have you brought me some more French bonbons in a box with a picture on the lid, like the last?’

‘My sweet one, I ought to be provided with a box of that very description,’ replied Geoffrey, grasping the little maiden’s hand and dragging her to the cottage; ‘but how could I anticipate such bliss as to find you here in this O-for-ever-to-be-sanctified-village?’ cried the lover, coining a Germanic compound in his rapture. ‘Is mamma in there? O, take me to her, darling, take me!’

Tableaux vivants, pert cousins, Lady Baker, the claims of civilised society, all melted into thin air amidst the delight of this discovery. He was as unsophisticated as if he had been a Blackfoot, brought up in the pathless hunting-grounds of the West.

‘Take me to her, thou dearest child,’ he exclaimed; and the little one led him into the cottage garden, where the bees were humming in the sunset, the air sweet with roses and carnations, happy swallows twittering in the eves.

[Pg 10]

Here, on the threshold of the cottage door, framed like a picture by the stout black timbers, stood that one woman whom his soul worshipped, tall, slender, lovely, like a goddess who for a little while deigned to walk this lower earth.

She looked at Geoffrey with a tender gladness, a wild surprise, opposite feelings curiously blended in the expression of that eloquent face.

‘O, Janet,’ said he, ‘how could you be so cruel as to run away from me?’

‘How could you be so unkind as to follow me?’ she asked reproachfully.

‘I have not followed you. ’Twas chance that led me here this afternoon. There is a providence kind to true lovers, after all. I did not follow you, Janet, but I was heartbroken by the loss of you. I went down to Stillmington to carry you what I dared to think good news.’

‘Good news!’ she repeated wonderingly.

‘Yes, the tidings of your freedom.’

Janet’s pale face grew a shade paler.

‘Come in for a little while,’ she said; ‘we cannot stand here talking of such things. Flossie, run and play on the green, darling; I’ll come to you presently. Now, Mr. Hossack.’

She led the way into the simple cottage room,[Pg 11] spotlessly clean, and with that dainty brightness of furniture and whiteness of drapery which industrious hands can give to the humblest surroundings. It was a small square room, with two of its angles cut off by old-fashioned corner cupboards whose shining glass doors displayed the treasures of glass and china within. A dimity-covered sofa, a couple of basket-work arm-chairs, an ancient bureau of darkest mahogany, and a solid Pembroke table formed the chief furniture of the room. One of Flossie’s fairy-tale books—Geoffrey’s gift—lay open upon the table, the mother’s workbox beside it. A bowl of cut flowers adorned the broad sill of the long low casement, and the afternoon sunlight was filtered through the whitest of dimity curtains. To Geoffrey this old room, with its low ceiling sustained by heavy black beams, was perfectly delightful.

‘Do you mean to tell me that my husband is dead?’ asked Janet, when she had brought her visitor in and shut the door, looking him full in the face with grave earnest eyes.

Geoffrey quailed beneath that searching gaze. In this crisis, which involved the dearest wish of his heart, he had become the veriest child.

‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘he is dead. It is a most extraordinary story, and as I have no evidence to[Pg 12] prove my statement, you may be inclined to doubt me. Yet I pledge my honour—’

‘I shall not doubt your honour,’ said Janet, with a superb smile, ‘but I may doubt your discretion. How do you know that my husband is dead?’

‘I met him in America, and heard of his death there—heard it on the highest possible authority.’

‘You met him in America. Why did you not tell me that at Stillmington?’

‘Because I had at that time no means of identifying Matchi, the man I met in the West, with Mr. Vandeleur. I have seen your husband’s portrait within the last fortnight, and I can take my oath that Mr. Vandeleur and the man I knew in America are one and the same.’

‘Where could you see my husband’s portrait?’ asked Janet incredulously.

‘Lady Baker showed me a photograph of a group in which you and Mr. Vandeleur both appear.’

‘Have you no other reason to suppose that this American traveller, whom you call Matchi, and my husband are the same, except the evidence of a photograph?’ asked Janet, somewhat contemptuously. ‘What more common than an accidental resemblance between two men who are utter strangers to each other?’

[Pg 13]

‘Not such a likeness as that which I am speaking of; nor is a genius for music the commonest thing in the world. The violin-playing of the man in the western pine-forest exactly resembled that which Lady Baker described to me.’

‘What,’ cried Janet, with a wounded air, ‘you have been taking Lady Baker into your confidence?’

‘Forgive me, Janet. I am bent upon bringing this matter to a happy issue. Lady Baker is your true friend. She bitterly reproaches herself for her part in bringing about your unhappy marriage; she went to Melksham in search of you, when she accidentally learned that Mr. Vandeleur had been seen there, and was deeply grieved at arriving too late to find you.’

‘She is very good,’ answered Janet, with a sigh. ‘And now tell me about this man you met in America. Tell me everything, without reserve.’

Without reserve; that would be rather difficult. Not for worlds—no, not even to secure his own happiness—could Geoffrey Hossack betray his friend.

He told his story as best he could; but in his fear of saying too much, stumbled a little over the details. Altogether the story had a garbled air, and before he came to the end he saw plainly enough that Janet was unconvinced.

[Pg 14]

‘I can trust your truth,’ she said, looking at that frank honest face with her clear eyes, ‘but I cannot trust your judgment. You had but just recovered from a fever, in which your senses had been astray, when you heard of his death. He was shot, you say, in the forest. Who shot him?’

‘I—I cannot tell you,’ faltered Geoffrey, in a cold perspiration.

This Janet understood to mean ‘I do not know.’

‘See how vague your information is,’ she exclaimed, with an incredulous laugh. ‘You were told that he was shot, but you were not told who shot him; you were not told the motive of the murder. Even in the backwoods I suppose people do not shoot each other quite without motive.’

Geoffrey stood before her dumbfoundered.

‘Did you kill him yourself?’ she asked, with a sudden flash of suspicion.

‘No, I wish I had; there should have been no mistake about it then.’

‘Say no more, Mr. Hossack; this is a subject upon which you and I can hardly agree. When you can bring me direct and legal evidence of Mr. Vandeleur’s death, I will believe it.’

‘And if I ever can do that—and from the manner of his death it is almost impossible—you[Pg 15] will give me some reward for my fidelity—eh, Janet?’

‘I will make no bargains,’ she answered gravely. ‘I beg you to hold yourself entirely free, and for the sake of your own happiness I trust you may speedily get rid of this boyish infatuation.’

‘Boyish!’ echoed Geoffrey, with the proud consciousness of his eight-and-twenty years. ‘Why I am your senior by two years. Lucius told me so.’

‘Sorrow does the work of time in some lives,’ said Janet, with her sad smile; ‘I feel myself very old at six-and-twenty. Come, Mr. Hossack, you have been always very good to me, and for once in a way I will treat you as a friend. Little Flossie is very fond of you, and I know she is dying for a long talk about her new pets, the tame rabbits and the tortoiseshell kitten, whose acquaintance she has made down here. Stop and drink tea with us, and tell me how you happened to find me out in this quiet corner of the earth.’

‘You forget that we are not a mile from one of the gates of Mardenholme,’ said Geoffrey, enchanted at the prospect of drinking tea with his goddess.

‘True; but I didn’t think you knew Lady Baker.’

‘Didn’t you?’ said this Jesuit, in an artless tone. ‘Why, you see my people live down hereabouts—Hillersdon[Pg 16] Grange—and my cousins and Lady Baker are uncommonly thick.’

Mrs. Bertram called to Flossie through the open window. The child was walking up and down the little path by the beehives, nursing her tortoiseshell kitten. She came bounding in joyfully at this summons, and exhibited this feline treasure to Mr. Hossack, that good-natured individual allowing the small member of the tiger tribe to make a promenade upon his outstretched arm, and pur triumphantly from a lofty perch on his coat-collar.

Mrs. Bertram rang a little tinkling handbell, and a decent old woman—who must surely have been what is called ‘upon the listen,’ or she could hardly have heard that feeble summons—appeared with a tea-tray, and spread the neat little table with the best china teacups, a brown home-baked loaf, the yellowest of butter-pats, the richest of cream in a little glass jug, a great wedge of golden honeycomb, a few ripe apricots nestling in a bed of mulberry leaves,—a repast at once Arcadian and picturesque.

‘But perhaps you may not care for such a womanish beverage as orange pekoe,’ said Janet doubtfully, as Mr. Hossack surveyed the banquet from his altitude of something over six feet, the kitten still promenading his shoulder.

[Pg 17]