CHAPTER XXXVI.
The dressing-bell rang in Milford Castle; but before its iron tongue had told the guests to make ready for the great business-meal of the day, all of them had sought their chambers, and Lady Anne Mellent was nearly dressed. Five minutes after, she sent her maid to knock at Colonel Middleton's door and tell him that she was going down, and would be glad to speak with him in the drawing-room as soon as he was ready. The maid thought it rather strange, although she was well accustomed to her mistress's various oddities; for, though she knew Lady Anne to be very eccentric, yet she had never before suspected her of coquetting with any one. With abigail penetration she had discovered, by some means or another, that Charles Marston was a favoured suitor; and now to be sent to tell a young, handsome, distinguished-looking man to make haste in dressing, for the purpose of having a tête-à-tête with her mistress before any one else was down, shocked her ideas of propriety very much. Pounds per annum and perquisites, however, are better than all the proprieties in the world, and accordingly she did as she was bid. But few minutes elapsed before Colonel Middleton was in the drawing-room. The maid's ear was certainly too near the keyhole within five minutes after; but she could hear nothing except the indistinct buzz of a low but eager conversation. She then tried what one sense could do to make up for the defect of another, and applied her eye to the aperture which had refused intelligence to her ear. She had the whole farther end of the room before her; but, to her surprise, there she saw Colonel Middleton standing with his back against one of the window-frames, and Lady Anne near him, leaning upon a large carved and gilt chair, while good Mrs. Brice sat writing a note at a table much more in advance.
A moment after a carriage drove up, and the maid ran away, just catching a sight of the velvet coat of Mr. Hargrave as he entered the door.
With stately step the old gentleman followed the servant, who admitted him to the drawing-room, and was met joyously by Lady Anne, who said--
"I am glad you have come, and have come soon."
"Did you suppose I would break my written word, fair châtelaine?" asked the old gentleman, in a somewhat reproachful tone. "Have I been true to a velvet coat and a queue for so many years, to have my faith doubted now-a-days?"
"No, no," said Lady Anne; "but I wish particularly to introduce you to this gentleman, Colonel Middleton, who, though magnanimously prepared to fight his own battles against a very formidable enemy, has listened to my persuasions, and is going to take you into his councils and solicit your advice and assistance. There--go with him, Henry, into the library; tell him the whole story, and the intelligence you have received to-day of the machinations against you."
While she was speaking, Mr. Hargrave from time to time looked with a somewhat inquiring glance from her face to that of Henry Hayley, and then a faint smile came upon his fine though faded features.
"No, no!" cried Lady Anne, laughing, as she remarked it; "you are quite mistaken. He is not the man, and a great deal handsomer. But you will hear all about it in a minute, for the whole must come out now, and you will know the why and the wherefore."
"Come with us," said Henry, addressing her: "we shall need you in our council indeed."
"Well, then, dear Mrs. Brice," said the beautiful girl, "if Lady Fleetwood and the rest come down, say that I will be back in a few minutes."
Lady Fleetwood did come down, and then the other members of the party, one after another, and to each Mrs. Brice delivered Lady Anne's message.
"I wonder where Colonel Middleton is," said Lady Fleetwood, at length, after Mr. Winkworth, who was the last, had been down five minutes.
"He is with Lady Anne in the library," said Mrs. Brice, simply; and Lady Fleetwood's fair and delicate complexion showed a blush as deep as if she had been a young girl just caught in attempting to elope.
Maria remarked her aunt's colour, and she coloured a little too, from sympathy more than anything else; for she felt certain that all her young friend's thoughts and feelings were high, and pure, and noble; but yet she did not wish that Lady Anne would make other people think she was coquetting with Colonel Middleton.
Charles Marston walked towards the window, and tumbled over a footstool; and even Mr. Winkworth seemed a little discomposed.
A few minutes after, the butler threw open the doors, and without looking round, pronounced in pompous tones--"Dinner is on the table, my lady;" but the next moment he perceived that Lady Anne was not in the room, and stood confounded.
"You had better knock at the library door and tell Lady Anne," said Mrs. Brice, in her usual quiet tones.
"Knock at the door!" thought Lady Fleetwood: "well, this is very strange!"
Still they were kept waiting for some minutes; and then--to the infinite relief of some of the party, it must be confessed--the doors on the other side were thrown open, and Lady Anne appeared, leaning on Mr. Hargrave's arm and followed by Colonel Middleton.
"I am afraid you have thought me lost," she said; "but I and my two counsellors here have been considering weighty matters for the good of the nation. Mr. Hargrave, allow me to present you to Lady Fleetwood, who says she had the pleasure of knowing you in years long past. Not a word to her till you are in the dining-room, for the dinner is getting cold. This is my dear friend, Miss Monkton, of whom we were talking two nights ago. Mr. Winkworth--Mr. Hargrave. Charles Marston, let me introduce you to Mr. Hargrave, my future husband."
"A promise before witnesses!" said Mr. Hargrave, with a smile; "but now, my dear lady, let me lead you to the dining-room, for I do not intend to give you up to any one."
The procession was soon formed, and the party sat down to dinner. Lady Anne was peculiarly gay and lively; but every now and then a shade of grave thought came upon her for an instant, which she cast off again as soon, her high spirits seeming to bound up more lightly than ever from the momentary depression. She had contrived to place Colonel Middleton next to Maria, and, if the extraordinary truth must be told, to get Charles Marston next to herself. Once or twice, too, when the conversation at the table was general and Mr. Hargrave was engaged with some one else, she exchanged a few words with Charles Marston in a low tone.
Thus, shortly after the fish and soup had been removed, she said--
"What made you look so gloomy when I came in before dinner? Traitor and rebel! your faith has been wavering."
"Because you are a little tyrant," replied Charles, in the same tone, for his heart now beat freely again; "and you sport with the pain of your subjects."
"They inflict the pain upon themselves," said Lady Anne; and the next moment, there being an interval of silence, she turned to speak with Mr. Hargrave.
Some time afterwards, she took another opportunity to say, "I think, Charles, you will stand by a friend in time of need."
"What do you mean?" he asked, for she spoke very gravely.
"I cannot explain," she said; "but you may be tried within four-and-twenty hours."
"Oh, I understand," replied Charles, and his eye glanced towards Colonel Middleton. "Do not fear; I will stand by him to the last, if I can be of any assistance."
They were again interrupted, and the dinner passed over without anything worth chronicling, till the ladies rose to retire from table. Lady Anne paused for a moment before going out, saying to Mr. Hargrave, "Do not forget the two notes, my dear friend."
"They are gone already," answered Mr. Hargrave: "as I came out I gave them to your butler, bidding him send them by one of my postilions."
When the ladies were gone, Mr. Hargrave naturally resumed the seat which he had occupied at the end of Lady Anne's table, and Mr. Winkworth drew his chair near him.
"Charles Hargrave," he said, laying his hand upon that of the old gentleman, "you have forgotten me."
Mr. Hargrave turned, and looked at him steadfastly. "I have indeed," he said, "though I thought I forgot nothing, and have sometimes lamented, my dear sir, that my memory was too tenacious, especially of affections."
"Yet we were once very intimate," said Mr. Winkworth, "though you are well-nigh twenty years my senior--older in years, I mean, though perhaps younger in body; but it is not wonderful, for I have withered away during nearly thirty years in India, so that, when I take up a little miniature portrait that was painted about the time I knew you, and then look in the glass, I do not know which it would be better to do, to laugh or to cry."
"It is very strange," said Mr. Hargrave. "Will you not recal the circumstances to my mind by some fact? Your voice, I will own, sounds familiar to my ears; but----"
"It is of no consequence just now," replied Mr. Winkworth: "by-and-by, when we can have a little chat alone together, I will bring it all up before you in a minute, like the landscape on the rising of the sun. Suffice it for the present that you are sitting beside an old friend."
Still Mr. Hargrave seemed puzzled, and returned to the subject more than once; but the other only laughed, and in a very few minutes they rose to rejoin the ladies. Then, while Colonel Middleton and Charles Marston walked away to the drawing-room, Mr. Hargrave took the other old gentleman by the arm, saying--
"Now you must give me satisfaction. You have attacked the honour of my memory, and I must have an explanation, lest I should think my faculties are failing."
"Well, let us sit down, then," said Mr. Winkworth; and seating themselves at the table, they remained there for a full hour. When they rejoined the party in the drawing-room, the two old men seemed as gay as any of them; and with music, and a game of chess between Mr. Winkworth and Lady Fleetwood, the evening passed lightly to its close. Half-past eleven o'clock came, without Mr. Hargrave's carriage being announced; but three notes were brought to him by the butler, who informed him at the same time that his servant had returned from Detchton-Grieve.
Mr. Hargrave only said, "Very well;" but Lady Fleetwood thought fit to tease herself about the old gentleman's going home so late. In truth, she looked upon the remote part of the country in which she was as little better than a barbarous land, and the journey back to Detchton-Grieve in as formidable a light as a retreat through a pass in presence of an enemy. Nor could she help expressing her sense of Mr. Hargrave's courage in undertaking such a perilous enterprise; but the old gentleman replied--
"I must decline the glory, my dear lady. I am going to sleep here to-night, and perhaps may spend to-morrow here likewise. This is the first time, dear Lady Anne," he continued, turning to his fair hostess, "that I have slept out of my own house for five-and-twenty years; but what would I not do," he continued, gallantly kissing her hand, "for an approving look from those bright eyes?"
"When we are married, you know, you shall always stay at home," said Lady Anne; "and now I have taken care that everything should be made as comfortable for you as possible. I wish I could have got a drawing of your room at Detchton; then you should have found all things precisely in the same state."
"When Cicero wrote his essay upon the 'Consolations of Old Age,'" said Mr. Hargrave, smiling, "he did not, so far as I remember, include that of being made love to by all the beautiful girls in the neighbourhood. But I am afraid he thought that there might be some portion of bitter under the sweet, and that they only ventured to do so from a knowledge that we are very harmless animals, and may be petted without peril. But now, sweet lady, I will seek my room; for, though I flatter myself I am very hale and healthy under seventy winters, yet I must not forget the good old maxim, that 'early to bed and early to rise' is the way to obtain many desirable things."
This was the signal for the general dispersion of the party; but Henry Hayley contrived to obtain an opportunity of saying in a whisper to Maria--
"Come down early to-morrow, dear Maria. I must speak with you for a few moments as soon as possible. Events are thickening around us, and you may be frightened at some things that are likely to happen, unless I have an opportunity of preparing you for them."
The colour mounted a little into Maria's cheek, but she answered frankly--
"I will come. Where shall I find you?"
"In the library," replied her lover, and they parted for the night; but Maria certainly did not take the best means to ensure early rising, for she lay awake for more than an hour, in anxious and painful thought.