Chapter Twenty Eight.
A Home Gayer than Congenial.
Madame Lalande, née Powell, was the widow of a West Indian planter, late deceased. Her husband, during life, had held commercial intercourse with Bristol, then chief port of communication with all the Transatlantic colonies. Though a Creole of French descent, the isle of his nativity, in the Antilles, had come under British rule; and he himself rather affected English tastes and habits, often visiting England and making short sojourns in it. At a Bristol ball he had first met Gwendoline Powell, Ambrose’s sister; had married in Bristol, and there designed spending the evening of his days in retirement from the cares of business life. And when the time at length came for carrying this design into execution, he sold off his West Indian plantation—an extensive one, with its human chattels, some hundreds in number—and invested the proceeds in Bristol property, part of it being a handsome dwelling-house meant for his future home:
Into this he had entered about a year before the commencement of the civil strife, which he lived not to see. The cold, moist climate of our island, so different to that of the tropical Antilles, was fatal to him, and in less than twelve months after settling on the Avon’s banks he was buried there, having succumbed to an attack of pleurisy. Possibly fast living may have had something to do with it. He was a man of social inclinings and sumptuous habits, which his great wealth enabled him to indulge without stint; and he had recklessly disregarded the care of his health.
Fortunately for those who inherited his property, his life of extravagance had not been long enough to dissipate it, and Madame Lalande was still one of the wealthiest women in Bristol, with no one to share her wealth, save an only daughter, a girl of some eighteen summers, or, to speak more correctly, one summer of eighteen years in length. For the occasional visits to England with her father and mother had been made in this season, the rest of her life spent in a land where winter is unknown. All summer her life in every sense; from her cradle not a wish denied, or taste ungratified, but everything lavished upon her which money could purchase or parental fondness bestow.
As a consequence, Clarisse Lalande had grown up a spoilt child; and now that she was almost a woman, the fruits of such folly made themselves manifest. Imperious and capricious, she had a temper which would not brook restraint. For this it had never known, accustomed all her life to the obeisance of black slaves, and the flattery of mulatto hand-maidens.
Flattery from others she had received too—a very incense of it—which her beauty, without thought of her prospective wealth, commanded. For a beauty she was, of the true Creole type, with all its characteristics; the golden brown tint of skin, the crimson flush of cheeks, the brilliancy of dark eyes, with a luxuriance of hair that defied confinement by ordinary clasp or comb. There was the suspicion of a “wave” in it; and report said that the blood in her father’s veins had not been pure Circassian, but with a slight admixture of Ethiopian. All the more piquant were the charms it had transmitted to his daughter, as the star-like fire in her brown-black eyes, and a figure of grandly voluptuous outline. Some of her mental characteristics, too, may have come from it—a certain sensuousness, with the impatience of control already adverted to.
Such being Clarisse Lalande, it scarce needs saying that between her and her cousins Powell there was little congeniality either of tastes or sentiments. Though in person more resembling Sabrina, the two were mental antipodes; while sunbright Vaga, who looked altogether unlike her dark-skinned Creole cousin, had yet certain similar traits of temper; the which made mutual antipathy, at first sight, as when alkali and acid come into contact. It afterwards became heart-hatred, inspired and nursed by the most powerful of influences.