it had begun to snow by the time jeffray had left pevensel forest for the meadow-lands and brown fallows that spoke of civilization. dusk had fallen, the whirling snow-flakes dimming the red glow in the west, yet filling the twilight with a gray radiance. richard saw the lights of rodenham village glimmering faintly in the valley below him. soon he was riding through his own park with the thickening snow driving like mist amid the trees.
jeffray left his mare at the stables and entered the house by the side door from the garden. the old priory of rodenham was one of those dream-houses that seem built up out of the idyls of the past. it was full of long galleries, dark entries, beams, recessed windows, huge cupboards, and winding stairs. casements glimmered in unexpected places. the rooms led one into the other at all angles, and were rarely on a level. here were panels black with age, phantasmal beds, carved chests that might have tombed mysteries for centuries, faded tapestries that breathed forth tragedy as they waved upon the walls. all was dark, mellow, stately, silent. the very essences of life seemed to have melted into the stones; the deep throes of the human heart had become as echoes in each solemn room.
jeffray found the lady letitia, his aunt, playing piquet in the damask drawing-room with dr. sugg, the rector of rodenham. the lady letitia was a red-beaked and bushy browed old vulture, with wicked eyes and a budding beard. her towering “head” was stuffed full of ribbons and feathers, her stupendous hoop of red damask, her gown flowered red and blue. the lady letitia was one of those preposterous old ladies who labor under the delusion that a woman of sixty may still presume to trade upon the reputation of impudent loveliness she had created some thirty years ago. everything about the lady letitia was false and artificial. her teeth and eyebrows were emblems of what her virtues were, manufactured articles to make the wearer passable in society. the old lady had deigned to drive down from london in her coach-and-four to spend christmas with her nephew, a piece of affectionate economy necessitated by heavy losses at cards. she had deigned also to take richard’s education in hand. the lad was deplorably quiet, gauche, and sensitive.
“so you are back at last, richard,” she said, looking like a pompous old parrot, with one eye on her cards and one on her nephew. “seat yourself, dr. sugg; richard does not want you to stand on ceremony. snowing, eh? detestable weather; the country is like a quagmire already, as i may see by your coat and breeches, nephew. it is usual for a gentleman to dress before presenting himself to a lady. you look surprised, richard. ‘is it not my own house?’ you say. certainly, mon cher, so it is, but i am a lady of birth, sir, and i like to be treated as such. how is mistress jilian? deft at the harpsichord as ever?”
richard, whose face had flushed towards the end of this oration, drew a chair beside the card-table, and seated himself before the fire. it was characteristic of the lady letitia that she had a habit of ruling and correcting every one. she would tilt her beak of a nose, fix her wicked little eyes on the victim, and drop gall and bitterness from her shrivelled old mouth with a condescension that made her detestable. there was an avaricious glint in the old lady’s eyes for the moment. poor dr. sugg, purple-faced and stertorous, came nightly to the priory in clean ruffles and a well-powdered wig to permit the lady letitia to possess herself of his small cash in the hope that the worthy dowager might use her influence on his behalf with my lord the bishop.
aunt letitia turned suddenly and rapped her nephew’s shoulder with her fan.
“richard,” she said, with some asperity, “is it customary to sit between a lady and the fire?”
jeffray apologized and shifted his chair. dr. sugg was engaged in shuffling the cards; the dowager’s black eyes were busy scanning her nephew’s person with the critical keenness of a woman of the world.
“richard, where did you get that coat?” she asked.
“at lewes, aunt.”
“pooh! the rascal has made it like a sack. you must have a smart tailor, boy. i cannot allow you to be disgraced by your clothes.”
dr. sugg, who was glancing over his cards, cast a pathetic look at richard, and groaned over his inveterate bad luck. aunt letitia’s eyes glistened; her rouged and scraggy face was radiant with miserly good humor.
“my dear richard,” she said, benignantly, “i must really take you to the wells with me, and introduce you into respectable society. you must learn elegance, dignity, address. these virtues are as necessary to a young man of good family as a good tailor or a smart hatter. you must have your hair dressed properly; i will instruct gladden myself in the latest fashion. bucolic melancholy does not pass for fine breeding in elegant circles.”
jeffray smiled somewhat cynically at his aunt as he watched her clutching at poor sugg’s shillings. he was heartily tired of his elderly relative’s imperial patronage. she condescended to accept his hospitality, and improved the occasion by pestering him with her worldly superficialities, abusing his “bookishness” and amending his manners. the nephew looked forward to his aunt’s departure with a sincerity that was ingenuous and enthusiastic. the lady letitia was still, however, bent upon economy. though the country bored her excessively, she was saving money at her nephew’s expense, and his hospitality would enable her to go to tunbridge wells in the spring unencumbered by debt.
dr. suggs departed with an empty purse after supper, to trudge home to the parsonage through the drifting snow. the lady letitia established herself in a fauteuil beside the fire in the damask drawing-room, with tom jones on her knee and a glass of steaming rum at her elbow. jeffray had taken refuge in the library, the only room in the house that aunt letitia suffered him to possess in peace. the dowager bore herself as though she were the mistress of rodenham priory, walked the linen-room and kitchen, rated the servants, and even bearded old peter gladden, the butler, in his den.
richard jeffray had brought many books, pictures, and curios from abroad, having been plentifully supplied with money by his father, who had been something of an antiquary and a man of taste. the old library, with its towering shelves and wainscoted walls, held the treasures that richard had transmitted from time to time from italy. here were etruscan and greek vases; boxes of coins, rings, and charms; fragments of statuary and of mosaic. the gathering of engraved stones had formed jeffray’s most extravagant hobby. egyptian scarabæi, gnostic charms, classical cameos and intaglios, mostly forged, were packed away in a satinwood bureau. jeffray boasted a strong-box full of sapphires, emeralds, garnets, opals, chalcedonies, sards, jaspers and other stones. old peter gladden had set two lighted candles on the escritoire near the window. a manuscript lay open on the writing flap, the manuscript of an epic that richard had been laboring at for months. it was conceived in the miltonic style, and dealt with the descent of christ into hades.
the lady letitia was yawning over the love affairs of sophia weston when her nephew joined her in the drawing-room. she roused herself, sat up stiffly in her chair, and held up her fan to keep the heat of the fire from her painted face. the dowager regarded richard with the solemnity of a witch of endor. jeffray had learned to dread these nightly interviews. aunt letitia was forever flinging her sarcasms at his head, and being a sensitive and easy-tempered youth he had never presumed to flout her in her pedagogic utterances.
it was evident to richard that the dowager had been meditating as usual over his youthful eccentricities. she looked more pompous and austere than usual, like some hoary catechist ready to hear the callow creed of youth. the wind was moaning over the great house, tossing the sombre boughs of the cedars that towered above the lawns. the windows rattled; every chimney was full of sound. jeffray flung more wood upon the fire, and sat down opposite his aunt with a look of melancholy resignation on his face.
“richard,” said the old lady, suddenly, tilting her red beak and fixing her eyes upon her nephew.
jeffray roused himself as from a reverie.
“you are often at hardacre house.”
“am i, aunt letitia?”
“often enough, richard, to suggest the attraction to me.”
jeffray turned and watched the fire. the light played upon his sallow face and melancholy eyes, his plain black coat, the white ruffles falling down upon the small and refined hands. there was an air of picturesqueness about him that even aunt letitia recognized, despite the fact that she preferred a mischievous dandy to a book-befogged scholar.
“richard.”
the young man glanced at her inquiringly.
“jilian is thirty-five if she is a day. she pads her figure and dyes her hair. you must be careful, lad. the wench has angled these twenty years. i can make a better match for you than that.”
richard had grown accustomed to the lady letitia’s blunt methods of attack. he crossed one leg over the other, and strove to appear at his ease under the old lady’s critical gaze. the dowager was forever hinting at the undesirable nature of an alliance with the hardacre family. they had birth, certainly, but what were a baronet’s blazonings in aristocratic england? sir peter was as poor as a parson; his estates were mortgaged to the last tree. miss jilian had been in the market for years, and would bring nothing in the shape of a dowry. the lady letitia dilated materially on all these points, as though she were advising her nephew on the purchase of a mansion.
“you are very kind, aunt letitia,” said the young man, somewhat sullenly, at the end thereof, “but i believe i am capable of choosing myself a wife.”
the old lady’s eyes glittered.
“so you are going to marry jilian hardacre, eh?”
“i did not say so.”
“pooh, boy! haven’t i eyes in my head? so she has caught you, has she, the minx? yet i must confess, nephew, that you do not seem ravished at the thought of embracing such a bride.”
richard drew his knees up and fidgeted in his chair.
“nothing of a serious nature has passed between us,” he said, awkwardly.
“nothing serious, eh? and what do you call ‘serious,’ mon cher? oglings and letters, gloves, flowers, whisperings in window-seats! egad, nephew, you will have that gambling oaf of a lot to deal with. they are mad to marry jilian, and they want money.”
the old lady was quite flushed and eloquent, while richard’s brown face expressed surprise. he was innocent of worldly guile, nor had he scented such matrimonial subtleties in the hardacre mansion.
“sir peter has been very kind to me,” he said.
“noble old gentleman! and he has never been for pushing miss jilian into your arms, eh? no, i warrant you, the wench is spry and buxom enough herself. you are not a bad-looking lad, richard, and you have money.”
jeffray still appeared in a fog.
“i do not understand you, aunt,” he said.
“not understand me!”
“no.”
“nephew dick, you are a bigger fool than i thought you were. come, lad, blab to me; have you offered yourself to the fair jilian?”
richard blushed, rather prettily for a man, and shook his head.
“it has not gone as far as that,” he confessed.
“well, nephew,” she said, brusquely, “are you in love with the lady?”
“i thought i was—”
aunt letitia sniffed, and flicked her fan.
“dear little love-bird,” she rasped, ironically; “let me warn you, richard, before it is too late, that unless this pretty romance is locked in the lumber-room you will have that bully of a lot raging round here about his sister’s honor.”
richard straightened up stiffly in his chair and stared at his aunt in melancholy astonishment.
“i have done nothing to compromise miss jilian,” he said.
“nothing!” and the old lady cackled.
“on my honor, aunt letitia.”
“dear lad, how innocent you are! your virginity is better than a sermon. a pity miss jilian hardacre cannot say the same about her sweet person. well, richard, if you take an old woman’s advice, you will break with the lady, delicately, gently, mind you. miss jilian is a tender young thing, and must be handled with discretion.”
“and cousin lot—?”
“can you fight, richard?”
“well, i am not much of a swordsman. but if sir peter thinks—”
“that you have paid undue attention to his dear daughter—”
“yes—”
“you will sacrifice your virgin honor, eh?”
“aunt letitia, i trust i shall never act dishonorably by any woman.”
the dowager shut up her fan suddenly with a snap, yawned, and announced that she was going to her chamber.
“you are an incorrigible fool, richard,” she said, contemptuously; “please ring for my maid. i see that it is quite useless to reason with such a saint.”
