SPLENDID MISERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5651, 27 December 1879, Page 3

SPLENDID MISERY.

A NOVEL. By the Author of " Lady Audley's Secret," &c. CHAPTER XX. ON SOME WILD DOWN ABOVE THE WINDY BEEP. Tiik strong breath of the Atlantic, the perfect reatfulncss of her life at Penruth Place, did for Barbara what Alpine breezes ami frequent change of scene had failed to do The sweet wild-rose bloom came back ' 1 her cheek, the luatre to her eyes. If th* dull, permanent pain of despair, which poe9 call a broken heart, could kill of itself alone. Barbara would have surely died. But sr.<i carried her grief about with her, she here her burden in silence, and she went <"i liviDg. Interest in life she had little. The grand, old, romantic house was beautiful ' n her eyes, but it only seemed to her like a house in a picture. It had no part in : ' { ' r own life. She never thought of it as h :!U '- Home was the cottage in South-lane ;the cozy little rooms—oh, how small wey seemed, looking back at them from her present qraudeur ! —the half-acre of gn'lfn, the familiar chairs and tables, amidst which she had grown up. Those things musT ever remain uuutterably dear. Her husband was very kind to her—kind in his own grim way, which was like i uess in other people. The grating voice, with its loud base tones, startled her 1 little in these days, when her nerves wer? weak. Hut she knew that, after his own peculiar fashion, he was good to her, good a:id forbearing, since he had told her how in her fever and delirium she had raved ai'Out her first lover. "1 think if I had known how fond you were of that soldier, I should harJly have been foid enough to marry you, blotted as | I was about you from the first h. ir I saw you," lie said one day, when he had been talking of her illness. "I told you that I had loved him with all my heart," she faltered, meekly, "Had loved? Yes. But I l>eiieved it was a thing of the past." "It was past, quite past. We had given each other up. But when I was ill the old days came back, just as earlier days came back sometimes in those lor.' dreadful nights, and I fancied myself a child again, playing at childish games with Flossie. You must not think of anything I said while I was ill, Vy vyan. Past and present were all in a tangle."

'MVell, ifc's nofc worth thinking about, perhaps. You were very bad. It was not a lively honeymoon." " I am sorry 1 gave you so rruch trouble." "Egad, I believe falling in love i 3 all trouble. I would not give you up now 1 have got you ; but I know I was a happier man before L saw your face." This was not a pleasant way of looking at things. Vyvyan bad yielded to a fascination that was stronger than himself. He submitted, but he was angry with himself for submitting. He looked upon bis love and h'u marriage as a fatality. If Barbara had loved him, he would have bowed to fate, and rejoiced in his bonlage. He would have beea the most devoted, the most yielding of husbands. This rugged old tree would have bent like the tendered sapling. But Barbara did not love him, and she was too frank to affect a love she could not feel. She wa* gentle and obedient, grateful for his kindnea?, but there her idea of duty ended. She had no idea that duty could constraiu her to pretend affection.

She bore her new honours with a gentle humility which ought to have disarmed her foes. Even Priscilla could find no cause for complaint, though she had been compelled to hand over her cherished house-keeping keys, and to sink into a subordinate position in a house where she hal been sole mistress

so long. Strange for Barbara, whose only notion or an establishment was the all-comprehensive Amelia, to fiud herself mistress of half-a-dozen women-servants, and as many men indoor and out-door. The middle-aged butler, who had washed spoons and glasses in his boyhood in the same pantry where he now

decanted his wine and read his newspaper, took kindly to the young wife ; not so much for the love he bore her as for lii 3 honest dislike of Pripcilla. That lady's spiritual views had weighed heavily on the whole household. She lial been a sworn foe to followers, to all kitchen revelries. She had been hard as the granite of her native hills. And now, with a young wife, the servants felt that things would be differently maoaged. There would be a slackening of the reins. I.ittle as he spent upon himself, and hard as he was in .til business transactions, Vyvyan Pen ruth was liberal in his ideas as a master. He tad been brought up to consider a house fill of servants as part of himself—not for rank or state, but for old time-honoured custom. His father had kept so many servants, and he would keep the same number. He did not give large wages. Labour was cheap in that remote western world, but he would have no stint in his kitchen and servants' hall.

Jt had been in vain that his sister had told him there were more cats than could catch mice.

" X like to see the cits about the place," lie said. " It's I who have to pay for them. You needn't trouble."

'' I am too conscientious not to be troubled by wasteful ways' and idleness, which is pernicious to soul and body," retorted Priscilla.

"Idleness! Why, there's no one in the house as idle as you," growled her brother.

"You do nothing but writi twaddling letters to other old tabbies, and read pious books."

" I am trying to prepare myself for a worl.l where I shall have many things that are denied me here, Yyvyan, and where I shall be better understood," said Mies fenruth, with dignity. Barbara's chief pleasure at Penruth Place was the flower garden. That was a real delight. To inhabit a land where roses and myrtle grew and flourished, as they grew and flourished here, was almost as good a? being a princess in a fairy tale. W hen her husband saw that she was fond of flowers, he engaged her an extra gardener. "Have as many men about as you like," ho said ; "so long as you leave n>y sister her dahlia garden, you can do what you please with the rest. If you'd like a hothouse, I'll build you one, so that you may have flowers to ornament your rooms in winter."

" You are very good," murmured Barbara, wondering, as she always wondered, at his rough kindness, knowing how little she had done to deserve it. " I don't want to give you any trouble. "It will be no trouble. I shall just order a man to come from Launceston and build a hot house. Coles, your new gardener, knows all about it. Since you don't want to make any alteration in the house, you maj as well have your own way in the gardei.. Fine roses, these yellow ones, aren't th ; y 1" he went on, sniffing at a Marshal Kiel "Do you remember my bringing you a bjnch of yellow roses once when you were illl had only seen you twice at that time, yet you had taken hold of my life. I was miserable about you." Did she remember ? Could she ever forget that wretched time, when she was lyngfiick to death with sorrow ? The sight of yellow roses brought back the old pain. She could see Flossie bouncing into the room anl flinging the flowers on her bed. " I want to make you happy if I can," pursued her husband, this being one of his rare moments of confidence. "I arn glad you are satisfied -with the old hen«j as it stands, and the old furniture, which been in it ever since Cromwell's time."

"Satisfied!" echoed Barbara. ''Have you forgotten the home I came frorn—the old chairs and tables and odd bits of china, and the cottage piano in our parlour at Catnberwell? And yet that is my ides! of a home. I have the sirne kind of it, I suppose, that a bird has about lih nest —mere twisted wisps of grassland 1 its of twigs and scraps of wool, yet it is notion of comfort."

" I hope you will get to like Plau3 a; well 23 you like .Carnberwell. " Perhaps in time ; but I must grow -n it, you see. I know that it is a grand old h .use, and exactly like an ogre's palaco iu a : ; iiry tale." " And I am like the ogre ?" " You are a very good-natured o£re f " Barbara answered, with one of her rare smiles. " I try to be. I try to make you hap>y. Do you know that I have ordered a c ; w carriage for you? Mine were all dropping to pieces, worn out with long disuse. I have ordered a landau, and I am going to get ytu a pony carriage, which you can drive your--8 j'• 1 have told Mark to look out for a pair ot ponies."

~ generous you are !" cried Barbara, us mg with absolute pleasure : '' and how Pleased mother and Flossie will be—whenU—they come to see me

"All, by-the-way, you wanted them to come to you, didn't you ? I remember your saying something about it. Let them come as so on a# yo« like." Barbara stood on tiptoe and kissed him, the*lirE:' spontaneous ki-s she had given hiui since he had been her husband. "Do you really mean it?" she cried enchanted. "May they really and truly come; and are you sure you won't mind?"' '•Why should I mind ? Have them cere to-morrow, if it will make you happy. I want to see you smile and to hear you laugh as you did that 6rst night at the play." " Ah," sighed Barbara, with a sharp sudden pang, "so many things have happened since then." " What things !" "I have grown so much older." " Why, it's only a year ago." She wrote to her mother that night a letter overflowing with love, and with a flivour of real happiness in it, which her former letters had never had, though she had made them elaborately cheerful. Writing home had been one of her chief consolations. She had described the house and garden, the tors, the moors, the heather, aud granite—every feature of her new home ; she had p.-aised her husband; she had spoken kindly of good-natured, sauntering Mark; she had even found a good word for I'riscilla. "She is very, almost painfully religious," she wrote; "but I have no right to find fault with her for that, ai no doubt she is thoroughly sincere. She has a fortune of her own, you know, quite independent of her brother ; so she has no motive for pretending."

To-night she wrote in wild Bpirits : "You are to come at once darling— ' directly minute,' as old nurse used to say to us—as s jon as ever rail and coach will bring you. Don't trouble about gowns or luggage of any kind ; bring anything or nothing. Don't, for Heaven's sake, say you must have a week to get ready, as you usually ilo about everything, you dear slowcoach ; but just put your brushes and combs ill a carpet-bag, and ccme off at once ! I have heaps of money, and we can buy all you want at where the shops are very good, though not nearly equal to the Walworth Road. Kvcr dear one, I am so happy at the thought of seeing you after our weary parting ; and ob, how shall I ever let you go back to dear old Camberwell again ? And I wonder how you will feel in this old Uromwellian mansion, where nobody but servants are ever allowed to do any sweeping or dusting, and where all things go in a slow monotonous way, as if the house was managed by clock-work. And the gardens ! Ah, tlio?e will delight you, But Flossie will call the p'.ice dull, no doubt, for there is not a single shop to look at on the moor : and 1 dare say she will get tired of the two big brown tors that are always staring at oue solemnly, as much as to say, ' You poor, contemptible, modern, evanescent creatures, we were here before the Flood ; we shall be here at the Day of Judgment.' " There was great rej >icing at Cambcrwell when Barbara's invitation came. Mrs. Tre-vor-nock aud her younger daughter had been enjoying a delightful change or air at quiet little Broadstairs, with alternations of gaiety at Margate and Kam=gate ; and the sea breezes and novelty of life had helped to restore Mrs. Trevoruock to perfect health

and strength. But the graud restorative was that ease of mind which came from a secure future, and the delightful idea that Barbara was established for life in her rightful position as a great lady. It never entered ioto her thoughts that she had done wrong In promoting her. daughter's marriage with Vyvyan Peuruth. She was not the kind of woman who would have deliberately sold her child into bondage. Yet she had been made somewhat uneasy now and then by the tone of her darling's letters, which, though studiously cheerful, did not breathe the spirit of happiness. The girl had written about outward things, of herself and her own feelings hardly at all, of her husband only a few words now and then, telling them that ho had beeu very good to her. But now this letter was full of life and suushiuc, as if written by the happy Bab of old days, before the coming of Captain Lelaud, , before the beginning of love aud sorrow. There was a happy day of tremendous bustle, hurried starching and ironing, and packing of a new truuk and a new portmauteau, bought for the occasion ; aud then, early in the fr<>sh Septomber morning, Mrs. Trevornock and her daughter loft South-lano in a four-wheel cab, ou their way to the railway station. It was a very long journey, but a happy one; a feast of green fields, and hill and | valley, glimpses of distant woodland, windiug ; streams, aud rustic villages ; and, lastly, the 1 grandeur of a wild range of pasture on the skirts of Dattmoor, over which they travelled in a stage-coach ; aud then came JLanncpston, and Barbara's owu carriage tj meet the travellers. It was an old-fashioned britzska, much the worse for wear, which luoked as if it had been built iu the year oue, as Flossie pertly observed, when she had established herself comfortably in the roomy back seat, with her bonnet-box, parasol, and umbrella, and divers miuor parcels, on the seat opposite her ; but as Barbara was to have a nt w barouche immediately, the shabbiness of the existing carriage counted for nothing, 41 Now, I do feel thankful to Providence," Mrs. Trevornock exclaimed, piously ; " for I am sittiug in my daughter's carriage, and the dream of my life is realised."

" Oh," said Flossie, "then I suppose you have no dream to be fulfilled about poor little me and my carriage ?"

"My dear Flossie, you know what a bright clever girl I think you ; but Barbara was born to be distinguished. Nobody has ever denied yourgood looks ; but her beauty is—well, really, you know—"

" Uon't be apologetic," said Flossie. " I'm quite willing to admit Bab's superiority ; but 1 shuuld like to think there was a carriage— something better than this family ark, wbiuh positively smells of dry-rot—looming in the future for me."

" Why not, dear?" said the sanguine mother. " With such opportunities as Barbara can give you, you ought to make a splendid match."

They were climbiug slowly up the steep Lauuoeston street by this time, and Flossie was looking eagerly right and left for bonnets and haberdashery.

" Bab may well call this place inferior to the Walworth ltoad," she exclaimed at last ;

' there's not a shop worth looking at."

Half-au-hour later Miss Trevornocl; found herself" face to face with primeval nature in the shape of the Cornish tors.

" What big brown things !" she exclaimed, contemptuously, being of a temper which would not have be?n overawed by Mont Blanc. " Are those the creatures your Tre, Pol, and Pens make such a fuss about ? I expected to see tliem ever so much higher."

Mrs. Trevornock'3' memory had wandered back to the distant past.

"When Mr. T. brought me to Cornwall after my honeymoon, the bells were runy to welcome me," she said, pensively.

" Then I hope pa was not expected to pay the riugers," retorted Flossie," "for I'm sure he wouldn't have done it."

" Xo, dear; your grandmother paid for everything. She was the soul of generosity, and she welcomed me as lovingly as if I had been lier oivn daughter. You don't remember your grandmother 1"

" How should I, when I never siw her," snapped Flossie. "But I think she must have been a most extraordinary woman."

" How so, dear ?" " For being so nice herself, and yet contriving to have such a sou as Mr. T." After about an hour's drive they came to the lodge gates, and Mrs.Trevorno-'k Hushed with triumph as she entered her daughter's park, ller imiyination, ahvayj fervid, had picture! a grander domain, larger timber, oak* as magnificent as those at Stonoleigh, beeelies: as line as those of the New Forest,

wooded glades dotted with deer. This sweep of upla id pasture, with its screcn of stunted oak and r-cotch lir, hardly came up to her expectations. But v. hi n they passed the boundary between park and garden, and approached the fine old house, grey and lichen'd, with its richly-mnllioued windows looking out upon them like grave historic faces the mother's breast swelled with raoturn. "What a noble mansion, I'lossie ! she oriel. "It is like one of the show placcs 1 use ! to be taken to see when I wag a girl." But here was something that went nearer to the iriaternat heart than tho mansion ; here "'• a3 Barbara herself standing in the porch in a white gown waiting for her mother and sister. She ran tu the carriage door • uhe could hardly wait till the steady old coachman had pulled up his horses, before her arms were round her mother s neck, and she was crying and laughing on her •lioulder in a rapture of affection that was almost hysterical. . " Dear mother, what a century since I have seen you! And how well you are looking! Flossie too." " We had three weeks at Broad-stairs, you know, dear," explained Mrs. Trevoruook, with tears in her pretty eyes. . _

noon before the Albion; lodgings a fabulous price."

Barbara led her mother into the house, that happy parent gazing at everything with awe and admiration. "My dearest child," she faltered, 44 1 never felt so proud in my life. Such a glorious old house ! such a heavenly gardeu ! What a good man your husband must be !" " Yes," sighed Barbara, 44 he is all that is good." And then Mrs. Trevornock felt a gentle thrill of self-approbatioD. How wise she had been ! how truly she had played a mother's part ! and what a lucky stroke Flossie had made in losing that foolish letter, which would have spoiled everything? " Providence has been very good to us," she thought, complacently. " Flossie," began Barbara, in a confidendential tone, 44 1 hope you'll be very polite to Miss Penruth." " I'll do my best," replied Flossie ; " but I have made up my mind to hate her uf course she's the image of Mr. Penruth ?" 44 She's not in the least like him." 44 Then she ought to be," retorted Fossie. " It is a gross impertinence for the members of a family to act up an individuality of their own." " Will you come straight up to your rooms and get ready for dinner, or would you like a cup of tea first, mother darling ?" asked Barbara, People in this dark period of history contrived to exist without the now b!e live o'clock tea ; but Barbara felt that this was an occasion for'abuormal tea-driuk-ing. " I think a cup of tea would revive us," said Mrs. Trevornock.

" \ow shall have i& in your room, dearest, and then you need not face MUs Penruth til) you are refreshed." " I suppose you call her Priscilla ?" suggested Flossie. " I have uot arrived at that yet." "Then you are getting on very slowly." They all three went up the dark old staireagy in a loving cluster. Vyvyan and Mark were out; Priscilla was in the retirement of her own room, where she spent a considerable portion of her life reading, writing letters, labouring at some elaborate piece of fancy-work, or making coarse aud homely raiment for divers ancient pensioners. Barbara and her guests had the house all to themselves. She took them to the rooms she had brightened aud embellished for their occupation. There were flowers in abundance oil mantel-piece aud table ; the j faded and sombre lints of the past made a harmonious background for the rich damask of roses, the vivid scarlet of geraniums. Giltnore, Barbara's special atteudant, a plump, fair-haired young woman, brought the tea on a massive old silver tray, with cake, home-made biscuits, and clotted cream, and honeycomb. " I hope you don't cxpecb mo to eat any dinner, Bab," cried Flossie, " for I am goiug to enjoy myself now," Mrs. Trevornock reposed in the slumberous corner of an old-fashioned sofa, sipping strong tea, aud contemplating her surrouudinys dreamily, too full of content for much speech. Through the open lattice, the one practicable opening in the wide Tudor window, came the breath of land and sea, ilowers and ocean-weeds. Yonder, faraway, rose the Cornish mountains, remote, in-

accessible, save to a hardy climber. The grave old room looked as it had looked on .Puritan and Cavalier in days when there was trouble ia the land, aud New i lace was a comfortable refuge for the hunted Royalist. What a contrast to the modern shabbiness of .South-lane, Camberwell ! The comfortable little house, which till now had been a tiling of beauty and a perennial source of pride, must henceforward seem ineffably i-habby to Mrs. Trevornoek. Yet there was no touch of envy mingled with her admiration. It seemed to her only the rightful order of things that Barbara should inhabit a noble old mansion, while her mother and sister dwelt far off iu humility, and looked up to her from their remoteness as to a new hJsther, glorified and beautified by her wealthy lord's surroundings. Mrs. Trevornock folded her hands, and felt that she had done her duty. Those were halcyon daj's for Barbara—a peerless September. Every eye in England was turned to the Crimea, every thought was of news from the seat of war; but Barbara heard of repulse or victory with only a languid interest. He was not there Her soldier, her hero, was far away in that remoter world, where battles as desperate and victories aa grand had been fought and won for the last hundred years, with hardly an interval in the march of conquest. Sevastopol fell, and even in this /ar West there was ringing of bells, and bonfires were lighted, and tar-barrels blazed as gady as on St. John's Kve ; bat Barbara was absorbed in the delight of her mother's society, aud took the faintest notice of bells and bonfires. The rose bloom has come back to her checks the lustre to her lovely eyes. Vyvyan looked 011 and understood, with a bitter sense of wrong, her great capacity for loving, and her inability to love him. " What affection she lavishes on raolher and sister ! how passionately she loved that Indian soldier ! Yet to me she is cold as marble. What a besotted idiot I was when I married her !" Ue had tried, according to his lights, to win her love ; he had beeu kind, liberal, aud indulgent, but lie felt that he had failed. She was grateful, she gave him respect, obedience, deference, as her part of the bargain ; but he was no nearer her heart

than he had been when she yielded herself shrinking, re'uetantly, to his first kiss, the solemn ki-s of bethrothal. " Fool ! fool ! fool !" he said to himself, in bitterest self-scorn ; and then he lapsed back into his old self, and was hard and grumpy an:l inatter of-fact a of yore—a man living within himself, aud taking little dolight in life.

Meanwhile Mrs. Trevornock and Flossie wero revelling in all the good things of this life, dawdling away sunny mornings in a garden running over with rosrs, waxing sleek and fat upou much Coruisli cake aud Cornish cream, going for long drives to choice bits of

scencry, taking their luncheon with them, for the delight of eating uucotnfortably among the slippery serpentine rocks, where the gulls and cormorants lived, or on some breezy hill-top, swept by all the winds that blow across tlie wide Atlantic. Flossie inspected the neighbouring scenery most completely, aud turned up her small nose at tlie oldest-established lions 011 the Cornish coast, making light of Tintagel, aud expressing herself irreverently about Logan Stones, cromlechs, and the Druids generally.

Miss Penrufch had no share in these amusements. Barbara invited her politely and formally to take her seat in the family carriage, the new landau, roomy, substantial, and comfortable—a carriage that wotdd have held six as it held four. "I am not fond of long drives," LViscilla replied, stilly; "1 consider them a wasto of life." "One must spend one's Hfe somehow," said Barbara, with a faint sigh. " If we thought oE our lives as talents for which we shall have to account, we should hardly spend them driving about to look at

cliffs and roekp," retorted Priscilla, with a wrathful glance at Flotsie, whose very presence affected her as a scarlet Hag allects a bull.

" I don't think we shall find our account in the skies stand any the worse for the happy, innocent houis we have spent ad-

miring the beauty of the earth," protested this young lady.

" I cannot argue with flippancy," said Miss Penruth.

"No one would ever accuse you of being flippant," returned Flossie.

" I was talking of your flippancy, Miss Trevornoek."

"Then you ought to have made yourself clearer."

There had been numerous skirmishes between the two Indies, Flossie generally getting the best of the argument, or, at any rate, by the pertness of her manner appearing to come victorious out of the fray. Never had Miss i'enruth disliked any one so intensely, and her capacity for dislike was larjje. Marl;, on the contrary, had taken kindly to the lively Flossie. Her vivacity amused him, and distracted him from those gloomy thoughts that had of la'.o oppressed him. She was his ideal of agreeable young ladyhood. He wondered at his brother's folly in choosing the elder sister. What was a little beauty more or less ? Hark had found out by hard experience that well-cut features and a brilliant complexion will not of themselves alone make a man's liresidc pleasant to him. His real need in life, did he but know it in time, is a cheerful, sweettempered companion, light of foot over the stony ways of fortune, with a spirit brave enough to face an occasional tempest, a mind sunuier than the sunshine when it is all fair. Flossie Beemed to Mark just this kind of girl. Her tongue was sharp, but her temper and heart were excellent. " I suppose your mother-in-law and her daughter are settled for here life," Priscilla said to her brother one day, whenhe happened nf- h-i "*■ 1 — --1 j.l. — t

and gnests were far afield. 44 Mrs. Peurath seems so happy, ano hns changed s • much for the better, as far as good spirit* go, aioce they have come, that it would be a pity to send them away."

| " "ies, she is very happy with them," Vyvyan answered, moodily. " Yet you could hardly have counted upon that when you married." 44 Counted upon what?" 44 Upon having your mother-in-law fixed here for life." " She is not fixed for life ; they are going home in a week or so," answered Vyvyan ; and he made up his iniud that they should go home. fTo be continued.]