Chapter XX: Carnaby Court

The baronet's country seat was popular among his 'set,' and in the county generally. The ladies were attractive, Sir Carnaby was fond of society, and was undeniably hospitable: the preserves were good, the corn-fed pheasants were among the best in the land, and partridges abounded in the coverts and thickets; the stud and cellar were good, and his French cook was a genius. The oak-studded chase, where the deer lay deep amid the fern, showed trees that were of vast antiquity--remnants, perhaps, of the days when Bucks was all a forest, as old historians tell us.

The Collingwoods had been lords of Collingwood ever since tradition could tell of them. They were, it was said, old as the chalky Chiltern Hills and the woods of Whaddon Chase, and stories of their prowess had been rife among the people since the days when Edward was murdered at Tewkesbury, when 'bluff King Hal' burnt Catholics and Protestants together with perfect impartiality at Smithfield, when Mary spent her maudlin love on Philip, and Queen Bess boxed the ears of her courtiers: all had figured in history somehow; and everywhere, over the gateway half hidden by ivy, in the painted oriels, on the gables, and on the buttons of the livery servants, were three eels wavy on a bend, indicating a heraldic portion of the tenure by which they held their land, like the lord of Aylesbury in the same county--'By the sergentry of finding straw for the bed of the Defender of the Faith, with three eels for his supper, when he should travel that way.'

Built, patched, and repaired in various ages, the Court is one of the most picturesque old mansions in the county. In one portion, chiefly inhabited by crows and bats, there was a half-ruined remnant left by the Wars of the Roses, on which the present Tudor, or, rather, Elizabethan mansion, with its peaked gables, oriel windows, and clustered chimney-stacks--square, twisted, or fluted--had been engrafted. Hawthorn, holly, and ivy grew out of the clefts of the ruinous portion; and there in childhood had Clare and Ida made baby houses; and there they had devoured in secret many a fairy and ghost story, and thrilled with joy over that of the 'Ugly Duckling.' The terrace balustrades were mossy and green, and though Carnaby Court had an old and decayed aspect, there was a lingering grandeur about it.

The plate in the dining-hall was famous in the county for its value and antiquity, though many a goblet and salver had gone to the melting-pot when King Charles unfurled his standard at Nottingham.

We have said that stories had been rumoured about of a figure seen in the garden and elsewhere; and Sir Carnaby, who loathed scenes, excitement, worry, 'and all that sort of thing,' as he phrased it (though he had undergone enough and to spare), was intensely provoked when the old butler gave him some hint of the shadowy addition to the family at the Court.

'A ghost!' he exclaimed, with his gold glasses on his long, thin nose.

'Yes, sir--so they say.'

'They--who? Stuff! If this absurd story gets abroad, we shall find ourselves a subject for the speculation of the vulgar here and the spiritualists everywhere; and the house may be beset by all manner of intruders. And what is it like?'

'Nobody knows; a tall man in black, I have heard,' replied the butler.

'Black! How do ghosts or spirits get clothes?'

'I don't know, Sir Carnaby.'

'Of course you don't, how should you? _Your_ spirits are in wood,' chuckled the baronet. 'I have heard of tables spinning about, of bells ringing, banjos playing, of sticks beating on a drum-head by unseen hands, and even of people flying through the air at _séances_, but I'll have none of that nonsense at Carnaby Court. It's bad style--vulgar--very! We'll send for the disembodied police, and have your ghost taken up as a rogue and impostor.'

Quite a gay party had assembled for the Christmas festivities at the old Court; there were Major Desmond, and two of his brother officers, with his intended, one of the belles of the last season at Tyburnia, Colonel and Lady Rakes, Lord Brixton, and many more, including old Lord Bayswater and Charley Rakes, a mere lad, steeped already in folly or worse, yet very much disposed to lionise and patronise the pretty Violet.

When Trevor Chute and Vane first arrived they were both shocked--the latter particularly so--to find a great and fatal change had come over Ida, and it had come suddenly too, as Clare asserted. Jerry had begun to feel the sweetness of cheated hope, but this was fading now. She seemed in a decline apparently; large dark circles were under her eyes, and their old soft sweetness of gaze was blended with a weird and weary look of infinite melancholy at times; and when Clare had expressed to Sir Carnaby a hope that she might yet wed Jerry out of pity--

'Let her wed him for anything, for--by Jove, this sort of thing is great boredom,' sighed or grumbled the baronet.

'The idea of you, Captain Chute, eloping with our new mamma,' said Violet, when she met him.

'That led to my being of service to your father, Violet--to my being here to-night,' he added, in a tender whisper to Clare, as the ladies left the dining-table, and Sir Carnaby changed his seat to the head of the table.

'Ugh!' said he, in a low voice, 'unless poor Ida brightens up a little, a doleful Christmas we are likely to have of it; but I am glad to see you, Vane--the wine stands with you--pass the bottles, and don't insult my butler by neglecting to fill your glass.'

With all his affected breeze of manner, his desire to appear juvenile before Lady Evelyn, and all his inborn selfishness, both Vane and Chute could perceive that the failing health of his favourite daughter had affected him. The unwelcome crow's-feet were deeper about his eyes; his general 'get-up' was less elaborate; his whiskers were out of curl, and like what remained of his hair, showed, by an occasional patch of grey, that dye was sometimes forgotten.

The first quiet stolen interview of Clare and Trevor Chute was one of inexpressible happiness and joy. They were again in the recess of that oriel near which he had first said he loved her, and she had accepted him. The moon shone as bright now as then, but in the clear and frosty sky of a winter night, and the flakes of light threw down many a crimson, golden, and blue ray of colour on the snowy skin and white dress of Clare, as she nestled her face on Trevor's breast, while his arm went round her.

Clare loved well the woods of the old Court--the lovely, leafy woods--with trees round and vast as the pillars of a Saxon cathedral--loved them in their vernal greenery, their summer foliage, and their varied autumnal tints of russet, brown, and gold, for there had Trevor told her again and again the old, old story, the story of both their hearts, hand locked in hand; and there she had first learned how sweet and good our earthly life may be, how full of hope, of sunshine, and glory to the loving and the loved; but never did she love them as when she saw them now, though standing black and leafless amid the far-stretching waste of snow that gleamed in the distance far away under the glare of the moon, for Trevor was with her once more, and never to be separated from her again!

'Oh, Trevor, Trevor! I thank kind Heaven,' she whispered for the twentieth time, 'that you and papa are friends now--and such friends! Lady Evelyn has told me again and again all the debt we owe. If the poor old man had perished----'

'Had I saved a nation, Clare, my reward is in you,' said he, arresting effectually further thanks or praises.

He had dreamed by day of Clare, and loved her as much as ever man loved woman; he had undergone all the misery of separation, of hopelessness, doubt, and even of groundless jealousy; and now, after all, she was his own! For the most tranquil time of all his past life he would not have exchanged the tumultuous and brilliant joy of the present; yet that joy was not without a cloud, and that cloud was the regret and perplexity caused by Ida, for whom he had all the tenderness of a brother.

On the day after his arrival he was writing in the library, and had been so for some time, before he discovered that Ida was lying fast asleep in an easy-chair near the fire, her slumber being induced either by weariness and languor, or the cosy heat of the room, with its warmth of colour and its heavy draperies, which partly hid the snowy scene without. For a few moments he watched the singular beauty of the girl's upturned face, the purity of her profile, and the sweetness of her parted lips, as her graceful head reclined against the back of the softly cushioned chair, over which, as they had become undone, bright masses of her auburn hair were rippling.

Suddenly she seemed to shiver in her sleep, and to mutter, as terror and sorrow hardened the lines of her face. She was dreaming; and starting with a low cry, she awoke, and sprang almost into the arms of Chute. Her lips were white and parched--white as the teeth within them; her eyes, with a wild, hysterical, and overstrained expression, were fixed on the empty air, while the veins in her delicate throat were swollen; and then she turned to Chute, who kissed her forehead, caressed her hands, and besought her to be calm. She drew a long, gasping sigh, and said, while swaying forward, as if about to fall:

'Oh, Trevor, Trevor! I have had a dream of Beverley--and such a dream! Hold me up, or I shall fall!' she added, pressing her tremulous hands upon her thin white temples. 'In this dream, Beverley said--said----' Tears choked her utterance.

'_What_ did you think he said?' asked Chute, tenderly.

'Think? I heard him as plainly as I hear you!'

'Well, do speak, Ida.'

'He said, "We are never to be parted, Ida, even by death. Fate has linked my soul to yours for ever; and though unseen, I am ever near you." Then a cry escaped me, and I awoke. Had you not been here, I should have fainted.'

'This is--heavens! what shall I call it--morbid!' exclaimed Chute. 'Such dreams----'

'Come to me unbidden--uncontrolled,' continued Ida, sobbing heavily. 'There seems to be a strange, half sad and sweet, half fearful and subtle, influence at work around me! I am sure that there is a world beyond the grave--an unseen world that is close, close to us all, Trevor.'

As she spoke, Chute, who was regarding her with the tenderest sympathy, became deeply pained to see the grey, death-like hue that stole over her lovely face, and the droop that came into her--for the moment--lustreless eyes; and as he gazed he almost began to imbibe some of her wild convictions. 'It is a matter of knowledge,' says a writer, 'that there are persons whose yearning conceptions--nay, travelled conclusions--continually take the form of images which have a foreshadowing power: the deed they do starts up before them in complete shape, making a coercive type; the event they hunger for or dread rises into vision with a seed-like growth, feeding itself fast on unnumbered impressions. They are not always the less capable of argumentative process, nor less sane than the commonplace calculators of the market.'

'Whenever I _think_ of Beverley, I seem to feel that he is, unseen, beside me; and this startling and oppressive emotion I can neither control, analyze, or conquer,' said Ida, wearily, as Chute led her to another room.