CHAPTER V.
_In Which Captain Armine Is Very Absent during Dinner_.
YOU are well mounted,' said Mr. Temple to Ferdinand.
''Tis a barb. I brought it over with me.'
''Tis a beautiful creature,' said Miss Temple.
'Hear that, Selim,' said Ferdinand; 'prick up thine ears, my steed. Iperceive that you are an accomplished horsewoman, Miss Temple. You knowour country, I dare say, well?'
'I wish to know it better. This is only the second summer that we havepassed at Ducie.'
'By-the-bye, I suppose you know my landlord, Captain Armine?' said Mr.Temple.
'No,' said Ferdinand; 'I do not know a single person in the county. Ihave myself scarcely been at Armine for these five years, and my fatherand mother do not visit anyone.'
'What a beautiful oak!' exclaimed Miss Temple, desirous of turning theconversation.
'It has the reputation of being planted by Sir Francis Walsingham,' saidFerdinand. 'An ancestor of mine married his daughter. He was the fatherof Sir Walsingham, the portrait in the gallery with the white stick. Youremember it?'
'Perfectly: that beautiful portrait! It must be, at all events, a veryold tree.'
'There are few things more pleasing to me than an ancient place,' saidMr. Temple.
'Doubly pleasing when in the possession of an ancient family,' added hisdaughter.
'I fear such feelings are fast wearing away,' said Ferdinand.
'There will be a reaction,' said Mr. Temple.
'They cannot destroy the poetry of time,' said the lady.
'I hope I have no very inveterate prejudices,' said Ferdinand; 'butI should be sorry to see Armine in any other hands than our own, Iconfess.'
'I never would enter the park again,' said Miss Temple.
'So far as worldly considerations are concerned,' continued Ferdinand,'it would perhaps be much better for us if we were to part with it.'
'It must, indeed, be a costly place to keep up,' said Mr. Temple.
'Why, as for that,' said Ferdinand, 'we let the kine rove and the sheepbrowse where our fathers hunted the stag and flew their falcons. I thinkif they were to rise from their graves they would be ashamed of us.'
'Nay!' said Miss Temple, 'I think yonder cattle are very picturesque.But the truth is, anything would look well in such a park as this. Thereis such a variety of prospect.'
The park of Armine indeed differed materially from those vamped-upsheep-walks and ambitious paddocks which are now honoured with thetitle. It was, in truth, the old chase, and little shorn of its originalproportions. It was many miles in circumference, abounding in hill anddale, and offering much variety of appearance. Sometimes it was studdedwith ancient timber, single trees of extraordinary growth, and richclumps that seemed coeval with the foundation of the family. Tracts ofwild champaign succeeded these, covered with gorse and fern. Then camestately avenues of sycamore or Spanish chestnut, fragments of statelywoods, that in old days doubtless reached the vicinity of the mansionhouse; and these were in turn succeeded by modern coverts.
At length our party reached the gate whence Ferdinand had calculatedthat they should quit the park. He would willingly have accompaniedthem. He bade them farewell with regret, which was softened by the hopeexpressed by all of a speedy meeting.
'I wish, Captain Armine,' said Miss Temple, 'we had your turf to canterhome upon.'
'By-the-bye, Captain Armine,' said Mr. Temple, 'ceremony should scarcelysubsist between country neighbours, and certainly we have given you nocause to complain of our reserve. As you are alone at Armine, perhapsyou would come over and dine with us to-morrow. If you can manage tocome early, we will see whether we may not contrive to kill a birdtogether; and pray remember we can give you a bed, which I think, allthings considered, it would be but wise to accept.'
'I accept everything,' said Ferdinand, smiling; 'all your offers. Goodmorning, my dearest sir; good morning, Miss Temple.'
'Miss Temple, indeed!' exclaimed Ferdinand, when he had watched themout of sight. 'Exquisite, enchanting, adored being! Without thee what isexistence? How dull, how blank does everything even now seem! It is asif the sun had just set! Oh! that form! that radiant countenance! thatmusical and thrilling voice! Those tones still vibrate on my ear, or Ishould deem it all a vision! Will to-morrow ever come? Oh! that Icould express to you my love, my overwhelming, my absorbing, my burningpassion! Beautiful Henrietta! Thou hast a name, methinks, I ever loved.Where am I? what do I say? what wild, what maddening words are these? AmI not Ferdinand Armine, the betrothed, the victim? Even now, methinks, Ihear the chariot-wheels of my bride. God! if she be there; if she indeedbe at Armine on my return: I'll not see her; I'll not speak to them;I'll fly. I'll cast to the winds all ties and duties; I will not bedragged to the altar, a miserable sacrifice, to redeem, by my forfeitedfelicity, the worldly fortunes of my race. O Armine, Armine! she wouldnot enter thy walls again if other blood but mine swayed thy fairdemesne: and I, shall I give thee another mistress, Armine? It wouldindeed be treason! Without her I cannot live. Without her form boundsover this turf and glances in these arbours I never wish to view them.All the inducements to make the wretched sacrifice once meditated thenvanish; for Armine, without her, is a desert, a tomb, a hell. I am free,then. Excellent logician! But this woman: I am bound to her. Bound? Theword makes me tremble. I shiver: I hear the clank of my fetters. Am Iindeed bound? Ay! in honour. Honour and love! A contest! Pah! The Idolmust yield to the Divinity!'
With these wild words and wilder thoughts bursting from his lips anddashing through his mind; his course as irregular and as reckless ashis fancies; now fiercely galloping, now pulling up into a sudden halt,Ferdinand at length arrived home; and his quick eye perceived in amoment that the dreaded arrival had not taken place. Glastonbury was inthe flower-garden on one knee before a vase, over which he was traininga creeper. He looked up as he heard the approach of Ferdinand. Hispresence and benignant smile in some degree stilled the fierce emotionsof his pupil. Ferdinand felt that the system of dissimulation must nowcommence; besides, he was always careful to be most kind to Glastonbury.He would not allow that any attack of spleen, or even illness, couldever justify a careless look or expression to that dear friend.
'I hope, my dear father,' said Ferdinand, 'I am punctual to our hour?'
'The sun-dial tells me,' said Glastonbury, 'that you have arrived tothe moment; and I rather think that yonder approaches a summons to ourrepast. I hope you have passed your morning agreeably?'
'If all days would pass as sweet, my father, I should indeed beblessed.'
'I, too, have had a fine morning of it. You must come to-morrow and seemy grand emblazonry of the Ratcliffe and Armine coats; I mean it for thegallery.' With these words they entered the Place.
'You do not eat, my child,' said Glastonbury to his companion.
'I have taken too long a ride, perhaps,' said Ferdinand: who indeed wasmuch too excited to have an appetite, and so abstracted that anyone butGlastonbury would have long before detected his absence.
'I have changed my hour to-day,' continued Glastonbury, 'for thepleasure of dining with you, and I think to-morrow you had better changeyour hour and dine with me.'
'By-the-bye, my dear father, you, who know everything, do you happen toknow a gentleman of the name of Temple in this neighbourhood?'
'I think I heard that Mr. Ducie had let the Bower to a gentleman of thatname.'
'Do you know who he is?'
'I never asked; for I feel no interest except about proprietors, becausethey enter into my County History. But I think I once heard that thisMr. Temple had been our minister at some foreign court. You give me afine dinner and eat nothing yourself. This pigeon is savoury.'
'I will trouble you. I think there once was a Henrietta Armine, myfather?'
'The beautiful creature!' said Glastonbury, laying down his knife andfork; 'she died young. She was a daughter of Lord Armine; and the Queen,Henrietta Maria, was her godmother. It grieves me much that we have
noportrait of her. She was very fair, her eyes of a sweet light blue.'
'Oh! no; dark, my father; dark and deep as the violet.'
'My child, the letter-writer, who mentions her death, describes them aslight blue. I know of no other record of her beauty.'
'I wish they had been dark,' said Ferdinand recovering himself;'however, I am glad there was a Henrietta Armine; 'tis a beautifulname.'
'I think that Armine makes any name sound well,' said Glastonbury. 'Nomore wine indeed, my child. Nay! if I must,' continued he, with a mostbenevolent smile, 'I will drink to the health of Miss Grandison!'
'Ah!' exclaimed Ferdinand.
'My child, what is the matter?' inquired Glastonbury.
'A gnat, a fly, a wasp! something stung me,' said Ferdinand.
'Let me fetch my oil of lilies,' said Glastonbury; ''tis a specific'
'Oh, no! 'tis nothing, only a fly: sharp at the moment; nothing more.'
The dinner was over; they retired to the library. Ferdinand walkedabout the room restless and moody; at length he bethought himself of thepiano, and, affecting an anxiety to hear some old favourite compositionsof Glastonbury, he contrived to occupy his companion. In time, however,his old tutor invited him to take his violoncello and join him in aconcerto. Ferdinand of course complied with his invitation, but theresult was not satisfactory. After a series of blunders, which were thenatural result of his thoughts being occupied on other subjects, he wasobliged to plead a headache, and was glad when he could escape to hischamber.
Rest, however, no longer awaited him on his old pillow. It was at firstdelightful to escape from the restraint upon his reverie which he hadlately experienced. He leant for an hour over his empty fireplace inmute abstraction. The cold, however, in time drove him to bed, buthe could not sleep; his eyes indeed were closed, but the vision ofHenrietta Temple was not less apparent to him. He recalled every featureof her countenance, every trait of her conduct, every word that she hadexpressed. The whole series of her observations, from the moment hehad first seen her until the moment they had parted, were accuratelyrepeated, her very tones considered, and her very attitudes ponderedover. Many were the hours that he heard strike; he grew restless andfeverish. Sleep would not be commanded; he jumped out of bed, he openedthe casement, he beheld in the moonlight the Barbary rose-tree of whichhe had presented her a flower. This consoling spectacle assured him thathe had not been, as he had almost imagined, the victim of a dream. Heknelt down and invoked all heavenly and earthly blessings on HenriettaTemple and his love. The night air and the earnest invocation togethercooled his brain, and Nature soon delivered him, exhausted, to repose.