THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE

FEBRUARY, 1875.

DEAR LADY DISDAIN.

BY JUSTIN M'CARTHY, AUTHOR OF "LINLEY ROCHFORD," "A FAIR SAXON," "MY ENEMY'S DAUGHTER," &c.

CHAPTER IV.

MY LADY DISDAIN.

UREWOODS was, generally speaking, the name of the place in which Christmas found himself quartered for the hour. But it was not easy to say that there was

any particular district or area specially covered by the name of Durewoods, or, indeed, any particular place to which the name strictly applied. The little arm of the sea, the narrow inlet from the great broad bay, at the inland end of which the village stood, was never called Durewoods bay or creek, or anything of the kind. Probably the beautiful growth of trees that covered the slope of the rising shores on either side had once been called Durewoods, and thence the name had spread itself over the whole place. But these woods were not now called Durewoods; they were simply called "the plantation." Neither was the village called Durewoods; people only spoke of it as "the cottages." The village had, in fact, no corporate existence, no soul, and no name. It never did anything as a community; it never acted together, or had any apparent consciousness that it was a whole. The cottages were there-had been built there somehow for the convenience chiefly of the fisherfolk; and that was all that anybody knew. The row of tenements in front of the water was called "the cottages," the few residences of a better class that stood on the hills were spoken of as "the houses," and the one large and pretentious-looking mansion was the Hall. VOL. XIV., N.S. 1875.

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Probably this had once been called Durewoods Hall; but, if so, the name had lapsed into disuse. Yet the place, taken collectively— Hall, houses, cottages, and all, was called Durewoods. The Saucy Lass came and went between "Durewoods" and other places, and she lay generally of nights off "Durewoods" pier.

There were very few families of what might be called social position living in and about Durewoods. One or two retired officials of the Customs had come thither from the large seaports near and settled for the quiet and the cheapness. A clergyman and a Dissenting minister, and a doctor who was attached to a neighbouring dispensary, were there; and the captain of the Saucy Lass walked home to his family abode there among the trees every night. These and a few other residents occupied "the houses." The Hall had been for many years unoccupied until it came by some legal process or other out of the hands of its ancient possessors into those of a clever, handsome, portly gentleman from London, who was vaguely known down there as having something to do with companies and finance. This gentleman came to Durewoods several times before he made up his mind to occupy the Hall himself. He brought down architects and surveyors, and various men of business from London, and studied the matter a good deal. At last he made up his mind, had the place put into repair, closed up half the building, furnished the rest, employed gardeners on the grounds, which were not large, and spent great part of one mild winter there. Presently he brought his daughter there, his only child-he was a widower-and settled her there with a housekeeper and a companion; and he used to bring friends down every now and then. The clergyman, the minister, the doctor, the retired Customs' officials, and the captain of the Saucy Lass, all thought Mr. John Challoner a great man, and were delighted to be in his favour; but Durewoods, as a whole-if we may thus speak of it-never took to him. To Durewoods he was always a stranger; and he sealed finally its mind against him when he decided upon occupying only half the Hall. In time he became Sir John Challoner, Baronet; but Durewoods did not care. Of course, in Durewoods we do not, in this sense, take in Mrs. Cramp. She herself was but a settler and a stranger. She had been a lady's maid; she had been frequently called in to assist Sir John's housekeeper at the Hall, and she had a sort of professional devotion to her social superiors anyhow.

Another stranger and settler was Miss Lyle. The pretty little place which she occupied now had been discovered and bought up for her by Sir John Challoner, and the house was altered and almost

rebuilt to suit her peculiar tastes and habits.

She came there with ago, and hardly ever

her trusty henchman, Merlin, several years stirred outside her own gate, unless when she went upon the water with Merlin for her boatman. So far as people knew her, they liked her, and the parents of Janet-a Durewoods lass-and Janet herself, were greatly attached to her. As for Merlin, his popularity was soon universal. He fell in with the ways of the fishermen like a brother of the craft, and would pass hours with them lounging along the shore, examining their boats, and helping to mend their nets. How any interchange of ideas was at first effected, it would be hard to guess, but Merlin and the fishermen seemed from the first to understand each other, as dogs or horses do. Merlin used to stroll round to the cottages when the husbands were at sea, and reassure the wives if the expeditions proved long and dangerous, and sing strange wild songs to the children, and tell thrilling stories of adventures which had befallen himself on the waves. These were nearly all narratives in pantomime, sharp fizzing sounds being understood to represent flashes of lightning, vehement undulatory motions of the hands being unmistakable symbols of the mountainous billows, and, of course, the dullest spectator could not fail to comprehend the final tableau, which pictured Merlin himself swimming heroically to the wreck, or rowing his boat thither, and saving somebody under conditions of difficulty unparalleled. Merlin soon became an authority, and a rather dogmatic one, upon most things, and acquired such a hold over the respect of his neighbours, that even the fact of his being seen to cross himself and to tell over his beads like a faithful Catholic, did not unseat him from his position of dignity. There was, indeed, one legend which he was particularly fond of telling, and which might, under other conditions, have wrought him harm with his compeers. This was a tale of a fearful storm, in which some fishers, and, it was generally understood, Merlin himself among them, had become involved off the coast of Brittany, and in which their lives were positively forfeit, until suddenly the skies opened, a light shone on them, and a lady appeared in the heavens-beyond doubt the Virgin herself and guided their boat safely to a peaceful creek where the storm raged no more. But, luckily for Merlin, the description of the lights "on the top," by which he meant "above," and the frequent repetition of the word "she," misled his auditory, and, aided by the happy effect of his gestures, they always understood that at the critical moment the lights of a Channel steamer hove in sight, and that the imperilled boatmen were quietly taken on board. So that the story, however thrilling and dramatic, did not tax their

powers of sound Protestant belief any more than the melodious narrative of the vessel's rescue in the Bay of Biscay.

Merlin's popularity reflected itself a good deal upon Merlin's mistress. She was understood to have been a very great person of some sort, and to have lived in some splendid world whereof Durewoods had but a vague conception, and to have now retired into a sort of half-penitential privacy. Sir John Challoner and his guests always treated her with great respect, and whenever an artist or a group of artists came—as sometimes would happen in the summer— to make sketches at Durewoods, they always sent up their cards to her house, and were generally received by her. Durewoods was in a sort of way a little proud of this.

In this place had Miss Marie Challoner spent some seven or eight years. She had for society first her governess or companion, and then Miss Dione Lyle. As she grew up, being an independent and spirited young woman, not, perhaps, very easy to please in friends, she got rid of all professional companionship, and pleased herself by not even having a housekeeper, but taking the reins of domestic government in her own hands. It amused her to learn how to regulate and order things, and even to make mistakes and find out by experience of mistake the way to the right. When she was in any household difficulty she consulted Mrs. Cramp, and when she was in any intellectual perplexity she betook herself to Miss Dione Lyle. So her life went on, its highest effort at variety being when her father took her for a few days to Ostend or Paris, or, perhaps, Brighton; for he was a busy man, who rarely cared to go beyond the distance of a night's post from London. For the most part, she had to find her own intellectual and moral food as best she could around her; to live on the green leaves of her own trees, so to speak, like the sloth, whom otherwise she did not in the least resemble. Miss Challoner had driven to the pier on the night of Christmas's arrival for the purpose of meeting her father. She found, instead, only his servant, who brought a message to tell her that he could not come for some days, and that he would then bring a few guests with him. This was a double disappointment to her; first, because her father had not come at once, and next, because when he was to come he was to bring guests with him. Miss Challoner did not greatly care, as a rule, for her father's guests. They wanted colour, she said.

My Lady Disdain was an early riser, although by no means given to early going to rest. On the contrary, she revelled a good deal in the unholy pleasure of sitting up till all hours in her bedroom, reading

of nights. She had a great deal of spare time when her father was not at home; and it would have hung terribly upon her hands sometimes but that she had a very active intellect, and was fond of reading. She knew nothing, as yet, of a London season. Her father had preferred to keep her in the country thus far, but he talked now, as she was nearly twenty years old, of setting up a regular establishment in town, and introducing her formally to London life. She had, hitherto, only known London as a child knows it; as a place where she was taken to theatres, and had drives in parks. She had gone through the earlier part of what is understood to be a girl's education in Bath and in Paris, and when she was twelve years old she settled down at the house which her father had bought at Durewoods. Here she had no companionship when she had got rid of her governess but that of her father when he could absent himself from town, and that of the visitors he brought with him, and the school friends who occasionally came to spend a few weeks with her, and, for some years, the frequent association with Miss Lyle. Therefore, this young lady lived a good deal of her time in romance, in looking out for adventures, of which she was to be the heroine, and in wondering that nothing particular was ever happening in life. She would sometimes have welcomed anything almost, even pain itself, which varied a little the sweet monotony of her existence. So whenever a new acquaintance came in her way, she eagerly approached him or her, sought out for something refreshing and remarkable, generally failed to find it, and then let the new comer pass. She was perfectly sincere where sometimes people thought her insincere; utterly unaffected where censors occasionally complained of affectation. She had no more idea of deceit or fickleness when, having welcomed a new acquaintance yesterday, she turned away from him or her to-day, than one who, seeking to arrive at a particular place, and thinking he has found the right way, turns down a certain street in eager hopefulness, and then seeing that he is mistaken, turns back and tries another. Has the street he leaves a right to complain that it has been treated badly? If not, then neither had any of Miss Challoner's acquaintances a right to say that she had treated them ill, when, finding that there was nothing specially interesting or fine about them, she showed no further care for their society.

This morning of which we are now talking, Miss Challoner felt rather anxious to know what sort of person Christmas Pembroke, Miss Lyle's guest, might turn out to be. She was pleased with the chance-meeting at the pier, and she took him under her charge out of pure good-nature. This was the more good-natured on her part