LAURA MILDMAY.
So the field was clear, and battle coming.
Here was the peace of tranquil Golden Friars broken, and the world again by the ears, all by the supreme influence and waywardness of women; old Hileria Pullen’s wild escapade,” and good Mrs. Jenner’s fancy for adopting other people’s progeny; the baby itself being of the same unlucky sex.
But notwithstanding these alarms, the sceptical attorney of Golden Friars was right — nothing followed.
With the great and distant metropolis was, indeed, thus spun the one fine thread of interest that connected it with the isolation of Golden Friars, and henceforward any bit of news respecting the movements of Captain Torquil was discussed with good appetite in the drawing-room and nursery of the vicar’s house, in the snuggery of Tom Shackles, in the humble dwelling of jolly Dick Wykes, and in the office of shrewd old Tarlcot from whose London correspondents, who had themselves had some unpleasant dealings with the captain, these little bits of news were derived.
I am making a little chronicle, and shall jot down all I ever heard of this captain, while in due chronological order noting, also, such occurrences as illustrate Golden Friars during the brief period of my story.
In the first place, then, without any show of opposition, the good vicar was appointed to take care of this little ward of Chancery, by the decree of that High Court. And now, cedant arma togoe. The vicar might snap his fingers at the captain.
He was, like some others I have heard of, a married gentleman, who, without pretending to be single, lives like a bachelor, and puts his incumbrance quite out of view, like a by-gone indiscretion and sin of his youth.
He was an Eton man, a member of good clubs, and had started well enough. His patrimony was gone, but he did not trouble any one with maunderings about that misfortune, and nobody ever asked after it. He paid his debts of honour lightly, and was one of the best dressed men about town. He lived, I dare say, on his luck and — skill.
I don’t know exactly what it was, but Torquil grew to be not quite so well liked, and some men were a little shy of him, and his temper at Guildford was tremendous.
The fact is that Captain Torquil was fast caught in that vice, the winch of which is twisted tighter and tighter hourly, and whose metallic bite whitens with hell-fire. He was in the torture of debt, and, worse, of the frightful shifts into which that agony drives some minds.
He was in that selfish agony, quivering on the edge of despair, with just one devil’s throw for it; and he threw, as we know, and lost it.
And now, in the dust and crash of a hideous ruin, Captain Torquil had vanished. After a time he turned up in Spain, where two royal pretenders were at that time campaigning and enlisting free lances.
Then Captain Torquil was wounded; a very bad wound, for it knocked his eye out.
“He was, as you know, such a handsome fellow,” said the writer of the letter, “and now you never beheld such an object. A glass eye the doctor says he can’t use, and I assure you it is a perfect chasm. I suppose they will stick a patch or something over it, but, so far as appearance goes, he is done for.”
Shortly after came a letter to the vicar, saying that Captain Torquil’s friends were, in his present forlorn state, making up a little purse for him, and trusted that, being connected with his family, he would be so good as to contribute something. The good vicar sent five pounds, and Mr. Tarlcot said that a fool and his money are soon parted.
Then it was stated that a legacy had been left him by an aunt of his, but no one seemed to know how much.
About five years after that, a letter reached the vicar’s wife from Mrs. Torquil; not very long, but extremely plaintive, in which occurred this passage: “Since the death of my unhappy husband, Captain Torquil, I have suffered much distress of mind and body, if you thought your good husband who was so kind to mine, could,” &c. &c.
And so it appeared, that with that fierce and selfish spirit, “life’s fitful fever” was over.
Poor Mrs. Torquil, not very long after, embraced the Roman Catholic faith, and was received into a charitable institution. This event was, perhaps, the saving of her life, for she could now no longer procure alcohol.
Years had now passed, and the delights of good Mrs. Jenner’s vicarious maternity seemed always increasing.
How had this little child-so windered, as Kitty Bell had said, with the blea, or, in more familiar phrase, the plae, livid complexion, the suspected gloo, or squint, and whose little figure was held, by the same authority, to be all a-cracked, or, as we say, crooked — how had this poor misthriven, blasted flower lived through this time? and what did it look like now?
“Well,” said Kitty Bell, now, after the flight of eighteen years, a little less light of foot, with streaks of grey in her brown hair, and lines traced deep enough across her once smooth forehead, and others etched about her kindly eyes-”well, who’d a thought the night she came here, when I held the can’le by her poor little pined face-an ill-favvert bab it was; poisoned, the doctor said— ’twould ever a chirp’d up sooa? The weeny thing we used to see snoozlin’ in the weeny bed — lookin’ just like as if it was going to dee — who’d a thought ’twould ever a spired up and stiffened like that? She’s t’ bonniest and t’ cantiest lass that ever set foot in Golden Friars — and the kindest.”
She was now a beautiful girl, lithe and slender, with rich brown hair, and large, long-lashed eyes of blue, and lips so crimson, and cheeks so clear, and such a pretty oval formed her face, that Laura Mildmay was really one of the prettiest creatures that ever lover dreamed of.
A little shy-with something wild and fiery in those dark eyes, proud and often sad, and sometimes merry — if you had seen her walking those mountain paths with a step like the deer’s, you might have taken her for the genius of those beautiful solitudes. I am going to tell you something of this young lady, who has risen from her temporary death to this beautiful shape, to be the late-found heroine of this little tale.