Marcella Read online

  MARCELLA

  by

  MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

  Author of _Robert Elsmere_, _The History Of David Grieve_, etc.

  In Two Volumes

  1894

  Portrait of Mary A. Ward]

  TO MY FATHER I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE

  BOOK I.

  "If nature put not forth her powerAbout the opening of the flower,Who is it that could live an hour?"

  CHAPTER I.

  "The mists--and the sun--and the first streaks of yellow in thebeeches--beautiful!--_beautiful_!"

  And with a long breath of delight Marcella Boyce threw herself on herknees by the window she had just opened, and, propping her face upon herhands, devoured the scene, before her with that passionate intensity ofpleasure which had been her gift and heritage through life.

  She looked out upon a broad and level lawn, smoothed by the care ofcenturies, flanked on either side by groups of old trees--some Scotchfirs, some beeches, a cedar or two--groups where the slow selective handof time had been at work for generations, developing here the delightfulroundness of quiet mass and shade, and there the bold caprice of barefir trunks and ragged branches, standing black against the sky. Beyondthe lawn stretched a green descent indefinitely long, carrying the eyeindeed almost to the limit of the view, and becoming from the lawnonwards a wide irregular avenue, bordered by beeches of a splendidmaturity, ending at last in a far distant gap where a gate--and a gateof some importance--clearly should have been, yet was not. The size ofthe trees, the wide uplands of the falling valley to the left of theavenue, now rich in the tints of harvest, the autumn sun pouringsteadily through the vanishing mists, the green breadth of the vastlawn, the unbroken peace of wood and cultivated ground, all carried withthem a confused general impression of well-being and of dignity.Marcella drew it in--this impression--with avidity. Yet at the samemoment she noticed involuntarily the gateless gap at the end of theavenue, the choked condition of the garden paths on either side of thelawn, and the unsightly tufts of grass spotting the broad gravel terracebeneath her window.

  "It _is_ a heavenly place, all said and done," she protested to herselfwith a little frown. "But no doubt it would have been better still ifUncle Robert had looked after it and we could afford to keep the gardendecent. Still--"

  She dropped on a stool beside the open window, and as her eyes steepedthemselves afresh in what they saw, the frown disappeared again in theformer look of glowing content--that content of youth which is nevermerely passive, nay, rather, contains an invariable element of covetouseagerness.

  It was but three months or so since Marcella's father, Mr. RichardBoyce, had succeeded to the ownership of Mellor Park the old home of theBoyces, and it was little more than six weeks since Marcella hadreceived her summons home from the students' boarding-house inKensington, where she had been lately living. She had ardently wishedto assist in the June "settling-in," having not been able to apply hermind to the music or painting she was supposed to be studying, norindeed to any other subject whatever, since the news of theirinheritance had reached her. But her mother in a dry little note had letit be known that she preferred to manage the move for herself. Marcellahad better go on with her studies as long as possible.

  Yet Marcella was here at last. And as she looked round her large bareroom, with its old dilapidated furniture, and then out again to woodsand lawns, it seemed to her that all was now well, and that herchildhood with its squalors and miseries was blotted out--atoned for bythis last kind sudden stroke of fate, which might have been delayed sodeplorably!--since no one could have reasonably expected that anapparently sound man of sixty would have succumbed in three days to thesort of common chill a hunter and sportsman must have resistedsuccessfully a score of times before.

  Her great desire now was to put the past--the greater part of it at anyrate--behind her altogether. Its shabby worries were surely done with,poor as she and her parents still were, relatively to their presentposition. At least she was no longer the self-conscious schoolgirl, paidfor at a lower rate than her companions, stinted in dress, pocket-money,and education, and fiercely resentful at every turn of some real orfancied slur; she was no longer even the half-Bohemian student of thesepast two years, enjoying herself in London so far as the iron necessityof keeping her boarding-house expenses down to the lowest possiblefigure would allow. She was something altogether different. She wasMarcella Boyce, a "finished" and grown-up young woman of twenty-one, theonly daughter and child of Mr. Boyce of Mellor Park, inheritress of oneof the most ancient names in Midland England, and just entering on alife which to her own fancy and will, at any rate, promised the highestpossible degree of interest and novelty.

  Yet, in the very act of putting her past away from her, she onlysucceeded, so it seemed, in inviting it to repossess her.

  For against her will, she fell straightway--in this quiet of the autumnmorning--into a riot of memory, setting her past self against herpresent more consciously than she had done yet, recalling scene afterscene and stage after stage with feelings of sarcasm, or amusement, ordisgust, which showed themselves freely as they came and went, in thefine plastic face turned to the September woods.

  She had been at school since she was nine years old--there was thedominant fact in these motley uncomfortable years behind her, which, inher young ignorance of the irrevocableness of living, she wished soimpatiently to forget. As to the time before her school life, she had adim memory of seemly and pleasant things, of a house in London, of alarge and bright nursery, of a smiling mother who took constant noticeof her, of games, little friends, and birthday parties. What had led tothe complete disappearance of this earliest "set," to use a theatricalphrase, from the scenery of her childhood, Marcella did not yetadequately know, though she had some theories and many suspicions inthe background of her mind. But at any rate this first image of memorywas succeeded by another precise as the first was vague--the image of atall white house, set against a white chalk cliff rising in terracesbehind it and alongside it, where she had spent the years from nine tofourteen, and where, if she were set down blindfold, now, at twenty-one,she could have found her way to every room and door and cupboard andstair with a perfect and fascinated familiarity.

  When she entered that house she was a lanky, black-eyed creature, tallfor her age, and endowed or, as she herself would have put it, cursedwith an abundance of curly unmanageable hair, whereof the brushing andtending soon became to a nervous clumsy child, not long parted from hernurse, one of the worst plagues of her existence. During her home lifeshe had been an average child of the quick and clever type, with averagefaults. But something in the bare, ugly rooms, the discipline, theteaching, the companionship of Miss Frederick's Cliff House School forYoung Ladies, transformed little Marcella Boyce, for the time being,into a demon. She hated her lessons, though, when she chose, she coulddo them in a hundredth part of the time taken by her companions; shehated getting up in the wintry dark, and her cold ablutions with somedozen others in the comfortless lavatory; she hated the meals in thelong schoolroom, where, because twice meat was forbidden and twicepudding allowed, she invariably hungered fiercely for more mutton andscorned her second course, making a sort of dramatic story to herselfout of Miss Frederick's tyranny and her own thwarted appetite as she satblack-browed and brooding in her place. She was not a favourite with hercompanions, and she was a perpetual difficulty and trouble to herperfectly well-intentioned schoolmistress. The whole of her first yearwas one continual series of sulks, quarrels, and revolts.

  Perhaps her blackest days were the days she spent occasionally in bed,when Miss Frederick, at her wit's end, would take advantage of one ofthe child's perpetual colds to try the effects of a day's seclusion andsolitary confinement, administered in such a form that it could do hercharge no harm, and might, she hoped, do her good. "For I do believe agreat part of it's liver or nerves! No child in her right senses couldbehave so," she would declare to the mild and stout French lady who hadbeen her partner for years, and who was more inclined to befriend andexcuse Marcella than any one else in the house--no one exactly knew why.

  Now the rule of the house when any girl was ordered to bed with a coldwas, in the first place, that she should not put her arms outside thebedclothes--for if you were allowed to read and amuse yourself in bedyou might as well be up; that the housemaid should visit the patient inthe early morning with a cup of senna-tea, and at long and regularintervals throughout the day with beef-tea and gruel; and that no oneshould come to see and talk with her, unless, indeed, it were thedoctor, quiet being in all cases of sickness the first condition ofrecovery, and the natural schoolgirl in Miss Frederick's persuasionbeing more or less inclined to complain without cause if illness weremade agreeable.

  For some fourteen hours, therefore, on these days of durance Marcellawas left almost wholly alone, nothing but a wild mass of black hair anda pair of roving, defiant eyes in a pale face showing above thebedclothes whenever the housemaid chose to visit her--a pitiable morsel,in truth, of rather forlorn humanity. For though she had her movementsof fierce revolt, when she was within an ace of throwing the senna-teain Martha's face, and rushing downstairs in her nightgown to denounceMiss Frederick in the midst of an astonished schoolroom, somethinggenerally interposed; not conscience, it is to be feared, or any wish"to be good," but only an aching, inmost sense of childish lonelinessand helplessness; a perception that she had indeed tried everybody'spatience to the limit, and that these days in bed represented criseswhich must be borne with even by such a rebel as Marcie Boyce.

  So she s
ubmitted, and presently learnt, under dire stress of boredom, toamuse herself a good deal by developing a natural capacity for dreamingawake. Hour by hour she followed out an endless story of which she wasalways the heroine. Before the annoyance of her afternoon gruel, whichshe loathed, was well forgotten, she was in full fairy-land again,figuring generally as the trusted friend and companion of the Princessof Wales--of that beautiful Alexandra, the top and model of Englishsociety whose portrait in the window of the little stationer's shop atMarswell--the small country town near Cliff House--had attracted thechild's attention once, on a dreary walk, and had ever since governedher dreams. Marcella had no fairy-tales, but she spun a whole cycle forherself around the lovely Princess who came to seem to her before longher own particular property. She had only to shut her eyes and she hadcaught her idol's attention--either by some look or act of passionateyet unobtrusive homage as she passed the royal carriage in thestreet--or by throwing herself in front of the divinity's runawayhorses--or by a series of social steps easily devised by an imaginativechild, well aware, in spite of appearances, that she was of an oldfamily and had aristocratic relations. Then, when the Princess had heldout a gracious hand and smiled, all was delight! Marcella grew up on theinstant: she was beautiful, of course; she had, so people said, the"Boyce eyes and hair;" she had sweeping gowns, generally of white muslinwith cherry-coloured ribbons; she went here and there with the Princess,laughing and talking quite calmly with the greatest people in the land,her romantic friendship with the adored of England making her all thetime the observed of all observers, bringing her a thousand delicateflatteries and attentions.

  Then, when she was at the very top of ecstasy, floating in the softestsummer sea of fancy, some little noise would startle her into openingher eyes, and there beside her in the deepening dusk would be the barewhite beds of her two dormitory companions, the ugly wall-paperopposite, and the uncovered boards with their frugal strips of carpetstretching away on either hand. The tea-bell would ring perhaps in thedepths far below, and the sound would complete the transformation ofthe Princess's maid-of-honour into Marcie Boyce, the plain naughtychild, whom nobody cared about, whose mother never wrote to her, who incontrast to every other girl in the school had not a single "partyfrock," and who would have to choose next morning between another dumbday of senna-tea and gruel, supposing she chose to plead that her coldwas still obstinate, or getting up at half-past six to repeat half apage of Ince's "Outlines of English History" in the chilly schoolroom,at seven.

  Looking back now as from another world on that unkempt fractious Marcieof Cliff House, the Marcella of the present saw with a mixture ofamusement and self-pity that one great aggravation of that child's dailymiseries had been a certain injured, irritable sense of socialdifference between herself and her companions. Some proportion of thegirls at Cliff House were drawn from the tradesman class of two or threeneighbouring towns. Their tradesmen papas were sometimes ready to dealon favourable terms with Miss Frederick for the supply of herestablishment; in which case the young ladies concerned evidently feltthemselves very much at home, and occasionally gave themselves airswhich alternately mystified and enraged a little spitfire outsider likeMarcella Boyce. Even at ten years old she perfectly understood that shewas one of the Boyces of Brookshire, and that her great-uncle had been afamous Speaker of the House of Commons. The portrait of this great-unclehad hung in the dining room of that pretty London house which now seemedso far away; her father had again and again pointed it out to thechild, and taught her to be proud of it; and more than once her childisheye had been caught by the likeness between it and an old grey-hairedgentleman who occasionally came to see them, and whom she called"Grandpapa." Through one influence and another she had drawn the gloryof it, and the dignity of her race generally, into her childish blood.There they were now--the glory and the dignity--a feverish leaven,driving her perpetually into the most crude and ridiculous outbreaks,which could lead to nothing but humiliation.

  "I wish my great-uncle were here! _He'd_ make you remember--yougreat--you great--big bully you!"--she shrieked on one occasion when shehad been defying a big girl in authority, and the big girl--the stoutand comely daughter of a local ironmonger--had been successfullyasserting herself.

  The big girl opened her eyes wide and laughed.

  "_Your_ great-uncle! Upon my word! And who may he be, miss? If it comesto that, I'd like to show _my_ great-uncle David how you've scratched mywrist. He'd give it you. He's almost as strong as father, though he isso old. You get along with you, and behave yourself, and don't talkstuff to me."

  Whereupon Marcella, choking with rage and tears, found herself pushedout of the schoolroom and the door shut upon her. She rushed up to thetop terrace, which was the school playground, and sat there in a hiddenniche of the wall, shaking and crying,--now planning vengeance on herconqueror, and now hot all over with the recollection of her ownill-bred and impotent folly.

  No--during those first two years the only pleasures, so memorydeclared, were three: the visits of the cake-woman on Saturday--Marcellasitting in her window could still taste the three-cornered puffs andsmall sweet pears on which, as much from a fierce sense of freedom andself-assertion as anything else, she had lavished her tiny weeklyallowance; the mad games of "tig," which she led and organised in thetop playground; and the kindnesses of fat Mademoiselle Renier, MissFrederick's partner, who saw a likeness in Marcella to a long-dead smallsister of her own, and surreptitiously indulged "the little wild-cat,"as the school generally dubbed the Speaker's great-niece, whenever shecould.

  But with the third year fresh elements and interests had entered in.Romance awoke, and with it certain sentimental affections. In the firstplace, a taste for reading had rooted itself--reading of the adventurousand poetical kind. There were two or three books which Marcella hadabsorbed in a way it now made her envious to remember. For at twenty-onepeople who take interest in many things, and are in a hurry to haveopinions, must skim and "turn over" books rather than read them, mustuse indeed as best they may a scattered and distracted mind, and sufferoccasional pangs of conscience as pretenders. But at thirteen--whatconcentration! what devotion! what joy! One of these precious volumeswas Bulwer's "Rienzi"; another was Miss Porter's "Scottish Chiefs"; athird was a little red volume of "Marmion" which an aunt had given her.She probably never read any of them through--she had not a particle ofindustry or method in her composition--but she lived in them. The partswhich it bored her to read she easily invented for herself, but thescenes and passages which thrilled her she knew by heart; she had nogift for verse-making, but she laboriously wrote a long poem on thedeath of Rienzi, and she tried again and again with a not inapt hand toillustrate for herself in pen and ink the execution of Wallace.

  But all these loves for things and ideas were soon as nothing incomparison with a friendship, and an adoration.

  To take the adoration first. When Marcella came to Cliff House she wasrecommended by the same relation who gave her "Marmion" to the kindoffices of the clergyman of the parish, who happened to be known to someof the Boyce family. He and his wife--they had no children--did theirduty amply by the odd undisciplined child. They asked her to tea once ortwice; they invited her to the school-treat, where she was onlyself-conscious and miserably shy; and Mr. Ellerton had at least onefriendly and pastoral talk with Miss Frederick as to the difficulties ofher pupil's character. For a long time little came of it. Marcella washard to tame, and when she went to tea at the Rectory Mrs. Ellerton, whowas refined and sensible, did not know what to make of her, though insome unaccountable way she was drawn to and interested by the child. Butwith the expansion of her thirteenth year there suddenly developed inMarcie's stormy breast an overmastering absorbing passion for these twopersons. She did not show it to them much, but for herself it raisedher to another plane of existence, gave her new objects and newstandards. She who had hated going to church now counted time entirelyby Sundays. To see the pulpit occupied by any other form and face thanthose of the rector was a calamity hardly to be borne; if the exit ofthe school party were delayed by any accident so that Mr. and Mrs.Ellerton overtook them in the churchyard, Marcella would walk home onair, quivering with a passionate delight, and in the dreary afternoon ofthe school Sunday she would spend her time happily in trying to writedown the heads of Mr. Ellerton's sermon. In the natural course of thingsshe would, at this time, have taken no interest in such things at all,but whatever had been spoken by him had grace, thrill, meaning.

  Nor was the week quite barren of similar delights. She was generallysent to practise on an old square piano in one of the top rooms. Thewindow in front of her overlooked the long white drive and the distanthigh road into which it ran. Three times a week on an average Mrs.Ellerton's pony carriage might be expected to pass along that road.Every day Marcella watched for it, alive with expectation, her fingersstrumming as they pleased. Then with the first gleam of the white ponyin the distance, over would go the music stool, and the child leapt tothe window, remaining fixed there, breathing quick and eagerly till thetrees on the left had hidden from her the graceful erect figure of Mrs.Ellerton. Then her moment of Paradise was over; but the afterglow of itlasted for the day.

  So much for romance, for feelings as much like love as childhood canknow them, full of kindling charm and mystery. Her friendship had beenof course different, but it also left deep mark. A tall, consumptivegirl among the Cliff House pupils, the motherless daughter of aclergyman-friend of Miss Frederick's, had for some time taken notice ofMarcella, and at length won her by nothing else, in the first instance,than a remarkable gift for story-telling. She was a parlour-boarder, hada room to herself, and a fire in it when the weather was cold. She wasnot held strictly to lesson hours; many delicacies in the way of foodwere provided for her, and Miss Frederick
watched over her with a quitematernal solicitude. When winter came she developed a troublesome cough,and the doctor recommended that a little suite of rooms looking southand leading out on the middle terrace of the garden should be given upto her. There was a bedroom, an intermediate dressing-room, and then alittle sitting-room built out upon the terrace, with a window-dooropening upon it.

  Here Mary Lant spent week after week. Whenever lesson hours were doneshe clamoured for Marcie Boyce, and Marcella was always eager to go toher. She would fly up stairs and passages, knock at the bedroom door,run down the steps to the queer little dressing-room where the roofnearly came on your head, and down more steps again to the sitting-room.Then when the door was shut, and she was crooning over the fire with herfriend, she was entirely happy. The tiny room was built on the edge ofthe terrace, the ground fell rapidly below it, and the west windowcommanded a broad expanse of tame arable country, of square fields andhedges, and scattered wood. Marcella, looking back upon that room,seemed always to see it flooded with the rays of wintry sunset, a kettleboiling on the fire, her pale friend in a shawl crouching over thewarmth, and the branches of a snowberry tree, driven by the wind,beating against the terrace door.

  But what a story-teller was Mary Lant! She was the inventor of a storycalled "John and Julia," which went on for weeks and months without everproducing the smallest satiety in Marcella. Unlike her books ofadventure, this was a domestic drama of the purest sort; it wasextremely moral and evangelical, designed indeed by its sensitivelyreligious author for Marcie's correction and improvement. There was init a sublime hero, who set everybody's faults to rights and lectured theheroine. In real life Marcella would probably before long have beenfound trying to kick his shins--a mode of warfare of which in her demonmoods she was past mistress. But as Mary Lant described him, she notonly bore with and trembled before him--she adored him. The taste forhim and his like, as well as for the story-teller herself--a girl of atremulous, melancholy fibre, sweet-natured, possessed by a Calvinistfaith, and already prescient of death--grew upon her. Soon her absorbingdesire was to be altogether shut up with Mary, except on Sundays and atpractising times. For this purpose she gave herself the worst cold shecould achieve, and cherished diligently what she proudly considered tobe a racking cough. But Miss Frederick was deaf to the latter, and onlythreatened the usual upstairs seclusion and senna-tea for the former,whereupon Marcella in alarm declared that her cold was much better andgave up the cough in despair. It was her first sorrow and cost her somedays of pale brooding and silence, and some nights of stifled tears,when during an Easter holiday a letter from Miss Frederick to her motherannounced the sudden death of Mary Lant.