By the Old Surgeon It was apparently an idea,rather than a passion,that inspired Lord Uplandtowers'resolve to win her.Nobody ever knew when he formed it,or whence he got his assurance of success in the face of her manifest dislike of him.Possibly not until after that first important act of her life which I shall presently mention.His matured and cynical doggedness at the age of nineteen,when impulse mostly rules calculation,was remarkable,and might have owed its existence as much to his succession to the earldom and its accompanying local honours in childhood,as to the family character;an elevation which jerked him into maturity,so to speak,without his having known adolescence.He had only reached his twelfth year when his father,the fourth Earl,died,after a course of the Bath waters.
Nevertheless,the family character had a great deal to do with it.
Determination was hereditary in the bearers of that escutcheon;sometimes for good,sometimes for evil.
The seats of the two families were about ten miles apart,the way between them lying along the now old,then new,turnpike-road connecting Havenpool and Warborne with the city of Melchester:a road which,though only a branch from what was known as the Great Western Highway,is probably,even at present,as it has been for the last hundred years,one of the finest examples of a macadamized turnpike-track that can be found in England.
The mansion of the Earl,as well as that of his neighbour,Barbara's father,stood back about a mile from the highway,with which each was connected by an ordinary drive and lodge.It was along this particular highway that the young Earl drove on a certain evening at Christmastide some twenty years before the end of the last century,to attend a ball at Chene Manor,the home of Barbara,and her parents Sir John and Lady Grebe.Sir John's was a baronetcy created a few years before the breaking out of the Civil War,and his lands were even more extensive than those of Lord Uplandtowers himself;comprising this Manor of Chene,another on the coast near,half the Hundred of Cockdene,and well-enclosed lands in several other parishes,notably Warborne and those contiguous.At this time Barbara was barely seventeen,and the ball is the first occasion on which we have any tradition of Lord Uplandtowers attempting tender relations with her;it was early enough,God knows.
An intimate friend--one of the Drenkhards--is said to have dined with him that day,and Lord Uplandtowers had,for a wonder,communicated to his guest the secret design of his heart.
'You'll never get her--sure;you'll never get her!'this friend had said at parting.'She's not drawn to your lordship by love:and as for thought of a good match,why,there's no more calculation in her than in a bird.'
'We'll see,'said Lord Uplandtowers impassively.
He no doubt thought of his friend's forecast as he travelled along the highway in his chariot;but the sculptural repose of his profile against the vanishing daylight on his right hand would have shown his friend that the Earl's equanimity was undisturbed.He reached the solitary wayside tavern called Lornton Inn--the rendezvous of many a daring poacher for operations in the adjoining forest;and he might have observed,if he had taken the trouble,a strange post-chaise standing in the halting-space before the inn.He duly sped past it,and half-an-hour after through the little town of Warborne.
Onward,a mile farther,was the house of his entertainer.
At this date it was an imposing edifice--or,rather,congeries of edifices--as extensive as the residence of the Earl himself;though far less regular.One wing showed extreme antiquity,having huge chimneys,whose substructures projected from the external walls like towers;and a kitchen of vast dimensions,in which (it was said)breakfasts had been cooked for John of Gaunt.Whilst he was yet in the forecourt he could hear the rhythm of French horns and clarionets,the favourite instruments of those days at such entertainments.
Entering the long parlour,in which the dance had just been opened by Lady Grebe with a minuet--it being now seven o'clock,according to the tradition--he was received with a welcome befitting his rank,and looked round for Barbara.She was not dancing,and seemed to be preoccupied--almost,indeed,as though she had been waiting for him.
Barbara at this time was a good and pretty girl,who never spoke ill of any one,and hated other pretty women the very least possible.
She did not refuse him for the country-dance which followed,and soon after was his partner in a second.
The evening wore on,and the horns and clarionets tootled merrily.
Barbara evinced towards her lover neither distinct preference nor aversion;but old eyes would have seen that she pondered something.
However,after supper she pleaded a headache,and disappeared.To pass the time of her absence,Lord Uplandtowers went into a little room adjoining the long gallery,where some elderly ones were sitting by the fire--for he had a phlegmatic dislike of dancing for its own sake,--and,lifting the window-curtains,he looked out of the window into the park and wood,dark now as a cavern.Some of the guests appeared to be leaving even so soon as this,two lights showing themselves as turning away from the door and sinking to nothing in the distance.
His hostess put her head into the room to look for partners for the ladies,and Lord Uplandtowers came out.Lady Grebe informed him that Barbara had not returned to the ball-room:she had gone to bed in sheer necessity.
'She has been so excited over the ball all day,'her mother continued,'that I feared she would be worn out early ...But sure,Lord Uplandtowers,you won't be leaving yet?'
He said that it was near twelve o'clock,and that some had already left.
'I protest nobody has gone yet,'said Lady Grebe.
