Wylder's Hand eBook

Old Lady Chelford, stiff and rich, a Vandyke dowager, with a general effect of deep lace, funereal velvet, and pearls; and pale, with dreary eyes, and thin high nose, sat in a high-backed carved oak throne, with red cushions.  To her I was first presented, and cursorily scrutinised with a stately old-fashioned insolence, as if I were a candidate footman, and so dismissed.  On a low seat, chatting to her as I came up, was a very handsome and rather singular-looking girl, fair, with a light golden-tinted hair; and a countenance, though then grave enough, instinct with a certain promise of animation and spirit not to be mistaken.  Could this be the heroine of the pending alliance?  No; I was mistaken.  A third lady, at what would have been an ordinary room’s length away, half reclining on an ottoman, was now approached by Wylder, who presented me to Miss Brandon.

’Dorcas, this is my old friend, Charles de Cresseron.  You have often heard me speak of him; and I want you to shake hands and make his acquaintance, and draw him out—­do you see; for he’s a shy youth, and must be encouraged.’

He gave me a cheerful slap on the shoulder as he uttered this agreeable bit of banter, and altogether disconcerted me confoundedly.  Wylder’s dress-coats always smelt of tobacco, and his talk of tar.  I was quietly incensed and disgusted; for in those days I was a little shy.

The lady rose, in a soft floating way; tall, black-haired—­but a blackness with a dull rich shadow through it.  I had only a general impression of large dusky eyes and very exquisite features—­more delicate than the Grecian models, and with a wonderful transparency, like tinted marble; and a superb haughtiness, quite unaffected.  She held forth her hand, which I did little more than touch.  There was a peculiarity in her greeting, which I felt a little overawing, without exactly discovering in what it consisted; and it was I think that she did not smile.  She never took that trouble for form’s sake, like other women.

So, as Wylder had set a chair for me I could not avoid sitting upon it, though I should much have preferred standing, after the manner of men, and retaining my liberty.

CHAPTER III.

OUR DINNER PARTY AT BRANDON.

I was curious.  I had heard a great deal of her beauty; and it had exceeded all I heard; so I talked my sublimest and brightest chit-chat, in my most musical tones, and was rather engaging and amusing, I ventured to hope.  But the best man cannot manage a dialogue alone.  Miss Brandon was plainly not a person to make any sort of exertion towards what is termed keeping up a conversation; at all events she did not, and after a while the present one got into a decidedly sinking condition.  An acquiescence, a faint expression of surprise, a fainter smile—­she contributed little more, after the first few questions of courtesy had been asked, in her low silvery tones, and answered by me.  To me the natural demise of a tete-a-tete discourse has always seemed a disgrace.  But this apathetic beauty had either more moral courage or more stupidity than I, and was plainly terribly indifferent about the catastrophe.  I’ve sometimes thought my struggles and sinkings amused her cruel serenity.