Mohawks, Volume 2 of 3 A Novel by M. E. Braddon

Author:M. E. Braddon [Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-11-16T05:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER VIII.

"YET STILL I AM IN LOVE, AND PLEASED WITH RUIN."

It was the noon of next day before Lavendale opened his curtains and rang for his letters and his chocolate—a glorious summer noontide, with a flood of sunshine pouring in through the three tall narrow windows in that front bedchamber in Bloomsbury Square. The Lavendale mansion was a fine double-house with the staircase in the middle. His lordship's bedroom, dressing-room, and private writing-closet, or study, occupied one side of the first floor; on the other were two drawing-rooms, the white and the yellow, panelled and painted, opening into each other with high folding-doors after the French manner; and beyond these a small inner room, where a choice company of three or four kindred spirits might play high and drink deep, as it were in a sanctuary, remote from the household. The house had been built by the first Lord Lavendale in his pride of place and power. Here Somers and Godolphin had been entertained; here William himself had brought his grim dark visage and high wig, his hooked nose, and his Dutch favourites, to steep themselves in the Lavendale Burgundy after a ponderous old English dinner of thirty or forty dishes. It was a house full of stately memories, a house built for a statesman and a gentleman. How pleasantly would those panelled rooms have echoed the merry voices of children, the scampering of little feet! but all prospect of domesticity was over for Lord Lavendale. To-morrow the paternal house would be deserted, perhaps for ever; left to the rats and some grimy caretaker, or sold in a year or two to the best bidder. To-day the paternal acres would be mortgaged up to the hilt, since a man who runs away with a woman of fashion must needs have ready-money. There are a few things in this life that cannot be done upon credit. Running away with your neighbour's wife is one of them.

Lavendale thought of these things in very idleness of fancy as he stirred his chocolate, while his valet gathered up scattered garments, picked up an Alençon cravat from the floor, and reduced the disorder of the room generally. He thought of his mother, whom he remembered as the occupant of this bedchamber. The room had seemed sacred and solemn to him, like a temple, in those early days of his childhood, when he came in at bedtime to say his prayers at his mother's knee. How she had loved him! with what heart-whole devotion, with what anxiety! as he knew now, looking back upon her tenderness, understanding it with the understanding of manhood. He had not enjoyed his prayers in the abstract; but he had always liked to be with his mother. She was not one of the gad-about mothers, who see their children for five minutes in a powder-closet, look up from a patch-box to kiss little missy or master, and then airily dismiss the darling to nurse and nursery. She had always had leisure to love her boy.

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