HELEN GOULBURN was sitting alone in the great drawing-room of her father’s country-house on an evening in October. It had been very sultry during the day, and the great heat had ended in a thunderstorm and torrents of rain. Now all the tumult and commotion of the elements were over. The night was cool and fresh. The great windows were open to the unseen garden, from which a sweetness of honeysuckle and mignonnette and late roses came in upon every breath of the fitful night air. The room was an immense room, far too large for a solitary occupant. She and her lamp and her white dress made a lightness in one corner; the rest of the huge drawing-room was faintly lighted with candles, of which there were regiments about on the walls, reflected vaguely from mirrors here and there, on tables and consoles and cabinets,—but yet not enough to give anything like light to the vast shadowy room, which was full of everything that is rich and rare—of everything at least that the highest price could buy or the best workmen produce. The windows, a long line of them, all draped in that shadowy whiteness, stood open, as has been said. Most girls of Helen’s age would have been afraid to sit all alone, with so many windows opening on to a lawn, which in its turn swept downwards into the park, at so late an hour. Sometimes the lace curtains swayed in the night wind as if put aside by a shadowy hand. It was difficult to keep the imagination from developing some stealthy figure half hidden in the drapery, some one coming in, out of the darkness outside. The house was full of wealth, and the temptations to a sudden raid might have been many. When the branches swayed in the night air, bringing down a shower of raindrops, or some twig cracked, or one of the mysterious noises of which darkness is always full, broke the absolute quiet—any one of those sounds, which yet were scarcely definite sounds at all, might have conveyed a tremor to the lonely occupant of all this mystic space and solitude. But Helen sat unmoved. She was used to the vacant bigness of the great house, often inhabited by only herself and her little sister, and a crowd of servants. She had been in the hands of a governess till very lately, and in the routine of lessons and the certainty that a schoolgirl was not likely to be interrupted by visitors, had escaped all consciousness of the isolation of the great house. It was the most splendid in the county, surrounded by a beautiful park, embosomed in great trees. When Mr Goulburn bought it from the decaying proud family to whom its glories belonged, Fareham was already a noble place; and he had added greatly to it, had built out a room here and a room there, and enlarged it with every extravagance of convenience that lavish wealth could think of. He had built and decorated in the most costly way the splendid room in which his daughter was sitting; he had fitted out for her a suite of rooms worthy of a princess; the very servants were lodged as half the well-to-do people in England would have been glad to be lodged. Outside, in the darkness of the summer night, full of dew and rain and soft fragrance, were acres of flower-beds and conservatories, tended by a regiment of gardeners.
But notwithstanding all this splendour, the county looked very shyly on the new member of its sacred and select society. He had brought very good introductions, and he gave such dinners as were not to be had within a hundred miles. The Duke called, an honour scarcely less than royal condescension; but the surrounding gentry showed no enthusiasm in following that example. Helen was then still in the school-room, which furnished the ladies with a very good excuse; but even after the ball, which was given on the occasion of her coming out, and which certified that event to all the world, no genial circle of neighbours collected round her. Even her youth, her solitude, her motherless and friendless condition, did not call forth the sympathy of the county people. Never was girl more solitary. Her governess, who it had been arranged was to stay with her as chaperon, had married suddenly the widowed vicar of the parish, and deserted her not long before the period of which we speak: and she was left alone, the mistress of the wealthiest, most barren, and splendid house in all the district. She had crowds of servants to do whatever she bade—carriages, horses, whatever, as the servants’ hall said, heart could desire—but no friends. Little Jane, her little sister, was the offspring of a marriage which her father had made “abroad,” and of which, except this child, no trace existed. It was only on his return with the baby, six years before, that his extraordinary wealth had shown itself. Before that period Helen had been left at a school in the country—but not in this part of the country—where she had been happy enough with her companions. But when her father returned from “abroad,” everything had been changed for her. An ayah had brought the baby home, and Helen had first become aware of the existence of a little sister when she saw a big pair of dark eyes gleaming out of the palest of little faces over the dusky nurse’s shoulder. She had been taken away from her school from that day, and ever since had lived the life of a princess, waited upon by innumerable servants, and living in luxurious houses. But her father had always lived the life of a bachelor, notwithstanding his possession of these two daughters. His friends had been all men. There were great dinners now and then; and occasionally Helen had seen through an open door a glimpse of a long splendid table laden with plate and crystal, and baskets of fruit and flowers, where her father’s friends were being entertained. But no ladies had come to the house, nor, after the childish companions of her school, had she had any friends in her new magnificence, except Miss Temple, who had been very good to her, and whose departure had brought a poignant sensation of loss into the girl’s mind. It was almost the only keen feeling she had ever known. She had come into society with something of the bewildered, uncertain vision of a creature bred in the darkness, who is dazzled and confused rather than delighted by the light. The people who came to the ball had been as figures in a dream to her. The whole scene was like something in the theatre. She was scarcely aware that she was herself not a spectator, but an actor in it, walking about mechanically among the guests, making her mechanical curtsey when her father brought up now one strange face, now another.
And after that one ball, silence had fallen again upon Fareham. The porter at the lodge received sheaves of cards, and some carriages even penetrated through the grand avenue to the hall door; but no one entered the house. Doubtless there were some hearts in those carriages in which there vibrated some touch of pity for the millionaire’s shy, motherless, inexperienced daughter. But the county was wonderfully intact, and its gentry had made up their minds to discourage the advent of Money among them. A few years of perseverance would no doubt have made an end of that irrational notion; but in the meantime they distrusted Mr Goulburn. He was far too rich; it was insolent of a man who, so far as any one knew, was nobody, to be richer than all the squires put together. A ball in such a house might be tolerated. It was like a public ball; you took your own party (for in this respect the invitations were most liberal), and, save that one of your men had to sacrifice himself to ask the girl of the house to dance once, you kept yourselves to yourselves, as you did at the ball for the hospital or any other subscription assembly. This was what the county people said. And as for Helen, she was often dull, but she had not learned to blame anybody for her dulness. She thought it a law of nature—it was no one’s fault.
All this explanation is to show how it was that Helen found nothing unusual in her own position, alone in this great dim room, with all the windows open. The windows always were open, except in the depth of winter. The darkness without had no dangers for her; it never occurred to her that any strange apparition might disturb her solitude. She liked the stillness, the night air, the fragrance from the garden. Though she usually went to bed early, yet on this night she was not sleepy. She was reading a novel; that was one of the luxuries which her father provided regularly. She had not read many books that were worth reading, but of novels all kinds. When the butler came softly into the room, with the intention of closing up the house for the night, she stopped him.
“Are you going to sit up to-night, Brownlow?” she said.
“Yes, Miss Goulburn, as usual on Saturdays, till the last train comes in,” the man replied.
“Then leave the windows open a little longer.”
“Yes, Miss Goulburn,” he said. But he did not go away forthwith; he extinguished the candles on the distant tables and in the sconces, moving like a shadow (though he was very substantial) in that elegant desert of costly furniture, until finally Helen’s figure in her white dress, lit up by her lamp, became the one definite point in the darkness. She was at some distance from the windows, in the winter corner near the fireplace, now all dark. Everything was dark except that one spot. The soft and almost stealthy closing of the door was all that testified to Brownlow’s departure; he had become invisible before. In the great stillness his soft and regular step, subdued and respectful, as a good servant’s ought to be, yet stately, was heard retiring, thick though the carpets were and closely fitting every door. He went away through those softly carpeted corridors and across the great marble hall to his own part of the house. And once more absolute silence and solitude abode with Helen. The night air came in softly, swaying the curtains; sometimes a bough creaked, a long tendril of some creeping plant shook out a few rain-drops, a moth dashed against the panes. No other sound in heaven or earth. And Helen in her white dress gave a heart to the darkness. All alone, no one near her, yet not afraid!