THE LAMP OF LOVE.
And this fellow of the Irregular Horse--this fellow who was so
insufferably good-looking, and seemed to know it too--this
interloper, for so Audley Trevelyan chose to consider him--what
manner of advances had he already made, and how had she received
them, on that overland route, so perilous from the propinquity and
the hourly chances it affords of acquaintance ripening into
friendship, and of friendship into love?
Was he only to meet her unexpectedly, and, by that strange influence
of coincidence already referred to, to find himself supplemented, it
might be, and on the verge of losing, if he had not
already--deservedly as he felt--lost her?
Did it never occur to the Honourable Mr. Audley Trevelyan that,
separating as they did, there were a thousand chances to one against
their ever meeting again in this world, and, more than all, the world
of India?
He watched long and anxiously; there was no sign of her seeing or
recognising him, and, placed where they were, apart, he had neither
excuse nor opportunity for drawing nearer her. The durbar closed at
last; a banquet, solemn and magnificent, followed; then, on lumbering
elephants and beautiful horses, the various dignitaries withdrew,
each followed by his noisy and half-nude _suwarri_. A small but
select evening party of Europeans was invited that night to the house
of the Viceroy; thither went Audley; and there, as he had quite
anticipated, they met, not in the suite of rooms, however, but in the
magnificent gardens, where there was a display of those wonderful
rockets, stars, wooden shells that burst in mid air, displaying a
thousand prismatic hues, and many others of those pyrotechnic
efforts, in which the Indians so peculiarly excel.
In a walk of the garden, while actually seeking for her, he met Sybil
face to face, but leaning on the arm of the same brilliantly dressed
officer; for no uniform is more gorgeous or lavish than that of the
Irregular Horse, for fancy, vanity, and the army-tailor "run riot"
together. He was carrying his cap under his other arm, and seemed
entirely satisfied with himself and his companion, in whose pretty
ear he was whispering, while smiling, with all the provoking air of a
privileged man.
"Ah, Miss Devereaux--you surely remember me?" said Audley, bowing
low, with a flush on his brow, and, despite all his efforts, an
unmistakable sickly smile in his face.
Sybil grew a trifle paler, as she presented her hand, with a far from
startled expression; for she had been quite aware that he was
somewhere about the Viceregal Court, and therefore, to her, the
meeting was not quite so unexpected.
"You do not seem surprised?" said he.
"Why should I, Mr. Trevelyan, when I knew that you were here?" she
replied with perfect candour; "but I am so--so delighted--indeed I
am, Audley;" then perceiving that there was an undoubted awkwardness
in all this, she coloured, while her eyes sparkled with vexation, and
she introduced the two gentlemen rather nervously by name, and then
added, in an explanatory tone, to the cavalry officer, "He is quite
an old friend, believe me--the same who saved my life. Surely I told
you?"
"I am not aware--oh yes--perhaps," drawled the other: "at Cairo, was
it not?"
"No, no--in Cornwall."
"But it was in Cairo you told me, when we visited the citadel by
moonlight----"
"And we are, as I said, such old friends," she added hastily.
"That, doubtless, you will have much to say to each other. Permit
me; for I am perhaps _de trop_," interrupted the other, twirling a
moustache, and looking somewhat cloudy; "but I shall hope to see you
ere the trumpets announce supper;" and with a smiling bow he resigned
Sybil to Audley's proffered arm, and retired with a good grace to
join another group.
"Sybil," said Audley, after a half-minute's pause, during which he
had been surveying her with fond and loving eyes, "by what singular
incidence of the stars are we blessed by meeting thus!"
"You may well ask, if such you feel it to be," she replied calmly,
and her voice made his heart vibrate as she spoke; "yet it is simple
and prosaic enough. I am here solely by the influence of misfortune."
"Misfortune?"
"Yes."
"Oh, explain."
"When poor mamma died, what was left for me but to eat the bread of
dependence?--and I am a dependent now."
"Sybil!"
"I came to India as that which you find me."
"And that is----"
"The humble friend--the companion, for it is nothing more in plain
English--of the Governor-General's lady. Mamma gone--Denzil, too, in
Afghanistan--was I not fortunate in finding such a home?"
"My poor Sybil," exclaimed Audley, gnawing his moustache and pressing
her soft hand and arm against his side. Then he became silent, as
the past and present, for a little, held his soul in thrall; and far
from the brilliant fête of the Anglo-Indian Court his mind flashed
back to other days, and he saw again only Sybil Devereaux and the
purple moorland, the solemn rock-pillar, the lonely tarn, with its
osier isles, the long-legged heron and the blue kingfisher amid its
green reedy sedges, and in the soft sunlight the grey granite earns
cast their shadows on the lee, as when he had seen her on that day
when first they met; and much of shame for himself and for his father
mingled with the memory and his emotion.
But there was a change here!
The poor, pale girl, who had so anxiously and wearily sought to sell
her pencilled sketches and water-coloured drawings in the shops of
the little market town, who so often with an aching heart took them
back, through the mist and the rain and the wind, to the humble
cottage where her mother lay dying, was now in a very different
sphere, richly though modestly dressed, easy in air and bearing,
perfectly self-possessed, surrounded by wealth and rank, yet with all
the secret pride of her little heart, nieek, gentle, and happy in
aspect.
She, too, was silent for a time, during which she glanced at him
covertly and timidly.
"Here again was Audley," was the thought of her heart; "did he love
her still? Had he truly loved her, even _then_?" was the next
thought, and her heart half answered, "Yes--he had loved her, but
only as the worldly love;" and this fear, this half-conviction,
dashed her present joy. Yet no woman wishes to believe, or cares to
admit even to herself, that the power she once exerted over a man's
heart can, under any circumstances, pass altogether away.
"Sybil," said he, "you, any more than I, cannot have forgotten all
our past, and the scenes where we met--the wild shore, the
precipices, the grey granite rocks of our own Cornwall; and that
awful hour in the Pixies' Cave, too--can you have forgotten that?"
"Far from it, Audley,--I have forgotten nothing; and now I must
remember the difference of rank that places us so far--so very far
apart," she added with a strange flash in her eye and a quiver in her
short upper lip.
"Come this way, dear Sybil. I have much to say--to talk with you
about--but we must be alone;" and he led her down a less frequented
walk, apart from the company, the strains of the military music, the
coloured lights and lanterns that hung in garlands and festoons from
tree to tree, and the soaring fireworks that ever and anon filled the
soft dewy air with the splendour of many-lined brilliance.
"Will this not seem marked?" asked Sybil nervously and almost
haughtily.
"How?"
"I must beware of attracting notice now--here especially; and you are
no longer the mere Audley Trevelyan of other times."
"Then, dearest, who the deuce am I?" asked he, laughing.
Sybil had seen the Hindoo maidens--slender, graceful, and dark-eyed
girls--launching their love-lamps from the ghauts upon the sacred
waters of the Ganges--watching them with thrills of alternate joy and
fear, as they floated away under the glorious silver radiance of the
Indian moon. She had heard their wails of sorrow if the flame
flickered out and died; or their merry shouts and songs of glee if
they floated steadily and burned truly and bravely. Audley's
affection had been to her as a light in her path that had vanished;
but now her love-lamp seemed to be lit again; for Audley, with
admirable tact, conversed with her as if on their old and former
footing, expressing only what he felt--the purest and deepest joy at
thus suddenly meeting her again, and he had too much good taste to
make the slightest reference to the gossip of his friend Stapylton,
the ex-Hussar, though certainly he had neither forgotten it, nor the
unpleasantly offhand mode in which it had been communicated to him.
"But how strange--to come to India, my dear girl, of all places in
the world! What led you to think of it?" he asked.
"Have I not already told you? I did not think of it: chance threw
the offer in my way; and I had two sufficient reasons, at least, for
accepting of it."
"And these--bless them, say I!--these were----"
"That my brother, dear Denzil, was here--here then, at least."
"And I--too?"
"I do not say so--least of all must I say so now; and then Lady
----'s offers were most advantageous to a penniless girl like me.
You and, more than all, your father, deemed me no suitable match for
you, when we were in England--when I was an inmate of my parent's
house at Porthellick. You see, I speak quite plainly, Audley, and as
one who is quite alone in the world; now, when by death and--and
misfortune, I am reduced to eat the bread of dependence, the matter
is worse than ever."
"But you love me still, Sybil--do you not!"
She was silent and trembling now.
"Speak," he urged; "you do love me still?"
"Yes, Audley."
"And will marry me, Sybil!"
"No."
"You love another then--another in secret?"
"No--one may not, cannot, love two."
But Audley thought of Stapylton and that devilish Irregular Horseman,
and struck the heel of his glazed boot viciously into the gravel of
the path.