VALENTINE AND LAURA
"The flower out of reach is dedicate to God."
_Tamil Proverb._
Some one passing Valentine as he walked home in the gloaming, started,
and hurried on. "He came up so still-like," she said, afterwards, "that
I e'en took him for a sperit, he being a Melcombe, and they having a way
of _walking_."
She did not speak without book, for old Madam Melcombe was already said
to haunt the churchyard. Not as a being in human guise, but as a white,
widewinged bird, perfectly noiseless in its movements, skimming the
grass much as owls do, but having a plaintive voice like that of a
little child.
Late in the night again, when all the stars were out sparkling in a
moonless sky, and the household should long have been asleep, the same
fancy or fear recurred. Two housemaids woke suddenly, and felt as if
there was a moaning somewhere outside. They had been sleeping in the
heat with their window open, and they looked out and saw a dark shadow
moving in the garden, moving away from the house, and seeming to make as
if it wrung its hands. After this, still peering out into the starlight,
they lost sight of it; but they fancied that they heard it sigh, and
then it stood a dark column in their sight, and seemed to fall upon the
bed of lilies, and there lie till they were afraid to look any longer,
and they shut their window and crept again into their beds.
But the lilies? It might have been true that they saw somewhat, but if a
spirit had haunted the dark garden that night, surely no trace of its
sojourn would have remained on the bed of lilies; yet in the morning
many, very many of their fragrant leaves were crushed and broken, as if
in truth some houseless or despairing being had crouched there.
The housemaids told their tale next morning, and it was instantly
whispered in the house that the ghost had come again. The maids shook
with fear as they went about, even in broad daylight. The gardener alone
was incredulous, and made game of the matter.
"Hang the ghost!" said he; but then he came from the eastern counties,
and had no reverence for the old family "fetch." "Hang the ghost! why
shouldn't that shadow have been the brown pony? Ain't he out at grass,
and didn't I find the garden-door ajar this morning? He came in, I'll be
bound." Then the gardener shouldered his spade, and finding a number of
footmarks all over the place, specially about the bed of lilies, and
certainly not those of a pony, he carefully obliterated them, and held
his peace. Shaking his head when alone, and muttering, "They're a queer
lot, these Melcombes--who'd have expected this now! If the dead ones
don't walk, the live ones do. Restless, that's what it is. Restless, too
much to eat. I should say, and too little to do. When the missis comes
we shall have more sensible doings, and I wish the missis had never left
us, that I do."
Mrs. Peter Melcombe, thus welcomed back again in the gardener's mind,
was then driving up to the door of Melcombe House, and Valentine was
stepping out to receive her.
It was natural that she should feel agitated, and Valentine accosted her
so seriously as to increase her emotion. She had been able to recover
her usually equable spirits after the loss of her child, it was only on
particular occasions that she now gave way to tears. She was by no
means of their number who love to make a parade of grief; on the
contrary, emotion was painful to her, and she thankfully avoided it when
she could.
She retired with Laura, and after a reasonable time recovered herself,
taking care to go at once into the room where her darling had slept, and
where he had played, that she might not again be overcome.
"I have dreaded this inexpressibly," she said, sobbing, to Laura, who
was following her with real sympathy.
"Valentine was very odd," answered Laura; "you would, I am sure, have
got over your return quite calmly, if he had been less solemn. Surely,
Amelia dear, he is altered."
"He was oppressed, no doubt, at sight of me; he felt for me."
Laura said no more, but several times during that first day she made
wondering observations. She looked in vain for the light-hearted
companionable young fellow with whom she had become intimate in cousinly
fashion, and whom she had fully hoped to consult about a certain affair
of her own. She saw an air of oppressive bitterness and absence of mind
that discouraged her greatly. "There is no mistaking his expression of
countenance," she thought; "he must have been disappointed in love."
"Laura," exclaimed Mrs. Melcombe, when the two ladies, having left the
dining-room, were alone together in the old grandmother's favourite
parlour, now used as a drawing-room--"Laura, what can this mean? Is he
dyspeptic? Is he hypochondriacal? I declare, if Mr. Craik had not been
invited to meet us, I hardly see how we could have got through the
dinner: he is very odd."
"And surely the conversation was odd too," said Laura. "How they did
talk about old Becky Maddison and her death this afternoon! How
fervently he expressed his gladness that Mr. Craik had seen her to-day,
and had administered the sacrament to her! I suppose you observed
Valentine's hesitation when you asked if he believed her story?"
"Yes; I felt for the moment as if I had no patience with him, and I
asked because I wanted to bring him to reason. He can hardly wish to own
before sensible people that he does believe it; and if he does not, he
must know that she was an impostor, poor old creature." Then she
repeated, "He is very odd," and Laura said--
"But we know but little of him. It may be his way to have fits of
melancholy now and then. How handsome he is!"
Amelia admitted this; adding, "And he looks better without that
perpetual smile. He had an illness, I think, two years ago; but he
certainly appears to be perfectly well now. It cannot be his health that
fails him."
There was the same surprise next morning. Valentine seemed to be making
an effort to entertain them, but he frequently lapsed into silence and
thought. No jokes, good or bad, were forthcoming. Mrs. Melcombe felt
that if she had not received such a warm and pressing invitation to come
to visit Melcombe, she must have now supposed herself to be unwelcome.
She took out some work, and sat in the room where they had breakfasted,
hoping to find an opportunity to converse with him on her own plans and
prospects; while Laura, led by her affectionate feelings, put on her hat
and sauntered down the garden--to the lily-bed of course, and there she
stood some time, thinking of her dear old grandmother. She was not
altogether pleased with its appearance, and she stooped to gather out a
weed here and there.
Presently Valentine came down the garden. He was lost in thought, and
when he saw Laura he started and seemed troubled. "What can you be
about, Laura dear?" he said.
He had made up his mind that she had a pecuniary claim on him, and
therefore he purposely addressed her with the affection of a relative.
He felt that this would make it easier for her to admit this convenient
claim.
"What am I about?" answered Laura. "Why, Valentine, I was just picking
off some of these leaves, which appear to have been broken. The bed
looks almost as if some--some creature had been lying on it."
"Does it?" said Valentine, and he sighed, and stood beside her while she
continued her self-imposed task.
"These lilies, you know," she remarked, "have great attractions for us."
"Yes," said Valentine, and sighed again.
"How he shivers!" thought Laura. "You cannot think," she said, rising
from her task and looking about her, "how it touches my feelings to come
back to the old place."
"You like it then, Laura?"
"Like it! I love it, and everything belonging to it."
"Including me!" exclaimed Valentine, rallying for the moment and
laughing.
Laura looked up and laughed too, but without answering. Before there was
time for that, she had seen the light of his smile die out, and the
gloom settle down again. A sort of amazement seemed to be growing under
his eyelids; his thought, whatever it was, had gradually returned upon
him, and he was struck by it with a new surprise.
"Valentine!" she exclaimed.
"Yes," he answered steadily and gravely, and then roused himself to add,
"Come out from under the shadow of this wall. The garden is all gloomy
here in the morning; it makes me shiver. I want to speak to you," he
continued, when they had passed through the door in the wall, and were
walking on the lawn before the house.
"And I to you," she replied. "It was kind of you to ask us to come
here."
"I suppose Mrs. Melcombe has decided to marry again," he began.
"Yes, but she would like to tell you about that herself."
"All right. I consider, Laura dear, that you have much more claim upon
me than upon her."
"Do you, Valentine, do you?"
As they walked down into the orchard, Laura shed a few agitated tears;
then she sat down on a grassy bank, and while Valentine, leaning against
the trunk of a pear-tree, looked down upon her, she said--
"Then I wish you would help me, Valentine. The devotion that I have
inspired, if I could only meet it as it deserves--" And then she went on
in a tone of apology, "And it is only help that I want, for I have five
hundred pounds of my own, if I could but get at it."
"Where is the devotion?" exclaimed Valentine, suddenly rallying. "Let me
only catch hold of that devotion, and I'll soon have it down on its
knees, and old Craik's large red hands hovering over it and you, while
he matches it as the Church directs to a devotion more than worthy of
it, as I will the five hundred pounds with another."
"Ah, but you can't," said Laura, laughing also, "because he's in
America; and, besides, you don't know all."
"Oh, he's in America, is he?"
"Yes; at least I suppose he's on the high seas by this time, or he will
be very shortly, for he's going up to New York."
"_Up_ to New York! Where does he hang out then when he's at home?"
"At Santo Domingo."
"That at least shows his original mind. Not black, of course? Not
descended from the woman who 'suddenly married a Quaker?'"
"Oh no, Valentine--an Englishman."
"An Englishman and live at Santo Domingo! Well, I should as soon have
expected him to live in the planetary spaces. It would be much more
roomy there, and convenient too, though to be sure a planet coming up
might butt at him now and then."
"It is rather a large island," said Laura. "But, Valentine----"
"Well."
"He speaks Spanish very well. He is comfortably off."
"His speciality, no doubt, is the sugar-cane. Well, I shall consider him
very mean if he doesn't let me have my sugar cheap, in return for my
kindness."
"You are sure you are going to be kind then."
"Yes. if he is a good fellow."
"He is a good fellow, and I am not worthy of him, for I behaved
shamefully to him. He has written me a very gentlemanly letter, and he
said, with perfect straightforwardness, that he did at one time believe
himself to have quite got over his attachment to me, but--but he had
been a good deal alone, had found time to think, and, in short, it had
come on again; and he hoped he was now able to offer me not only a very
agreeable home, but a husband more worthy of me. That's a mistake, for I
behaved ill to him, and he well, and always well, to me. In short, he
begged me to come over to New York in September: he is obliged to be
there on business himself at that time. He said, taking the chances, and
in the hope of my coming, he would name the very line of steamers I
ought to come by; and if I could but agree to it, he would meet me and
marry me, and take me back with him."
"Somehow, Laura, I seem to gather that you do not consider him quite
your equal."
"No, I suppose, as I am a Melcombe----"
"A Melcombe!" repeated Valentine with bitter scorn. "A Melcombe!" Laura
felt the colour rush over her face with astonishment. She knew rather
than saw that the little glimpse she had had of his own self was gone
again; but before she could decide how to go on, he said, with
impatience and irritation, "I beg your pardon; you were going to
say----"
"That he is in a fairly good position now," she proceeded, quoting her
lover's language; "and he has hopes that the head of the firm, who is a
foreigner, will take him into partnership soon. Besides, as his future
home is in America (and mine, if I marry him), what signifies his
descent?"
"No," murmured Valentine with a sigh. "'The gardener Adam and his wife'
(Tennyson)."
"And," proceeded Laura, "nothing can be more perfectly irreproachable
than his people are--more excellent, honest, and respectable."
"Whew!" cried Valentine with a bitter laugh, "that is a great deal to
say of any family. Well, Laura, if you're sure they won't mind demeaning
themselves by an alliance with us----"
"Nonsense, Valentine; I wish you would not be so odd," interrupted
Laura.
"I have nothing to say against it."
"Thank you, dear Valentine; and nobody else has a right to say anything,
for you are the head of the family. It was very odd that you should have
pitched upon that particular line to quote."
"Humph! And as I have something of my own, more than three thousand
pounds in fact----"
"And Melcombe," exclaimed Laura.
"Ah, yes, I forgot. But I was going to say that you, being the only
other Melcombe, you know, and you and I liking one another, I wish to
act a brotherly part by you; and therefore, when you have bought
yourself a handsome trousseau and a piano, and everything a lady ought
to have, and your passage is paid for, I wish to make up whatever is
left of your five hundred pounds to a thousand, that you may not go
almost portionless to your husband."
"I am sure, dear Valentine, he does not expect anything of the sort,"
exclaimed Laura faintly, but with such a glow of pleasure in her face as
cheated Valentine for the moment into gladness and cordiality.
"Depend upon it, he will be pleased notwithstanding to find you even a
better bargain than he expected." Laura took Valentine's hand when he
said this, and laid it against her cheek. "What's his name, Laura?"
"His name is Swan."
Thereupon the whole story came out, told from Laura's point of view, but
with moderate fairness.
Valentine was surprised; but when he had seen the letters and discovered
that the usually vacillating Laura had quite made up her mind to sail to
New York, he determined that his help and sanction should enable her to
do so in the most desirable and respectable fashion. Besides, how
convenient for him, and how speedy a release from all responsibility
about her! Of course he remembered this, and when Laura heard him call
her lover "Don Josef," she thought it a delightful and romantic name.
But Mrs. Peter Melcombe was angry when Laura told her that Joseph had
written again, and that Valentine knew all and meant to help her. She
burst into tears. "Considering all I have suffered," she said, "in
consequence of that young man's behaviour, I wonder you have not more
feeling than to have anything to say to him. Humanly speaking, he is the
cause of all my misfortunes; but for him, I might have been mistress of
Melcombe still, and my poor darling, my only delight, might have been
well and happy."
Laura made no reply, but she repeated the conversation afterwards to
Valentine with hesitating compunction, and a humble hope that he would
put a more favourable construction on her conduct than Amelia had done.
"Humanly speaking," repeated Valentine with bitterness, "I suppose, then,
she wishes to insinuate that God ordained the child's death, and she had
nothing to do with it?"
"She behaved with beautiful submission," urged Laura.
"I dare say! but the child had been given over to her absolute control,
and she actually had a warning sent to her, so that she knew that it was
running a risk to take him into heat, and hurry, and to unwholesome
food. She chose to run the risk. She is a foolish, heartless woman. If
she says anything to me, I shall tell her that I think so."
"I feel all the more bitter about it," he muttered to himself, "because
I have done the same thing."
But Mrs. Melcombe said nothing, she contented herself with having made
Laura uncomfortable by her tears, and as the days and weeks of her visit
at Melcombe went on she naturally cared less about the matter, for she
had her own approaching marriage to think of, and on the whole it was
not unpleasant to her to be for ever set free from any duty toward her
sister-in-law.
Valentine, though he often amazed Laura by his fits of melancholy, never
forgot to be kind and considerate to her; he had long patience with her
little affectations, and the elaborate excuses she made about all sorts
of unimportant matters. She found herself, for the first time in her
life, with a man of whom she could exact attendance, and whom she could
keep generally occupied with her affairs. She took delighted advantage
of this state of things, insomuch that before she was finally escorted
to Liverpool and seen off, people in the neighbourhood, remarking on his
being constantly with her, and observing his only too evident
depression, thought he must have formed an attachment to her; it was
universally reported that young Mr. Melcombe was breaking his heart for
that silly Laura; and when, on his return, he seemed no longer to care
for society, the thing was considered to be proved.
It was the last week in October when he reached Wigfield, to be present
at his sister's wedding. All the woods were in brown and gold, and the
still dry October summer was not yet over. John's children were all well
again, and little Anastasia came to meet him in the garden, using a
small crutch, of which she was extremely proud, "It was such a pretty
one, and bound with pink leather!" Her face was still pinched and pale,
but the nurse who followed her about gave a very good account of her, it
was confidently expected that in two or three months she would walk as
well as ever. "A thing to be greatly wished," said the nurse, "for Mr.
Mortimer makes himself quite a slave to her, and Mrs. Walker spoils
her."
Valentine found all his family either excited or fully occupied, and yet
he was soon aware that a certain indefinable change in himself was only
the more conspicuous for his fitful attempts to conceal it.
As to whether he was ill, whether unhappy, or whether displeased, they
could not agree among themselves, only, as by one consent, they forbore
to question him; but while he vainly tried to be his old self, they
vainly tried to treat him in the old fashion.
He thought his brother seemed, with almost studied care, to avoid all
reference to Melcombe. There was, indeed, little that they could talk
about. One would not mention his estate, the other his wife, and as for
his book, this having been a great failure, and an expensive one, was
also a sore subject. Almost all they said when alone concerned the
coming marriage, which pleased them both, and a yachting tour.
"I thought you had settled into a domestic character, St. George?" said
Valentine.
"So did I, but Tom Graham, Dorothea's brother, is not going on well, he
is tired of a sea life, and has left his uncle, as he says, for awhile.
So as the old man longs for Dorothea, I have agreed to take her and the
child, and go for a tour of a few months with him to the Mediterranean.
It is no risk for the little chap, as his nurse, Mrs. Brand, feels more
at home at sea than on shore."
On the morning of the wedding Valentine sauntered down from his sister's
house to John Mortimer's garden. Emily had Dorothea with her, and Giles
was to give her away. She was agitated, and she made him feel more so
than usual; a wedding at which Brandon and Dorothea were to be present
would at any time have made him feel in a somewhat ridiculous position,
but just then he was roused by the thought of it from those ideas and
speculations in the presence of which he ever dwelt, so that, on the
whole, though it excited it refreshed him.
He was generally most at ease among the children; he saw some of them,
and Swan holding forth to them in his most pragmatical style. Swan was
dressed in his best suit, but he had a spade in his hand. Valentine
joined them, and threw himself on a seat close by. He meant to take the
first opportunity he could find for having a talk with Swan, but while
he waited he lost himself again, and appeared to see what went on as if
it was a shifting dream that meant nothing; his eyes were upon, the
children, and his ears received expostulation and entreaty: at last his
name roused him.
"And what Mr. Melcombe will think on you it's clean past my wits to find
out. Dressed up so beautiful, all in your velvets and things, and
buckles in your shoes, and going to see your pa married, and won't be
satisfied unless I'll dig out this here nasty speckled beast of a
snake."
"But you're so unfair," exclaimed Bertram. "We told you if you'd let us
conjure it, there would be no snake."
"What's it all about?" said Valentine, rousing himself and remarking
some little forked sticks held by the boys.
"Why, it's an adder down that hole," cried one.
"And it's a charm we've got for conjuring him," quoth the other. "And we
only want Swanny to dig, and then if the charm is only a sham charm, the
adder will come out."
"I should have thought he was a sight better wheer he is," said Swan.
"But you've been so masterful and obstinate, Master Bertie, since you
broke your arm!"
"It's not at all kind of you to disappoint us on father's wedding-day."
"Well, Mr. Melcombe shall judge. If he says, 'Charm it,' charm you
shall; for he knows children's feelings as well as grown folks's. There
never was anybody that was so like everybody else."
"It's conjuring, I tell you, cousin Val. Did you never see a conjuror
pull out yards and yards of shavings from his mouth, and then roll them
up till they were as small as a pea, and swallow them? This is conjuring
too. We say, 'Underneath this hazelin mote;' that's the forked-stick,
you know; and while we say it the adder is obliged to roll himself up
tighter and tighter, just like those shavings, till he is quite gone."
"_I_ can't swallow that!" exclaimed Valentine. "Well, off then."
"But I won't have the stick poked down his hole!" cried Swan, while Hugh
shouted down his defiance--
"'Underneath this hazelin mote
There's a braggerty worm with a speckled throat,
Now!
Nine double hath he.'
"That means he's got nine rings."
"Well, I shall allers say I'm surprised at such nonsense. What do you
think he cares for it all?"
"Why, we told you it would make him twist himself up to nothing. Go on,
Hughie. It's very useful to be able to get rid of snakes."
"'Now from nine double to eight double,
And from eight double to seven double,
And from seven double to six double.
And from six double to five double,
And from five double to four double,
And from four double to three double.'
(He's getting very tight now!)
"'And from three double to two double,
And from two double to one double,
Now!
No double hath he,'
"There, now he's gone, doubled up to nothing. Now dig, Swanny, and you'll
see he's gone."
"It's only an old Cornish charm," said Valentine. "I often heard it when
I was a boy."
"I call it heathenish!" exclaimed Mr. Swan. "What do folks want with a
charm when they've got a spade to chop the beast's head off with?"
"But as he's gone, Swan," observed Valentine, "of course you cannot dig
him out; so you need not trouble yourself to dig at all."
"Oh, but that's not fair. We want, in case he's there, to see him."
"No, no," said Swan dogmatically; "I never heard of such a thing as
having the same chance twice over. I said if you'd sit on that bench,
all on you, I'd dig him out, if he was there. You wouldn't; you thought
you'd a charm worth two of that work, and so you've said your charm."
"Well, we'll come and sit upon the bench tomorrow, then, and you'll dig
him."
"That'll be as I please. I've no call to make any promises," said Swan,
looking wise.
The only observer felt a deep conviction that the children would never
see that snake, and slight and ridiculous as the incident was, Swan's
last speech sunk deeply into Valentine's heart, and served to increase
his dejection. "And yet," he repeated to himself, "I fully hope, when
I've given up all, that I shall have my chance--the same chance over
again. I hope, please God, to prove that very soon; for now Laura's
gone, I'm bound to Melcombe no longer than it takes me to pack up my
clothes and the few things I brought with me."