TO TIE OR NOT TO TIE THE KNOT?
“Take care, Lady Bell!” exclaimed Harry, in rising agitation, “lest I’m
only delivered from one temptation to be plunged into another.”
“Ah! temptations have no power for you,” proclaimed Lady Bell, with a
mixture of pride and sorrow; “you are as firm as a rock, and as
unyielding when you think you are in the right.”
“Don’t be too sure,” said Captain Fane, and she saw that he could be
nervous with all his firmness. “I have let you say how you will want me,
because it has been marrow to my bones and joy to my heart, Bell, when
God knows I am anxious and sad enough. But at least you do not resign me
to the importunities of any rival, unless it be to the image of
Britannia herself,” he suggested, with an effort at a jest and a smile,
“flourishing, as our general figurehead, and to the death which she may
bear in her hand. Think what I must feel to leave you, exposed to the
cunning wiles of all the beaux and bucks and great matches who hunt
women as men hunt game. These men play with women, and have no
remorse—for not believing in a God in heaven, they do not believe in a
man or woman on earth. They seek to buy women, and sooner than be foiled
in the base barter which they propose, and be forced to confess their
titles, rent-rolls, money-bags, even their pretty persons, disparaged,
they will try to get the better of women by cruel arts. Such men betray
women infernally.”
He had worked himself up till he was pouring forth a torrent of rage,
hatred, and apprehension. Cold as the morning was, he had to wipe his
forehead.
“Why, Harry!” remonstrated Lady Bell, startled, but not altogether
offended by his jealous fury, not unwilling to be roused from the
dejection into which she was sinking, and to be diverted for a moment
from the gloomy prospect before her.
There was no question of the gloom near at hand, and to last for many a
day. Come what liked in the future, Harry Fane was going, would go to
join his ship in the first place, and the war in the second. He might be
subjected to work, weariness, and privation, but he had action and
change for his portion. As for her, she must abide in her place forlorn,
with the brightness passed from the sky, and the zest gone out of the
feast. The “Lubin” of the song was indeed on the eve of departure, of
long uncertain tarrying, perhaps till his love’s bloom was faded, her
heart withered and dry. Lady Bell had asked once in very idleness and
restlessness, that movement, passion, even, in its pangs, might ruffle
the still waters of her heart. They were ruffled with a vengeance,
lashed into a piteous storm, to heave and swell for many a day, ere they
settled down again in peace.
Knowing what was hanging over her, Lady Bell was fain to forget the
knowledge for a moment, in the rousing consideration that Captain Fane,
in spite of her frank confession, was half beside himself with jealousy.
She did not altogether disapprove of this state of matters, for was it
not evidence of how well the self-controlled sailor loved her?
She was a little frightened at the strength of his passion,
nevertheless. Extravagantly as she herself had loved him, she did not
know him fully and closely, after all. One of the charms of her love was
its mystery.
But Lady Bell thought Harry Fane too severe in his strictures, and
certainly needing to be pulled up and taken to task. Aching as her heart
was, she tried to make believe for a brief space that the ache was not
there, and to do her part in enlightening her lover.
She began to pout with her white face and her tearful eyes.
“Would I forget you in your absence, Harry? Could you ever believe that?
What effect would all the wicked stratagems of the finest gentlemen have
on me?”
“How can I tell?” he answered gloomily. “I found a whole hornet’s nest
buzzing round you when I met you first, and again at the masquerade, and
you did not seem able to put them down.”
“Why should I put them down? They are entitled to live as well as the
rest of us, even though a busy fellow of a bee looks down upon them as
drones or butterflies; indeed they are rather that than hornets. They
have never done me harm, and they have squired and amused me many a day;
you ought to be more generous to them, sir, and to learn to keep a civil
tongue in your head.”
“We have no time for quarrelling,” cried Harry, “you may teach me better
manners one day, if we are spared and restored to each other, and you
are still willing to undertake the office. But I could not profit by the
best of lessons, and I submit that it would be taking me altogether at a
disadvantage to begin when I am just about to bid you farewell.”
“Not yet! not yet!” besought Lady Bell, dislodged from her poor little
temporary cranny of arch resistance and coquettish teasing, and
stretched anew, like another Andromeda, on a sheer precipice, over a sea
of misery, until she fell back into her lamentation. “If we had but
understood each other faster, and been married within these few
weeks—sailors and soldiers must woo and wed in haste—before these
terrible sailing orders arrived! Then I could have sailed with you; I
should not have been frighted, though we had encountered the enemy. I
could have kept quiet below, with you on deck to run to when the guns
ceased firing. I might have proved how little I cared for any other man
by following you all over the world.”
“You can prove it, dear,” declared Harry Fane, hoarse with eagerness,
taking her at her word, giving the reins to his passion, and smothering
and trampling down every doubt and scruple. “Let us be married before I
go, and although I cannot take you with me, I may send for you to my
station. Some one of my old messmates and friends will be glad to do as
he would be done by, and bring you out to me in his ship.”
Lady Bell was astounded; she had been utterly unprepared for this
catching up of her speech, heartfelt though it was.
Harry Fane rushed on, overwhelming her with his special pleading.
“That and that alone would reassure my mind, which is on the rack for
you, exposed on a pinnacle as you are. Don’t be vexed with me when I say
it, but you are a beautiful woman of rank, very young, greatly admired,
as you well may be, moving in gay worldly circles, which unsettle even a
man’s head, and throw dust in his eyes. You have not a near relation
whose right it would be to control and guide you, only such thoughtless,
irresponsible guardians as even my good cousin! Oh! my love, how shall I
leave you thus? for God knows how long,” he groaned in anguish, “these
six—twelve years. This horrid war has long been hanging over us. Our
American brethren are brave and resolute as we are; the strife may last
while mother country and colony hold out. How can I trust your constancy
exposed to such a test, assailed as it will be when I am gone, and you a
young woman, and therefore weak, without blame or shame to you?”
“I understand,” acknowledged Lady Bell piteously. “I am not angry with
you for distrusting me—how can I be, when I remember how weak I was once
before? How wrong as well as weak, I know by my love for you. I was
unfair to myself and to another. Do I not shrink from looking you and
every one in the face when I think of my marriage? Do I not blush for
the name I bear, because of the reason for bearing it?—that I let myself
be sold as a chattel or a slave, rather than die free—and I was not a
loyal slave, Harry, never think it; I revolted and fled, like many
another slave.”
He was hardly listening to her, he was so dead set on over-persuading
her and himself that he might make her his, and that by doing so, he
would save her.
“Then do not risk danger again, you are not so much older—only a tender
girl of eighteen—widow though you are. I may not even be able to reach
you with the poor stay of letters when all your friends will be against
me. I cannot wonder and complain, but I must think of myself and my
love, and of you and yours, for you love me, and me only, Lady Bell,
your lips have sworn it now, over and over.”
“Ay, and I swear it again,” averred Lady Bell, with fond pride.
“No other man will ever be to you what I can be. I will say more,
cross-grained sinner as I am, I honestly believe that I shall raise you,
Bell, by your love, as you will raise me by mine. Are not true lovers
made for helpmeets as well as mates? And, although I have no cause for
boasting, less at this moment perhaps than at any other, still, do you
not love me, darling, because you think me honest, though plain, earnest
if harsh, a little wiser in my blundering, a little more bent on truth
and righteousness in my faultiness, than the ruck of those heartless
triflers and blasphemous renouncers of all obligations around you?”
“Have I not called you the best of men?” boasted Lady Bell, with an
immensity of faith which might have staggered him and opened his eyes.
But he only shut them harder, while he modestly declined the innocent
hyperbole.
“Oh, no, a prodigiously erring fellow, and nearly mad at this moment, I
suspect. But we should walk through life hand in hand, love, and ask to
rise to the best that nature and grace could make us. For that end we
should seek to be reverent and dutiful, and to turn our backs on
vanities, follies, and worse. It is not wrong to make this end so sure,
that if we live it cannot be baulked, and that no one can ever more come
between us to beguile us of our faith in God and each other.”
“If I could only claim you as my wife,” he argued unweariedly, “I should
have no fear to leave you thus solemnly bound to me—thus able by
uttering one word to dismiss all suitors, or to consign them to the
tender mercies of a man whom you could then call from the ends of the
earth—too happy to come, as I came to you at the masquerade—to give you
protection. My name alone, when you choose to take it, and replace by it
the name which you tell me, hanging your head (I cannot bear to have my
love hang her head), it is no pleasure or pride for you to wear, would
protect you.”
“Ah! Harry, shall I ever wear your dear name?”
“If you will, Lady Bell; and I venture to affirm that it will shelter
you as the name of the husband of your own free choice. In the mean time
I shall be doing my best to make my name honourable for you. But ah,
Bell, grant me my reward now, during the few short hours which we are
yet to spend together—while it is in your power to grant it, since it is
doubtful whether I shall ever return to claim it.”
“Come back quick, Harry, and you may blame me as you will, I shall be
too happy to be blamed by you, and to do whatever you desire,” promised
Lady Bell.
“Heaven forgive my conceit, it was my very wonder and delight, which
caused me to find fault or fret at every small mote in my sun. But I
shall not contradict or plague you more, very likely you will soon have
seen the last of a lumpish, captious fellow, whose greatest merit that I
can see is, that he no sooner knew you than he cast his quips and
cranks, as a misanthropic sailor, to the winds, and loved you with his
whole heart and soul.”
“Oh, heavens! seen the last, contradict—plague! Harry, while you profess
to love me, how can you speak so unkind?”