MAUD'S SECRET.
----In the glance,
A moment's glance, of meeting eyes,
His heart stood still in sudden trance--
He trembled with a sweet surprise;
All in the waning light she stood,
The star of perfect womanhood.
That summer eve his heart was light,
With lighter step he trod the ground,
And life was fairer in his sight,
And music was in every sound:
He bless'd the world where there could be
So beautiful a thing as she.
The western horizon was all ablaze, and the sun's rays came slanting
through the gloom of the Rhododendron Forest, as Sutton and his
companion rode down the mountain-side towards the plains.
Did Felicia's wishes and hopes breathe a subtle influence around them,
which drew their hearts together and opened to each the destiny which
awaited it? Did the sweet, serious look with which she bade Sutton
farewell speak to his eye, for years accustomed to watch for her
unspoken commands, of something in which he had failed to please her,
to understand her desire, to do or to be exactly what she wanted? Was
there some shade of reserve, constraint, dissatisfaction in Felicia's
manner that aroused his attention and led him to explore his companion
with an anxious curiosity which usually he was far from feeling? Or was
it something in Maud, a causeless embarrassment, a scarcely concealed
trepidation, a manner at once sad and excited, the flush that, as
Desvoeux had told her in the morning, gave her cheek more than its
accustomed beauty, which, before they had been ten minutes on the road,
had sent such a flash of intelligence through Sutton's being,--which
came upon him like an inspiration, clear, cogent, indisputable, and only
curious in not having been understood before?
Be that as it may, Sutton suddenly found himself in an altogether
different mood and in altogether different company to that which he had
figured to himself for the first stage of his journey. Maud had all at
once become supremely interesting and infinitely more beautiful than he
had ever yet conceived her. She was no longer the mere excitable,
romantic child, whose nascent feelings and ideas might be watched with
half-amused curiosity, but a being whose brightness and innocence were
allied with the most exquisite pathos, and who was ready to cast at the
first worthy shrine all the wealth of an impulsive, ardent, tender
nature. As for Maud, she was too excited, too profoundly moved, too
much the prey of feelings of which she knew neither the true measure nor
the full force, to be able to analyse her thoughts or to be completely
mistress of herself.
Dissimulation was an art of which life had not as yet taught her the
necessity, or experience familiarised the use. The unconscious hypocrisy
with which some natures from the very outset, perhaps all natures later
on in life, veil so much of themselves from the outer world, had never
occurred to her as a possible or necessary means of self-protection in
an existence which till now had been too simple, childish and innocent
to call for concealment. She fixed her clear, honest eyes on her
interrogator, whoever he was, be the question what it might, and he knew
that it was the truth, pure, simple and complete, that she was telling.
Each phase of feeling wrote itself on her expression almost before Maud
herself had realised it, certainly long before she knew enough about it
to attempt to conceal it from the world. The feeble attempts at
deception, which the accidents of life had from time to time forced upon
her, had proved such absolute failures as merely to warn her of the
uselessness of everything of the kind, even if it had occurred to her to
wish to deceive. Her courtesy was the courtesy of sincerity, and she had
none other to offer. Those whom she disliked, accordingly, pronounced
her rude, and it was fortunate that they were very few in number. Her
friends, on the contrary, and their name was legion, read, and knew that
they read, to the very bottom of her heart. Now, for the first time in
her life, she was distinctly conscious of a secret which it would be
misery and humiliation to divulge, but for the custody of which neither
nature nor art had supplied her with any effectual means. Silence was
the natural resource, but silence is sometimes more eloquent than
speech. Whether she spoke or whether she held her peace, Maud felt a
terrified conviction that she would betray herself, should it occur to
Sutton to pay the least attention to her state of mind.
'There,' Sutton said, pointing to a range of hills just visible in the
faint horizon, 'there is the Black Mountain, and there lies the pass
where we shall be marching in a day or two. It is such a grand, wild
place! I have been along it so often, but have never had leisure to
paint it. This time, however, I hope to get a sketch.'
'Tell me,' Maud said, 'the sort of expeditions these are, and what
happens, and what kind of danger you are all in.'
'I will tell you,' said her companion. 'They are hot, troublesome,
inglorious promenades, over country which lames a great many of our
horses and harasses our men. We burn some miserable huts, destroy a few
acres of mountain crops and drive off such cattle as the people have not
had time to drive away themselves, and, in fact, do all that soldiering
admits of in the absence of that most important ingredient of a
brilliant campaign, an enemy: _he_, unluckily, is invariably over the
hills and far away some hours previous to our arrival.'
Maud felt this account to be on the whole reassuring: 'How soon,' she
asked, 'will you come back again?'
'Before you have time to miss me,' said her companion; 'it is an affair
literally of days. Besides, Elysium, you will find, is all the
pleasanter for having its crowd of soldiers somewhat thinned.'
'It will not be the pleasanter to us,' said Maud, 'for your being gone.'
Her tone took Sutton greatly by surprise.
'You are having a happy time here, are you not?' he asked. 'It seems to
me a pleasant sort of life.'
'Yes,' said Maud, emphatically, 'the pleasantest, happiest I have ever
known. All life has been bright to me; but there are things in it that
hurt one, for all that.'
'Yes?' said Sutton, with a kind inquiry in his tones, for he had never
thought of Maud but as the pretty incarnation of enjoyment; 'well, tell
me the things which hurt you.'
'The things that have hurt me the most,' said Maud with a sudden impulse
of outspokenness, 'are partings. They grieve me, even though I know that
they are no real cause for grief. I minded leaving school and my dear
mistress more than I can tell, and yet I longed to go. I minded leaving
my friends on board ship, and yet I had only known them a month. I
minded leaving you at Dustypore when we came away, and now to-day I am
sad because you are leaving us.'
'That makes me sad too,' said Sutton, grieved, and yet not wholly
grieved, at each new phase of sentiment which the childish frankness of
his companion revealed to him; 'but, you know, we soldiers are for ever
on the move, and nobody is surprised or sad when we are ordered off. You
love Felicia, do you not?'
'Yes,' said Maud, seriously; 'I feel a sort of worship for her. Who
could be so sweet, noble and pure without being adored? But then she
makes me melancholy too sometimes, because she is so melancholy herself;
and, oh, how far above one! Could one ever hope to be half as good? She
fills me with love, but love with a sort of despair about it.'
Maud was highly wrought up and feeling strongly and painfully about
everything that formed her life. She was full of thoughts that
clamoured for expression; and Sutton, she knew not why, seemed the
natural and proper recipient; it was so easy almost to confess to him,
to trust him with thoughts, hopes, pangs, which instinct said the common
eye must never see; to claim from him a sort of gentle, chivalrous
protection which no one but he knew how to give.
'Felicia,' Sutton said, 'need fill no one with despair, rather with
hopefulness and courage about life. I have known her since she was a
child; we two, in fact--children of two sisters, whose marriages had
bound them closer in affection to each other--lived for years more as
brother and sister than anything else. I have watched her for years
gathering strength, calmness, and nobility from going nobly and calmly
through the troubles of the world. She seems to me, in the midst of all
that is vulgar and base in the world around her, like the Lady in Comus,
impervious to everything that could sully or degrade.'
'Ah!' said Maud, 'if one could only go through life in that way--but it
is so horribly unattainable. Everything is too difficult, and one is so
shamefully weak. I could never be calm or noble in a trouble, like
Felicia.'
'Wait till the troubles come,' said her companion kindly; 'you will find
how one rises to an emergency. Felicia would not be what she is but for
the trials she has borne. But see there is the guard, and here, alas!
our pleasant journey together ends. I must travel on alone.'
A few hundred yards below stood Sutton's first relay of horses, and here
they were to part. A trooper was waiting to escort Maud on her homeward
journey till she rejoined Felicia and the children.
'This,' Sutton said, 'has been a charming ride, though something of a
sad one. I shall like to remember it. See, you shall give me that sweet
rose you wear, and that shall be my badge in all tournaments to come. In
return I will give you something to keep for me. This locket, you know,
holds my mother's hair. I never part with it; but I have often thought
it a foolish risk to take it on such wild expeditions as this. This time
you shall take care of it for me, if you will.
Sutton gave her the locket with the grave, pathetic air which, to Maud's
eye, threw a sort of romance over his least important actions. He took
her hand and held it in his own, and it seemed as though some sacred
pledge were at the moment, with no spoken words, given and received.
Maud never afterwards forgot that little scene--the kind, gentle eyes,
the sorrowful furrowed brow, the tender solemn voice; in front the wide
mysterious plains, stretching far below, all the horizon still aglow
with the expiring glory of the sunset; behind her a cold blue darkening
world--the gathering vapours, no longer irradiated, settling in solid
masses on the solemn mountain-tops. As she came to a bend in the path
she turned to wish her companion a last farewell, for she knew that he
was watching her departure. Then she rode homewards through the gloom,
moved, agitated, frightened, yet on the whole happier--with a deeper
kind of happiness than she had ever known before.