Very late I slept, and before I had finished dressing, Starwood came
for me. Seraphael had been down some time, he told me. I was very
sorry, but relieved to discover how much more of his old bright self
he wore than on the previous evening.
"Now, Carlomein," he began immediately, "we are going on a pilgrimage
directly after breakfast."
I could tell he was excited, for he ate nothing, and was every moment
at the window. To Starwood his abstinence seemed a matter of course; I
was afraid, indeed, that it was no new thing. I could not remonstrate,
however, having done quite enough in that line for the present. It was
not half-past ten when we found ourselves in an open carriage, into
which the Chevalier sprang last, and in springing said to me: "Give
your own orders, Carlomein." I was for an instant lost, but recovered
myself quite in time to direct, before we drove from the hotel, to the
exact locality of Clara's cottage, unknowing whether I did well or
ill, but determined to direct to no other place. As we passed from
London and met the breeze from fields and gardens, miles and miles of
flower-land, I could observe a clearing of Seraphael's countenance:
its wan shadow melted, he seemed actually abandoned to enjoyment;
though he was certainly in his silent mood, and only called out for my
sympathy by his impressive glances as he stood up in the carriage with
his hat off and swaying to and fro. And when we reached, after a
rapid, exhilarating drive, the winding road with its summer trees in
youngest leaf, he only began to speak,--he had not before spoken.
"How refreshing!" he exclaimed, "and what a lovely shade! I will
surely not go on a step farther, but remain here and make my bed. It
will be very unfortunate for me if all those pretty houses that I see
are full, and how can we get at them?"
"I am nearly sure, sir, that you can live here if you like, or close
upon this place; but if you will allow me, I will go on first and
announce your arrival to a friend of mine, who will be rather
surprised at our all coming together, though she would be more happy
than I could express for her to welcome you at her house."
"It is, then, _that_ I was brought to see,--a friend of thine; thou
hast not the assurance to tell me that any friend of thine will be
glad to welcome another! But go, Carlomein,"--and he opened the
carriage-door,--"go and get over thy meeting first; we will give thee
time. Oh, Carlomein! I little thought what a man thou hadst grown when
I saw thee so tall! Get out, and go quickly; I would not keep thee now
for all the cedars of Lebanon!"
I could tell his mood now very accurately, but it made no difference;
I knew what I was about, or I thought I knew, and did not remain to
answer. I ran along the road, I turned the corner; the white gate
shone upon me, and again I stopped to breathe. More roses, more
narcissus lambent as lilies, more sweetness, and still more rest! The
grass had been cut that morning, and lay in its little heaps all over
the sunny lawn. The gravel was warm to my feet as I walked to the
door, and long before the door was opened I heard a voice.
So ardent did my desire expand to identify it with its owner that I
begged the servant not to announce me, nor to disturb Miss Benette if
singing. Thoné took the cue, gave me a kind of smile, and preceded me
with a noiseless march to the very back parlor; I advanced on tiptoe
and crouching forwards. Laura, too, was there, sitting at the table.
She neither read nor worked, nor had anything in her hands; but with
more tact than I should have expected from her, only bowed, and did
not move her lips. In the morning light my angel sat, and her notes,
full orbed and star-like, descended upon my brain. Few notes I
heard,--she was just concluding,--the strain ebbed as the memory of a
kiss itself dissolving; but I heard enough to know that her voice was,
indeed, the realization of all her ideal promise. I addressed her as
she arose, and told her, in very few words, my errand. She was
perturbless as usual, and only looked enchanted, the enchantment
betraying itself in the eye, not in any tremble or the faintest flush.
"Do bring them, sir," she said; "and as you say this gentleman has
eaten nothing, I will try what I can do to make him eat. It is so
important that I wonder you could allow him to come out until he had
breakfasted,"--for I had told her of his impatience; "afterwards, if
he likes, he can go to see the houses. There are several, I do
believe, if they have not been taken since yesterday."
I went back to the carriage, and it was brought on to the gate, I
walking beside it. Thoné was waiting, and held it open,--the sweet hay
scented every breath.
"Oh, how delicious!" said Seraphael, as he alighted, standing still
and looking around.
The meadows, the hedges, the secluded ways first attracted him; and
then the garden, which I thought he would never have overpassed, then
the porch, in which he stood.
"And this is England!" he exclaimed; "it is strange how unlike it is
to that wild dream-country I went to when last I came to London. This
is more like heaven,--quiet and full of life!"
These words recalled me to Clara. He had put his head into the very
midst of those roses that showered over the porch.
"Oh! I must gather one rose of all these,--there are so many; she will
never miss it." And then he laughed. A soft, soft echo of his laugh
was heard,--it startled me by its softness, it was so like an
infant's. I looked over my shoulder, and there, in the shadow of the
hall, I beheld her, her very self. It was she, indeed, who laughed,
and her eye yet smiled. Without waiting for my introduction, she
courtesied with a profound but easy air, and while, to match this
singular greeting, Seraphael made his regal bow, she said, looking at
him,--
"You shall have all the roses, sir, and all my flowers, if you will
let my servant gather them; for I believe you might prick your
fingers, there being also thorns. But while Thoné is at that work,
perhaps you will like to walk in out of the sun, which is too hot for
you, I am sure." She led us to the parlor where she had been singing,
the piano still stood open.
"But," said Seraphael, taking the first chair as if it were his own,
"we disturb you! What were you doing, you and Carl? I ask his
pardon,--Mr. Auchester."
"We two did nothing, sir; I was only singing. But that can very well
be put off till after breakfast, which will be ready in a few
minutes."
"Breakfast?" I thought, but Clara's face told no tales,--her
loveliness was unruffled. The clear blue eye, the divine mouth, were
evidently studies for Seraphael; he sat and watched her eagerly, even
while he answered her.
"You look as if you had had breakfast."
"Indeed, I am very hungry, and so is my friend Mr. Auchester."
"He always looks so, Mademoiselle!" replied the Chevalier, mirthfully,
"but I do really think he might be elegant enough to tell me your
name: he has forgotten to do so in his embarrassment. I cannot guess
whether it be English, French, or German,--Italian, Greek, or Hebrew."
"I am called Clara Benette, sir; that is my name."
"It is not Benette,--La Benetta benedetta! Carlomein, why hast thou so
forgotten? Allow me to congratulate you, Mademoiselle, on possessing
the right to be so named. And for this do I give you joy,--that not
for your gifts it has been bestowed, nor for that genius which is
alone of the possessor, but for that goodness which I now experience,
and feel to have been truly ascribed to you."
He stood to her and held out his hand; calmly she gave hers to it, and
gravely smiled.
"Sir, I thank you the more because I _know_ your name. I hope you will
excuse me for keeping you so long without your breakfast."
He laughed again, and again sat down; but his manner, though of that
playful courtliness, was quite drawn out to her. He scarcely looked at
Laura; I did not even believe that he was aware of her presence, nor
was _I_ aware of the power of his own upon her. After ten minutes
Thoné entered and went up to Clara. She motioned to us all then, and
we arose; but as she looked at Seraphael first, he took her out and
into the dining-room. The table was snowed with damask; flowers were
heaped up in the centre,--a bowl of honeysuckles and heartsease; the
dishes here were white bread, brown bread, golden butter, new-laid
eggs in a nest of moss, the freshest cream, the earliest strawberries;
and before the chair which Clara took, stood a silver chocolate-jug
foaming, and coffee above a day-pale spirit-lamp. On the sideboard
were garnished meat, and poultry already carved, the decanters, and
still more flowers; it was a feast raised as if by magic, and
unutterably tempting at that hour of the day. Clara asked no questions
of her chief guest, but pouring out both chocolate and coffee, offered
them both; he accepted the former, nor refused the wing of a chicken
which Thoné brought, nor the bread which Clara asked me to cut. I was
perfectly astounded; she had helped herself also, and was eating so
quietly, after administering her delicious cups all round, that no one
thought of speaking. At last Starwood, by one of those unfortunate
chances that befall timid people, spoke, and instantly turned scarlet,
dropping his eyes forthwith, though he only said, "I never saw the
Chevalier eat so much." Clara answered, with her fork in her dimpled
hand, "That is because you gentlemen have had a long drive; it always
raises the appetite to come out of London into the country. You cannot
eat too much here."
"Do you think I shall find a house that will hold me and my younger
son," said Seraphael presently, pointing at Starwood his slight
finger, "and a servant or two?"
"If you like to send my servant, sir, she will find out for you."
"No, perhaps you will not dislike to drive a little way with us. I
know Carl will be so glad!"
"We shall be most pleased, sir," she answered, quite quietly, though
there was that in his expression which might easily have fluttered
her. I could not at all account for this eflish mood, though I had
been witness to freaks and fantasies in my boy days. Never had I seen
his presence affect any one so little as Clara. Had she not been of a
loveliness so peculiarly genial, I should have called her cold; as it
was, I felt he had never made himself more at home with any one in my
sight. While, having graciously deferred to her the proposal for an
instant search, he sauntered out into the little front garden, she
went for her bonnet, and came down in it,--a white straw, with a
white-satin ribbon and lining, and a little white veil of her own
work, as I could tell directly I caught her face through its wavering
and web-like tracery. Seraphael placed her in the carriage, and then
looked back.
"Oh, Laura--that is, Miss Lemark--is not coming," observed Miss
Benette; this did not strike me except as a rather agreeable
arrangement, and off we drove. Fritz, Seraphael's own man, was on the
box,--a perfect German, of very reserved deportment, who, however, one
could see, would have allowed Seraphael to walk upon him. His heavy
demonstrations about situations and suitabilities made even Clara
laugh, as they were met by Seraphael's wayward answers and skittish
sallies. We had a very long round, and then went back to dinner with
our lady; but Seraphael, by the time the moon had risen, fell into
May-evening ecstasies with a very old-fashioned tenement built of
black wood and girded by a quickset hedge, because it suddenly, in the
silver shine, reminded him of his own house in Germany, as he said. It
was so near the cottage that two persons might even whisper together
over the low and moss-greened garden-wall.
The invitation of Miss Lawrence I could not forget, even through the
intenser fascination spread about me. I returned with Seraphael to
town again, and again to the country; he having thither removed his
whole effects,--so important, though of so slight bulk, they
consisting almost entirely of scored and other compositions, which
were safely deposited in a little empty room of the rambling house he
had chosen. This room he and Starwood and I soon made fit to be seen
and inhabited, by our distribution of all odd furniture over it, and
all the conveniences of the story. Three large country scented
bed-rooms, with beds big enough for three chevaliers in each, and two
drawing-rooms, were all that we cared for besides. Seraphael was only
like a child that night that is preparing for a whole holiday: he
wandered from room to room; he shut himself into pantry, wine-cellar,
and china-closet; he danced like a day-beam through the low-ceiled
sitting-chambers, and almost threw himself into the garden when he saw
it out of the window. It was the wildest place,--the walks all sown
with grass, an orchard on a bank all moss, forests of fruit-trees and
moss-rose bushes, and the great white lilies in ranks all round the
close-fringed lawn; all old-fashioned flowers in their favorite soils,
a fountain and a grotto, and no end of weeping-ashes, arbors bent from
willows, and arcades of nut and filbert trees. The back of the house
was veiled with a spreading vine--too luxuriant--that shut out all but
fresh green light from the upper bed-rooms; but Seraphael would not
have a spray cut off, nor did he express the slightest dissatisfaction
at being overlooked by the chimneys and roof-hung windows of Clara's
little cottage, which peeped above the hedge. The late inhabitant and
present owner of the house, an eccentric gentlewoman who abjured all
innovation, had desired that no change should pass upon her tenement
during her absence for a sea-side summer; even the enormous mastiff,
chained in the yard to his own house, was to remain barking or baying
as he listed; and we were rather alarmed, Starwood and I, to discover
that Seraphael had let him loose, in spite of the warnings of the
housekeeper, who rustled her scant black-silk skirts against the
doorstep in anger and in dread. I was about to make some slight
movement in deprecation, for the dog was fiercely strong and of a
tremendous expression indeed, but he only lay down before the
Chevalier and licked the leather of his boots, afterwards following
him over the whole place until darkness came, when he howled on being
tied up again until Seraphael carried him a bone from our
supper-table. Our gentle master retired to rest, and his candle-flame
was lost in the moonlight long before I could bring myself to go to
bed. I can never describe the satisfaction, if not the calm, of lying
between two poles of such excitement as the cottage and that haunted
mansion.