It was at sunset that I stole through the ruined court-yard, having left
my chaise at the foot of the hill below. Though they whom I came to seek
knew that I had arrived in England, they did not, from my letter, expect
me till the next day. I had stolen a march upon them; and now, in spite
of all the impatience which had urged me thither, I was afraid to enter,
--afraid to see the change more than ten years had made in those forms for
which, in my memory, Time had stood still. And Roland had, even when we
parted, grown old before his time. Then my father was in the meridian of
life, now he had approached to the decline. And my mother, whom I
remembered so fair, as if the freshness of her own heart bad preserved
the soft bloom to the cheek,--I could not bear to think that she was no
longer young. Blanche, too, whom I had left a child,--Blanche, my
constant correspondent during those long years of exile, in letters
crossed and recrossed, with all the small details that make the eloquence
of letter-writing, so that in those epistles I had seen her mind
gradually grow up in harmony with the very characters, at first vague and
infantine, then somewhat stiff with the first graces of running-hand,
then dashing off free and facile; and for the last year before I left, so
formed yet so airy, so regular yet so unconscious of effort, though in
truth, as the calligraphy had become thus matured, I had been half vexed
and half pleased to perceive a certain reserve creeping over the style,--
wishes for my return less expressed from herself than as messages from
others, words of the old child-like familiarity repressed, and "Dearest
Sisty" abandoned for the cold form of "Dear Cousin." Those letters,
coming to me in a spot where maiden and love had been as myths of the
bygone, phantasms and eidola only vouchsafed to the visions of fancy, had
by little and little crept into secret corners of my heart; and out of
the wrecks of a former romance, solitude and revery had gone far to build
up the fairy domes of a romance yet to come. My mother's letters had
never omitted to make mention of Blanche,--of her forethought and tender
activity, of her warm heart and sweet temper,--and in many a little home
picture presented her image where I would fain have placed it, not
"crystal seeing," but joining my mother in charitable visits to the
village, instructing the young and tending on the old, or teaching
herself to illuminate, from an old missal in my father's collection, that
she might surprise my uncle with a new genealogical table, with all
shields and quarterings, blazoned or, sable, and argent; or flitting
round my father where he sat, and watching when he looked round for some
book he was too lazy to rise for. Blanche had made a new catalogue and
got it by heart, and knew at once from what corner of the Heraclea to
summon the ghost. On all these little traits had my mother been
eulogistically minute; but somehow or other she had never said, at least
for the last two years, whether Blanche was pretty or plain. That was a
sad omission. I had longed just to ask that simple question, or to imply
it delicately and diplomatically; but, I know not why, I never dared,--
for Blanche would have been sure to have read the letter; and what
business was it of mine? And if she was ugly, what question more awkward
both to put and to answer? Now, in childhood Blanche had just one of
those faces that might become very lovely in youth, and would yet quite
justify the suspicion that it might become gryphonesque, witch-like, and
grim. Yes, Blanche, it is perfectly true! If those large, serious black
eyes took a fierce light instead of a tender; if that nose, which seemed
then undecided whether to be straight or to be aquiline, arched off in
the latter direction, and assumed the martial, Roman, and imperative
character of Roland's manly proboscis; if that face, in childhood too
thin, left the blushes of youth to take refuge on two salient peaks by
the temples (Cumberland air, too, is famous for the growth of the
cheekbone!),--if all that should happen, and it very well might, then, O
Blanche, I wish thou hadst never written me those letters; and I might
have done wiser things than steel my heart so obdurately to pretty Ellen
Bolding's blue eyes and silk shoes. Now, combining together all these
doubts and apprehensions, wonder not, O reader, why I stole so stealthily
through the ruined court-yard, crept round to the other side of the
tower, gazed wistfully on the sun setting slant, on the high casements of
the hall (too high, alas! to look within), and shrank yet to enter,--
doing battle, as it were, with my heart.
Steps--one's sense of hearing grows so quick in the Bushland!--steps,
though as light as ever brushed the dew from the harebell! I crept under
the shadow of the huge buttress mantled with ivy. A form comes from the
little door at an angle in the ruins,--a woman's form. Is it my mother?
It is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds round the
building, it turns to look back, and a sweet voice--a voice strange, yet
familiar--calls, tender but chiding, to a truant that lags behind. Poor
Juba! he is trailing his long ears on the ground; he is evidently much
disturbed in his mind: now he stands still, his nose in the air. Poor
Juba! I left thee so slim and so nimble,--
"Thy form, that was fashioned as light as a fay's,
Has assumed a proportion more round;"
years have sobered thee strangely, and made thee obese and Primmins-like.
They have taken too good care of thy creature-comforts, O sensual
Mauritanian! Still, in that mystic intelligence we call instinct thou
art chasing something that years have not swept from thy memory. Thou
art deaf to thy lady's voice, however tender and chiding. That's right!
Come near,--nearer,--my cousin Blanche; let me have a fair look at thee.
Plague take the dog! he flies off from her; he has found the scent; he is
making up to the buttress! Now--pounce--he is caught, whining ungallant
discontent! Shall I not yet see the face? It is buried in Juba's black
curls! Kisses too! Wicked Blanche, to waste on a dumb animal what, I
heartily hope, many a good Christian would be exceedingly glad of! Juba
struggles in vain, and is borne off! I don't think that those eyes can
have taken the fierce turn, and Roland's eagle nose can never go with
that voice, which has the coo of the dove.
I leave my hiding-place and steal after the Voice and its owner. Where
can she be going? Not far. She springs up the hill whereon the lords of
the castle once administered justice,--that hill which commands the land
far and wide, and from which can be last caught the glimpse of the
westering sun. How gracefully still is that attitude of wistful repose!
Into what delicate curves do form and drapery harmoniously flow! How
softly distinct stands the lithe image against the purple hues of the
sky! Then again comes the sweet voice, gay and carolling as a bird's,--
now in snatches of song, now in playful appeals to that dull four-footed
friend. She is telling him something that must make the black ears stand
on end, for I just catch the words, "He is coming," and "home."
I cannot see the sun set where I lurk in my ambush amidst the brake and
the ruins, but I feel that the orb has passed from the landscape, in the
fresher air of the twilight, in the deeper silence of eve. Lo! Hesper
comes forth; at his signal, star after star, come the hosts,--
"Ch' eran con lui, quando l' amor divino,
Mosse da prima quelle cose belle!"
And the sweet voice is hushed.
Then slowly the watcher descends the hill on the opposite side; the form
escapes from my view. What charm has gone from the twilight? See,
again, where the step steals through the ruins and along the desolate
court. Ah! deep and true heart, do I divine the remembrance that leads
thee? I pass through the wicket, down the dell, skirt the laurels, and
behold the face looking up to the stars,--the face which had nestled to
my breast in the sorrow of parting years, long years ago; on the grave
where we had sat,--I the boy, thou the infant,--there, O Blanche, is thy
fair face, fairer than the fondest dream that had gladdened my exile,
vouchsafed to my gaze!
"Blanche, my cousin! again, again,--soul with soul, amidst the dead!
Look up, Blanche; it is I."