YET once more, O ye laurels! and once more,
Ye myrtles!--LYCIDAS.
WHILE Maltravers was yet agitated and excited by the disclosures of the
curate, to whom, as a matter of course, he had divulged his own identity
with the mysterious Butler, Aubrey, turning his eyes to the casement, saw
the form of Lady Vargrave slowly approaching towards the house.
"Will you withdraw to the inner room?" said he; "she is coming; you are
not yet prepared to meet her!--nay, would it be well?"
"Yes, yes; I am prepared. We must be alone. I will await her here."
"But--"
"Nay, I implore you!"
The curate, without another word, retired into the inner apartment, and
Maltravers sinking in a chair breathlessly awaited the entrance of Lady
Vargrave. He soon heard the light step without; the door, which opened
at once on the old-fashioned parlour, was gently unclosed, and Lady
Vargrave was in the room! In the position he had taken, only the outline
of Ernest's form was seen by Alice, and the daylight came dim through the
cottage casement; and seeing some one seated in the curate's accustomed
chair, she could but believe that it was Aubrey himself.
"Do not let me interrupt you," said that sweet, low voice, whose music
had been dumb for so many years to Maltravers, "but I have a letter from
France, from a stranger. It alarms me so; it is about Evelyn;" and, as
if to imply that she meditated a longer visit than ordinary, Lady
Vargrave removed her bonnet, and placed it on the table. Surprised that
the curate had not answered, had not come forward to welcome her, she
then approached; Maltravers rose, and they stood before each other face
to face. And how lovely still was Alice! lovelier he thought even than
of old! And those eyes, so divinely blue, so dovelike and soft, yet
with some spiritual and unfathomable mystery in their clear depth, were
once more fixed upon him. Alice seemed turned to stone; she moved not,
she spoke not, she scarcely breathed; she gazed spellbound, as if her
senses--as if life itself--had deserted her.
"Alice!" murmured Maltravers,--"Alice, we meet at last!"
His voice restored memory, consciousness, youth, at once to her! She
uttered a loud cry of unspeakable joy, of rapture! She sprang
forward--reserve, fear, time, change, all forgotten; she threw herself
into his arms, she clasped him to her heart again and again!--the
faithful dog that has found its master expresses not his transport more
uncontrollably, more wildly. It was something fearful--the excess of her
ecstasy! She kissed his hands, his clothes; she laughed, she wept; and
at last, as words came, she laid her head on his breast, and said
passionately, "I have been true to thee! I have been true to thee!--or
this hour would have killed me!" Then, as if alarmed by his silence, she
looked up into his face, and as his burning tears fell upon her cheek,
she said again and with more hurried vehemence, "I _have_ been
faithful,--do you not believe me?"
"I do, I do, noble, unequalled Alice! Why, why were you so long lost to
me? Why now does your love so shame my own?"
At these words, Alice appeared to awaken from her first oblivion of all
that had chanced since they met; she blushed deeply, and drew herself
gently and bashfully from his embrace. "Ah," she said, in altered and
humbled accents, "you have loved another! Perhaps you have no love left
for me! Is it so; is it? No, no; those eyes--you love me--you love me
still!"
And again she clung to him, as if it were heaven to believe all things,
and death to doubt. Then, after a pause, she drew him gently with both
her hands towards the light, and gazed upon him fondly, proudly, as if to
trace, line by line, and feature by feature, the countenance which had
been to her sweet thoughts as the sunlight to the flowers. "Changed,
changed," she muttered; "but still the same,--still beautiful, still
divine!" She stopped. A sudden thought struck her: his garments were
worn and soiled by travel, and that princely crest, fallen and dejected,
no longer towered in proud defiance above the sons of men. "You are not
rich," she exclaimed eagerly,--"say you are not rich! I am rich enough
for both; it is all yours,--all yours; I did not betray you for it; there
is no shame in it. Oh, we shall be so happy! Thou art come back to thy
poor Alice! thou knowest how she loved thee!"
There was in Alice's manner, her wild joy, something so different from
her ordinary self, that none who could have seen her--quiet, pensive,
subdued--would have fancied her the same being. All that Society and its
woes had taught were gone; and Nature once more claimed her fairest
child. The very years seemed to have fallen from her brow, and she
looked scarcely older than when she had stood with him beneath the
moonlight by the violet banks far away. Suddenly, her colour faded; the
smile passed from the dimpled lips; a sad and solemn aspect succeeded to
that expression of passionate joy. "Come," she said, in a whisper,
"come, follow;" and still clasping his hand, she drew him to the door.
Silent and wonderingly he followed her across the lawn, through the
moss-grown gate, and into the lonely burial-ground. She moved on with a
noiseless and gliding step,--so pale, so hushed, so breathless, that even
in the noonday you might have half fancied the fair shape was not owned
by earth. She paused where the yew-tree cast its gloomy shadow; and the
small and tombless mound, separated from the rest, was before them. She
pointed to it, and falling on her knees beside it, murmured, "Hush, it
sleeps below,--thy child!" She covered her face with both her hands, and
her form shook convulsively.
Beside that form and before that grave knelt Maltravers. There vanished
the last remnant of his stoic pride; and there--Evelyn herself
forgotten--there did he pray to Heaven for pardon to himself, and
blessings on the heart he had betrayed. There solemnly did he vow, the
remainder of his years, to guard from all future ill the faithful and
childless mother.