ONE MORE SACRIFICE.
Letitia Arundel kept her word, and came very often to Kemberling
Retreat; sometimes on horseback, sometimes in a little pony-carriage;
sometimes accompanied by Belinda Lawford, sometimes accompanied by a
younger sister of Belinda's, as chestnut-haired and blue-eyed as
Belinda herself, but at the school-room and bread-and-butter period of
life, and not particularly interesting. Major Lawford came one day with
his daughter and her friend, and Edward and the half-pay officer walked
together up and down the grass-plat, smoking and talking of the Indian
war, while the two girls roamed about the garden amidst the roses and
butterflies, tearing the skirts of their riding-habits every now and
then amongst the briers and gooseberry-bushes. It was scarcely strange
after this visit that Edward Arundel should consent to accept Major
Lawford's invitation to name a day for dining at the Grange; he could
not, with a very good grace, have refused. And yet--and yet--it seemed
to him almost a treason against his lost love, his poor pensive
Mary,--whose face, with the very look it had worn upon that last day,
was ever present with him,--to mix with happy people who had never
known sorrow. But he went to the Grange nevertheless, and grew more and
more friendly with the Major, and walked in the gardens--which were
very large and old-fashioned, but most beautifully kept--with his
sister and Belinda Lawford; with Belinda Lawford, who knew his story
and was sorry for him. He always remembered _that_ as he looked at her
bright face, whose varying expression gave perpetual evidence of a
compassionate and sympathetic nature.
"If my poor darling had had this girl for a friend," he thought
sometimes, "how much happier she might have been!"
I dare say there have been many lovelier women in this world than
Belinda Lawford; many women whose faces, considered artistically, came
nearer perfection; many noses more exquisitely chiselled, and scores of
mouths bearing a closer affinity to Cupid's bow; but I doubt if any
face was ever more pleasant to look upon than the face of this blooming
English maiden. She had a beauty that is sometimes wanting in perfect
faces, and, lacking which, the most splendid loveliness will pall at
last upon eyes that have grown weary of admiring; she had a charm for
want of which the most rigidly classical profiles, the most exquisitely
statuesque faces, have seemed colder and harder than the marble it was
their highest merit to resemble. She had the beauty of goodness, and to
admire her was to do homage to the purest and brightest attributes of
womanhood. It was not only that her pretty little nose was straight and
well-shaped, that her lips were rosy red, that her eyes were bluer than
the summer heavens, and her chestnut hair tinged with the golden light
of a setting sun; above and beyond such commonplace beauties as these,
the beauties of tenderness, truth, faith, earnestness, hope and
charity, were enthroned upon her broad white brow, and crowned her
queen by right divine of womanly perfection. A loving and devoted
daughter, an affectionate sister, a true and faithful friend, an
untiring benefactress to the poor, a gentle mistress, a well-bred
Christian lady; in every duty and in every position she bore out and
sustained the impression which her beauty made on the minds of those
who looked upon her. She was only nineteen years of age, and no sorrow
had ever altered the brightness of her nature. She lived a happy life
with a father who was proud of her, and with a mother who resembled her
in almost every attribute. She led a happy but a busy life, and did her
duty to the poor about her as scrupulously as even Olivia had done in
the old days at Swampington Rectory; but in such a genial and cheerful
spirit as to win, not cold thankfulness, but heartfelt love and
devotion from all who partook of her benefits.
Upon the Egyptian darkness of Edward Arundel's life this girl arose as
a star, and by-and-by all the horizon brightened under her influence.
The soldier had been very little in the society of women. His mother,
his sister Letitia, his cousin Olivia, and John Marchmont's gentle
daughter were the only women whom he had ever known in the familiar
freedom of domestic intercourse; and he trusted himself in the presence
of this beautiful and noble-minded girl in utter ignorance of any
danger to his own peace of mind. He suffered himself to be happy at
Lawford Grange; and in those quiet hours which he spent there he put
away his old life, and forgot the stern purpose that alone held him a
prisoner in England.
But when he went back to his lonely dwelling-place, he reproached
himself bitterly for that which he considered a treason against his
love.
"What right have I to be happy amongst these people?" he thought; "what
right have I to take life easily, even for an hour, while my darling
lies in her unhallowed grave, and the man who drove her to her death
remains unpunished? I will never go to Lawford Grange again."
It seemed, however, as if everybody, except Belinda, was in a plot
against this idle soldier; for sometimes Letitia coaxed him to ride
back with her after one of her visits to Kemberling Retreat, and very
often the Major himself insisted, in a hearty military fashion, upon
the young man's taking the empty seat in his dog-cart, to be driven
over to the Grange. Edward Arundel had never once mentioned Mary's name
to any member of this hospitable and friendly family. They were very
good to him, and were prepared, he knew, to sympathise with him; but he
could not bring himself to talk of his lost wife. The thought of that
rash and desperate act which had ended her short life was too cruel to
him. He would not speak of her, because he would have had to plead
excuses for that one guilty act; and her image to him was so stainless
and pure, that he could not bear to plead for her as for a sinner who
had need of men's pity, rather than a claim to their reverence.
"Her life had been so sinless," he cried sometimes; "and to think that
it should have ended in sin! If I could forgive Paul Marchmont for all
the rest--if I could forgive him for my loss of her, I would never
forgive him for that."
The young widower kept silence, therefore, upon the subject which
occupied so large a share of his thoughts, which was every day and
every night the theme of his most earnest prayers; and Mary's name was
never spoken in his presence at Lawford Grange.
But in Edward Arundel's absence the two girls sometimes talked of the
sad story.
"Do you really think, Letitia, that your brother's wife committed
suicide?" Belinda asked her friend.
"Oh, as for that, there can't be any doubt about it, dear," answered
Miss Arundel, who was of a lively, not to say a flippant, disposition,
and had no very great reverence for solemn things; "the poor dear
creature drowned herself. I think she must have been a little wrong in
her head. I don't say so to Edward, you know; at least, I did say so
once when he was at Dangerfield, and he flew into an awful passion, and
called me hard-hearted and cruel, and all sorts of shocking things; so,
of course, I have never said so since. But really, the poor dear
thing's goings-on were so eccentric: first she ran away from her
stepmother and went and hid herself in a horrid lodging; and then she
married Edward at a nasty church in Lambeth, without so much as a
wedding-dress, or a creature to give her away, or a cake, or cards, or
anything Christian-like; and then she ran away again; and as her father
had been a super--what's its name?--a man who carries banners in
pantomimes, and all that--I dare say she'd seen Mr. Macready as Hamlet,
and had Ophelia's death in her head when she ran down to the river-side
and drowned herself. I'm sure it's a very sad story; and, of course,
I'm awfully sorry for Edward."
The young lady said no more than this; but Belinda brooded over the
story of that early marriage,--the stolen honeymoon, the sudden
parting. How dearly they must have loved each other, the young bride
and bridegroom, absorbed in their own happiness, and forgetful of all
the outer world! She pictured Edward Arundel's face as it must have
been before care and sorrow had blotted out the brightest attribute of
his beauty. She thought of him, and pitied him, with such tender
sympathy, that by-and-by the thought of this young man's sorrow seemed
to shut almost every idea out of her mind. She went about all her
duties still, cheerfully and pleasantly, as it was her nature to do
everything; but the zest with which she had performed every loving
office--every act of sweet benevolence, seemed lost to her now.
Remember that she was a simple country damsel, leading a quiet life,
whose peaceful course was almost as calm and eventless as the existence
of a cloister; a life so quiet that a decently-written romance from the
Swampington book-club was a thing to be looked forward to with
impatience, to read with breathless excitement, and to brood upon
afterwards for months. Was it strange, then, that this romance in real
life--this sweet story of love and devotion, with its sad climax,--this
story, the scene of which lay within a few miles of her home, the hero
of which was her father's constant guest,--was it strange that this
story, whose saddest charm was its truth, should make a strong
impression upon the mind of an innocent and unworldly woman, and that
day by day and hour by hour she should, all unconsciously to herself,
feel a stronger interest in the hero of the tale?
She was interested in him. Alas! the truth must be set down, even if it
has to be in the plain old commonplace words. _She fell in love with
him_. But love in this innocent and womanly nature was so different a
sentiment to that which had raged in Olivia's stormy breast, that even
she who felt it was unconscious of its gradual birth. It was not "an
Adam at its birth," by-the-by. It did not leap, Minerva-like, from the
brain; for I believe that love is born of the brain oftener than of the
heart, being a strange compound of ideality, benevolence, and
veneration. It came rather like the gradual dawning of a summer's
day,--first a little patch of light far away in the east, very faint
and feeble; then a slow widening of the rosy brightness; and at last a
great blaze of splendour over all the width of the vast heavens. And
then Miss Lawford grew more reserved in her intercourse with her
friend's brother. Her frank good-nature gave place to a timid,
shrinking bashfulness, that made her ten times more fascinating than
she had been before. She was so very young, and had mixed so little
with the world, that she had yet to learn the comedy of life. She had
yet to learn to smile when she was sorry, or to look sorrowful when she
was pleased, as prudence might dictate--to blush at will, or to grow
pale when it was politic to sport the lily tint. She was a natural,
artless, spontaneous creature; and she was utterly powerless to conceal
her emotions, or to pretend a sentiment she did not feel. She blushed
rosy red when Edward Arundel spoke to her suddenly. She betrayed
herself by a hundred signs; mutely confessing her love almost as
artlessly as Mary had revealed her affection a twelvemonth before. But
if Edward saw this, he gave no sign of having made the discovery. His
voice, perhaps, grew a little lower and softer in its tone when he
spoke to Belinda; but there was a sad cadence in that low voice, which
was too mournful for the accent of a lover. Sometimes, when his eyes
rested for a moment on the girl's blushing face, a shadow would darken
his own, and a faint quiver of emotion stir his lower lip; but it is
impossible to say what this emotion may have been. Belinda hoped
nothing, expected nothing. I repeat, that she was unconscious of the
nature of her own feeling; and she had never for a moment thought of
Edward otherwise than as a man who would go to his grave faithful to
that sad love-story which had blighted the promise of his youth. She
never thought of him otherwise than as Mary's constant mourner; she
never hoped that time would alter his feelings or wear out his
constancy; yet she loved him, notwithstanding.
All through July and August the young man visited at the Grange, and at
the beginning of September Letitia Arundel went back to Dangerfield.
But even then Edward was still a frequent guest at Major Lawford's; for
his enthusiasm upon all military matters had made him a favourite with
the old officer. But towards the end of September Mr. Arundel's visits
suddenly were restricted to an occasional call upon the Major; he left
off dining at the Grange; his evening rambles in the gardens with Mrs.
Lawford and her blooming daughters--Belinda had no less than four
blue-eyed sisters, all more or less resembling herself--ceased
altogether, to the wonderment of every one in the old-fashioned
country-house.
Edward Arundel shut out the new light which had dawned upon his life,
and withdrew into the darkness. He went back to the stagnant monotony,
the hopeless despondency, the bitter regret of his old existence.
"While my sister was at the Grange, I had an excuse for going there,"
he said to himself sternly. "I have no excuse now."
But the old monotonous life was somehow or other a great deal more
difficult to bear than it had been before. Nothing seemed to interest
the young man now. Even the records of Indian victories were "flat,
stale, and unprofitable." He wondered as he remembered with what eager
impatience he had once pined for the coming of the newspapers, with
what frantic haste he had devoured every syllable of the Indian news.
All his old feelings seemed to have gone away, leaving nothing in his
mind but a blank waste, a weary sickness of life and all belonging to
it. Leaving nothing else--positively nothing? "No!" he answered, in
reply to these mute questionings of his own spirit,--"no," he repeated
doggedly, "nothing."
It was strange to find what a blank was left in his life by reason of
his abandonment of the Grange. It seemed as if he had suddenly retired
from an existence full of pleasure and delight into the gloomy solitude
of La Trappe. And yet what was it that he had lost, after all? A quiet
dinner at a country-house, and an evening spent half in the leafy
silence of an old-fashioned garden, half in a pleasant drawing-room
amongst a group of well-bred girls, and only enlivened by simple
English ballads, or pensive melodies by Mendelssohn. It was not much to
forego, surely. And yet Edward Arundel felt, in sacrificing these new
acquaintances at the Grange to the stern purpose of his life, almost as
if he had resigned a second captaincy for Mary's sake.