THE LOVES OF THE ANGELS.
While these events were going on at the Castle, Lord Stanton, for his
part, had come to a standstill in the matter which he had been drawn
into so inadvertently, and which had become so very serious an
occupation in his life. He was young, and unacquainted with the ways of
the world, and he did not know what step to take next. And he too was
paralyzed by the sudden catastrophe which had happened to the Squire.
Was it his fault? He could scarcely help an uneasy sense that by
agitating him unduly he had helped to bring on the sudden attack, and
thus he had left the Castle that evening with a heavy burden on his
mind. And Geoff, with entire unconsciousness of the lingering pangs of
life and the tenacity of the human frame, believed, without any doubt,
that Mr. Musgrave would die, and did not know what was to be done about
the exile, whose condition would thus be completely changed. In the
mean time it seemed to him necessary to wait until the issue of this
illness should be known. Thus his doubtfulness was supplanted by an
apparent necessity, and the time went on with nothing done.
He went at first daily to inquire for the old man, and never failed to
see Lilias somewhere waiting for him with serious, intent face, and eyes
which questioned even when the lips did not speak. Lilias did not say
much at any time. She examined his face with her eyes and said “Papa?”
with a voice which trembled; but it became by degrees less easy to
satisfy Lilias by telling her, as he did so often, that he had not
forgotten, that he was doing everything that could be done, smoothing
the way for her father’s return, or waiting till he could more
successfully smooth the way. “You do not believe me, Lily,” Geoff said,
with a sense of being doubted, which hurt him sadly. “Yes; but he is not
your papa, Mr. Geoff, and you are grown up and don’t want any one,”
Lilias said, with her lip quivering. The visionary child was deeply cast
down by the condition of the house and the recollection of the
melancholy rigid figure which she had seen carried past, with a pang of
indescribable pain and terror. Lilias seemed to see him lying in his
room, where Mary now spent almost all her time, pale with that deadly
ashen paleness, his faded eyes half open, his helpless hands lying like
bits of rag, all the grey fingers huddled together. Fright and sorrow
together brought a sob out of her heart whenever she thought of this;
not moving, not able to speak, or turn round, or look up at those who
watched him; and still not dead! Lilias felt her heart stand still as
she thought of her grandfather. And she had no one to take refuge with.
Martuccia was frightened too, and would not go up or down stairs alone.
Lilias, for her part, did all she could, out of pride, and shame of her
own weakness, to conceal her terror; but oh, to have papa nigh to creep
close to, to feel safe because he was there! A few tears dropped from
her eyes. “You are grown up and you don’t want any one.” This went to
Geoff’s heart.
“Oh Lily, don’t you think they would let you come to my mother?” he
cried; “this is too sad for you, this dismal house; and if Nello goes
away as you said----”
“Do you think I would go and leave Mary all alone? Nobody is sorry for
Mary except me--and Mr. Pen. When she comes out of her room I go and I
kiss her hand, and she cries. She would be more ill and more weary,”
said Lilias, with a precocious understanding, “if there was not some
little thing to give her an excuse and make her cry.”
“My little Lily! who taught you all that? it must have been the angels,”
cried Geoff, kissing in his turn the little hand.
But this touch had the same effect upon Lilias that her own kiss had on
Mary. She cried and sobbed and did her best to swallow it down. “Oh Mr.
Geoff! I want papa!” she cried, with that little convulsive break in her
voice which is so pitiful in a child. She was seated on Mary’s chair at
the door of the hall, and he on the threshold at her feet. Geoff did not
know what kind of half-admiring, half-pitying sentiment he had for this
child. He could not admire her enough, or wonder at her. She was but a
child, not equal to him in his young manhood; and yet that very
childhood in its unconsciousness was worlds above him, he thought. He
felt like the man in the story who loved the fairy maiden--the young
Immortal; would she give up her visionary paradise for his sake and
learn to look at him, not as an angel but as a woman? but for that she
must be a woman first, and at present she was but a child. When he
kissed her hand it cost Lilias no blush. She accepted it with childish,
angelical dignity. “She took the kiss sedately--” and the dark fountains
of her eyes filled full, and two great tears tumbled over, and a piteous
quiver came to her lips, and she said, “Oh, Mr. Geoff, I want papa!”
This was when the Squire had been ill about a week, six or seven days
before Randolph took Nello away. Geoff went home riding, very full of
thought. What could he do to please his little Lily? He preferred that
she should creep close to himself and tell him her troubles, but he
could not resist that plaint, and even though it should be against
himself he must try what he could do to bring her father to her. Geoff
thought a great deal on this subject, but it was very fatiguing and
unsatisfactory, for he did not know what to do, and after a while he
relapsed into the pleasanter path, and began to think of Lily. “Because
of the angels,” he said to himself as he jogged softly along, much more
slowly and reflectively than his horse liked to go. He forgot where he
was going and the engagements he had, and everything that was practical
and important, as he rambled on. The day was sweet in early autumn, the
lake rippling musically upon the beach, the sky blue and crossed by
floating atoms of snowy cloud. Everything in the world was sweet and
pleasant to the young man. “Because of the angels;” he had never been
quite clear what these words meant, but he seemed to see quite plainly
now, though he could no more have explained than he could have written
_Hamlet_. “Because of the angels!” He seemed to make a little song of it
as he went on, a drowsy, delicious burden like the humming of the bee.
It was not he that said it, he thought, but it murmured all about him,
wrapping him in a soft enchantment. Such a visionary love as his,
perhaps, has need of those intoxications of ethereal fancy: for nothing
can be so like the love of an angel as that of a young man possessed by
a tender visionary passion for a child.
Geoff was so rapt in his own thoughts that he did not see for some time
the beckonings and signals that were coming to him from a carriage drawn
up on the road to which the path descended, along which he was moving so
gently. When his attention was at last caught, he saw it was his Cousin
Mary, leaning half out of the window in her eagerness.
“Give your horse to the footman and come in here--I have so much to say
to you,” she said.
But when he had done as she told him and taken his seat beside her, Lady
Stanton kept looking at her young cousin.
“What is it?” she said; “you keep on smiling, and there is a little
drowsy, dreamy, intoxicated air about you; what has happened, Geoff?”
“Nothing; and it is unkind to say I look intoxicated. Could you not find
a prettier word?”
“I believe you are really, really!--Geoff, I think I know what it means,
and I hope it is somebody very nice. Tell me, who is she?”
“This is strange,” said Geoff; “indeed, it is true, I have been visiting
a lady; but she is only twelve years old,” he said, turning to her with
a vivid blush.
“Oh, Geoff!” Mary’s brow contracted, “you do not mean _that_ little
girl?”
“Why shouldn’t I mean her? I will make you my confessor, Cousin Mary. I
don’t think. I shall ever marry any one but little Lily. Of course she
is very little, and when she is grown up she will probably have nothing
to say to me; but I shall never care for any one else. Why should you
shake your head? I never saw any one like her,” said Geoff, growing
solemn, and shaking off his blush as he saw himself opposed.
“Oh, Geoff!” Mary shook her head and contracted her beautiful brow, “I
do not think anything good can come out of that family; but I must not
speak. I am jealous, I suppose. How did you know I did not want you for
Annie or Fanny?” she went on with a smile that was a little strained and
fictitious; for Mary knew very well that she was jealous, but not for
Annie, or Fanny, or Geoff.
“Hush,” he said, “I loved you before Lily, but you could not have me; it
is Lily, failing you. If you could but have seen her just now! The
Squire is lying between life and death, and Miss Musgrave, who was so
good to her, is with him night and day, and poor little Lily is so
lonely and frightened. She looks at me with her little lip all
quivering, and says, ‘Papa! I want papa.’” Geoff almost cried himself to
recollect her piteous tone, and the tears came to Mary’s eyes.
“Ah! if she takes after _him_, Geoff! but that is just what I want to
talk to you about. I have done something that you may think rash. I have
spoken to Sir Henry. He is--well, he has his faults like the rest of
us--but he is just; he would not do a wrong thing. I told him that you
had found out something----”
“What did he say?” cried Geoff, breathless, for Lady Stanton made a
sudden pause.
She was looking across him out at the window; her eyes had strayed past
his face, looking away from him as people do with a natural artifice to
allow the first signs of displeasure to blow over, before they look an
offended person in the face. But as she looked, Lady Stanton’s
countenance changed, her lips fell apart, her eyes widened out, her face
paled, as if a cloud had passed over it. She gave a great cry, “Oh
John, _John_!” she said.
“What is it?--who is it?” cried Geoff.
She made him signs to have the carriage stopped; she could not speak.
Geoff did what he could to make the coachman hear him; but it was by no
means the affair of a moment to gain the attention of that functionary,
and induce him to stop. When, however, this was accomplished, Geoff
obeyed the passionate desire in Lady Stanton’s face, who all the time
had been straining to look out, and jumped to the ground. He looked
round anxiously, while she, half out of the carriage, gazed back, fixing
her eyes upon one of those recesses in the road which are common in the
north country. “I see no one,” said Geoff. He came back to the place on
which her gaze was fixed, and looked behind the wall that bounded it,
and all about, but could see nothing. When he returned he found that
Mary had fallen back in her corner, and was weeping bitterly. “He looked
at me with such reproachful eyes. Oh, he need not; there was no reason.
I would have saved or served him with my life,” she cried; “and he had
never any claim on me, Geoff, never any claim on me!--why should he come
and look at me with such reproachful eyes? If he is dead, he ought to
know better than that. Surely he ought to know----”
The carriage, standing in the middle of the road, the young man
searching about, not knowing what he was looking for; the coachman
superbly indifferent on the box, contemplating the agitation of his
inferiors with god-like calm; the footman, on Geoff’s horse, with his
mouth open, staring, while the beautiful lady wept inside, made the
strangest picture. As a matter of course, the footman, riding on in
advance, had seen nothing and nobody. He avowed frankly that he was not
taking any notice of the folks on the road. He might have seen a man
seated on the stones, he could not be certain. Neither had the coachman
taken any notice. Foot passengers did not interest either of these
functionaries. And Lady Stanton did not seem able to give any further
explanation. The only thing to be done was to go on. She had been on her
way to Stanton to give Geoff the advantage of Sir Henry’s advice and
opinion, and thither, accordingly, they proceeded after this
interruption. Geoff took his place again beside his cousin, perhaps a
little impatient of the stoppage; but as she lay back in the corner,
covering her face with her hands, Geoff’s heart was too soft not to
forget every other sentiment. He thought only of consoling her.
“Tell me what it was,” he said, soothingly. “You saw--some one? Do not
cry so bitterly. You never harmed anybody in your life. Tell me--you
thought you saw----?”
“I saw _him_, as plainly as I see you, Geoff; don’t tell me it was a
fancy. He was sitting, resting, like a man tired with walking, dusty and
worn out. I noticed his weary look before I saw his face, and just as we
passed he raised his head. Oh, why should he have looked at _me_ like
that, Geoff? No, I never did any one harm, much less him. I have always
stood up for him, you know, since you first spoke to me. I have always
said, always--even before this was found out: living people mistake each
other continually; but the dead--the dead ought to know----”
“Who is dead?” said Geoff; “are you speaking of John Musgrave, who is as
much alive as I am?”
“If he were a living man,” said Mary, solemnly, “how could I have seen
him? Geoff, it is no mistake. I saw him, as I see you.”
“And is that why you think him dead?” said Geoff, with natural surprise.
Lady Stanton raised herself erect in her corner. “Geoff, oh, can you not
understand?” she cried. But she did not herself quite understand what
she meant. She thought from the suddenness of it, from the shock it gave
her, and from the disappearance of the wayfarer, which was so
inexplicable, that it was an apparition she had seen. John Musgrave
could not be there, in the flesh, seated by the roadside; it was not
possible; but when Geoff asked whether having seen him was an argument
for thinking him dead, she had nothing to say. She wrung her hands. “I
have seen him whether he is living or dead,” she repeated, “and he
looked at me with such eyes. He was not young as he used to be, but
worn, and a little grey. I came to tell you what Sir Henry said; but
here is something far, far more important. Know him! Could I mistake
him, do you think?--how could I mistake him? Geoff, how could it be
_he_, sitting there without any warning, without a word? but if it was
he, if that was possible, why are we going on like this? Are we to
desert him?--give him up? I am talking folly,” she said, again clasping
her hands. “Oh, Geoff, a living man would not have looked at me with
such eyes.”
“He has not very much right to happy eyes, has he?” said Geoff; “coming
home an outlaw, not venturing to speak to any one. It would not be half
so sad if he were a ghost. But to come back, and not to dare to trust
even his friends, not to know if he has any friends, not to be able to
go home and see his children like any other man, to rest on the stones
at the roadside, he to whom all the land belongs! I don’t wonder he
looked sad,” cried Geoff, half-sympathetic, half-indignant. “How was he
to know even that he would find a friend in you?”
Mary was sobbing, scarcely able to speak. “Oh, tell them to go back
again--tell them to go back,” she cried. There was no way of satisfying
her but this: the carriage turned slowly round, rolling like a ship at
sea. The coachman was disgusted and unwilling. “What did she want now?”
he said, telegraphing with uplifted hands and eyes to the surprised
footman on Geoff’s horse. Lady Stanton was not a hard mistress like her
stepdaughters, nor fantastical and unreasonable as they were. She took
the carriage humbly when she could get it, and would consult this very
coachman’s convenience before bringing him out, which no one else
thought of doing. Nevertheless Lady Stanton had her character in the
house, and human nature required that it should be kept up. She was the
stepmother, the scapegoat. “What is she after now?” the coachman said.
She got out of the carriage herself, trembling, to aid in the search,
and the footman getting down, looked everywhere, even under the stones,
and in the roadside hedges, but no one was there. When they resumed
their way again, Mary lay back in her corner too much worn out with
excitement and emotion to be able even to speak. Geoff could not tell
whether she was glad or sorry to be brought to acknowledge that it was
more likely to be John Musgrave whom she had seen than his ghost. She
was convinced by his reasoning. Oh, yes; no doubt, she said, it must be
so. Because you saw a man unexpectedly, that was no reason for supposing
him to be dead. Oh, no--Geoff was quite right; she saw the reason of all
he said. But Mary’s head and her heart and all her being thrilled with
the shock. There was a ringing in her ears, and pulses were beating all
over, and her blood coursing through her veins. The very country, so
familiar, seemed to change its aspect. No stronger commentary could have
been on the passage of time than the sudden glimpse of the face which
she had seen just now on the roadside. But Mary did not think of that.
The lake and the rural road that ran by it, and the hills in the
distance, seemed to take again the colours of her youth. He was nothing
to her, and never had been. She had not loved him, only had “taken an
interest.” But all that was most poignant in her life came back to her,
with the knowledge that he was here. Once more it seemed to be that time
when all is vivid, when every day may be the turning-point of life--the
time that was consciously but a drift and floating on of hour by hour
when it existed, as is the present moment--but which, looking back upon
it, seemed the time of free action, of choice, of every possibility. Was
it so? Might he be met with round any corner--this man who had been
banished so long? In the face of death and danger had he come back, he
whom nobody had expected ever to come back? A strange half-question
whether everything else had come back with him, and half-certainty that
nothing for her could change, was in Mary’s mind as she lay back,
quivering with emotion, hearing Geoff’s voice in her ears, not knowing a
word he said. What had Geoff to do with it--young Geoff, to whom nothing
had ever happened? She smiled vaguely to herself to think that the boy
could think he knew. How was he to know?--he was not of that time. But
all the people in the road, and the very water itself, and the villages
and houses, seemed to ask her, Was it true?
This was all the evidence on the subject from which a judgment could be
formed. Randolph Musgrave (who told no one) had seen, in his own words,
a something, a some one, whose face he did not see, but who suggested
John to him so strongly that his very heart seemed to stop beating--then
disappeared. And Lady Stanton from the window of the carriage, driving
past, saw a face, which was John Musgrave’s face grown older and worn,
with hair that was slightly grey, instead of the brown curls of former
years, and which disappeared too in the twinkling of an eye, and being
searched for, could be found no more. What was it?--an apparition
conjured up by their interest or their fears? or John Musgrave, in his
own person, come home?