M. PLATZOFF'S SECRET--CAPTAIN DUCIE'S TRANSLATION OF M. PAUL PLATZOFF'S
MS.
"You will have gathered from the foregoing note, my dear Carlo, that I
have something of importance to relate to you; something that I am
desirous of keeping a secret from everyone but yourself. From the same
source you will have learned where to find the key by which alone the
lock of my secret can be opened.
"I was induced by two reasons to make use of _The Confessions of
Parthenio the Mystic_ as the basis of my cryptographic communication. In
the first place, each of us has in his possession a copy of the same
edition of that rare book, _viz._, the Amsterdam edition of 1698. In the
second place, there are not more than half-a-dozen copies of the same
work in England; so that if this document were by mischance to fall into
the hands of some person other than him for whom it is intended, such
person, even if sufficiently acute to guess at the means by which alone
the cryptogram can be read, would still find it a matter of some
difficulty to obtain possession of the requisite key.
"I address these lines to you, my dear Lampini, not because you and I
have been friends from youth, not because we have shared many dangers
and hardship together, not because we have both kept the same great
object in view throughout life; in fine, I do not address them to you as
a private individual, but in your official capacity as Secretary of the
Secret Society of San Marco.
"You know how deeply I have had the objects of the Society at heart ever
since, twenty-five years ago, I was deemed worthy of being made one of
the initiated. You know how earnestly I have striven to forward its
views both in England and abroad; that through my connection with it I
am _suspect_ at nearly every capital on the Continent--that I could not
enter some of them except at the risk of my life; that health, time,
money--all have been ungrudgingly given for the furtherance of the same
great end.
"Heaven knows I am not penning these lines in any self-gratulatory frame
of mind--I who write from this happy haven among the hills.
Self-gratulation would ill-become such as me. Where I have given gold,
others have given their blood. Where I have given time and labour,
others have undergone long and cruel imprisonments, have been separated
from all they loved on earth, and have seen the best years of their life
fade hopelessly out between the four walls of a living tomb. What are my
petty sacrifices to such as these?
"But not to everyone is granted the happiness of cementing a great cause
with his heart's blood. We must each work in the appointed way--some of
us in the full light of day; others in obscure corners, at work that can
never be seen, putting in the stones of the foundation painfully one by
one, but never destined to share in the glory of building the roof of
the edifice.
"Sometimes, in your letters to me, especially when those letters
contained any disheartening news, I have detected a tone of despondency,
a latent doubt as to whether the cause to which both of us are so firmly
bound was really progressing; whether it was not fighting against hope
to continue the battle any longer; whether it would not be wiser to
retreat to the few caves and fastnesses that were left us, and leaving
Liberty still languishing in chains, and Tyranny still rampant in the
high places of the world, to wage no longer a useless war against the
irresistible Fates. Happily, with you such moods were of the rarest: you
would have been more than mortal had not your soul at times sat in
sackcloth and ashes.
"Such seasons of doubt and gloom have come to me also; but I know that
in our secret hearts we both of us have felt that there was a
self-sustaining power, a latent vitality in our cause that nothing could
crush out utterly; that the more it was trampled on the more dangerous
it would become, and the faster it would spread. Certain great events
that have happened during the last twelve months have done more towards
the propagation of the ideas we have so much at heart than in our
wildest dreams we dare have hoped only three short years ago. Gravely
considering these things, it seems to me that the time cannot be far
distant when the contingent plan of operations as agreed upon by the
Central Committee two years ago, to which I gave in my adhesion on the
occasion of your last visit to Bon Repos, will have to replace the
scheme at present in operation, and will become the great lever in
carrying out the Society's policy in time to come.
"When the time shall be ripe, but one difficulty will stand in the way
of carrying out the proposed contingent plan. That difficulty will arise
from the fact that the Society's present expenses will then be trebled
or quadrupled, and that a vast accession to the funds at command of the
Committee for the time being will thus be imperatively necessitated. As
a step, as a something towards obviating whatever difficulty may arise
from lack of funds, I have devised to you, as Secretary of the Society,
the whole of my personal estate, amounting in the aggregate to close
upon fifteen thousand pounds. This property will not accrue to you till
my decease; but that event will happen no very long time hence. My will,
duly signed and witnessed, will be found in the hands of my lawyer.
"But it was not merely to advise you of this bequest that I have sought
such a roundabout mode of communication. I have a greater and a much
more important bequest to make to the Society, through you, its
accredited agent. I have in my possession a green DIAMOND, the estimated
value of which is a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. This precious gem
I shall leave to you, by you to be sold after my death, the proceeds of
the sale to be added to the other funded property of the Society of San
Marco.
"The Diamond in question became mine during my travels in India many
years ago. I believe my estimate of its value to be a correct one.
Except my confidential servant, Cleon (whom you will remember), no one
is aware that I have in my possession a stone of such immense value. I
have never trusted it out of my own keeping, but have always retained
it by me, in a safe place, where I could lay my hands upon it at a
moment's notice. But not even to Cleon have I entrusted the secret of
the hiding-place, incorruptibly faithful as I believe him to be. It is a
secret locked in my own bosom alone.
"You will now understand why I have resorted to cryptography in bringing
these facts under your notice. It is intended that these lines shall not
be read by you till after my decease. Had I adopted the ordinary mode of
communicating with you, it seemed to me not impossible that some other
eye than the one for which it was intended might peruse this statement
before it reached you, and that through some foul play or underhand deed
the Diamond might never come into your possession.
"It only remains for me now to point out where and by what means the
Diamond may be found. It is hidden away in--"
* * * * *
Here the MS., never completed, ended abruptly.
(_To be continued._)
RONDEAU.
In vain we call to youth, "Return!"
In vain to fires, "Waste not, yet burn!"
In vain to all life's happy things,
"Give the days song--give the hours wings!
Let us lose naught--yet always learn!"
The tongue must lose youth, as it sings--
New knowledge still new sorrow brings:
Oh, sweet lost youth, for which we yearn
In vain!
But even this hour from which ye turn--
Impatient--o'er its funeral urn
Your soul with mad importunings
Will cry, "Come back, lost hour!" So rings
Ever the cry of those who yearn
In vain.
E. NESBIT.
SAPPHO.
When the Akropolis at Athens bore its beautiful burden entire and
perfect, one miniature temple stood dedicated to wingless Victory, in
token that the city which had defied and driven back the barbarian
should never know defeat.
But only a few decades had passed away when that temple stood as a mute
and piteous witness that Athens had been laid low in the dust, and that
Victory, though she could never weave a garland for Hellenes who had
conquered Hellenes, was no longer a living power upon her chosen
citadel. By the eighteenth century the shrine had altogether
disappeared: the site only could be traced, and four slabs from its
frieze were discovered close at hand, built into the walls of a Turkish
powder magazine; but not another fragment could be found.
The descriptions of Pausanias and of one or two later travellers were
all that remained to tell us of the whole; of its details we might form
some faint conception from those frieze marbles, rescued by Lord Elgin
and now in the British museum.
But we are not left to restore the temple of wingless Victory in our
imagination merely, aided by description and by fragment. It stands
to-day almost complete except for its shattered sculptures, placed upon
its original site, and looking, among the ruins of the grander buildings
around it, like a beautiful child who gazes for the first time on sorrow
which it feels but cannot share. The blocks of marble taken from its
walls and columns had been embedded in a mass of masonry, and when
Greece was once more free, and all traces of Turkish occupation were
being cleared from the Akropolis, these were carefully put together with
the result that we have described.
Like this in part, but unhappily only in part, is the story of the poems
of Sappho. She wrote, as the architect planned, for all time. We have
one brief fragment, proud, but pathetic in its pride, that tells us she
knew she was meant not altogether to die:
"I say that there will be remembrance of us hereafter,"
and again with lofty scorn she addresses some other woman:
"But thou shalt lie dead, nor shall there ever be remembrance of
thee then or in the time to come, for thou hast no share in the
roses of Pieria; but thou shalt wander unseen even in the halls of
Hades, flitting forth amid the shades of the dead."
The words sound in our ears with a melancholy close as we remember how
hopelessly lost is almost every one of those poems that all Hellas
loved and praised as long as the love and praise of Hellas was of any
worth. Remembrance among men was, to her, the Muses' crowning gift; that
which should distinguish her from ordinary mortals, even beyond the
grave, and grant her new life in death. But it was only for her songs'
sake that she cared to live; she looked for immortality only because she
felt that they were too fair to die.
It was almost by accident that the name of Sappho was first associated
with the slanders that have ever since clung round it.
By the close of the fourth century, B.C., Athenian comedy had
degenerated into brilliant and witty and scandalous farce, in many
essentials resembling the new Comedy of the Restoration in England. But
the vitiated Athenian palate required a seasoning which did not commend
itself to English taste; it was necessary that the shafts of the
writer's wit should strike some real and well-known personage.
Politics, which had furnished so many subjects and so many characters to
Aristophanes, were now a barren field, and public life at Athens in
those days was nothing if not political. Hence arose the practice of
introducing great names of bygone days into these comedies, in all kinds
of ridiculous and disgraceful surroundings.
There was a piquancy about these libels on the dead which we cannot
understand, but which we may contrast with the less dishonourable
process known to modern historians as "whitewashing." Just as Tiberius
and Henry VIII. have been rescued from the infamy of ages, and placed
among us upon pedestals of honour from which it will be difficult
hereafter wholly to dislodge them, many honoured names were taken by
these iconoclasts of the Middle Comedy and hurled down to such infamy as
they alone could bestow.
Sappho stood out prominently as the one supreme poetess of Hellas, and
the poets, if so they must be called, of the decline of Greek dramatic
art were never weary of loading her name with every most disgraceful
reproach they could invent. It is hardly worth while to discuss a
subject so often discussed with so little profit, or it would be easy to
show that these gentlemen, Ameipsias, Antiphanes, Diphilus, and the
rest, were indebted solely to their imagination for their facts.
It would be as fair to take the picture of Sokrates in the "Clouds" of
Aristophanes for a faithful representation of the philosopher as it
would be to take the Sappho of the comic stage for the true Sappho.
Indeed, it would be fairer; for the Sokrates of the "Clouds" is an
absurd caricature, but, like every good caricature, it bore some
resemblance to the original.
Aristophanes and his audience were familiar with the figure of Sokrates
as he went in and out amongst them; they knew his character and his
manner of life; and, though the poet ventured to pervert the teaching
and to ridicule the habits of a well-known citizen, he would not venture
to put before the people a representation in which there was not a grain
of truth.
But Sappho had been dead for two hundred years: the Athenian populace
knew little of her except that she had been great and that she had been
unhappy; and the descendants of the men who had thronged the theatre to
see the Oedipus of Sophokles, sickening with that strange disease which
makes the soul crave to batten on the fruits that are its poison, found
a rare feast furnished forth in the imaginary history of the one great
woman of their race.
The centuries went on, and Sappho came before the tribunal of the early
Christian Church.
The chief witnesses against her were these same comic poets, who were
themselves prisoners at the bar; and her judges, with the ruthless
impartiality of undiscriminating zeal, condemned the whole of her works,
as well as those of her accusers, to be destroyed in the flames.
Thus her works have almost totally perished: the fragments that are
extant give us only the faintest hints of the grace and sweetness that
we have for ever lost.
The mode of the preservation of these remains is half-pathetic,
half-grotesque. We have one complete poem and a considerable portion of
another; the rest are the merest fragments--now two or three lines, now
two or three words, often unintelligible without their context. We have
imitations and translations by Catullus and by Horace; but even Catullus
has conspicuously failed to reproduce her. As Mr. Swinburne has candidly
and very truly said: "No man can come close to her."
No; all that we possess of Sappho is gleaned from the dictionary, the
geography, the grammar and the archæological treatise; from a host of
worthy authors who are valued now chiefly for these quotations which
they have enshrined. Here a painful scholar of Alexandria has preserved
the phrase--
"The golden sandalled dawn but now has (waked) me,"
to show how Sappho employed the adverb. Apollonius, to prove that the
Æolic dialect had a particular form for the genitive case of the first
personal pronoun, has treasured up two sad and significant utterances,
"But thou forgettest me!"
and
"Or else thou lovest another than me,"
The Æolic genitive has saved for us another of these sorrow-laden
sentences which Mr. Swinburne has amplified in some beautiful but too
wordy lines. Sappho only says
"I am full weary of Gorgo."
--A few of these fragments tell us of the poet herself.
"I have a daughter like golden flowers, Kleis my beloved, for whom
(I would take) not all Sydia...."
and one beautiful line which we can recognise in the translation by
Catullus,
"Like a child after its mother, I--"
The touches by which she has painted nature are so fine and delicate
that the only poet of our time who has a right to attempt to translate
them has declared it to be "the one impossible task." Our English does,
indeed, sound harsh and unmusical as we try to represent her words; yet
what a picture is here--
"And round about the cold (stream) murmurs through the
apple-orchards, and slumber is shed down from trembling leaves."
She makes us hear the wind upon the mountains falling on the oaks; she
makes us feel the sun's radiance and beauty, as it glows through her
verses; she makes us love with her the birds and the flowers that she
loved. She has a womanly pity not only for the dying doves when--
"Their hearts grew cold and they dropped their wings,"
but for the hyacinth which the shepherds trample under foot upon the
hillside. The golden pulse growing on the shore, the roses, the garlands
of dill, are yet fragrant for us; we can even now catch the sweet tones
of the "Spring's angel," as she calls it, the nightingale that sang in
Lesbos ages and ages ago. One beautiful fragment has been woven with
another into a few perfect lines by Dante Gabriel Rossetti; but it shall
be given here as it stands. It describes a young, unwedded maiden:
"As the sweet apple blushes on the end of the bough, the very end
of the bough which the gatherers overlooked--nay, overlooked not,
but could not reach."
The Ode to Aphrodite and the fragment to Anaktoria are too often found
in translations to be quoted here. Indeed, it is of but little use to
quote; for Sappho can be known only in her own language and by those who
will devote time to these inestimable fragments. Their beauty grows upon
us as we read; we catch in one the echo of a single tone, so sweet that
it needs no harmony; and again a few stray chords that haunt the ear and
fill us with an exquisite dissatisfaction; and yet again a grave and
stately measure such as her rebuke to Alkæus--
"Had thy desire been for what was good or noble and had not thy
tongue framed some evil speech, shame had not filled thine eyes--"
MARY GREY.
THE SILENT CHIMES.
RINGING AT MIDDAY.
It was an animated scene; and one you only find in England. The stubble
of the cornfields looked pale and bleak in the departing autumn, the
wind was shaking down the withered leaves from the trees, whose thinning
branches told unmistakably of the rapidly-advancing winter. But the day
was bright after the night's frost, and the sun shone on the glowing
scarlet coats of the hunting men, and the hounds barked in every variety
of note and leaped with delight in the morning air. It was the first run
of the season, and the sportsmen were fast gathering at the appointed
spot--a field flanked by a grove of trees called Poachers' Copse.
Ten o'clock, the hour fixed for the throw-off, came and went, and still
Poachers' Copse was not relieved of its busy intruders. Many a gentleman
foxhunter glanced at his hunting-watch as the minutes passed, many a
burly farmer jerked his horse impatiently; while the grey-headed
huntsman cracked his long whip amongst his canine favourites and
promised them they should soon be on the scent. The delay was caused by
the non-arrival of the Master of the Hounds.
But now all eyes were directed to a certain quarter, and by the
brightened looks and renewed stir, it might be thought that he was
appearing. A stranger, sitting his horse well and quietly at the edge of
Poachers' Copse, watched the newcomers as they came into view. Foremost
of them rode an elderly gentleman in scarlet, and by his side a young
lady who might be a few years past twenty.
"Father and daughter, I'll vow," commented the stranger, noting that
both had the same well-carved features, the same defiant, haughty
expression, the same proud bearing. "What a grandly-handsome girl! And
he, I suppose, is the man we are waiting for. Is that the Master of the
Hounds?" he asked aloud of the horseman next him, who chanced to be
young Mr. Threpp.
"No, sir, that is Captain Monk," was the answer. "They are saying yonder
that he has brought word the Master is taken ill and cannot hunt
to-day"--which proved to be correct. The Master had been taken with
giddiness when about to mount his horse.
The stranger rode up to Captain Monk; judging him to be regarded--by the
way he was welcomed and the respect paid him--as the chief personage at
the meet, representing in a manner the Master. Lifting his hat, he
begged grace for having, being a stranger, come out, uninvited, to join
the field; adding that his name was Hamlyn and he was staying with Mr.
Peveril at Peacock's Range.
Captain Monk wheeled round at the address; his head had been turned
away. He saw a tall, dark man of about five-and-thirty years, so dark
and sunburnt as to suggest ideas of his having recently come from a
warmer climate. His hair was black, his eyes were dark brown, his
features and manner prepossessing, and he spoke as a man accustomed to
good society.
Captain Monk, lifting his hat in return, met him with cordiality. The
field was open to all, he said, but any friend of Peveril's would be
doubly welcome. Peveril himself was a muff, in so far as that he never
hunted.
"Hearing there was to be a meet to-day, I could not resist the
temptation of joining it; it is many years since I had the opportunity,"
remarked the stranger.
There was not time for more, the hounds were throwing off. Away dashed
the Captain's steed, away dashed the stranger's, away dashed Miss
Monk's, the three keeping side by side.
Presently came a fence. Captain Monk leaped it and galloped onwards
after the other red-coats. Miss Eliza Monk would have leaped it next,
but her horse refused it; yet he was an old hunter and she a fearless
rider. The stranger was waiting to follow her. A touch of the angry Monk
temper assailed her and she forced her horse to the leap. He had a
temper also; he did not clear it, and horse and rider came down
together.
In a trice Mr. Hamlyn was off his own steed and raising her. She was not
hurt, she said, when she could speak; a little shaken, a little
giddy--and she leaned against the fence. The refractory horse, unnoticed
for the moment, got upon his legs, took the fence of his own accord and
tore away after the field. Young Mr. Threpp, who had been in some
difficulty with his own steed, rode up now.
"Shall I ride back to the Hall and get the pony-carriage for you, Miss
Eliza?" asked the young man.
"Oh, dear, no," she replied, "thank you all the same. I would prefer to
walk home."
"Are you equal to the walk?" interposed the stranger.
"Quite. The walk will do away with this faintness. It is not the first
fall I have had."
The stranger whispered to young Mr. Threpp--who was as good-natured a
young fellow as ever lived. Would he consent to forego the sport that
day and lead his horse to Mr. Peveril's? If so, he would accompany the
young lady and give her the support of his arm.
So William Threpp rode off, leading Mr. Hamlyn's horse, and Miss Monk
accepted the stranger's arm. He told her a little about himself as they
walked along. It might not have been an ominous commencement, but
intimacies have grown sometimes out of a slighter introduction. Their
nearest way led past the Vicarage. Mr. Grame saw them from its windows
and came running out.
"Has any accident taken place?" he asked hurriedly. "I hope not."
Eliza Monk's face flushed. He had been Lucy's husband several months
now, but she could not yet suddenly meet him without a thrill of
emotion. Lucy ran out next; the pretty young wife for whom she had been
despised. Eliza answered Mr. Grame curtly, nodded to Lucy, and passed
on.
"And, as I was telling you," continued Mr. Hamlyn, "when this property
was left to me in England, I made it a plea for throwing up my post in
India, and came home. I landed about six weeks ago, and have been since
busy in London with lawyers. Peveril, whom I knew in the days gone by,
wrote to invite me to come to him here on a week's visit, before he and
his wife leave for the South of France."
"They are going to winter there for Mrs. Peveril's health," observed
Eliza. "Peacock's Range, the place they live at, belongs to my cousin,
Harry Carradyne. Did I understand you to say that you were not an
Englishman?"
"I was born in the West Indies. My family were English and had settled
there."
"What a coincidence!" exclaimed Eliza Monk with a smile. "My mother was
a West Indian, and I was born there.--There's my home, Leet Hall!"
"A fine old place," cried Mr. Hamlyn, regarding the mansion before him.
"You may well say 'old,'" remarked the young lady. "It has been the
abode of the Monk family from generation to generation. For my part, I
sometimes half wish it would fall down that we might get away to a more
lively locality. Church Leet is a dead-alive place at best."
"We always want what we have not," laughed Mr. Hamlyn. "I would give all
I am worth to possess an ancestral home, no matter if it were grim and
gloomy. We who can boast of only modern wealth look upon these family
castles with an envy you have little idea of."
"If you possess modern wealth, you possess a very good and substantial
thing," she answered, echoing his laugh.--"Here comes my aunt, full of
wonder."
Full of alarm also. Mrs. Carradyne stood on the terrace steps, asking if
there had been an accident.
"Not much of one, Aunt Emma. Saladin refused the fence at Ring Gap, and
we both came down together. This gentleman was so obliging as to forego
his day's sport and escort me home. Mr.--Mr. Hamlyn, I believe?" she
added. "My aunt, Mrs. Carradyne."
The stranger confirmed it. "Philip Hamlyn," he said to Mrs. Carradyne,
lifting his hat.
Gaining the hall-door with slow and gentle steps came a young man, whose
beautiful features were wasting more perceptibly day by day, and their
hectic growing of a deeper crimson. "What is amiss, Eliza?" he cried.
"Have you come to grief? Where's Saladin?"
"My brother," she said to Mr. Hamlyn.
Yes, it was indeed Hubert Monk. For he did not die of that run to the
church the past New Year's Eve. The death-like faint proved to be a
faint, nothing more. Nothing more _then_. But something else was
advancing with gradual steps: steps that seemed to be growing almost
perceptible now.
Now and again Hubert fainted in the same manner; his face taking a
death-like hue, the blue tinge surrounding his mouth. Captain Monk,
unable longer to shut his eyes to what might be impending, called in the
best medical advice that Worcestershire could afford; and the doctors
told him the truth--that Hubert's days were numbered.
To say that Captain Monk began at once to "set his house in order" would
not be quite the right expression, since it was not he himself who was
going to die. But he set his affairs straight as to the future, and
appointed another heir in his son's place--his nephew, Harry Carradyne.
Harry Carradyne, a brave young lieutenant, was then with his regiment in
some almost inaccessible fastness of the Indian Empire. Captain Monk
(not concealing his lamentation and the cruel grief it was to himself
personally) wrote word to him of the fiat concerning poor Hubert,
together with a peremptory order to sell out and return home as the
future heir. This was being accomplished, and Harry might now be
expected almost any day.
But it may as well be mentioned that Captain Monk, never given to be
confidential about himself or his affairs, told no one what he had done,
with one exception. Even Mrs. Carradyne was ignorant of the change in
her son's prospects and of his expected return. The one exception was
Hubert. Soon to lose him, Captain Monk made more of his son than he had
ever done, and seemed to like to talk with him.
"Harry will make a better master to succeed you than I should have made,
father," said Hubert, as they were slowly pacing home from the
parsonage, arm-in-arm, one dull November day, some little time after the
meet of the hounds, as recorded. It was surprising how often Captain
Monk would now encounter his son abroad, as if by accident, and give him
his arm home.
"What d'ye mean?" wrathfully responded the Captain, who never liked to
hear his own children disparaged, by themselves or by anyone else.
Hubert laughed a little. "Harry will look after things better than I
ever should. I was always given to laziness. Don't you remember,
father, when a little boy in the West Indies, you used to tell me I was
good for nothing but to bask in the heat?"
"I remember one thing, Hubert; and, strange to say, have remembered it
only lately. Things lie dormant in the memory for years, and then crop
up again. Upon getting home from one of my long voyages, your mother
greeted me with the news that your heart was weak; the doctor had told
her so. I gave the fellow a trimming for putting so ridiculous a notion
into her head--and it passed clean out of mine. I suppose he was right,
though."
"Little doubt of that, father. I wonder I have lived so long."
"Nonsense!" exploded the Captain; "you may live on yet for years. I
don't know that I did not act foolishly in sending post-haste for Harry
Carradyne."
Hubert smiled a sad smile. "You have done quite right, father; right in
all ways; be sure of that. Harry is one of the truest and best fellows
that ever lived: he will be a comfort to you when I am gone, and the
best of all successors later. Just--a--moment--father!"
"Why, what's the matter?" cried Captain Monk--for his son had suddenly
halted and stood with a rapidly-paling face and shortened breath,
pressing his hands to his side. "Here, lean on me, lad; lean on me."
It was a sudden faintness. Nothing very much, and it passed off in a
minute or two. Hubert made a brave attempt at smiling, and resumed his
way. But Captain Monk did not like it at all; he knew all these things
were but the beginning of the end. And that end, though not with actual
irreverence, he was resenting bitterly in his heart.
"Who's that coming out?" he asked, crossly, alluding to some figure
descending the steps of his house--for his sight was not what it used to
be.
"It is Mr. Hamlyn," said Hubert.
"Oh--Hamlyn! He seems to be always coming in. I don't like that man
somehow, Hubert. Wonder what he's lagging in the neighbourhood for?"
Hubert Monk had an idea that he could have told. But he did not want to
draw down an explosion on his own head. Mr. Hamlyn came to meet them
with friendly smiles and hand-shakes. Hubert liked him; liked him very
much.
Not only had Mr. Hamlyn prolonged his stay beyond the "day or two" he
had originally come for, but he evinced no intention of leaving. When
Mr. Peveril and his wife departed for the south, he made a proposal to
remain at Peacock's Range for a time as their tenant. And when the
astonished couple asked his reasons, he answered that he should like to
get a few runs with the hounds.
II.
The November days glided by. The end of the month was approaching, and
still Philip Hamlyn stayed on, and was a very frequent visitor at Leet
Hall. Little doubt that Miss Monk was his attraction, and the parish
began to say so without reticence.
The parish was right. One fine, frosty morning Mr. Hamlyn sought an
interview with Captain Monk and laid before him his proposals for Eliza.
One might have thought by the tempestuous words showered down upon him
in answer that he had proposed to smother her. Reproaches, hot and fast,
were poured forth upon the suitor's unlucky head.
"Why, you are a stranger!" stormed the Captain; "you have not known her
a month! How dare you? It's not commonly decent."
Mr. Hamlyn quietly answered that he had known her long enough to love
her, and went on to say that he came of a good family, had plenty of
money, and could make a liberal settlement upon her.
"That you never will," said Captain Monk. "I should not like you for my
son-in-law," he continued candidly, calming down from his burst of
passion to the bounds of reason. "But there can be no question of it in
any way. Eliza is to become Lady Rivers."
Mr. Hamlyn opened his eyes in astonishment. "Lady Rivers!" he echoed.
"Do you speak of Sir Thomas Rivers?--that old man!"
"No, I do not, sir. Sir Thomas Rivers has one foot in the grave. I speak
of his eldest son. He wants her, and he shall have her."
"Pardon me, Captain, I--I do not think Miss Monk can know anything of
this. I am sure she did not last night. I come to you with her full
consent and approbation."
"I care nothing about that. My daughter is aware that any attempt to
oppose her will to mine would be utterly futile. Young Tom Rivers has
written to me to ask for her; I have accepted him, and I choose that she
shall accept him. She'll like it herself, too; it will be a good match."
"Young Tom Rivers is next door to a simpleton: he is not half-baked,"
retorted Mr. Hamlyn, his own temper getting up: "if I may judge by what
I've seen of him in the field."
"Tom Rivers is a favourite everywhere, let me tell you, sir. Eliza would
not refuse him for you."
"Perhaps, Captain Monk, you will converse with her upon this point?"
"I intend to give her my orders--if that's what you mean," returned the
Captain. "And now, sir, I think our discussion may terminate."
Mr. Hamlyn saw no use in prolonging it for the present. Captain Monk
bowed him out of the house and called his daughter into the room.
"Eliza," he began, scorning to beat about the bush, "I have received an
offer of marriage for you."
Miss Eliza blushed a little, not much: few things could make her do that
now. Once our blushes have been wasted, as hers were on Robert Grame,
their vivid freshness has faded for ever and aye. "The song has left the
bird."
"And I have accepted it," continued Captain Monk. "He would like the
wedding to be early in the year, so you may get your rattletraps in
order for it. Tell your aunt I will give her a blank cheque for the
cost, and she may fill it in."
"Thank you, papa."
"There's the letter; you can read it"--pushing one across the table to
her. "It came by special messenger last night, and I have sent my answer
this morning."
Eliza Monk glanced at the contents, which were written on rose-coloured
paper. For a moment she looked puzzled.
"Why, papa, this is from Tom Rivers! You cannot suppose I would marry
_him_! A silly boy, younger than I am! Tom Rivers is the greatest goose
I know."
"How dare you say so, Eliza?"
"Well, he is. Look at his note! Pink paper and a fancy edge!"
"Stuff! Rivers is young and inexperienced, but he'll grow older--he is a
very nice young fellow, and a capital fox-hunter. You'd be master and
mistress too--and that would suit your book, I take it. I want to have
you settled near me, see, Eliza--you are all I have left, or soon will
be."
"But, papa--"
Captain Monk raised his hand for silence.
"You sent that man Hamlyn to me with a proposal for you. Eliza; you
_know_ that would not do. Hamlyn's property lies in the West Indies, his
home too, for all I know. He attempted to tell me that he would not take
you out there against my consent; but I know better, and what such
ante-nuptial promises are worth. It might end in your living there."
"No, no."
"What do you say 'no, no' for, like a parrot? Circumstances might compel
you. I do not like the man, besides."
"But why, papa?"
"I don't know; I have never liked him from the first. There! that's
enough. You must be my Lady Rivers. Poor old Tom is on his last legs."
"Papa, I never will."
"Listen, Eliza. I had one trouble with Katherine; I will not have
another with you. She defied me; she left my home rebelliously to enter
upon one of her own setting-up: what came of it? Did luck attend her? Do
you be more wise."
"Father," she said, moving a step forward with head uplifted; and the
resolute, haughty look which rendered their faces so much alike was very
conspicuous on hers, "do not let us oppose each other. Perhaps we can
each give way a little? I have promised to be the wife of Philip Hamlyn,
and that promise I will fulfil. You wish me to live near you: well, he
can take a place in this neighbourhood and settle down in it; and on my
part, I will promise you not to leave this country. He may have to go
from time to time to the West Indies; I will remain at home."
Captain Monk looked steadily at her before he answered. He marked the
stern, uncompromising expression, the strong will in the dark eyes and
in every feature, which no power, not even his, might unbend. He thought
of his elder daughter, now lying in her grave; he thought of his son, so
soon to be lying beside her; he did not care to be bereft of _all_ his
children, and for once in his hard life he attempted to conciliate.
"Hark to me, Eliza. Give up Hamlyn--I have said I don't like the man;
give up Tom Rivers also, an' you will. Remain at home with me until a
better suitor shall present himself, and Leet Hall and its broad lands
shall be yours."
She looked up in surprise. Leet Hall had always hitherto gone in the
male line; and, failing Hubert, it would be, or ought to be, Harry
Carradyne's. Though she knew not that any steps had already been taken
in that direction.
"Leet Hall?" she exclaimed.
"Leet Hall and its broad lands," repeated the Captain impatiently. "Give
up Mr. Hamlyn and it shall all be yours."
She remained for some moments in deep thought, her head bent, revolving
the offer. She was fond of pomp and power, as her father had ever been,
and the temptation to rule as sole domineering mistress in her
girlhood's home was great. But at that very instant the tall fine form
of Philip Hamlyn passed across a pathway in the distance, and she turned
from the temptation for ever. What little capability of loving had been
left to her after the advent of Robert Grame was given to Mr. Hamlyn.
"I cannot give him up," she said in low tones.
"What moonshine, Eliza! You are not a love-sick girl now."
The colour dyed her face painfully. Did her father suspect aught of the
past; of where her love _had_ been given--and rejected? The suspicion
only added fuel to the fire.
"I cannot give up Mr. Hamlyn," she reiterated.
"Then you will never inherit Leet Hall. No, nor aught else of mine."
"As you please, sir, about that."
"You set me at defiance, then!"
"I don't wish to do so, father; but I shall marry Mr. Hamlyn."
"At defiance," repeated the Captain, as she moved to escape from his
presence; "Katherine secretly, you openly. Better that I had never had
children. Look here, Eliza: let this matter remain in abeyance for six
or twelve months, things resting as they are. By that time you may have
come to your senses; or I (yes, I see you are ready to retort it) to
mine. If not--well, we shall only then be where we are."
"And that we should be," returned Eliza, doggedly. "Time will never
change either of us."
"But events may. Let it be so, child. Stay where you are for the
present, in your maiden home."
She shook her head in denial; not a line of her proud face giving way,
nor a curve of her decisive lips: and Captain Monk knew that he had
pleaded in vain. She would neither give up her marriage nor prolong the
period of its celebration.
What could be the secret of her obstinacy? Chiefly the impossibility of
tolerating opposition to her own indomitable will. It was her father's
will over again; his might be a very little softening with years and
trouble; not much. Had she been in desperate love with Hamlyn one could
have understood it, but she was not; at most it was but a passing fancy.
What says the poet? I daresay you all know the lines, and I know I have
quoted them times and again, they are so true:
"Few hearts have never loved, but fewer still
Have felt a second passion. _None_ a third.
The first was living fire; the next a thrill;
The weary heart can never more be stirred:
Rely on it the song has left the bird."
Very, very true. Her passion for Robert Grame had been as living fire in
its wild intensity; it was but the shadow of a thrill that warmed her
heart for Philip Hamlyn. Possibly she mistook it in a degree; thought
more of it than it was. The feeling of gratification which arises from
flattered vanity deceives a woman's heart sometimes: and Mr. Hamlyn did
not conceal his rapturous admiration of her.
She held to her defiant course, and her father held to his. He did not
continue to say she should not marry; he had no power for that--and
perhaps he did not want her to make a moonlight escapade of it, as
Katherine had made. So the preparation for the wedding went on, Eliza
herself paying for the rattletraps, as they had been called; Captain
Monk avowed that he "washed his hands of it," and then held his peace.
Whether Mr. Hamlyn and his intended bride considered it best to get the
wedding over and done with, lest adverse fate, set afoot by the Captain,
should, after all, circumvent them, it is impossible to say, but the day
fixed was a speedy one. And if Captain Monk had deemed it "not decent"
in Mr. Hamlyn to propose for a young lady after only a month's
knowledge, what did he think of this? They were to be married on the
last day of the year.
Was it fixed upon in defiant mockery?--for, as the reader knows, it had
proved an ominous day more than once in the Monk family. But no,
defiance had no hand in that, simply adverse fate. The day originally
fixed by the happy couple was Christmas Eve: but Mr. Hamlyn, who had to
go to London about that time on business connected with his property,
found it impossible to get back for the day, or for some days after it.
He wrote to Eliza, asking that the day should be put off for a week, if
it made no essential difference, and fixed the last day in the year.
Eliza wrote word back that she would prefer that day; it gave more time
for preparation.
They were to be married in her own church, and by its Vicar. Great
marvel existed at the Captain's permitting this, but he said nothing.
Having washed his hands of the affair, he washed them for good: had the
bride been one of the laundry-maids in his household he could not have
taken less notice. A Miss Wilson was coming from a little distance to be
bridesmaid; and the bride and bridegroom would go off from the church
door. The question of a breakfast was never mooted: Captain Monk's
equable indifference might not have stood that.
"I shall wish them good-luck with all my heart--but I don't feel
altogether sure they'll have it!" bewailed poor Mrs. Carradyne in
private. "Eliza should have agreed to the delay proposed by her father."
III.
Ring, ring, ring, broke forth the chimes on the frosty midday air. Not
midnight, you perceive, but midday, for the church clock had just given
forth its twelve strokes. Another round of the dial, and the old year
would have departed into the womb of the past.
Bowling along the smooth turnpike road which skirted the churchyard on
one side came a gig containing a gentleman; a tall, slender,
frank-looking young man, with a fair face and the pleasantest blue eyes
ever seen. He wore a white top-coat, the fashion then, and was driving
rapidly in the direction of Leet Hall; but when the chimes burst forth
he pulled up abruptly.
"Why, what in the world?--" he began--and then sat still listening to
the sweet strains of "The Bay of Biscay." The day, though in mid-winter,
was bright and beautiful, and the golden sunlight, shining from the
dark-blue sky, played on the young man's golden hair.
"Have they mistaken midday for midnight?" he continued, as the chimes
played out their tune and died away on the air. "What's the meaning of
it?"
He, Harry Carradyne, was not the only one to ask this. No human being in
and about Church Leet, save Captain Monk and they who executed his
orders, knew that he had decreed that the chimes should play that day
at midday. Why did he do it? What could his motive be? Surely not that
they should, by playing (according to Mrs. Carradyne's theory),
inaugurate ill-luck for Eliza! At the moment they began to play she was
coming out of church on Mr. Hamlyn's arm, having left her maiden name
behind her.
A few paces more, for he was driving gently on now, and Harry pulled up
again, in surprise, as before, for the front of the church was now in
view. Lots of spectators, gentle and simple, stood about, and a handsome
chariot, with four post horses and a great coat-of-arms emblazoned on
its panels, waited at the church gate.
"It must be a wedding!" decided Harry.
The next moment the chariot was in motion; was soon about to pass him,
the bride and bridegroom inside it. A very dark but good-looking man,
with an air of command in his face, he, but a stranger to Harry; she,
Eliza. She wore a grey silk dress, a white bonnet, with orange blossoms
and a veil, which was quite the fashionable wedding attire of the day.
Her head was turned, nodding its farewells yet to the crowd, and she did
not see her cousin as the chariot swept by.
"Dear me!" he exclaimed, mentally. "I wonder who she has married?"
Staying quietly where he was until the spectators should have dispersed,
whose way led them mostly in opposite directions, Harry next saw the
clerk come out of the church by the small vestry door, lock it and cross
over to the stile; which brought him out close to the gig.
"Why, my heart alive!" he exclaimed. "Is it Captain Carradyne?"
"That's near enough," said Harry, who knew the title was accorded him by
the rustic natives of Church Leet, as he bent down with his sunny smile
to shake the old clerk's hand. "You are hearty as ever, I see, John. And
so you have had a wedding here?"
"Ay, sir, there have been one in the church. I was not in my place,
though. The Captain, he ordered me to let the church go for once, and to
be ready up aloft in the belfry to set the chimes going at midday. As
chance had it, the party came out just at the same time; Miss Eliza was
a bit late in coming, ye see; so it may be said the chimes rang 'em out.
I guess the sound astonished the people above a bit, for nobody knew
they were going to play."
"But how was it all, Cale? Why should the Captain order them to chime at
midday?"
John Cale shook his head. "I can't tell ye that rightly, Mr. Harry; the
Captain, as ye know, sir, never says why he does this or why he does
t'other. Young William Threpp, who had to be up there with me, thought
he must have ordered 'em to play in mockery--for he hates the marriage
like poison."
"Who is the bridegroom?"
"It's a Mr. Hamlyn, sir. A gentleman who is pretty nigh as haughty as
the Captain himself; but a pleasant-spoken, kindly man, as far as I've
seen: and a rich one, too."
"Why did Captain Monk object to him?"
"It's thought 'twas because he was a stranger to the place and has lived
over in the Indies; and he wanted Miss Eliza, so it's said, to have
young Tom Rivers. That's about it, I b'lieve, Mr. Harry."
Harry Carradyne drove away thoughtfully. At the foot of the slight
ascent leading to Leet Hall, one of the grooms happened to be standing.
Harry handed over to him the horse and gig, and went forward on foot.
"Bertie!" he called out. For he had seen Hubert before him, walking at a
snail's pace: the very slightest hill tried him now. The only one left
of the wedding-party, for the bridesmaid drove off from the church door.
Hubert turned at the call.
"Harry! Why, Harry!"
Hand locked in hand, they sat down on a bench beside the path; face
gazing into face. There had always been a likeness between them: in the
bright-coloured, waving hair, the blue eyes and the well-favoured
features. But Harry's face was redolent of youth and health; in the
other's might be read approaching death.
"You are very thin, Bertie; thinner even than I expected to see, you,"
broke from the traveller involuntarily.
"_You_ are looking well, at any rate," was Hubert's answer. "And I am so
glad you are come: I thought you might have been here a month ago."
"The voyage was unreasonably long; we had contrary winds almost from
port to port. I got on to Worcester yesterday, slept there, and hired a
horse and gig to bring me over this morning. What about Eliza's wedding,
Hubert? I was just in time to see her drive away. Cale, with whom I had
a word down yonder, says the master does not like it."
"He does not like it and would not countenance it: washed his hands of
it (as he told us) altogether."
"Any good reason for that?"
"Not particularly good, that I see. Somehow he disliked Hamlyn; and Tom
Rivers wanted Eliza, which would have pleased him greatly. But Eliza was
not without blame. My father gave way so far as to ask her to delay
things for a few months, not to marry in a hurry, and she would not. She
might have conceded as much as that."
"Did you ever know Eliza concede anything, Bertie?"
"Well, not often."
"Who gave her away?"
"I did: look at my gala toggery"--opening his overcoat. "He wanted to
forbid it. 'Don't hinder me, father,' I pleaded; 'it is the last
brotherly service I can ever render her.' And so," his tone changing to
lightness, "I have been and gone and done it."
Harry Carradyne understood. "Not the last, Hubert; don't say that. I
hope you will live to render her many another yet."
Hubert smiled faintly. "Look at me," he said in answer.
"Yes, I know; I see how you look. But you may take a turn yet."
"Ah, miracles are no longer wrought for us. Shall I surprise you very
much, cousin mine, if I say that were the offer made me of prolonged
life, I am not sure that I should accept it?"
"Not unless health were renewed with it; I can understand that. You have
had to endure suffering, Bertie."
"Ay. Pain, discomfort, fears, weariness. After working out their torment
upon me, they--why then they took a turn and opened out the vista of a
refuge."
"A refuge?"
"The one sure Refuge offered by God to the sick and sorrowful, the weary
and heavy-laden--Himself. I found it. I found _Him_, and all His
wonderful mercy. It will not be long now, Harry, before I see Him face
to face. And here comes His true minister but for whom I might have
missed the way."
Harry turned his head, and saw, advancing up the drive, a good-looking
young clergyman. "Who is it?" he involuntarily cried.
"Your brother-in-law, Robert Grame. Lucy's husband."
It was not the fashion in those days for a bride's mother (or one acting
as her mother) to attend the bride to church; therefore Mrs. Carradyne,
following it, was spared risk of conflict with Captain Monk on that
score. She was in Eliza's room, assisting at the putting on of the
bridal robes (for we have to go back an hour or so) when a servant came
up to say that Mr. Hamlyn waited below. Rather wondering--for he was to
have driven straight to the church--Mrs. Carradyne went downstairs.
"Pardon me, dear Mrs. Carradyne," he said, as he shook hands, and she
had never seen him look so handsome, "I could not pass the house without
making one more effort to disarm Captain Monk's prejudices, and asking
for his blessing on us. Do you think he will consent to see me?"
Mrs. Carradyne felt sure he would not, and said so. But she sent Rimmer
to the library to ask the question. Mr. Hamlyn pencilled down a few
anxious words on paper, folded it, and put it into the man's hand.
No; it proved useless. Captain Monk was harder than adamant; he sent
Rimmer back with a flea in his ear, and the petition torn in two.
"I feared so," sighed Mrs. Carradyne. "He will not this morning see even
Eliza."
Mr. Hamlyn did not sigh in return; he spoke a cross, impatient word: he
had never been able to see reason in the Captain's dislike to him, and,
with a brief good-morning, went out to his carriage. But, remembering
something when crossing the hall, he came back.
"Forgive me, Mrs. Carradyne; I quite forgot that I have a note for you.
It is from Mrs. Peveril, I believe; it came to me this morning, enclosed
in a letter of her husband's."
"You have heard at last, then!"
"At last--as you observe. Though Peveril had nothing particular to write
about; I daresay he does not care for letter writing."
Slipping the note into her pocket, to be opened at leisure, Mrs.
Carradyne returned to the adorning of Eliza. Somehow, it was rather a
prolonged business--which made it late when the bride with her
bridesmaid and Hubert drove from the door.
Mrs. Carradyne remained in the room--to which Eliza was not to
return--putting this up, and that. The time slipped on, and it was close
upon twelve o'clock when she got back to the drawing-room. Captain Monk
was in it then, standing at the window; which he had thrown wide open.
To see more clearly the bridal party come out of the church, was the
thought that crossed Mrs. Carradyne's mind in her simplicity.
"I very much feared they would be late," she observed, sitting down near
her brother: and at that moment the church clock began to strike twelve.
"A good thing if they were _too_ late!" he answered. "Listen."
She supposed he wanted to count the strokes--what else could he be
listening to? And now, by the stir at the distant gates, she saw that
the bridal party had come out.
"Good heavens, what's that?" shrieked Mrs. Carradyne, starting from her
chair.
"The chimes," stoically replied the Captain. And he proceeded to hum
through the tune of "The Bay of Biscay," and beat a noiseless
accompaniment with his foot.
"_The Chimes_, Emma," he repeated, when the melody had finished itself
out. "I ordered them to be played. It's the last day of the old year,
you know."
Laughing slightly at her consternation, Captain Monk closed the window
and quitted the room. As Mrs. Carradyne took her handkerchief from her
pocket to pass it over her face, grown white with startled terror, the
note she had put there came out also, and fell on the carpet.
Picking it up, she stood at the window, gazing forth. Her sight was not
what it used to be; but she discerned the bride and bridegroom enter
their carriage and drive away; next she saw the bridesmaid get into the
carriage from the Hall, assisted by Hubert, and that drive off in its
turn. She saw the crowd disperse, this way and that; she even saw the
gig there, its occupant talking with John Cale. But she did not look at
him particularly; and she had not the slightest idea but that Harry was
in India.
And all that time an undercurrent of depression was running riot in her
heart. None knew with what a strange terror she had grown to dread the
chimes.
She sat down now and opened Mrs. Peveril's note. It treated chiefly of
the utterly astounding ways that untravelled old lady was meeting with
in foreign parts. "If you will believe me," wrote she, "the girl that
waits on us wears carpet slippers down at heel, and a short cotton
jacket for best, and she puts the tea-tray before me with the handle of
the teapot turned to me and the spout standing outwards, and she comes
right into the bed-room of a morning with Charles's shaving-water
without knocking." But the one sentence that arrested Mrs. Carradyne's
attention above any other was the following: "I reckon that by this time
you have grown well acquainted with our esteemed young friend. He is a
good, kindly gentleman, and I'm sure never could have done anything to
deserve his wife's treatment of him."
"Can she mean Mr. Hamlyn?" debated Mrs. Carradyne, all sorts of ideas
leaping into her mind with a rush. "If not--what other 'esteemed friend'
can she allude to?--_she_, old herself, would call _him_ young. But Mr.
Hamlyn has not any wife. At least, had not until to-day."
She read the note over again. She sat with it open, buried in a reverie,
thinking no end of things, good and bad: and the conclusion she at last
came to was, that, with the unwonted exercise of letter-writing, poor
old Mrs. Peveril's head had grown confused.
"Well, Hubert, did it all go off well?" she questioned, as her nephew
entered the room, some sort of excitement on his wasted face. "I saw
them drive away."
"Yes, it went off well; there was no hitch anywhere," replied Hubert.
"But, Aunt Emma, I have brought a friend home with me. Guess who it is."
"Some lady or other who came to see the wedding," she returned. "I can't
guess."
"You never would, though I were to give you ten guesses; no, though je
vous donne en mille, as the French have it. What should you say to a
young man come all the way over seas from India? There, that's as good
as telling you, Aunt Emma. Guess now."
"Oh, Hubert!" clasping her trembling hands. "It cannot be Harry! What is
wrong?"
Harry brought his bright face into the room and was clasped in his
mother's arms. She could not understand it one bit, and fears assailed
her. Come home in _this_ unexpected manner! Had he left the army? What
had he done? _What_ had he done? Hubert laughed and told her then.
"He has done nothing wrong; everything that's good. He has sold out at
my father's request and left with honours--and is come home, the heir of
Leet Hall. I said all along it was a shame to keep you out of the plot,
Aunt Emma."
Well, it was glorious news for her. But, as if to tarnish its delight,
like an envious sprite of evil, deep down in her mind lay that other
news, just read--the ambiguous remark of old Mrs. Peveril's.
IV.
The walk on the old pier was pleasant enough in the morning sun. Though
yet but the first month in the year, the days were bright, the blue
skies without a cloud. Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn had enjoyed the fine weather
at Cheltenham for a week or two; from that pretty place they had now
come to Brighton, reaching it the previous night.
"Oh, it is delightful!" exclaimed Eliza, gazing at the waves. She had
not seen the sea since she crossed it, a little girl, from the West
Indies. Those were not yet the days when all people, gentle and simple,
told one another that an autumn tour was essential to existence. "Look
at the sunbeams sparkling on the ripples and on the white sails of the
little boats! Philip, I should like to spend a month here."
"All right," replied Mr. Hamlyn.
They were staying at the Old Ship, a fashionable hotel then for ladies
as well as gentlemen, and had come out after breakfast; and they had the
pier nearly to themselves at that early hour. A yellow, gouty gentleman,
who looked as if he had quarrelled with his liver in some clime all fire
and cayenne, stood at the end leaning on his stick, alternately looking
at the sea and listlessly watching any advancing stragglers.
There came a sailor, swaying along, a rope in his hand; following him,
walked demurely three little girls in frocks and trousers, with their
French governess; then came two eye-glassed young men, dandyfied and
supercilious, who appeared to have more money than brains--and the
jaundiced man went into a gaping fit of lassitude.
Anyone else coming? Yes; a lady and gentleman arm-in-arm: quiet,
well-dressed, good-looking. As the invalid watched their approach, a
puzzled look of doubt and surprise rose to his countenance. Moving
forward a step or two on his gouty legs, he spoke.
"Can it be possible, Hamlyn, that we meet here?"
Even through his dark skin a red flush coursed into Mr. Hamlyn's face.
He was evidently very much surprised in his turn, if not startled.
"Captain Pratt!" he exclaimed.
"Major Pratt now," was the answer, as they shook hands. "That wretched
climate played the deuce with me, and they graciously gave me a step and
allowed me to retire upon it. The very deuce, I assure you, Philip. Beg
pardon, ma'am," he added seeing the lady look at him.
"My wife, Mrs. Hamlyn," spoke her husband.
Major Pratt contrived to lift his hat, and bow: which feat, what with
his gouty hands and his helpless legs and his great invalid stick, was a
work of time. "I saw your marriage in _The Times_, Hamlyn, and wondered
whether it could be you, or not: I didn't know, you see, that you were
over here. Wish you luck; and you also, ma'am. Hope it will turn out
more fortunate for you, Philip, than--"
"Where are you staying?" broke in Mr. Hamlyn, as if something were
frightening him.
"At some lodgings over yonder, where they fleece me," replied the Major.
"You should see the bill they've brought me in for last week. They've
made me eat four pounds of butter and five joints of meat, besides
poultry and pickles and a fruit pie! Why, I live mostly upon dry toast;
hardly dare touch an ounce of meat in a day. When I had 'em up before
me, the harpies, they laid it upon my servant's appetite--old Saul, you
know. _He_ answered them."
Mrs. Hamlyn laughed. "There are two articles that are very convenient,
as I have heard, to some of the lodging-house keepers: their lodgers'
servant, and their own cat."
"By Jove, ma'am, yes!" said the Major. "But I've given warning to this
lot where I am."
Saying au revoir to Major Pratt, Mr. Hamlyn walked down the pier again
with his wife. "Who is he, Philip?" she asked. "You seem to know him
well."
"Very well. He is a sort of connection of mine, I believe," laughed Mr.
Hamlyn, "and I saw a good deal of him in India a few years back. He is
greatly changed. I hardly think I should have known him had he not
spoken. It's his liver, I suppose."
Leaving his wife at the hotel, Mr. Hamlyn went back again to Major
Pratt, much to the lonely Major's satisfaction, who was still leaning on
his substantial stick as he gazed at the water.
"The sight of you has brought back to my mind all that unhappy business,
Hamlyn," was his salutation. "I shall have a fit of the jaundice now, I
suppose! Here--let's sit down a bit."
"And the sight of you has brought it to mine," said Mr. Hamlyn, as he
complied. "I have been striving to drive it out of my remembrance."
"I know little about it," observed the Major. "She never wrote to me at
all afterwards, and you wrote me but two letters: the one announcing the
fact of her disgrace; the other, the calamity and the deaths."
"That is quite enough to know; don't ask me to go over the details to
you personally," said Mr. Hamlyn in a tone of passionate discomfort. "So
utterly repugnant to me is the remembrance altogether, that I have
never spoken of it--even to my present wife."
"Do you mean you've not told her you were once a married man?" cried
Major Pratt.
"No, I have not."
"Then you've shown a lack of judgment which I wouldn't have given you
credit for, my friend," declared the Major. "A man may whisper to his
girl any untoward news he pleases of his past life, and she'll forgive
and forget; aye, and worship him all the more for it, though it were the
having set fire to a church: but if he keeps it as a bonne bouchée to
drop out after marriage, when she has him fast and tight, she'll
curry-comb his hair for him in style. Believe that."
Mr. Hamlyn laughed.
"There never was a hidden skeleton between man and wife yet but it came
to light sooner or later," went on the Major. "If you are wise, you will
tell her at once, before somebody else does."
"What 'somebody?' Who is there here that knows it?"
"Why, as to 'here,' I know it, and nearly spoke of it before her, as you
must have heard; and my servant knows it. That's nothing, you'll say; we
can be quiet, now I have the cue: but you are always liable to meet with
people who knew you in those days, and who knew _her_. Take my advice,
Philip Hamlyn, and tell your wife. Go and do it now."
"I daresay you are right," said the younger man, awaking out of a
reverie. "Of the two evils it may be the lesser." And with lagging
steps, and eyes that seemed to have weights to them, he set out to walk
back to the Old Ship Hotel.
JOHNNY LUDLOW.
THE BRETONS AT HOME.
BY CHARLES W. WOOD, F.R.G.S., AUTHOR OF "THROUGH HOLLAND," "LETTERS FROM
MAJORCA," ETC. ETC.
The English courage and constitution, for which Madame Hellard of the
Hôtel d'Europe professed so much admiration, carried us through the
ordeal of a sound drenching. Perhaps our escape was partly due to
firmness of will, which goes for much; perhaps in part to the dose of
strong waters added to the black coffee our loquacious but interesting
hostess at the little auberge by the river-side had brewed for us.
[Illustration: ST. POL DE LÉON.]
"Had we been to Roscoff?" she had asked us on that memorable afternoon,
when the clouds opened all their waterspouts and threatened the world
with a second deluge. And we had replied that we had not seen Roscoff,
but hoped to do so the following day, wind and weather permitting. Not
that we had to reach Roscoff by water; but the elements can make
themselves quite as disagreeable on land as at sea: and like the Marines
might take for their motto, PER MARE, PER TERRAM.
The next day wind and weather were not permitting. Madame Hellard
clasped her hands with a favourite and pathetic gesture that would melt
the hardest heart and dispose it to grant the most outrageous request.
She bemoaned our fate and the uncertainty of the Breton climate.
"Enfin!" she concluded, "the climate of la Petite Bretagne is very much
the same as that of la Grande Bretagne, from all I have heard. You must
be accustomed to these variations. When the Saxons came over and
settled here centuries and centuries ago, and peopled our little
country, they brought their weather with them. It has never changed.
Like the Breton temperament, it is founded upon a rock--though I often
wish it were a little more pliable and responsive. Changes are good
sometimes. I am not of those who think what is must always be best. If I
were in your Parliament--but you don't have ladies in your Parliament,
though they seem to have a footing everywhere else--I should be a
Liberal; without going too far, bien-intendu; I am all for progress, but
with moderation."
To-day there seemed no prospect of even moderately fine weather, and we
could only improve our time by cultivating the beauties of Morlaix under
weeping skies.
Its quaint old streets certainly have an unmistakable, an undying charm,
which seems to be in touch with all seasons. Blue skies will light them
up and cause them to stand out with almost a joyous air; the declining
sun will illumine their latticed panes with a fire and flame mysterious
with the weight of generations; strong lights and shadows will be thrown
by gables and deep recesses, and sculptured porches; by the "aprons"
that protect the carven beams, and the eaves that stand out so strongly
in outline against the background of the far-off sky. And if those skies
are sad and sorrowful, immediately the quaint houses put on all the
dignity of age: from every gable end, from every lattice, every niche
and grotesque, the rain trickles and falls, and they, too, you would
say, are weeping for their lost youth.
But they are too old to do that. It is not the very aged who weep for
their early days; they have forgotten what is now too far off to be
realised. They weep who stand upon the boundary line separating youth
from age; who at once look behind and beyond: look back with longing
upon the glow and romance which have not yet died out of the heart, and
forward into the future where romance can have no place, and nothing is
visible excepting what has been called the calmness and repose of old
age.
"There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone which fades so fast,
But the bloom of early youth is gone ere youth itself be past."
The reader will probably quote the remainder for himself; Byron never
wrote truer or sadder lines. And we all know of a great man in history
who, at eighty years old, turned to his friend and, pointing to a young
chimney-sweeper, exclaimed: "I would give my wealth, fame, coronet--all,
to be once more that boy's age, even if I must take his place!" One of
the saddest sentences, perhaps, that one of eighty could utter.
To-day every house was weeping. Even the women who kept the stalls in
the covered market-place dispensed their butter and poultry, their
fruit and flowers, with a melancholy air, and looked as if they had not
the courage to keep up the prices. Ladies and housekeepers wandered from
stall to stall followed by their maids, a few of whom wore picturesque
caps, conspicuous in their rarity: for even Breton stubbornness has
yielded very much, where, for once, it should have been firm as a rock,
and it is only in the remoter districts that costume is still general.
We were invited to many purchases as we looked around, and had we
yielded to all might have stocked Madame Hellard's larder to
overflowing: a very unnecessary attention, for the table is kept on the
most liberal principles.
It was really alarming to see the quantity that some of the Bretons
managed to appropriate in an incredibly short space of time at the table
d'hôte. H.C., who was accustomed to the æsthetic table of his aunt, Lady
Maria, more than once had to retire to his room, and recover his
composure, and wonder whether his own appetite would ever return to him.
And once or twice when I unfeelingly drew attention to an opposite
neighbour and wondered what Lady Maria would say to it, he could only
reply by a dismal groan which caused the opposite neighbour for a moment
to arrest his mission of destruction and stare.
On the second occasion that it happened he called up the head
waitress--they were all women who served in the room--and asked her if
the "Monsieur Anglais vis-à-vis" was not ill.
"He looks pale and thin," he added, feelingly, and might well think so,
placed in juxtaposition with himself, for he was large and round, with
cheeks, as Tony Lumpkin would have said, broad and red as a pulpit
cushion. It was simply cause and effect.
In his case, too, the cause was not confined to eating. Two bottles of
the white wine, supplied gratis in unlimited quantities at the table
d'hôte disappeared during the repast; and we began to think of Mr.
Weller senior, the tea-party, and the effect of the unlimited cups upon
Mr. Stiggins. "I come from Quimper," we heard the Breton say on one
occasion to his next-door neighbour, "and I think it the best town in
France, not excepting Paris. Where do you come from?"
"From Rouen," replied the neighbour, a far more refined specimen of
humanity, who spoke in quiet tones. "I am not a Breton."
"So much the worse for you," returned our modern Daniel Lambert
unceremoniously. "The French would beat the world, and the Bretons would
beat the French. Then I suppose you don't deal in horses?"
"No," with an amused smile. "I am only a humble architect." But we
discovered afterwards that he was celebrated all over France.
Travelling, no less than adversity, makes us acquainted with strange
bedfellows.
The head waitress was a very interesting character, much older than the
other waitresses, whom she took under her wing with a species of
hen-like protection, keeping them well up to their duties, and rating
them soundly where they failed. She was a Bretonne, but of the better
type, with sharp, clearly-cut features, and eyes full of vivacity, that
seemed in all places at once. She wore list shoes, and would flit like a
phantom from one end of the room to the other, her cap-strings flying
behind her, directing, surveying all. Very independent, too, was she,
and evidently held certain of her guests in sovereign contempt.
"This terrible fair!" she would say, "which lasts three days, and gives
us no rest and no peace; and one or two of those terrible dealers, who
have a greater appetite than their own cattle, and would eat from six
o'clock until midnight, if one only let them! Monsieur Hellard loses
pretty well by some of them; I am sure of it!"
The lift which brought things up from the kitchen was at the end of the
room, and every now and then she would go to it, and in a shrill voice,
which seemed to penetrate to very far-off regions--Halls of Eblis or
caverns measureless to man--cry out "LÂ SUITE!" the _a_ very much
_circumflexed_ with true Breton pronunciation.
It was amusing, occasionally, when a certain dish was sent up that in
some way or other did not please her, to hear it sent down again in the
return lift accompanied by a reprimand that was very much to the point,
and was audible to the assembled room. The whole table on those
occasions would break into laughter, for her reprimand was always spiced
with inimitable humour, which penetrated even the impervious Breton
intellect.
Then she would fly down the room with the dish returned to her
satisfaction, a suppressed smile lurking about the corners of her mouth,
and, addressing the table at large with a freedom that only the French
can assume without familiarity, exclaim: "It is not because some of you
give the chef too much to do, with your enormous capacities, that I am
going to allow him to neglect his work." And the table would laugh again
and applaud Catherine, the head waitress. For she was very capable and
therefore very popular, as ministering well to their wants. And the
Breton temperament is seldom sensitive.
She had her favourites, to whom she was devoted, making no secret of her
preference. We were amongst the fortunate, and soon fell into her good
graces. Woe betide anyone who attempted to appropriate our seats before
we entered; or a waitress who brought us the last remnants of a
dish--for nothing seemed to escape her observation. She was most
concerned about H.C.'s want of appetite and ethereal
appearance--certainly a startling contrast to some of her experiences.
[Illustration: CREISKER, ST. POL DE LÉON.]
"Monsieur hasn't the appetite of a lark," she complained to me one
morning. "Tell him that the Breton climate is as difficult to fight as
the Breton soldier; and if he does not eat, he will be washed away by
the rains. WHAT EYES!" she exclaimed; "quite the eyes of a poet. I am
sure monsieur is a poet. Have I not reason?"
Thus proving herself even more that an excellent waitress--a woman of
penetration.
We have said that the day after our aquatic adventure at the little inn
by the river-side, "Au retour de la Pêche," the rain came down with
vengeance. There was no doubt about its energy; and this, at least, was
consoling. Nothing is more annoying than your uncertain morning, when
you don't know whether to start or stay at home. On these occasions,
whichever you do turns out a mistake.
But the following day our patience was rewarded by bright sunshine and
blue skies. "The very day for Roscoff," said Madame Hellard; "though I
cannot think why you are determined to pay it a visit. There is
absolutely nothing to see. It is a sad town, and its streets are given
over to melancholy. Of course, you will take St. Pol de Léon on your
way. It is equally quiet, and even less picturesque."
This was not very encouraging, but we have learned to beware of other
people's opinions: they often praise what is worthless, and pass over
delights and treasures in absolute silence.
So, remembering this, we entered the hotel omnibus with our sketching
materials and small cameras, and struggled up the hill to the railway
station and the level of the huge viaduct.
On our way we passed the abode of our refined and interesting
antiquarian. He was standing at his door, the same patient look upon his
beautiful face, the same resigned attitude. He caught sight of us and
woke up out of a reverie. His spirit always seemed taking some far-off
flight.
"Ces messieurs are not leaving?" he cried, for we passed slowly and
close to him. There was evidence of slight anxiety or disappointment in
his tone; the crucifix yet hung on his walls, and H.C.'s mind still
hovered in the balance.
"No," we replied. "We are going to Roscoff, and shall be back to-night."
"Roscoff? It is lovely," he said. "I know you will like it. But it is
very quiet, and only appeals to the artistic temperament. You will see
few shops there; no antiquarians; and the people are stupid. Still, the
place is remarkable."
The omnibus passed on and we were soon steaming away from Morlaix.
It was a desperately slow train. The surrounding country was not very
interesting, but the journey, fortunately, was short. As we passed the
celebrated St. Pol de Léon on the way, we decided to take it first.
Roscoff was the terminus, and appeared like the ends of the earth at the
very extreme point of land, jutting into the sea and looking out upon
the English Channel. If vision could have reached so far, we might have
seen the opposite English coast, and peered right into Plymouth Sound;
where, the last time that we climbed its heights straight from the
hospitality of a delightful cruise in a man-of-war, the band of the
Marine Artillery was ravishing all ears and discoursing sweet music in a
manner that few bands could rival.
We approached St. Pol de Léon, which may be described as an
ecclesiastical, almost a dead city. But how glorious and interesting
some of these dead cities are, with their silent streets and their
remnants of the past! The shadow of death seems upon them, and they
impress you with a mute eloquence more thrilling and effective than the
greatest oration ever listened to.
As we approached St. Pol, which lay half a mile or so from the railway,
its churches and towers were so disposed that the place looked like one
huge ecclesiastical building. These stood out with wonderful effect and
clearness against the background of the sky.
We left the station, and thought we might as well use the omnibus in
waiting. It was small and held about four passengers. As soon as we had
taken our seats two fat priests came up and entered. We felt rather
crowded, and, like the moping owl, resented the intrusion; but when
three stout ladies immediately followed, and looked appealingly at the
state of affairs, it was too much. We gave up our seats and walked; and
presently the omnibus passed us, one of the ladies having wedged herself
in by a miracle between the priests. It would take a yet greater miracle
to unpack them again. The driver looked round with a smile--he had
admitted us into the omnibus and released us--and, pointing to the roof
with his whip, humorously exclaimed: "Complêt!"