'BIDE A WEE.'
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands!
Tempest
The Ponsonby family were spending the hot season at Chorillos, the
Peruvian watering-place, an irregular assembly of cane-built,
mud-besmeared ranches, close on the shore of the Pacific, with the
mountains seeming to rise immediately in the rear.
They had gone for Mr. Ponsonby's health, and Rosita's amusement; and in
the latter object they had completely succeeded. In her bathing-dress,
full trousers, and a beautifully-embroidered blouse, belted at the
waist, a broad-brimmed straw hat, and her raven hair braided in two
long tresses, she wandered on the shore with many another fair
Limenian, or entered the sea under the protection of a brown Indian;
and, supported by mates or gourds, would float for hours together among
her companions, splashing about, and playing all sorts of frolics, like
so many mermaids.
In the evening she returned to more terrestrial joys, and arraying
herself in some of her infinite varieties of ball-dresses, with flowers
and jewels in her hair, a tiny Panama hat cocked jauntily on the top of
her head, and a rich shawl with one end thrown over the shoulder, she
would step daintily out in her black satin shoes, with old Xavier in
attendance, or sometimes with Robson as her cavalier, to meet her
friends on the beach, or make a call in the lamp-lit corridor of some
other rancho. There were innumerable balls, dances, and pic-nics to
the rich and fertile villages and haciendas around, and fetes of every
description almost every evening; visits to the tombs of the old
Peruvians, whose graves were often rudely and lightly searched for the
sake of their curious images and golden ornaments. The Senora declared
it was the most lovely summer she had ever spent, and that nothing
should induce her to return to Lima while her friends remained there.
The other object, of re-invigorating Mr. Ponsonby, had not been
attained. He had been ailing for some time past, and, instead of
deriving benefit from the sea-breezes, only missed the comforts of
home. He was so testy and exacting that Mary would have seldom liked
to leave him to himself, even if she had been disposed to lead the life
of a fish; and she was seldom away from him, unless Robson came down
from Lima to transact business with him.
Mary dreaded these interviews, for her father always emerged from them
doubly irritable and dispirited; and when Rosita claimed the Senor
Robson as her knight for her evening promenade, and the father and
daughter were left alone together, he would blame the one lady for
going, the other for staying--then draw out his papers again, and
attempt to go over them, with a head already aching and confused--be
angry at Mary's entreaties that he would lay them aside, or allow her
to help him--and presently be obliged with a sigh to desist, and lie
back in his chair, while she fanned him, or cooled his forehead with
iced water. Yet he was always eager and excited for Robson to come;
and a delay of a day would put his temper in such a state that his wife
kept out of his sight, leaving Mary to soothe him as she might.
'Mary,' said her father one evening, when she was standing at the
window of the corridor, refreshing her eye with gazing at the glorious
sunset in the midst of a pile of crimson and purple clouds, reflected
in the ocean--'Mary, Ward is going to Mew York next week.'
'So soon?' said Mary.
'Aye, and he is coming here to-morrow to see you.'
Mary still looked out with a sort of interest to see a little gold
flake change its form as it traversed a grand violet tower.
'I hope you will make him a more reasonable answer than you did last
time,' said her father; 'it is too bad to keep the poor man dangling on
at this rate! And such a man!'
'I am very sorry for it, but I cannot help it,' said Mary; 'no one can
be kinder or more forbearing than he has been, but I wish he would look
elsewhere.'
'So you have not got that nonsense out of your head!' exclaimed Mr.
Ponsonby, with muttered words that Mary would not hear. 'All my fault
for ever sending you among that crew! Coming between you and the best
match in Lima--the best fellow in the world--strict enough to content
Melicent or your mother either! What have you to say against him,
Mary? I desire to know that.'
'Nothing, papa,' said Mary, 'except that I wish he could make a better
choice.'
'I tell you, you and he were made for each other. It is the most
provoking thing in the world, that you will go on in this obstinate
way! I can't even ask the man to do me a kindness, with having an eye
to these abominable affairs, that are all going to the dogs. There's
old Dynevor left his senses behind him when he went off to play the
great man in England, writing every post for remittances, when he knows
what an outlay we've been at for machinery; and there's the Equatorial
Company cutting its own throat at Guayaquil, and that young fellow up
at the San Benito not half to be trusted--Robson can't make out his
accounts; and here am I such a wretch that I can hardly tell what two
and two make; and here's Ward, the very fellow to come in and set all
straight in the nick of time; and I can't ask him so much as to look at
a paper for me, because I'm not to lay myself under an obligation.'
'But, papa, if our affairs are not prosperous, it would not be fair to
connect Mr. Ward or any one with them.'
'Never you trouble yourself about that! You'll come in for a pretty
fortune of your own, whatever happens to that abominable cheat of a
Company; and that might be saved if only I was the man I was, or
Dynevor was here. If Ward would give us a loan, and turn his mind to
it, we should be on our legs in an instant. It is touch and go just
now!--I declare, Mary,' he broke out again after an interval, 'I never
saw anything so selfish as you are! Lingering and pining on about this
foolish young man, who has never taken any notice of you since you have
been out here, and whom you hear is in love with another woman--married
to her very likely by this time--or, maybe, only wishing you were
married and out of his way.'
'I do not believe so,' answered Mary, stoutly.
'What! you did not see Oliver's letter from that German place?'
'Yes, I did,' said Mary; 'but I know his manner to Clara.'
'You do? You take things coolly, upon my word!'
'No,' said Mary. 'I know they are like brother and sister, and Clara
could never have written to me as she has done, had there been any such
notion. But that is not the point, papa. What I know is, that while
my feelings are what they are at present, it would not be right of me
to accept any one; and so I shall tell Mr. Ward, if he is still
determined to see me. Pray forgive me, dear papa. I do admire and
honour him very much, but I cannot do any more; and I am sorry I have
seemed pining or discontented, for I tried not to be so.'
A grim grunt was all the answer that Mr. Ponsonby vouchsafed. His
conscience, though not his lips, acquitted poor Mary of discontent or
pining, as indeed it was the uniform cheerfulness of her demeanour that
had misled him into thinking the unfortunate affair forgotten.
He showed no symptoms of speaking again; and Mary, leaning back in her
chair, had leisure to recover herself after the many severe strokes
that had been made at her. There was one which she had rebutted
valiantly at the moment, but which proved to have been a poisoned
dart--that suggestion that it might be selfish in her not to set Louis
even more free, by her own marriage!
She revolved the probabilities: Clara, formed, guided, supported by
himself, the companion of his earlier youth, preferred to all others,
and by this time, no doubt, developed into all that was admirable. What
would be more probable than their mutual love? And when Mary went over
all the circumstances of her own strange courtship, she could not but
recur to her mother's original impression, that Louis had not known
what he was doing. Those last weeks had made her feel rather than
believe otherwise, but they were far in the distance now, and he had
been so young! It was not unlikely that even yet, while believing
himself faithful to her, his heart was in Clara's keeping, and that the
news of her marriage would reveal to them both, in one rush of
happiness, that they were destined for each other from the first.
Mary felt intense pain, and yet a strange thrill of joy, to think that
Louis might at last be happy.
She drew Clara's last letter out of her basket, and re-read it, in
hopes of some contradiction. Clara's letters had all hitherto been
stiff. She had not been acknowledged to be in the secret of Mary's
engagement while it subsisted, and this occasioned a delicacy in
writing to her on any subject connected with it; and so the mention of
the meeting at the 'Grand Monarque' came in tamely, and went off
quickly into Lord Ormersfield's rheumatism and Charlemagne's tomb. But
the remarkable thing in the letter was the unusual perfume of happiness
that pervaded it; the conventional itinerary was abandoned, and there
was a tendency to droll sayings--nay, some shafts from a quiver at
which Mary could guess. She had set all down as the exhilaration of
Louis's presence, but perhaps that exhilaration, was to a degree in
which she alone could sympathize.
Mary was no day-dreamer; and yet, ere Rosita's satin shoe was on the
threshold, she had indulged in the melancholy fabric of a castle at
Ormersfield, in which she had no share, except the consciousness that
it had been her self-sacrifice that had given Louis at last the
felicity for which he was so well fitted.
But at night, in her strange little room, lying in her hammock, and
looking up through her one unglazed window, high up in the roof, to the
stars that slowly travelled across the space, she came back to a more
collected opinion. She had no right to sacrifice Mr. Ward as well as
herself. Louis could not be more free than she had made him already,
and it would be doing evil that good might come, to accept the
addresses of one man while she could not detach her heart from another.
'Have I ever really tried yet? she thought. 'Perhaps I am punishing
him and poor Mr. Ward, because, as papa says, I have languished, and
have never tried in earnest to wean my thoughts from him. He was the
one precious memory, besides my dear mother, and she never thought it
would come to good. He will turn out to have been constant to Clara
all the time, though he did not know it.'
Even if Mr. Ponsonby had been in full health, he would have had no
inclination to spare Mary the conversation with Mr. Ward, who took his
hot nine miles' ride from Lima in the early morning, before the shadow
of the mountains had been drawn up from the arid barren slope leading
to Chorillos.
He came in time for the late breakfast, when the table was loaded with
various beautiful tropical fruits, tempting after his ride, and in his
state of suspense. He talked of his journey, and of his intended
absence, and his regret, in a manner half mechanical, half dreamy,
which made Mary quite sorry for him; it was melancholy for a man of his
age to have fixed so many fond hopes where disappointment was in store
for him. She wished to deal as kindly with him as she could, and did
not shrink away when her father left them, muttering something about a
letter, and Rosita went to take her siesta.
With anxious diffidence he ventured to ask whether she remembered what
had passed between them on the San Benito mountain.
'Yes, Mr. Ward, but I am afraid I do not think differently now, in
spite of all your kindness.'
Poor Mr. Ward's countenance underwent a change, as if he had hoped
more. 'Your father had given me reason to trust,' he said, 'that you
had recovered your spirits; otherwise I should hardly have presumed to
intrude on you. And yet, before so long an absence, you cannot wonder
that I longed to hear something decisive.'
'Indeed I wished what I said before to be decisive. I am very sorry to
give pain to one so much kinder than I deserve, and to whom I look up
so much, but you see, Mr. Ward, I cannot say what is untrue.'
'Miss Ponsonby,' said Mr. Ward, 'I think you may be acting on a most
noble but mistaken view. I can well believe that what you have once
experienced you can never feel again. That would be more than I should
dare to ask. My own feeling for you is such that I believe I should be
able to rejoice in hearing of the fulfilment of your happiness, in your
own way; but since there seems no such probability, cannot you grant me
what you can still give, which would be enough to cause me the greatest
joy to which I have ever aspired; and if my most devoted affection
could be any sufficient return, you know that it is yours already.'
The grave earnestness with which he spoke went to Mary's heart, and the
tears came into her eyes. She felt it almost wrong to withstand a man
of so much weight and worth; but she spoke steadily--'This is very
kind--very kind indeed; but I do not feel as if it would be right.'
'Will you not let me be the judge of what will satisfy me?'
'You cannot judge of my feelings, Mr. Ward. You must believe me that,
with all my esteem and gratitude, I do not yet feel as if I should be
acting rightly by you or by any one else, under my present sentiments.'
'You do not _yet_ feel?'
Mary felt that the word was a mistake. 'I do not think I ever shall,'
she added.
'You will not call it persecution, if I answer that perhaps I may make
the venture once more,' he said. 'I shall live on that word 'yet'
while I am at New York. I will tease you no more now; but remember
that, though I am too old to expect to be a young lady's first choice,
I never saw the woman whom I could love, or of whom I could feel so
sure that she would bring a blessing with her; and I do believe that,
if you would trust me, I could make you happy. There! I ask no answer.
I only shall think of my return next year, and not reckon on that. I
know you will tell me whatever is true.' He pressed her hand, and
would fain have smiled reassuringly.
He took leave much more kindly than Mary thought she deserved, and did
not appear to be in low spirits. She feared that ahe had raised
unwarrantable hopes, but the truth was, that Mr. Ponsonby had privately
assured him that, though she could not yet believe it, poor girl! the
young man in England would be married before many months were over to
old Dynevor's niece. There would be no more difficulty by the time he
came back, for she liked him heartily already, and was a sensible girl.
So Mr. Ward departed, and Mary was relieved, although she missed his
honest manly homage, and sound wise tone of thought, where she had so
few to love or lean on. She thought that she ought to try to put
herself out of the way of her cousins at home as much as possible, and
so she did not try to make time to write to Clara, and time did not
come unsought, for her father's health did not improve; and when they
returned to Lima, he engrossed her care almost entirely, while his
young wife continued her gaieties, and Mary had reason to think the
saya y manto disguise was frequently donned; but it was so much the
custom of ladies of the same degree, that Mary thought it neither
desirable nor likely to be effectual to inform her father, and incite
him to interfere. She devoted herself to his comfort, and endeavoured
to think as little as she heard of English cousins.
There was not much to hear. After returning home quite well, Lord
Ormersfield was laid up again by the first cold winds, and another
summer of German brunnens was in store for him and Louis. Lady Conway
had taken a cottage in the Isle of Wight, where Walter, having found
the Christmas holidays very dull, and shown that he could get into
mischief as well without Delaford as with him, she sent him off in a
sort of honourable captivity to James and Isabel, expecting that he
would find it a great punishment. Instead of this, the change from
luxury to their hard life seemed to him a sort of pic-nic. He enjoyed
the 'fun' of the waiting on themselves, had the freedom of Ormersfield
park for sport; and at home, his sister, whom he had always loved and
respected more than any one else. James had time to attend to him, and
to promote all his better tastes and feelings; and above all, he lost
his heart to his twin nieces. It was exceedingly droll to see the half
quarrelsome coquetries between the three, and to hear Walter's grand
views for the two little maidens as soon as he should be of age. James
and Louis agreed that there could not be much harm in him, while he
could conform so happily to such a way of life. Everything is
comparative, and the small increase to James's income had been
sufficient to relieve him from present pinching and anxiety in the
scale of life to which he and Isabel had become habituated. His
chaplaincy gave full employment for heart and head to a man so
energetic and earnest; he felt himself useful there, and threw himself
into it with all his soul; and, what was more wonderful, he had never
yet quarrelled with the guardians; and the master told Mr. Calcott that
he had heard Mr. Frost was a fiery gentleman, but he had always seen
him particularly gentle, especially with the children in school. The
old women could never say enough in his praise, and doated on the
little brown fairy who often accompanied him.
There was plenty to be done at home--little luxury, and not much rest;
but Isabel's strength and spirits seemed a match for all, in her own
serene quiet way, and the days passed very happily.
Charlotte had a workhouse girl under her, who neither ate nor broke so
vehemently as her predecessor. One night, when Charlotte sat mending
and singing in the nursery, the girl came plodding up in her heavy
shoes, saying, 'There's one wanting to see ye below.'
'One! Who can it be?' cried Charlotte, her heart bounding at the
thought of a denouement to her own romance.
'He looks like a gentleman,' said the girl, 'and he wanted not to see
master, but Miss Arnold most particular.' More hopes for Charlotte.
She had nearly made one bound downstairs, but waited to lay awful
commands on the girl not to leave the children on no account; then flew
down, pausing at the foot of the stairs to draw herself up, and
remember dignity and maidenliness. Alas for her hopes! It was
Delaford! His whiskers still were sleek and curly; he still had a
grand air; but his boots were less polished--his hat had lost the
gloss--and he looked somewhat the worse for wear.
Poor Charlotte started back as if she had seen a wild beast in her
kitchen. She had heard of his dishonesty, and her thoughts flew
distractedly to her spoons, murder, and the children. And here he was
advancing gracefully to take her hand. She jumped back, and exclaimed,
faintly, 'Mr. Delaford, please go away! I can't think what you come
here for!'
'Ah! I see, you have listened to the voice of unkind scandal,' said Mr.
Delaford. 'I have been unfortunate, Miss Arnold--unfortunate and
misunderstood--guilty never. On the brink of quitting for ever an
ungrateful country, I could not deny myself the last sad satisfaction
of visiting the spot where my brightest hours have been passed;' and he
looked so pathetic, that Charlotte felt her better sense melting, and
spoke in a hurry--
'Please don't, Mr. Delaford, I've had enough of all that. Please go,
and take my best wishes, as long as you don't come here, for I know all
about you.'
But the intruder only put his hand upon his heart, and declared that he
had been misrepresented; and let a cruel world think of him as it
might, there was one breast in which he could not bear that a false
opinion, of him should prevail. And therewith he reached a chair, and
Charlotte found herself seated and listening to him, neither believing,
nor wishing to believe him, longing that he would take himself away,
but bewildered by his rhetoric. In the first place, he had been
hastily judged; he had perhaps yielded too much to Sir Walter--but
youth, &c.; and when Lady Conway's means were in his hands, it had
seemed better--he knew now that it had been a weakness, but so he had
judged at the time--to supply the young gentleman's little occasions,
than to make an eclat. Moreover, if he had not been the most
unfortunate wretch in the world, a few lucky hits would have enabled
him to restore the whole before Lord Fitzjocelyn hurried on the
inquiry; but the young gentleman thought he acted for the best, and Mr.
Delaford magnanimously forgave him.
Charlotte could not follow through half the labyrinth; and sat pinching
the corner of her apron, with a vague idea that perhaps he was not so
bad as was supposed; but what would happen if her master should find
him there? She never looked up, nor made any answer, till he began to
give her a piteous account of his condition; how he did not know where
to turn, nor what to do; and was gradually beginning to sell off his
'little wardrobe to purchase the necessaries of life.' Then the
contrast began to tell on her soft heart, and she looked up with a
sound of compassion.
In the wreck of his fortunes and hopes, he had thought of her; he knew
she had too generous a spirit to crush a wretch trodden down by
adversity, who had loved her truly, and who had once had some few hopes
of requital. Those were, alas! at an end; yet still he saw that
'woman, lovely woman, in our hours of ease'--And here he stumbled in
his quotation, but the fact was, that his hopes being blasted in
England, he had decided on trying his fortune in another hemisphere;
but, unfortunately, he had not even sufficient means to pay for a
passage of the humblest description, and if he could venture to entreat
for a--in fact, a loan--it should be most faithfully and gratefully
restored the moment the fickle goddess should smile on him.
Charlotte felt a gleam of joy at the prospect of getting rid of him on
any terms. She belonged to a class who seldom find the golden mean in
money matters, being either exceedingly close and saving, or else
lavish either on themselves or other people. Good old Jane had never
succeeded in saving; all her halfpence went to the beggars, and all her
silver melted into halfpence, or into little presents; and on the
receipt of her wages, she always rushed on to the shop like a child
with a new shilling. Reading had given Charlotte a few theories on the
subject, but her practice had not gone far. She always meant to put
into the savings' bank; but hiring books, and daintiness, though not
finery, in dress, had prevented her means from ever amounting to a sum,
in her opinion, worth securing. The spirit of economy in the household
had so far infected her that she had, in spite of her small wages, more
in hand than ever before, and when she found what Mr. Delaford wanted,
a strange mixture of feelings actuated her. She pitied the change in
his fortunes; she could not but be softened by his flattering
sayings,--she could not bear that he should not have another chance of
retrieving his character--she knew she had trifled unjustifiably with
his feelings, if he had any,--and she had a sense of being in fault.
And so the little maiden ran upstairs, peeped into her red-leather
work-box, pulled out her bead-purse, and extracted therefrom three
bright gold sovereigns, and ran downstairs again, trembling at her own
venturesomeness, afraid that their voices might be heard. She put the
whole before Delaford, saying--
'There--that is all that lays in my power. Don't mention it, pray.
Now, please go, and a happy journey to you.'
How she wished his acknowledgments and faithful promises were over! He
did hint something about refreshment, bread-and-cheese and beer, fare
which he used to despise as 'decidedly low,' but Charlotte was obdurate
here, and at last he took his leave. There stood the poor, foolish,
generous little thing, raking out the last embers of the kitchen fire,
conscious that she had probably done the silliest action of her life,
very much ashamed, and afraid of any one knowing it; and yet strangely
light of heart, as if she had done something to atone for the past
permission that she had granted him to play with her vanity.
'Some day she might tell Tom all about it, and she did not think he
would be angry, for he knew what it was to have nowhere to go, and to
want to try for one more chance.'