CLEVE AGAIN BEFORE HIS IDOL.
CLEVE could not rest--he could not return to Ware. He would hear his
fate defined by her who had grown so inexpressibly dear by
being--unattainable! Intolerant of impediment or delay, this impetuous
spirit would end all, and know all that very night.
The night had come--one that might have come in June. The moon was
up--the air so sweetly soft--the blue of heaven so deep and liquid.
His yacht lay on the deep quiet shadow, under the pier of Cardyllian. He
walked over the moonlighted green, which was now quite deserted. The
early town had already had its tea and "pikelets." Alone--if lovers ever
_are_ alone--he walked along the shore, and heard the gentle sea ripple
rush and sigh along the stones. He ascended the steep path that mounts
the sea-beaten heights, overlooking Cardyllian on one side, and Malory
on the other.
Before him lay the landscape on which he had gazed as the sun went down
that evening, when the dull light from the gold and crimson sky fell
softly round. And now, how changed everything! The moon's broad disk
over the headland was silvering the objects dimly. The ivied castle at
his left looked black against the sky. The ruins how empty now! How
beautiful everything, and he how prodigious a fool! No matter. We have
time enough to be wise. Away, to-morrow, or at latest, next day; and in
due course would arrive the season--that tiresome House of Commons--and
the routine of pleasure, grown on a sudden so insupportably dull.
So he had his walk in the moonlight toward Malory--the softest moonlight
that ever fell from heaven--the air so still and sweet: it seemed an
enchanted land. Down the hill toward Malory he sauntered, looking
sometimes moonward, sometimes on the dark woods, and feeling as five
weeks since he could not have believed himself capable of feeling, and
so he arrived at the very gate of Malory.
Here stood two ladies, talking low their desultory comments on the
beautiful scene, as they looked across the water toward the headland of
Pendillion. And these two ladies were the same from whom he had parted
so few hours since. It was still very early everywhere except at
Cardyllian, and these precincts of Malory, so entirely deserted at these
hours that there seemed as little chance of interruption at the gate, as
if they had stood in the drawing-room windows.
Cleve was under too intense and impetuous an excitement to hesitate. He
approached the iron gate where, as at a convent grille, the old and the
young recluse stood. The moonlight was of that intense and brilliant
kind which defines objects clearly as daylight. The ladies looked both
surprised; even Miss Anne Sheckleton looked grave.
"How very fortunate!" said Cleve, raising his hat, and drawing near.
Just then, he did not care whether Sir Booth should chance to see him
there or not, and it was not the turn of his mind to think, in the first
place, of consequences to other people.
Happily, perhaps, for the quiet of Malory, one of Sir Booth's caprices
had dispensed that night with his boat, and he was at that moment
stretched in his long silk dressing-gown and slippers, on the sofa, in
what he called his study. After the first instinctive alarm, therefore,
Miss Anne Sheckleton had quite recovered her accustomed serenity and
cheer of mind, and even interrupted him before he had well got to the
end of his salutation to exclaim--
"Did you ever, anywhere, see such moonlight? It almost dazzles me."
"Quite splendid; and Malory looks so picturesque in this light." He was
leaning on the pretty old gate, at which stood both ladies, sufficiently
far apart to enable him, in a low tone, to say to the younger, without
being overheard--"So interesting in every light, now! I wonder your men
don't suspect me of being a poacher, or something else very bad, I find
myself prowling about here so often, at this hour, and even later."
"I admire that great headland--Pendillion, isn't it?--so very much; by
this light one might fancy it white with snow," said Miss Sheckleton.
"I wish you could see Cardrwydd Island _now_; the gray cliffs in this
light are so white and transparent, you can hardly imagine so strange
and beautiful an effect," said Cleve.
"I dare say," said Miss Sheckleton.
"You have only to walk about twenty steps across that little road
towards the sea, and you have it full in view. Do let me persuade you,"
said Cleve.
"Well, I don't mind," said Miss Sheckleton. "Come, Margaret, dear," and
these latter words she repeated in private exhortation, and then aloud
she added--"We have grown so much into the habit of shutting ourselves
up in our convent grounds, that we feel like a pair of runaway nuns
whenever we pass the walls; however, I _must_ see the island."
The twenty steps toward the sea came to be a hundred or more, and at
last brought them close under the rude rocks that form the little pier;
in that place, the party stopped, and saw the island rising in the
distant sheen, white and filmy; a phantom island, with now and then a
gleam of silvery spray, from the swell which was unfelt within the
estuary, shooting suddenly across its points of shadow.
"Oh! how beautiful!" exclaimed Miss Fanshawe, and Cleve felt strangely
elated in her applause. They were all silent, and Miss Sheckleton, still
gazing on the distant cliffs, walked on a little, and a little more, and
paused.
"How beautiful!" echoed Cleve, in tones as low, but very different.
"Yes, how beautiful--how fatally beautiful; how beloved, and yet how
cold. Cold, mysterious, wild as the sea; beautiful, adored and _cruel_.
How _could_ you speak as you did to-day? What have I done, or said, or
thought, if you could read my thoughts? I tell you, ever since I saw you
in Cardyllian church I've thought only of you; you haunt my steps; you
inspire my hopes. I adore you, Margaret."
She was looking on him with parted lips, and something like fear in her
large eyes, and how beautiful her features were in the brilliant
moonlight.
"Yes, I _adore_ you; I don't know what fate or fiend rules these things;
but to-day it seemed to me that you hated me, and yet I adore you; _do_
you hate me?"
"How wildly you talk; you can't love me; you don't know me," said this
odd girl.
"I don't know you, and yet I love you; you don't know _me_, and yet I
think you _hate_ me. You talk of love as if it were a creation of reason
and calculation. You don't know it, or you could not speak so;
antipathies perhaps you do not experience; is there no caprice in
_them_? I love you _in defiance_ of calculation, and of reason, and of
hope itself. I can no more help loving you than the light and air
without which I should die. You're not going; you're not _so_ cruel; it
may be the last time you shall ever hear me speak. You won't believe me;
no, not a word I say, although it's all as true as that this light
shines from heaven. You'd believe one of your boatmen relating any
nonsense he pleases about people and places here. You'll believe worse
fellows, I dare say, speaking of higher and dearer things, _perhaps_--I
can't tell; but _me_, on _this_, upon which I tell you, _all_ depends
for me, you won't believe. I never loved any mortal before. I did not
know what it was, and now here I stand, telling you my bitter story,
telling it to the sea, and the rocks, and the air, with as good a chance
of a hearing. I read it in your manner and your words to-day. I felt it
intuitively. You don't care for me; you can't like me; I see it in your
looks. And now, will you tell me; for God's sake, Margaret, do tell
me--is there not some one--you _do_ like? I know there is."
"That's _quite_ untrue--I mean there is _nothing_ of the kind," said
this young lady, looking very pale, with great flashing eyes; "and one
word more of this kind to-night you are not to say to me. Cousin Anne,"
she called, "come, I'm going back."
"We are so much obliged to you, Mr. Verney," said Miss Sheckleton,
returning; "we should never have thought of coming down here, to look
for this charming view. Come, Margaret, darling, your papa may want me."
An inquisitive glance she darted furtively at the young people, and I
dare say she thought that she saw something unusual in their
countenances.
As _they_ did not speak, Miss Sheckleton chatted on unheeded, till, on a
sudden, Cleve interposed with--
"There's an old person--an old lady, I may call her--named Rebecca
Mervyn, who lives in the steward's house, adjoining Malory, for whom I
have a very old friendship; she was so kind to me, poor thing, when I
was a boy. My grandmother has a very high opinion of her; and _she_ was
never very easily pleased. I suppose you have seen Mrs. Mervyn; you'd
not easily forget her, if you have. They tell me in the town that she is
quite well; the same odd creature she always was, and living still in
the steward's house."
"I know--to be sure--I've seen her very often--that is, half-a-dozen
times or more--and she _is_ a very odd old woman, like that benevolent
enchantress in the 'Magic Ring'--don't you remember? who lived in the
castle with white lilies growing all round the battlements," answered
Miss Sheckleton.
"I know," said Cleve, who had never read it.
"And if you want to see her, _here_ she is, oddly enough," whispered
Miss Sheckleton, as the old woman with whom Sedley had conferred on the
sea-beach came round the corner of the boundary wall near the gateway by
which they were now standing, in her grey cloak, with dejected steps,
and looking, after her wont, seaward toward Pendillion.
"No," said Cleve, getting up a smile as he drew a little back into the
shadow; "I'll not speak to her now; I should have so many questions to
answer, I should not get away from her for an hour."
Almost as he spoke the old woman passed them, and entered the gate; as
she did so, looking hard on the little party, and hesitating for a
moment, as if she would have stopped outright. But she went on without
any further sign.
"I breathe again," said Cleve; "I was so afraid she would know me again,
and insist on a talk."
"Well, perhaps it is better she did not; it might not do, you know, if
she mentioned your name, for _reasons_," whispered Miss Sheckleton, who
was on a sudden much more intimate with Cleve, much more friendly, much
more kind, and somehow pitying.
So he bade good-night. Miss Sheckleton gave him a little friendly
pressure as they shook hands at parting. Miss Fanshawe neither gave nor
refused her hand. He took it; he held it for a moment--that slender
hand, all the world to him, clasped in his own, yet never to be his,
lodged like a stranger's for a moment there--then to go, for ever. The
hand was carelessly drawn away; he let it go, and never a word spoke he.
The ladies entered the deep shadow of the trees. He listened to the
light steps fainting into silent distance, till he could hear them no
more.
Suspense--still suspense.
Those words spoken in her clear undertone--terrible words, that seemed
at the moment to thunder in his ears, "loud as a trumpet with a silver
sound"--were they, after all, words of despair, or words of hope?
"_One word more of this kind, to-night, you are not to say to me._"
How was he to translate the word "to-night" in this awful text? It
seemed, as she spoke it, introduced simply to add peremptoriness to her
forbiddance. But was that its fair meaning? Did it not imply that the
prohibition was limited only to that night? Might it not mean that he
was free to speak more--possibly to hear more--at a future time?
A riddle? Well! he would read it in the way most favourable to his
hopes; and who will blame him? He would have no oracles--no
ambiguities--nothing but sharply defined certainty.
With an insolent spirit, instinct with an impatience and impetuosity
utterly intolerant of the least delay or obstruction, the interval could
not be long.