THE NIGHT BREEZE
Frank sat on the north wall watching the moon through the leaves.
Her light was faint, for the skirts of the day still swept the
west. He had watched her for half an hour--the pale crescent,
which even in that short time had seemed to wane, as her light
waxed and her horns grew keener on the night's front--the high
forlorn hope of heaven's host that could not all that month drive
out the day. He sat under the close silence of the elm, among
whose leaves there crept the faint, veiled murmur of the seaboard,
fingered by the brooding surges as they beat out their slow,
uncertain, soft-swelling music. Now and again there came, twining
among the mellow notes of the water, from some far field the
corncrake's brazen call, and made the gold ring stronger. These
sounds, the pale moonlight, the night, and the idea of Muriel,
possessed him to the exclusion of thought. Passion rendered him
impassive, and he waited without impatience. Slowly pealing from
the tower in Gourock, ten strokes told the hour. A crackling twig,
a footstep, a rustle, and Muriel was beside him.
Nothing was said till she had recovered her breath; then her
voice, timed unconsciously to the rippling accompaniment of the
waves, whispered clear, 'When you had gone, my father locked me in
my room. The thought of waiting-and-waiting here all night would
soon have made me mad, so I got out by the window. I threw out a
cushion, and then I was frightened. But after a little my courage
came back again, and then I threw over two more, and dropped down
quite soft. I don't know whether any one saw or heard me; but you
wanted me, and I'm here. See, I tore my dress.'
He kissed her dress.
'You must not enter your father's house again,' he said.
Her breath came quick; she took his arm, and looked at him
intently.
'Do you know your father?' he asked.
'He is difficult; but I am beginning to.'
'Then you will understand why his house is not for you.'
She had only a look with which to answer, and he did not think it
satisfactory.
'Tell me,' he said, 'do you understand?'
'No; I do not. My father wants me to marry a stranger, but he
cannot make me.'
'Then you do not know him. He has no scruples; he will do
anything.'
'What can he have said to impress you so?'
'He said enough to show me he has no conscience, and that he looks
on you as a mere puppet.'
Muriel felt as if the world were breaking up on all sides. What
strange new things the day had brought forth; and, to crown them,
flight from home seemed imminent! She pressed to her side Frank's
arm, and with her disengaged hand smoothed the collar of his coat
and fastened the top button, all the while looking wistfully at
his set face. The ears of both were ringing with their own blood,
or they would have heard a movement among the branches; for at
that moment Lee reached the elm. His intention was to interrupt at
once, and get back to the ravelled skein in the house; but the
vision of the two lovers solaced his artistic sense; he was so
near that he could hear their whispers. Shall not an artist take
delight in his own work? Chance would help him, as it had done,
manfully. He would watch this scene out. Surely he held the
strings; and these, his daintiest puppets, he must see them play
their best.
'You must come away with me,' said Frank hoarsely. 'See, I would
have you what is called elope, and I am scrupulous. I do not know
if such an action can be justified by our position even to
ourselves. Your father has no scruples. Conceive what he will do.'
Two incidents flashed into Muriel's mind; the elopement of one
former schoolmate, and the forced marriage of another; both ending
in death by heartbreak of the young wives. She was angry at
herself that these should have occurred to her. Frank and
she!--they were apart from the world. Yet she whispered, 'You
surely exaggerate.'
'No; I do not,' he said. 'Come with me, just now. We are in
Scotland. I will marry you to-night--regularly, to-morrow. You
needn't fear; I have plenty of money.'
'Frank!' she cried reproachfully, 'if I thought my marrying you
depended on running off just now, I would go although you hadn't a
penny.'
'It does, it does. Step on the wall, and I will help you down.'
This command, and the action which accompanied it, roused her. She
had not fully realised the purpose that made his pleading so
earnest, until he seized her quickly, and lifted her towards the
wall.
Lee grasped his whip tightly, and was ready for a spring.
'Put me down,' said Muriel.
Frank hesitated for a moment. It came into his brain to profess a
misunderstanding of her meaning, and lift her over; but looking in
her eyes he blushed with shame at the imagination of such a
deceit. When she was free she seated herself at the root of the
tree, and clasped her knees, gazing at vacancy. She sat for a full
minute. He did not interrupt her meditation. He scarcely thought
that she had divined his momentary impulse. Nevertheless, he felt
as if she had, and punished himself by remaining silent and apart.
He watched her face. It was a sweet perplexity. He chafed to think
that he could not resolve her difficulty.
At length her brow cleared. She rose and went to the wall. She
looked up and down the road and over her shoulder enchantingly.
Then she lifted her skirts over the wall and sat with her back to
Frank. In a second she turned round, and dropped with a little
laugh into the road. He sprang after her, and seized her hand. Lee
approached the wall, but still kept himself concealed.
'Muriel!' Frank whispered breathlessly.
'Frank,' she said, giving him her hand, 'I will do what you think
right. That's what I meant by coming over the wall--I am in your
hands. But first I will tell you what I think. My father wishes me
to marry his friend. That is all we know at present. If the time
should come when I must either obey my father or fly with you, you
know what I would do. But I do not see that that time can ever
come.'
'Yes,' said he. 'But if your father should give you this
alternative--either to marry his friend or remain single?'
'I was coming to that, although it seems too ridiculous to be
likely. Well, we would elope.'
There was silence for several seconds. Unwittingly they had to
accustom themselves to the changed environment, although the
difference was slight. Their natures were so quickened, so
responsive, that soon a perfect accord existed between them and
the latticeless moonbeams, the wide, open night, and the
undeadened music of the surges. They crossed the road in order to
be wholly free of the shade of the elm, not thinking why they did
so. Lee, on his knees behind the wall, watched them with glowing
eyes.
At length Frank said, 'You are here; you are beautiful; you are
hopeful; and you make me hopeful too. I have dreamt so long of
having you that I cannot, with you beside me, imagine our not
being married. But I force myself to remember your father's
determined tone, his cold-blooded sophistries. I heard the worst,
most insolent, most foul, most damnable----'
'Frank!'
'Most foolish talk fall from your father's lips about you, Muriel.
It is horrible to talk to you in this way; but I tremble when I
think of your being left to your father's tender mercies. Listen.
I have challenged him to keep you from me, and he has accepted the
challenge. I regret it now. He said that he would use every means;
that he was always armed to the teeth; so I resolved at once to
run away with you, and dared him. I have been rash--or should I
save you in spite of yourself?'
She looked at the ground, working with both hands at the buttons
of her dress. He had described her mental condition as well as his
own. His presence had cast into the shade the recollection of her
talk with Lee. The threat contained in what Lee had said about
'coming to the point and never returning to it' now assumed
portentous shape in her fancy, quickened by Frank's forebodings;
and the happy, trustful, resolved expression which her face had
worn when she climbed over the wall gave place to one of wretched
doubt.
Frank, watching her closely, would not take advantage of her
wavering mood, and refrained from word or action. His whole
endeavour had been to overcome her repugnance to an elopement; yet
when it was shaken, he made no attempt to improve the occasion. He
felt that to do so would be like striking a man when he is down.
What he aimed at was to make her throw him the reins and be
passive. This she had seemed to do when she went over the wall,
but the surrender had not been absolute.
'I am puzzled,' she said hastily, knitting her brows at the moon.
'I cannot decide. I shall tell you how I am thinking, and then,
perhaps, I shall find out what it is right to think. It is clearer
to think aloud. Elopement! It is a bad, vulgar thing. It would be
in all the papers--forgive me, love! I am thinking that way. I
can't help it. People would joke about it as long as we lived. My
father would never forgive me. Frank--Frank Hay! I love him, and
he loves me. My father doesn't love me. Frank wants me to elope.
What would it matter about newspapers and society when we were
married? I am a foolish girl. It always comes round to this: would
it be right just now? Could it ever be right? Here I am in the
road. You must decide.'
This was spoken with extraordinary emphasis, and at a great rate
of speed; and when it was done the trouble passed off her face. It
settled on his. He pushed his hat from his forehead, thrust his
hands into his pockets, confronting her, and said, 'I hoped for
this, and intended to carry you off in triumph. Whatever withholds
me, I cannot.'
Vacillation is not always the sign of a weak nature. The wind
veers round the compass, and then the gale sets in steadily. Frank
had never been on such a high sea of moral difficulty before. He
had some crew of principles; but they were not able-bodied, having
slept for the most part through the plain sailing of his life.
When the storm came the drowsy helmsman, Conscience, started up
rubbing his blinking eyes; and Will, the captain, had no order to
give.
He climbed the wall, and held down his hands to Muriel. She put
one foot in a little hole; he pulled her up; and they were again
under the elm, Lee barely escaping discovery.
Now, just at the instant Frank gave Muriel his hands, and she
clambered up the wall with the grace of a wild thing and the
necessary free movements; just when her panting body was in his
arms, and her breath upon his face, there came out of the south
one long, gentle, trembling, warm sigh, bearing a burden of subtle
odour from the half-reaped hay fields, and making the trees shiver
with delight through all their happy branches, and the sap swell
and trickle to the very tips of the downiest twigs. It was Summer
kissing Nature in the night. Frank and Muriel were caught in the
contagion. Passion whirled round their hearts that had been held
by consciences alike inexperienced, and the poor helmsmen were
overset. Their blood rattled along their veins like uncontrolled
rudder-chains. He lifted her over; and, taking her in his arms
again when he joined her in the road, started to carry her. They
would be married that night.
A long shadow thrown suddenly across the road arrested him, and
immediately a tall figure stood up in the moonlight. He set Muriel
on her feet behind him, and faced Lee.
'Mr. Chartres!' he exclaimed hoarsely.
'You wished,' said Lee, handing him the riding whip, 'for an
opportunity to horsewhip me.'
'Villain!' cried Frank savagely, seizing the whip. He raised it to
strike. His rage was simply that of a foiled animal.
'Haven't you got over that bad habit of calling names yet?' said
Lee with a smile, as he caught the hand that held the descending
whip. Frank shifted it to the other hand, which Lee grasped as
quickly. Thus Lee held by the wrist a hand of Frank's in each of
his.
Muriel uttered a little scream and fell on her knees. She kept her
eyes fixed on the whip. It jerked about overhead for a few seconds
and fell to the ground. Then she looked at the men. Their arms
were locked round each other. They staggered about and knocked
against the wall. She heard them breathing hard. She held her own
breath. She had scarcely begun to think what would be the upshot
when Frank fell with a thud on his back, and Lee stood over him
whip in hand.
'You have killed him!' she screamed, starting to her feet, and
rushing to her prostrate lover.
'Hardly,' said Lee, throwing the whip away, rather ostentatiously,
as he stepped aside to let Frank rise. He got up looking very
unheroic; indeed, decidedly sheepish. Lee folded his arms, paler,
if anything, than the other, and said, 'I won't ask you to try
another fall. I think I am just twice as strong as you. I mean
this to be a lesson. If you are wise, you will not attempt to
struggle with me in anything.'
Frank stood with his eyes fixed on the ground; his self-esteem had
fallen with his body; Muriel had seen him beaten.
Lee, resting a hand on Muriel's shoulder, and forcing her to stand
beside him when she shrank away, said gaily, 'She is really a
splendid girl, this daughter of mine. How handsome she looks just
now! You must be chagrined horribly when you think that you almost
had her. My dear boy, I pity you sincerely. I don't know exactly
what course you should follow. It would be very striking,
certainly, if you were to go off and drown yourself at once; but I
don't think you'll do that. For myself I would prefer that you
shouldn't. I like you too well, and hope that you will continue to
play a part in our story. Perhaps you might take to drink.
That's a good idea. Go in for dissipation; there's nothing like it
for the cure of romance. Unworldly diseases need worldly remedies.
And yet that's too common, especially with lady novelists. I
believe you'll hit on some bright course of your own, for you're a
capital collaborateur. I must thank you and Muriel for this scene.
I've witnessed it all. Oh, you needn't be ashamed!' for Frank shut
his eyes tightly, and Muriel hid her face in her hands. 'You're
most delightful young people. The way you answered at once to that
soft, warm gust charmed me, charmed me. I understand it all
perfectly. I also am at one with nature. Well, good night. Come,
Muriel.'
Taking her hand he moved toward the wall. She looked over her
shoulder to catch a glance from Frank, but his eyes were still
fixed on the ground, and he stood motionless. Quick as a fawn she
leapt from Lee's side, and throwing her arms round Frank's neck,
cried out loud in a tone mingled of anguish and pity and passion,
'I love you!' and he, reanimated by that shout, whispered as Lee
snatched her away, 'I'll watch here all night.' That gave her new
hope too. She would come to him by some means or other; and she
felt so contented as Lee helped her over the wall, and led her in
silence to the house, that she wondered at herself.