A VOICE IN THE NIGHT.
‘As I trembled, look’d, and sigh’d,
His eyes met mine--he fix’d their glories on me;
Confusion thrill’d me then, and secret joy,
Fast throbbing, stole its treasures from my heart,
And, mantling upward, turn’d my face to crimson.’
_Brooke_.
There was none of the mischievous joy of a girl set at liberty to
follow her own devices in her demeanour, as she traversed the distance
that lay between the cottage and the sands, with her head bent and her
eyes fixed on the ground. For, perhaps, in all her short life, Fenella
had never felt so lonely and uncared-for as she did that afternoon.
She had often grieved during her school days because she did not go
home to see her mother; but the separation between them at that time
was as nothing compared to the gulf that divided them now--a gulf
which, some instinct told the girl, would never be bridged over but by
the conventionalities of society.
She soon reached the ruined villa, and sitting on the floor of the open
verandah, with her feet upon the sand, she leaned her cheek against
a stucco pillar, green with the damp of time, and gave herself up to
thought. Had she been less sad, the scene around would have excited
all her interest, even in its solitude; it was so unlike anything to
which she had been accustomed. Before her lay the broad, still ocean,
and there were few moving things about to break the sense of isolation
it engendered. Two or three boats were drawn up upon the sand; in the
distance several more might be seen floating on the quiet waters; and
to the right a faint trail of blue smoke, curling along the horizon,
showed that the little steamer had started with its daily freight from
the pier at Lynwern.
Fenella had seated herself with her back to Ines-cedwyn; had she turned
her head she would have seen that the green slope down which she had
wandered was the foreground of a range of chalk hills that sheltered
the little village from the winter gales. She would have seen that
the vegetation, such as it was, grew almost to the water’s edge; that
sheep and donkeys and cattle browsed peacefully upon the common; that
to the right of her, though hidden by a cliff, lay Lynwern, the town
from which she had walked the night before, and to the left was a great
landslip that had rolled almost into the sea, and was still crowned
with the wild apple orchard it had carried with it.
But her heart was too full just then to see the wild beauties of the
place to which she had come. The tears were too near her eyes for her
to see anything distinctly. She kept them fixed upon the blue water,
which broke with monotonous fidelity upon the golden sand, and ran back
again with a subdued murmur, leaving a trail of froth and scum to mark
its way.
Fenella believed, in her loneliness, that she had arrived at the very
climax of all suffering--that there could never be anything worse for
her to bear than she was bearing then. All her friends seemed to have
retreated from her as the sea retreated from the sands, but with no
hope of return. She had been parted from Honorée St Just and all her
convent friends, and she had received nothing in return with which to
fill up the vacancy their loss had made in her heart, and life seemed
cruelly hard to the girl. Her love for her mother and her mother’s love
for her had been the dream of her youth. She had believed in it as in
the mercy of God. She had returned home ready to lean her whole weight
upon it as on the staff of her existence, and it had snapped like a
reed in her hand. And even Bennett had failed her; even poor Bennett,
though it was not her fault, was absent at this crisis, and preferred
Martha’s attendance to that of her young mistress.
No one wanted her--that was Fenella’s prevailing thought that
afternoon. Every one would get on better without the trouble of her
presence; she might as well be out of the world altogether. It was a
dangerous thought to indulge in--a dangerous moment in which to present
any new interest to fill up the void in the girl’s aching heart. She
felt so forlorn that she would have been thankful to a dog for showing
her any sympathy. And a dog was the first to do it.
Fenella had been so absorbed in her own melancholy thoughts that she
had not observed that a little boat had come in at a short distance
from where she sat--that is, the boat had come in as near as it could
through the shallow water, and its occupants had jumped out, and waded
through the ankle-deep tide to shore. And one of the occupants, being
very short and bandy-legged and impetuous, had wetted himself from
head to foot, and now came bounding forward--some doggish instinct
telling him he would be welcome--and, with pricked ears and shining
eyes, ensconced his dripping little body behind the shelter of
Fenella’s black skirt, and from that ambush barked vociferously at his
approaching master.
The girl started from her reverie; then perceiving the friendly
disposition of the intruder, she put out her hand and patted the wet
coat of the little terrier.
‘Trap! Trap! come back, sir; come back! Do you hear what I say to
you?’ was shouted in an authoritative masculine voice; but Trap
only wriggled his small red body about, and declined to have another
sea-bath, as he imagined his owner was desirous of making him. Then a
young man in boating gear strode up to Fenella’s side, and seizing the
little terrier by the nape of the neck, flung him to some distance on
the sand.
‘Oh! don’t hurt him!’ cried the girl; ‘poor little fellow, he didn’t
mean to do any harm.’
The gentleman’s soft felt hat was crushed in one hand in a moment.
‘You are very good to say so,’ he replied, ‘but the brute has wetted
your dress.’
Fenella blushed.
‘It is only an old frock,’ she said ingenuously; ‘he cannot hurt it.
May I take him on my lap?’ for Trap had ventured by that time to crawl
back to his master’s feet.
‘Trap will be but too much honoured,’ replied the young man, as he
lifted the little animal and deposited him in Fenella’s open arms.
Then he said, ‘I hardly hoped we should have met again so soon, and
least of all should I have thought to meet you here.’
At these words, and at the sound of his voice, the girl started.
‘You don’t remember me,’ he continued, as he met her look of frank
amazement, ‘neither had I any right to hope you should do so; but I
have a better memory, you see. “_I know you again to swear to_.”’
As he repeated Bennett’s indignant remark, Fenella recognised him as
the young man whom she had accosted at the Calais restaurant, and who
had crossed with them to Dover. The colour rushed to her pale cheeks in
a flood of crimson, but all she said was,--
‘How funny!’
‘What is funny?’
‘That you should be here, in this very place,’ said Fenella shyly.
‘But I think it is funnier that _you_ should be here, or at least that
you should have walked over here so soon, for I suppose you are staying
at Lynwern.’
‘No; I am living at Ines-cedwyn with my nurse, but she has hurt her
foot and cannot come out with me.’
The stranger put on a look of proper concern.
‘I’m very sorry to hear it; I hope she will soon be better. When did
you arrive?’
‘Only yesterday; we were in London first with my mother.’
‘Well, I came straight through from Dover, for my people are staying at
Lynwern, and they wished me to join them. I have been all the winter in
Paris.’
‘Have you? for your holidays?’ demanded Fenella, as she caressed the
little terrier, who had now settled himself for a comfortable nap in
her arms.
The gentleman laughed.
‘Not exactly--though it is something like it. I belong to the army, and
I am home on leave.’
‘The army!’ repeated the girl wonderingly. ‘Oh, then you are quite
grown up!’
‘Nearly,’ he replied, still laughing. ‘I am twenty-two.’
His laugh was so pleasant and boyish, and his whole demeanour so
friendly as he stood with one foot upon the floor of the verandah and
looked down upon her, that after a while Fenella ventured to look up at
him. He was an exceptionally handsome man, and to her unsophisticated
eyes he appeared to be the handsomest she had ever seen. She thought
so from the first moment she met him--she thought so to the very last.
His power over her would have been, eventually perhaps, as great had
his features been plain, but it would not have asserted its sway so
rapidly. There is a magic in beauty which few minds are strong enough
to resist. As the girl’s eyes met his, her lids were lowered, and he
felt that his influence had commenced.
‘May I tell you,’ he said, bending down to her, ‘how pleased I am to
have met you again, because I want to thank you for your kindness?’
‘What kindness?’
‘Why, in speaking to me at the restaurant, and asking if you could help
me. Do you think I did not appreciate it, or that I am such a bear as
to be ungrateful?’
‘I thought perhaps you couldn’t speak French,’ stammered the girl.
‘Some people who go abroad can’t; and I had just come from the convent,
so I wanted to help you. But Bennett scolded me dreadfully about it.
She said I had done very wrong indeed, and I am afraid she would say
I was wrong in speaking to you now,’ continued Fenella, as she looked
around her rather fearfully.
‘Who is Bennett?’
‘The woman who was with me. She was my nurse once, but she is mamma’s
maid now, and I am under her care here.’
‘And do you always believe what Bennett says to you, then?’
‘Not always, perhaps; but wasn’t she right? Do you think I ought to
have spoken to you?’
‘I think, if you had not, I should have missed knowing one of the most
admirable traits of your character. It is not always wise, certainly,
for a young lady to address a stranger, but I should think you might be
safely left to follow your own instincts. Besides, I hope you saw I was
a gentleman,’ he added, rather proudly.
‘No; I never thought about that,’ replied the girl. ‘I was afraid you
were in trouble--that is all! But I am glad I was mistaken.’
‘I daresay your nurse is a very good sort of old woman,’ continued the
young man, ‘but she can’t know much of the rules of society, can she?’
‘I suppose not; but no more do I. I have never been in society yet.’
‘All the better for you. Keep out of it as long as ever you can.
Society is a huge sham--a community whose religion is to tell lies; and
when a girl wants to be honest and follow the inclinations of her own
kind heart, as you do, they tell her it is not proper, and society will
never allow it.’
‘If that is true,’ sighed the girl, ‘I hope I shall never go into
society; and any way it will be a long time, for I am only sixteen. But
my mother likes it very much, I think.’
‘Will you forgive me if I ask you something very strange?’ said her new
friend presently. ‘I want to know who your mother is, and what your
name is?’
Fenella laughed softly.
‘Oh, how funny! we have been talking together all this time, and we
don’t even know who we are. If you had gone away and forgotten to ask
me that question, I should never have known. It would have been all
like a dream, wouldn’t it?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t think I could have been contented to
remember it only as a dream. I should have come back again to ask you
that question.’
The look he threw at her as he pronounced the words made Fenella’s eyes
droop again.
‘My name is Fenella Barrington,’ she said, in a low voice, ‘and my
mother is Mrs Barrington.’
‘And have you no father?’
‘No; he died a long time ago.’
There was silence between them for a minute, and then the stranger
said,--
‘You don’t ask who I am,--perhaps you don’t care to hear.’
‘Won’t you tell me?’ rejoined Fenella simply.
‘Certainly I will. I am Geoffrey Doyne, and I belong to the 30th
Hussars. Don’t I look like a hussar?’
‘No; I think you look more like a boatman,’ said the girl, smiling.
‘When I saw you first to-day, I was in hopes you were a sailor.’
‘Why--_in hopes?_’
‘Because my father was a captain in the Royal Navy, and I love sailors
for his sake.’
‘Then I wish I were one.’
‘But weren’t you allowed to choose which you would be?’
‘Certainly I was.’
‘And you preferred to be a soldier?’
‘I did.’
‘Then why should you wish to change?’ said Fenella, with open eyes. ‘I
daresay it is nicer to be a soldier, after all--it must be so hard to
go away to sea from all whom you love!’
‘Soldiers have to do that sometimes, too!’
‘Yes; there seems nothing but parting and sadness in this world.’
‘But you are too young to say that, Miss Barrington.’
‘Am I? I am not too young to think it.’
‘Are you going to make a long stay in Ines-cedwyn?’ was the next
question he asked her.
‘I think so, but I am not sure. My mother has gone to Mentone, and
she sent me here because I am not very strong, and the doctor said I
required sea air. But it is very lonely, isn’t it? I would rather have
gone with my mother,’ said Fenella, with tears in her eyes.
How Geoffrey Doyne would have liked to have the privilege of consoling
her!
‘It is dull,’ he answered, ‘even at Lynwern. I can’t imagine why my
people chose to come here, but I have an invalid sister who cannot
stand a noisy watering-place, and as my leave will soon be up, they
wanted to see something of me before I go back again.’
‘Back again!’ reiterated his companion.
‘Yes, to India; the 30th is at Kerampore at present. A horrid hole; I
couldn’t stand it, and so I got eighteen months’ leave to England.’
‘And is this better than Kerampore?’
‘I hope it will be. I shall pass most of my time fishing. I have hired
that little boat for the season. I have been out since eight o’clock
this morning.’
‘And why did you land at Ines-cedwyn?’
‘I cannot tell you; a happy intuition guided me, I suppose; but the
sands looked inviting, and our arms ached with pulling. However, I
promised to get back to dinner. Do you live far from here?’
‘Bennett and I are staying at her brother Benjamin’s cottage in the
village, half-a-mile from this. It is such a strange little place, you
would laugh to see it, and there is sand on the floor instead of a
carpet.’
‘That must be rather pleasant this warm weather; and I suppose you will
be as little as possible in the house.’
‘Yes; my mother’s orders were that I was to be on the beach all day
long, so Bennett says I am to bring my work and books down here every
day.’
‘That will be charming. I envy you. And this old tumble-down house
makes a convenient retreat from the sun. I wonder to whom it belongs?’
‘To nobody, Martha says,’ replied Fenella; ‘and the people of
Ines-cedwyn won’t come near it at night because they declare that it’s
haunted.’
‘What fools!’ laughed Mr Geoffrey Doyne; ‘they will mistake you for a
ghost if they see you here, Miss Barrington.’
Fenella laughed too.
‘I should like to frighten them and keep them all away,’ she said; ‘and
then I would sweep out one of the rooms, and bring down a table and
some chairs, and make a little house where I could come and sit and
have tea whenever I liked.’
‘And wouldn’t you ask me in to tea sometimes, Miss Barrington, if I
came this way?’ pleaded Mr Doyne.
‘Yes, if you came this way,’ she answered gravely; ‘and little Trap
too. He should have a saucer of milk all to himself, for I think he is
a dear little fellow.’
‘Since you admire him, I wish I could leave him with you, for he is not
a particular favourite of mine,’ said Geoffrey Doyne; ‘he belongs to
one of my sisters, and I think him a great nuisance, especially in the
boat when I am fishing. But as you are good enough to approve of him, I
will bring him over to see you again some day, if I may?’
‘Thank you,’ said Fenella, as she patted the dog’s rough coat. At this
juncture the boatman approached them, touching his hat.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but if we’re to get back to Lynwern by six
o’clock, we’d better be going,’ he said to young Doyne.
‘All right, Tugwell, I am ready. Good bye,’ he continued, turning to
Fenella, who had risen to her feet. ‘I am so glad we have met again; I
hope it won’t be for the last time.’
She did not echo his wish, but she put her hand in his as confidingly
as a child, and then she stooped down again and patted the little dog.
Geoffrey Doyne waited with his hat in his hand until her farewells were
concluded; then, with a bow and a smile, he whistled to Trap and turned
away.
Fenella watched him and the boatman as they strode over the wet,
glistening sand to the boat, which they pushed into the water. Then
the man got on board with the dog under his arm, and with one bound
Geoffrey Doyne went over the gunwale after him. Fenella saw his lithe,
graceful figure standing in the boat as the man pushed off from shore;
his face was turned towards her, and he waved his hat once again in
the air before he took the oar and settled down to his work. She
watched the long powerful strokes that bore the little bark away from
Ines-cedwyn, and when it had rounded the cliffs that hid Lynwern from
her sight, she felt somehow as if the sun had suddenly set, and the
evening air was chilly. And yet there was a glow about her girlish
heart that it had never experienced before--the first consciousness
that comes to a woman of being appreciated by the other sex. Fenella’s
life had not been worse than wasted (as so many school-girls’ lives
are in the present day) by dreaming and talking of possible lovers.
Her ideas on all such subjects were very crude and childlike; still
the womanly instinct was strong within her--the yearning to love and
to be loved--and only needed the touch of Nature to make its presence
known. That first meeting with Geoffrey Doyne caused it to stir in its
sleep--stir as a heavy sleeper might, when some unexpected sound makes
him move and murmur for a moment uneasily, and then sink off to rest
again.
For some time after the young man had left her she sat in the same
place, gazing at the sea, over which the setting sun was now shedding
rays of ineffable glory; sat there, reviewing each glance of his eyes,
each tone of his voice, and thinking how nice and pleasant it was to
have a friend to talk to, and how much she wished that Mr Doyne lived
in Ines-cedwyn, in Benjamin Bennett’s cottage, and she could see and
talk with him every hour of the day--it would make the place so much
less dull for her and Bennett. With this remembrance came the wonder
what her nurse would say when she heard that Fenella had again spoken
to a gentleman who was a stranger to her. But then he wasn’t a stranger
now (so the girl argued); he knew her name, and she knew his--Geoffrey
Doyne! It was a pretty name, Fenella thought; and she said it over
several times softly to herself,--‘_Geoffrey Doyne! Geoffrey Doyne!
Geoffrey Doyne!_’ She was afraid Bennett might be angry and scold a
little, but she quite made up her mind that she must tell her of the
meeting. There was no deceit in Fenella’s nature; if ever she concealed
a thing during her lifetime, it was in deference to an opinion which
she considered superior to her own. She did not relish the idea of
confessing this second piece of imprudence on her part to her old nurse
(because it _was_ the second, Bennett would consider it all the more
culpable); still Fenella never dreamt of _not_ confessing it. It was
nearly seven o’clock when at last she could persuade herself to give
over dreaming and take her way homewards. As she rose and left the
ruined bungalow, she turned and cast a fond look back to it--a look
that seemed to say, ‘I will return--and he will return! I love you for
the happiness you have given me.’
Ah! the blindness of her ignorant heart,--she had better have cursed
each stone of which it was composed. But had an angel barred her
path that evening; had Michael himself, the Head of all the Heavenly
Hosts, stood in her way with his shining sword, and told her it would
be better for her had she laid down and died upon those stones before
she left them, with the joyous hope of return filling her eyes with a
light that had never beamed in them before--that it would be better
for her if the boat that bore Geoffrey Doyne to Lynwern never reached
its destination, but sunk with him and her faint remembrance of him
beneath the waves,--would Fenella have believed even the Archangel
of God Himself? No; she would have called him hard, and cruel, and
unsympathetic; would have accused him of envy and malice, and all
uncharitableness--and clung to her ideal, although there was but the
merest outline of a fancied god to cling to. But, pour the poison once
into the opened veins, and all your efforts to extract it afterwards
will prove unavailing. So is it with a fatal passion. Let it
once--only once--mix with the current of the heart’s blood, and it will
never again be dissevered until that current is stopped by the chill
hand of Death.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]