A fortnight has passed; we have been hither and thither; now we are at
Lucerne. Peopled with better inhabitants, Lucerne might well do for
Heaven. It is drawing towards eventide, and Elizabeth and I are sitting
hand in hand on a quiet bench, under the shady linden trees, on a high
hill up above the lake. There is nobody to see us, so we sit peaceably
hand in hand. Up by the still and solemn monastery we came, with its
small and narrow windows, calculated to hinder the holy fathers from
promenading curious eyes on the world, the flesh, and the devil,
tripping past them in blue gauze veils: below us grass and green trees,
houses with high-pitched roofs, little dormer-windows, and shutters
yet greener than the grass; below us the lake in its rippleless peace,
calm, quiet, motionless as Bethesda’s pool before the coming of the
troubling angel.
“I said it was too good to last,” say I, doggedly, “did not I, only
yesterday? Perfect peace, perfect sympathy, perfect freedom from
nagging worries--when did such a state of things last more than two
days?”
Elizabeth’s eyes are idly fixed on a little steamer, with a stripe of
red along its side, and a tiny puff of smoke from its funnel, gliding
along and cutting a narrow white track on Lucerne’s sleepy surface.
“This is the fifth false alarm of the gout having gone to his stomach
within the last two years,” continue I, resentfully. “I declare to
Heaven, that if it has not really gone there this time, I’ll cut the
whole concern.”
Let no one cast up their eyes in horror, imagining that it is my father
to whom I am thus alluding; it is only a great uncle by marriage,
in consideration of whose wealth and vague promises I have dawdled
professionless through twenty-eight years of my life.
“You _must_ not go,” says Elizabeth, giving my hand an imploring
squeeze. “The man in the Bible said, ‘I have married a wife, and
therefore I cannot come;’ why should it be a less valid excuse now a
days?”
“If I recollect rightly, it was considered rather a poor one even
then,” reply I, dryly.
Elizabeth is unable to contradict this, she therefore only lifts two
pouted lips (Monsieur Taine objects to the redness of English women’s
mouths, but I do not) to be kissed, and says, “Stay.” I am good enough
to comply with her unspoken request, though I remain firm with regard
to her spoken one.
“My dearest child,” I say, with an air of worldly experience and
superior wisdom, “kisses are very good things--in fact there are few
better--but one cannot live upon them.”
“Let us try,” she says, coaxingly.
“I wonder which would get tired first?” I say, laughing. But she only
goes on pleading, “Stay, stay.”
“How _can_ I stay?” I cry, impatiently; “you talk as if I _wanted_ to
go! Do you think it is any pleasanter to me to leave you than to you
to be left? But you know his disposition, his rancorous resentment of
fancied neglects. For the sake of two days’ indulgence, must I throw
away what will keep us in ease and plenty to the end of our days?”
“I do not care for plenty,” she says, with a little petulant gesture.
“I do not see that rich people are any happier than poor ones. Look at
the St. Clairs; they have £40,000 a-year, and she is a miserable woman,
perfectly miserable, because her face gets red after dinner.”
“There will be no fear of _our_ faces getting red after dinner,” say I,
grimly, “for we shall have no dinner for them to get red after.”
A pause. My eyes stray away to the mountains. Pilatus on the right,
with his jagged peak and slender snow-chains about his harsh neck; hill
after hill rising silent, eternal, like guardian spirits standing hand
in hand around their child, the lake. As I look, suddenly they have
all flushed, as at some noblest thought, and over all their sullen
faces streams an ineffable rosy joy--a solemn and wonderful effulgence,
such as Israel saw reflected from the features of the Eternal in their
prophet’s transfigured eyes. The unutterable peace and stainless
beauty of earth and sky seem to lie softly on my soul. “Would God I
could stay! Would God all life could be like this!” I say, devoutly,
and the aspiration has the reverent earnestness of a prayer.
“Why do you say, ‘_Would God!_’” she cries, passionately, “when it lies
with yourself? Oh my dear love,” gently sliding her hand through my
arm, and lifting wetly-beseeching eyes to my face, “I do not know why
I insist upon it so much--I cannot tell you myself--I daresay I seem
selfish and unreasonable--but I feel as if your going now would be the
end of all things--as if----.” She breaks off suddenly.
“My child,” say I, thoroughly distressed, but still determined to have
my own way, “you talk as if I were going for ever and a day; in a week,
at the outside, I shall be back, and then you will thank me for the
very thing for which you now think me so hard and disobliging.”
“Shall I?” she answers, mournfully. “Well, I hope so.”
“You will not be alone, either; you will have Morris.”
“Yes.”
“And every day you will write me a long letter, telling me every single
thing that you do, say, and think.”
“Yes.”
She answers me gently and obediently; but I can see that she is still
utterly unreconciled to the idea of my absence.
“What is it that you are afraid of?” I ask, becoming rather irritated.
“What do you suppose will happen to you?”
She does not answer; only a large tear falls on my hand, which she
hastily wipes away with her pocket handkerchief, as if afraid of
exciting my wrath.
“Can you give me any good reason why I _should_ stay?” I ask,
dictatorially.
“None--none--only--stay--stay!”
But I am resolved _not_ to stay. Early the next morning I set off.