BOTH SIDES OF THE MOON AT ONCE.
The spot which Claude had chosen for the pic-nic was on one of the lower
spurs of that great mountain of The Maiden's Peak, which bounds the vale
of Gwynnant to the south. Above, a wilderness of gnarled volcanic dykes,
and purple heather ledges; below, broken into glens, in which still
linger pale green ashwoods, relics of that great primaeval forest in
which, in Bess's days, great Leicester used to rouse the hart with hound
and horn.
Among these Claude had found a little lawn, guarded by great rocks, out
of every cranny of which the ashes grew as freely as on flat ground.
Their feet were bedded deep in sweet fern and wild raspberries, and
golden-rod, and purple scabious, and tall blue campanulas. Above them,
and before them, and below them, the ashes shook their green filigree in
the bright sunshine; and through them glimpses were seen of the purple
cliffs above, and, right in front, of the great cataract of Nant
Gwynnant, a long snow-white line zigzagging down coal-black cliffs for
many a hundred feet, and above it, depth beyond depth of purple shadow
away into the very heart of Snowdon, up the long valley of Cwm-dyli, to
the great amphitheatre of Clogwyn-y-Garnedd; while over all the cone of
Snowdon rose, in perfect symmetry, between his attendant peaks of
Lliwedd and Crib Coch.
There they sat, and laughed, and talked, the pleasant summer afternoon,
in their pleasant summer bower; and never regretted the silence of the
birds, so sweetly did Valencia's song go up, in many a rich sad Irish
melody; while the lowing of the milch kine, and the wild cooing of the
herd-boys, came softly up from the vale below, "and all the air was
filled with pleasant noise of waters."
Then Claude must needs photograph them all, as they sat, and group them
first according to his fancy; and among his fancies was one, that
Valencia should sit as queen, with Headley and the Major at her feet.
And Headley lounged there, and looked into the grass, and thought it
well for him could he lie there for ever.
Then Claude must photograph the mountain itself; and all began to talk
of it.
"See the breadth of light and shadow," said Claude; "how the purple
depth of the great lap of the mountain is thrown back by the sheet of
green light on Lliwedd, and the red glory on the cliffs of Crib Coch,
till you seem to look away into the bosom of the hill, mile after mile."
"And so you do," said Headley. "I have learnt to distinguish mountain
distances since I have been here. That peak is four miles from us now;
and yet the shadowed cliffs at its foot seem double that distance."
"And look, look," said Valencia, "at the long line of glory with which
the western sun is gilding the edge of the left hand slope, bringing it
nearer and nearer to us every moment, against the deep blue sky!"
"But what a form! Perfect lightness, perfect symmetry!" said Claude.
"Curve sweeping over curve, peak towering over peak, to the highest
point, and then sinking down again as gracefully as they rose. One can
hardly help fancying that the mountain moves; that those dancing lines
are not instinct with life."
"At least," said Headley, "that the mountain is a leaping wave, frozen
just ere it fell."
"Perfect," said Valencia. "That is the very expression! So concise, and
yet so complete."
And Headley, poor fool, felt as happy as if he had found a gold mine.
"To me," said Elsley, "the fancy rises of some great Eastern monarch
sitting in royal state; with ample shoulders sloping right and left, he
lays his purple-mantled arms upon the heads of two of those Titan guards
who stand on either side his footstool."
"While from beneath his throne," said Headley, "as Eastern poets would
say, flow everlasting streams, life-giving, to fertilise broad lands
below."
"I did not know that you, too, were a poet," said Valencia. "Nor I,
madam. But if such scenes as these, and in such company, cannot inspire
the fancy of even a poor country curate to something of exaltation, he
must be dull indeed."
"Why not put some of these thoughts into poetry?"
"What use?" answered he in so low, sad, and meaning a tone, meant only
for her ear, that Valencia looked down at him: but he was gazing
intently upon the glorious scene. Was he hinting at the vanity and
vexation of poor Elsley's versifying? Or did he mean that he had now no
purpose in life,--no prize for which it was worth while to win honour?
She did not answer him: but he answered himself,--perhaps to explain
away his own speech,--
"No, madam! God has written the poetry already; and there it is before
me. My business is not to re-write it clumsily but to read it humbly,
and give Him thanks for it."
More and more had Valencia been attracted by Headley, during the last
few weeks. Accustomed to men who tried to make the greatest possible
show of what small wits they possessed, she was surprised to find one
who seemed to think it a duty to keep his knowledge and taste in the
background. She gave him credit for more talent than appeared; for more,
perhaps, than he really had. She was piqued, too, at his very modesty
and self-restraint. Why did not he, like the rest who dangled about her,
spread out his peacock's train for her eyes; and try to show his worship
of her, by setting himself off in his brightest colours? And yet this
modesty awed her into respect of him; for she could not forget that,
whether he had sentiment much or little, sentiment was not the staple of
his manhood: she could not forget his cholera work; and she knew that,
under that delicate and bashful outside, lay virtue and heroism, enough
and to spare.
"But, if you put these thoughts into words, you would teach others to
read that poetry."
"My business is to teach people to do right; and if I cannot, to pray
God to find some one who can."
"Right, Headley!" said Major Campbell, laying his hand on the Curate's
shoulder. "God dwells no more in books written with pens than in temples
made with hands; and the sacrifice which pleases Him is not verse, but
righteousness. Do you recollect, Queen Whims, what I wrote once in your
album?
'Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,
So making life, death, and that vast for ever,
One grand, sweet song.'"
"But, you naughty, hypocritical Saint Père, you write poetry yourself,
and beautifully."
"Yes, as I smoke my cigar, to comfort my poor rheumatic old soul. But if
I lived only to write poetry, I should think myself as wise as if I
lived only to smoke tobacco."
Valencia's eyes could not help glancing at Elsley, who had wandered away
to the neighbouring brook, and was gazing with all his eyes upon a ferny
rock, having left Lucia to help Claude with his photographing.
Frank saw her look, and read its meaning; and answered her thoughts,
perhaps too hastily.
"And what a really well-read and agreeable man he is, all the while!
What a mine of quaint learning, and beautiful old legend!--If he would
but bring it into the common stock for every one's amusement, instead of
hoarding it up for himself!" "Why, what else does he do but bring it
into the common stock, when he publishes a book which every one can
read!" said Valencia, half out of the spirit of contradiction.
"And few understand," said Headley, quietly.
"You are very unjust; he is a very discerning and agreeable person, and
I shall go and talk to him." And away went Valencia to Elsley, somewhat
cross. Woman-like, she allowed, for the sake of her sister's honour, no
one but herself to depreciate Vavasour, and chose to think it
impertinent on Headley's part.
Headley began quietly talking to Major Campbell about botany, while
Valencia, a little ashamed of herself all the while, took her revenge on
Elsley by scolding him for his unsocial ways, in the very terms which
Headley had been using.
At last Claude, having finished his photographing, departed downward to
get some new view from the road below, and Lucia returned to the rest of
the party. Valencia joined them at once, bringing up Elsley, who was not
in the best of humours after her diatribes; and the whole party wandered
about the woodland, and scrambled down beside the torrent beds.
At last they came to a point where they could descend no further; for
the stream, falling over a cliff, had worn itself a narrow chasm in the
rock, and thundered down it into a deep narrow pool.
Lucia, who was basking in the sunshine and the flowers as simple as a
child, would needs peep over the brink, and made Elsley hold her while
she looked down. A quiet happiness, as of old recollections, came into
her eyes, as she watched the sparkling and foaming water--
"And beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Did pass into her face."
Campbell started. The Lucia of seven years ago seemed to bloom out
again in that pale face and wrinkled forehead; and a smile came over his
face, too, as he looked.
"Just like the dear old waterfall at Kilanbaggan. You recollect it,
Major Campbell?"
Elsley always disliked recollections of Kilanbaggan; recollections of
her life before he knew her; recollections of pleasures in which he had
not shared: especially recollections of her old acquaintance with the
Major.
"I do not, I am ashamed to say," replied the Major.
"Why, you were there a whole summer. Ah! I suppose you thought about
nothing but your salmon fishing. If Elsley had been there he would not
have forgotten a rock or a pool. Would you, Elsley?"
"Really, in spite of all salmon, I have not forgotten a rock or a pool
about the place which I ever saw: but at the waterfall I never was."
"So he has not forgotten? What cause had he to remember so carefully?"
thought Elsley.
"Oh, Elsley, look! What is that exquisite flower, like a ball of gold,
hanging just over the water?"
If Elsley had not had the evil spirit haunting about him, he would have
joined in Lucia's admiration of the beautiful creature, as it dropped
into the foam from its narrow ledge, with its fan of palmate leaves
bright green against the black mosses of the rock, and its golden petals
glowing like a tiny sun in the darkness of the chasm: as it was, he
answered--
"Only a buttercup."
"I am sure it's not a buttercup! It is three times as large, and a so
much paler yellow! Is it a buttercup, now, Major Campbell?"
Campbell looked down.
"Very nearly one, after all: but its real name is the globe flower. It
is common enough here in spring; you may see the leaves in every
pasture. But I suppose this plant, hidden from the light, has kept its
flowers till the autumn."
"And till I came to see it, darling that it is! I should like to reward
it by wearing it home."
"I daresay it would be very proud of the honour; especially if Mr.
Vavasour would embalm it in verse, after it had done service to you."
"It is doing good enough service where it is," said Elsley. "Why pluck
out the very eye of that perfect picture?"
"Strange," said Lucia, "that such, a beautiful thing should be born
there all alone upon these rocks, with no one to look at it."
"It enjoys itself sufficiently without us, no doubt," said Elsley.
"Yes; but I want to enjoy it. Oh, if you could but get it for me?"
Elsley looked down. There were fifteen feet of somewhat slippery rock;
then a ragged ledge a foot broad, in a crack of which the flower grew;
then the dark boiling pool. Elsley shrugged his shoulders, and said,
smiling, as if it were a fine thing to say--"Really, my dear, all men
are not knight errants enough to endanger their necks for a bit of weed;
and I cannot say that such rough _tours de force_ are at all to my
fancy."
Lucia turned away: but she was vexed. Campbell could see that a strange
fancy for the plant had seized her. As she walked from the spot, he
could hear her talking about its beauty to Valencia.
Campbell's blood boiled. To be asked by that woman--by any woman--to get
her that flower: and to be afraid! It was bad enough to be ill-tempered;
but to be a coward, and to be proud thereof! He yielded to a temptation,
which he had much better have left alone, seeing that Lucia had not
asked him; swung himself easily enough down the ledge; got the flower,
and put it, quietly bowing, into Mrs. Vavasour's hand.
He was frightened when he had done it; for he saw, to his surprise, that
she was frightened. She took the flower, smiling thanks, and expressing
a little commonplace horror and astonishment at his having gone down
such a dangerous cliff: but she took it to Elsley, drew his arm through
hers, and seemed determined to make as much of him as possible for the
rest of the afternoon. "The fellow was jealous, then, in addition to his
other sins!" And Campbell, who felt that he had put himself
unnecessarily forward between husband and wife, grew more and more
angry; and somehow, unlike his usual wont, refused to confess himself in
the wrong, because he was in the wrong. Certainly it was not pleasant
for poor Elsley; and so Lucia felt, and bore with him when he refused to
be comforted, and rendered blessing for railing when he said to her more
than one angry word; but she had been accustomed to angry words by this
time.
All might have passed off, but for that careless Valencia, who had not
seen the details of what had passed; and so advised herself to ask where
Lucia got that beautiful plant?
"Major Campbell picked it up for her from the cliff," said Elsley,
drily.
"Ah? at the risk of his neck, I don't doubt. He is the most matchless
_cavalier servente_."
"I shall leave Mrs. Vavasour to his care, then--that is, for the
present," said Elsley, drawing his arm from Lucia's.
"I assure you," answered she, roused in her turn by his determined bad
temper, "I am not the least afraid of being left in the charge of so old
a friend."
Elsley made no answer, but sprang down through the thickets, calling
loudly to Claude Mellot.
It was very naughty of Lucia, no doubt: but even a worm will turn; and
there are times when people who have not courage to hold their peace
must say something or other; and do not always, in the hurry, get out
what they ought, but only what they have time to think of. And she
forgot what she had said the next minute, in Major Campbell's question--
"Am I, then, so old a friend, Mrs. Vavasour?"
"Of course; who older?"
Campbell was silent a moment. If he was inclined to choke, at least
Lucia did not see it.
"I trust I have not offended your--Mr. Vavasour?"
"Oh!" she said, with a forced gaiety, "only one of his poetic fancies.
He wanted so much to see Mr. Mellot photograph the waterfall. I hope he
will be in time to find him."
"I am a plain soldier, Mrs. Vavasour, and I only ask because I do not
understand. What are poetic fancies?"
Lucia looked up in his face puzzled, and saw there an expression so
grave, pitying, tender, that her heart leaped up toward him, and then
sank back again.
"Why do you ask? Why need you know? You are no poet."
"And for that very cause I ask you."
"Oh, but," said she, guessing at what was in his mind, and trying,
woman-like, to play purposely at cross purposes, and to defend her
husband at all risks; "he has an extraordinary poetic faculty; all the
world agrees to that, Major Campbell."
"What matter?" said he. Lucia would have been very angry, and perhaps
ought to have been so; for what business of Campbell's was it whether
her husband were kind to her or not? But there was a deep sadness,
almost despair, in the tone, which disarmed her.
"Oh, Major Campbell, is it not a glorious thing to be a poet? And is it
not a glorious thing to be a poet's wife? Oh, for the sake of that--if I
could but see him honoured, appreciated, famous, as he will be some day!
Though I think" (and she spoke with all a woman's pride) "he is somewhat
famous now, is he not?"
"Famous? Yes," answered Campbell, with an abstracted voice, and then
rejoined quickly, "If you could but see that, what then?"
"Why then," said she, with a half smile (for she had nearly entrapped
herself into an admission of what she was determined to conceal)--"why
then, I should be still more what I am now, his devoted little wife, who
cares for nobody and nothing but putting his study to rights, and
bringing up his children."
"Happy children!" said he, after a pause, and half to himself, "who have
such a mother to bring them up."
"Do you really think so? But flattery used not to be one of your sins.
Ah, I wish you could give me some advice about how I am to teach them."
"So it is she who has the work of education, not he!" thought Campbell
to himself; and then answered gaily,--
"My dear madam, what can a confirmed old bachelor like me know about
children?"
"Oh, don't you know" (and she gave one of her pretty Irish laughs) "that
it is the old maids who always write the children's books, for the
benefit of us poor ignorant married women? But" (and she spoke earnestly
again) "we all know how wise and good you are. I did not know it in old
times. I am afraid I used to torment you when I was young and foolish."
"Where on earth can Mellot and Mr. Vavasour be?" asked Campbell.
"Oh, never mind! Mr. Mellot has gone wandering down the glen with his
apparatus, and my Elsley has gone wandering after him, and will find him
in due time, with his head in a black bag, and a great bull just going
to charge him from behind, like that hapless man in 'Punch.' I always
tell Mr. Mellot that will be his end."
Campbell was deeply shocked to hear the light tone in which she talked
of the passionate temper of a man whom she so surely loved. How many
outbursts of it there must have been; how many paroxysms of
astonishment, shame, and grief,--perhaps, alas! counterbursts of anger--
ere that heart could have become thus proof against the ever-lowering
thunder-storm!
"Well," he said, "all we can do is to walk down to the car, and let them
follow; and, meanwhile, I will give you my wise opinion about this
education question, whereof I know nothing."
"It will be all oracular to me, for I know nothing either;" and she put
her arm through his, and walked on.
"Did you hurt yourself then? I am sure you are in pain."
"I? Never less free from it, with many thanks to you. What made you
think so?"
"I heard you breathe so hard, and quite stamp your feet, I thought. I
suppose it was fancy."
It was not fancy, nevertheless. Major Campbell was stamping down
something; and succeeded too in crushing it.
They walked on toward the car, Valencia and Headley following them: ere
they arrived at the place where they were to meet it, it was quite dark:
but what was more important, the car was not there.
"The stupid man must have mistaken his orders, and gone home."
"Or let his horse go home of itself, while he was asleep inside. He was
more than half tipsy when we started."
So spoke the Major, divining the exact truth. There was nothing to be
done but to walk the four miles home, and let the two truants follow as
they could.
"We shall have plenty of time for our educational lecture," said Lucia.
"Plenty of time to waste, then, my clear lady."
"Oh, I never talk with you five minutes--I do not know why--without
feeling wiser and happier. I envy Valencia for having seen so much of
you of late."
Little thought poor Lucia, as she spoke those innocent words, that
within four yards of her, crouched behind the wall, his face and every
limb writhing with mingled curiosity and rage, was none other but her
husband.
He had given place to the devil: and the devil (for the "superstitious"
and "old-world" notion which attributes such frenzies to the devil has
not yet been superseded by a better one) had entered into him, and
concentrated all the evil habits and passions which he had indulged for
years into one flaming hell within him.
Miserable man! His torments were sevenfold: and if he had sinned, he was
at least punished. Not merely by all which a husband has a right to feel
in such a case, or fancies that he has a right; not merely by tortured
vanity and self-conceit, by the agony of seeing any man preferred to
him, which to a man of Elsley's character was of itself unbearable;--not
merely by the loss of trust in one whom he hail once trusted utterly:--
but, over and above all, and worst of all, by the feeling of shame,
self-reproach, self-hatred, which haunts a jealous man, and which ought
to haunt him; for few men lose the love of women who have once loved
them, save by their own folly or baseness:--by the recollection that he
had traded on her trust; that he had drugged his own conscience with the
fancy that she must love him always, let him do what he would; and had
neglected and insulted her affection, because he fancied, in his
conceit, that it was inalienable. And with the loss of self-respect,
came recklessness of it, and drove him on, as it has jealous men in all
ages, to meannesses unspeakable, which have made them for centuries,
poor wretches, the butts of worthless playwrights, and the scorn of
their fellow-men.
Elsley had wandered, he hardly knew how or whither, for his calling to
Mellot was the merest blind,--stumbling over rocks, bruising himself
against tree-trunks, to this wall. He knew they must pass it. He waited
for them, and had his reward. Blind with rage, he hardly waited for the
sound of their footsteps to die away, before he had sprung into the
road, and hurried up in the opposite direction,--anywhere, everywhere,--
to escape from them, and from self. Whipt by the furies, he fled along
the road and up the vale, he cared not whither.
And what were Headley and Valencia, who of necessity had paired off
together, doing all the while? They walked on silently side by side for
ten minutes; then Frank said,--
"I have been impertinent, Miss St. Just, and I beg your pardon."
"No, you have not," said she, quite hastily. "You were right, too
right,--has it not been proved within the last five minutes? My poor
sister! What can be done to mend Mr. Vavasour's temper? I wish you could
talk to him, Mr. Headley."
"He is beyond my art. His age, and his talents, and his--his
consciousness of them," said Frank, using the mildest term he could
find, "would prevent so insignificant a person as me having any
influence. But what I cannot do, God's grace may."
"Can it change a man's character, Mr. Headley? It may make good men
better--but can it cure temper?"
"Major Campbell must have told you that it can do anything."
"Ah, yes: with men as wise, and strong, and noble as he is; but with
such a weak, vain man--"
"Miss St. Just, I know one who is neither wise, nor strong, nor noble:
but as weak and vain as any man; in whom God has conquered--as He may
conquer yet in Mr. Vavasour--all which makes man cling to life."
"What all?" asked she, suspecting, and not wrongly, that he spoke of
himself.
"All, I suppose, which it is good for them to have crushed. There are
feelings which last on, in spite of all struggles to quench them--I
suppose, because they ought to last; because, while they torture, they
still ennoble. Death will quench them: or if not, satisfy them: or if
not, set them at rest somehow."
"Death?" answered she, in a startled tone.
"Yes. Our friend, Major Campbell's friend, Death. We have been seeing a
good deal of him together lately, and have come to the conclusion that
he is the most useful, pleasant, and instructive of all friends."
"Oh, Mr. Headley, do not speak so! Are you in earnest?"
"So much in earnest, that I have resolved to go out as an army chaplain,
to see in the war somewhat more of my new friend."
"Impossible! Mr. Headley; it will kill you!--All that horrible fever and
cholera!"
"And what possible harm can it do me, if it does kill me, Miss St.
Just!"
"Mr. Headley, this is madness! I--we cannot allow you to throw away your
life thus--so young, and--and such prospects before you! And there is
nothing that my brother would not do for you, were it only for your
heroism at Aberalva. There is not one of the family who does not love
and respect you, and long to see all the world appreciating you as we
do; and your poor mother--"
"I have told my mother all, Miss St. Just. And she has said 'Go; it is
your only hope.' She has other sons to comfort her. Let us say no more
of it. Had I thought that you would have disapproved of it, I would
never have mentioned the thing."
"Disapprove of--your going to die? You shall not! And for me, too: for I
guess all--all is my fault!"
"All is mine," said he quietly: "who was fool enough to fancy that I
could forget you--conquer my love for;" and at these words his whole
voice and manner changed in an instant into wildest passion. "I must
speak--now and never more--I love you still, fool that I am! Would God I
had never seen you! No, not that. Thank God for that to the last: but
would God I had died of that cholera! that I had never come here,
conceited fool that I was, fancying that it was possible, after having
once--No! Let me go, go anywhere, where I may burden you no more with my
absurd dreams!--You, who have had the same thing said to you, and in
finer words, a hundred times, by men who would not deign to speak to
me!" and covering his face in his hands, he strode on, as if to escape.
"I never had the same thing said to me!"
"Never? How often have fine gentlemen, noblemen, sworn that they were
dying for you?"
"They never have said to me what you have done."
"No--I am clumsy, I suppose--"
"Mr. Headley, indeed you are unjust to yourself--unjust to me!"
"I--to you? Never! I know you better than you know yourself--see in you
what no one else sees. Oh, what fools they are who say that love is
blind! Blind? He sees souls in God's own light; not as they have become:
but as they ought to become--can become--are already in the sight of Him
who made them!"
"And what might I become?" asked she, half-frightened by the new
earnestness of his utterance.
"How can I tell! Something infinitely too high for me, at least, who
even now am not worthy to kiss the dust off your feet."
"Oh, do not speak so: little do you know--! No, Mr. Headley, it is you
who are too good for me; too noble, single-eyed, self-sacrificing, to
endure my vanity and meanness for a day."
"Madam, do not speak thus! Give me no word which my folly can distort
into a ray of hope, unless you wish to drive me mad. No! it is
impossible; and, were it possible, what but ruin to my soul? I should
live for you, and not for my work. I should become a schemer, ambitious,
intriguing, in the vain hope of proving myself to the world worthy of
you. No; let it be. 'Let the dead bury their dead, and follow thou me.'"
She made no answer--what answer was there to make? And he strode on by
her side in silence for full ten minutes. At last she was forced to
speak.
"Mr. Headley, recollect that this conversation has gone too far for us
to avoid coming to some definite understanding--"
"Then it shall, Miss St. Just. Then it shall, once and for all: formally
and deliberately, it shall end now. Suppose,--I only say suppose,--that
I could, without failing in my own honour, my duty to my calling, make
myself such a name among good men that, poor parson though I be, your
family need be ashamed of nothing about me, save my poverty? Tell me,
now and for ever, could it be possible--"
He stopped. She walked on, silent, in her turn.
"Say no, as a matter of course, and end it!" said he, bitterly.
She drew a long breath, as if heaving off a weight.
"I cannot--dare not say it."
"It? Which of the two? yes, or no?"
She was silent.
He stopped, and spoke calmly and slowly. "Say that again, and tell me
that I am not dreaming. You? the admired! the worshipped! the
luxurious!--and no blame to you that you are what you were born--could
you endure a little parsonage, the teaching village school-children,
tending dirty old women, and petty cares the whole year round?"
"Mr. Headley," answered she, slowly and calmly, in her turn, "I could
endure a cottage,--a prison, I fancy, at moments,--to escape from this
world, of which I am tired, which will soon be tired of me: from women
who envy me, impute to me ambitions as base as their own; from men who
admire--not me, for they do not know me, and never will--but what in me
--I hate them!--will give them pleasure. I hate it all, despise it all;
despise myself for it all every morning when I wake! What does it do for
me, but rouse in me the very parts of my own character which are most
despicable, most tormenting? If it goes on, I feel I could become as
frivolous, as mean, aye, as wicked as the worst. You do not know--you do
not know--. I have envied the nuns their convents. I have envied Selkirk
his desert island. I envy now the milkmaids there below: anything to
escape and be in earnest, anything for some one to teach me to be of
use! Yes, this cholera--and this war--though only, only its coming
shadow has passed over me,--and your words too--" cried she, and stopped
and hesitated, as if afraid to tell too much--"they have wakened me--to
a new life--at least to the dream of a new life!"
"Have you not Major Campbell?" said Headley, with a terrible effort of
will.
"Yes--but has he taught me? He is dear, and good, and wise; but he is
too wise, too great for me. He plays with me as a lion might with a
mouse; he is like a grand angel far above in another planet, who can
pity and advise, but who cannot--What am I saying?" and she covered her
face with her hand.
She dropped her glove as she did so. Headley picked it up and gave it to
her: as he did so their hands met; and their hands did not part again.
"You know that I love you, Valencia St. Just."
"Too well! too well!"
"But you know, too, that you do not love me."
"Who told you so? What do you know? What do I know? Only that I long for
some one to make me--to make me as good as you are!" and she burst into
tears.
"Valencia, will you trust me?"
"Yes!" cried she, looking up at him suddenly: "if you will not go to the
war."
"No--no--no! Would you have me turn traitor and coward to God; and now,
of all moments in my life?"
"Noble creature!" said she; "you will make me love you whether I wish or
not."
What was it, after all, by which Frank Headley won Valencia's love? I
cannot tell. Can you tell, sir, how you won the love of your wife? As
little as you can tell of that still greater miracle--how you have kept
her love since she found out what manner of man you were.
So they paced homeward, hand in hand, beside the shining ripples, along
the Dinas shore. The birches breathed fragrance on them; the night-hawk
churred softly round their path; the stately mountains smiled above them
in the moonlight, and seemed to keep watch and ward over their love, and
to shut out the noisy world, and the harsh babble and vain fashions of
the town. The summer lightning flickered to the westward; but round them
the rich soft night seemed full of love,--as full of love as their own
hearts were, and, like them, brooding silently upon its joy. At last the
walk was over; the kind moon sank low behind the hills; and the darkness
hid their blushes as they paced into the sleeping village, and their
hands parted unwillingly at last.
When they came into the hall, through the group of lounging gownsmen and
tourists, they found Bowie arguing with Mrs. Lewis, in his dogmatic
Scotch way,--
"So ye see, madam, there's no use defending the drunken loon any-more at
all; and here will my leddies have just walked their bonny legs off, all
through that carnal sin of drunkenness, which is the curse of your Welsh
populaaation."
"And not quite unknown north of Tweed either, Bowie," said Valencia,
laughing. "There now, say no more about it. We have had a delightful
walk, and nobody is the least tired. Don't say any more, Mrs. Lewis: but
tell them to get us some supper. Bowie, so my lord has come in?"
"This half-hour good!"
"Has he had any sport?"
"Sport! aye, troth! Five fish in the day. That's a river indeed at
Bettws! Not a pawky wee burn, like this Aberglaslyn thing."
"Only five fish?" said Valencia, in a frightened tone.
"Fish, my leddy, not trouts, I said. I thought ye knew better than that
by this time."
"Oh, salmon?" cried Valencia, relieved. "Delightful. I'll go to him
this moment."
And upstairs to Scoutbush's room she went.
He was sitting in dressing-gown and slippers, sipping his claret, and
fondling his fly-book (the only one he ever studied _con amore_), with a
most complacent face. She came in and stood demurely before him, holding
her broad hat in both hands before her knees, like a school-girl, her
face half-hidden in the black curls. Scoutbush looked up and smiled
affectionately, as he caught the light of her eyes and the arch play of
her lips.
"Ah! there you are, at a pretty time of night! How beautiful you look,
Val! I wish my wife may be half as pretty!"
Valencia made him a prim curtsey.
"I am delighted to hear of my lord's good sport. He will choose to be in
a good humour, I suppose."
"Good humour? _ça va sans dire_! Three stone of fish in three hours!"
"Then his little sister is going to do a very foolish thing, and wants
his leave to do it; which if he will grant, she will let him do as many
foolish things as he likes without scolding him, as long as they both
shall live."
"Do it then, I beg. What is it? Do you want to go up Snowdon with
Headley to-morrow, to see the sun rise? You'll kill yourself!"
"No," said Valencia very quietly; "I only want to marry him."
"Marry him?" cried Scoutbush, starting up.
"Don't try to look majestic, my dear little brother, for you are really
not tall enough; as it is, you have only hooked all your flies into your
dressing-gown."
Scoutbush dashed himself down into his chair again.
"I'll be shot if you shall!"
"You may be shot just as surely, whether I do or not," said she softly;
and she knelt down before him, and put her arms round him, and laid her
head upon his lap. "There, you can't run away now; so you must hear me
quietly. And you know it may not be often that we shall be together
again thus; and oh, Scoutbush! brother! if anything was to happen to
you--I only say if--in this horrid war, you would not like to think that
you had refused the last thing your little Val asked for, and that she
was miserable and lonely at home."
"I'll be shot if you shall!" was all the poor Viscount could get out.
"Yes, miserable and lonely; you gone away, and mon Saint Père too: and
Lucia, she has her children--and I am so wild and weak--I must have some
one to guide me and protect me--indeed I must!"
"Why, that was what I always said! That was why I wanted you so to marry
this season! Why did not you take Chalkclere, or half-a-dozen good
matches who were dying for you, and not this confounded black parson, of
all birds in the air?"
"I did not take Lord Chalkclere for the very reason that I do take Mr.
Headley. I want a husband who will guide me, not one whom I must guide."
"Guide?" said Scoutbush bitterly, with one of those little sparks of
practical shrewdness which sometimes fell from him. "Aye, I see how it
is! These intriguing rascals of parsons--they begin as father
confessors, like so many popish priests; and one fine morning they
blossom out into lovers, and so they get all the pretty women, and all
the good fortunes,--the sneaking, ambitious, low-bred--"
"He is neither! You are unjust, Scoutbush!" cried Valencia, looking up.
"He is the very soul of honour. He might be rich now, and have had a
fine living, if he had not been too conscientious to let his uncle buy
him one; and that offended his uncle, and he would allow him nothing.
And as for being low-bred, he is a gentleman, as you know; and if his
uncle be in business, his mother is a lady, and he will be well enough
off one day."
"You seem to know a great deal about his affairs."
"He told me all, months ago--before there was any dream of this. And, my
dear," she went on, relapsing into her usual arch tone, "there is no
fear but his uncle will be glad enough to patronise him again, when he
finds that he has married a viscount's sister."
Scoutbush laughed. "You scheming little Irish rogue! But I won't! I've
said it, and I won't. It's enough to have one sister married to a poor
poet, without having another married to a poor parson. Oh! what have I
done that I should be bothered in this way? Isn't it bad enough to be a
landlord, and to have an estate, and be responsible for a lot of people
that will die of the cholera, and have to vote in the house about a lot
of things I don't understand, or anybody else, I believe, but that, over
and above, I must be the head of the family, and answerable to all the
world for whom my mad sisters many? I won't, I say!"
"Then I shall just go and marry without your leave! I'm of age, you
know, and my fortune's my own; and then we shall come in as the runaway
couples do in a play, while you sit there in your dressing-gown as the
stern father--Won't you borrow a white wig for the occasion, my lord?--
And we shall fall down on our knees so,"--and she put herself in the
prettiest attitude in the world,--"and beg your blessing--please forgive
us this time, and we'll never do so any more! And then you will turn
your face away, like the baron in the ballad,--
'And brushed away the springing tear
He proudly strove to hide,'
Et cetera, et cetera,--Finish the scene for yourself, with a 'Bless ye,
my children; bless ye!'"
"Go along, and marry the cat if you like! You are mad; and I am mad; and
all the world's mad, I think."
"There," she said, "I knew that he would be a good boy at last!" And she
sprang up, threw her arms round his neck, and, to his great
astonishment, burst into the most violent fit of crying.
"Good gracious, Valencia! do be reasonable! You'll go into a fit, or
somebody will hear you! You know how I hate a scene. Do be good, there's
a darling! Why didn't you tell me at first how much you wished for it,
and I would have said yes in a moment."
"Because I didn't know myself," cried she passionately. "There, I will
be good, and love you better than all the world, except one. And if you
let those horrid Russians hurt you, I will hate you as long as I live,
and be miserable all my life afterwards."
"Why, Valencia, do you know, that sounds very like a bull?"
"Am I not a wild Irish girl?" said she, and hurried out, leaving
Scoutbush to return to his flies.
She bounded into Lucia's room, there to pour out a bursting heart--and
stopped short.
Lucia was sitting on the bed, her shawl and bonnet tossed upon the
floor, her head sunk on her bosom, her arms sunk by her side.
"Lucia, what is it? Speak to me, Lucia!"
She pointed faintly to a letter on the floor--Valencia caught it up--
Lucia made a gesture as if to stop her.
"No, you must not read it. Too dreadful!"
But Valencia read it; while Lucia covered her face in her hands, and
uttered a long, low, shuddering moan of bitter agony.
Valencia read, with flashing eyes and bursting brow. It was a hideous
letter. The words of a man trying to supply the place of strength by
virulence. A hideous letter, unfit to be written here.
"Valencia! Valencia! It is false--a mistake--he is dreaming. You know it
is false! You will not leave me too!"
Valencia dashed it on the ground, clasped her sister in her arms, and
covered her head with kisses.
"My Lucia! My own sweet good sister! Base, cowardly," sobbed she, in her
rage; while Lucia's agony began to find a vent in words, and she moaned
on--
"What have I done? All that flower, that horrid flower: but who would
have dreamed--and Major Campbell, too, of all men upon earth! Valencia,
it is some horrid delusion of the devil. Why, he was there all the
while--and you too. Could he think that I should before his very face?
What must he fancy me? Oh, it is a delusion of the devil, and nothing
else!"
"He is a wretch! I will take the letter to my brother; he shall right
you!"
"Ah no! no! never! Let me tear it to atoms--hide it! It is all a
mistake! He did not mean it! He will recollect himself to-morrow and
come back."
"Let him come back if he dare!" cried Valencia, in a tone which said, "I
could kill him with my own hands!"
"Oh, he will come back! He cannot have the heart to leave his poor
little Lucia. Oh, cruel, cowardly, not to have said one word--not one
word to explain all--but it was all my fault, my wicked, odious temper;
and after I had seen how vexed he was, too!--Oh, Elsley, Elsley, come
back, only come back, and I will beg your pardon on my knees! anything?
Scold me, beat me, if you will! I deserve it all! Only come back, and
let me see your face, and hear your voice, instead of leaving me here
all alone, and the poor children too! Oh, what shall I say to them
to-morrow, when they wake and find no father!"
Valencia's indignation had no words. She could only sit on the bed, with
Lucia in her arms, looking defiance at all the world above that fair
head which one moment dropped on her bosom, and the next gazed up into
her face in pitiful child-like pleading.
"Oh, if I but knew where he was gone! If I could but find him! One word
--one word would set all right! It always did, Valencia, always! He was
so kind, so dear in a moment, when I put away my naughty, naughty
temper, and smiled in his face like a good wife. Wicked creature that I
was! and this is my punishment. Oh, Elsley, one word, one word! I must
find him if I went barefoot over the mountains--I must go, I must--"
And she tried to rise: but Valencia held her down, while she entreated
piteously--
"I will go, and see about finding him!" she said at last as her only
resource. "Promise me to be quiet here, and I will."
"Quiet? Yes! quiet here!" and she threw herself upon her face on the
floor.
She looked up eagerly. "You will not tell Scoutbush?"
"Why not?"
"He is so--so hasty. He will kill him! Valencia, he will kill him!
Promise me not to tell him, or I shall go mad!" And she sat up again,
pressing her hands upon her head, and rocking from side to side.
"Oh, Valencia, if I dared only scream! but keeping it in kills me. It is
like a sword through my brain now!"
"Let me call Clara."
"No, no! not Clara. Do not tell her, I will be quiet; indeed I will;
only come back soon, soon; for I am all alone, alone!" And she threw
herself down again upon her face.
Valencia went out. Certain as she was of her sister's innocence, there
was one terrible question in her heart which must be answered, or her
belief in all truth, goodness, religion, would reel and rock to its very
foundations. And till she had an answer to that, she could not sit still
by Lucia.
She walked hurriedly, with compressed lips, but quivering limbs, down
stairs, and into the sitting-room. Scoutbush was gone to bed. Campbell
and Mellot sat chatting still.
"Where is my brother?"
"Gone to bed, as some one else ought to be; for it is past twelve. Is
Vavasour come in yet?"
"No."
"Very odd," said Claude; "I never saw him after I left you."
"He said certainly that he was going to find you," said Campbell.
"There is no need for speculating," said Valencia quietly; "my sister
has a note from Mr. Vavasour at Pen-y-gwryd."
"Pen-y-gwryd?" cried both men at once.
"Yes. Major Campbell, I wish to show it to you."
Valencia's tone and manner was significant enough to make Claude Mellot
bid them both good-night.
When he had shut the door behind him, Valencia put the letter into the
Major's hand.
He was too much absorbed in it to look up at her; but if he had done so,
he would have been startled by the fearful capacity of passion which
changed, for the moment, that gay Queen Whims into a terrible Roxana, as
she stood, leaning against the mantelpiece, but drawn up to her full
height, her lips tight shut, eyes which gazed through and through him in
awful scrutiny, holding her very breath, while a nervous clutching of
the little hand said, "If you have tampered with my sister's heart,
better for you that you were dead!"
He read it through, once, twice, with livid face; then clashed it on the
floor.
"Fool!--cur!--liar!--she is as pure as God's sunlight."
"You need not tell me that," said Valencia, through her closed teeth.
"Fool!--fool!" And then, in a moment, his voice changed from indignation
to the bitterest self-reproach.
"And fool I; thrice fool! Who am I, to rail on him? Oh God! what have I
done?" And he covered his face with his hands.
"What have you done?" literally shrieked Valencia.
"Nothing that you or man can blame, Miss St. Just! Can you dream that,
sinful as I am, I could ever harbour a thought toward her of which I
should be ashamed before the angels of God?"
He looked up as he spoke, with an utter humility and an intense honesty,
which unnerved her at once.
"Oh, my Saint Père!" and she held out both her hands. "Forgive me, if--
only for a moment--"
"I am not your Saint Père, nor any one's! I am a poor, weak, conceited,
miserable man, who by his accursed impertinence has broken the heart of
the being whom he loves best on earth."
Valencia started: but ere she could ask for an explanation, he rejoined
wildly--
"How is she? Tell me only that, this once! Has it killed her? Does she
hate him?"
"Adores him more than ever. Oh, Major Campbell! it is too piteous, too
piteous."
He covered his face with his hands, shuddering. "Thank God! yes, thank
God! So it should be. Let her love him to the last, and win her martyr's
crown! Now, Valencia St. Just, sit down, if but for five minutes; and
listen, once for all, to the last words, perhaps, you will ever hear me
speak; unless she wants you--?"
"No, no! Tell me all, Saint Père!" said Valencia, "for I am walking in a
dream--a double dream!" as the new thought of Headley, and that walk,
came over her. "Tell me all at once, while I have wits left to
comprehend."
"Miss St. Just," said he, in a clear calm voice, "it is fit, for her
honour and for mine, that you should know all. The first day that I ever
saw your sister, I loved her; as a man loves who can never cease to
love, or love a second time. I was a raw awkward Scotchman then, and she
used to laugh at me. Why not? I kept my secret, and determined to become
a man at whom no one would wish to laugh. I was in the Company's service
then. You recollect her jesting once about the Indian army, and my
commanding black people, and saying that the Line only was fit for--some
girl's jest?"
"No; I recollect nothing of it."
"I never forgot it. I threw up all my prospects, and went into the Line.
Whether I won honour there or not I need not tell you. I came back to
England years after, not unworthy, as I fancied, to look your sister in
the face as an equal. I found her married."
He paused a little, and then went on, in a quiet, business-like tone.
"Good. Her choice was sure to be a worthy one, and that was enough for
me. You need not doubt that I kept my secret then more sacredly than
ever. I returned to India, and tried to die. I dared not kill myself,
for I was a soldier and a Christian, and belonged to God and my Queen.
The Sikhs would not kill me, do what I would to help them. Then I threw
myself into science, that I might stifle passion; and I stifled it. I
fancied myself cured, and I was cured; and I returned to England again.
I loved your brother for her sake; I loved you at first for her sake,
then for your own. But I presumed upon my cure; I accepted your
brother's invitation; I caught at the opportunity of seeing her again--
happy--as I fancied; and of proving to myself my own soundness. I
considered myself a sort of Melchisedek, neither young nor old, without
passions, without purpose on earth--a fakeer who had licence to do and
to dare what others might not. But I kept my secret proudly inviolate. I
do not believe at this moment she dreams that--Do you?"
"She does not."
"Thank God! I was a most conceited fool, puffed up with spiritual pride,
tempting God needlessly. I went, I saw her. Heaven is my witness, that
as far as passion goes, my heart is as pure as yours: but I found that I
still cared more for her than for any being on earth: and I found too
the sort of man upon whom--God forgive me! I must not talk of that--I
despised him, hated him, pretended to teach him his duty, by behaving
better to her than he did--the spiritual coxcomb that I was! What
business had I with it? Why not have left all to God and her good sense?
The devil tempted me to-day, in the shape of an angel of courtesy and
chivalry; and here the end is come. I must find that man, Miss St. Just,
if I travel the world in search of him. I must ask his pardon frankly,
humbly, for my impertinence. Perhaps so I may bring him back to her, and
not die with a curse on my head for having parted those whom God has
joined. And then to the old fighting-trade once more--the only one, I
believe, I really understand; and see whether a Russian bullet will not
fly straighter than a clumsy Sikh's."
Valencia listened, awe-stricken; and all the more so because this was
spoken in a calm, half-abstracted voice, without a note of feeling, save
where he alluded to his own mistakes. When it was over, she rose without
a word, and took both his hands in her own, sobbing bitterly.
"You forgive me, then, all the misery which I have caused!"
"Do not talk so! Only forgive me having fancied for one moment that you
were anything but what you are, an angel out of heaven."
Campbell hung down his head.
"Angel, truly! Azraël, the angel of death, then. Go to her now--go, and
leave a humbled penitent man alone with God."
"Oh, my Saint Père!" cried she, bursting into tears. "This is too
wretched--all a horrid dream--and when, too--when I had been counting on
telling you something so different!--I cannot now, I have not the
heart."
"What, more misery?"
"Oh no! no! no! You will know all to-morrow. Ask Scoutbush."
"I shall be gone in search of that man long before Scoutbush is awake."
"Impossible! you do not know whither he is gone."
"If I employ every detective in Bow Street, I will find him."
"Wait, only wait, till the post comes in to-morrow. He will surely
write, if not to her,--wretch that he is!--at least to some of us."
"If he be alive. No. I must go up to Pen-y-gwryd, where he was last
seen, and find out what I can."
"They will be all in bed at this hour of the night; and if--if anything
has happened, it will be over by now," added she with a shudder.
"God forgive me! It will indeed: but he may write--perhaps to me. He is
no coward, I believe: and he may send me a challenge. Yes, I will wait
for the post."
"Shall you accept it if he does?"
Major Campbell smiled sadly.
"No, Miss St. Just; you may set your mind at rest upon that point. I
have done quite enough harm already to your family. Now, good-bye! I
will wait for the post to-morrow: do you go to your sister."
Valencia went, utterly bewildered. She had forgotten Frank, but Frank
had not forgotten her. He had hurried to his room; lay till morning,
sleepless with delight, and pouring out his pure spirit in thanks for
this great and unexpected blessing. A new life had begun for him, even
in the jaws of death. He would still go to the East. It seemed easy to
him to go there in search of a grave; how much more now, when he felt so
full of magic life, that fever, cholera, the chances of war, could not
harm him! After this proof of God's love, how could he doubt, how fear?
Little he thought that three doors off from him, Valencia was sitting up
the whole night through, vainly trying to quiet Lucia, who refused to
undress, and paced up and down her room, hour after hour in wild misery,
which I have no skill to detail.