It was at sunset that I stole through the ruined courtyard, having
left my chaise at the foot of the hill below. Though they whom I came
to seek knew that I had arrived in England, they did not, from my
letter, expect me till the next day. I had stolen a march upon them;
and now, in spite of all the impatience which had urged me thither, I
was afraid to enter--afraid to see the change more than ten years had
made in those forms, for which, in my memory, time had stood still.
And Roland had, even when we parted, grown old before his time. Then,
my father was in the meridian of life, now he had approached to the
decline. And my mother, whom I remembered so fair, as if the freshness
of her own heart had preserved the soft bloom to the cheek--I could
not bear to think that she was no longer young. Blanche, too, whom I
had left a child--Blanche, my constant correspondent during those long
years of exile, in letters crossed and re-crossed, with all the small
details that make the eloquence of letter writing, so that in those
epistles I had seen her mind gradually grow up in harmony with the very
characters--at first vague and infantine--then somewhat stiff with the
first graces of running hand, then dashing off, free and facile; and,
for the last year before I left, so formed, yet so airy--so regular,
yet so unconscious of effort--though, in truth, as the caligraphy had
become thus matured, I had been half vexed and half pleased to perceive
a certain reserve creeping over the style--wishes for my return less
expressed from herself than as messages from others; words of the old
childlike familiarity repressed; and "Dearest Sisty" abandoned for
the cold form of "Dear Cousin." Those letters, coming to me in a spot
where maiden and love had been as myths of the bygone, phantasms and
_eidola_, only vouchsafed to the visions of fancy, had, by little and
little, crept into secret corners of my heart; and out of the wrecks
of a former romance, solitude and reverie had gone far to build up the
fairy domes of a romance yet to come. My mother's letters had never
omitted to make mention of Blanche--of her forethought and tender
activity, of her warm heart and sweet temper--and, in many a little
home picture, presented her image where I would fain have placed it,
not "crystal-seeing," but joining my mother in charitable visits to the
village, instructing the young, and tending on the old, or teaching
herself to illuminate, from an old missal in my father's collection,
that she might surprise my uncle with a new genealogical table, with
all shields and quarterings, blazoned _or_, _sable_, and _argent_; or
flitting round my father where he sat, and watching when he looked
round for some book he was too lazy to rise for. Blanche had made a
new catalogue and got it by heart, and knew at once from what corner
of the Heraclea to summon the ghost. On all these little traits had my
mother been eulogistically minute; but somehow or other she had never
said, at least for the last two years, whether Blanche was pretty or
plain. That was a sad omission. I had longed just to ask that simple
question, or to imply it delicately and diplomatically; but, I know not
why, I never dared--for Blanche would have been sure to have read the
letter--and what business was it of mine? And, if she _was_ ugly, what
question more awkward both to put and to answer? Now, in childhood,
Blanche had just one of those faces that might become very lovely in
youth, and would yet quite justify the suspicion that it might become
gryphonesque, witch-like, and grim. Yes, Blanche, it is perfectly
true! If those large, serious black eyes took a fierce light, instead
of a tender--if that nose, which seemed then undecided whether to be
straight or to be aquiline, arched off in the latter direction, and
assumed the martial, Roman, and imperative character of Roland's manly
proboscis--if that face, in childhood too thin, left the blushes of
youth to take refuge on two salient peaks by the temples (Cumberland
air, too, is famous for the growth of the cheek-bone!)--if all that
should happen, and it very well might, then, O Blanche, I wish thou
hadst never written me those letters; and I might have done wiser
things than steel my heart so obdurately to pretty Ellen Bolding's
blue eyes and silk shoes. Now, combining together all these doubts and
apprehensions, wonder not, O reader, why I stole so stealthily through
the ruined courtyard, crept round to the other side of the tower, gazed
wistfully on the sun setting slant on the high casements of the hall,
(too high, alas, to look within,) and shrunk yet to enter;--doing
battle, as it were, with my heart.
Steps!--one's sense of hearing grows so quick in the Bushland!--steps,
though as light as ever brushed the dew from the harebell! I crept
under the shadow of the huge buttress mantled with ivy. A form comes
from the little door at an angle in the ruins--a woman's form. Is it
my mother?--it is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds
round the building, it turns to look back, and a sweet voice--a voice
strange, yet familiar--calls, tender, but chiding, to a truant that
lags behind. Poor Juba! he is trailing his long ears on the ground: he
is evidently much disturbed in his mind; now he stands still, his nose
in the air. Poor Juba! I left thee so slim and so nimble--
"Thy form, that was fashioned as light as a fay's,
Has assumed a proportion more round."
Years have sobered thee strangely, and made thee obese and
Primmins-like. They have taken too good care of thy creature comforts,
O sensual Mauritanian! still, in that mystic intelligence we call
instinct, thou art chasing something that years have not swept from thy
memory. Thou art deaf to thy lady's voice, however tender and chiding.
That's right,--come near--nearer--my cousin Blanche; let me have a
fair look at thee. Plague take the dog! he flies off from her: he has
found the scent--he is making up to the buttress! Now--pounce--he is
caught! whining ungallant discontent. Shall I not yet see the face? it
is buried in Juba's black curls. Kisses too! Wicked Blanche, to waste
on a dumb animal what, I heartily hope, many a good Christian would be
exceedingly glad of! Juba struggles in vain, and is borne off. I don't
think that those eyes can have taken the fierce turn, and Roland's
eagle nose can never go with that voice which has the coo of the dove.
I leave my hiding-place, and steal after the Voice, and its owner.
Where can she be going? Not far. She springs up the hill whereon the
lords of the castle once administered justice--that hill which commands
the land far and wide, and from which can be last caught the glimpse
of the westering sun. How gracefully still is that attitude of wistful
repose! Into what delicate curves do form and drapery harmoniously
flow! How softly distinct stands the lithe image against the purple
hues of the sky! Then again comes the sweet voice, gay and carolling as
a bird's--now in snatches of song, now in playful appeals to that dull
four-footed friend. She is telling him something that must make the
black ears stand on end, for I just catch the words, "He is coming,"
and "home!"
I cannot see the sun set where I lurk in my ambush, amidst the brake
and the ruins; but I _feel_ that the orb has passed from the landscape,
in the fresher air of the twilight, in the deeper silence of eve. Lo!
Hesper comes forth: at his signal, star after star, come the hosts--
"Ch'eran con lui, quando l'amor divino,
Mosse da primà quelle cose belle!"
and the sweet voice is hushed.
Then slowly the watcher descends the hill on the opposite side--the
form escapes from my view. What charm has gone from the twilight? See,
again, where the step steals through the ruins and along the desolate
court. Ah! deep and true heart, do I divine the remembrance that leads
thee? I pass through the wicket, down the dell, skirt the laurels, and
behold the face, looking up to the stars--the face which had nestled
to my breast in the sorrow of parting, years, long years ago: on the
grave where we had sat, I the boy, thou the infant--there, O Blanche!
is thy fair face--(fairer than the fondest dream that had gladdened my
exile)--vouchsafed to my gaze!
"Blanche, my cousin!--again, again--soul with soul, amidst the dead!
Look up, Blanche; it is I."