‘FOR LOVE AND NOT FOR HATE THOU MUST BE DED.’
When Daphne and Gerald were gone, and the fair woodland scene was
empty, a third figure came slowly out of the fir-grove, a substantial
form clad in a rusty black-silk gown, short petticoats, side-laced
cashmere boots, and a bonnet which was only thirty years behind the
prevailing fashion. This antique form belonged to Jane Mowser, who
carried a little basket of an almost infantine shape, and who had
been gathering wild strawberries for her afternoon refreshment. While
thus engaged she had espied Daphne’s white frock gleaming athwart the
dark stems of the firs, and had contrived to skirt the pathway, and
keep the young lady in view. Thus she had been within earshot when
Daphne and Gerald Goring met, and had heard the greater part of their
conversation. ‘I’ve known it and foreseen it. I knew it would come
to this from the very beginning,’ she muttered breathlessly; ‘and I’m
thankful that I’m the chosen instrument for finding them out. Oh, my
poor Miss Madoline, what a viper you have nourished in your loving
bosom! Oh, the artfulness of that anteloping girl! pretending to reject
him, and leading him on all the time, and meaning to run away with him
to-morrow, and be married on the sly at Geneva, as truly as my name is
Mowser. But I’ll put a stop to their goings on. I’ll let in the light
upon their dark ways. Jane Mowser will prove a match for an antelope
and a traitor.’
The little basket trembled in Mrs. Mowser’s agitated grasp, as she
trotted briskly downhill to the hotel. ‘I’ll make their baseness known
to Sir Vernon,’ said Mowser, ‘and if he has the heart of a man he’ll
crush that fair-haired young viper.’
Having detested Daphne from the day of her birth, Mowser now felt a
virtuous thrill, the sense of a relieved conscience, in the idea that
Daphne had justified her dislike. It would have been pain and grief to
her had the girl turned out well; but to have her judgment borne out,
her wisdom made clear as daylight, every evil feeling of her heart
fully excused by the girl’s bad conduct, this was comfort which weighed
heavily in the scale against her honest sorrow for the mistress whom
she honestly loved.
She had no idea that the revelation she was going to make must
necessarily lead to the cancelment of Madoline’s engagement. Her notion
was that if Sir Vernon were made acquainted with the treachery that had
been going on in his family circle, he would turn his younger daughter
out of doors, and compel Gerald Goring to keep faith with his elder
daughter. She allowed nothing for those finer shades of feeling which
generally lead to the breaking of matrimonial engagements. It seemed to
her that if a man had got himself engaged to a girl, and wanted to cry
off, he must be taken by the scruff off his neck, as it were, and made
to fulfill his promise.
When seven o’clock came and the _table-d’hôte_, Daphne was shut up in
her own room with a bad headache; Mr. Goring was missing; and there
were only Aunt Rhoda, Madoline, and Edgar to take their accustomed
places near one end of the long table. A little pencilled note from
Daphne had been brought to Madoline by one of the chambermaids, just
before dinner:
‘I have been for a long, long walk, and the heat has given me a
dreadful headache. Please excuse my coming to dinner. I will have some
tea in my room.’
‘That foolish girl has been walking too far for her strength, no
doubt,’ said Mrs. Ferrers. ‘She is always in extremes. But what has
become of Mr. Goring? Has he been overwalking himself too?’
‘I think not,’ answered Lina, smiling; ‘we were dawdling about together
near the hotel till four o’clock, and I don’t suppose he would start
for a long ramble after that.’
‘Then why is he not at dinner?’
This question was unanswerable. They could only speculate vaguely about
the absent one. Nobody had seen him after he parted from Madoline at
the garden gate. Perhaps he had walked to Vevey, perhaps to Montreux,
miscalculating the distance, and the time it would take him to go
and return. There was an uncomfortable feeling all through the slow
protracted dinner, Madoline’s eyes wandering to the door every now
and then, expecting to see Gerald enter; Edgar out of spirits because
Daphne was absent; Mrs. Ferrers overcome by the heat, and beginning to
perceive that Swiss scenery was a delight of which one might become
weary.
‘I am so vexed with myself for falling asleep and letting Daphne roam
about alone,’ said Edgar, staring absently at a savoury mess of veal
and vegetable to which he had mechanically helped himself.
‘I don’t see why you should blame yourself for Daphne’s want of common
sense,’ answered Aunt Rhoda somewhat snappishly. ‘It was an afternoon
that would have sent anybody to sleep. Even I, who am generally so
wakeful, closed my eyes for a few minutes over my book.’
If Mrs. Ferrers had confessed that she had been snoring vigorously for
an hour and a half, she would have been nearer the truth.
Dinner came to its formal close in the shape of an unripe dessert, and
there was still no sign of Gerald. Edgar went up to the corridor and
knocked at Daphne’s door to inquire if her head were better.
She answered from within in a weary voice:
‘Thanks; no! It is aching awfully. Please don’t trouble yourself about
me. Go for a nice walk with Lina.’
‘Don’t you think if you were to come out and sit in the garden the cool
evening air would do you good?’
‘I couldn’t lift my head from the pillow.’
‘Then you will not be well enough to go back to Montreux to-morrow
morning? We had better put off the journey.’
‘On no account. I shall be quite well to-morrow. It is only a headache.
Please go away and enjoy your evening.’
‘As if I could enjoy life without you. Good-night, darling. God bless
you!’
‘Good-night,’ replied the tired voice, and he went away sorrowing.
What was his life worth without her? Absolutely nothing. He had chosen
to make this one delight, this one love, the all-in-all of existence.
He went down into the garden with a moody dejected air and joined Lina,
who was sitting in a spot where the view of the valley below and the
height above was loveliest; but Lina was scarcely more cheerful than
Edgar. She was beginning to feel seriously uneasy at Gerald’s absence.
‘You don’t think anything can have happened—any accident?’ she asked
falteringly.
‘Do you mean that he can have tumbled off a precipice? Hardly likely.
A man who has climbed Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau would scarcely come
to grief hereabouts. I think the worst that has befallen him is to have
lost his dinner.’
They sat in the garden till the valley and lake below were folded in
darkness, and the moon was climbing high above the dark fir trees and
the gray peak, and then Lina’s heart was lightened by the sound of a
sympathetic tenor voice, whose every tone she knew, singing _La Donna e
mobile_, in notes that floated nearer and nearer as the singer came up
the grassy slope below the garden. She went to meet him.
‘My dear Gerald, I have been miserable about you.’
‘Because I didn’t appear at dinner? Forgive me, dearest. The heat gave
me a racking headache, and I thought a tremendous walk was the only way
to cure it. I have been down to Montreux, and seen your father, who is
pining for your return. He looked quite scared when I dashed into the
garden where he was reading his paper on the terrace by the lake. I was
not ten minutes at Montreux altogether.’
‘Dear father! It was very good of you to go and see him.’
‘It was only a peep. I’m sorry you felt fidgety about me.’
‘I am sorry you had a headache. It seems an epidemic. Daphne was not
able to appear at dinner for the same reason.’
‘Poor little Daphne!’
* * * * *
They were to start upon their return journey early next morning, so
as to reach Montreux before the tropical heat of afternoon. They all
breakfasted together in Madoline’s sitting-room between six and seven,
Aunt Rhoda, who was a great advocate of early rising, looking much the
sleepiest of the party. Daphne was pale and spiritless, but as she
declared herself perfectly well nobody could say anything to her.
They started at seven o’clock. There were two carriages; a roomy
landau, and a vehicle of composite shape and long service for Mowser
and the luggage. Daphne at once declared her intention of walking.
‘The walk downhill through fields and orchards and vineyards’ will be
lovely,’ she said.
‘Delicious,’ exclaimed Edgar; ‘but don’t you think it is rather too far
for a walk?’
‘Are you too lazy to walk with me?’
‘I don’t think you need insult me by such a question.’ On which Daphne
set out without another word, waving her hand lightly to Madoline as
she vanished at a turn in the road.
Gerald Goring handed the two ladies to their seats in the landau, and
took his place facing them. He had a listless worn-out look, as if his
pedestrianism last night had exhausted him.
‘You are not looking well, Gerald,’ Lina said anxiously, disturbed at
seeing his haggard countenance in the clear morning light.
‘My dearest, who could possibly look well in such a languid atmosphere
as this? We are in a vaporous basin, shut in by a circle of hills. Down
at Montreux it is like being at the bottom of a gigantic forcing-pit;
here, though we fancy ourselves ever so high, we are only on the side
of the incline. The wall still rises above us. At this season we ought
to be at Davos or Pontresina.’
‘Those are the only places people go to nowadays,’ said Mrs. Ferrers
discontentedly. ‘I shall be almost ashamed to tell my friends where I
have been. All the people one meets in society go to the Engadine.’
‘I don’t think that idea need spoil our enjoyment of this lovely
scenery,’ said Madoline. ‘Look at Daphne and Mr. Turchill, what a way
they are below us!’
She pointed with her sunshade to a glancing white figure among the
chestnut groves below. Edgar and Daphne had descended by those steep
straight paths which made so little of the distance, while the horses
were travelling quietly along the gentle windings of the road. It was
a lovely drive to Montreux, the town and its adjacent villages looking
like a child’s toys set out upon a green table; the castle of Chillon
distinctly seen at every turn of the road; the hillsides shaded by
Spanish chestnuts, big and old; verdant slopes mounting up and up
towards a blue heaven. They passed the little post and telegraph office
at Glion, a wooden hut, baked through and through with the sun, like
an oven; the hotel where the children were at play in the garden, and
a few early-rising adults strolled about rather listlessly, waiting
for breakfast; and then down by the ever-winding road, past many a
trickling waterfall; sometimes a mere cleft in the rock, sometimes a
stony recess in a low wall, fringed with ferns, where the water drops
perpetually into the basin below, and so by wooded slopes descending
steeply to the sapphire lake, past the parish church, picturesquely
situated on the hillside, and by many a public pump with a double
spout, and tanks where the women were washing linen or vegetables under
an open roof. Some kind of industry was going on at all these public
fountains; or at least there was a group of children dabbling in the
water.
They were at Montreux before ten o’clock; Sir Vernon delighted to have
his elder daughter back again, and even inquiring civilly about Daphne,
who had not yet arrived, despite the tremendous spurt she and Edgar had
begun with.
‘That is just like Daphne,’ said her father, when he was told how she
had insisted on walking all the way. ‘She is always beginning something
tremendous and never finishing it. I daresay we shall have Turchill
down here presently in search of a carriage to bring her the second
half of the way.’
‘Yesterday she gave herself a headache by roaming about the hills,’
said Aunt Rhoda; ‘she has not a particle of discretion.’
‘Do you expect her to be full of wisdom at eighteen, Auntie?’ asked
Madoline deprecatingly.
‘I can only say, my dear, that at eighteen I was not a fool,’ replied
Mrs. Ferrers sourly; and Lina did not argue the question further,
knowing but too well how her aunt was affected towards Daphne.
The pedestrians made their appearance five minutes later, none the
worse for their long walk through fields and vineyards, and across
cottage-gardens and orchards, a walk full of interest and diversity.
Daphne, flushed with exercise, looked ever so much better than she had
looked at breakfast, where she had been without appetite even for her
beloved rolls and honey.
‘I have a little business to arrange in Geneva,’ said Gerald, while
they were all sitting about the airy drawing-room in a purposeless way,
before settling down into their old quarters and old habits. ‘I think
I shall take the train, as the quicker way, and then I can be back to
dinner.’
Madoline looked surprised.
‘Have you anything very important to do in Geneva?’ she asked; ‘you
never said anything about it before.’
‘No; it is a necessity which has arisen quite lately. I’ll tell you all
about it—afterwards. Good-bye till dinner-time. You must be tired after
your morning drive, and you won’t feel inclined for much excursionising
to-day.’
‘I’m afraid we’ve seen everything there is to be seen within a
manageable distance,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, rather dolefully.
Daphne was sitting near the door. She had dropped into a low deep
chair, and sat with her straw hat in her lap, full of wild flowers
which she had gathered on her way down. Gerald stooped as he passed
her, and took one of the half-withered blossoms—things so fragile in
their delicate beauty that they faded as soon as plucked—and put it in
his breast. The act was so carelessly done that no one seeing it would
have perceived any significance in it, or could have guessed that the
hand which took the flower trembled with suppressed feeling, and that
the heart against which it lay beat loud with passion.
‘I am going to make all arrangements for our marriage,’ he said in a
low voice.
‘Good-bye,’ she answered, looking straight up at him.
He was gone. Her gaze followed him slowly to the door, and lingered
there; then she rose and gathered up her flowers.
‘I think I’ll go to my room and lie down,’ she said to Madoline.
‘Please don’t let Edgar come worrying about me. Tell him to amuse
himself without my company for once in a way.’
‘My dearest, I don’t think he has any idea of amusing himself without
you in Switzerland. How tired you look, my poor pet! Go and lie down
and get a nice refreshing sleep after your walk. You shall not be
disturbed till I come myself to bring you some tea. That will be better
for you than coming down to luncheon.’
‘I don’t feel much inclined for sleep, though I confess to being tired.
I should like you to come and sit with me for a little, Lina, soon
after luncheon, if you don’t mind.’
‘Mind! My darling, as if I were not always glad to be with you.’
Daphne went slowly up to her room, very slowly, with automatic steps,
as one who walks in his sleep. The dark gray eyes looked straight into
space, fixed and heavy with despair.
‘He is mad, and I am mad,’ she said to herself. ‘How can it
end—except——’
Her room was bright and pretty, gaily furnished in that bright foreign
style which studies scenic effect rather than solid comfort; French
windows opening upon a balcony, shaded with a striped awning. The
windows looked on to the lake, across the bright blue water to the
opposite shore, with its grand and solitary hills, its villages few
and far apart. Daphne stood for a long while looking dreamily at the
expanse of bright water, and the bold and rugged shore beyond; at
Chillon in its rocky corner; at the deep dark gorge whence the yellow
Rhone comes rushing in, staining Lake Loman’s azure floor. How lovely
it all was—how lovely, and yet of how little account in the sum of
man’s destiny! All Nature’s loveliness was powerless to mend one broken
heart.
‘What was it that he read on my hand that day at Fontainebleau?’ she
asked herself. ‘Was it this? was it this?’
A steamer went by laden with people, a band playing a waltz tune. The
world seemed full of thoughtless souls, for whom life meant only idle
empty pleasures. Daphne turned away from that sunlit scene sick at
heart, wishing that she were lying quietly in one of those green dells
through which they had passed to-day, a leafy hollow hidden in the
hillside, and that life were ebbing away without an effort.
‘Seneca was a wise and learned man,’ she thought; ‘but with all his
wisdom he found it difficult to die. Cleopatra’s death sounds easier—a
basket of fruit and a little gliding snake a bright pretty creature
that a child might have played with, and been stung to death unawares.’
She threw herself on the bed, not tired from her walk, which seemed
as nothing to the lithe active limbs, but weary of life and its
perplexities. Oh, how he loved her, and how she loved him! And what a
glorious godlike thing life would be in his company! Glorious, but it
must not be; godlike, but honour barred the way.
‘Oh God! let me never forget what she has been to me,’ she prayed, with
clasped hands, with all her soul in that prayer—‘sister, mother, all
the world of love, and protection, and comfort—teach me to be true to
her; teach me to be loyal.’
For two long hours she lay, broad awake, in a blank tearless despair;
and then the door was gently opened, and Madoline came softly into the
room and seated herself by the bed. Daphne was lying with her face to
the wall. She did not turn immediately, but stretched out her hand to
her sister without a word.
‘Dearest, your hand is burning hot; you must be in a fever,’ said
Madoline.
‘No; there is nothing the matter with me.’
‘I’m afraid there is. I’m afraid that walk was too fatiguing. I have
ordered some tea for you.’ The maid brought it in as she spoke; not
Mowser; Mowser had kept herself aloof with an air of settled gloom,
ever since her return to Montreux. ‘I hope you have had a nice long
sleep.’
‘I have not been able to sleep much,’ answered Daphne, turning her
languid head upon her pillow, and then sitting up on the bed, a
listless figure in a tumbled white gown, with loose hair falling
over shoulders; ‘I have not been able to sleep much, but I have been
resting. Don’t trouble about me, Lina dear. I am very well. What
delicious tea!’ she said, as she tasted the cup which Madoline had just
poured out for her. ‘How good you are! I want to talk with you—to have
a long serious talk—about you and—Mr. Goring.’
‘Indeed, dear. It is not often my lively sister has any inclination for
seriousness.’
‘No; but I have been thinking deeply of late about long engagements,
and short engagements, and love before marriage, and love after
marriage—don’t you know.’ Her eyes were hidden under their drooping
lids, but her colour changed from pale to rose and from rose to pale as
she spoke.
‘And what wise thoughts have you had upon the subject, dearest?’ asked
Lina lightly.
‘I can hardly explain them; but I have been thinking—you know that I am
not desperately in love with—poor Edgar. I have never pretended to be
so; have I, dear?’
‘You have always spoken lightly of him. But it is your way to speak
lightly of everything; and I hope and believe that he is much more dear
to you than you say he is.’
‘He is not. I respect him, because I know how good he is; but that
is all. And do you know, Lina, I have sometimes fancied that your
feeling for Mr. Goring is not much stronger than mine for Edgar. You
are attached to him; you have an affection for him, which has grown
out of long acquaintance and habit—an almost sisterly affection; but
you are not passionately in love with him. If he were to die you would
be grieved, but you would not be heartbroken.’ She said this slowly,
deliberately, her eyes no longer downcast, but reading her sister’s
face.
‘Daphne!’ cried Madoline, ‘how dare you? How can you be so cruel? Not
love him! Why, you know that I have loved him ever since I was a child,
with a love which every day of my life has made stronger—a love which
is so rooted in my heart that I cannot imagine what life would be like
without him. I am not impulsive or demonstrative—I do not talk about
those things which are most dear and most sacred in my life, simply
because they are too sacred to be spoken about. If he were—to die—if I
were to lose him—no, I cannot think of that. It is heartless of you to
put such thoughts into my mind. My life has been all sunshine—a calm
happy life. God may be keeping some great grief in store for my later
days. If it were to come I should bow beneath the rod; but my heart
would break all the same.’
‘And if the grief took another shape—if he were to be false to you?’
said Daphne, laying her hand, icy cold now, upon her sister’s.
‘That would be worse,’ answered Lina huskily; ‘it would kill me.’
Daphne said not a word more. Her hands were clasped, as in prayer; the
dark sorrowful eyes were lifted, and the lips moved dumbly.
‘I ought not to have talked of such things, dear,’ she said, gently,
after that voiceless prayer. ‘It was very foolish.’
Lina was profoundly agitated. That calm and gentle nature was capable
of strongest feeling. The image of a terrible sorrow—a sorrow which,
however unlikely, was not impossible—once evoked was not to be banished
in a moment.
‘Yes; it was foolish, Daphne,’ she answered tremulously. ‘No good can
ever come of such thoughts. We are in God’s hands. We can only be happy
in this life with fear and trembling, for our joy is so easily turned
into sorrow. And now, dear, if you are quite comfortable, and there is
nothing more I can do for you, I must go back to Aunt Rhoda. I promised
to go for a walk with her.’
‘Isn’t it too warm for walking?’
‘Not for Aunt Rhoda’s idea of an afternoon walk, which is generally to
stroll down to the pier, and sit under the trees watching the people
land from the steamers.’
‘Shall you be out long, do you think?’
‘That will depend upon Aunt Rhoda. She said something about wanting
to go in the steamer to Vevey, if it could be done comfortably before
dinner.’
‘Good-bye! Kiss me, Lina. Tell me you are not angry with me for what I
said just now. I wanted to sound the depths of your love.’
‘It was cruel, dear; but I am not angry,’ answered Lina, kissing her
tenderly.
Daphne put her arms round her sister’s neck, just as she had done years
ago when she was a child.
‘God bless you, and reward you for all you have been to me, Lina!’ she
faltered tearfully; and so, with a fervent embrace, they parted.