IN something over a week the post brought two letters for the
fellow-travellers. Loyd’s was from his mother--a very homely affair,
full of affection and love, and overflowing with those little details
of domestic matters so dear to those who live in the small world of home
and its attachments.
Calvert’s was from his Cousin Sophy, much briefer, and very different in
style. It ran thus:
“Dear Henry--”
“I used to be Harry,” muttered he.
“Dear Henry,--It was not without surprise I saw your
handwriting again. A letter from you is indeed an event at
Rocksley.
“The Miss Grainger, if her name be Adelaide (for there were
two sisters) was our nursery governess long ago. Cary liked,
I hated her. She left us to take charge of some one’s
children--relatives of her own, I suspect--and though she
made some move about coming to see us, and presenting ‘her
charge,’ as she called it, there was no response to the
suggestion, and it dropped. I never heard more of her.
“As to any hopes of assistance from papa, I can scarcely
speak encouragingly. Indeed, he made no inquiry as to the
contents of your letter, and only remarked afterwards to
Cary that he trusted the correspondence was not to continue.
“Lastly, as to myself, I really am at a loss to see how my
marriage can be a subject of joy or grief, of pleasure or
pain, to you. We are as much separated from each other in
all the relations of life, as we shall soon be by long miles
of distance. Mr. Wentworth Graham is fully aware of the
relations which once subsisted between us,--he has even
read your letters--and it is at his instance I request that
the tone of our former intimacy shall cease from this day,
and that there may not again be any reference to the past
between us. I am sure in this I am merely anticipating what
your own sense of honourable propriety would dictate, and
that I only express a sentiment your own judgment has
already ratified.
“Believe me to be, very sincerely yours,
“Sophia Calvert.”
“Oh dear! When we were Sophy and Harry, the world went very differently
from now, when it has come to Henry and Sophia. Not but she is
right--right in everything but one. She ought not to have shown the
letters. There was no need of it, and it was unfair! There is a roguery
in it too, which, if I were Mr. Wentworth Graham, I’d not like. It is
only your most accomplished sharper that ever plays ‘cartes sur table.’
I’d sorely suspect the woman who would conciliate the new love by a
treachery to the old one. However, happily, this is his affair, not
mine. Though I could make it mine, too, if I were so disposed, by simply
reminding her that Mr. W. G. has only seen one half, and, by long odds,
the least interesting half, of our correspondence, and that for the
other he must address himself to me. Husbands have occasionally to learn
that a small sealed packet of old letters would be a more acceptable
present to the bride on her wedding morning than the prettiest trinket
from the Rue de la Paix. Should like to throw this shell into the midst
of the orange-flowers and the wedding favours, and I’d do it too, only
that I could never accurately hear of the tumult and dismay it caused.
I should be left to mere imagination for the mischief and imagination no
longer satisfies me.”
While he thus mused, he saw Loyd preparing for one of his daily
excursions with the photographic apparatus, and could not help a
contemptuous pity for a fellow so easily amused and interested, and
so easily diverted from the great business of life--which he deemed
“getting on”--to a pastime which cost labour and returned no profit.
“Come and see ‘I Grangeri’ (the name by which the Italians designated
the English family at the villa), it’s far better fun than hunting out
rocky bits, or ruined fragments of masonry. Come, and I’ll promise you
something prettier to look at than all your feathery ferns or drooping
foxgloves.”
Loyd tried to excuse himself. He was always shy and timid with strangers.
His bashfulness repelled intimacy and so he frankly owned that he would
only be a bar to his friend’s happiness, and throw a cloud over this
pleasant intercourse.
“How do you know but I’d like that?” said Calvert with a mocking laugh.
“How do you know but I want the very force of a contrast to bring my own
merits more conspicuously forward?”
“And make them declare when we went away, that it is inconceivable why
Mr. Calvert should have made a companion of that tiresome Mr. Loyd--so
low-spirited and so dreary, and so uninteresting in every way?”
“Just so! And that the whole thing has but one explanation--in Calvert’s
kindness and generosity; who, seeing the helplessness of this poor
depressed creature, has actually sacrificed himself to vivify and cheer
him. As we hear of the healthy people suffering themselves to be bled
that they might impart their vigorous heart’s blood to a poor wretch in
the cholera.”
“But I’m not blue yet,” said Loyd laughing. “I almost think I could get
on with my own resources.”
“Of course you might, in the fashion you do at present; but _that_ is
not life--or at least it is only the life of a vegetable. Mere existence
and growth are not enough for a man who has hopes to fulfil, and
passions to exercise, and desires to expand into accomplishments, not
to speak of the influence that everyone likes to wield over his fellows.
But, come along, jump into the boat, and see these girls! I want you;
for there is one of them I scarcely understand as yet, and as I am
always taken up with her sick sister, I’ve had no time to learn more
about her.”
“Well,” said Loyd, “not to offer opposition to the notion of the tie
that binds us, I consent.” And sending back to the cottage all the
details of his pursuit, he accompanied Calvert to the lake.
“The invalid girl I shall leave to your attention, Loyd,” said the
other, as he pulled across the water. “I like her the best; but I am in
no fear of rivalry in that quarter, and I want to see what sort of stuff
the other is made of. So, you understand, you are to devote yourself
especially to Florence, taking care, when opportunity serves, to say all
imaginable fine things about me--my talents, my energy, my good spirits,
and so forth. I’m serious, old fellow, for I will own to you I mean to
marry one of them, though which, I have not yet decided on.”
Loyd laughed heartily--far more heartily than in his quiet habit was his
wont--and said, “Since when has this bright idea occurred to you?”
“I’ll tell you,” said the other gravely. “I have for years had a sort
of hankering kind of half attachment to a cousin of mine. We used to
quarrel, and make up, and quarrel again; but somehow, just as careless
spendthrifts forget to destroy the old bill when they give a renewal,
and at last find a swingeing sum hanging over them they had never
dreamed of, Sophy and I never entirely cancelled our old scores, but
kept them back to be demanded at some future time. And the end has been,
a regular rupture between us, and she is going to be married at the end
of this month, and, not to be outdone on the score of indifference, I
should like to announce my own happiness, since that’s the word for it,
first.”
“But have you means to marry?”
“Not a shilling.”
“Nor prospects?”
“None.”
“Then I don’t understand----”
“Of course you don’t understand. Nor could I make you understand
how fellows like myself play the game of life. But let me try by an
illustration to enlighten you. When there’s no wind on a boat, and her
sails flap lazily against the mast, she can have no guidance, for there
is no steerage-way on her. She may drift with a current, or rot in a
calm, or wait to be crushed by some heavier craft surging against her.
Any wind--a squall, a hurricane--would be better than that. Such is
my case. Marriage without means is a hurricane; but I’d rather face a
hurricane than be water-logged between two winds.”
“But the girl you marry--”
“The girl I marry--or rather the girl who marries _me_--will soon learn
that she’s on board a privateer, and that on the wide ocean called life
there’s plenty of booty to be had, for a little dash and a little danger
to grasp it.”
“And is it to a condition like this you’d bring the girl you love,
Calvert?”
“Not if I had five thousand a year. If I owned that, or even four, I’d
be as decorous as yourself; and I’d send my sons to Rugby, and act as
poor-law guardian, and give my twenty pounds to the county hospital,
and be a model Englishman, to your heart’s content. But I haven’t five
thousand a year, no, nor five hundred a year; and as for the poor-house
and the hospital, I’m far more likely to claim the benefit than aid
the funds. Don’t you see, my wise-headed friend, that the whole is a
question of money? Morality is just now one of the very dearest things
going, and even the rich cannot always afford it. As for me, a poor
sub in an Indian regiment, I no more affect it than I presume to keep a
yacht, or stand for a county.”
“But what right have you to reduce another to such straits as these? Why
bring a young girl into such a conflict?”
“If ever you read Louis Blanc, my good fellow, you’d have seen that the
right of all rights is that of ‘associated labour.’ But come, let us not
grow too deep in the theme, or we shall have very serious faces to meet
out friends with, and yonder, where you see the drooping ash trees, is
the villa. Brush yourself up, therefore, for the coming interview; think
of your bits of Shelley and Tennyson, and who knows but you’ll acquit
yourself with honour to your introducer.”
“Let my introducer not be too confident,” said Loyd, smiling; “but here
come the ladies.”
As he spoke, two girls drew nigh the landing-place, one leaning on the
arm of the other, and in her attitude showing how dependent she was for
support.
“My bashful friend, ladies!” said Calvert, presenting Loyd. And with
this they landed.