THE following letter from Calvert to Drayton was written about three
weeks after the event of our last chapter.
“The Villa.
“My dear Algernon,--I knew my black fellow would run you to
earth, though he had not a word of English in his
vocabulary, nor any clue to you except your name and a map
of England. It must have, however, been his near kinsman--
the other ‘black gentleman’--suggested Scarborough to him;
and, to this hour, I cannot conceive how he found you. I am
overjoyed to hear that you could muster enough Hindostanee
to talk with him, and hear some of those adventures which my
natural modesty might have scrupled to tell you. It would
seem from your note, that he has been candour itself, and
confessed much that a man of a paler and thinner skin might
prefer to have shrouded or evaded. All true, D.; we have
done our brigandage on a grand scale, and divided our prize
money without the aid of a prize-court.
“Keep those trinkets with an easy conscience, and if they
leave your own hands for any less worthy still, remember the
adage, ‘Ill got, ill gone,’ and be comforted. I suppose you
are right--you are generally right on a question of
worldly craft and prudence--it is better not to attempt the
sale of the larger gems in England. St Petersburg and Vienna
are as good markets, and safer.
“El. J. has already told you of our escape into Cashmere:
make him narrate the capture of Mansergh, and how he found
the Keyserbagh necklace under his saddle. A Queen’s officer
looting! Only think of the enormity! Did it not justify
those proceedings in which Instinct anticipated the finding
of a court-martial? The East, and its adventures--a very
bulky roll, I assure you--must wait till we meet; and in my
next I shall say where, and how, and when: for there is much
that I shall tell that I could not write even to you,
Algernon. Respect my delicacy, and be patient.
“I know you are impatient to hear why I am not nearer
England--even at Paris--and I am just as impatient to tell
you. The address of this will show you where I am. All the
writing in the world could not tell you why. No, Drayton; I
lie awake at night, questioning, questioning, and in vain. I
have gone to the nicest anatomy of my motives, dissecting
fibre by fibre, and may I be--a Queen’s officer--if I can
hit upon an explanation of the mystery. The nearest I can
come is, that I feel the place dangerous to me, and,
therefore, I cling to it. I know well the feeling that would
draw a man back to the spot where he had committed a great
crime. Blood is a very glutinous fluid, and has most
cohesive properties; but here, in this place, I have done
no enormities, and why I hug this coast, except that it be a
lee-shore, where shipwreck is very possible, I really cannot
make out Not a bit in love? No, Algy. It is not easy for a
man like me to fall in love. Love demands a variety of
qualities, which have long left me, if I ever had them. I
have little trustfulness, no credulity; I very seldom look
back, never look forward; I neither believe in another, nor
ask belief in myself. I have seen too much of life to be a
dreamer--reality with me denies all place to mere romance.
Last of all I cannot argue from the existence of certain
qualities in a woman to the certainty of her possessing
fifty others that I wish her to have. I only believe what I
see, and my moral eyes are affected with cataract; and yet,
with all this, there’s a girl here--the same, ay, the same,
I told you of long ago--that I’d rather marry than I’d be
King of Agra, with a British governor-general for my water-
carrier! The most maddening of all jealousy is for a woman
that one is not in love with! I am not mad, most noble
Drayton, though I am occasionally as near it as is safe for
the surrounders. With the same determination that this girl
says she’ll not have me, have I sworn to myself she shall be
mine. It is a fair open game, and I leave _you_, who love a
wager, to name the winner. I have seen many prettier women--
scores ol cleverer ones. I am not quite sure that in the
matter of those social captivarions into which manner
enters, she has any especial gifts. She is not a horsewoman,
in the real sense of the word, which, once on a time, was a
sine quâ non of mine; nor, in fact, has she a peculiar
excellence in anything, and yet she gives you the impression
of being able to be anything she likes. She has great
quickness and great adaptiveness, but she possesses one
trait of attraction above all; she utterly rejects _me_,
and sets all my arts at defiance. I saw, very soon after I
came back here, that she was prepared for a regular siege,
and expected a fierce love-suit on my part I accordingly
spiked my heavy artillery, and assumed an attitude of peace-
like indolence. I lounged about, chiefly alone; neither
avoided nor sought her, and, if I did nothing more, I sorely
puzzled her as to what I could mean by my conduct. This
was so far a success that it excited her interest, and I saw
that she watched and was studying me. She even made faint
attempts at little confidences: ‘Saw I was unhappy--had
something on my mind;’ and, for the matter of that, I had
plenty--plenty on my conscience, too, if nature had been
cruel enough to have inflicted me with one. I, of course,
said ‘No’ to all these insinuations. I was not happy nor
unhappy. If I sat at the table of life, and did not
eat, it was because I had no great appetite. The
entertainment did not amuse me much, but I had nowhere
particularly to go to. She went one day so far as to hint
whether I was not crossed in love? But I assured her
not, and I saw her grow very pale as I said it. I
even suggested, that though one might have two attacks of
the malady, like the measles, the second one was always
mild, and never hurt the constitution. Having thus
piqued her a little about myself, I gradually unsettled her
opinion on other things, frightened her by how the
geologists contradict Genesis, and gave her to choose
between Monsieur Cuvier and Moses. As for India, I made
her believe that we were all heartily ashamed of what we
were doing there, spoke of the Hindoo as the model native,
and said that if the story of our atrocities were written,
Europe would rise up and exterminate us. Hence I had
not taken the C.B., nor the V.C., nor any other alphabetical
glories. In a word, Drayton, I got her into that frame of
resdessness and fever in which all belief smacks of foolish
credulity, and the commonest exercise of trust seems like
the indulgence of a superstition.
“All this time no mention of Loyd, not a hint of his
existence. Yesterday, however, came a fellow here, a certain
Mr. Stockwell, with a note of introduction from Loyd,
calling him ‘my intimate friend S., whom you have doubtless
heard of as a most successful, photographer. He is going to
India with a commission from the Queen,’ &c. We had him to
dinner, and made him talk, as all such fellows are ready to
talk, about themselves and the fine people who employ them.
In the evening we had his portfolio and the peerage, and so
delighted was the vulgar dog to have got into the land of
coronets and strawberry-leaves, that he would have ignored
Loyd if I had not artfully brought him to his recollection;
but he came to the memory of ‘poor Joe,’ as he called him,
with such a compassionating pity, that I actually grew to
like him. He had been at the vicarage, too, and saw its
little homely ways and small economies; and I laughed so
heartily at his stupid descriptions and vapid jokes, that I
made the ass think he was witty, and actually repeat them.
All this time imagine Florry, pale as a corpse, or scarlet,
either half fainting or in a fever, dying to burst in with
an angry indignation, and yet restrained by maiden
bashfulness. She could bear no more by eleven o’clock, and
went off to bed under pretence of a racking headache.
“It is a great blow at any man’s favour in a woman’s esteem
when you show up his particular friend, his near intimate;
and certes, I did not spare Stockwell. You have seen me in
this part, and you can give me credit for some powers in
playing it.
“‘Could that creature ever have been the dear friend of
Joseph’ said Milly, as he said good-night.
“‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘They seem made for each other.’
“Florry was to have come out for a sail this morning with
me, but she is not well--I suspect sulky--and has not
appeared. I therefore give you the morning that I meant
for her. Her excuses have amazed me; because, after my last
night’s success, and the sorry figure I had succeeded in
presenting L. to her, I half hoped my own chances might be
looking up. In fact, though I have been playing a waiting
game so patiently, to all appearance, I am driven half mad
by self restraint. Come what may, I must end this; besides,
to day is the fourth: on the tenth the steamer from
Alexandria will touch at Malta; L. will therefore be at
Leghorn by the fourteenth, and here two days after--that is
to say, in twelve days more my siege must be raised. If I
were heavily ironed in a felon’s cell with the day of my
execution fixed, I could not look to the time with one-half
the heart-sinking I now feel.
“I’d give--what would I not give?--to have you near me,
though in my soul I know all that you’d say; how you’d
preach never minding, letting be, and the rest of it, just
as if I could cut out some other work for myself tomorrow,
and think no more of her. But I cannot. No Drayton, I
cannot, Is it not too hard for the fellow who cut his way
through Lahore with sixteen followers, and made a lane
through her Majesty’s light cavalry, to be worsted,
defeated, and disgraced by a young girl, who has neither
rank, riches, nor any remarkable beauty to her share, but is
simply sustained by the resolve that she’ll not have me?
Mind, D., I have given her no opportunity of saying this
since I came last here: on the contrary, she would, if
questioned, be ready--I’d swear to it she would--to say,
‘Calvert paid me no attentions, nor made any court to me.’
She is very truthful in everything, but who is to say what
her woman’s instinct may not have revealed to her of my love?
Has not the woman a man loves always a private key to his
heart, and doesn’t she go and tumble its contents about,
just out of curiosity, ten times a day? Not that she’d ever
find a great deal either in or on mine. Neither the
indictments for murder or manslaughter, nor that other
heavier charge for H. T., have left their traces within my
pericardium, and I could stand to back myself not to rave in
a compromising fashion if I had a fever to-morrow. But how
hollow all this boasting, when that girl within the closed
window-shutter yonder defies me--ay, defies me! Is she to
go off to her wedding with the inner consciousness of this
victory? There’s the thought that is driving me mad, and
will, I am certain, end by producing some dire mischief--
what the doctors call a lesion--in this unhappy brain of
mine. And now, as I sit here in listless idleness, that
other fellow is hastening across Egypt, or ploughing his way
through the Red Sea, to come and marry her! I ask you, D.,
what amount of philosophy is required to bear up under this?
“I conclude I shall leave this some time next week--not to
come near England, though--for I foresee that it will soon
be out where, how, and with whom I have been spending my
holidays. Fifty fellows must suspect, and some half-dozen
must know all about it America, I take it, must be my
ground--as well there as anywhere else--but I can’t endure
a plan, so enough of this. Don’t write to me till you hear
again, for I shall leave this certainly, though where for,
not so certain.
“What a deal of trouble and uncertainty that girl might
spare me if she’d only consent to say ‘Yes.’ If I see her
alone this evening, I half think I shall ask her.
“Farewell for a while, and believe me,
“Yours ever,
“HARRY C.
“P.S. Nine o’clock, evening. Came down to dinner looking
exceedingly pretty, and dressed to perfection. All spite and
malice, I’m certain. Asked me to take her out to sail to-
morrow. We are to go off on an exploring expedition to an
island--‘que sais je?’
“The old Grainger looks on me with aunt-like eyes. She has
seen a bracelet of carbuncles in dull gold, the like of
which Loyd could not give her were he to sell justice for
twenty years to come. I have hinted that I mean them for my
mother-in-law whenever I marry, and she understands that the
parentage admits of a representative. All this is very
ignoble on my part; but if I knew of anything meaner that
would ensure me success, I’d do it also.
“What a stunning vendetta on this girl, if she were at last
to consent, to find out whom she had married, and _what_.
Think of the winter nights’ tales, of the charges that hang
over me, and their penalties. Imagine the Hue and Cry as
light reading for the honeymoon!”
He added one line on the envelope, to say he would write again on the
morrow; but his promise he did not keep.