A WALK BY MOONLIGHT.
While Martha Tansey was telling her grisly story in the housekeeper's
room, and David Arden listening to the oft-told tale, for the sake of
the possible new lights which the narration might throw upon his present
theory, the little party in the drawing-room had their music and their
talk. Mr. Longcluse sang the song which, standing beside Uncle David on
the landing, near the great window on the staircase, we have faintly
heard; and then he sang that other song, of the goblin wooer, at Alice's
desire.
"Was the poor girl fool enough to accept his invitation?" inquired Miss
Maubray.
"That I really can't say," laughed Mr. Longcluse.
"Yes, indeed, poor thing! I so hope she didn't," said Lady May.
"It's very likely she did," interposed Sir Reginald, opening his
eyes--every one thought he was dozing--"nothing more foolish, and
therefore, nothing more likely. Besides, if she didn't, she probably did
worse. Better to go straight to the----"
"Oh, dear Reginald!" exclaimed Lady May.
"Than by a tedious circumbendibus. I suppose her parents highly
disapproved of the goblin; wasn't that alone an excellent reason for
going away with him?"
And Sir Reginald closed his eyes again.
"Perhaps," said Miss Maubray aside to Vivian Darnley, "that romantic
young lady may have had a cross papa, and thought that she could not
change very much for the worse."
"Shall I tell that to Sir Reginald?--it would amuse him," inquired
Darnley.
"Not as my remark; but I make you a present of it."
"Thanks; but that, even with your permission, would be a plagiarism, and
robbing you of his applause."
Vivian Darnley was very inattentive to his own nonsense. He was talking
very much at random, for his mind, and occasionally his eyes, were
otherwise occupied.
Alice Arden was sitting near the piano, and talking to Mr. Longcluse.
"Is that meant to be a ghost, I wonder, in our sense, like the ghost of
Wilhelm in the ballad of Leonora? or is the lover a demon?"
"A demon, surely," answered Longcluse, "a spirit appointed to her
destruction. In an old ghostly writer there is a Latin sentence,
_Unicuique nascenti, adest dæmon vitæ mystagogus_, which I will
translate, 'There is present at the birth of every human being a demon,
who is the conductor of his life.' Be it fortunate, or be it direful, to
this supernatural influence he owes it all. So they thought; and to
families such a demon is allotted also, and they prosper or wane as his
function is ordained. I wonder whether such demons ever enter into human
beings, and, in the shape of living men, haunt, plague, and ruin their
predestinated victims."
This sort of mysticism for a time they talked, and then wandered away to
other themes, and the talk grew general; and Mr. Longcluse, with a pang,
discovered that it was late. He had something on his mind that night. He
had an undivulged use, also, to which to apply David Arden. As the hour
drew near it weighed more and more heavily at his heart. That hour must
be observed; he wished to be away before it arrived. There was still
ample time; but Lady May was now talking of going, and he made up his
mind to say farewell.
Lingeringly Mr. Longcluse took his leave. But go he must; and so, a last
touch of the hand, a last look, and the parting is over. Down-stairs he
runs; his groom and his brougham are at the door. What a glorious moon!
The white light upon all things around is absolutely dazzling. How sharp
and black the shadows! How light and filmy rises the old house! How
black the nooks of the thick ivy! Every drop of dew that hangs upon its
leaves, or on the drooping stalks of the neglected grass, is transmuted
into a diamond. As he stands for an instant upon the broad platform of
the steps, he looks round him with a deep sigh, and with a strange smile
of rapture. The man standing with the open door of the brougham in his
hand caught his eye.
"Go you down as far as the little church, before you reach the 'Guy of
Warwick,' in the village, quite close to this--you know it--and wait
there for me. I shall walk."
The man touched his hat, shut the door, and mounted the box beside the
driver, and away went the brougham. Mr. Longcluse lit a cigarette, and
slowly walked down the broad avenue after the vehicle. By the time he
had got about half-way, he heard the iron gates swing together, the
sound of the wheels was lost in distance, and the feeling of seclusion
returned. In the same vague intoxication of poetry and romance, he
paused and looked round again, and sighed. The trunk of a great tree
overthrown in the last year's autumnal gales, with some of its boughs
lopped off, lay on the grass at the edge of the avenue. There remained a
little of his cigarette to smoke, and the temptation of this natural
seat was irresistible; so he took it, and smoked, and gazed, and
dreamed, and sometimes, as he took the cigarette from his lips, he
sighed--never was man in a more romantic vein. He looked back on the
noble front of the picturesque old house. The cold moonlight gleamed on
most of the window-panes: but from a few tall windows glowed faintly the
warmer light of candles. If anyone had ever felt the piercing storms of
life, the treachery of his species, and the mendacity of the illusions
that surround us, Longcluse was that man. He had accepted the conditions
of life, and was a man of the world; but no boy of eighteen was ever
more in love than he at this moment.
Gazing back at the dim glow that flushed through the tall window-blinds
of the distant drawing-room, his fancy weaving all those airy dreams
that passion lives in, this pale, solitary man--whom no one quite knew,
who trusted no one, who had his peculiar passions, his sorrows, his
fears, and strange remembrances; everything connected with his origin,
vicissitudes, and character, except this one wild hope, locked up, as it
were, in an iron casket, and buried in a grave fathoms deep--was now
floated back, he knew not how, to that time of sweet perturbation and
agonising hope at which the youth of Shakespeare's time were wont to
sigh like a furnace, and indite woeful ballads to their mistress's
eyebrows. Now he saw lights in an upper room. Imagination and conjecture
were in a moment at work. No servant's apartment, its dimensions were
too handsome; and had not Sir Reginald mentioned that his room was upon
a level with the hall? Just at this moment Lady May's carriage drove
down the avenue and past him. Yes, she had run up direct to her room on
bidding Lady May good-night. How he drank in these rosy lights through
his dark eyes! and how their tremble seemed to quicken the pulsations of
his heart! Gradually his thoughts saddened, and his face grew dark.
"Two doors in life--only in this life, if all bishops and curates speak
truth--one or other shut for ever in the next. The gate to heaven, the
gate to hell. Heaven! _Facilis decensus._ Life is such a sophism. Yet
even those canting dogs in the pulpit can't bark away the truth. God
sees not with our eyes! Revealed religion--Mahomet, Moses, Mormon,
Borgia! What is the first lesson inscribed by his Maker on every man's
heart, instinct, intellect? I read the mandate thus: 'Take the best care
you can of number one.' Bah! 'It is he that hath made us, and not we
ourselves.'"
Uncle David's carriage now drove by.
"There goes that sharp girl--pretty, vain--and they're all vain; they
ought to be vain; they could not please if they were not. Vain she
is--devoured, mind, soul, passion, by vanity. Yes, and power--the lust
of power, conquest, acquisition. She's greedy and crafty, I daresay. Oh!
Alice, who was ever quite like you? The most beautiful, the best, my
darling! Oh! enchantress, work the miracle, and make this forlorn man
what he might be!"
It passed like a magic-lantern picture, and was gone. The distant clang
of the iron gate was heard again, the avenue was deserted and silent,
and Longcluse once more alone in his dream. He was looking towards the
house, sometimes breaking into a few murmured words, sometimes smoking,
and just as his cigarette was out he saw a figure approaching. It was
Uncle David, who was walking down the avenue. It so happened that his
mind was at that moment busy with Mr. Longcluse, and it was with an odd
little shock, therefore, that he saw the very man--whom he fancied by
that time to be at least two miles away--rise up in his path, and stand
before him, smiling, in the moonlight.
"Oh!--Mr. Longcluse?" exclaimed David Arden, coming suddenly to a halt.
"So it is," said Longcluse, with a little laugh. "You are surprised to
find me here, and I fancied I had seen your carriage go on."
"So you did; it is waiting near the gate for me. Can I give you a seat
into town?"
"Thanks," said Longcluse, smiling; "mine is waiting for me a little
further on."
Longcluse walked slowly on toward the gate, with David Arden at his
side.
"My ward, Miss Maubray, has gone on with Lady May, and Darnley went with
them. So I'm not such a brute as I should be if I were making a young
lady wait while I was enjoying the moonlight."
"It was this wonderful moon that led me, also, into this night-ramble on
foot," said Mr. Longcluse; "I found the temptation absolutely
irresistible."
As they thus talked, Mr. Longcluse had formed the resolution of choosing
that moment for a confidence which, considering how slender was his
acquaintance with Mr. David Arden, was, to say the least, a little bold
and odd. They had not very far to walk before reaching the gate, so, a
little abruptly turning the course of their talk, Mr. Longcluse said,
with a chilly little laugh, and a smile more pallid than ever in the
moonlight--
"By-the-bye, we were talking of that shocking occurrence in the Saloon
Tavern; and connected with it, I have had two threatening letters."
"Indeed!" said David Arden.
"Fact, I assure you," said Mr. Longcluse, with a shrug and another cold
little laugh.