BEVERLEY MERE
What contrasts there are in life! Light and shade, Lazarus and Dives,
the joyous spirit and the broken heart, always in juxtaposition. Here
are two pictures not three miles apart.
A pale, wan young man, dressed in black, with the traces of deep grief
on his countenance, and his whole bearing that of one who is thoroughly
overcome and prostrated by sorrow, sits brooding over an untasted
breakfast; the room he occupies is not calculated to shed a cheering
influence on his reflections: it is a long, low, black-wainscoted
apartment, well stored with books, and furnished in a curious and
somewhat picturesque style with massive chairs and quaintly carved
cabinets. Ancient armour hangs from the walls, looming ghostly and
gigantic in the subdued light, for although it is a bright October
morning out-of-doors, its narrow windows and thick walls make Alton
Grange dull and sombre and gloomy within. A few sketches, evidently by
the hand of a master, are hung in favourable lights. More than one are
spirited representations of a magnificent black-and-white retriever--the
same that is now lying on the floor, his head buried between his huge,
strong paws, watching his master's figure with unwinking eyes. That
master takes no notice of his favourite. Occasionally he fixes his
heavy glance on a picture hanging over the chimney-piece, and then
withdraws it with a low stifled moan of anguish, at which the dog raises
his head wistfully, seeming to recognise a too familiar sound. The
picture is of a beautiful foreign-looking woman; its eyes and eyebrows
are reproduced in that sorrow-stricken young man. They are mother and
son; and they have never met. Could she but have seen me then! If ever
a spirit might revisit earth to console the weary pilgrim here, surely
it would be a mother's, bringing comfort to a suffering child. How I
longed for her love and her sympathy. How I felt I had been
robbed--yes, _robbed_--of my rights in her sad and premature death.
Reader, have you never seen a little child, after a fall, or a blow, or
some infantine wrong or grievance, run and hide its weeping face in its
mother's lap? Such is the first true impulse of our childish nature,
and it is never completely eradicated from the human breast. The
strong, proud man, though he may almost forget her in his triumphs and
successes, goes to his mother for consolation when he is overtaken by
sorrow, deceived in his affections, wounded in his feelings, or sad and
sick at heart. There he knows he is secure of sympathy and consolation;
there he knows he will not be judged harshly, and as the world judges;
there he knows that, do what he will, is a fountain of love and
patience, never to run dry; and for one blessed moment he is indeed a
child again. God help those who, like me, have never known a mother's
love. Such are the true orphans, and such He will not forget.
Bold loses patience at last, and pokes his cold, wet nose into my hand.
Yes, Bold, it is no use to sit brooding here. "Hie, boy! fetch me my
hat." The dog is delighted with his task: away he scampers across the
hall--he knows well which hat to choose--and springing at the
crape-covered one, brings it to me in his mouth, his fine honest
countenance beaming with pride, and his tail waving with delight. We
emerge through a glass door into the garden, and insensibly, for the
first time since my father's death, we take the direction of Beverley
Manor.
This is a dark and sadly-shaded picture; let us turn to one of brighter
lights and more variegated colouring. The sun is streaming into a
beautiful little breakfast-room opening on a conservatory, with flowers,
and a fountain of gold-fish, and all that a conservatory should have.
The room itself is richly papered and ornamented, perhaps a little too
profusely, with ivory and gilding. Two or three exquisite landscapes in
water-colours adorn the walls; and rose-coloured hangings shed a soft,
warm light over the furniture and the inmates. The former is of a light
and tasteful description--low, soft-cushioned _fauteuils_, thin cane
chairs, bright-coloured ottomans and footstools, Bohemian glass vases
filled with flowers--everything gay, vivid, and luxurious; a good fire
burning cheerfully on the hearth, and a breakfast-table, with its snowy
cloth and bright silver belongings, give an air of homely comfort to the
scene. The latter consists of four persons, who have met together at
the morning meal every day now for several weeks. Constance Beverley
sits at the head of the table making tea; Ropsley and Sir Harry, dressed
in wondrous shooting apparel, are busily engaged with their breakfast;
and Miss Minim is relating to the world in general her sufferings from
rheumatism and neuralgia, to which touching narrative nobody seems to
think it necessary to pay much attention. Ropsley breaks in abruptly by
asking Miss Beverley for another cup of tea. He treats her with studied
politeness, but never takes his cold grey eye off her countenance. The
girl feels that he is watching her, and it makes her shy and
uncomfortable.
"Any news, Ropsley?" says Sir Harry, observing the pile of letters at
his friend's elbow; "no _officials_, I hope, to send you back to
London."
"None as yet, thank Heaven, Sir Harry," replies his friend; "and not
much in the papers. We shall have war, I think."
"Oh, don't say so, Mr. Ropsley," observes Constance, with an anxious
look. "I trust we shall never see anything so horrid again."
Miss Minim remarks that "occasional wars are beneficial, nay, necessary
for the welfare of the human race," illustrating her position by the
familiar metaphor of thunderstorms, etc.; but Ropsley, who has quite the
upper hand of Miss Minim, breaks in upon her ruthlessly, as he observes,
"The funds gone down a fraction, Sir Harry, I see. I think one ought to
sell. By-the-bye, I've a capital letter from De Rohan, at Paris. You
would like to hear what he is about, Miss Beverley, I am sure."
Constance winced and coloured. It was Ropsley's game to assert a sort
of matter-of-course _tendresse_ on her part for my Hungarian friend,
which he insisted on so gradually, but yet so successfully, as to give
him the power of making her uneasy at the mention of "De Rohan's" name.
He wished to establish an influence over her, and this was the only
manner in which he could do so; but Ropsley was a man who only asked to
insert the point of the wedge, he could trust himself to do the rest.
Yet, with all his knowledge of human nature, he made this one great
mistake, he judged of women by the other half of mankind; so he looked
pointedly at Constance as he added, "I'll read you what he says, or,
perhaps, Miss Beverley, you would like to see his letter?"
He had now driven her a little too far, and she turned round upon him.
"Really, Mr. Ropsley, I don't wish to interfere with your
correspondence. I hate to read other people's letters; and Count de
Rohan has become such a stranger now that I have almost forgotten him."
She was angry with herself immediately she had spoken. It seemed so like
the remark of a person who was piqued. Ropsley would be more than ever
convinced now that she cared for him. Sir Harry, too, looked up from
his plate, apparently at his daughter's unusual vehemence. The girl bit
her lips, and wished she had held her tongue. Ropsley saw he had marked
up another point in the game.
"Very true," said he, with his quiet, well-bred smile: "old playfellows
and old school-days cannot be expected to last all one's life. However,
Victor does not forget us. He seems to be very gay, though, and rather
dissipated, at Paris; knows all the world and goes everywhere; ran a
horse last week at Chantilly. You know Chantilly, Sir Harry."
The Baronet's face brightened. He had won a cup, given by Louis
Philippe, from all the foreigners there on one occasion, and he liked to
be reminded of it.
"Know it," said he, "I should think I do. Why, I trained
Flibbertigibbet in the park here myself--I and the old coachman. We
never sent him to my own trainer at Newmarket, but took him over
ourselves, and beat them all. That was the cup you saw in the centre of
the dinner-table yesterday. The two-year-old we tried at Lansdowne was
his grandson. Ah! Ropsley, I wish I had taken your advice about him."
Ropsley was, step by step, obtaining great influence over Sir Harry. He
returned to the subject of old friendships.
"By-the-bye, Miss Beverley, have you heard anything of poor Egerton? I
fear his father's death will be a sad blow to him. I tremble for the
consequences."
And here he touched his forehead, with a significant look at Sir Harry.
Constance was a true woman. She was always ready too vigorously to
defend an absent friend, but she was no match for her antagonist; she
could not keep cool.
"What do you mean?" said she, angrily. "Why should you tremble, as you
call it, for Vere?"
Ropsley put on his most provoking air, as he answered, with a sort of
playful mock deference--
"I beg your pardon, Miss Beverley, I am continually affronting you, this
unlucky morning. First, I bore you about De Rohan, thinking you _do_
care for your old friends; then I make you angry with me about Egerton,
believing you _don't_. After all, I said no harm about him; nothing
more than we all know perfectly well. He always was eccentric as a
boy--he is more so than ever, I think, now; and I only meant that I
feared any sudden shock or violent affliction might upset his nervous
system, and, in short--may I ask you for a little more cream?--end in
total derangement. The fact is," he added, _sotto voce_, to Sir Harry,
"he is as mad as Bedlam now."
He saw the girl's lip quiver, and her hand shake as she gave him his
cup; but he kept his cold grey eye fastened on her. He seemed to read
her most secret thoughts, and she feared him now--actually feared him.
Well, it was always something gained. He proceeded good-humouredly--
"Do we shoot on the island to-day, Sir Harry?" he asked of his host.
"Perhaps Miss Beverley will come over to our luncheon in her boat. How
pretty you have made that island, Sir Harry; and what a place for ducks
about sundown!"
The island was a pet toy of Sir Harry's; he was pleased, as usual, with
his friend's good taste.
"Yes, come over to luncheon, Constance," said he. "You can manage the
boat quite well that short way."
"No, thank you, papa," answered Constance, with a glance at Ropsley;
"the boat is out of repair, and I had rather not run the risk of an
upset."
"You used to be so fond of boating, Miss Beverley," observed Ropsley,
with his scarcely perceptible sneer. "You and Egerton used to be always
on the water. Perhaps you don't like it without a companion; pray don't
think of coming on our account. I quite agree with you, it makes all
the difference in a water-party."
Constance began to talk very fast to her father.
"I'll come, papa, after all, I think," said she; "it is such a beautiful
day! and the boat will do very well, I dare say--and I'm so fond of the
water, papa; and--and I'll go and put my bonnet on now. I've got two or
three things to do in the garden before I start."
So she hurried from the room, but not till Ropsley had presented her
with a sprig of geranium he had gathered in the conservatory, and
thanked her in a sort of mock-heroic speech for her kindness in so
readily acceding to his wishes.
Would he have been pleased or not, could he have seen her in the privacy
of her own apartment, which she had no sooner reached than she dashed
his gift upon the floor, stamping on it with her little foot as though
she would crush it into atoms, while her bosom heaved, and her dark eyes
filled with tears, shed she scarce knew why? She had a vague
consciousness of humiliation, and an undefined feeling of alarm that she
could not have accounted for even to herself, but which was very
uncomfortable notwithstanding.
The gentlemen put on their belts and shooting apparatus; and Ropsley,
with the sneer deepening on his well-cut features, whispered to himself,
"_Pour le coup, papillon, je te tiens_."
Bold and I strolled leisurely along: the dog indulging in his usual
vagaries on the way; his master brooding and thoughtful, reflecting on
the many happy times he had trod the same pathway when he was yet in
ignorance of the fatal secret, and how it was all over now. My life was
henceforth to be a blank. I began to speculate, as I had never
speculated before, on the objects and aims of existence. What had I
done, I thought, that I should be doomed to be _so_ miserable?--that I
should have neither home nor relatives nor friends?--that, like the poor
man whose rich neighbour had flocks and herds and vineyards, I should
have but my one pet lamb, and even that should be taken away from me?
Then I thought of my father's career--how I had been used to look up to
him as the impersonation of all that was admirable and enviable in man.
With his personal beauty and his princely air and his popularity and
talent, I used to think my father must be perfectly happy. And now to
find that he too had been living with a worm at his heart! But then he
had done wrong, and he suffered rightly, as he himself confessed, for
the sins of his youth. And I tried to think myself unjustly treated;
for of what crimes had I been guilty, that I should suffer too? My
short life had been blameless, orderly, and dutiful. Little evil had I
done; but even then my conscience whispered--Much good had I left
undone. I had lived for myself and my own affections; I had not trained
my mind for a career of usefulness to my fellow-men. It is not enough
that a human being should abstain from gross, palpable evil; he must
follow actual good. It is better to go down into the market, and run
your chance of the dirt that shall soil it, and the hands it shall pass
through, in making your one talent ten talents, than to hide it up in a
napkin, and stand aloof from your fellow-creatures, even though it
should give you cause, like the Pharisee, to "thank God that you are not
as other men are."
"Steady, Bold! Heel, good dog, heel! You hear them shooting, I know,
and you would like well to join the sport. Bang! bang! there they go
again. It is Sir Harry and his guest at their favourite amusement. We
will stay here, old dog, and perhaps we may see her once more, if only
at a distance, and we shall not have had our walk for nothing." So Bold
and I crouched quietly down amongst the tall fern, on a knoll in the
park from whence we could see the Manor House and the mere, and
Constance's favourite walk in the shrubbery which I had paced with her
so often and so happily in days that seemed now to have belonged to
another life.
They were having capital sport in the island; it was a favourite
preserve of Sir Harry; and although artificially stocked with
pheasants--as indeed what coverts are not, for that most artificial of
all field-sports which we call a _battue_?--it had this advantage, that
the game could not possibly stray from its own feeding-place and home.
Moreover, as the fine-plumaged old cocks went whirring up out of the
copse, there was a great art in knocking them over before they were
fairly on the wing, so that the dead birds might not fall into the
water, but be picked up on _terra firma_, dry, and in good order to be
put into the bag. Many a time had I stood in the middle ride, and
brought them down right and left, to the admiration of my old
acquaintance, Mr. Barrells, and the applause of Sir Harry. Many a happy
day had I spent there, in the enjoyment of scenery, air, exercise, and
sport (not that I cared much for the latter); but, above all, with the
prospect of Constance Beverley bringing us our luncheon, or, at the
worst, the certainty of seeing her on our return to the Manor House.
How my heart ached to think it was all gone and past now!
I watched the smoke from the sportsmen's guns as it curled up into the
peaceful autumn sky. I heard the cheery voices of the beaters, and the
tap of their sticks in the copse; but I could not see a soul, and was
myself completely unseen. I felt I was looking on what had so long been
my paradise for the last time, and I lost the consciousness of my own
identity in the dreamy abstraction with which I regarded all around. It
seemed to me as if another had gone through the experiences of my past
life, or rather as if I was no longer Vere Egerton, but one who had
known him and pitied him, and would take some little interest in him for
the future, but would probably see very little of him again. I know not
whether other men experience such strange fancies, or whether it is but
the natural effect of continued sorrow, which stuns the mental sense,
even as continued pain numbs that of the body; but I have often felt
myself retracing my own past or speculating on my own future, almost
with the indifference of an uninterested spectator. Something soon
recalled me to myself. Bold had the eye of a hawk, but I saw her before
Bold did; long ere my dog erected his silken ears and stopped his
panting breath, my beating heart and throbbing pulses made me feel too
keenly that I was Vere Egerton again.
She seemed to walk more slowly than she used; the step was not so light;
the head no longer carried so erect, so naughtily; she had lost the
deer-like motion I admired so fondly; but oh! how much better I loved to
see her like this. I watched as a man watches all he loves for the
_last_ time. I strove, so to speak, to print her image on my brain,
there to be carried a life-long photograph. She walked slowly down
towards the mere, her head drooping, her hands clasped before her,
apparently deep, deep in her own thoughts. I would have given all I had
in the world could I but have known what those thoughts were. She
stopped at the very place where once before she had caressed Bold; she
gathered a morsel of fern and placed it in her bosom; then she walked on
faster, like one who wakes from a train of profound and not altogether
happy reflections.
Meanwhile I had the greatest difficulty in restraining my dog. Good,
faithful Bold was all anxiety to scour off at first sight of her, and
greet his old friend. He whined piteously when I forbade him. I
thought she must have heard him; but no, she walked quietly on towards
the water, loosed her little skiff from its moorings, got into it, and
pushed off on the smooth surface of the mere.
She spread the tiny sail, and the boat rippled its way slowly through
the water. The little skiff was a favourite toy of Constance, and I had
taught her to manage it very dexterously. At the most it would hold but
two people; and many an hour of ecstasy had I passed on the mere in "The
Queen Mab," as we sportively named it, drinking in every look and tone
of my idolised companion: poison was in the draught, I knew it well, and
yet I drank it to the dregs. Now I watched till my eyes watered, for I
should never steer "The Queen Mab" again.
A shout from the shore of the island diverted my attention. Sir Harry
had evidently espied her, and was welcoming his daughter. I made out
his figure, and that of Barrells, at the water's edge; whilst the report
of a gun, and a thin column of white smoke curling upwards from the
copse, betokened the presence of Ropsley among the beaters in the
covert. When I glanced again at "The Queen Mab," it struck me she had
made but little way, though her gossamer-looking sail was filled by the
light breeze. She could not now be more than a hundred and fifty yards
from her moorings, whilst I was myself perhaps twice that distance from
the brink of the mere. Constance rises from her seat, and waves her hand
above her head. Is that her voice? Bold hears it too, and starts up to
listen. The white sail leans over. God in heaven! it is down! Vivid
like lightning the ghastly truth flashes through my brain; the boat is
waterlogged--she is sinking--my heart's darling will be drowned in my
very sight; it is ecstasy to think I can die with her, if I cannot save
her!
"Bold! Bold! Hie, boy; go fetch her; hie, boy; hie!"
The dog is already at the water-side; with his glorious, God-given
instinct he has understood it all. I hear the splash as he dashes in; I
see the circles thrown behind him as he swims; whilst I am straining
every nerve to reach the water's edge. What a long three hundred yards
it is! A lifetime passes before me as I speed along. I have even
leisure to think of poor Ophelia and her glorious Dane. As I run I
fling away coat, waistcoat, watch, and handkerchief. I see a white
dress by the side of the white sail. My gallant dog is nearing it even
now. The next instant I am overhead in the mere; and as I rise to the
surface, shaking the water from my lips and hair, I feel, through all my
fear and all my suspense, something akin to triumph in the long,
vigorous strokes that are shooting me onwards to my goal. Mute and
earnest I thank God for my personal strength, never appreciated till
this day; for my hardy education, and my father's swimming lessons in
the sluggish, far-away Theiss; for my gallant, faithful dog, who has
reached her even now.
"Hold on, Bold! her dress is floating her still. Hold on, good dog.
Another ten seconds, and she is saved!"
* * * * *
Once I thought we were gone. My strength was exhausted. I had reached
the bank with my rescued love. Her pale face was close to mine; her
long, wet hair across my mouth; she was conscious still, she never lost
her senses or her courage. Once she whispered, "Bless you, my brave
Vere." But the bank was steep, and the water out of our depth to the
very edge. A root I caught at gave way. My overtaxed muscles refused
to second me. It was hard to fail at the last. I could have saved
myself had I abandoned my hold. It was delicious to know this, and then
to wind my arm tighter round her waist, and to think we should sleep
together for ever down there; but honest Bold grasped her once more in
those vigorous jaws--she bore the marks of his teeth on her white neck
for many a day. The relief thus afforded enabled me to make one
desperate effort, and we were saved.
She fainted away when she was fairly on the bank; and I was so exhausted
I could but lie gasping at her side. Bold gave himself a vigorous shake
and licked her face. Assistance, however, was near at hand; the
accident had been witnessed from the island; Sir Harry and the keeper
had shoved off immediately in their boat, and pulled vigorously for the
spot. It was a heavy, lumbering craft, and they must have been too
late. Oh, selfish heart! I felt that had I not succeeded in saving
her, I had rather we had both remained under those peaceful waters; but
selfish though it may have been, was it not ecstasy to think that I had
rescued _her_--Constance Beverley, my own Constance--from death? I, the
ungainly, unattractive man, for whom I used to think no woman could ever
care; and she had called me "_her_ brave Vere!" HERS! She could not
unsay that; come what would, nothing could rob me of _that_. "Fortune,
do thy worst," I thought, in my thrill of delight, as I recalled those
words, "I am happy for evermore." Blind! blind! _Quem Deus vult perdere
prius dementat_.