He turns away with a muttered exclamation, not benedictory towards his betrothed, between his teeth.
"I will try to be as little annoyance to you as I can," says the poor child, in bitter mortification. "You will be out hunting most of the day, I daresay, and, except when I am waiting upon either Mr. and Mrs. Blessington, I am not often downstairs."
He takes no notice of her submissive speech, but stands, with his eyes moodily downcast, upon the white stone of the cold carpetless stairs.
"Believe me, I would go away, if I could," she says, piteously. "I did not wish to be in your way; but I had nowhere to go to."
A shade of pity softens his stern face.
"Are they kind to you?" he asks abruptly.
"Yes—oh yes—quite kind."
"And what, in God's name," he says, slowly, as if the question were forced from him against his will, by the slender fragility of her figure, by the pallid delicacy of her face—"And what, in God's name, can have induced your friends to allow you to accept such a situation, for which you are about as well fitted as I for the archbishopric of Canterbury?"
"I have not many friends, and I did not ask the advice of the few I have."
"They ought to have given it unasked," he says, gruffly.
"So they did, but I did not take it."
"Well, it is no business of mine," he says, harshly, ashamed and angry at himself for his temporary lapse into friendliness. "God knows I have had as good reason to hate you, and wish you ill, as ever man had! Ihavehated you," he says, with fierce heartiness, "during the last three months, as I should not have thought it possible to hate anything so weak and tender. IhopeI hate you still!"
Remembering how much deeplier she had sinned against that other, and with how godlike a fulness and freedom he had pardoned her, she feels her heart rise up against him.
"The worse case I see you in, the more I ought to rejoice—the more Ishouldhave rejoiced yesterday," he continues, with rapid passion; "and yet—and yet—"
He passes his hand across his forehead, pushing the hair away; and not even the dab of mud on his nose can hinder the expression of his countenance from having something of a tragical pathos in it.
"And yet what?" she asks, tremulously, moving a step nearer to him.
"And yet, for the life of me, while I amwithyou, I cannot. When I am away from you, I can remember what youare;when I am with you, I see only what you seem. Esther! Esther! why, in God's name, don't the two tally better?"
"Whether they tally or not can be of but little concern to you now, Mr. Gerard," she answers, with some exasperation.
His brown cheek flushes into shamed angry-red.
"You are right," he says, stiffly. "Itisno concern of mine; I am sorry I needed reminding."
"Why must we waste time digging that poor old past out of its grave?" she says, with persuasive gentleness, as her hand lays itself lightly, as if half afraid of being shaken off, upon his scarlet sleeve. "Why cannot we let bygones, that" (with a sigh) "are so completely bygones, be bygones? I did you an injury once—not an irreparable one, you will allow, since it is already repaired" (smiling half-scornful, half-melancholy); "and my whole life since has been a punishment—O God!whata punishment!" (putting her hand for a second over her eyes). "I am tired of being punished now. We shall see very little of one another henceforth, but that little might as well be in civility as in incivility—mightn't it?"
"Civility!"—he repeats, without much of that quality in his tone—"civility between you and me! And what would that end in, pray? It would be oversweet at first, and bitterer than wormwood afterwards, as our formercivilitywas. No—no! we will have no sophisms, no absurd Platonisms here! God forbid my thrusting myself into temptation again! We will say 'good morning' and 'good evening' to one another, as people would remark it if we did not. But for the rest, let us hold our tongues and keep apart; and as soon as I can do it, without exciting great question, you may rely upon my going; and then we shall have done with one another for good, I pray God!"
She bends her head submissively. "You are right, I think."
"Click-clack—click-clack," come other high-heeled shoes; "swish! swish!" a long dress trails along. From the heaven of the upper regions the blue-and-white angel is in the act of descent. Without another word, the two part—the woman going quickly down, the man as quickly up.
"Good morning, Conny! Rather late in the day to say 'good morning,' isn't it?"
This is his greeting, accompanied with a rather constrained laugh, to his future proprietor.
"So you and Miss Craven have been renewing your acquaintance upon the landing?" replies the divinity, smiling a little inquisitively. "I was looking down at you from the gallery; you looked so picturesque!"
"If being cased from top to toe in black mud is picturesque, I am eminently so," answers he, looking down at his legs to hide a transient expression of confusion. "Well, good-bye for the present; I suppose I must be going to adorn for this unearthly meal."
No one ever accused the dinnersen familleat Felton of being too lively; but, that evening, Gerard decides that they yield the palm, in point of perfect stagnation, to Blessington. There is, indeed, none of that lynx-eyed watching of the servants, none of that pouncing upon their minutest derelictions, which makes dining in Sir Thomas's company so thoroughly uncomfortable a process: no one calls the fat red-faced butler and the two blue-and-yellow footmen "hounds, louts, fools."
At Blessington, indeed, the servants have things pretty much their own way; and, accustomed to their master's total and mistress's partial deafness, have got into a habit of conversing with one another in a tone of voice considerably above that usually considered seemly in civilisedménages. With one member of the company (Miss Craven) St. John has entered into a pact to exchange no remarks, good or bad; a second member (Mr. Blessington) contributes nothing to the conversation but a series of inarticulate though loud mumblings over his food—with the exception of a question, addressed to the butler, as to what the viands upon the table under his sightless eyes consist of. "'Aricot—Volly Vong—Line of Mutton—Biled Turkey," enumerates that functionary, glibly, at the top of his voice. From a third member (Mrs. Blessington) St. John has already heard all that is to be said on the subject of draughts and sand-bags; and with the fourth member, conversation always drives as heavily as a loaded waggon dragged up a perpendicular hill.
The evening is but a prolongation of the dinner, with the additional disadvantage of there being no eating and drinking to employ the otherwise unoccupied jaws. "England expects every man to do his duty!" She expects every man who has the misfortune to be in the position of an affianced to sit, hours long, idle beside his betrothed—however ardently his soul may be sighing for a sheet of theTimesor a whiff of Latakia: to hold converse with no other man, woman, or child, if she be in the room.
Since, at the entrance of the gentlemen, Constance looked up expectant, and since he has a vague idea that it is part of his share of their bargain to pay her all outward observance and attention, St. John seats himself on the sofa beside her. She sits rather forward, upright as a dart; he leans back, with his arms resting on the sofa behind her. It is not a caress; but, from a little distance, it has the air of one. The old gentleman, rendered surprisingly wakeful by the unwonted incident of the addition of a stranger to his little circle, insists upon hearing a pungent article on Gladstone and the Irish Church, over which he has fallen asleep in the morning, re-read to him by his little white slave.
"I am afraid I can hardly see, Mr. Blessington; there is so little light!" she has remonstrated, mildly.
"Light!—pooh!" repeats the old gentleman, gaily. "What do young eyes like yours want with light? They ought to be able to see in the dark, like cats. You'll be borrowing Mrs. Blessington's spectacles next—eh, Mrs. Blessington?"
"Mrs. Blessington is asleep, Mr. Blessington."
"Oh! Go on, then, my dear—go on. Let us hear what they have got to say for these rascally placehunters, who are trying to remove the landmarks of the Constitution for the sake of getting into office."
Her long damp evening rambles—rambles on which a mother would have put so decided a veto—have brought back Miss Craven's cold. She has been hoarse all day; and it is a well-known fact that hoarseness always becomes worse towards night: a tiresome little tickling cough interrupts her every moment. Add to which, her attention is completely distracted from the subject in hand by the involuntary and vain effort to catch what Mr. Gerard and his love are saying to one another. She would hardly have been repaid for her trouble had she succeeded.
"Had you a good run to-day?"
"Yes, rather a quick thing."
"Which horse did you ride?"
"The grey—one you have not seen. I bought her in Ireland of Brownrigg;herequired more of a weight-carrier."
"Does she seem likely to prove satisfactory?"
"Very: she has a good turn of speed, jumps capitally, and is very temperate."
"Was it a large field?"
"Middling."
"Any one you knew?"
"Two or three" (with a yawn).
"You are going out to-morrow again, of course?" with a slight attempt at a pout, which is not even perceived by the person for whose benefit it is intended.
"No, I think not; it is five-and-twenty miles, and the trains do not fit: one gets lazy in one's old age. I suppose I shall agree soon with Brakespeare, of the —th, who sent seven horses down to Melton last year; and at the end of the season confessed that he hated hunting, and that he thought it a very dangerous amusement."
"Really?" answers Constance, who always takes everythingau sérieux, opening her great eyes.
"No, not really—most assuredly!" he answers, laughing lazily. "On the contrary, I am nearer coinciding with the opinion of the Jewish gentleman, who said it would be a very pleasant world if there were noshummersand noshabbaths."
It is hardly worth Miss Craven's while, you will perceive, to lose her place twice, and get rated by her old employer, for the sake of hearing brilliant questions and answers of the above description. Though her jealous eyes are fixed upon theSaturday'scolumns, they see, none the less clearly, those two figures reclined upon the distant sofa. Once she sees St. John raise himself, and, stooping forward over his companion, speak with more animation than he has yet used. If she break the drum of her ear in the attempt, shemustcatch the drift of that remark—some delicious tender nothing, no doubt. She succeeds:
"By-the-bye, Conny, how was the lump on your pony's leg when you left home?"
As another and another article follow the first, Esther's cough becomes increasingly troublesome: her throat aches with the effort of reading: her voice at each paragraph waxes huskier and huskier. For several minutes past Gerard's answers to Miss Blessington's questions have been growing ever more wildly random; suddenly he leaves the sofa, and comes over to Mr. Blessington's armchair.
"Will you letmeread to you a bit?" he asks, in that loud unmodulated roar that people unused to the deaf think the only method of making them hear.
"Eh! what does he say?" inquires the old gentleman, sharply, lifting his head, and peering blindly up in the direction whence the voice came.
"I asked whether you would letmeread to you, for a change, instead of Miss Craven?"
"No—thanks, no," replies the old man, ungraciously. "Much obliged to you, but I cannot hear a word you say; you run all your words into one another."
"Do I? I daresay," rejoins Gerard, good-humouredly; "but have you ever heard me read? I think not."
"Begging your pardon, I have, though; I heard you read prayers here one Sunday evening."
"And I am afraid my mode of conducting divine worship has not left a pleasant impression," says the young man, laughing. "Well, but I promise to read as slow as ever you choose, and to count four at every full-stop."
"No—no," cries the old man, obstinately. "Get away with you, my dear boy! you are interrupting us. No offence, but we are very happy without you—aren't we, Miss Esther? You attend to your own business; we don't offer to help you in that—do we—eh, my dear?"
Baffled and vexed, St. John stands silent; and as he so stands, the young girl lifts her great meek eyes, dumbly grateful, to his. He has forbidden her to speak to him, but he cannot lay an embargo upon the gentle messages sent from those sorrowful shining orbs. His own meet them for an instant; then he turns away with a half-shudder.
"What a churchyard cough that girl has!" says Miss Blessington, fanning herself gently, as he reseats himself beside her; "it really quite fidgets one. Of course it is very unjust of one, but I always feel soangrywith a person who goes 'cough, cough, cough' every minute."
"I feel angrier with the person who is the cause of it," answers Gerard, thoroughly chafed: "it is positive barbarity. You see what successImet with when I tried to relieve guard. Suppose you offer: you can always make him hear!"
"I should be delighted," answers Conny, blandly; "only, unfortunately, this damp weather makes my throat so relaxed" (touching the firm round pillar with two white slender fingers), "that I really should be afraid."
"Just try—there's a good girl," urges he, coaxingly; "you can stop in a minute if you find that it hurts you."
A mulish expression comes into her face; small good would persuasion, cajolery, threats, or promises do now!
"I am very sorry I cannot oblige you; but as I am to dine out on Thursday, and one is always expected to sing, I really must nurse my voice."
"When the days begin to lengthen,Then the cold begins to strengthen."
This ancient distich proves true in the year I am speaking of. Not later than Christmas does the moist mild weather last. With January the frost comes hurrying back; hanging great icicles on the house-eaves, throwing men out of work, and pressing with its iron finger the thin faint life out of half-a-dozen old almsmen and almswomen. The foxes have a little breathing-time—a little space in which to steal and eat three or four more fat capons and stubble-fed geese—before that evil day when their dappled foes shall tear their poor little red bodies limb from limb. Hunting is stopped, and men are hurrying up from the shires to London. St. James's Street and its hundred clubs are crowded. At Blessington everybody is pirouetting on the ice. St. John, passionately fond of all out-of-door sports, spends the whole day on the mere. One afternoon a large party comes over from Lord Linley's place, five miles away. Not in all Lord Linley's grounds is there such a stretch of smooth ice as the Blessington pool affords; and so they are all come to show their prowess on its hard flat face.
Esther keeps well out of their way. From her post of observation—the deep window-seat in the China gallery—she has watched their arrival, heard their gay voices in the hall, and then, unnoticed, unmissed, she has stolen out upon one of her long, dawdling, cold-giving strolls in the park: over the frost-crisped grass, under the branchy trees, whose staglike crowns cut the pale sky—up little knolls and down into dips where, in summer time, the fern stands neck high. At last she comes in sight of the mere; and, impelled by curiosity, trusting in her own insignificance to escape notice, sits down on a bank that slopes gently down towards the sheet of water, and looks upon the unwonted brilliance of the scene. Girls in velvet short costumes; bright petticoats, furs, hats with humming birds on them, curls, fair chignons, glancing in the cheerful winter sun. Fashion in all its folly and extravagance, but picturesque withal; it is as if a company of Dresden shepherdesses had stepped off the mantelshelf, and come tripping, dainty-footed, over the frozen water. Her eyes follow the shepherdess figures with eager interest—so seldom in her simple country-bred life has she been brought into contact with any of Fashion's bright daughters. The men have less attraction for her. Under no most prosperous conjunction of circumstances could she ever have been a man; but under happier auspices she might have been one of these fluttering butterflies—a prettier butterfly than any there, her heart tells her. Shylock's words recur to her: "Am not I 'fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer?' Why, then, are they frisking about in purple and fine linen upon the ice, with half-a-dozen young patricians (in trousers of surprising tightness and coats of unequalled brevity) in their train, while I am perched here upon the all-alone stone, among these stiff cold sedges, with only the Canada geese, with their long necks craned out, screeching above my head?"
Meanwhile, Miss Craven is the subject of more remark than she is at all aware of.
"I say, Gerard," says Lord Linley's heir—a goodnatured ugly little prodigal, who is one of the shining lights of Her Majesty's Household, and goes among men by thesobriquetof "Gaolbird," for which he has to thank the unexampled brevity of his locks—"I say, Gerard, you ought to know all the remarkable objects about here: tell us, who is themournerin the distance?"
St. John's eyes follow the direction indicated by his friend, and a shade of annoyance crosses his face. "Her name is Miss Craven, I believe," he answers, shortly.
"Uncommon good-looking girl, whoever she is!" says a second man, who has just stopped to adjust his skates; "I have been perilling my life among those d——d rushes by the edge, to get a good look at her!"
"Deuced good legs!" subjoins a third, remarkable for his laconism; taking his pipe out of his mouth to make room for his criticism, and fixing upon that part of a woman's charms which is always the first to enchain the masculine attention.
"She is vewy like a girl I used to know at the Cape," says a "Heavy," who has been vanquished in single combat by the letter R. "TheFlywe used to call her, because when she settled on a f'la, it was mowally impossible to dwive her off."
St. John, who has been listening with ill-concealed anger and disgust to these comments—free as if they had been upon the points of a horse—on the charms of the woman for whom he has been trying to persuade himself that he feels inveterate aversion, turns to move away; but Linley's voice recalls him.
"I say, Gerard!—Gerard!"
"Well?"
"Do you know her?"
"Slightly."
"Introduce me, then—there's a good fellow!"
"And me!"
"And me!"
"My acquaintance with Miss Craven is not such as to justify my introducing any one to her," answers Gerard, stiffly, and so walks resolutely off.
"Sly dog!" cries Linley, laughing; "means to keep her all to himself—a nice quiet little game of his own."
"Means to drive a pair then—eh?" asks the laconic youth.
"Vewy seldom pays," says the "Heavy," sagely; "one or other invawiably jibs."
But Mr. Linley, being more in earnest than he usually is about most things, is not so easily balked. After many fruitless inquiries among the company, he at length appeals to Miss Blessington.
"Do you know, Miss Blessington," he says, peering up at her with his quick terrier-face (for her stately height exceeds his), "I have actually been putting the same question to twenty people running, and never yet succeeded in getting an answer? You are my last hope: whoisthat lady in black?"
"The lady in black!" repeats Constance, amiably—following, as her lover had done, the direction of his gaze. "Oh!" (with a little, slighting laugh), "nobody very particular; only poor Miss Craven, my aunt's companion!"
"Poor girl!" he says—his eyes still riveted upon the pensive oval face, and his interest in her not the least lessened by the information as to her social status, that Constance had thought so damning. He does not want tomarryher; and for any other purpose a pretty woman is a pretty woman, be she duchess or fishwife. "It must be very slow for her, mustn't it? I always hate looking on—don't you? I always like to have a hand in everything, whatever it may be; it would really be a charity to go and speak to her, only I'm afraid she would take it as an insult if I went up and introduced myself."
"I assure you she is quite happy watching us," replies Constance, sweetly; being, for the most part, not fond of going shares with a sister fair one in any of the proper men and tall that are wont to gather about her.
But he is persevering. "Don't you think that a little improving conversation with me would tend to make her happier still?" he asks, banteringly, yet in earnest. "I tried to get Gerard to introduce me, but I could not make out exactly what was up; he seemed to take it as a personal insult. You won't mind doing me that good turn, I'm sure?"
"I shall be most happy, of course," she answers, hiding her displeasure under the calm smile which covers all her emotions, or approximations to emotion. And with apparent readiness she leads the way to the spot where, couched in her rushy lair, the subject of their talk sits unconscious, with her eyes riveted on the darting forms beneath her.
"Miss Craven, Mr. Linley wishes to be introduced to you."
"Tome!" she says, starting; her eyes opening wide, and cheeks flushing with surprise.
Then two bows are executed, and the thing is done. Esther is not longer upon the all-alone stone; she has other occupation for her ears than to listen to the screeching of the Canada geese; she, too, like the other butterflies, has got a tight-trousered, short-coated patrician in tow.
"Linley has succeeded, do you see?" says the man to whom Esther's legs have had the happiness to appear "very good."
"Mostly does; it is a little way he has!"
"Who did they say she was?"
"Somebody's companion; old Blessington's, I think."
"Cunning old beggar! He knows what he is about, though he does pretend to be stone-blind."
"Old Blessington's companion, eh? I'm sure I wish she were mine."
"A sort of 'Abishag the Shunammite,' I suppose?"
These are some of the comments that the unknown beauty draws forth. Five minutes later, Miss Craven's scruples—such as never having skated before, having no skates, &c.—being overruled by her new acquaintance, she is sitting on the bank; and he, kneeling before her, is fastening some one else's unused skates on her little feet. A great desire for pleasure has come over her—a great longing for warmth and colour in her grey life, that looks all the greyer now in the contrast to the brilliant reds and purples of these strange lives with which it is brought into sudden contact. A great delight in the wintry brightness fills her—in the shifting, varying hues—in the bubbling laughter; a great impulse to laugh too, the spirit of youth rising up in arms against the tyranny of grief.
The low sun shoots down dazzling crimson rays on the mere's dirty white face. The swans and Solan geese are exiled to a little corner, where the ice has been broken for them, and where they have to keep swimming round and round to prevent the invasion of their little territory by the grasping frost. Girls that cannot skate being pushed about in chairs; "Whirr! whirr!" they rush along the smooth surface at a headlong pace. Men, with their arms stretched out like the sails of a windmill, advancing cautiously—first one foot, then the other—just managing to keep on their feet, and thinking themselves extremely clever for so managing. Other men and women flying hand-in-hand, from one end of the pool to the other, in long, smooth slides—as safe and secure as if running upon their own feet on the grass. Others, cutting eights, and all manner of figures, whirling round upon one leg, and making themselves altogether remarkable. One poor gentleman with his skates in the air, and head starring the ice; brother men laughing and jeering; pretty girls pitying—light laughter mixed with their condolences also. Eight people dancing a quadrille,chaîne des dames:in and out, in and out—right, left—go the moving figures, the cerise petticoats, the glancing feet. It is all so pretty and gay. When one has spent the best part of three months in weeping, when one has the quick blood of seventeen in one's veins, one longs to get up and run, and dance, and jump about too.
"There's no wind to-day," says Linley, turning his face to the north-east, whence a bitter breath comes most faintly; "when there is, it is the best fun in the world to get a very light cane chair and a big umbrella—to sit on the one and hold the other up; you can have no conception of the terrific rate that one gets along at."
"I should think it sometimes happened that the cane chair and the big umbrella went on by themselves and left you behind?" says Esther archly.
"Frequently, but that makes it all the more exciting."
"Does it?"
"Keep hold of the chair, push it gently before you, and try to balance yourself as well as you can," continues he, giving grave instructions to his new pupil.
"Howcanone balance oneself on things no bigger than knife-blades?" she asks, grasping desperately the chair-back.
"Rome was not built in a day," he answers, with a cheery laugh; "try!"
She obeys, and moves forward two or three timid inches; then stops again.
"I have that poor gentleman's fate before my mind's eye," she says, nervously. "I feel as if, by some natural attraction, one's feet must go up sky-wards, and one's head make acquaintance with the ice."
"No necessity at all," replies the young man, encouragingly. "That fellow is a duffer at everything; he is the very worst rider I ever set eyes on—holds his whip like a fishing-rod."
"Does he?"
"Look at that girl, now, with the purple feather! She skims along like a bird; she is as much at her ease as if she were in her arm-chair at home. By Jove! no, she ain't though!" For, as he speaks, "Thud!" comes the girl with the purple feather down in a sitting posture on the ice: men crowd round, inquire into casualties, pick her up again: off she goes!
"You must be more careful next time in your selection of examples," Esther says, smiling mischievously; "thatone was not encouraging, you must allow."
Constitutionally timid, she stands hesitating, in half-shyness, half-fear, and whole dread of being ridiculous; laughing, reddening, dimpling in the happy sunlight—as pretty a picture as ever little terrier-faced member of the Household has seen.
"Perhaps you'd get on better if you tried walking between two people," he says, suggestively; "it is easier than with a chair. That is the way my sister began—I on one side, don't you know, and another fellow on the other. Here, Gerard, come and make yourself useful; give Miss Craven your arm!"
Gerard looks—has been looking all the while; sees the face, that had met him so pale and dejected three hours ago, transformed by the keen January air, and the excitement of the moment, into more than its old loveliness; sees the soft splendour of languishing almond eyes, the guileless baby-smile. It is the transient happiness of a moment that has wrought the change, and he, in his rough anger, attributes it to the insatiate rabid desire for admiration.
"She would flirt in her coffin," he says to himself, bitterly; and so answers, coldly, "I cannot—I have taken my skates off!"
"All right," says Mr. Linley, gaily, and then, in an aside to Esther, "On duty, evidently!"
"Evidently!" She assents with a faint smile, but her lips quiver with a dumb pain. "He need not have slighted me so openly," she thinks, in cruel mortification. "Perhaps if you gave me your hand I might manage to steady myself gradually," she says naïvely.
Mr. Linley has no objection whatever to having his hand convulsively clutched by a very pretty woman, even though it is so clutched, not in affection to himself, but in the spasmodic effort to maintain the perpendicular—in the desperate endeavour to hinder her feet from outrunning body and head. And so she totters along—amused, flattered, frightened; and far too much absorbed in considerations of her own safety, to be at all aware of the condescending notice that several of the more worthy gender are good enough to bestow upon her, though the conceit inborn in the male mind would have made them completely sceptical of that fact, had they been told it.
Meanwhile Miss Blessington, a little out of breath with her exertions, is resting on a chair, in bright blue velvet and a more delicate pink-and-white porcelain face than any of the other shepherdesses. Over her Gerard is leaning—frowning, sad, and heavy-hearted. Over and over again he has tried to turn his eyes to other groups, but again and again, contrary to his will, they return and fix themselves upon that slender staggering figure in black. Once he sees her on the point of falling—saved only by being caught with quick adroitness in her companion's arms. He draws his breath involuntarily hard. How dare any man but he touch her—lay a finger upon her fair person? One of the old simple instincts, stronger—oh, how far stronger!—than any of the restrictions with which our civilisation has sought to bind them—a great lust of raging jealousy—is upon him.
"Ihateher!" he says to himself, fiercely; "she is a vile unprincipled coquette. Thank God, I found her out in time! Thank God, I washed my hands of her before it was too late! And yet—and yet—if I could but pick a quarrel with that fellow!"
What right has Gerard to object if every man upon the ground catch her in big arms, and hold her there under his very eyes? He has washed his hands of her, thank God! All his rights of proprietorship in womankind centre in the calm blue statue, smiling with even placidness on himself, on his poodle, on all the world—his Constance, whom no one is thinking of taking from him; his own—oh, blissful thought!—in life, in death, and in eternity!
In the meantime the remarks upon Esther vary from the wildly laudatory to the discriminatingly censuring.
"She is extwemely dark," says thedwagoon, as he would have called himself; "a thowough bwunette; must have a touch of the tar-bwush, I fancy!"
The stable-clock strikes four. Esther starts, as much as scullion Cinderella started at the chiming midnight. "I must go" she says, hastily; "I shall be wanted."
"Wanted?" he repeats, inquiringly. "And are not you wanted here? You cannot be in two places at once, like a bird."
"Mrs. Blessington will want me—I am her companion," she answers, colouring slightly. "I daresay you did not know it." ("He would not have been so civil to me if he had, I daresay," is her mental reflection.)
"Yes, I did."
"Who told you?—or have all 'companions' such a family likeness that you detected me at a glance?"
"Miss Blessington told me; and for the first time in my life I wished myself an old woman," he replies, sentimentally.
She laughs, a little embarrassed. She knows as well as he does that he doesnotwish to be an old woman, even for the pleasure of having her to carry his air-cushion and spectacle-case. But civil speeches are always more or less untrue, and none the less pleasant for that.
"If the frost holds," says the young man, suggestively—taking the small black hand which she has timidly proffered, not being by any means sure that it is etiquette for a "companion" to shake hands with lords' eldest sons—"If the frost holds, will you be inclined for another lesson or two? There is nothing like making hay when the sun shines—sayto-morrow?"
Her face brightens for a moment; it is so pleasant to talk gaily, and be admired, and made much of, and reminded that there are other things besides death and poverty and servitude; then her countenance falls.
"To-day has been very pleasant," she says, naïvely, "but I cannot answer for to-morrow."
"Are you so changeable," he asks, with a laudable though unsuccessful endeavour to fashion his jolly little dog-face into an expression of reproachful sentiment, "as not to know to-day what you will like or not like to-morrow?"
"I know whatIshall like," she answers, gently, "but I don't know what other people will. Would not you think it very odd if your valet were to make engagements without consulting you?Iam Mrs. Blessington's valet."
She evidently thinks this argument so conclusive, and that it so decidedly closes the question, that he has no choice but to loose her hand; and she, having no other farewells to make, turns and passes homewards through the crisply rustling sedges.
"Veryclean about the fetlock!" ejaculates the laconic youth, unable to raise his mind from her legs; following them with his eyes, as she climbs the grassy slope.
"Yes, but what howible boots! Whoever could have had the atwocity to fwame such beetle-cwushers?"
The frost goes, but so does not St. John. He hunts all day, and all the long evenings lounges sedulously on the sofa beside Constance, trying to feel affectionate: trying to make her talk—trying, metaphorically, to pull the string at his fine wax-doll's side, to make her say "Pap-pa" and "Mam-ma" prettily. "Since I am to spend my life with this woman," he says to himself, heavily, "I must try and make the best of her."
And, alas! alas! the best is not very good. He is thirty now, and—the Gerards are a long-lived, tough race—he may live till ninety. He asks himself, now and then, in a sort of startled terror, is he to see opposite him at breakfast, every day for the next sixty years, this carven face, changeless as the stone saints on the walls of Felton Church? Of all the one-half of creation, is this unsuggestive, unresponsive, negative woman to be his sole portion? "It is her misfortune that she is not a woman of science," as Mr. Shandy mildly remarked of his wife, "but shemightask a question." Strive as he may against the conviction, the yoke that he has taken upon himself in careless apathy has already begun to gall his withers. And yet it was not (as you may imagine)piquethat first made Gerard Miss Blessington's lover. It was partly that numb indifference as to anything that might happen to him, that always follows a great blow, partly sheer weariness of his father's importunities upon the subject of his marriage.
He is the last scion of a family that has come down in direct male line from a Norman robber: if it be tersely predicated of him on his tombstone that he died S. P., the Hall, and the lake, and the wide fat lands will go to some distant needy cousins, with whom Sir Thomas is at dagger's drawing, and for whom he cherishes a hatred livelier even than that which poachers, Irish beggars, and vulpecides inspire in his gentle breast. The fact of his responsibilities has been chimed into St. John's ears till he is rather weary of it: he has been hearing it for the last five-and-twenty years—ever since indeed, that solemn day when, petticoats being cast aside, he was invested with the virile dignity of round jacket and breeches.
"Why don't we cut off the entail?" he asks impatiently, one day, shortly after Esther's visit—a visit which has naturally given him a greater distaste for the subject than he had ever before experienced. "You and I together can do it, cannot we, Sir Thomas, and leave the property to the Foundling, or Hanwell, or to some hospital or penitentiary, where it would do a deal more good, I don't doubt, than it ever has in our hands?" But he does not mean it; his pride in the old house and the old name is as great, though not as offensively shown, as his father's.
"It's all your cursed selfishness," says his parent, strutting and fuming about, one morning, over the crimson and ash-coloured squares of the library carpet; puffing out his feathers, as it were, and beginning to gobble-obble. "You prefer your lazy, lounging club life, your French chef, and d——d sybarite habits, to everything else under heaven; you don't reflect that, when a man has been given such advantages as yours, he owes corresponding duties to his country and his estate, and—and—and hisfather——" concludes Sir Thomas, rather at a loss for a peroration.
St. John lifts his eyebrows almost imperceptibly at the last clause. "If you like to look out for a wife for me," he says, flinging himself indolently into an arm-chair, and speaking half-seriously, half-derisively, "and will engage to undertake all the bore of the preliminaries—love-making, dancing attendance, etc.—I have no objection to marrying, since the duty of continuing this illustrious race has been perverse enough to devolve on me, who, God knows, am not ambitious of perpetuating myself."
"Love-making!—pooh!" repeats Sir Thomas, contemptuously; "we need have none of that rubbish; respect and esteem are a deal the best basis to go upon; that's what your mother and I began life with——"
"And have continued undiminished up to the present day," says St. John, with a slight sneer. "Well" (yawning), "if you can find, amongst the wide range of your acquaintance, any young lady who is willing to respect and esteem me—which is not likely—or to respect and esteem Felton—which is more probable, and, after all, comes to much the same in the end—she may have the felicity of being your daughter-in-law, for all I shall do to hinder it: anything for a quiet life."
Sir Thomas turns his bright little fierce eyes sharply upon his offspring, prepared, at a moment's notice, to precipitate himself into one of his blustering, sputtering, God damning rages if he detect the slightest sign of mirth or derision on the young man's face. But none such is to be found; his downcast eyes are fixed with lazy interest upon his own substantial legs, stretched in black-and-crimson-ribbed stockings, straight before him. The ire of his parent's gaze is mitigated. "If you are in earnest," he says, surlily, "and not making a jest of this, as you mostly do of every serious subject, why—why—there's no use in going far afield for what one has ready to one's hand."
"Where?" asks St. John, thoroughly mystified by the Delphic obscurity of his papa's remark, looking vaguely round the room, out on the terrace, at the laughing, tumbling fountain, at the garden roller.
"Where?" repeats Sir Thomas, rather irritated at his son's obtuseness. "Why, here! not five yards off! in this very house!" Then, seeing him still look puzzled: "God bless my soul, sir! where are your wits to-day? How can you do better than Conny? That bit of land of hers down at Four Oaks dovetails into ours as neatly as possible; it seems as if it were intended by Providence," ends Sir Thomas, piously.
St. John gives a long, low whistle. "Conny!" he repeats, in unfeigned surprise. "I should as soon have thought of marrying my mother. Why, we have been like brother and sister all our lives."
"Fiddlesticks!" says Sir Thomas, gruffly. "She is no more your sister than I am. When I was young, if people were born brothers and sisters they called themselves so, and if they were not they did not. I hate your adopted brother and sister and father and motherhoods."
"Conny!" ejaculates St. John, again, reflectively.
The idea is thoroughly new, certainly, but it does not altogether displease him.
He is thinking of her approvingly, as the one woman whom, above all others, it would be impossible for him to love. After all, it is not a wife for him that is required; God knows, he has no desire for such an appendage; it is a mother for the heir to Felton that is wanted; and for that purpose she will do as well as another—better than most, indeed, being statelier, fairer, of better growth. If she can transmit to her progeny her own straight features, instead of Sir Thomas's bottle nose, or St. John's long nondescript one, so much the better for them.
"Well?" says Sir Thomas, impatiently, strutting up and down, with his hands under his green-coat tails.
"If she have no objection, neither have I; 'one woman is as good as another, if not better,' as the Irishman said," answers the young man, indifferently. "Well, Sir Thomas," rising and looking excessively bored, "I suppose I may go now, mayn't I? I promised Bellew to go down to the kennels with him, and as it is past twelve o'clock, I'm afraid my bliss cannot well be consummated to-day."
He wants an heir, and she wants diamonds, and so the bargain is struck.
"She is good to look at, and she does not pretend to care two straws about me—both causes for special thankfulness," he says to himself, with a sort of sardonic philosophy, after his decisive interview with his betrothed. "'On this day two years I married: Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.' Will Byron's summary of wedded felicity be mine also? Probably. I suppose one may think oneself tolerably lucky nowadays if one steer clear of Sir James Wilde, and if one's children do not bear a very striking resemblance to one's neighbour."
"And I know he's Mary's cousin;For my firstborn son and heirMuch resembles that young guardsman,With the selfsame curly hair."
Meanwhile Esther's little holiday is succeeded by no others; it remains one green oasis, with well and palm-trees, among long stretches of shifting, blinding, desert sand. Mr. Linley, indeed, has been to call, and has been rewarded for his attention by a three-quarters-of-an-hourtête-à-têtewith Mrs. Blessington. Esther is aware of his presence; is visited, indeed, by a small and contemptible desire to go down and chat with the young fellow; feels a weak craving for the touch of a friendly hand, for the greeting of admiring eyes and courteous words. But, being dimly conscious that the small acquaintance she has already had with him has made Gerard conceive an even worse opinion of her than he had before nourished, she restrains herself, in her great desire to prove to him that she is not the insatiable greedy coquette he falsely thinks her; and stays upstairs in the cold, in her great bare barrack, curled up on the broad paintless window-seat, and vainly trying to read "Pamela"—the hairbreadth escapes from RUIN (in big letters), in the shape of a handsome and generous master, of that most austerely virtuous and priggish of waiting-maids being one of the newest works of fiction in the Blessington library.
And St. John hears of Linley's visit, and does not hear of Esther's little self-abnegation; and, too proud to ask any questions about the matter, pictures to himself softoeillades, challenging smiles, hand-pressures, under the purblind eyes of the old lady, and, so picturing, eats his heart out with a dumb gnawing jealousy.
One evening, in one of her late lonely saunters (Miss Blessington never accompanies her on her walks), Esther has strayed outside the park paling into the road, lured by the splendour of a great holly-bush, all afire with thousand clustered berries, amid the dark glister of varnished leaves. Now, although having well understood (as
"Johnny and his sister Jane,While walking down a shady lane,"
unfortunately for themselves, did not) that
"Fruit in lanes is seldom good,"
Esther has coveted those berries. Fond of bright colours as a child or a savage, she has been wrestling obstinately with the stout tough stems, and has come off ultimately victor, with only one very considerable scratch, and several lesser ones on each bare hand. This spoil, robbed from niggard winter, will make the old rat palace at home so bravely, warmly gay. As she strolls slowly along, considering her treasures, the sound of a trotting horse on the road behind her reaches her ears. She turns, and sees a glimmer of scarlet flashing through the misty light. Is it St. John coming back from hunting? If St. John have a figure light and spare as a jockey's, have a large red moustache, and a small questioningretrousséface, this is he; if he have not, this is not he.
"How de-do, Miss Craven?" says Linley, throwing himself off his horse, and coming towards her with ready right hand heartily outstretched. "Could not imagine who you were. I thought, perhaps, you were the spirit of a departed Blessington, and as I am rather nervous, and frightened out of my wits at ghosts, I had half a mind to turn and flee."
"Only curiosity got the better of fear," she says, smiling up at him, or rather down on him, through the steaming January evening; "you thought I might prove human, after all?"
"Why did not you come and see me the other day when I came to call upon you?" he asks, walking along beside her; "I believe you were at home all the time." In his heart he does not in the least believe it.
She does not answer; but, without thinking of what she is doing, picks off the berries, the procuring of which had cost her so many wounds, and strews them along the road.
"Were youreallyat home?" he repeats, a misgiving as to such having been the case crossing his mind, and giving his vanity a slight prick.
"Yes, I was."
"And knew I was there all the time?"
"Yes."
"A prey to Mrs. Blessington——?"
"Yes."
"And never came to my rescue?"
"Did you expect the butler and housekeeper to come and entertain you?" she asks, a little bitterly. "Have you forgotten what I told you the other day—that I am Mrs. Blessington'svalet?I have as little concern with her visitors as the kitchen-maids have."
"But I was nothervisitor," objects the young fellow, stoutly—"at least" (laughing) "Iwas, but Heaven knows I did not mean to be! However, 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' and I obtained a great deal of information gratis upon a subject on which I really never had reflected as seriously as, it appears, I ought to have done——"
"Draughts and sandbags! I know what you are going to say," interrupts Esther, breaking into a childish lighthearted laugh. "We do hear a great deal about them; but I don't mind now; I'm used to it. I fall into a sort of waking trance when the subject is first broached, and say 'Yes' and 'No,' and 'H'm' and 'Oh,' at stated intervals; it does just as well as listening all through."
Linley laughs too. He is always glad of an excuse for laughing. Life has been to him as yet only laughable or smileable.
"Not a bad plan," ha says, commendingly; "but, really now, I flattered myself I struck out one or two very original thoughts on the subject of sash-windows; I said several rather brilliant things, only she did not seem to see them. I hoped she would have found my conversation so improving that she would have asked me to come again; but she did not do anything of the kind."
"They never ask anybody to Blessington," says Esther, feeling the string of her tongue loosed, and experiencing, despite herself, great enjoyment in having some one to chatter to, at whom it is not necessary to bawl, and who does not answer her monosyllabically withfadechilly smiles. "They are too old to care for society; like Barzillai the Gileadite, they cannot hear any more 'the voice of singing men and singing women.' They have the clergyman and his wife to dine on Christmas Day, and there their gaiety for the year begins and ends."
"And yours too?"
"And mine too. But I don't wish for gaiety," she answers, gravely, with an involuntary glance at her crape, which has grown very brown, and rusty, and shabby genteel.
"It must be an awful fate being shut up with those two old mummies," says Linley, compassionately, his pity for Miss Craven made vivid by his personal recollections of Mrs. Blessington's conversational power. "I had rather live in a lighthouse, or sweep a crossing, by long odds."
"So would I," she answers, drily, "if any one would set on foot a subscription to buy me a broom."
"You have Miss Blessington now as a companion, at all events," rejoins he, glad to fix on any bright spot in his poor new acquaintance's mud-coloured life.
"Yes; she is pleasant to look at."
"And to talk to."
"She never talks."
"And Gerard? He is not particularly pleasant to look at, certainly——"
"Not particularly," she assents; feeling a hot glow steal all over her, as at an insult to herself.
"But when he is not in one of his sulks, as he was the other day—do you remember?—he is not a bad fellow, as fellows go."
"Isn't he?"
He looks at her with surprise. "Why, surely, living in the same house with him, you ought to know him, at least as well as I do?"
"I never speak to him, and he never speaks to me," she answers, shortly.
Linley bursts out laughing. "Good heavens! what a horrible picture you draw! You remind one of Mr. Watts's pretty little hymn—
"'Where'er I take my walks abroadHow many poor I see!And as I never speaks to themThey never speak to me.'"
Esther laughs; but anyone listening might have heard a melancholy ring in her merriment.
"Doesnobodyspeak toanybodythen at Blessington?" asks the young man, aghast at the state of things as revealed by his companion's answers.
"Mr. Blessington roars at Mrs. Blessington, and Mrs. Blessington roars at Mr. Blessington, and I roar at them both."
"And the other two—do not they speak?"
"We are, none of us, much addicted to conversation," she answers, grimly; "but,en revanche, what we do say we say very loud."
"Are youalldeaf, then?"
"No; but when one lives with deaf people, one gets into the habit of thinking that the whole world is hard of hearing; one bawls at everyone."
"What an exhausting process!" he says, with a shrug; "takes a great deal out of you, doesn't it?"
"A good deal; lately, I have generally ended the day without any voice at all. I don't mind making short remarks at the top of my voice, but shouting out six columns of theTimes, as is daily my pleasing task, is rather fatiguing."
"How inhuman of them to allow you!" he cries, indignantly, looking at the slender, fragile figure, at the childish face—so appealing, so touching in its utter paleness, now that he sees it without the temporary rose-flush of excitement.
"Not at all," she answers, simply; "they pay me for it."
"It would require very high pay to indemnify any one for the sacrifice of the best years of their lives to those two old fossils; I thought I was entitled to something considerable for standing the old woman for three-quarters of an hour the other day without uttering a groan," answers the young man, more seriously than he generally takes the trouble of saying anything.
"My pay is fifty pounds a year," she answers, frankly, "if you call that high."
Fifty pounds! It would not find him in cigars. He has thrown away five times that sum, before now, at lansquenet at one sitting.
Involuntarily his thoughts glance back over his own life—the luxurious sybarite life in which, hitherto, the heaviest misfortunes have been a too-prolonged frost, a disease among the grouse, the coming in second at a steeplechase, or the pressure of a heavy helmet on his forehead when on duty on a hot summer afternoon. Involuntarily, he compares this life of his with the existence of the slight frail child beside him: but the comparison is disagreeable, and so he stifles it, as he always stifles, on principle, every painful thought, as a sin against his religion of ease.
"Fifty pounds!—what a pittance!" he ejaculates.
"Do you think so?" she answers, surprised. "I think it is a good deal. Considering that they find me in food and lodging, and that I do for them only what any charity-school boy could do nearly as well, it is surely enough."
Her companion differs widely in opinion from her, but
"When ignorance is bliss'Tis folly to be wise;"
and reflecting that it is fortunate that she is satisfied, on whatever insufficient grounds her satisfaction rests, he drops the subject, and continues his catechism on a different head.
"Have you no amusement of any kind—none?"
"Oh dear, yes! We drive into Shelford every day in a close carriage, with all the windows up."
"Terrific! And what do you do when you get there?"
"We come back again."
"And have you no visitors? Does no one ever come to call?"
"Yes; you came the other day."
"And am I a solitary instance of would-be sociability?"
"Not quite. Mr. Blessington gets into a panic about himself, sometimes, and thinks that he is drawing near his latter end; and he bids us all good-bye; andhecries, andwecry, and then Mr. Brand, the doctor, comes and reassures us."
"I had no idea that there was anything the matter with the old gentleman."
"No more there is. He has no more idea of dyingreallythan you have; less, probably. You may break your neck out hunting, and he cannot well break his out of his armchair. When a person has got into such a confirmed habit of living as he has," she concludes, drily, "they find it extremely difficult to break themselves of it."
He smiles.
"After all," she continues, thoughtfully, "since it is wear-and-tear of mind, brain and heart-work, that drives people to the churchyard, I don't see any reason why mere sleeping and eating machines should not go on for ever."
It would be impossible to imagine a more innocent dialogue than the foregoing, would not it? But the interlocutors have involuntarily fallen into a very gentle saunter, as two people that, finding each other's society agreeable, are in no haste to part. With his horse's bridle carelessly thrown over his arm, a small muddy scarlet gentleman strolls along with his face turned with interest towards his companion, who is chattering away to him freely and readily—not as having any particular partiality for him, but as being something young, friendly, compassionate.
This is the picture—invested by twilight with an air of mystery that it would not have worn in daylight—that salutes the eyes of a second and larger scarlet gentleman, splashing home through the puddles on a tired horse. As he passes them, Gerard (for it is he) pulls up his horse into a walk, for he would not have the incivility to cover any woman with dirt, even though the woman in question be a vile greedy coquette, to whose insatiable vanity all men are meat. Then, raising his hat stiffly, he rides on without speaking. As he trots homeward through the dusk, the thought flashes into his writhing heart: "It was an assignation! She arranged it with him on the day he came to call. Damnable flirt! Is not she satisfied withtworuined lives? Is she fool enough to think that Linley will marry her? A nice time of night for a respectable young woman to be out walking with a man she has only seen twice in her life! And I heard her tell Mrs. Blessington the other day that she never went outside the park-gates! Liar! What man was ever deep enough to be up to a woman's tricks? She'll go to the dogs, as sure as fate, if she is left to herself! Pshaw! I daresay she knows the way there already. She issoyoung; shall I warn her? Shall I speak to her? Not I. Thank God, it is no business of mine!"
"Gerard!" says Linley, as, having passed them, he strikes into a brisk trot—looking as if he were going to his own funeral, and just about to join thecortège. "Certainly being in love don't improve him; he is not half the fellow he was last season."
But Esther, in the moment of his passing them, had caught a glimpse of the eager white anger of his face, and she hardly hears. "I'm afraid Mr. Gerard thought it odd my being out so late," she says, trembling with recollected fear of those altered, wrathful eyes.
"Well, and if he did?" cries Linley, impatiently.
"Itisvery late," she says, looking round into the dusk; "it must be, by the light. I never noticed how dark it has grown since you overtook me."
"It is no darker than it was before Gerard passed us," he answers, rather nettled.
"No, but—"
"Why, how scared you look!" he interrupts her. "You don't mean to say you areafraidof him?" (incredulously.) "If I were you, I don't think I should pay much deference to the opinion of a person who, as you say, never has the civility even to speak to you."
She is silent.
"It is the authority of his eye that awes you, I suppose?" says the young man, vexed and sneering:—
"'An eye like Mars', to threaten and command.'
"Threaten!Yes—I can testify to that!"
Hearing his words, Esther recovers her self-possession, and speaks with some dignity: "You are quite wrong. Mr. Gerard's opinion has no influence whatever on my sayings or doings; it would be very ridiculous if it had. It was merely that his look of surprise reminded me of what I ought to have recollected without reminding, that Ishouldhave been home an hour ago."
"Wanted again, I suppose?" says the young man, with the air of an aggrieved person. "I wish you were not in quite such request; you are always being wanted."
"There is a stile close here," says Esther, evidently in a hurry to be off; "if I cross it, and make a short-cut across the park, I shall be home twenty minutes sooner than if I went by the road. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," he says, reluctantly. "I'm not a bloodthirsty fellow generally, but I wish that Gerard had broken his neck over that bullfinch that he came to grief over to-day, before he had come poking his ugly nose here, where nobody wanted him; at least I did not, and, to judge by your face, neither did you. Well! when are we to meet again, I wonder?"
"Never!—some time or other—soon!" answers Esther, hastily and contradictorily, running up the gamut of adverbs in search of the one most likely to obtain her release. Having gained that object, she jumps over the stile, and disappears into a sea of mist.
Meanwhile St. John, having arrived at Blessington, and given up his horse to a groom, enters the house; but the confinement of roof and walls is insupportable to him. So he goes out again, and, walking up the avenue, stations himself at the gate. There, resting his arms on the topmost bar, he stands, straining his eyes down the road by which he expects to see Esther and her companion make their appearance.
"They will defer their parting to the last moment—that is of course," he says to himself, in his lonely pain. "Well," taking out his watch and minuting them, in order to drink the cup of his jealous misery to the dregs, "it is not more than a mile and a half from here to the place where I passed them; let us see how long a time they will manage to be in doing the distance."
He has not long to wait. Before five minutes are over he hears the sound of a horse's feet. "Linley must not see him watching them," he thinks, with a sort of shame at himself, and so steps back into the shade of a great tree.
Linley rides byalone. His face is turned towards the house, in whose great black façade the lighted windows make oblong-shaped red glories; his eyes are trying to fix upon Esther's casement. Of course he hits upon the wrong one, and directs his sentimental gaze towards the apartment where, with wig off and teeth out, Mrs. Blessington, aided by her maid, is slowly moving through the stages of her dinner toilette.
"She must have taken the short-cut across the park," thinks Gerard, with a sense of unwilling relief. "Afraid of my telling tales of her escapade, I suppose."
He retraces his steps down the avenue, and, following a back road that skirts the kitchen-garden, reaches another gate that leads into the park, and there stands and waits again.
The short-cut has proved rather a long one. Part of the park has been fenced off, to keep the deer and the Scotch cattle separate; a gate which she had reckoned upon finding open, she discovers to be padlocked, and has to make a long circuit round to another gate.
As she toils weary-footed through the wet grass, vague alarms assail him that watches for her. Can any evil have come to her in the darkness? Most improbably in that still, safe park. After a while, and when his reasonless fears are beginning to gather more strongly about his heart, he hears the sound as of some one running pantingly. Esther is not so good at running as she was in the old Glan-yr-Afon days. She has been flying along in hot haste, with a mixed fear of Scotch bulls and goblins in pursuit. As she approaches the gate, Gerard opens it for her. Seeing it swing open without any apparent cause, she gives a great nervous start; then, discovering the motive cause of the phenomenon, drops into a walk.
"It is rather late, Mr. Gerard, I'm afraid, isn't it so?" she asks, with some hesitation at this disobedience to his command of silence. And yet, surely, if he had meant not to speak to her, he would not have come thither.
Two speech-gifted human beings could hardly be expected to meet with less civility than two pigs, who would at least exchange a grunt.
He looks at his watch again. "It is ten minutes to six," he replies with punctilious politeness.
"Is itreally?I had no idea how the time went," she says, apologetically, "until your look of—of—surprisereminded me."
The line of defence she has hit upon is unlucky.
"Really!" he answers, stiffly.
"I had not noticed how the light had gone, nor anything about the matter," she continues, innocently, floundering at every word into deeper disgrace.
"I daresay not," he replies, freezingly.
She had addressed him, penitent and humble, willing to take a scolding in all submissiveness, but the chill brevity of his answers turns her meekness to gall.
"When one is in pleasant company," she remarks, with a rather hysterical laugh, "one forgets the flight of time."
"Undoubtedly," replies Gerard, endeavouring to conceal his anger under an appearance of calmness, and unable to manage more than one word at a time.
"If one has not taken a vow of perpetual silence, it is a great relief to have a little conversation with a person who is neitherdeafnordumb," she says, emboldened by exasperation.
"An immense relief, no doubt," he answers, in deep displeasure. "And yet, if you will allow me," he continues, unable to resist the temptation to lecture her—"who am so much older than you, and can have no interest in the matter but your own advantage—to give an opinion, I should recommend your choosing a fitter time of day for your meetings, even with so desirable and congenial a companion as Mr. Linley."
"Beggars must not be choosers," she answers, sulkily. "You seem to forget how very small a portion of the day I have at my own disposal."
He draws himself up to his full height, and a stern expression makes his lip thin. "I was right," he says internally; "it was no accident!" Then aloud: "I apologise, Miss Craven, for interfering in your affairs, in which, God knows, I have small concern. I only thought that, as you are so young, you might not be aware thatnocturnalwalks with a man of Linley's character are not advantageous to any woman's reputation."
"I know nothing about his character," retorts she, defiantly; "I daresay it is as good as other people's. All I know is, that he is very kind and civil to me, which is what nobody else is nowadays."
Then, to avoid the disgrace of seeming to court his compassion by tears, she darts from his side, and rushes to that harbour of refuge—her great, bare sleeping-chamber.
Time goes by. Since Joshua, God-bidden, commanded sun and moon to stand still, who has been able to stop it?
Gerard still remains at Blessington—remains, despite the six-o'clock dinners; despite the inarticulate and inharmonious mumblings with which old Blessington takes away the appetites of such as feast with him; despite the utter failure of his endeavours to draw from the mind of his betrothed any ideas but such asLe FolletandLe Journal des Demoiselleshad just put into it. Latterly he has abandoned the attempt, has taken to reading theTimes,Field, anything in the evening, instead; has even, in his despair—modern works of fiction being, as I have before observed, unknown at Blessington—waded through two chapters and a half of "Pamela," which Esther had inadvertently left on the table. Sometimes, to his own surprise, he catches himself wishing that his wedding-day were over. "When we are married, we need never speak to one another," he reflects. "Thank God, we shall not be so poor as to be obliged to keep together from economy; a dinner of herbs and hatred, or, worse still, indifference therewith,wouldbe hard to digest; she may go her way, and I mine. I will get up a great stock of beads, and looking-glasses, and red calico, and make an expedition to Central Africa; learn some euphonious African tongue, all made up of Ms and Ns; and carefully abstain from engaging in arguments upon the immortality of the soul with intelligent natives."
Now and again conscience's voice thunders at him in the recesses of his soul: "You are paltering with temptation. Arise!—flee!—begone!" But he, strong in the innocence of his acts and words, replies doughtily: "Temptation is there none for me here. The occupations of my life are such as they would be at home; I am struggling to know and like better her with whom my life is to be passed. As to that other woman, I see her rarely, speak to her never, look at her as seldom as it is possible to me."
And, in the meantime, that other woman droops like an unwatered flower, day by day. When the mainspring of a watch is broken, must it not stop? If hope, the mainspring of life, be broken, must not life stop—not all at once, as the watch does, but by gentle yet sure degrees? A slow fire burns in the child's veins; before this man had come, she had peace—a sad stagnant peace, indeed, but still peace.Nowshe lives in a state of perpetual concealed excitement. True, they meet but rarely, speak to each other never; but the same roof covers them both. From her outlook in the China Gallery, she can watch his going forth in the morning, his coming back at evening. At breakfast and dinner he sits opposite to her; she can study his face, with stealthy care, lest she may be observed, while he drives heavily through slow trite talk with her that fills the place in his life that, for a golden day, from one sundown to another, was Esther's. Sometimes they meet upon the stairs; her black dress lightly touches him, as they pass one another dumbly. At night she lies awake, waiting to catch the sound of his footfall in the gallery past her door; has to wait long hours often; for he, unknowing that any one takes note of his vigils, sits in the smoking-room far into the small hours, puffing out of his well-coloured meerschaum great volumes of smoke—wishing, not seldom, I think, that he could puff away Constance, his beloved, into smoke volumes and thin air.
Fed by no kindly words, nourished only upon neglect and cold looks, Esther's love for Gerard yet strikes out great roots downwards—shoots forth strong branches upwards. A tree of far statelier growth it stands than in the days when the soft gales and gentle streams of answering love fanned and watered it. Who cares for what they can have? Who cries for the moon? It is the intermediate something—the something that lies just a handbreadth beyond the utmost stretch of our most painfully-strained arms, that we eat out our hearts in longing for.
Esther never goes beyond the park palings now, deterred by the fear of being waylaid by Linley. She need not have been alarmed. As long as she came naturally in his way, he was delighted to see her: as we stoop and pick gladly the fruit that drops off the tree at our feet. He had even, on a day when the frost forbade hunting, and when he had got tired of skating, taken the unwonted trouble of riding over to Blessington, to warm himself at the fire of those great black eyes, that have still for him the charm of novelty upon them; but women, many and fair, came too readily to his hand to make him very keen in the chase of any one individual woman. In former generations men used to be the pursuers, women the pursued. In this generation we, who have set right most things, have set right this also.Now, the hares pursue the harriers, the foxes the hounds, and the doves swoop upon the falcons.