Chapter divisionCHAPTER VIII.Anotherand a much more reputable Council of Three sat that night in Miss Tresilyan’s apartments. Mr. Fullarton represented the male element there, and was in great force. The late accession to his flock had decidedly raised his spirits: he knew how materially it would strengthen his hands; but, independently of all politic consideration, Cecil’s grace and beauty exercised a powerful influence over him. Do not misconstrue this. I believe a thought had never crossed his mind relating to any living woman that his own wife might not have known and approved; nevertheless was it true, that Mr. Fullarton liked his penitents to be fair: not a very eccentric or unaccountable taste either. It is a necessity of our nature to take more delight in the welfare and training of a beautiful and refined being, than in that of one who is coarse and awkward and ugly. Even with the merely animal creation we should experience this; and not above one divine in fifty ismorethan human, after all.So, gazing on the fair face and queenly figure that were then before him, and feeling a sort of vested interest in their possessor, the heart of the pastor was merry within him; and he, so to speak, caroused over the profusely-sugared tea and well-butteredgalettewith a decorous and regulated joviality; ever as he drank casting down the wreaths of his florid eloquence at the feet of his entertainers. In any atmosphere whatsoever, no matter how uncongenial, those garlands were sure to bloom. His zeal was such a hardy perennial that the most chilling reception could not damage its vitality. Principle and intention were both all right, of course, but they were clumsily carried out, and the whole effect was to remind one unpleasantly of the clockmaker puffing his wares. At the most unseasonable times and in the most incongruous places, Mr. Fullarton always had an eye to business, introducing and inculcating his tenets with an assurance and complacency peculiar to himself. Sometimes he would adopt the familiarly conversational, sometimes the theatrically effective style; but it never seemed to cross his mind that either could appear ridiculous or grotesque. Some absurd stories were told of his performances in this line. On one occasion, they say, he addressed his neighbor at dinner, to whom he had just been introduced, abruptly thus: “You see, what we want is—more faith,” in precisely the manner and tone of agourmetsuggesting that “the soup would be all the better for a little more seasoning;” or of Mr. Chouler asserting, “the farmers must be protected, sir.” On another, meeting for the first time a very pious and wealthy old man (I believe a joint-stock bank director), he proceeded to sound him as to his “experiences.” The unsuspecting elder, rather flattered by the interest taken in his welfare, and never dreaming that such communications could be any thing but privileged and confidential, parted with his information pretty freely. Mr. Fullarton was so delighted at what he had heard that he turned suddenly round to the mixed assembly and cried out. “Why, here’s a blessed old Barzillai!” His face was beaming like that of an enthusiastic numismatist who stumbles upon a rare Commodus or an authentic Domitian. There were several people present of his own way of thinking; but some, even among those, felt very ill afterward from their efforts to repress their laughter. The miserable individual thus endued with the “robe of honor” would have infinitely preferred the most scandalously abusive epithet to that fervid compliment. He would have parted with half his bank shares at a discount (they were paying about 14 per cent. then—you can get them tolerably cheap now) to have been able to sink into his shoes on the spot; indeed these were almost large enough to form convenient places of refuge. It had a very bad effect on21him: he never again unbosomed himself on any subject to man, woman, or child. Even in his last illness—though he must have had one or two troublesome things on his mind, unless he had peculiar ideas, as to the propriety of ruining widows and orphans—he declined to commit himself,But locked the secret in his breast,And died in silence, unconfessed.On that Saturday night, to one of the party at all events, Mr. Fullarton’s presence was very welcome. Mrs. Danvers was somewhat of a hard drinker in theology, and, like other intemperate people, was not over particular as to the quality of the liquors set before her, provided only that they were hot and strong, and unstinted. The succulent and highly-flavored eloquence to which she was listening suited her palate exactly, besides which, the chaplain’s peculiar opinions happened to coincide perfectly with her own. As the evening progressed she got more and more exhilarated; and at length could not forbear intimating “how sincerely she valued the privilege of sitting under so eminent a divine.”The latter made a scientific little bow, elaborated evidently by long practice, expressive at once of gratification and humility.“A privilege, if such it be, dear Mrs. Danvers, that some of my congregation estimate but very lightly. You would hardly believe how many members of my flock I scarcely know, except by name. It is a sore temptation to discouragement. I fear that Major Keene’s pernicious example is indeed contagious, and that his evil communications have corrupted many—alas! too many.” He rounded off the period with a ponderous professional sigh.Miss Tresilyan was leaning back in her armchair: as the wood-fire sprang up brightly and sank again suddenly, her great deep eyes seemed to flash back the fitful gleams. It was long since she had spoken. In truth, she had been drawing largely upon her piety at first, to make herself feel interested, and, when this failed, upon her courtesy, to appear so; but she was conscious of relapses more and more frequent into the dreary regions of Boredom. Every bodywouldagree with every body else so completely! A bold contradiction, a stinging sarcasm, or a caustic retort, would have been worth any thing just then to take off the cloying taste of the everlasting honey. She roused herself at these last words enough to ask languidly, “What has he done?”There could not be a simpler question, nor one put more carelessly; but it was rather a “facer” to Mr. Fullarton, who dealt in generalities as a rule, and objected to being brought to book about particulars—considering, indeed, such a line of argument as indicative of a caviling and narrow-minded disposition in his interlocutor.“Well,” he said, not without hesitation, “Major Keene has only once been to church; and, I believe, has spoken scoffingly since of the discourse he heard delivered there. Yet I may say I was more than usually ‘supported’ on that occasion.” The man’s thorough air of conviction softened somewhat the absurd effect of his childish vanity.Cecil would have been sorry to confess how much excuse she felt inclined to admit just then for the sins both of commission and omission—sins that, at another time, when her faculties were fresh and her judgment unbiassed, she might have looked upon as any thing but venial. Ah! Mr. Fullarton, the seed you have scattered so profusely to-night is beginning to bear fruit already you never dreamed of. Beet-root and turnips will not succeed oneverysoil. It must be long before a remunerative crop of these can be gathered from the breezy upland which for centuries, till the heather was burned, has worn a robe of uncommercial but imperial purple.Nevertheless, Miss Tresilyan frowned perceptibly. It looked very much as if Keene had been amusing himself at her expense when he affected an interest in her leading the choir. Unwittingly to “make sport for the men of war in Gath” by no means suited the fancy of that haughtyladye.“It is very wrong of him not to come to church,” she observed after a pause (for the sin of sarcasm disapproval was not so ready, and she made the most of scanty means of condemnation). “Yet I scarcely think he can be actively hostile. You know he almost lives with the Molyneuxs, and has great influence with them. Do they not attend regularly?”Mr. Fullarton admitted that they did. “But,” said he, “constant intercourse with such a man must ere long have its injurious effect. Indeed, I felt it my bounden duty to warn Mrs. Molyneux on the subject. I grieve to say she treated my admonition with a very unwarrantable levity.”Mrs. Danvers’s sympathetic groan was promptly at the service of the speaker; fortunately, turning to thank her for it by a look, he missed detecting her pupil’s smile. She could fancy so well Fanny’s littlemoue, combining amusement, vexation, and impertinence, while undergoing the ecclesiastical censure.“You must be merciful to Mrs. Molyneux,” she remarked, with a demure gravity that did her credit under the circumstances. “She is my greatest friend, you know. When a wife is so very fond of her husband, surely there is some excuse for her adopting his prejudices for and against people?”The pastor brightened up suddenly: he had just recollected another fact to fire off against thebête noir.“I forgot to tell you that Major Keene is much addicted to play, and, besides, is intimate with the Vicomte de Châteaumesnil.Noscitur a sociis.” The reverend man was an indifferent classic, but he had a way of flashing scraps out of grammars andAnalecta Minorabefore women and others unlikely to be down upon him, as if they were quotations from some recondite author.“You can not mean that cripple who is drawn about in a wheel-chair?” Cecil asked. “We saw him to-day, only for a moment, for he drew his cloak over his face as we passed. I never saw such a melancholy wreck, and I pitied him so much that I fear he will haunt me.”Far deeper would have been the compassion had she guessed at the pang that shot straight to Armand’s heart as he veiled his blasted features and haggard eyes, feeling bitterly that such as he were not worthy to look upon her in the glory of her brilliant beauty.“A notorious atheist and profligate,” was the22reply. “We can not regard his sore affliction in any other light than a judgment—a manifest judgment, dear Miss Tresilyan.”There was grave disapproval and just a shade of contempt in the face of one of his hearers as she said, “The hand of God is laid so heavily there that man may surely forbear him.” But Mrs. Danvers struck in to her favorite’s rescue, rejoicing in an opportunity of displaying her partisanship.“A judgment, of course. It would be sinful to doubt it. Besides, do nototherssuffer?” (She cast up her eyes here pointedly, as though she said, “There may be more perfect saints, but if you want a fair specimen of the fine old English martyr—me voici.”) “Cecil, my love, I wonder you did not perceive Major Keene’s true character at once. You were talking to him a good deal the other day.”“He did not favor me with any remarkably heretical opinions,” Miss Tresilyan replied, carelessly. “Perhaps they have been exaggerated. At all events, he is not likely to do us much harm. Don’t you thinkweare safe, Bessie? Dick does not care much for play; and his ideas on religious subjects are so very simple that it would be hard to unsettle them.”Clearly she thought the topic was exhausted, but it had a strange fascination for Mr. Fullarton. One of the many good-natured people, who especially abound in those semi-English Continental towns, had been kind enough to quote or misquote to him a remark of Royston’s about that sermon; and on this topic the chaplain was very vulnerable. He would have forgiven a real substantial injury far sooner than a depreciation of his discourses.Was he one whit weaker or more susceptible than his fellows? I think not. All the philosophy on earth will not teach us to endure without wincing a mosquito’s bite. The hardiest hero bears about him one spot where an ivy-leaf clinging intercepted the petrifying water—a tiny out-of-the-way spot, not very near the head or heart, but palpable enough to be stricken by Paris’s arrow or Hagen’s spear. Cæsar is very sensitive about that bald crown of his, and fears lest even the laurel wreath should cover it but meagrely. Many wars, since that which brought Ilium to the dust, might have been traced to slighted vanity, and many excellent Christians have waxed quite as wroth as the queen of heathenish heaven about thespretæ injuria formæ. (Do you think this is a peculiarly feminine failing? I have seen a first-class man and Ireland scholar look massacres at the child of his bosom friend, when the unconscious innocent made disagreeable remarks on his personal appearance, alluding particularly to the shape of his nose, which wasnotPhidian. He has since been heard to speak of that terrible deed in Bethlehem as a painful but justifiable measure of political expediency; and is inclined, on many grounds, to excuse and sympathize with the stem Idumean.) The insult offered to the embassador in Tarentum was only the outbreak of a single drunkard’s brutality, but all the wealth of the fair city of Phalanthus did not suffice to pay the account for washing the soiled robe white again; and blood enough ran down her streets to have quenched some blazing temples before the Romans would give her a receipt in full.Arguing from thesedata, we may conclude that Mr. Fullarton was laboring under a slight delusion in believing (which he did sincerely) that only a pure and disinterested zeal for the welfare of his flock impelled him to say, “I shall make it my business to inquire more fully into Major Keene’s antecedents. I am convinced there is something discreditable in the background, and it may be well to be armed with proofs in case of need.”Thoughhemay have deceived himself completely as to the nature of the spirit that possessed him, Cecil Tresilyan was more clear-sighted. She had not failed to remark a certain vicious twinkle in the speaker’s eye and a deeper flush on his ruddy countenance, betokening rather a mundane resentment. Her lip began to curl.“How very disagreeable some of your duties must be. No doubt you interpret them correctly, but in this case perhaps it would be well to bequitesure before acting on the offensive. If I were a man—even a clergyman—I don’t think I should like to have Major Keene for my declared enemy.”The text with which the chaplain enforced his reply—expressive of a determination to keep his own line at all hazards, strong in the rectitude of his cause—had better not be quoted here, especially as it was not apposite enough to “lay” the contradictory spirit that was alive in his fair opponent. (How very angry Cecil would have been if she had been told ten minutes ago that such an expression would apply to her!) The temptation to answer sharply was so powerful that she took refuge in distant coldness.“You quite misunderstand me, Mr. Fullarton. I never dreamed of offering advice; it would have been excessively presumptuous in me, especially as I have not the faintest interest in the subject we have been talking about. Need we discuss it any longer? I think Major Keene has been too highly honored already.”That weary look was so manifest now on the beautiful face that even the chaplain, albeit tenacious of his position as a sea-anemone, felt that, for once, he had overstaid his time and was periling his popularity. So, after an expansive benediction, and an entreaty that they would be early at church on the morrow, he went “to his own place.”With a sigh of admiration—“What an excellent man, and how well he talks!” said Bessie Danvers.With a sigh of relief—“He talks a great deal, and it is very late,” said Cecil Tresilyan.Chapter divisionCHAPTER IX.Fromhis “coign of vantage” in the reading-desk the next morning, Mr. Fullarton surveyed a crowded congregation, serenely complacent and hopeful, as a farmer in August looking down from the hill-side on golden billows of waving grain. Visitors had been pouring in rather fast during the week; and there was a vague, general impression, which no individual would have owned, that they were to hear something unusually good. For once expectation was not to be disappointed—a remarkable fact, when one considers how much dissatisfaction is created, as23a rule, in the popular mind, by the shortcomings of eclipses, processions, Vesuvian eruptions, new operas, and other advertised attractions, natural and artificial. The singing was really a success. Miss Tresilyan’s magnificent voice did its duty nobly, and did no more. Without overpowering or singling itself out from the others, it lured them on to follow where they could never have gone alone: the choir was kept in perfect order without even knowing that it was disciplined.There was an elderly Englishman who had resided at Dorade ever since he had a slight difference of opinion with the Bankruptcy Court a quarter of a century back. Drifting helplessly and aimlessly about Europe in search of employment, he had taken root where he came ashore, and vegetated, as floating weeds will do. He picked up rather a precarious livelihood by acting as a species of factotum to his countrymen in the season, ministering, not injudiciously, to their myriad whims and necessities. Among his multifarious functions, perhaps the most respectable and permanent was that of clerk to the English chapel. He was by no means a very religious man, nor were his morals quite unexceptionable, but he had completely identified himself with the fortunes and interests of that modest building. A sneer at its capabilities or a doubt as to its prospects would exasperate him at any time far more than a direct insult to himself (to be sure there was little self-respect left to be offended). When disguised in drink, which was the case tolerably often, he generally proposed to settle the question by the ordeal of battle, and was only to be appeased by an apology or a great deal more liquor.On this occasion the success and the singing combined—for excess and hardship had not quite deadened a good ear for music—moved the old castaway strangely. His thoughts wandered back to the misused days when he had friends, and a position, and character; when he was a householder and vestryman, and even dreamt ambitiously of a churchwardenship. He could see distinctly his own pew, with the gray, worm-eaten panels, where he had sat many and many a warm afternoon, resisting sternly, as became a man of mark in the parish, treacherous inclinations to slumber. He saw the ponderous brown gallery—eyesore to archæologists—which held the village choir: there they were, with the sun streaming in on their heads through the western window, till even the faded red cushion in front deepened into rich crimson, chanting their quaint old anthems with right good courage, though every one got lost in the second line, and, after much independent exertion of the lungs, just came up in time to join in the grand final rally. He saw the mild-faced, gray-haired parson mounting slowly the pulpit stairs, adjusting and manœuvring the refractory gown thatwouldcome off his shoulders with the nervous gesture which, beginning in timidity, had grown into a habit that was part of the man. More plainly than all—he saw a low, green mound, just beyond the chancel walls, where one was sleeping who had lavished on him all the treasures of a rare, unselfish, trusting love; the dear, meek, little wife, who was so proud of her husband’s few poor talents, so indulgent to his many failings, who ever had an excuse ready to answer his self-reproaches, whose weak, thin hand was always strong enough to pluck him back from ruin and dishonor, till it grew stiff and cold. She knew it, too, for he remembered the wail that burst from her lips when she thought she was alone, the night before she died—“Ah! who will save him now that I am gone?” How miserable and lonely he was long after they buried her! How incessantly he used to repeat those last words, meant to be comforting, that she spoke, with her arm wound round his neck, “Darling, you have been so very, very kind to me!” So it went on, till the devil of drink, choosing his time cunningly, entered into him, and battled with and drove out the angel. A strange resurrection! Memories that had died years ago, withering from very shame, began to curl and twine themselves round the hard, battered heart as tenderly as ever. These pictures of the past were still vivid and clear, when he became aware of a dimness in his eyes that blinded them to all real surrounding objects; he felt so surprised that it broke the spell; tears had almost forgotten the way to his eyes.Not very probable, is it, that a prosaic elderly clerk should dream of all this during the three last verses of a hymn? Well, the steadiest imagination is apt to disregard sometimes the proprieties of place; and as for space—of course the visions of the night are quicker on the wing than their rivals of the day; yet there must be some analogy, and, they say, we pass through the vicissitudes of half a lifetime in the few seconds before we wake.Cecil was really pleased with the result of the singing. She would have been even more so had it not been for the marked expression of approval on the face of Royston Keene. It was evident she had been on her trial. The cool, tranquil, appreciative smile was very provoking. It made her feel for the moment like aprima donnaon her first appearance at a new theatre.Unusually eloquent and verbose was the sermon that day, for not only was the preacher aware that bright eyes looked upon his deeds, but he saw his enemies in the front of the battle. Surely all extemporaneous speakers, in court, pulpit, or senate, must be accessible to such external influences. It ought not to be so, of course, but I fancy itis. Would John Knox have been so fiery in denunciation if those wicked maids of honor had not derided him? I doubt if a discourse delivered in a Union would ever soar to sublimity, even if the excellent paupers could be supposed to understand it. So, with every sentence more plaintive grew Mr. Fullarton’s lamentations over worldlings and their vanities, more bitter his invectives against those who, having themselves broken out of the fold, seek to lead others astray. An occasional gesture—something too expressive—was not needed to point his animadversions. The object of them sat with his head slightly bent, neither by frown nor smile betraying that a single allusion had gone home. The simple truth was, that he scarcely caught one word. The last cadence of sweeter tones was still lingering in his ears, and had locked them fast against all other sounds. The energetic divine might have poured out upon his guilty head yet stormier vials, and he would never have heard one roll of the thunder. However, the dearest friends must part, and all orations must come to an end, except those of the24much-desiderated Chisholm Anstey, of whom an old-world parliament was not worthy; so, after “a burst of forty-five minutes without a check,” the chaplain dismissed his beloved hearers to their digestion.The stream, as it flowed out, divided, and broke up into small pools of conversation. Miss Tresilyan and her chaperone joined the Molyneux party, just as Fanny was saying to Keene that “she hoped he would profit by much in the sermon that was evidently meant for him.”“Washe personal?” the latter asked, so indifferently; “I didn’t notice it. Well, I suppose it amuses him, and it certainly does not hurt me.” (Mrs. Danvers sniffed indignantly—a form of protest to which her nose, from its construction, was eminently adapted; but he went on before she could speak) “Miss Tresilyan, will you allow perhaps the unworthiest member of the congregation to express an opinion that the singing went off superbly?”Her beautiful eyes glittered somewhat disdainfully. “Thank you, you are very good. But I think you have hardly a right to be critical. I should like to have some one’s opinion who isreallyinterested in the chapel. It was scarcely worth taking so much trouble to appear so the other day. You know what Liston said about the penny? ‘It is not the value of the thing, but one hates to be imposed upon.’ Delusions are not so agreeable as illusions, Major Keene.”Royston was very much pleased. He liked above all things to see a woman stand up to him defiantly; indeed, if they were worth “setting to with,” he always tried to get them to spar as soon as possible, to find out if they had any idea of hitting straight. He did not betray his satisfaction, though, as he answered quite calmly, “Pardon me, I could not be so impertinent as to attempt a ‘delusion’ on so short an acquaintance. I deny the charge distinctly. I believe that residence in Dorade, and a certain amount of subscription, constitute a member of Mr. Fullarton’s congregation, and give one a franchise. He has not thought fit to excommunicate me publicly as yet. I really was interested in the subject, for I fully meant to go to church this morning, and I mean to go again.”Insensibly they had walked on in advance of the others. She shook her head with a saucy incredulity—“I am no believer in sudden conversions.”“Nor I; I was not speaking of such; but I am very fond of good singing, and I would go any where to hear it. Did our chaplain include hypocrisy among my other disqualifications for decent society last night? I understand he is good enough to furnish a catalogue of them to all new comers.”Cecil certainly had not abused him then; so there was not the slightest necessity for her looking guilty and conscious, both of which she felt she was doing as she replied—“I am sure Mr. Fullarton would not asperse any one’s character knowingly. He could only speak from a sense of duty, perhaps not a pleasant one.”“Quite so,” said Royston; “I don’t quarrel with him for any fair professional move. If he thinks it necessary or expedient to prejudice indifferent people against me, he is clearly right to do so. Ah! I see, you think I dislike him. I don’t, indeed. Morally and physically, he seems a little too unctuous, that’s all. Capital clergyman for a cold climate! Fancy how useful he would be in an Arctic expedition. They might save his salary in Arnott’s stoves: I’m certain heradiates.”Miss Tresilyan knew that it was wrong to smile. But she had an unfortunately quick perception of the ridiculous, and the struggles of principle against a sense of humor were not always successful. She would not give up her point, though. “I can not think that you judge him fairly,” she persisted.“Perhaps not; but there is a large class who would scarcely be much moved by stronger and abler words than, I suppose, we heard to-day—spoken as they were spoken. These preachers won’t study the fitness of things; that’s the worst of it. I have known a garrison chaplain deliver a discourse that, I am convinced, was composed for a visitation. It seems absurd to hear a man warning us against a particular sin, and threatening us with all sorts of penalties if we indulge in it, when it is impossible that he himself should ever have felt the temptation. We want some one who can find out the harmless side of our character, as well as the diseased part, and work upon it. Such a person may be as strict and harsh as he pleases, but he is listened to.” He paused for a moment, and went on in a graver tone—“I think it might have done evenmesome good, when I was younger, to have talked for half an hour with the man who wrote ‘How Amyas threw his sword away.’”Cecil could not disagree with him now, nor did she wish to do so. She liked those last words of his better than any he had spoken. Remember, she was born and bred in the honest west country, where one, at least, of their own prophets hath honor. If you want to indulge your enthusiasm for the Rector of Eversley, let your next walking-tour turn thitherward; for on all the sea-board from Portsmouth to Penzance, there is never a woman—maid, wife, or widow—that will say you nay.Keene saw his advantage, but was far too wise to follow it up then. The weaker sex, as a rule, are acute but not very close reasoners; they mix up their majors and minors with a charming recklessness; and, if innocent of nothing else, are generally guiltless of a syllogism. It follows that, in the course of an argument, it is easy enough to entangle them in their talk. When such a chance occurs, don’t come down on your pretty antagonist with “I thought you said so and so,” but be politic as well as generous, and pass it by. They will do more justice to your self-denial than they would have done to your dialectic talents. Corinna loves to be contradicted, but hates to be convinced, and dreads no monster so much as a short-horned—dilemma. She may forgive the first offense as inadvertent, but “one more such victory and you are lost.” Think how often clemency has succeeded where severity would have failed. What did that discreet Eastern emir, when he found his fair young wife sleeping in a garden, where she had no earthly business to be? He laid his drawn sabre softly across her neck, and retired without breaking her slumbers. The cold blade was the first thing Zuleika felt when she woke; I can not guess what her sensations were; but when she gave the weapon back to her solemn lord,25she pressed her rosy lips thrice on the blue steel, and made a vow that she most probably kept; and Hussein Bey never was happier, than when he drew her back to his broad breast, looking into her face silently with his calm, grave smile.I fancy our sisters enter into an argument with more simple good faith and eagerness than we are wont to indulge in; so that it is probably easier to tease and exasperate them, which is amusing enough while it lasts. But no doubt it hurts them sometimes more than we are aware of; and, after all, breaking a butterfly on the wheel is poor pastime, and not a very athletic sport. The glory, too, to be won is so small that it scarcely compensates for the pain we inflict, and may, perchance, eventuallyfeel. Is Achilles inclined to be proud of the strength of his arm, or the keenness of his falchion, as he grovels in the dust at the slain Amazon’s side? Nay, he would give half his laurels to be able to close that awful gaping wound—to see the proud lips soften for a moment from their immutable scorn—to detect the faintest tremor in the long white limbs that never will stir again.The solemnity of these illustrations, in which battles, murders, and sudden deaths are mingled, will prove that I regard the subject as by no means trivial, but am sincerely anxious to warn my comrades against yielding to a temptation which assails us daily.On these principles the Cool Captain acted, then. His gay laugh opened a bridge to the retreating enemy as he said, “How my poor character must have been worried last night! I wish Mrs. Molyneux had been there. She is good enough to stand up for her old friend sometimes. I could hardly expectyouto take so much trouble for a very recent acquaintance.”“Of course not,” replied Cecil. “I was not in a position to contradict any thing, even if I had wished to do so. But, I remember, I thought I would speak to you about my brother. You know enough of him already to guess why I am nervous about him. I almost forced him to take me abroad; and he is exposed to so many more dangers here than at home. Please, don’t encourage him to play, or tempt him into any thing wrong. Indeed, I don’t mean to speak harshly or uncourteously, so you need not be angry.”She raised her eyes to her companion’s with a pretty pleading. He met them fairly. Whatever his intentions might be, no one could say that the major ever shrank from looking friend or foe in the face.“I am sorry that you should think the warning necessary. Supposing that it were so—on my honor, he is safe from me. I should like to alter your opinion of me, if it were possible. Will you give me a chance?” The others joined them before she could reply; but more than once that day Cecil wondered whether, even during their short acquaintance, she had not sometimes dealt scanty justice to Royston Keene.Chapter divisionCHAPTER X.Thereis a pleasant theory—that every woman may be loved, once at least in her life, if she so wills it. It must be true: how, otherwise, can you account for the number of hard-featured visages—lighted up by no redeeming ray of intellect—that preside at “good men’s feasts,” and confront them at their firesides? How do the husbands manage? Do they, from constantly contemplating an inferior type of creation, lose their comparing and discriminating powers, so that, like the Australian and Pacific aborigines, they come to regard as points of beauty peculiarities that a more advanced civilization shrinks from? Or do their visual organs actually become impaired, like those of captives who can see clearly only in their own dungeon’s twilight, and flinch before the full glare of day? If neither of these is the case, they must sometimes sympathize with that dreary dilemma of Bias which the adust Aldrich quotes in grim irony—Εἴ μὲν κάλην, ἕξεις κοίνην, εἰ δ᾽ αἰσχρὰν, ποίνην. (Whether of the two horns impaled the sage of Priēne?) Some, of course, are fully alive to the outward defects of their partners; but few are so candid as the old Berkshire squire, who, looking after his spouse as she left the room, said, pensively, “Excellent creature, that! I’ve liked her better every day for twenty years, but I’ve always thought she’s the plainest-headed woman in England!” Fewer still would wish to emulate the sturdy plain-speaking of the “gudeman” in the Scottish ballad, who, when his witch-wife boasted how she bloomed into beauty after drinking the “wild-flower wine,” replied, undauntedly,“Ye lee, ye lee, ye ill womyn,Sae loud I hear ye lee;The ill-faured’st wife i’ the kingdom of FifeIs comely compared wi’ thee.”He could stand all the other marvels of the Sabbat, butthatwas too much for his credulity.No doubt many of these Ugly Princesses are endowed with excellent sterling qualities. The old Border legend says there never was a happier match than that of “Muckle-mou’ed Meg,” though her husband married her reluctantly with a halter tightening round his neck. But such advantages lie below the surface, and take some time in being appreciated. The first process of captivation is what I don’t understand—unless, indeed, there are sparkles in the quartz, invisible to common eyes, that tell the experienced gold-seeker of a rich vein near.Well, we will allow the proposition with which we started; but do you suppose its converse would hold equally good—that every woman couldloveonce if she wished it? Nine out of ten of them would, I dare say, answer boldly in the affirmative; but in a few rather sad and weary faces you might read something more than a doubt about this; and lips, not so red and full as they once were, on which the wintry smile comes but rarely, could tell perhaps a different story. The precise mould that will fitsomefancies is as hard to find as the slipper of Cendrillon; and so, in default of the fairychaussure, the small white foot goes on its road unshod, and the stones and briers gall it cruelly.With men it does not so much matter. They have always the counteracting resources of bodily and mental exertion, against which the affections can make but little head. Indeed, some of the most distinguished in arts, in arms, if not in song, seem to have gone down to their graves without ever giving themselves time to indulge in any one of these. Perhaps they never missed26a sentiment which would have been very much in their way if they had felt it. If all tales are true, mathematics are a very effectual Nénuphar. But with women it is different.Theycan’t be always clambering up unexplored peaks, or inventing improvements in gunnery, or commanding irregular corps, or bringing in faultless reform bills, or finding out constellations, or shooting big game, or resorting to any ofourthousand-and-one safety-valves to superfluous excitement. Are crochet, or crossed letters, or charity-schools, or even Cochins andCrève-cœurs, so entirely engrossing as to drown forever the reproaches of nature, that will make herself heard? If not, surely the most phlegmatically proper of her sex does sometimes feel sad and dissatisfied when she thinks that she has never been able to care for any one more than for her own brother. It must seem hard that, when the frost of old age comes on, she shall not have even a memory to look upon to warm her. But in the world here, such temptations to discontent abound; but the most guileless votary of theSacré Cœurmight confess regrets and misgivings like these without meriting any extra allowance of fast and scourge.If we were to reckon up the cases we have heard of women who have “gone wrong,” and made, if notmésalliances, at least marriages inexplicable on any rational grounds, it would fill up a long summer’s day, even without drawing on darker recollections of post-nuptial transgression. In these last cases, perhaps, the altar and absolute indifference was a more dangerous element than Mrs. Malaprop’s “little aversion,” which is, at all events, apositive, thing to work upon. Lethargies are harder to cure, they say, than fevers. Certainly they have the warning examples of others who have so erred, and paid for it by a life-long repentance; but that never has stopped them yet, and never will. Remember the reply of thedébutanteto her austere parent when the latter refused to take her to a ball, saying that “shehad seen the folly of such things.” “I want to see the folly of them too.” Few of us men can realize the feeling that, with our sisters, may account for, though not excuse, much folly and sin. They see others happy all around them: it is hard to fast when so many are feasting. So there comes a shameful sense of ignorance—a vague, eager desire for knowledge—a terror of an isolation deepening and darkening upon them, and a determination, at any risks, to balk at leastthatenemy—and so, like the poor lady of Shalott, they grow restless, and reckless, and rebellious at last. They are safe where they are, but the days have so much of dull sameness that there is a sore temptation in the unknown peril. “Better,” they say, “than the close atmosphere of the guarded castle and the phantasms of fairy-land, one draught of the fresh outer air—one glimpse of real life and nature—one taste of substantial joys and sorrows that shall wake all the pulses of womanhood, even though the experience be brief and dearly bought, though the web woven while we sat dreaming must surely be rent in twain—ay, even though the curse, too, may follow very swiftly, and the swans be waiting at the gate that shall bear us down to ourburying.”If staid and cold-blooded virgins and matrons are not exempt from these disagreeable self-reproaches, how did it fare with Cecil Tresilyan, in whom the energy of a strong temperament was stirring like the spring-sap in a young oak-tree? Should she die conscious of the possession of such a wealth of love, with none to share or inherit it? She had seen such numbers of her friends and acquaintance “pair off,” that she began to envy at last the facility of attachment that she had been wont to hold in scorn. Very many reflections of “lovers lately wed” had been cast upon her mirror, and yet the One knightly shadow was long in coming. Can it be that yonder gleam through the trees is the flash of his distant armor?I hope this illustrated edition of rather an old theory has not bored you much; because it would have been just as simple to have said at once that, as the days went on in Dorade, and they were thrown constantly into each other’s society, Major Keene began to monopolize much more of Cecil Tresilyan’s thoughts than she would have allowed if she could have helped it; for, though she considered Mr. Fullarton’s testimony unfairly biased by prejudice, she could not doubt that Royston was by no means the most eligible object to centre her young affections upon. He carefully avoided discussion or display of any of his peculiar opinions in her presence, and on such occasions seemed inclined to soften his habitually sardonic and depreciatory tone. Once or twice, when they did disagree, she observed that he contrived to make some one else take her side, and then argued the point, as long as he thought it worth while, with the last opponent. Beyond the courtesy which invariably marked his demeanor toward her sex, this was the only sign of especial deference that he had shown. She never could detect the faintest approach to the adulation that hundreds had paid her, and which she had wearied of long ago. Nevertheless, she knew perfectly that on many subjects, generally considered all-important, they differed as widely as the poles.Perpetual struggles between the spirit and the flesh made Cecil’s heart an odd sort of debatable land; if she could not always insure success and supremacy to the right side, she certainly did endeavor to preserve the balance of power. Personally she rather disliked Mr. Fullarton, but she seemed to look upon him as the embodiment of a principle, and the symbol of an abstraction. He represented there the Establishment which she had always been taught to venerate; and so she felt bound, as far as possible, to favor and support him; just as Goring and Wilmot, and many more wild cavaliers, fearing neither God nor devil, mingled in their war-cry church as well as king. (Rather a rough comparison to apply to a well-intentioned demoiselle of the nineteenth century, but, I fancy, a correct one.) Thus, if she indulged herself in a longtête-à-têtewith Keene, she was sure to be extraordinarily civil to the chaplain soon after; and if she devoted herself for a whole evening to the society of the priest and his family, the soldier was likely to benefit by it on the morrow. Unluckily, the sacrifice of inclination was all ononeside.The antagonists had never, as yet, come into open collision. It was not respect or fear that made them shy of the conflict, but rather a feeling, which neither could have explained to himself, resembling that of leaders of parties in the27House, who decline measuring their strength against each other on questions of minor importance, reserving themselves for the final crisis, when the want-of-confidence vote shall come on. Once only there was a chance of a skirmish—the merest affair of outposts.Keene had been calling on the Tresilyans one evening, in the official capacity of bearer of a verbal message from Mrs. Molyneux. It was the simplest one imaginable; but as graver embassadors have done before him, liking his quarters he dallied over his mission. (If Geneva, instead of Paris, were chosen for the meeting of a Congress, would not several knotty points be decided much more speedily?) When, at last, all was settled, it seemed very natural that he should petition Cecil for “just one song;” and you know what that always comes to. Royston never would “turn over” if he could possibly avoid it; he considered it a willful waste of advantages, for the strain on his attention, slight as it might be, quite spoiled his appreciation of the melody. Perhaps he was right. As a rule, if one wanted to discover the one person about whose approval the faircantatriceis most solicitous, it would be well to looknotimmediately behind her ivory shoulder. At all events, he had made his peace with Miss Tresilyan on this point long ago. So he drew his arm-chair up near the piano, but out of her sight as she sang, and sat watching her intently through his half-closed eyelids.I marvel not that in so many legends of witchery and seduction since theOdysseytheθεσπεσίη ἀοίδηhas borne its part. “But,” the Wanderer might say, replying against Circè’s warning, “have we not learned prudence and self-command from Athenè, the chaste Tritonid? Have not ten years under shield before Troy, and a thousand leagues of seafaring, made our hearts as hard as our hands, and our ears deaf to the charms of song? Thus much of wisdom, at least, hath come with grizzled hair, that we may mock at temptations that might have won us when our cheeks were in their down. O most divinely fair of goddesses! have we not resisted your own enchantments? Shall we go forth scathless from Ææa to perish on the Isle of the Sirens?” But the low, green hills are already on the weather beam, and we are aware of a sweet weird chant that steals over the water like a living thing, and smooths the ripple where it passes. How fares it with our philosophic Laertiades? Those signs look strangely unlike incitements to greater speed; and what mean those struggles to get loose? Well, perhaps, for the hero that the good hemp holds firm, and that Peribates and Eurylochus spring up to strengthen his bonds; well, that the wax seals fast the ears of those sturdy old sea-dogs who stretch to their oars till Ocean grows hoary behind the blades; or nobler bones might soon be added to the myriads that lie bleaching in the meadow, half hidden by its flowers. It was not, then, so very trivial, the counsel that she gave in parting kindness—Κίρκη ἐϋπλόκαμος, δεινὴ θεὸς αὐδήεσσα.Are we in our generation wiser than the “man of many wiles?” Dinner is over, and every one is going out into the pleasance, to listen to the nightingales.“It will be delicious; there is nothing I should like so much; but I—I sprained my ankle in jumping that gate; and Amy” (that’s “my cousin who happens to sing”), “I heard you cough three times this morning.Youwon’t be so imprudent as to risk the night air? Ah! they are gone at last; and now, Amy dear—good, kindest Amy!—open the especial crimson book quickly, and give me first your own pet song, and then mine, and then ‘The Three Fishers,’ and then ‘Maud,’ and then, I suppose, they will be coming back again; but by that time, they may be as enthusiastic as they please, we shall be able to meet them fairly.”Things have changed since David’s day; spirits are raised sometimes now, as well as laid, by harp and song. In good truth, they are not always evil ones.On that night, Royston Keene listened to the sweet voice that seemed to knock at the gates of his heart—gates shut so long that the bars had rusted in their staples—not loudly or imperiously, but powerful in its plaintive appeal, like that of those one dearly loved, standing without in the bitter cold, and pleading—“Ah! let me in!” He listened till a pleasant, dreamy feeling ofdomesticitybegan to creep over him that he had never known before. He could realize, then, that there were circumstances under which a man might easily dispense with high play, and hard riding, and hard flirting (to give it a mild name), and hard drinking, and other excitements which habit had almost turned into necessities, without missing any one of them. There were two words which ought to have put all these fancies to flight, as the writing on the wall scattered the guests of Belshazzar—“Too Late.” But he turned his head away, and would not read them. He had actually succeeded in ignoring another disenchanting reality—the presence of Mrs. Danvers. That estimable person seemed more than usually fidgetty, and disposed to make herself, as well as others, uncomfortable. There was evidently something on her mind from her glancing so often and so nervously at the door. It opened at last softly, just as Cecil had finished “The Swallow,” and revealed Mr. Fullarton standing on the threshold. The latter was not well pleased with the scene before him. There was an air of comfort about it which, under the circumstances, he thought decidedly wrong; besides which he could not get rid of a vague misgiving (the rarest thing with him!) that his visit was scarcely welcome or well timed.Miss Tresilyan rose instantly to greet the intruder (yes, that’s the right word) with her usual calm courtesy. Very few words had been exchanged for the last hour, but she was perfectly aware—what woman is not?—of the influence she had exercised over her listener. That consciousness had made her strangely happy. So,shecertainly could have survived the chaplain’s absence. Royston Keene rose too, quite slowly. There are compounds, you know, that always remain soft and ductile in a certain temperature, but harden into stone at the first contact with the outer air. It was just so with him. Even as he moved, all gentle feelings were struck dead in his heart, and he stood up a harder man than ever, with no kinder emotion left than bitter anger at the interruption. He could not always28command his eyes, he knew; and, if he had not passed his hand quickly over his face just then, their expression might have thrilled through the new-comer disagreeably.“Cecil, dearest,” Mrs. Danvers said, with rather an awkward assumption of being perfectly at her ease, “Mr. Fullarton was good enough to say he would come and read to us this evening, and explain some passages. I don’t know why I forgot to tell you. I meant to do so, but—” Her look finished the sentence. Royston, like the others, guessed what she meant, andyoumay guess how he thanked her.Cecil colored with vexation. She was so anxious to prevent Mrs. Danvers from feeling dependent that she allowed her to take all sorts of liberties, and the amiable woman was not disposed to let the privilege fall into disuse. On the present occasion there was such an absurd incongruity of time and place that she might possibly have tried to evade the “exposition,” but she happened just then to meet Keene’s eye. The sarcasm there was not so carefully veiled as it usually was in her presence. Never yet was born Tresilyan who blenched from a challenge; so she answered at once to express “her sense of Mr. Fullarton’s kindness, and her regret that he had not come earlier in the evening.” If Royston had known how bitterly she despised herself for disingenuousness he would have been amply avenged.Even while she was speaking he closed the piano very slowly and softly. It did not take him long to put on his impenetrable face, for when he turned round there was not a trace of anger left; the scarce suppressed taunt in Cecil’s last words moved him apparently no more than Mrs. Danvers’s glance of triumph.“I owe you a thousand apologies,” he said, “for staying such an unwarrantable time, and quite as many thanks for the pleasantest two hours I have spent in Dorade. Don’t think I would detain you one moment from Mr. Fullarton and your devotional exercises. You know—no, youdon’tknow—the verse in the ballad:
Chapter division
Anotherand a much more reputable Council of Three sat that night in Miss Tresilyan’s apartments. Mr. Fullarton represented the male element there, and was in great force. The late accession to his flock had decidedly raised his spirits: he knew how materially it would strengthen his hands; but, independently of all politic consideration, Cecil’s grace and beauty exercised a powerful influence over him. Do not misconstrue this. I believe a thought had never crossed his mind relating to any living woman that his own wife might not have known and approved; nevertheless was it true, that Mr. Fullarton liked his penitents to be fair: not a very eccentric or unaccountable taste either. It is a necessity of our nature to take more delight in the welfare and training of a beautiful and refined being, than in that of one who is coarse and awkward and ugly. Even with the merely animal creation we should experience this; and not above one divine in fifty ismorethan human, after all.
So, gazing on the fair face and queenly figure that were then before him, and feeling a sort of vested interest in their possessor, the heart of the pastor was merry within him; and he, so to speak, caroused over the profusely-sugared tea and well-butteredgalettewith a decorous and regulated joviality; ever as he drank casting down the wreaths of his florid eloquence at the feet of his entertainers. In any atmosphere whatsoever, no matter how uncongenial, those garlands were sure to bloom. His zeal was such a hardy perennial that the most chilling reception could not damage its vitality. Principle and intention were both all right, of course, but they were clumsily carried out, and the whole effect was to remind one unpleasantly of the clockmaker puffing his wares. At the most unseasonable times and in the most incongruous places, Mr. Fullarton always had an eye to business, introducing and inculcating his tenets with an assurance and complacency peculiar to himself. Sometimes he would adopt the familiarly conversational, sometimes the theatrically effective style; but it never seemed to cross his mind that either could appear ridiculous or grotesque. Some absurd stories were told of his performances in this line. On one occasion, they say, he addressed his neighbor at dinner, to whom he had just been introduced, abruptly thus: “You see, what we want is—more faith,” in precisely the manner and tone of agourmetsuggesting that “the soup would be all the better for a little more seasoning;” or of Mr. Chouler asserting, “the farmers must be protected, sir.” On another, meeting for the first time a very pious and wealthy old man (I believe a joint-stock bank director), he proceeded to sound him as to his “experiences.” The unsuspecting elder, rather flattered by the interest taken in his welfare, and never dreaming that such communications could be any thing but privileged and confidential, parted with his information pretty freely. Mr. Fullarton was so delighted at what he had heard that he turned suddenly round to the mixed assembly and cried out. “Why, here’s a blessed old Barzillai!” His face was beaming like that of an enthusiastic numismatist who stumbles upon a rare Commodus or an authentic Domitian. There were several people present of his own way of thinking; but some, even among those, felt very ill afterward from their efforts to repress their laughter. The miserable individual thus endued with the “robe of honor” would have infinitely preferred the most scandalously abusive epithet to that fervid compliment. He would have parted with half his bank shares at a discount (they were paying about 14 per cent. then—you can get them tolerably cheap now) to have been able to sink into his shoes on the spot; indeed these were almost large enough to form convenient places of refuge. It had a very bad effect on21him: he never again unbosomed himself on any subject to man, woman, or child. Even in his last illness—though he must have had one or two troublesome things on his mind, unless he had peculiar ideas, as to the propriety of ruining widows and orphans—he declined to commit himself,
But locked the secret in his breast,And died in silence, unconfessed.
But locked the secret in his breast,
And died in silence, unconfessed.
On that Saturday night, to one of the party at all events, Mr. Fullarton’s presence was very welcome. Mrs. Danvers was somewhat of a hard drinker in theology, and, like other intemperate people, was not over particular as to the quality of the liquors set before her, provided only that they were hot and strong, and unstinted. The succulent and highly-flavored eloquence to which she was listening suited her palate exactly, besides which, the chaplain’s peculiar opinions happened to coincide perfectly with her own. As the evening progressed she got more and more exhilarated; and at length could not forbear intimating “how sincerely she valued the privilege of sitting under so eminent a divine.”
The latter made a scientific little bow, elaborated evidently by long practice, expressive at once of gratification and humility.
“A privilege, if such it be, dear Mrs. Danvers, that some of my congregation estimate but very lightly. You would hardly believe how many members of my flock I scarcely know, except by name. It is a sore temptation to discouragement. I fear that Major Keene’s pernicious example is indeed contagious, and that his evil communications have corrupted many—alas! too many.” He rounded off the period with a ponderous professional sigh.
Miss Tresilyan was leaning back in her armchair: as the wood-fire sprang up brightly and sank again suddenly, her great deep eyes seemed to flash back the fitful gleams. It was long since she had spoken. In truth, she had been drawing largely upon her piety at first, to make herself feel interested, and, when this failed, upon her courtesy, to appear so; but she was conscious of relapses more and more frequent into the dreary regions of Boredom. Every bodywouldagree with every body else so completely! A bold contradiction, a stinging sarcasm, or a caustic retort, would have been worth any thing just then to take off the cloying taste of the everlasting honey. She roused herself at these last words enough to ask languidly, “What has he done?”
There could not be a simpler question, nor one put more carelessly; but it was rather a “facer” to Mr. Fullarton, who dealt in generalities as a rule, and objected to being brought to book about particulars—considering, indeed, such a line of argument as indicative of a caviling and narrow-minded disposition in his interlocutor.
“Well,” he said, not without hesitation, “Major Keene has only once been to church; and, I believe, has spoken scoffingly since of the discourse he heard delivered there. Yet I may say I was more than usually ‘supported’ on that occasion.” The man’s thorough air of conviction softened somewhat the absurd effect of his childish vanity.
Cecil would have been sorry to confess how much excuse she felt inclined to admit just then for the sins both of commission and omission—sins that, at another time, when her faculties were fresh and her judgment unbiassed, she might have looked upon as any thing but venial. Ah! Mr. Fullarton, the seed you have scattered so profusely to-night is beginning to bear fruit already you never dreamed of. Beet-root and turnips will not succeed oneverysoil. It must be long before a remunerative crop of these can be gathered from the breezy upland which for centuries, till the heather was burned, has worn a robe of uncommercial but imperial purple.
Nevertheless, Miss Tresilyan frowned perceptibly. It looked very much as if Keene had been amusing himself at her expense when he affected an interest in her leading the choir. Unwittingly to “make sport for the men of war in Gath” by no means suited the fancy of that haughtyladye.
“It is very wrong of him not to come to church,” she observed after a pause (for the sin of sarcasm disapproval was not so ready, and she made the most of scanty means of condemnation). “Yet I scarcely think he can be actively hostile. You know he almost lives with the Molyneuxs, and has great influence with them. Do they not attend regularly?”
Mr. Fullarton admitted that they did. “But,” said he, “constant intercourse with such a man must ere long have its injurious effect. Indeed, I felt it my bounden duty to warn Mrs. Molyneux on the subject. I grieve to say she treated my admonition with a very unwarrantable levity.”
Mrs. Danvers’s sympathetic groan was promptly at the service of the speaker; fortunately, turning to thank her for it by a look, he missed detecting her pupil’s smile. She could fancy so well Fanny’s littlemoue, combining amusement, vexation, and impertinence, while undergoing the ecclesiastical censure.
“You must be merciful to Mrs. Molyneux,” she remarked, with a demure gravity that did her credit under the circumstances. “She is my greatest friend, you know. When a wife is so very fond of her husband, surely there is some excuse for her adopting his prejudices for and against people?”
The pastor brightened up suddenly: he had just recollected another fact to fire off against thebête noir.
“I forgot to tell you that Major Keene is much addicted to play, and, besides, is intimate with the Vicomte de Châteaumesnil.Noscitur a sociis.” The reverend man was an indifferent classic, but he had a way of flashing scraps out of grammars andAnalecta Minorabefore women and others unlikely to be down upon him, as if they were quotations from some recondite author.
“You can not mean that cripple who is drawn about in a wheel-chair?” Cecil asked. “We saw him to-day, only for a moment, for he drew his cloak over his face as we passed. I never saw such a melancholy wreck, and I pitied him so much that I fear he will haunt me.”
Far deeper would have been the compassion had she guessed at the pang that shot straight to Armand’s heart as he veiled his blasted features and haggard eyes, feeling bitterly that such as he were not worthy to look upon her in the glory of her brilliant beauty.
“A notorious atheist and profligate,” was the22reply. “We can not regard his sore affliction in any other light than a judgment—a manifest judgment, dear Miss Tresilyan.”
There was grave disapproval and just a shade of contempt in the face of one of his hearers as she said, “The hand of God is laid so heavily there that man may surely forbear him.” But Mrs. Danvers struck in to her favorite’s rescue, rejoicing in an opportunity of displaying her partisanship.
“A judgment, of course. It would be sinful to doubt it. Besides, do nototherssuffer?” (She cast up her eyes here pointedly, as though she said, “There may be more perfect saints, but if you want a fair specimen of the fine old English martyr—me voici.”) “Cecil, my love, I wonder you did not perceive Major Keene’s true character at once. You were talking to him a good deal the other day.”
“He did not favor me with any remarkably heretical opinions,” Miss Tresilyan replied, carelessly. “Perhaps they have been exaggerated. At all events, he is not likely to do us much harm. Don’t you thinkweare safe, Bessie? Dick does not care much for play; and his ideas on religious subjects are so very simple that it would be hard to unsettle them.”
Clearly she thought the topic was exhausted, but it had a strange fascination for Mr. Fullarton. One of the many good-natured people, who especially abound in those semi-English Continental towns, had been kind enough to quote or misquote to him a remark of Royston’s about that sermon; and on this topic the chaplain was very vulnerable. He would have forgiven a real substantial injury far sooner than a depreciation of his discourses.
Was he one whit weaker or more susceptible than his fellows? I think not. All the philosophy on earth will not teach us to endure without wincing a mosquito’s bite. The hardiest hero bears about him one spot where an ivy-leaf clinging intercepted the petrifying water—a tiny out-of-the-way spot, not very near the head or heart, but palpable enough to be stricken by Paris’s arrow or Hagen’s spear. Cæsar is very sensitive about that bald crown of his, and fears lest even the laurel wreath should cover it but meagrely. Many wars, since that which brought Ilium to the dust, might have been traced to slighted vanity, and many excellent Christians have waxed quite as wroth as the queen of heathenish heaven about thespretæ injuria formæ. (Do you think this is a peculiarly feminine failing? I have seen a first-class man and Ireland scholar look massacres at the child of his bosom friend, when the unconscious innocent made disagreeable remarks on his personal appearance, alluding particularly to the shape of his nose, which wasnotPhidian. He has since been heard to speak of that terrible deed in Bethlehem as a painful but justifiable measure of political expediency; and is inclined, on many grounds, to excuse and sympathize with the stem Idumean.) The insult offered to the embassador in Tarentum was only the outbreak of a single drunkard’s brutality, but all the wealth of the fair city of Phalanthus did not suffice to pay the account for washing the soiled robe white again; and blood enough ran down her streets to have quenched some blazing temples before the Romans would give her a receipt in full.
Arguing from thesedata, we may conclude that Mr. Fullarton was laboring under a slight delusion in believing (which he did sincerely) that only a pure and disinterested zeal for the welfare of his flock impelled him to say, “I shall make it my business to inquire more fully into Major Keene’s antecedents. I am convinced there is something discreditable in the background, and it may be well to be armed with proofs in case of need.”
Thoughhemay have deceived himself completely as to the nature of the spirit that possessed him, Cecil Tresilyan was more clear-sighted. She had not failed to remark a certain vicious twinkle in the speaker’s eye and a deeper flush on his ruddy countenance, betokening rather a mundane resentment. Her lip began to curl.
“How very disagreeable some of your duties must be. No doubt you interpret them correctly, but in this case perhaps it would be well to bequitesure before acting on the offensive. If I were a man—even a clergyman—I don’t think I should like to have Major Keene for my declared enemy.”
The text with which the chaplain enforced his reply—expressive of a determination to keep his own line at all hazards, strong in the rectitude of his cause—had better not be quoted here, especially as it was not apposite enough to “lay” the contradictory spirit that was alive in his fair opponent. (How very angry Cecil would have been if she had been told ten minutes ago that such an expression would apply to her!) The temptation to answer sharply was so powerful that she took refuge in distant coldness.
“You quite misunderstand me, Mr. Fullarton. I never dreamed of offering advice; it would have been excessively presumptuous in me, especially as I have not the faintest interest in the subject we have been talking about. Need we discuss it any longer? I think Major Keene has been too highly honored already.”
That weary look was so manifest now on the beautiful face that even the chaplain, albeit tenacious of his position as a sea-anemone, felt that, for once, he had overstaid his time and was periling his popularity. So, after an expansive benediction, and an entreaty that they would be early at church on the morrow, he went “to his own place.”
With a sigh of admiration—“What an excellent man, and how well he talks!” said Bessie Danvers.
With a sigh of relief—“He talks a great deal, and it is very late,” said Cecil Tresilyan.
Chapter division
Fromhis “coign of vantage” in the reading-desk the next morning, Mr. Fullarton surveyed a crowded congregation, serenely complacent and hopeful, as a farmer in August looking down from the hill-side on golden billows of waving grain. Visitors had been pouring in rather fast during the week; and there was a vague, general impression, which no individual would have owned, that they were to hear something unusually good. For once expectation was not to be disappointed—a remarkable fact, when one considers how much dissatisfaction is created, as23a rule, in the popular mind, by the shortcomings of eclipses, processions, Vesuvian eruptions, new operas, and other advertised attractions, natural and artificial. The singing was really a success. Miss Tresilyan’s magnificent voice did its duty nobly, and did no more. Without overpowering or singling itself out from the others, it lured them on to follow where they could never have gone alone: the choir was kept in perfect order without even knowing that it was disciplined.
There was an elderly Englishman who had resided at Dorade ever since he had a slight difference of opinion with the Bankruptcy Court a quarter of a century back. Drifting helplessly and aimlessly about Europe in search of employment, he had taken root where he came ashore, and vegetated, as floating weeds will do. He picked up rather a precarious livelihood by acting as a species of factotum to his countrymen in the season, ministering, not injudiciously, to their myriad whims and necessities. Among his multifarious functions, perhaps the most respectable and permanent was that of clerk to the English chapel. He was by no means a very religious man, nor were his morals quite unexceptionable, but he had completely identified himself with the fortunes and interests of that modest building. A sneer at its capabilities or a doubt as to its prospects would exasperate him at any time far more than a direct insult to himself (to be sure there was little self-respect left to be offended). When disguised in drink, which was the case tolerably often, he generally proposed to settle the question by the ordeal of battle, and was only to be appeased by an apology or a great deal more liquor.
On this occasion the success and the singing combined—for excess and hardship had not quite deadened a good ear for music—moved the old castaway strangely. His thoughts wandered back to the misused days when he had friends, and a position, and character; when he was a householder and vestryman, and even dreamt ambitiously of a churchwardenship. He could see distinctly his own pew, with the gray, worm-eaten panels, where he had sat many and many a warm afternoon, resisting sternly, as became a man of mark in the parish, treacherous inclinations to slumber. He saw the ponderous brown gallery—eyesore to archæologists—which held the village choir: there they were, with the sun streaming in on their heads through the western window, till even the faded red cushion in front deepened into rich crimson, chanting their quaint old anthems with right good courage, though every one got lost in the second line, and, after much independent exertion of the lungs, just came up in time to join in the grand final rally. He saw the mild-faced, gray-haired parson mounting slowly the pulpit stairs, adjusting and manœuvring the refractory gown thatwouldcome off his shoulders with the nervous gesture which, beginning in timidity, had grown into a habit that was part of the man. More plainly than all—he saw a low, green mound, just beyond the chancel walls, where one was sleeping who had lavished on him all the treasures of a rare, unselfish, trusting love; the dear, meek, little wife, who was so proud of her husband’s few poor talents, so indulgent to his many failings, who ever had an excuse ready to answer his self-reproaches, whose weak, thin hand was always strong enough to pluck him back from ruin and dishonor, till it grew stiff and cold. She knew it, too, for he remembered the wail that burst from her lips when she thought she was alone, the night before she died—“Ah! who will save him now that I am gone?” How miserable and lonely he was long after they buried her! How incessantly he used to repeat those last words, meant to be comforting, that she spoke, with her arm wound round his neck, “Darling, you have been so very, very kind to me!” So it went on, till the devil of drink, choosing his time cunningly, entered into him, and battled with and drove out the angel. A strange resurrection! Memories that had died years ago, withering from very shame, began to curl and twine themselves round the hard, battered heart as tenderly as ever. These pictures of the past were still vivid and clear, when he became aware of a dimness in his eyes that blinded them to all real surrounding objects; he felt so surprised that it broke the spell; tears had almost forgotten the way to his eyes.
Not very probable, is it, that a prosaic elderly clerk should dream of all this during the three last verses of a hymn? Well, the steadiest imagination is apt to disregard sometimes the proprieties of place; and as for space—of course the visions of the night are quicker on the wing than their rivals of the day; yet there must be some analogy, and, they say, we pass through the vicissitudes of half a lifetime in the few seconds before we wake.
Cecil was really pleased with the result of the singing. She would have been even more so had it not been for the marked expression of approval on the face of Royston Keene. It was evident she had been on her trial. The cool, tranquil, appreciative smile was very provoking. It made her feel for the moment like aprima donnaon her first appearance at a new theatre.
Unusually eloquent and verbose was the sermon that day, for not only was the preacher aware that bright eyes looked upon his deeds, but he saw his enemies in the front of the battle. Surely all extemporaneous speakers, in court, pulpit, or senate, must be accessible to such external influences. It ought not to be so, of course, but I fancy itis. Would John Knox have been so fiery in denunciation if those wicked maids of honor had not derided him? I doubt if a discourse delivered in a Union would ever soar to sublimity, even if the excellent paupers could be supposed to understand it. So, with every sentence more plaintive grew Mr. Fullarton’s lamentations over worldlings and their vanities, more bitter his invectives against those who, having themselves broken out of the fold, seek to lead others astray. An occasional gesture—something too expressive—was not needed to point his animadversions. The object of them sat with his head slightly bent, neither by frown nor smile betraying that a single allusion had gone home. The simple truth was, that he scarcely caught one word. The last cadence of sweeter tones was still lingering in his ears, and had locked them fast against all other sounds. The energetic divine might have poured out upon his guilty head yet stormier vials, and he would never have heard one roll of the thunder. However, the dearest friends must part, and all orations must come to an end, except those of the24much-desiderated Chisholm Anstey, of whom an old-world parliament was not worthy; so, after “a burst of forty-five minutes without a check,” the chaplain dismissed his beloved hearers to their digestion.
The stream, as it flowed out, divided, and broke up into small pools of conversation. Miss Tresilyan and her chaperone joined the Molyneux party, just as Fanny was saying to Keene that “she hoped he would profit by much in the sermon that was evidently meant for him.”
“Washe personal?” the latter asked, so indifferently; “I didn’t notice it. Well, I suppose it amuses him, and it certainly does not hurt me.” (Mrs. Danvers sniffed indignantly—a form of protest to which her nose, from its construction, was eminently adapted; but he went on before she could speak) “Miss Tresilyan, will you allow perhaps the unworthiest member of the congregation to express an opinion that the singing went off superbly?”
Her beautiful eyes glittered somewhat disdainfully. “Thank you, you are very good. But I think you have hardly a right to be critical. I should like to have some one’s opinion who isreallyinterested in the chapel. It was scarcely worth taking so much trouble to appear so the other day. You know what Liston said about the penny? ‘It is not the value of the thing, but one hates to be imposed upon.’ Delusions are not so agreeable as illusions, Major Keene.”
Royston was very much pleased. He liked above all things to see a woman stand up to him defiantly; indeed, if they were worth “setting to with,” he always tried to get them to spar as soon as possible, to find out if they had any idea of hitting straight. He did not betray his satisfaction, though, as he answered quite calmly, “Pardon me, I could not be so impertinent as to attempt a ‘delusion’ on so short an acquaintance. I deny the charge distinctly. I believe that residence in Dorade, and a certain amount of subscription, constitute a member of Mr. Fullarton’s congregation, and give one a franchise. He has not thought fit to excommunicate me publicly as yet. I really was interested in the subject, for I fully meant to go to church this morning, and I mean to go again.”
Insensibly they had walked on in advance of the others. She shook her head with a saucy incredulity—“I am no believer in sudden conversions.”
“Nor I; I was not speaking of such; but I am very fond of good singing, and I would go any where to hear it. Did our chaplain include hypocrisy among my other disqualifications for decent society last night? I understand he is good enough to furnish a catalogue of them to all new comers.”
Cecil certainly had not abused him then; so there was not the slightest necessity for her looking guilty and conscious, both of which she felt she was doing as she replied—“I am sure Mr. Fullarton would not asperse any one’s character knowingly. He could only speak from a sense of duty, perhaps not a pleasant one.”
“Quite so,” said Royston; “I don’t quarrel with him for any fair professional move. If he thinks it necessary or expedient to prejudice indifferent people against me, he is clearly right to do so. Ah! I see, you think I dislike him. I don’t, indeed. Morally and physically, he seems a little too unctuous, that’s all. Capital clergyman for a cold climate! Fancy how useful he would be in an Arctic expedition. They might save his salary in Arnott’s stoves: I’m certain heradiates.”
Miss Tresilyan knew that it was wrong to smile. But she had an unfortunately quick perception of the ridiculous, and the struggles of principle against a sense of humor were not always successful. She would not give up her point, though. “I can not think that you judge him fairly,” she persisted.
“Perhaps not; but there is a large class who would scarcely be much moved by stronger and abler words than, I suppose, we heard to-day—spoken as they were spoken. These preachers won’t study the fitness of things; that’s the worst of it. I have known a garrison chaplain deliver a discourse that, I am convinced, was composed for a visitation. It seems absurd to hear a man warning us against a particular sin, and threatening us with all sorts of penalties if we indulge in it, when it is impossible that he himself should ever have felt the temptation. We want some one who can find out the harmless side of our character, as well as the diseased part, and work upon it. Such a person may be as strict and harsh as he pleases, but he is listened to.” He paused for a moment, and went on in a graver tone—“I think it might have done evenmesome good, when I was younger, to have talked for half an hour with the man who wrote ‘How Amyas threw his sword away.’”
Cecil could not disagree with him now, nor did she wish to do so. She liked those last words of his better than any he had spoken. Remember, she was born and bred in the honest west country, where one, at least, of their own prophets hath honor. If you want to indulge your enthusiasm for the Rector of Eversley, let your next walking-tour turn thitherward; for on all the sea-board from Portsmouth to Penzance, there is never a woman—maid, wife, or widow—that will say you nay.
Keene saw his advantage, but was far too wise to follow it up then. The weaker sex, as a rule, are acute but not very close reasoners; they mix up their majors and minors with a charming recklessness; and, if innocent of nothing else, are generally guiltless of a syllogism. It follows that, in the course of an argument, it is easy enough to entangle them in their talk. When such a chance occurs, don’t come down on your pretty antagonist with “I thought you said so and so,” but be politic as well as generous, and pass it by. They will do more justice to your self-denial than they would have done to your dialectic talents. Corinna loves to be contradicted, but hates to be convinced, and dreads no monster so much as a short-horned—dilemma. She may forgive the first offense as inadvertent, but “one more such victory and you are lost.” Think how often clemency has succeeded where severity would have failed. What did that discreet Eastern emir, when he found his fair young wife sleeping in a garden, where she had no earthly business to be? He laid his drawn sabre softly across her neck, and retired without breaking her slumbers. The cold blade was the first thing Zuleika felt when she woke; I can not guess what her sensations were; but when she gave the weapon back to her solemn lord,25she pressed her rosy lips thrice on the blue steel, and made a vow that she most probably kept; and Hussein Bey never was happier, than when he drew her back to his broad breast, looking into her face silently with his calm, grave smile.
I fancy our sisters enter into an argument with more simple good faith and eagerness than we are wont to indulge in; so that it is probably easier to tease and exasperate them, which is amusing enough while it lasts. But no doubt it hurts them sometimes more than we are aware of; and, after all, breaking a butterfly on the wheel is poor pastime, and not a very athletic sport. The glory, too, to be won is so small that it scarcely compensates for the pain we inflict, and may, perchance, eventuallyfeel. Is Achilles inclined to be proud of the strength of his arm, or the keenness of his falchion, as he grovels in the dust at the slain Amazon’s side? Nay, he would give half his laurels to be able to close that awful gaping wound—to see the proud lips soften for a moment from their immutable scorn—to detect the faintest tremor in the long white limbs that never will stir again.
The solemnity of these illustrations, in which battles, murders, and sudden deaths are mingled, will prove that I regard the subject as by no means trivial, but am sincerely anxious to warn my comrades against yielding to a temptation which assails us daily.
On these principles the Cool Captain acted, then. His gay laugh opened a bridge to the retreating enemy as he said, “How my poor character must have been worried last night! I wish Mrs. Molyneux had been there. She is good enough to stand up for her old friend sometimes. I could hardly expectyouto take so much trouble for a very recent acquaintance.”
“Of course not,” replied Cecil. “I was not in a position to contradict any thing, even if I had wished to do so. But, I remember, I thought I would speak to you about my brother. You know enough of him already to guess why I am nervous about him. I almost forced him to take me abroad; and he is exposed to so many more dangers here than at home. Please, don’t encourage him to play, or tempt him into any thing wrong. Indeed, I don’t mean to speak harshly or uncourteously, so you need not be angry.”
She raised her eyes to her companion’s with a pretty pleading. He met them fairly. Whatever his intentions might be, no one could say that the major ever shrank from looking friend or foe in the face.
“I am sorry that you should think the warning necessary. Supposing that it were so—on my honor, he is safe from me. I should like to alter your opinion of me, if it were possible. Will you give me a chance?” The others joined them before she could reply; but more than once that day Cecil wondered whether, even during their short acquaintance, she had not sometimes dealt scanty justice to Royston Keene.
Chapter division
Thereis a pleasant theory—that every woman may be loved, once at least in her life, if she so wills it. It must be true: how, otherwise, can you account for the number of hard-featured visages—lighted up by no redeeming ray of intellect—that preside at “good men’s feasts,” and confront them at their firesides? How do the husbands manage? Do they, from constantly contemplating an inferior type of creation, lose their comparing and discriminating powers, so that, like the Australian and Pacific aborigines, they come to regard as points of beauty peculiarities that a more advanced civilization shrinks from? Or do their visual organs actually become impaired, like those of captives who can see clearly only in their own dungeon’s twilight, and flinch before the full glare of day? If neither of these is the case, they must sometimes sympathize with that dreary dilemma of Bias which the adust Aldrich quotes in grim irony—Εἴ μὲν κάλην, ἕξεις κοίνην, εἰ δ᾽ αἰσχρὰν, ποίνην. (Whether of the two horns impaled the sage of Priēne?) Some, of course, are fully alive to the outward defects of their partners; but few are so candid as the old Berkshire squire, who, looking after his spouse as she left the room, said, pensively, “Excellent creature, that! I’ve liked her better every day for twenty years, but I’ve always thought she’s the plainest-headed woman in England!” Fewer still would wish to emulate the sturdy plain-speaking of the “gudeman” in the Scottish ballad, who, when his witch-wife boasted how she bloomed into beauty after drinking the “wild-flower wine,” replied, undauntedly,
“Ye lee, ye lee, ye ill womyn,Sae loud I hear ye lee;The ill-faured’st wife i’ the kingdom of FifeIs comely compared wi’ thee.”
“Ye lee, ye lee, ye ill womyn,
Sae loud I hear ye lee;
The ill-faured’st wife i’ the kingdom of Fife
Is comely compared wi’ thee.”
He could stand all the other marvels of the Sabbat, butthatwas too much for his credulity.
No doubt many of these Ugly Princesses are endowed with excellent sterling qualities. The old Border legend says there never was a happier match than that of “Muckle-mou’ed Meg,” though her husband married her reluctantly with a halter tightening round his neck. But such advantages lie below the surface, and take some time in being appreciated. The first process of captivation is what I don’t understand—unless, indeed, there are sparkles in the quartz, invisible to common eyes, that tell the experienced gold-seeker of a rich vein near.
Well, we will allow the proposition with which we started; but do you suppose its converse would hold equally good—that every woman couldloveonce if she wished it? Nine out of ten of them would, I dare say, answer boldly in the affirmative; but in a few rather sad and weary faces you might read something more than a doubt about this; and lips, not so red and full as they once were, on which the wintry smile comes but rarely, could tell perhaps a different story. The precise mould that will fitsomefancies is as hard to find as the slipper of Cendrillon; and so, in default of the fairychaussure, the small white foot goes on its road unshod, and the stones and briers gall it cruelly.
With men it does not so much matter. They have always the counteracting resources of bodily and mental exertion, against which the affections can make but little head. Indeed, some of the most distinguished in arts, in arms, if not in song, seem to have gone down to their graves without ever giving themselves time to indulge in any one of these. Perhaps they never missed26a sentiment which would have been very much in their way if they had felt it. If all tales are true, mathematics are a very effectual Nénuphar. But with women it is different.Theycan’t be always clambering up unexplored peaks, or inventing improvements in gunnery, or commanding irregular corps, or bringing in faultless reform bills, or finding out constellations, or shooting big game, or resorting to any ofourthousand-and-one safety-valves to superfluous excitement. Are crochet, or crossed letters, or charity-schools, or even Cochins andCrève-cœurs, so entirely engrossing as to drown forever the reproaches of nature, that will make herself heard? If not, surely the most phlegmatically proper of her sex does sometimes feel sad and dissatisfied when she thinks that she has never been able to care for any one more than for her own brother. It must seem hard that, when the frost of old age comes on, she shall not have even a memory to look upon to warm her. But in the world here, such temptations to discontent abound; but the most guileless votary of theSacré Cœurmight confess regrets and misgivings like these without meriting any extra allowance of fast and scourge.
If we were to reckon up the cases we have heard of women who have “gone wrong,” and made, if notmésalliances, at least marriages inexplicable on any rational grounds, it would fill up a long summer’s day, even without drawing on darker recollections of post-nuptial transgression. In these last cases, perhaps, the altar and absolute indifference was a more dangerous element than Mrs. Malaprop’s “little aversion,” which is, at all events, apositive, thing to work upon. Lethargies are harder to cure, they say, than fevers. Certainly they have the warning examples of others who have so erred, and paid for it by a life-long repentance; but that never has stopped them yet, and never will. Remember the reply of thedébutanteto her austere parent when the latter refused to take her to a ball, saying that “shehad seen the folly of such things.” “I want to see the folly of them too.” Few of us men can realize the feeling that, with our sisters, may account for, though not excuse, much folly and sin. They see others happy all around them: it is hard to fast when so many are feasting. So there comes a shameful sense of ignorance—a vague, eager desire for knowledge—a terror of an isolation deepening and darkening upon them, and a determination, at any risks, to balk at leastthatenemy—and so, like the poor lady of Shalott, they grow restless, and reckless, and rebellious at last. They are safe where they are, but the days have so much of dull sameness that there is a sore temptation in the unknown peril. “Better,” they say, “than the close atmosphere of the guarded castle and the phantasms of fairy-land, one draught of the fresh outer air—one glimpse of real life and nature—one taste of substantial joys and sorrows that shall wake all the pulses of womanhood, even though the experience be brief and dearly bought, though the web woven while we sat dreaming must surely be rent in twain—ay, even though the curse, too, may follow very swiftly, and the swans be waiting at the gate that shall bear us down to ourburying.”
If staid and cold-blooded virgins and matrons are not exempt from these disagreeable self-reproaches, how did it fare with Cecil Tresilyan, in whom the energy of a strong temperament was stirring like the spring-sap in a young oak-tree? Should she die conscious of the possession of such a wealth of love, with none to share or inherit it? She had seen such numbers of her friends and acquaintance “pair off,” that she began to envy at last the facility of attachment that she had been wont to hold in scorn. Very many reflections of “lovers lately wed” had been cast upon her mirror, and yet the One knightly shadow was long in coming. Can it be that yonder gleam through the trees is the flash of his distant armor?
I hope this illustrated edition of rather an old theory has not bored you much; because it would have been just as simple to have said at once that, as the days went on in Dorade, and they were thrown constantly into each other’s society, Major Keene began to monopolize much more of Cecil Tresilyan’s thoughts than she would have allowed if she could have helped it; for, though she considered Mr. Fullarton’s testimony unfairly biased by prejudice, she could not doubt that Royston was by no means the most eligible object to centre her young affections upon. He carefully avoided discussion or display of any of his peculiar opinions in her presence, and on such occasions seemed inclined to soften his habitually sardonic and depreciatory tone. Once or twice, when they did disagree, she observed that he contrived to make some one else take her side, and then argued the point, as long as he thought it worth while, with the last opponent. Beyond the courtesy which invariably marked his demeanor toward her sex, this was the only sign of especial deference that he had shown. She never could detect the faintest approach to the adulation that hundreds had paid her, and which she had wearied of long ago. Nevertheless, she knew perfectly that on many subjects, generally considered all-important, they differed as widely as the poles.
Perpetual struggles between the spirit and the flesh made Cecil’s heart an odd sort of debatable land; if she could not always insure success and supremacy to the right side, she certainly did endeavor to preserve the balance of power. Personally she rather disliked Mr. Fullarton, but she seemed to look upon him as the embodiment of a principle, and the symbol of an abstraction. He represented there the Establishment which she had always been taught to venerate; and so she felt bound, as far as possible, to favor and support him; just as Goring and Wilmot, and many more wild cavaliers, fearing neither God nor devil, mingled in their war-cry church as well as king. (Rather a rough comparison to apply to a well-intentioned demoiselle of the nineteenth century, but, I fancy, a correct one.) Thus, if she indulged herself in a longtête-à-têtewith Keene, she was sure to be extraordinarily civil to the chaplain soon after; and if she devoted herself for a whole evening to the society of the priest and his family, the soldier was likely to benefit by it on the morrow. Unluckily, the sacrifice of inclination was all ononeside.
The antagonists had never, as yet, come into open collision. It was not respect or fear that made them shy of the conflict, but rather a feeling, which neither could have explained to himself, resembling that of leaders of parties in the27House, who decline measuring their strength against each other on questions of minor importance, reserving themselves for the final crisis, when the want-of-confidence vote shall come on. Once only there was a chance of a skirmish—the merest affair of outposts.
Keene had been calling on the Tresilyans one evening, in the official capacity of bearer of a verbal message from Mrs. Molyneux. It was the simplest one imaginable; but as graver embassadors have done before him, liking his quarters he dallied over his mission. (If Geneva, instead of Paris, were chosen for the meeting of a Congress, would not several knotty points be decided much more speedily?) When, at last, all was settled, it seemed very natural that he should petition Cecil for “just one song;” and you know what that always comes to. Royston never would “turn over” if he could possibly avoid it; he considered it a willful waste of advantages, for the strain on his attention, slight as it might be, quite spoiled his appreciation of the melody. Perhaps he was right. As a rule, if one wanted to discover the one person about whose approval the faircantatriceis most solicitous, it would be well to looknotimmediately behind her ivory shoulder. At all events, he had made his peace with Miss Tresilyan on this point long ago. So he drew his arm-chair up near the piano, but out of her sight as she sang, and sat watching her intently through his half-closed eyelids.
I marvel not that in so many legends of witchery and seduction since theOdysseytheθεσπεσίη ἀοίδηhas borne its part. “But,” the Wanderer might say, replying against Circè’s warning, “have we not learned prudence and self-command from Athenè, the chaste Tritonid? Have not ten years under shield before Troy, and a thousand leagues of seafaring, made our hearts as hard as our hands, and our ears deaf to the charms of song? Thus much of wisdom, at least, hath come with grizzled hair, that we may mock at temptations that might have won us when our cheeks were in their down. O most divinely fair of goddesses! have we not resisted your own enchantments? Shall we go forth scathless from Ææa to perish on the Isle of the Sirens?” But the low, green hills are already on the weather beam, and we are aware of a sweet weird chant that steals over the water like a living thing, and smooths the ripple where it passes. How fares it with our philosophic Laertiades? Those signs look strangely unlike incitements to greater speed; and what mean those struggles to get loose? Well, perhaps, for the hero that the good hemp holds firm, and that Peribates and Eurylochus spring up to strengthen his bonds; well, that the wax seals fast the ears of those sturdy old sea-dogs who stretch to their oars till Ocean grows hoary behind the blades; or nobler bones might soon be added to the myriads that lie bleaching in the meadow, half hidden by its flowers. It was not, then, so very trivial, the counsel that she gave in parting kindness—
Κίρκη ἐϋπλόκαμος, δεινὴ θεὸς αὐδήεσσα.
Κίρκη ἐϋπλόκαμος, δεινὴ θεὸς αὐδήεσσα.
Are we in our generation wiser than the “man of many wiles?” Dinner is over, and every one is going out into the pleasance, to listen to the nightingales.
“It will be delicious; there is nothing I should like so much; but I—I sprained my ankle in jumping that gate; and Amy” (that’s “my cousin who happens to sing”), “I heard you cough three times this morning.Youwon’t be so imprudent as to risk the night air? Ah! they are gone at last; and now, Amy dear—good, kindest Amy!—open the especial crimson book quickly, and give me first your own pet song, and then mine, and then ‘The Three Fishers,’ and then ‘Maud,’ and then, I suppose, they will be coming back again; but by that time, they may be as enthusiastic as they please, we shall be able to meet them fairly.”
Things have changed since David’s day; spirits are raised sometimes now, as well as laid, by harp and song. In good truth, they are not always evil ones.
On that night, Royston Keene listened to the sweet voice that seemed to knock at the gates of his heart—gates shut so long that the bars had rusted in their staples—not loudly or imperiously, but powerful in its plaintive appeal, like that of those one dearly loved, standing without in the bitter cold, and pleading—“Ah! let me in!” He listened till a pleasant, dreamy feeling ofdomesticitybegan to creep over him that he had never known before. He could realize, then, that there were circumstances under which a man might easily dispense with high play, and hard riding, and hard flirting (to give it a mild name), and hard drinking, and other excitements which habit had almost turned into necessities, without missing any one of them. There were two words which ought to have put all these fancies to flight, as the writing on the wall scattered the guests of Belshazzar—“Too Late.” But he turned his head away, and would not read them. He had actually succeeded in ignoring another disenchanting reality—the presence of Mrs. Danvers. That estimable person seemed more than usually fidgetty, and disposed to make herself, as well as others, uncomfortable. There was evidently something on her mind from her glancing so often and so nervously at the door. It opened at last softly, just as Cecil had finished “The Swallow,” and revealed Mr. Fullarton standing on the threshold. The latter was not well pleased with the scene before him. There was an air of comfort about it which, under the circumstances, he thought decidedly wrong; besides which he could not get rid of a vague misgiving (the rarest thing with him!) that his visit was scarcely welcome or well timed.
Miss Tresilyan rose instantly to greet the intruder (yes, that’s the right word) with her usual calm courtesy. Very few words had been exchanged for the last hour, but she was perfectly aware—what woman is not?—of the influence she had exercised over her listener. That consciousness had made her strangely happy. So,shecertainly could have survived the chaplain’s absence. Royston Keene rose too, quite slowly. There are compounds, you know, that always remain soft and ductile in a certain temperature, but harden into stone at the first contact with the outer air. It was just so with him. Even as he moved, all gentle feelings were struck dead in his heart, and he stood up a harder man than ever, with no kinder emotion left than bitter anger at the interruption. He could not always28command his eyes, he knew; and, if he had not passed his hand quickly over his face just then, their expression might have thrilled through the new-comer disagreeably.
“Cecil, dearest,” Mrs. Danvers said, with rather an awkward assumption of being perfectly at her ease, “Mr. Fullarton was good enough to say he would come and read to us this evening, and explain some passages. I don’t know why I forgot to tell you. I meant to do so, but—” Her look finished the sentence. Royston, like the others, guessed what she meant, andyoumay guess how he thanked her.
Cecil colored with vexation. She was so anxious to prevent Mrs. Danvers from feeling dependent that she allowed her to take all sorts of liberties, and the amiable woman was not disposed to let the privilege fall into disuse. On the present occasion there was such an absurd incongruity of time and place that she might possibly have tried to evade the “exposition,” but she happened just then to meet Keene’s eye. The sarcasm there was not so carefully veiled as it usually was in her presence. Never yet was born Tresilyan who blenched from a challenge; so she answered at once to express “her sense of Mr. Fullarton’s kindness, and her regret that he had not come earlier in the evening.” If Royston had known how bitterly she despised herself for disingenuousness he would have been amply avenged.
Even while she was speaking he closed the piano very slowly and softly. It did not take him long to put on his impenetrable face, for when he turned round there was not a trace of anger left; the scarce suppressed taunt in Cecil’s last words moved him apparently no more than Mrs. Danvers’s glance of triumph.
“I owe you a thousand apologies,” he said, “for staying such an unwarrantable time, and quite as many thanks for the pleasantest two hours I have spent in Dorade. Don’t think I would detain you one moment from Mr. Fullarton and your devotional exercises. You know—no, youdon’tknow—the verse in the ballad: