CHAPTER IV.
A fortnighthas passed; we have been hither and thither; now we are at Lucerne. Peopled with better inhabitants, Lucerne might well do for Heaven. It is drawing towards eventide, and Elizabeth and I are sitting hand in hand on a quiet bench, under the shady linden trees, on a high hill up above the lake. There is nobody to see us, so we sit peaceably hand in hand. Up by the still and solemn monastery we came, with its small and narrow windows, calculated to hinder the holy fathers from promenading curious eyes on the world, the flesh, and thedevil, tripping past them in blue gauze veils: below us grass and green trees, houses with high-pitched roofs, little dormer-windows, and shutters yet greener than the grass; below us the lake in its rippleless peace, calm, quiet, motionless as Bethesda’s pool before the coming of the troubling angel.
“I said it was too good to last,” say I, doggedly, “did not I, only yesterday? Perfect peace, perfect sympathy, perfect freedom from nagging worries—when did such a state of things last more than two days?”
Elizabeth’s eyes are idly fixed on a little steamer, with a stripe of red along its side, and a tiny puff of smoke from its funnel, gliding along and cutting a narrow white track on Lucerne’s sleepy surface.
“This is the fifth false alarm of the gout having gone to his stomach within the last two years,” continue I, resentfully. “I declare to Heaven, that if it has not reallygone there this time, I’ll cut the whole concern.”
Let no one cast up their eyes in horror, imagining that it is my father to whom I am thus alluding; it is only a great uncle by marriage, in consideration of whose wealth and vague promises I have dawdled professionless through twenty-eight years of my life.
“Youmustnot go,” says Elizabeth, giving my hand an imploring squeeze. “The man in the Bible said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come;’ why should it be a less valid excuse now a days?”
“If I recollect rightly, it was considered rather a poor one even then,” reply I, dryly.
Elizabeth is unable to contradict this, she therefore only lifts two pouted lips (Monsieur Taine objects to the redness of English women’s mouths, but I do not) to be kissed, and says, “Stay.” I am good enough to comply with her unspoken request, thoughI remain firm with regard to her spoken one.
“My dearest child,” I say, with an air of worldly experience and superior wisdom, “kisses are very good things—in fact there are few better—but one cannot live upon them.”
“Let us try,” she says, coaxingly.
“I wonder which would get tired first?” I say, laughing. But she only goes on pleading, “Stay, stay.”
“HowcanI stay?” I cry, impatiently; “you talk as if Iwantedto go! Do you think it is any pleasanter to me to leave you than to you to be left? But you know his disposition, his rancorous resentment of fancied neglects. For the sake of two days’ indulgence, must I throw away what will keep us in ease and plenty to the end of our days?”
“I do not care for plenty,” she says, with alittle petulant gesture. “I do not see that rich people are any happier than poor ones. Look at the St. Clairs; they have £40,000 a-year, and she is a miserable woman, perfectly miserable, because her face gets red after dinner.”
“There will be no fear ofourfaces getting red after dinner,” say I, grimly, “for we shall have no dinner for them to get red after.”
A pause. My eyes stray away to the mountains. Pilatus on the right, with his jagged peak and slender snow-chains about his harsh neck; hill after hill rising silent, eternal, like guardian spirits standing hand in hand around their child, the lake. As I look, suddenly they have all flushed, as at some noblest thought, and over all their sullen faces streams an ineffable rosy joy—a solemn and wonderful effulgence, such as Israel saw reflected from the features of the Eternal in their prophet’s transfigured eyes. The unutterablepeace and stainless beauty of earth and sky seem to lie softly on my soul. “Would God I could stay! Would God all life could be like this!” I say, devoutly, and the aspiration has the reverent earnestness of a prayer.
“Why do you say, ‘Would God!’” she cries, passionately, “when it lies with yourself? Oh my dear love,” gently sliding her hand through my arm, and lifting wetly-beseeching eyes to my face, “I do not know why I insist upon it so much—I cannot tell you myself—I daresay I seem selfish and unreasonable—but I feel as if your going now would be the end of all things—as if——.” She breaks off suddenly.
“My child,” say I, thoroughly distressed, but still determined to have my own way, “you talk as if I were going for ever and a day; in a week, at the outside, I shall be back, and then you will thank me for the very thingfor which you now think me so hard and disobliging.”
“Shall I?” she answers, mournfully. “Well, I hope so.”
“You will not be alone, either; you will have Morris.”
“Yes.”
“And every day you will write me a long letter, telling me every single thing that you do, say, and think.”
“Yes.”
She answers me gently and obediently; but I can see that she is still utterly unreconciled to the idea of my absence.
“What is it that you are afraid of?” I ask, becoming rather irritated. “What do you suppose will happen to you?”
She does not answer; only a large tear falls on my hand, which she hastily wipes away with her pocket handkerchief, as if afraid of exciting my wrath.
“Can you give me any good reason why Ishouldstay?” I ask, dictatorially.
“None—none—only—stay—stay!”
But I am resolvednotto stay. Early the next morning I set off.