MINA LAURYIFromthe first part of the manuscript entitled ‘Passing Events,’ completed by Charlotte Brontë on her twentieth birthday, April 21st, 1836.C. W. H.MINA LAURYITheCross of Rivaulx!*Is that a name familiar to my readers? I rather think not. Listen, then. It is a green, delightful, and quiet place, half way between Angria and the foot of the Sydenham Hills, under the frown of Hawkscliffe, and on the edge of its royal forest. You see a fair house whose sash-windows are set in ivy grown thick and kept in trim order. Over the front door there is a little porch of trellis-work, all the summer covered with a succession of verdant leaves and pink roses: globes, buds, and full-blown blossoms. Within this in fine weather the door is constantly open and reveals a passage terminating in a staircase of low white steps traced up the middle by a brilliant carpet. There are no decided grounds laid out about the Cross of Rivaulx; but a lawn-like greenness surrounds it, and the last remnants of Hawkscliffe shade it in the form of many wild-rose trees and a few lofty elms. You look in vain for anything like a wall or gate to shut it in. The only landmark consists in an old obelisk with moss and wild-flowers at its base and a half-obliterated crucifix sculptured on its side. Well, this is no very presuming place, but on a June evening not seldom have I seen a figure whom every eye in Angria might recognise stride out of the domestic gloom of that little hall and stand in pleasant leisure under the porch whose flowers and leaves were disturbed by the contact of his curls. It is but a lodge to the mighty towers of Hawkscliffe, which being five miles distant buried in the chase are of less convenient access. The day is breezeless, quite still and warm. The sun far declined, for afternoon is just melting into evening, sheds a deep amber light. A cheerful air surrounds the mansion, whose windows are up, its door as usual hospitably apart; and the broad passage reverberates with a lively conversational hum from the rooms which open upon it. The day is of that perfectly mild, sunny kind that by an irresistible influence draws people out into the balmy air; and see, there are two gentlemen lounging easily in the porch sipping coffee from the cups they have brought from the drawing-room, and a third has stretched himself on the soft moss in the shadow of the obelisk. But for these figures the landscape would be one of exquisite repose. They break the enchantment of sun, sky, pleasant home, and waveless trees. Their dress is military: they are officers from Angria, from the headquarters of Zamorna’s grand army. Two at least are of this description. The other, reclining on the grass, a slight figure in black, wears a civil dress. That is Mr. Warner, the Home Secretary. Another person was standing by him, whom I should not have omitted to describe. It was a fine girl dressed in rich black satin with ornaments like those of a bandit’s wife, in which a whole fortune seemed to have been expended; but no wonder, for they had doubtless been the gifts of a king! In her ears (she was not too refined for the barbaric magnificence of earrings) hung two long clear drops red as fire and suffused with a purple tint that showed them to be the true oriental ruby. Bright, delicate links of gold circled her neck again and again; and a cross of gems lay on her breast, the centre stone of which was a locket enclosing a ringlet of dark brown hair. With that little soft curl she would not have parted for a kingdom.Warner’s eyes were fixed with interest on Miss Laury as she stood over him, a model of beautiful vigour and glowing health, a kind of military erectness in her form so elegantly built, and in the manner in which her neck sprung from her bust and was placed with graceful uprightness on her falling shoulders. Her waist too falling in behind, and her fine slender foot supporting her in a regulated position, plainly indicated familiarity from her childhood with the sergeants’ drill.All the afternoon she had been entertaining: her exalted guests,—the two in the porch were no other than Lord Hartford and Enara,*and conversing with them frankly and cheerfully, but with a total absence of levity, a dash of seriousness, an habitual intentness of purpose that had more than once attracted to her the admiring glance of the Home Secretary. These and Lord Arundel were the only friends she had in the world. Female acquaintance she never sought, nor if she had sought would she have found them. And so sagacious, clever, and earnest was she in all she said and did that the haughty aristocrats did not hesitate to communicate with her often on matters of first-rate importance. Mr. Warner was now talking to her about himself.‘My dear madam,’ he was saying in his imperious but still dulcet tone, ‘it is unreasonable that you should remain thus exposed to danger. I am your friend; yes, madam, your true friend. Why do you not hear me and attend to my representations of the case? Angria is an unsafe place for you; you ought to leave it.’The lady shook her head: ‘Never till my master compels me; his land is my land.’‘But—but, Miss Laury, you know that our army has no warrant from the Almighty of conquest. This invasion may be successful, at least for a time, and then what becomes of you? When the duke’s nation is wrestling with destruction, his glory sunk in deep waters, and himself diving desperately to recover it, can he waste a thought or a moment on a woman? You will be at the tender mercies of Quashia,*and of Sheik Medina,—I mean of the detestable renegade Gordon,—before you are aware.’Mina smiled. ‘I am resolved,’ said she. ‘My master himself shall not force me to leave him. You know I am hardened, Warner; shame and reproach have no effect on me. I do not care for being called a camp-follower. In peace and pleasure all the ladies in Africa would be at the duke’s beck; in war and suffering he shall not lack one poor peasant girl. Why, sir, I’ve nothing else to exist for; I’ve no other interest in life. Just to stand by His Grace and watch him and anticipate his wishes, or when I cannot do that to execute them like lightning when they are signified; to wait on him when he is sick or wounded, to hear his groans and bear his heartrending animal-patience in enduring pain; to breathe if I can my own inexhaustible health and energy into him; and oh! if it were practicable, to take his fever and agony, to guard his interests, to take on my shoulders power from him that galls me with its weight; to fill gaps in his mighty train of service that nobody else would dare to step into; to do all that, sir, is to fulfil the destiny I was born to. I know I am of no repute among society at large, because I have devoted myself so wholly to one man. And I know that he very seldom troubles himself to think of what I do; and has never and can never appreciate the unusual feelings of subservience, the total self-sacrifice I offer at his shrine. But then he gives me my reward, and that an abundant one. Mr. Warner, when I was at Fort Adrian and had all the yoke of governing the garrison and military household I used to rejoice in my responsibility and to feel firmer the heavier the weight was assigned me to support. And when my master came over, as he often did, to take one of his general surveys, or on a hunting expedition with some of you, his officers, I had such delights in ordering the banquets and entertainments and in seeing the fires kindled up and chandeliers lighted in those dark halls, knowing for whom the feast was made ready; and it gave me a feeling of ecstasy to hear my young master’s voice as he spoke to you or Arundel or to that stately Hartford, and to see him moving about secure and powerful in his own stronghold, to know what true hearts he had about him, assured as I was that his generals and ministers were men of steel, and that his vassals under my rule were trusty as the very ramparts they garrisoned. The last summer evening that he came here the sun and flowers and quietness brightened his noble features with such happiness I could tell his heart was at rest, for as he lay in the shade where you are now I heard him hum the airs he long ago played on his guitar at Mornington. I was rewarded then to feel that the house I kept was pleasant enough to make him forget Angria, and recur to home. The west, the sweet west, is both his home and mine.’Mina paused and looked solemnly at the sun now softened in its shine and hanging exceedingly low. In a moment her eyes fell again on Warner. They seemed to have absorbed radiance from what they had gazed on. Light like an arrow-point glanced in them as she said:‘This is my time to follow. Ill not be robbed of those hours of blissful danger when I may be continually with him. My kind, noble master never likes to see my tears, and I will weep before him night and day till he grants what I wish. I am not afraid of danger. I have strong nerves. I don’t wish to fight like an Amazon; and fatigue I never felt. I will die or be with him.’‘What has fired your eyes so suddenly, Miss Laury?’ asked Lord Hartford, now advancing with Enara from their canopy of roses.‘The duke, the duke,’ muttered Henri Fernando; ‘she won’t leave him, I’ll be sworn.’‘I can’t, general,’ said Mina.‘No,’ answered the Italian; ‘and nobody shall force you. You shall have your own way, madam, whether it be right or wrong.’Before Miss Laury could answer a voice from within the mansion spoke her name.‘It is my lord!’ she exclaimed, and ran over the sward, through the porch, along the passage, to a summer parlour whose walls were painted a fine pale red, its mouldings burnished gilding, and its window-curtains artistical draperies of dark blue silk covered with gold waves and flowers. Here Zamorna sat alone. He had been writing. One or two letters, folded, sealed, and inscribed with western directions, lay on the table beside him. His gloves and cambric handkerchief with a crown wrought upon it in black hair appeared on his desk. He had not uncovered since entering the house three hours since; and either the weight of his dragoon helmet or the gloom of its impending plumes or else some inward feeling had clouded his face with a strange darkness. Mina closed the door and softly drew near. Without speaking or asking leave she began to busy herself in unclasping the heavy helmet. The duke smiled faintly as her little fingers played about his chin and luxuriant whiskers, and then, the load of brass and sable plumage being removed, as they arranged the pressed masses of glossy brown ringlets and touched with soft cool contact his feverish brow. Absorbed in the grateful task she hardly felt that His Majesty’s arm had encircled her waist, and yet she did feel it too and would have thought herself presumptuous to shrink from the endearment. She took it as a slave ought to take the caress of a Sultan, and obeying the gentle effort of his hand slowly sank on to the sofa by her master’s side.‘My little physician,’ said he, meeting her adoring but anxious upward gaze with the full light of his countenance, ‘you look at me as if you thought I was not well. Feel my pulse.’She folded that offered hand, white, supple, and soft with youth and delicate nature, in both her own, and whether Zamorna’s pulse beat rapidly or not his handmaid’s did as she felt the slender grasping fingers of the monarch laid quietly in hers. He did not wait for the report, but took his hand away again, and laying it on her raven curls said:‘So, Mina, you won’t leave me though I never did you any good in the world? Warner says you are resolved to continue in the scene of war.’‘To continue by your side, my lord.’‘But what shall I do with you, Mina? Where shall I put you? My little girl, what will the army say when they hear of your presence? You have read history? Recollect that it was Darius who carried his concubines to the field, not Alexander! The world will say: “Zamorna attends to his own pleasures and cares not how his men suffer.”’Mina writhed at these words as if the iron had entered into her soul. A vivid burning flush crimsoned her cheek, and tears of shame and bitter self-reproach gushed at once into her bright black eyes. Zamorna was touched acutely.‘Nay, my little girl,’ said he, redoubling his caresses and speaking in his most soothing tone, ‘never weep about it. It grieves me to hurt your feelings, but you desire an impossibility, and I must use strong language to convince you that I cannot grant it.’‘Oh, don’t refuse me again,’ sobbed Miss Laury. ‘I’ll bear all infamy and contempt to be allowed to follow you, my lord. My lord, I’ve served you for many years most faithfully, and I seldom ask a favour of you. Don’t reject the first request of the kind I have ever made.’The duke shook his head, and the meeting of his lips, too placid for the firm compression, told that he was not to be moved.‘If you should receive a wound, if you should fall sick,’ continued Mina, ‘what can surgeons and physicians do for you? They cannot watch you and wait on you and worship you like me, and you do not seem well now. The bloom is so faded on your complexion, and the flesh is wasted round your eyes. Do not look so calmly resolved: let me go!’Zamorna withdrew his arm from her waist. ‘I must be displeased before you cease to importune me,’ said he. ‘Mina, look at that letter. Read the direction,’ pointing to one he had been writing. She obeyed. It was addressed to, ‘Her Royal Highness, Mary Henrietta, Duchess of Zamorna.’‘Must I pay no attention to the feelings of that lady?’ pursued the duke, whom the duties of war and the conflict of some internal emotions seemed to render peculiarly stern. ‘Her public claims must be respected whether I love her or not.’Miss Laury shrunk into herself. Not another word did she venture to breathe. An unconscious wish of wild intensity filled her that she were dead and buried, and insensible to the shame that overwhelmed her. She saw Zamorna’s finger with the ring on it still pointing to that awful name, a name that raised no impulse of hatred: far too high and blessed did the exalted lady seem for that; but only bitter humiliation and self-abasement. She stole from her master’s side feeling that she had no more right to sit there than a fawn has to share the den of a royal lion; and murmuring that she was very sorry for her folly, was about to glide in dismay and despair from the room. But the duke rising up arrested her, and bending his lofty stature over her as she crouched before him folded her again in his arms. His countenance relaxed not a moment from its sternness, nor did the gloom leave his magnificent but worn features as he said:‘I will make no apologies for what I have said, because I know, Mina, that as I hold you now you feel fully recompensed for my severity. Before I depart I will speak to you one word of comfort which you may remember when I am far away and perhaps dead. My dear girl! I know and appreciate all you have done, all you have resigned, and all you have endured, for my sake. I repay you for it with one coin: with what alone to you will be of greater worth than worlds without it. I give you such true and fond love as a master can give to the fairest and loveliest vassal that ever was bound to him in feudal allegiance. You may never feel the touch of Zamorna’s lips again. There, Mina!’ And fervently and almost fiercely he pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘Go to your chamber; to-morrow you must leave for the west.’‘Obedient till death,’ was Miss Laury’s answer as she closed the door and disappeared.• • • • • • •C. Brontë,April 21st, 1836.
I
Fromthe first part of the manuscript entitled ‘Passing Events,’ completed by Charlotte Brontë on her twentieth birthday, April 21st, 1836.C. W. H.
Fromthe first part of the manuscript entitled ‘Passing Events,’ completed by Charlotte Brontë on her twentieth birthday, April 21st, 1836.
C. W. H.
MINA LAURY
TheCross of Rivaulx!*Is that a name familiar to my readers? I rather think not. Listen, then. It is a green, delightful, and quiet place, half way between Angria and the foot of the Sydenham Hills, under the frown of Hawkscliffe, and on the edge of its royal forest. You see a fair house whose sash-windows are set in ivy grown thick and kept in trim order. Over the front door there is a little porch of trellis-work, all the summer covered with a succession of verdant leaves and pink roses: globes, buds, and full-blown blossoms. Within this in fine weather the door is constantly open and reveals a passage terminating in a staircase of low white steps traced up the middle by a brilliant carpet. There are no decided grounds laid out about the Cross of Rivaulx; but a lawn-like greenness surrounds it, and the last remnants of Hawkscliffe shade it in the form of many wild-rose trees and a few lofty elms. You look in vain for anything like a wall or gate to shut it in. The only landmark consists in an old obelisk with moss and wild-flowers at its base and a half-obliterated crucifix sculptured on its side. Well, this is no very presuming place, but on a June evening not seldom have I seen a figure whom every eye in Angria might recognise stride out of the domestic gloom of that little hall and stand in pleasant leisure under the porch whose flowers and leaves were disturbed by the contact of his curls. It is but a lodge to the mighty towers of Hawkscliffe, which being five miles distant buried in the chase are of less convenient access. The day is breezeless, quite still and warm. The sun far declined, for afternoon is just melting into evening, sheds a deep amber light. A cheerful air surrounds the mansion, whose windows are up, its door as usual hospitably apart; and the broad passage reverberates with a lively conversational hum from the rooms which open upon it. The day is of that perfectly mild, sunny kind that by an irresistible influence draws people out into the balmy air; and see, there are two gentlemen lounging easily in the porch sipping coffee from the cups they have brought from the drawing-room, and a third has stretched himself on the soft moss in the shadow of the obelisk. But for these figures the landscape would be one of exquisite repose. They break the enchantment of sun, sky, pleasant home, and waveless trees. Their dress is military: they are officers from Angria, from the headquarters of Zamorna’s grand army. Two at least are of this description. The other, reclining on the grass, a slight figure in black, wears a civil dress. That is Mr. Warner, the Home Secretary. Another person was standing by him, whom I should not have omitted to describe. It was a fine girl dressed in rich black satin with ornaments like those of a bandit’s wife, in which a whole fortune seemed to have been expended; but no wonder, for they had doubtless been the gifts of a king! In her ears (she was not too refined for the barbaric magnificence of earrings) hung two long clear drops red as fire and suffused with a purple tint that showed them to be the true oriental ruby. Bright, delicate links of gold circled her neck again and again; and a cross of gems lay on her breast, the centre stone of which was a locket enclosing a ringlet of dark brown hair. With that little soft curl she would not have parted for a kingdom.
Warner’s eyes were fixed with interest on Miss Laury as she stood over him, a model of beautiful vigour and glowing health, a kind of military erectness in her form so elegantly built, and in the manner in which her neck sprung from her bust and was placed with graceful uprightness on her falling shoulders. Her waist too falling in behind, and her fine slender foot supporting her in a regulated position, plainly indicated familiarity from her childhood with the sergeants’ drill.
All the afternoon she had been entertaining: her exalted guests,—the two in the porch were no other than Lord Hartford and Enara,*and conversing with them frankly and cheerfully, but with a total absence of levity, a dash of seriousness, an habitual intentness of purpose that had more than once attracted to her the admiring glance of the Home Secretary. These and Lord Arundel were the only friends she had in the world. Female acquaintance she never sought, nor if she had sought would she have found them. And so sagacious, clever, and earnest was she in all she said and did that the haughty aristocrats did not hesitate to communicate with her often on matters of first-rate importance. Mr. Warner was now talking to her about himself.
‘My dear madam,’ he was saying in his imperious but still dulcet tone, ‘it is unreasonable that you should remain thus exposed to danger. I am your friend; yes, madam, your true friend. Why do you not hear me and attend to my representations of the case? Angria is an unsafe place for you; you ought to leave it.’
The lady shook her head: ‘Never till my master compels me; his land is my land.’
‘But—but, Miss Laury, you know that our army has no warrant from the Almighty of conquest. This invasion may be successful, at least for a time, and then what becomes of you? When the duke’s nation is wrestling with destruction, his glory sunk in deep waters, and himself diving desperately to recover it, can he waste a thought or a moment on a woman? You will be at the tender mercies of Quashia,*and of Sheik Medina,—I mean of the detestable renegade Gordon,—before you are aware.’
Mina smiled. ‘I am resolved,’ said she. ‘My master himself shall not force me to leave him. You know I am hardened, Warner; shame and reproach have no effect on me. I do not care for being called a camp-follower. In peace and pleasure all the ladies in Africa would be at the duke’s beck; in war and suffering he shall not lack one poor peasant girl. Why, sir, I’ve nothing else to exist for; I’ve no other interest in life. Just to stand by His Grace and watch him and anticipate his wishes, or when I cannot do that to execute them like lightning when they are signified; to wait on him when he is sick or wounded, to hear his groans and bear his heartrending animal-patience in enduring pain; to breathe if I can my own inexhaustible health and energy into him; and oh! if it were practicable, to take his fever and agony, to guard his interests, to take on my shoulders power from him that galls me with its weight; to fill gaps in his mighty train of service that nobody else would dare to step into; to do all that, sir, is to fulfil the destiny I was born to. I know I am of no repute among society at large, because I have devoted myself so wholly to one man. And I know that he very seldom troubles himself to think of what I do; and has never and can never appreciate the unusual feelings of subservience, the total self-sacrifice I offer at his shrine. But then he gives me my reward, and that an abundant one. Mr. Warner, when I was at Fort Adrian and had all the yoke of governing the garrison and military household I used to rejoice in my responsibility and to feel firmer the heavier the weight was assigned me to support. And when my master came over, as he often did, to take one of his general surveys, or on a hunting expedition with some of you, his officers, I had such delights in ordering the banquets and entertainments and in seeing the fires kindled up and chandeliers lighted in those dark halls, knowing for whom the feast was made ready; and it gave me a feeling of ecstasy to hear my young master’s voice as he spoke to you or Arundel or to that stately Hartford, and to see him moving about secure and powerful in his own stronghold, to know what true hearts he had about him, assured as I was that his generals and ministers were men of steel, and that his vassals under my rule were trusty as the very ramparts they garrisoned. The last summer evening that he came here the sun and flowers and quietness brightened his noble features with such happiness I could tell his heart was at rest, for as he lay in the shade where you are now I heard him hum the airs he long ago played on his guitar at Mornington. I was rewarded then to feel that the house I kept was pleasant enough to make him forget Angria, and recur to home. The west, the sweet west, is both his home and mine.’
Mina paused and looked solemnly at the sun now softened in its shine and hanging exceedingly low. In a moment her eyes fell again on Warner. They seemed to have absorbed radiance from what they had gazed on. Light like an arrow-point glanced in them as she said:
‘This is my time to follow. Ill not be robbed of those hours of blissful danger when I may be continually with him. My kind, noble master never likes to see my tears, and I will weep before him night and day till he grants what I wish. I am not afraid of danger. I have strong nerves. I don’t wish to fight like an Amazon; and fatigue I never felt. I will die or be with him.’
‘What has fired your eyes so suddenly, Miss Laury?’ asked Lord Hartford, now advancing with Enara from their canopy of roses.
‘The duke, the duke,’ muttered Henri Fernando; ‘she won’t leave him, I’ll be sworn.’
‘I can’t, general,’ said Mina.
‘No,’ answered the Italian; ‘and nobody shall force you. You shall have your own way, madam, whether it be right or wrong.’
Before Miss Laury could answer a voice from within the mansion spoke her name.
‘It is my lord!’ she exclaimed, and ran over the sward, through the porch, along the passage, to a summer parlour whose walls were painted a fine pale red, its mouldings burnished gilding, and its window-curtains artistical draperies of dark blue silk covered with gold waves and flowers. Here Zamorna sat alone. He had been writing. One or two letters, folded, sealed, and inscribed with western directions, lay on the table beside him. His gloves and cambric handkerchief with a crown wrought upon it in black hair appeared on his desk. He had not uncovered since entering the house three hours since; and either the weight of his dragoon helmet or the gloom of its impending plumes or else some inward feeling had clouded his face with a strange darkness. Mina closed the door and softly drew near. Without speaking or asking leave she began to busy herself in unclasping the heavy helmet. The duke smiled faintly as her little fingers played about his chin and luxuriant whiskers, and then, the load of brass and sable plumage being removed, as they arranged the pressed masses of glossy brown ringlets and touched with soft cool contact his feverish brow. Absorbed in the grateful task she hardly felt that His Majesty’s arm had encircled her waist, and yet she did feel it too and would have thought herself presumptuous to shrink from the endearment. She took it as a slave ought to take the caress of a Sultan, and obeying the gentle effort of his hand slowly sank on to the sofa by her master’s side.
‘My little physician,’ said he, meeting her adoring but anxious upward gaze with the full light of his countenance, ‘you look at me as if you thought I was not well. Feel my pulse.’
She folded that offered hand, white, supple, and soft with youth and delicate nature, in both her own, and whether Zamorna’s pulse beat rapidly or not his handmaid’s did as she felt the slender grasping fingers of the monarch laid quietly in hers. He did not wait for the report, but took his hand away again, and laying it on her raven curls said:
‘So, Mina, you won’t leave me though I never did you any good in the world? Warner says you are resolved to continue in the scene of war.’
‘To continue by your side, my lord.’
‘But what shall I do with you, Mina? Where shall I put you? My little girl, what will the army say when they hear of your presence? You have read history? Recollect that it was Darius who carried his concubines to the field, not Alexander! The world will say: “Zamorna attends to his own pleasures and cares not how his men suffer.”’
Mina writhed at these words as if the iron had entered into her soul. A vivid burning flush crimsoned her cheek, and tears of shame and bitter self-reproach gushed at once into her bright black eyes. Zamorna was touched acutely.
‘Nay, my little girl,’ said he, redoubling his caresses and speaking in his most soothing tone, ‘never weep about it. It grieves me to hurt your feelings, but you desire an impossibility, and I must use strong language to convince you that I cannot grant it.’
‘Oh, don’t refuse me again,’ sobbed Miss Laury. ‘I’ll bear all infamy and contempt to be allowed to follow you, my lord. My lord, I’ve served you for many years most faithfully, and I seldom ask a favour of you. Don’t reject the first request of the kind I have ever made.’
The duke shook his head, and the meeting of his lips, too placid for the firm compression, told that he was not to be moved.
‘If you should receive a wound, if you should fall sick,’ continued Mina, ‘what can surgeons and physicians do for you? They cannot watch you and wait on you and worship you like me, and you do not seem well now. The bloom is so faded on your complexion, and the flesh is wasted round your eyes. Do not look so calmly resolved: let me go!’
Zamorna withdrew his arm from her waist. ‘I must be displeased before you cease to importune me,’ said he. ‘Mina, look at that letter. Read the direction,’ pointing to one he had been writing. She obeyed. It was addressed to, ‘Her Royal Highness, Mary Henrietta, Duchess of Zamorna.’
‘Must I pay no attention to the feelings of that lady?’ pursued the duke, whom the duties of war and the conflict of some internal emotions seemed to render peculiarly stern. ‘Her public claims must be respected whether I love her or not.’
Miss Laury shrunk into herself. Not another word did she venture to breathe. An unconscious wish of wild intensity filled her that she were dead and buried, and insensible to the shame that overwhelmed her. She saw Zamorna’s finger with the ring on it still pointing to that awful name, a name that raised no impulse of hatred: far too high and blessed did the exalted lady seem for that; but only bitter humiliation and self-abasement. She stole from her master’s side feeling that she had no more right to sit there than a fawn has to share the den of a royal lion; and murmuring that she was very sorry for her folly, was about to glide in dismay and despair from the room. But the duke rising up arrested her, and bending his lofty stature over her as she crouched before him folded her again in his arms. His countenance relaxed not a moment from its sternness, nor did the gloom leave his magnificent but worn features as he said:
‘I will make no apologies for what I have said, because I know, Mina, that as I hold you now you feel fully recompensed for my severity. Before I depart I will speak to you one word of comfort which you may remember when I am far away and perhaps dead. My dear girl! I know and appreciate all you have done, all you have resigned, and all you have endured, for my sake. I repay you for it with one coin: with what alone to you will be of greater worth than worlds without it. I give you such true and fond love as a master can give to the fairest and loveliest vassal that ever was bound to him in feudal allegiance. You may never feel the touch of Zamorna’s lips again. There, Mina!’ And fervently and almost fiercely he pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘Go to your chamber; to-morrow you must leave for the west.’
‘Obedient till death,’ was Miss Laury’s answer as she closed the door and disappeared.
• • • • • • •
C. Brontë,
April 21st, 1836.