Valencia meanwhile defied old Lady Knockdown (whose horror and wrath knew no bounds), and walked off one morning with her maid to see her prodigal sister; a visit which not only brought comfort to the weary heart, but important practical benefits. For going home, she seized upon Scoutbush, and so moved his heart with pathetic pictures of Lucia's unheard-of penury and misery, that his heart was softened; and though he absolutely refused to call on Vavasour, he made him an offer, through Lucia, of Penalva Court for the time being; and thither they went—perhaps the best thing they could have done.
There, of course, they were somewhat more comfortable. A very cheap country, a comfortable house rent free, and a lovely neighbourhood, were a pleasant change after dear London lodgings: but it is a question whether the change made Elsley a better man.
In the first place, he became a more idle man. The rich enervating climate began to tell upon his mind, as it did upon Lucia's health. He missed that perpetual spur of nervous excitement, change of society, influx of ever-fresh objects, which makes London, after all, the best place in the world for hard working; and which makes even a walk along the streets an intellectual tonic. In the soft and luxurious West Country Nature invited him to look at her, and dream; and dream he did, more and more, day by day. He was tired, too—as who would not be?—of the drudgery of writing for his daily bread; and relieved from the importunities of publishers and printers'-devils, he sent up fewer and fewer contributions to the magazines. He would keep his energies for a great work; poetry was, after all, his forte: he would not fritter himself away on prose and periodicals, but would win for himself, etc. etc. If he made a mistake, it was at least a pardonable one.
But Elsley became not only a more idle, but a more morose man. He began to feel the evils of solitude. There was no one near with whom he could hold rational converse, save an antiquarian parson or two; and parsons were not to his taste. So, never measuring his wits against those of his peers, and despising the few men whom he met as inferior to himself, he grew more and more wrapt up in his own thoughts and his own tastes. His own poems, even to the slightest turn of expression, became more and more important to him. He grew more jealous of criticism, more confident in his own little theories, about this and that, more careless of the opinion of his fellowmen, and, as a certain consequence, more unable to bear the little crosses and contradictions of daily life; and as Lucia, having brought one and another child safely into the world, settled down into motherhood, he became less and less attentive to her, and more and more attentive to that self which was fast becoming the centre of his universe.
True, there were excuses for him; for whom are there none? He was poor and struggling; and it is much more difficult (as Becky Sharp, I think, pathetically observes) to be good when one is poor than when one is rich. It is (and all rich people should consider the fact) much more easy, if not to go to heaven, at least to think one is going thither, on three thousand a year, than on three hundred. Not only is respectability more easy, as is proved by the broad fact that it is the poor people who fill the gaols, and not the rich ones: but virtue, and religion—of the popular sort. It is undeniably more easy to be resigned to the will of Heaven, when that will seems tending just as we would have it; much more easy to have faith in the goodness of Providence, when that goodness seems safe in one's pocket in the form of bank-notes; and to believe that one's children are under the protection of Omnipotence, when one can hire for them in half an hour the best medical advice in London. One need only look into one's own heart to understand the disciples' astonishment at the news, that "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven."
"Who then can be saved?" asked they, being poor men, accustomed to see the wealthy Pharisees in possession of "the highest religious privileges, and means of grace." Who, indeed, if not the rich? If the noblemen, and the bankers, and the dowagers, and the young ladies who go to church, and read good books, and have been supplied from youth with the very best religious articles which money can procure, and have time for all manner of good works, and give their hundreds to charities, and head reformatory movements, and build churches, and work altar-cloths, and can taste all the preachers and father-confessors round London, one after another, as you would taste wines, till they find the spiritual panacea which exactly suits their complaint—if they are not sure of salvation, who can be saved?
Without further comment, the fact is left for the consideration of all readers; only let them not be too hard upon Elsley and Lucia, if, finding themselves sometimes literally at their wits' end, they went beyond their poor wits into the region where foolish things are said and done.
Moreover, Elsley's ill-temper (as well as Lucia's) had its excuses in physical ill-health. Poor fellow! Long years of sedentary work had begun to tell upon him; and while Tom Thurnall's chest, under the influence of hard work and oxygen, measured round perhaps six inches more than it had done sixteen years ago, Elsley's, thanks to stooping and carbonic acid, measured six inches less. Short breath, lassitude, loss of appetite, heartburn, and all that fair company of miseries which Mr. Cockle and his Antibilious Pills profess to cure, are no cheering bosom friends; but when a man's breast-bone is gradually growing into his stomach, they will make their appearance; and small blame to him whose temper suffers from their gentle hints that he has a mortal body as well as an immortal soul.
But most fretting of all was the discovery that Lucia knew—if not all about his original name—still enough to keep him in dread lest she should learn more.
It was now twelve months and more that this new terror had leapt up and stared in his face. He had left a letter about—a thing which he was apt to do—in which the Whitbury lawyer made some allusions to his little property; and he was sure that Lucia had seen it; the hated name of Briggs certainly she had not seen; for Elsley had torn it out the moment he opened the letter: but she had seen enough, as he soon found, to be certain that he had, at some time or other, passed under a different name.
If Lucia had been a more thoughtful or high-minded woman, she would have gone straight to her husband, and quietly and lovingly asked him to tell her all: but, in her left-handed Irish fashion, she kept the secret to herself, and thought it a very good joke to have him in her power, and to be able to torment him about that letter when he got out of temper. It never occurred, however, to her that his present name was the feigned one. She fancied that he had, in some youthful escapade, assumed the name to which the lawyer alluded. So the next time he was cross, she tried laughingly the effect of her newly-discovered spell; and was horror-struck at the storm which she evoked. In a voice of thunder, Elsley commanded her never to mention the subject again; and showed such signs of terror and remorse, that she obeyed him from that day forth, except when now and then she lost her temper as completely, too, as he. Little she thought, in her heedlessness, what a dark cloud of fear and suspicion, ever deepening and spreading, she had put between his heart and hers.
But if Elsley had dreaded her knowledge of his story, he dreaded ten times more Tom's knowledge of it. What if Thurnall should tell Lucia? What if Lucia should make a confidant of Thurnall? Women told their doctors everything; and Lucia, he knew too well, had cause to complain of him. Perhaps, thought he, maddened into wild suspicion by the sense of his own wrong-doing, she might complain of him; she might combine with Thurnall against him—for what purpose he knew not: but the wildest imaginations flashed across him, as he hurried desperately home, intending as soon as he got there to forbid Lucia's ever calling in his dreaded enemy. No, Thurnall should never cross his door again! On that one point he was determined, but on nothing else.
However, his intention was never fulfilled. For long before he reached home he began to feel himself thoroughly ill. His was a temperament upon which mental anxiety acts rapidly and severely; and the burning sun, and his rapid walk, combined with rage and terror to give him such a "turn" that, as he hurried down the lane, he found himself reeling like a drunken man. He had just time to hurry through the garden, and into his study, when pulse and sense failed him, and he rolled over on the sofa in a dead faint.
Lucia had seen him come in, and heard him fall, and rushed in. The poor little thing was at her wits' end, and thought that he had had nothing less than acoup-de-soleil.And when he recovered from his faintness, he began to be so horribly ill, that Clara, who had been called in to help, had some grounds for the degrading hypothesis (for which Lucia all but boxed her ears) that "Master had got away into the woods, and gone eating toadstools, or some such poisonous stuff;" for he lay a full half-hour on the sofa, death-cold, and almost pulseless; moaning, shuddering, hiding his face in his hands, and refusing cordials, medicines, and, above all, a doctor's visit.
However, this could not be allowed to last. Without Elsley's knowledge, a messenger was despatched for Thurnall, and luckily met him in the lane; for he was returning to the town in the footsteps of his victim.
Elsley's horror was complete, when the door opened, and Lucia brought in none other than his tormentor.
"My dearest Elsley, I have sent for Mr. Thurnall. I knew you would not let me, if I told you; but you see I have done it, and now you must really speak to him."
Elsley's first impulse was to motion them both away angrily; but the thought that he was in Thurnall's power stopped him. He must not show his disgust. What if Lucia were to ask its cause, even to guess it? for to his fears even that seemed possible. A fresh misery! Just because he shrank so intensely from the man, he must endure him!
"There is nothing the matter with me," said he languidly.
"I should be the best judge of that, after what Mrs. Vavasour has just told me," said Tom, in his most professional and civil voice; and slipped, catlike, into a seat beside the unresisting poet.
He asked question on question: but Elsley gave such unsatisfactory answers, that Lucia had to detail everything afresh for him, with—"You know, Mr. Thurnall, he is always overtasking his brain, and will never confess himself ill,"—and all a woman's anxious comments.
Rogue Tom knew all the while well enough what was the cause: but he saw, too, that Elsley was very ill. He felt that he must have the matter out at once; and, by a side glance, sent the obedient Lucia out of the room to get a table-spoonful of brandy.
"Now, my dear sir, that we are alone," began he blandly.
"Now, sir!" answered Vavasour, springing off the sofa, his whole pent-up wrath exploding in hissing steam, the moment the safety-valve was lifted. "Now, sir! What—what is the meaning of this insolence, this intrusion?"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Vavasour," answered Tom, rising, in a tone of bland and stolid surprise.
"What do you want here, with your mummery and medicine, when you know the cause of my malady well enough already? Go, sir! and leave me to myself."
"My dear sir," said Tom firmly, "you seem to have forgotten what passed between us this morning."
"Will you insult me beyond endurance?" cried Elsley.
"I told you that, as long as you chose, you were Elsley Vavasour, and I the country doctor. We have met in that character. Why not sustain it? You are really ill; and if I know the cause, I am all the more likely to know the cure."
"Cure?"
"Why not? Believe me, it is in your power to become a much happier man, simply by becoming a healthier one."
"Impertinence!"
"Pish! What can I gain by being impertinent, sir? I know very well that you have received a severe shock; but I know equally well, that if you were as you ought to be, you would not feel it in this way. When one sees a man in the state of prostration in which you are, common sense tells one that the body must have been neglected, for the mind to gain such power over it."
Elsley replied with a grunt; but Tom went on, bland and imperturbable.
"Believe me, it may be a very materialist view of things: but fact is fact—thecorpus sanumis father to themens sana—tonics and exercise make the ills of life look marvellously smaller. You have the frame of a strong and active man; and all you want to make you light-hearted and cheerful, is to develop what nature has given you."
"It is too late," said Elsley, pleased, as most men are, by being told that they might be strong and active.
"Not in the least. Three months would strengthen your muscles, open your chest again, settle your digestion, and make you as fresh as a lark, and able to sing like one. Believe me, the poetry would be the better for it, as well as the stomach. Now, positively, I shall begin questioning you."
So Elsley was won to detail the symptoms of internalmalaise, which he was only too much in the habit of watching himself; but there were some among them which Tom could not quite account for on the ground of mere effeminate habits. A thought struck him.
"You sleep ill, I suppose?" said he carelessly.
"Very ill."
"Did you ever try opiates?"
"No—yes—that is, sometimes."
"Ah!" said Tom, more carelessly still, for he wished to hide, by all means, the importance of the confession. "Well, they give relief for a time: but they are dangerous things—disorder the digestion, and have their revenge on the nerves next morning, as spitefully as brandy itself. Much better try a glass of strong ale or porter just before going to bed. I've known it give sleep, even in consumption—try it, and exercise. You shoot?"
"No."
"Pity; there ought to be noble cocking in these woods. However, the season's past. You fish?"
"No."
"Pity again. I hear Alva is full of trout. Why not try sailing? Nothing oxygenates the lungs like a sail, and your friends the fishermen would be delighted to have you as super-cargo. They are always full of your stories to them, and your picking their brains for old legends and adventures."
"They are noble fellows, and I want no better company; but, unfortunately, I am always sea-sick."
"Ah! wholesome, but unpleasant: you are fond of gardening?"
"Very; but stooping makes my head swim."
"True, and I don't want you to stoop. I hope to see you soon as erect as a Guardsman. Why not try walks?"
"Abominable bores—lonely, aimless—"
"Well, perhaps you're right. I never knew but three men who took long constitutionals on principle, and two of them were cracked. But why not try a companion; and persuade that curate, who needs just the same medicine as you, to accompany you? I don't know a more gentleman-like, agreeable, well-informed man than he is."
"Thank you. I can choose my acquaintances for myself."
"You touchy ass!" said Thurnall to himself. "If we were in the blessed state of nature now, wouldn't I give you ten minutes' double thonging, and then set you to work, as the runaway nigger did his master, Bird o' freedom Sawin, till you'd learnt a thing or two." But blandly still he went on.
"Try the dumb-bells then. Nothing like them for opening your chest. And do get a high desk made, and stand to your writing instead of sitting." And Tom actually made Vavasour promise to do both, and bade him farewell with—
"Now, I'll send you up a little tonic; and trouble you with no more visits till you send for me. I shall see by one glance at your face whether you are following my prescriptions. And, I say, I wouldn't meddle with those opiates any more; try good malt and hops instead."
"Those who drink beer, think beer," said Elsley, smiling; for he was getting more hopeful of himself, and his terrors were vanishing beneath Tom's skilful management.
"And those who drink water, think water. The Elizabethans—Sidney and Shakspeare, Burleigh and Queen Bess, worked on beef and ale,—and you would not class them among the muddle-headed of the earth: Believe me, to write well, you must live well. If you take it out of your brain, you must put it in again. It's a question of fact. Try it for yourself." And off Tom went; while Lucia rushed back to her husband, covered him with caresses, assured him that he was seven times as ill as he really was, and so nursed and petted him, that he felt himself, for that time at least, a beast and a fool for having suspected her for a moment. Ah, woman, if you only knew how you carry our hearts in your hands, and would but use your power for our benefit, what angels you might make us all!
"So," said Tom, as he went home, "he has found his way to the elevation-bottle, has he, as well as Mrs. Heale? It's no concern of mine: but as a professional man, I must stop that. You will certainly be no credit to me if you kill yourself under my hands."
Tom went straight home, showed the blacksmith how to make a pair of dumb-bells, covered them himself with leather, and sent them up the next morning with directions to be used for half an hour morning and evening.
And something—whether it was the dumb-bells, or the tonic, or wholesome fear of the terrible doctor—kept Elsley for the next month in better spirits and temper than he had been in for a long while.
Moreover, Tom set Lucia to coax him into walking with Headley. She succeeded at last; and, on the whole, each of them soon found that he had something to learn from the other. Elsley improved daily in health, and Lucia wrote to Valencia flaming accounts of the wonderful doctor who had been cast on shore in their world's end; and received from her after a while this, amid much more—for fancy is not exuberant enough to reproduce the whole of a young lady's letter.
"—I am so ashamed. I ought to have told you of that doctor a fortnight ago; but, rattle-pate as I am, I forgot all about it. Do you know, he is Sabina Mellot's dearest friend; and she begged me to recommend him to you; but I put it off, and then it slipped my memory, like everything else good. She has told me the most wonderful stories of his courage and goodness; and conceive—she and her husband were taken prisoners with him by the savages in the South Seas, and going to be eaten, she says: but he helped them to escape in a canoe—such a story—and lived with them for three months on the most beautiful desert island—it is all like a fairy tale. I'll tell it you when I come, darling—which I shall do in a fortnight, and we shall be all so happy. I have such a box ready for you and the chicks, which I shall bring with me; and some pretty things from Scoutbush beside, who is very low, poor fellow, I cannot conceive what about: but wonderfully tender about you. I fancy he must be in love; for he stood up the other day about you to my aunt, quite solemnly, with, 'Let her alone, my lady. She's not the first whom love has made a fool of, and she won't be the last: and I believe that some of the moves which look most foolish, turn out best after all. Live and let live; everybody knows his own business best; anything is better than marriage without real affection.' Conceive my astonishment at hearing the dear little fellow turn sage in that way!
"By the way, I have had to quote his own advice against him; for I have refused Lord Chalkclere after all. I told him (C. not S.) that he was much too good for me: far too perfect and complete a person; that I preferred a husband whom I could break in for myself, even though he gave me a little trouble. Scoutbush was cross at first; but he said afterwards that it was just like Baby Blake (the wretch always calls me Baby Blake now, after that dreadful girl in Lever's Novel); and I told him frankly that it was, if he meant that I had sooner break in a thorough-bred for myself, even though I had a fall or two in the process, than jog along on the most finished little pony on earth, who would never go out of an amble. Lord Chalk may be very finished, and learned, and excellent, and so forth: but,ma chère, I want, not a white rabbit (of which he always reminds me), but a hero, even though he be a naughty one. I always fancy people must be very little if they can be finished off so rapidly; if there was any real verve in them, they would take somewhat longer to grow. Lord Chalk would do very well to bind in Russian leather, and put on one's library shelves, to be consulted when one forgot a date; but really even your Ulysses of a doctor—provided, of course, he turned out a prince in disguise, and don't leave out his h's—would be more to the taste of your naughtiest of sisters."
Somewhere in those days, so it seems, did Mr. Bowie call unto himself a cab at the barrack-gate, and, dressed in his best array, repair to the wilds of Brompton, and request to see either Claude or Mrs. Mellot.
Bowie is an ex-Scots-Fusilier, who, damaged by the kick of a horse, has acted as valet, first to Scoutbush's father, and next to Scoutbush himself. He is of a patronising habit of mind, as befits a tolerably "leeterary" Scotsman of forty-five years of age and six-feet three in height, who has full confidence in the integrity of his own virtue, the infallibility of his own opinion, and the strength of his own right arm; for Bowie, though he has a rib or two "dinged in," is mighty still as Theseus' self; and both astonished his red-bearded compatriots, and won money for his master, by his prowess in the late feat of arms at Holland House.
Mr. Bowie is asked to walk into Sabina's boudoir (for Claude is out in the garden), to sit down, and deliver his message: which he does after a due military salute, sitting bolt upright in his chair, and in a solemn and sonorous voice.
"Well, madam, it's just this, that his lordship would be very glad to see ye and Mr. Mellot, for he's vary ill indeed, and that's truth; and if he winna tell ye the cause, then I will—and it's just a' for love of this play-acting body here, and more's the pity."
"More's the pity, indeed!"
"And it's my opeenion the puir laddie will just die, if nobody sees to him; and I've taken the liberty of writing to Major Cawmill mysel', to beg him to come up and see to him, for it's a pity to see his lordship cast away, for want of an understanding body to advise him."
"So I am not an understanding body, Bowie?"
"Oh, madam, ye're young and bonny," says Bowie, in a tone in which admiration is not unmingled with pity.
"Young indeed! Mr. Bowie, do you know that I am almost as old as you?"
"Hoot, hut, hut—" says Bowie, looking at the wax-like complexion and bright hawk-eyes.
"Really I am. I'm past five-and-thirty this many a day."
"Weel, then, madam, if you'll excuse me, ye're old enough to be wiser than to let his lordship be inveigled with any such play-acting."
"Really he's not inveigled," says Sabina, laughing. "It is all his own fault, and I have warned him how absurd and impossible it is. She has refused even to see him; and you know yourself he has not been near our house for these three weeks."
"Ah, madam, you'll excuse me: but that's the way with that sort of people, just to draw back and draw back, to make a poor young gentleman follow them all the keener, as a trout does a minnow, the faster you spin it."
"I assure you no. I can't let you into ladies' secrets; but there is no more chance of her listening to him than of me. And as for me, I have been trying all the spring to marry him to a young lady with eighty thousand pounds; so you can't complain of me."
"Eh? No. That's more like and fitting."
"Well, now. Tell his lordship that we are coming; and trust us, Mr.Bowie: we do not look very villainous, do we?"
"Faith, 'deed then, and I suppose not," said Bowie, using the verb which, in his cautious, Scottish tongue, expresses complete certainty. The truth is, that Bowie adores both Sabina and her husband, who are, he says, "just fit to be put under a glass case on the sideboard, like twa wee china angels."
In half an hour they were in Scoutbush's rooms. They found the little man lying on his sofa, in his dressing-gown, looking pale and pitiable enough. He had been trying to read; for the table by him was covered with books; but either gunnery and mathematics had injured his eyes, or he had been crying; Sabina inclined to the latter opinion.
"This is very kind of you both; but I don't want you, Claude. I wantMrs. Mellot. You go to the window with Bowie."
Bowie and Claude shrugged their shoulders at each other, and departed.
"Now, Mrs. Mellot, I can't help looking up to you as a mother."
"Complimentary to my youth," says Sabina, who always calls herself young when she is called old, and old when she is called young.
"I didn't mean to be rude. But one does long to open one's heart. I never had any mother to talk to, you know; and I can't tell my aunt; and Valencia is so flighty; and I thought you would give me one chance more. Don't laugh at me, I say. I am really past laughing at."
"I see you are, you poor creature," says Sabina, melting; and a long conversation follows, while Claude and Bowie exchange confidences, and arrive at no result beyond the undeniable assertion; "it is a very bad job."
Presently Sabina comes out, and Scoutbush calls cheerfully from the sofa:—
"Bowie, get my bath and things to dress; and order me the cab in half an hour. Good-bye, you dear people, I shall never thank you enough."
Away go Claude and Sabina in a hack-cab.
"What have you done?"
"Given him what he entreated for—another chance with Marie."
"It will only madden him all the more. Why let him try, when you know it is hopeless."
"Why, I had not the heart to refuse, that's the truth; and besides, I don't know that it is hopeless."
"All the naughtier of you, to let him run the chance of making a fool of himself."
"I don't know that he will make such a great fool of himself. As he says, his grandfather married an actress, and why should not he?"
"Simply because she won't marry him."
"And how do you know that, sir? You fancy that you understand all the women's hearts in England, just because you have found out the secret of managing one little fool."
"Managing her, quotha! Being managed by her, till my quiet house is turned into a perfect volcano of match-making. Why, I thought he was to marry Manchestrina."
"He shall marry who he likes; and if Marie changes her mind, and revenges herself on this American by taking Lord Scoutbush, all I can say is, it will be a just judgment on him. I have no patience with the heartless fellow, going off thus, and never even leaving his address."
"And because you have no patience, you think Marie will have none?"
"What do you know about women's hearts? Leave us to mind our own matters."
"Mr. Bowie will kill you outright, if your plot succeeds."
"No, he won't. I know who Bowie wants to marry; and if he is not good,he shan't have her. Besides, it will be such fun to spite old LadyKnockdown, who always turns up her nose at me. How mad she will be!Here we are at home. Now, I shall go and prepare Marie."
An hour after, Scoutbush was pleading his cause with Marie; and had been met, of course, at starting, with the simple rejoinder,—
"But, my lord, you would not surely have me marry where I do not love?"
"Oh, of course not; but, you see, people very often get love after they are married:—and I am sure I would do all to make you love me. I know I can't bribe you by promising you carriages and jewels, and all that:—but you should have what you would like—pictures and statues, and books—and all that I can buy—Oh, madam, I know I am not worthy of you—I never have had any education as you have!"—
Marie smiled a sad smile.
"But I would learn—I know I could—for I am no fool, though I say it: I like all that sort of thing, and—and if I had you to teach me, I should care about nothing else. I have given up all my nonsense since I knew you; indeed I have—I am trying all day long to read—ever since you said something about being useful, and noble, and doing one's work:—I have never forgotten that, madam, and never shall; and you would find me a pleasant person to live with, I do believe. At all events, I would—oh, madam—I would be your servant, your dog—I would fetch and carry for you like a negro slave!"
Marie turned pale, and rose.
"Listen to me, my lord; this must end. You do not know to whom you are speaking. You talk of negro slaves. Know that you are talking to one!"
Scoutbush looked at her in blank astonishment.
"Madam? Excuse me: but my own eyes—"
"You are not to trust them; I tell you fact."
Scoutbush was silent. She misunderstood his silence: but went on steadily.
"I tell you, my lord, what I expect you to keep secret: and I know that I can trust your honour."
Scoutbush bowed.
"And what I should never have told you, were it not my only chance of curing you of this foolish passion. I am an American slave!"
"Curse them! Who dared make you a slave?" cried Scoutbush, turning as red as a game-cock.
"I was born a slave. My father was a white gentleman of good family: my mother was a quadroon; and therefore I am a slave;—a negress, a runaway slave, my lord, who, if I returned to America, should be seized, and chained, and scourged, and sold.—Do you understand me?"
"What an infernal shame!" cried Scoutbush, to whom the whole thing appeared simply as a wrong done to Marie.
"Well, my lord?"
"Well, madam?"
"Does not this fact put the question at rest for ever?"
"No, madam! What do I know about slaves? No one is a slave in England. No madam; all that it does is to make me long to cut half-a-dozen fellows' throats—" and Scoutbush stamped with rage. "No, madam, you are you: and if you become my viscountess, you take my rank, I trust, and my name is yours, and my family yours; and let me see who dare interfere!"
"But public opinion, my lord?" said Marie, half-pleased, half-terrified to find the shaft which she had fancied fatal fall harmless at her feet.
"Public opinion? You don't know England, madam! What's the use of my being a peer, if I can't do what I like, and make public opinion go my way, and not I its? Though I am no great prince, madam, but only a poor Irish viscount, it's hard if I can't marry whom I like—in reason, that is—and expect all the world to call on her, and treat her as she deserves. Why, madam, you will have all London at your feet after a season or two, and all the more if they know your story: or if you don't like that, or if fools did talk at first, why we'd go and live quietly at Kilanbaggan, or at Penalva, and you'd have all the tenants looking up to you as a goddess, as I do, madam.—Oh, madam, I would go anywhere, live anywhere, only to be with you!"
Marie was deeply affected. Making all allowances for the wilfulness of youth, she could not but see that her origin formed no bar whatever to her marrying a nobleman; and that he honestly believed that it would form none in the opinion of his compeers, if she proved herself worthy of his choice; and, full of new emotions, she burst into tears.
"There, now, you are melting: I knew you would! Madam! Signora?" andScoutbush advanced to take her hand.
"Never less," cried she, drawing back. "Do not;—you only make me miserable! I tell you it is impossible. I cannot tell you all.—You must not do yourself and yours such an injustice! Go, I tell you!"
Scoutbush still tried to take her hand.
"Go, I entreat you," cried she, at her wits' end, "or I will really ring the bell for Mrs. Mellot!"
"You need not do that, madam," said he, drawing himself up; "I am not in the habit of being troublesome to ladies, or being turned out of drawing-rooms. I see how it is—" and his tone softened; "you despise me, and think me a vain, frivolous puppy.—Well; I'll do something yet that you shall not despise!" And he turned to go.
"I do not despise you; I think you a generous, high-hearted gentleman—nobleman in all senses."
Scoutbush turned again.
"But, again, impossible! I shall always respect you; but we must never meet again."
She held out her hand. Little Freddy caught and kissed it till he was breathless, and then rushed out, and blundered over Sabina in the next room.
"No hope?"
"None." And though he tried to squeeze his eyes together very tight, the great tears would come dropping down.
Sabina took him to a sofa, and sat him down while he made his little moan.
"I told you that she was in love with the American."
"Then why don't he come back and marry her! Hang him, I'll go after him and make him!" cried Scoutbush, glad of any object on which to vent his wrath.
"You can't, for nobody knows where he is. Now do be good and patient; you will forget all this."
"I shan't!"
"You will; not at first, but gradually; and marry some one really more fit for you."
"Ah, but if I marry her I shan't love her; and then, you know, Mrs. Mellot, I shall go to the bad again, just as much as ever. Oh, I was trying to be steady for her sake!"
"You can be that still."
"Yes, but it's so hard, with nothing to hope for. I'm not fit to take care of myself. I'm fit for nothing, I believe, but to go out and be shot by those Russians; and I'll do it!"
"You must not; you are not strong enough. The doctors would not let you go as you are."
"Then I'll get strong; I'll—"
"You'll go home, and be good."
"Ain't I good now?"
"Yes, you are a good, sensible fellow, and have behaved nobly, and I honour you for it, and Claude shall come and see you every day."
That evening a note came from Scoutbush.
"DEAR MRS. MELLOT—Whom should I find when I went home, but Campbell? I told him all; and he says that you and everybody have done quite right, so I suppose you have; and that I am quite right in trying to get out to the East, so I shall do it. But the doctor says I must rest for six weeks at least. So Campbell has persuaded me to take the yacht, which is at Southampton, and go down to Aberalva, and then round to Snowdon, where I have a little slate-quarry, and get some fishing. Campbell is coming with me, and I wish Claude would come too. He knows that brother-in-law of mine, Vavasour, I think, and I shall go and make friends with him. I've got very merciful to foolish lovers lately, and Claude can help me to face him; for I am a little afraid of genuises, you know. So there we'll pick up my sister (she goes down by land this week), and then go on to Snowdon; and Claude can visit his old quarters at the Royal Oak at Bettws, where he and I had that jolly week among the painters. Do let him come, and beg La Signora not to be angry with me. That's all I'll ever ask of her again."
"Poor fellow! But I can't part with you, Claude."
"Let him," said La Cordifiamma. "He will comfort his lordship; and do you come with me."
"Come with you! Where!"
"I will tell you when Claude is gone."
"Claude, go and smoke in the garden. Now?"
"Come with me to Germany, Sabina."
"To Germany? Why on earth to Germany?"
"I—I only said Germany because it came first into my mind. Anywhere for rest; anywhere to be out of that poor man's way."
"He will not trouble you any more; and you will not surely throw up your engagement?"
"Of course not!" said she, half peevishly. "It will be over in a fortnight; and then I must have rest. Don't you see how I want rest?"
Sabina had seen it for some time past. That white cheek had been fading more and more to a wax-like paleness; those black eyes glittered with fierce unhealthy light; and dark rings round them told, not merely of late hours and excitement, but of wild passion and midnight tears. Sabina had seen all, and could not but give way, as Marie went on.
"I must have rest, I tell you! I am beginning—I can confess all to you—to want stimulants. I am beginning to long for brandy and water—pah!—to nerve me up to the excitement of acting, and then for morphine to make me sleep after it. The very eau de Cologne flask tempts me! They say that the fine ladies use it, before a ball, for other purposes than scent. You would not like to see me commence that practice, would you?"
"There is no fear, dear."
"There is fear! You do not know the craving for exhilaration, the capability of self-indulgence, in our wild Tropic blood. Oh, Sabina, I feel at times that I could sink so low—that I could be so wicked, so utterly wicked, if I once began! Take me away, dearest creature, take me away, and let me have fresh air, and fair quiet scenes, and rest—rest—oh, save me, Sabina!" and she put her hands over her face, and burst into tears.
"We will go, then: to the Rhine, shall it be? I have not been there now for these three years, and it will be such fun running about the world by myself once more, and knowing all the while that—" and Sabina stopped; she did not like to remind Marie of the painful contrast between them.
"To the Rhine? Yes. And I shall see the beautiful old world, the old vineyards, and castles, and hills, which he used to tell me of—taught me to read of in those sweet, sweet books of Longfellow's! So gentle, and pure, and calm—so unlike me!"
"Yes, we will see them; and perhaps—"
Marie looked up at her, guessing her thoughts, and blushed scarlet.
"You, too, think then, that—that—" she could not finish her sentence.
Sabina stooped over her, and the two beautiful mouths met.
"There, darling, we need say nothing. We are both women, and can talk without words."
"Then you think there is hope!"
"Hope? Do you fancy that he is gone so very far? or that if he were, I could not hunt him out? Have I wandered half round the world alone for nothing?"
"No, but hope—hope that—"
"Not hope, but certainty; if some one I know had but courage."
"Courage—to do what!"
"To trust him utterly."
Marie covered her face with her hands, and shuddered in every limb.
"You know my story. Did I gain or lose by telling my Claude all?"
"I will!" she cried, looking up pale but firm. "I will!" and she looked steadfastly into the mirror over the chimney-piece, as if trying to court the reappearance of that ugly vision which haunted it, and so to nerve herself to the utmost, and face the whole truth.
In little more than a fortnight, Sabina and Marie, with maid and courier (for Marie was rich now), were away in the old Antwerpen. And Claude was rolling down to Southampton by rail, with Campbell, Scoutbush, and last, but not least, the faithful Bowie; who had under his charge what he described to the puzzled railway-guard as "goads and cleiks, and pirns and creels, and beuks and heuks, enough for a' the cods o' Neufundland."
Elsley went on, between improved health and the fear of Tom Thurnall, a good deal better for the next month. He began to look forward to Valencia's visit with equanimity, and, at last, with interest; and was rather pleased than otherwise when, in the last week of July, a fly drove up to the gate of old Penalva Court, and he handed out therefrom Valencia, and Valencia's maid.
Lucia had discovered that the wind was east, and that she was afraid to go to the gate for fear of catching cold; her real purpose being, that Valencia should meet Elsley first.
"She is so impulsive," thought the good little creature, always plotting about her husband, "that she will rush upon me, and never see him for the first five minutes; and Elsley is so sensitive—how can he be otherwise, in his position, poor dear?" So she refrained herself, like Joseph, and stood at the door till Valencia was half-way down the garden-walk, having taken Elsley's somewhat shyly-offered arm; and then she could refrain herself no longer, and the two women ran upon each other, and kissed, and sobbed, and talked, till Lucia was out of breath; but Valencia was not so easily silenced.
"My darling! and you are looking so much better than I expected; but not quite yourself yet. That naughty baby is killing you, I am sure! And Mr. Vavasour too, I shall begin to call him Elsley to-morrow, if I like him as much as I do now—but he is looking quite thin—wearing himself out with writing so many beautiful books,—that Wreck was perfect! And where are the children?—I must rush upstairs and devour them!—and what a delicious old garden! and clipt yews, too, so dark and romantic, and such dear old-fashioned flowers!—Mr. Vavasour must show me all over it, and over that hanging wood, too. What a duck of a place!—And oh, my dear, I am quite out of breath!"
And so she swept in, with her arm round Lucia's waist; while Elsley stood looking after her, well enough satisfied with her reception of him, and only hoping that the stream of words would slaken after a while.
"What a magnificent creature!" said he to himself. "Who could believe that the three years would make such a change!"
And he was right. The tall lithe girl had bloomed into full glory' and Valencia St. Just, though not delicately beautiful, was as splendid an Irish damsel as man need look upon, with a grand masque, aquiline features, luxuriant black hair, and—though it was the fag-end of the London season—the unrivalled Irish complexion, as of the fair dame of Kilkenny, whose
"Lips were like roses, her cheeks were the same,Like a dish of fresh strawberries smother'd in crame."
Her figure was perhaps too tall, and somewhat too stout also; but its size was relieved by the delicacy of those hands and feet of which Miss Valencia was most pardonably proud, and by that indescribable lissomeness and lazy grace which Irishwomen inherit, perhaps, with their tinge of southern blood; and when, in half an hour, she reappeared, with broad straw-hat, and gown tucked upà la bergèreover the striped Welsh petticoat, perhaps to show off the ankles, which only looked the finer for a pair of heavy laced boots, Elsley honestly felt it a pleasure to look at her, and a still greater pleasure to talk to her, and to be talked to by her; while she, bent on making herself agreeable, partly from real good taste, partly from natural good-nature, and partly, too, because she saw in his eyes that he admired her, chatted sentiment about all heaven and earth.
For to Miss Valencia—it is sad to have to say it—admiration had been now, for three years, her daily bread. She had lived in the thickest whirl of the world, and, as most do for a while, found it a very pleasant place.
She had flirted—with how many must not be told; and perhaps with more than one with whom she had no business to flirt. Little Scoutbush had remonstrated with her on some such affair, but she had silenced him with an Irish jest,—"You're a fisherman, Freddy; and when you can't catch salmon, you catch trout; and when you can't catch trout, you'll whip on the shallow for poor little gubbahawns, and say that it is all to keep your hand in—and so do I."
The old ladies said that this was the reason why she had not married; the men, however, asserted that no one dare marry her; and one club-oracle had given it as his opinion that no man in his rational senses was to be allowed to have anything to do with her, till she had been well jilted two or three times, to take the spirit out of her: but that catastrophe had not yet occurred, and Miss Valencia still reigned "triumphant and alone," though her aunt, old Lady Knockdown, moved all the earth, and some dirty places, too, below the earth, to get the wild Irish girl off her hands; "for," quoth she, "I feel with Valencia, indeed, just like one of those men who carry about little dogs in the Quadrant. I always pity the poor men so, and think how happy they must be when they have sold one. It is one chance less, you know, of having it bite them horribly, and then run away after all."
There was, however, no more real harm in Valencia, than there is in every child of Adam. Town frivolity had not corrupted her. She was giddy, given up to enjoyment of the present: but there was not a touch, of meanness about her: and if she was selfish, as every one must needs be whose thoughts are of pleasure, admiration, and success, she was so unintentionally; and she would have been shocked and pained at being told that she was anything but the most kind-hearted and generous creature on earth. Major Campbell, who was her Mentor as well as her brother's, had certainly told her so more than once; at which she had pouted a good deal, and cried a little, and promised to amend; then packed up a heap of cast-off things to send to Lucia—half of it much too fine to be of any use to the quiet little woman; and lastly, gone out and bought fresh finery for herself, and forgot all her good resolutions. Whereby it befell that she was tolerably deep in debt at the end of every season, and had to torment and kiss Scoutbush into paying her bills, which he did, like a good brother, and often before he had paid his own.
But, howsoever full Valencia's head may have been of fine garments and London flirtations, she had too much tact and good feeling to talk that evening of a world of which even Elsley knew more than her sister. For poor Lucia had been but eighteen at the time of her escapade, and had not been presented twelve months; so that she was as "inexperienced" as any one can be, who has only a husband, three children, and a household to manage on less than three hundred a year. Therefore Valencia talked only of things which would interest Elsley; asked him to read his last new poem—which, I need not say, he did; told him how she devoured everything he wrote; planned walks with him in the country; seemed to consult his pleasure in every way.
"To-morrow morning I shall sit with you and the children, Lucia; of course I must not interrupt Mr. Vavasour: but really in the afternoon I must ask him to spare a couple of hours from the Muses."
Vavasour was delighted to do anything—"Where would she walk?"
"Where? of course to see the beautiful schoolmistress who saved the man from drowning; and then to see the chasm across which he was swept. I shall understand your poem so much better, you know, if I can but realise the people and the place. And you must take me to see Captain Willis, too, and even the Lieutenant—if he does not smell too much of brandy. I will be so gracious and civil, quite the lady of the castle."
"You will make quite a royal progress," said Lucia, looking at her with sisterly admiration.
"Yes, I intend to usurp as many of Scoutbush's honours as I can till he comes. I must lay down the sceptre in a fortnight, you know, so I shall make as much use of it as I can meanwhile."
And so on, and so on; meaning all the while to put Elsley quite at his ease, and let him understand that bygones were bygones, and that with her any reconciliation at all was meant to be a complete one; which was wise and right enough. But Valencia had not counted on the excitable and vain nature with which she was dealing; and Lucia, who had her own fears from the first evening, was the last person in the world to tell her of it; first from pride in herself, and then from pride in her husband. For even if a woman has made a foolish match, it is hard to expect her to confess as much: and, after all, a husband is a husband, and let his faults be what they might, he was still her Elsley; her idol once; and perhaps (so she hoped) her idol again hereafter, and if not, still he was her husband, and that was enough.
"By which you mean, sir, that she considers herself bound to endure everything and anything from him, simply because she had been married to him in church?"
Yes, and a great deal more. Not merely being married in church; but what being married in church means, and what every woman who is a woman understands; and lives up to without flinching, though she die a martyr for it, or a confessor; a far higher saint, if the truth was known, as it will be some day, than all the holy virgins who ever fasted and prayed in a convent since the days when Macarius first turned fakeer. For to a true woman, the mere fact of a man's being her husband, put it on the lowest ground that you choose, is utterly sacred, divine, all-powerful; in the might of which she can conquer self in a way which is an everyday miracle; and the man who does not feel about the mere fact of a woman's having given herself utterly to him, just what she herself feels about it, ought to be despised by all his fellows;—were it not that, in that case, it would be necessary to despise more human beings than is safe for the soul of any man.
That fortnight was the sunniest which Elsley had passed, since he made secret love to Lucia in Eaton Square. Romantic walks, the company of a beautiful woman as ready to listen as she was to talk, free licence to pour out all his fancies, sure of admiration, if not of flattery, and pardonably satisfied vanity—all these are comfortable things for most men, who have nothing better to comfort them. But, on the whole, this feast did not make Elsley a better or a wiser man at home. Why should it? Is a boy's digestion improved by turning him loose into a confectioner's shop? And thus the contrast between what he chose to call Valencia's sympathy, and Lucia's want of sympathy, made him, unfortunately, all the more cross to her when they were alone; and who could blame the poor little woman for saying one night, angrily enough:
"Ah, yes! Valencia,—Valencia is imaginative—Valencia understands you—Valencia sympathises—Valencia thinks … Valencia has no children to wash and dress, no accounts to keep, no linen to mend—Valencia's back does not ache all day long, so that she would be glad enough to lie on the sofa from morning till night, if she was not forced to work whether she can work or not. No, no; don't kiss me, for kisses will not make up for injustice, Elsley. I only trust that you will not tempt me to hate my own sister. No: don't talk to me now, let me sleep if I can sleep; and go and walk and talk sentiment with Valencia to-morrow, and leave the poor little brood hen to sit on her nest, and be despised." And refusing all Elsley's entreaties for pardon, she sulked herself to sleep.
Who can blame her? If there is one thing more provoking than another to a woman, it is to see her husband Strass-engel, Haus-teufel, an angel of courtesy to every woman but herself; to see him in society all smiles and good stories, the most amiable and self-restraining of men; perhaps to be complimented on his agreeableness: and to know all the while that he is penning up all the accumulated ill-temper of the day, to let it out on her when they get home; perhaps in the very carriage as soon as it leaves the door. Hypocrites that you are, some of you gentlemen! Why cannot the act against cruelty to women, corporal punishment included, be brought to bear on such as you? And yet, after all, you are not most to blame in the matter: Eve herself tempts you, as at the beginning; for who does not know that the man is a thousand times vainer than the woman? He does but follow the analogy of all nature. Look at the Red Indian, in that blissful state of nature from which (so philosophers inform those who choose to believe them) we all sprang. Which is the boaster, the strutter, the bedizener of his sinful carcase with feathers and beads, fox-tails and bears' claws,—the brave, or his poor little squaw? An Australian settler's wife bestows on some poor slaving gin a cast-off French bonnet; before she has gone a hundred yards, her husband snatches it off, puts it on his own mop, quiets her for its loss with a tap of the waddie, and struts on in glory. Why not? Has he not the analogy of all nature on his side? Have not the male birds and the male moths, the fine feathers, while the females go soberly about in drab and brown? Does the lioness, or the lion, rejoice in the grandeur of a mane; the hind, or the stag, in antlered pride? How know we but that, in some more perfect and natural state of society, the women will dress like so many quakeresses; while the frippery shops will become the haunts of men alone, and "browches, pearls and owches be consecrate to the nobler sex?" There are signs already, in the dress of our young gentlemen, of such a return to the law of nature from the present absurd state of things, in which the human peahens carry about the gaudy trains which are the peacocks' right.
For there is a secret feeling in woman's heart that she is in her wrong place; that it is she who ought to worship the man, and not the man her; and when she becomes properly conscious of her destiny, has not he a right to be conscious of his? If the grey hens will stand round in the mire clucking humble admiration, who can blame the old blackcock for dancing and drumming on the top of a moss hag, with outspread wings and flirting tail, glorious and self-glorifying. He is a splendid fellow; and he was made splendid for some purpose surely? Why did Nature give him his steel-blue coat, and his crimson crest, but for the very same purpose that she gave Mr. A—— his intellect—to be admired by the other sex? And if young damsels, overflowing with sentiment and Ruskinism, will crowd round him, ask his opinion of this book and that picture, treasure his bon-mots, beg for his autograph, looking all the while the praise which they do not speak (though they speak a good deal of it), and when they go home write letters to him on matters about which in old times girls used to ask only their mothers;—who can blame him if he finds the little wife at home a very uninteresting body, whose head is so full of petty cares and gossip, that he and all his talents are quite unappreciated?Les femmes incomprisesof France used to (perhaps do now) form a class of married ladies, whose sorrows were especially dear to the novelists, male or female; but what are their woes compared to those ofl'homme incompris?What higher vocation for a young maiden than to comfort the martyr during his agonies? And, most of all, where the sufferer is not merely a genius, but a saint; persecuted, perhaps, abroad by vulgar tradesmen and Philistine bishops, and snubbed at home by a stupid wife, who is quite unable to appreciate his magnificent projects for regenerating all heaven and earth; and only, humdrum, practical creature that she is, tries to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with her God? Fly to his help, all pious maidens, and pour into the wounded heart of the holy man the healing balm of self-conceit; cover his table with confidential letters, choose him as your father-confessor, and lock yourself up alone with him for an hour or two every week, while the wife is mending his shirts upstairs.—True, you may break the stupid wife's heart by year-long misery, as she slaves on, bearing the burden and heat of the day, of which you never dream; keeping the wretched man, by her unassuming good example, from making a fool of himself three times a week; and sowing the seed of which you steal the fruit. What matter? If your immortal soul requires it, what matter what it costs her carnal heart? She will suffer in silence; at least, she will not tell you. You think she does not understand you. Well;—and she thinks in return that you do not understand her, and her married joys and sorrows, and her five children, and her butcher's bills, and her long agony of fear for the husband of whom she is ten times more proud than you could be; for whom she has slaved for years; whose defects she has tried to cure, while she cured her own; for whom she would die to-morrow, did he fall into disgrace, when you had flounced off to find some new idol: and so she will not tell you: and what the ear heareth not, that the heart grieveth not.—Go on and prosper! You may, too, ruin the man's spiritual state by vanity: you may pamper his discontent with the place where God has put him, till he ends by flying off to "some purer Communion," and taking you with him. Never mind. He is a most delightful person, and his intercourse is so improving. Why were sweet things made, but to be eaten? Go on and prosper.
Ah, young ladies, if some people had (as it is perhaps well for them that they have not) the ordering of this same British nation, they would certainly follow your example, and try to restore various ancient institutions. And first among them would be that very ancient institution of the cucking-stool; to be employed however, not as of old, against married scolds (for whom those who have been behind the scenes have all respect and sympathy), but against unmarried prophetesses, who, under whatsoever high pretence of art or religion, flirt with their neighbours' husbands, be they parson or poet.
Not, be it understood, that Valencia had the least suspicion that Elsley considered himself "incompris." If he had hinted the notion to her, she would have resented it as an insult to the St. Justs in general, and to her sister in particular; and would have said something to him in her off-hand way, the like whereof he had seldom heard, even from adverse reviewers.
Elsley himself soon divined enough of her character to see that he must keep his sorrows to himself, if he wished for Valencia's good opinion; and soon,—so easily does a vain man lend himself to meanness—he found himself trying to please Valencia, by praising to her the very woman with whom he was discontented. He felt shocked and ashamed when first his own baseness flashed across him: but the bait was too pleasant to be left easily: and, after all, he was trying to say to his guest what he knew his guest would like; and what was that but following those very rules of good society, for breaking which Lucia was always calling him gauche and morose? So he actually quieted his own conscience by the fancy that he was bound to be civil, and to keep up appearances, "even for Lucia's sake," said the self-deceiver to himself. And thus the mischief was done; and the breach between Lucia and her husband, which had been somewhat bridged over during the last month or two, opened more wide than ever, without a suspicion on Valencia's part that she was doing all she could to break her sister's heart.
She, meanwhile, had plenty of reasons which justified her new intimacy to herself. How could she better please Lucia? How better show that bygones were to be bygones, and that Elsley was henceforth to be considered as one of the family, than by being as intimate as possible with him? What matter how intimate? For, after all, he was only a brother, and she his sister.
She had law on her side in that last argument, as well as love of amusement. Whether she had either common sense or Scripture, is a very different question.
Poor Lucia, too, tried to make the best of the matter; and to take the new intimacy as Valencia would have had her take it, in the light of a compliment to herself; and so, in her pride, she said to Valencia, and told her that she should love her for ever for her kindness to Elsley, while her heart was ready to burst.
But ere the fortnight was over the Nemesis had come, and Lucia, woman as she was, could not repress a thrill of malicious joy, even though Elsley became more intolerable than ever at the change.
What was the Nemesis, then?
Simply that this naughty Miss St. Just began to smile upon FrankHeadley the curate, even as she had smiled upon Elsley Vavasour.
It was very naughty; but she had her excuses. She had found Elsley out; and it was well for both of them that she had done so. Already, upon the strength of their supposed relationship, she had allowed him to talk a great deal more nonsense to her,—harmless perhaps, but nonsense still,—than she would have listened to from any other man; and it was well for both of them that Elsley was a man without self-control who began to show the weak side of his character freely enough, as soon as he became at ease with his companion, and excited by conversation. Valencia quickly saw that he was vain as a peacock, and weak enough to be led by her in any and every direction, when she chose to work on his vanity. And she despised him accordingly, and suspected, too, that her sister could not be very happy with such a man.
None are more quick than sisters-in-law to see faults in the brother-in-law, when once they have begun to look for them; and Valencia soon remarked that Elsley showed Lucia nopetits soins, while he was ready enough to show them to her; that he took no real trouble about his children, or about anything else; and twenty more faults, which she might have perceived in the first two days of her visit, if she had not been in such a hurry to amuse herself. But she was too delicate to ask Lucia the truth, and contented herself with watching all parties closely, and in amusing herself meanwhile—for amusement she must have—in
"Breaking a country heartFor pastime, ere she went to town."
She had met Frank several times about the parish and in the schools, and had been struck at once with his grace and high breeding, and with that air of melancholy which is always interesting in a true woman's eyes. She had seen, too, that Elsley tried to avoid him, naturally enough not wishing an intrusion on their pleasanttêtes-à-tête.Whereon, half to spite Elsley, and half to show her own right to chat with whom she chose, she made Lucia ask Frank to tea; and next contrived to go to the school when he was teaching there, and to make Elsley ask him to walk with them; and all the more, because she had discovered that Elsley had discontinued his walks with Frank, as soon as she had appeared at Penalva.
Lucia was not sorry to countenance her in her naughtiness; it was a comfort to her to have a fourth person in the room at times, and thus to compel Elsley and Valencia to think of something beside each other; and when she saw her sister gradually transferring her favours from the married to the unmarried victim, she would have been more than woman if she had not rejoiced thereat. Only, she began soon to be afraid for Frank, and at last told Valencia so.
"Do take care that you do not break his heart!"
"My dear! You forget that I sit under Mr. O'Blareaway, and am to him as a heathen and a publican. Fresh from St. Nepomuc's as he is, he would as soon think of falling in love with an 'Oirish Prodestant,' as with a malignant and a turbaned Turk. Besides, my dear, if the mischief is going to be done, it's done already."
"I dare say it is, you naughty beautiful thing. If anybody is goose enough to fall in love with you, he'll be also goose enough, I don't doubt, to do so at first sight. There, don't look perpetually in that glass: but take care!"
"What use? If it is going to happen at all, I say, it has happened already; so I shall just please myself, as usual."
And it had happened: and poor Frank had been, ever since the first day he saw Valencia, over head and ears in love. His time had come, and there was no escaping his fate.
But to escape he tried. Convinced, with many good men of all ages and creeds, that a celibate life was the fittest one for a clergyman, he had fled from St. Nepomuc's into the wilderness to avoid temptation, and beheld at his cell-door a fairer fiend than ever came to St. Dunstan. A fairer fiend, no doubt; for St. Dunstan's imagination created his temptress for him, but Valencia was a reality: and fact and nature may be safely backed to produce something more charming than any monk's brain can do. One questions whether St. Dunstan's apparition was not something as coarse as his own mind, clever though that mind was. At least, he would never have had the heart to apply the hot tongs to such a nose as Valencia's, but at most have bowed her out pityingly, as Frank tried to bow out Valencia from the sacred place of his heart, but failed.
Hard he tried, and humbly too. He had no proud contempt for married parsons. He was ready enough to confess, that he, too, might be weak in that respect, as in a hundred others. He conceived that he had no reason, from his own inner life, to believe himself worthy of any higher vocation—proving his own real nobleness of soul by that very humility. He had rather not marry. He might do so some day: but he would sacrifice much to avoid the necessity. If he was weak, he would use what strength he had to the uttermost ere he yielded. And all the more, because he felt, and reasonably enough, that Valencia was the last woman in the world to make a parson's wife. He had his ideal of what such a wife should be, if she were to be allowed to exist at all—the same ideal which Mr. Paget has drawn in his charming little book (would that all parsons' wives would read and perpend), the "Owlet of Owlstone Edge." But Valencia would surely not make a Beatrice. Beautiful she was, glorious, lovable, but not the helpmeet whom he needed. And he fought against the new dream like a brave man. He fasted, he wept, he prayed: but his prayers seemed not to be heard. Valencia seemed to have enthroned herself, a true Venus victrix, in the centre of his heart, and would not be dispossessed. He tried to avoid seeing her: but even for that he had not strength: more miserable each time, as fierce against himself and his own weakness as if he had given way to wine or to oaths. In vain, too, he represented to himself the ridiculous hopelessness of his passion; the impossibility of the London beauty ever stooping to marry the poor country curate. Fancies would come in, how such things, strange as they might seem, had happened already; might happen again. It was a class of marriages for which he had always felt a strong dislike, even suspicion and contempt; and though he was far more fitted, in family as well as personal excellence, for such a match, than three out of four who make them, yet he shrank with disgust from the notion of being himself classed at last among the match-making parsons. Whether there was "carnal pride" or not in that last thought, his soul so loathed it, that he would gladly have thrown up his cure at Aberalva; and would have done so actually, but for one word which Tom Thurnall had spoken to him, and that was—Cholera.
That the cholera might come; that it probably would come, in the course of the next two months, was news to him which was enough to keep him at his post, let what would be the consequence. And gradually he began to see a way out of his difficulty—and a very simple one; and that was to die.
"That is the solution after all," said he. "I am not strong enough for God's work: but I will not shrink from it, if I can help. If I cannot master it, let it kill me; so at least I may have peace. I have failed utterly here: all my grand plans have crumbled to ashes between my fingers. I find myself a cumberer of the ground, where I fancied that I was going forth like a very Michael—fool that I was!—leader of the armies of heaven. And now, in the one remaining point on which I thought myself strong, I find myself weakest of all. Useless and helpless! I have one chance left, one chance to show these poor souls that I really love them, really wish their good—Selfish that I am! What matter whether I do show it or not? What need to justify myself to them? Self, self, creeping in everywhere! I shall begin next, I suppose, longing for the cholera to come, that I may show off myself in it, and make spiritual capital out of their dying agonies! Ah me! that it were all over!—That this cholera, if it is to come, would wipe out of this head what I verily believe nothing but death will do!" And therewith Frank laid his head on the table, and cried till he could cry no more.