I"ll speak to Foster; he must not show his disappointment even before Uncle Henry. You will be quite safe, you see. But, mind, I won"t allow _any one_ to frighten or vex my pet cousin." His countenance lowered as he spoke, and there was a threat in his eyes.
As the cloud darkened on his face, the light came back on Isabel Raymond"s. She took his hand--all fibre and sinew, like an oak-bough--into her slender fingers and pressed it hard. In good truth, a woman at her need could ask no better defender than he who stood by her side then, tall, strong, black-browed, and terrible as Saul. "Thank you so much, dear Guy," she whispered. "If you speak to Mr. Foster, you will tell him how _very_ sorry I am!" and then she left him.
Guy did speak to the curate, I hope gently. At all events, we never laughed at him again. How could we, when we saw him going about his daily duties, honestly and bravely, and always, when in presence, struggling with his great sorrow, so as not by word or look to compromise the thoughtless child who had won his heart for her amus.e.m.e.nt, and thrown it away for her convenience?
I have been disciplined since by what I have felt and seen, and I see now how ungenerous we had been.
What right had we to make of that man a puppet for our amus.e.m.e.nt, because he was shy, and stupid, and slow? He was as true in his devotion, as honorable in all his wishes, as confident in his hopes till they were blasted, as any one that has gone a wooing since the first whisper of love was heard in Eden. If his despair was less crushing than that of other men, it was because his principles were stronger to endure, and perhaps because his temperament was more tranquil and cold.
As I have said, he did his day"s work thoroughly, and that helped him through a good deal. But, to the utmost of his nature, I believe he did suffer. And could the long train of those whom disappointment has made maniacs or suicides do more?
Let us not trust too much to the absence of feeling in these seemingly impa.s.sive organizations.
I wonder how often the executors of old college fellows, or of hard-faced bankers and bureaucrats, have been aggravated by finding in that most secret drawer, which ought to have held a codicil or a jewel, a tress, a glove, or a flower? The searcher looks at the object for a moment, and then throws it into the rubbish-basket, with a laugh if he is good-natured, with a curse if he is vicious and disappointed. Let it lie there--though the dead miser valued it above all his bank-stock, and kissed it oftener than he did his living and lawful wife and children--what is it worth now? Say, as the grim Dean of St. Patrick wrote on _his_ love-token, "Only a woman"s hair."
Now these men, unknown to their best friend perhaps, had gone through the affliction which is so common that it is hard to speak of it without launching into truisms. This sorrow has made some men famous, by forcing them out into the world and shutting the door behind them. It has made the fortunes of some poets, who choose the world for their confidant, setting their bereavement to music, and bewailing Eurydice in charming volumes, that are cheap at "3_s._ 6_d._ in cloth, lettered." It has made some--I think the best and bravest--somewhat silent for the rest of their lives. I read some lines the other day wise enough to have sprung from an older brain than Owen Meredith"s.
"They were pedants who could speak-- Grander souls have pa.s.sed unheard; Such as felt all language weak; Choosing rather to record Secrets before Heaven, than break Faith with angels, by a word--"
Yes, many men have their Rachel; but--there being a prejudice against bigamy--few have even the Patriarch"s luck, to marry her at last; for the wife _de convenance_ generally outlives her younger sister; and so, one afternoon, we turn again from a grave in Ephrata-Green Cemetery, somewhat drearily, into our tent pitched in the plains of Belgravia, where Leah--(there was ever jealousy between those two)--meets us with a sharp glance of triumph in her "tender eyes."
We have known pleasanter _tete-a-tetes_--have we not?--than that which we undergo that evening at dinner, though our companion seems disposed to be especially lively. We have not much appet.i.te; but our _carissima sposa_ tells us "not to drink any more claret, or we shall never be fit to take her to Lady Shechem"s _conversazione_." Of all nights in the year, would she let us off duty on this one? "There are to be some very pleasant people there," she says, "though none, perhaps, that _you particularly care about_." (Thank you, my love; I understand that good-natured allusion perfectly, and am proportionately grateful.) Her voice sounds shriller than usual as she says this, and leaves us to put some last touches to her toilette. So we order a fresh bottle, notwithstanding the warning, and fall to thinking. How low and soft _that other_ voice was, and, even when a little reproachful, how rarely sweet! _She_ would scarcely have invented that last taunt if matters had turned out differently. Then we think of our respected father-in-law, Sir Joseph Leyburn, of Harran Park--a mighty county magistrate and cattle-breeder. He got Ishmael Deadeye, the poacher, transported last year, and took the prize for Devons at the Great Mesopotamian Agricultural with a brindled bull. We remember his weeping at the wedding-breakfast over the loss of his eldest treasure, and wonder if he was an arrant humbug, or only a foolish, fond old man, inclining morosely toward the former opinion. We don"t seem to care much about Sir Roland de Vaux, the celebrated geologist, whom we shall have the privilege of meeting this evening. What are strata to us, when our thoughts will not go lower than about _eight feet_ underground? We shall be rather bored than otherwise by Dr. Sternhold, that eminent Christian divine, who pa.s.ses his leisure hours in proving St. Paul to have been an unsound theologian and a weak dialectician. Why should Mr. Planet, the intrepid traveler, be always inflicting Jerusalem upon us, as if no one had ever visited the Holy Land before him? Our ancestors did so five hundred years ago, and did not make half the fuss about it; and _they_ had a skirmish or two there worth speaking of, while we don"t believe a word of Planet"s encounter with those three Arabs on the Hebron road.
Pooh! there"s no more peril in traversing the Wilderness of Cades than in going up to the Grands Mulets. We are not worthy of those distinguished men, and would prefer the society of hard-riding d.i.c.k Foley of the Blues. He had a few feelings in common with us once on a certain point (how we hated him then), and he won"t wonder if we are duller than usual this evening. Perhaps his own nerve will scarcely be as iron as usual in the Grand Military, to come off in the course of the week.
Well, the bottle is out, and Mademoiselle Zelpa comes to say that "Madame is ze raidee." So one gla.s.s of Cognac neat, as a _cha.s.se_ (to more things than good Claret), and then--let us put on our whitest tie and our most attractive smile, and "go forth, for she is gone."
CHAPTER VIII.
"A man had given all other bliss And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips."
We were asked to dine and sleep at Brainswick, where the hounds met on the following morning. Mr. Raymond could not make up his mind to the exertion, so Forrester and I accompanied Guy alone.
"By-the-by," the latter observed, as we were driving over in his mail-phaeton, "I wonder if we shall see the Bellasys to-night? I know they were to come down about this time. Steady, old wench! where are you off to?" (This was to the near wheeler, who was breaking her trot.) "I think you"ll admire her, Frank; but, _gare a vous_, she"s dangerous. Eh, Charley?"
"Well, you ought to know," answered Forrester; "I never tried her much myself. She"s two or three stone over my weight. I wonder what she has been doing lately? They sent her down to rusticate somewhere at the end of the season. She ought to be in great condition now, with a summer"s run."
Livingstone smiled, complacently I thought, as if some one had praised one of his favorite hunters, but did not pursue the subject.
When I came down before dinner he was talking to a lady in dark blue silk, with black lace over it, a wreath curiously plaited of natural ivy in her hair. I guessed her at once to be Flora Bellasys.
Let me try to paint--though abler artists have failed--the handsomest brunette I have ever seen.
She was very tall; her figure magnificently developed, though slender-waisted and lithe as a serpent. She walked as if she had been bred in a _basquina_, and her foot and ankle were hardly to be matched on this side of the Pyrenees; the nose slightly aquiline, with thin, transparent nostrils; and the forehead rather low--it looked more so, perhaps, from the thick ma.s.ses of dark hair which framed and shaded her face. Under the clear, pale olive of the cheeks the rich blood mantled now and then like wine in a Venice gla.s.s; and her lips--the outline of the upper one just defined by a penciling of down, the lower one full and pouting--glistened with the brilliant smoothness of a pomegranate flower when the dew is clinging. Her eyes--the opium-eaters of Stamboul never dreamed of their peers among the bevies of hachis-houris. They were of the very darkest hazel; one moment sleeping lazily under their long lashes, like a river under leaves of water-lilies; the next, sparkling like the same stream when the sunlight is splintered on its ripples into carcanets of diamonds. When they chose to speak, not all the orators that have rounded periods since Isocrates could match their eloquence; when it was their will to guard a secret, they met you with the cold, impenetrable gaze that we attribute to the mighty mother, Cybele. Even a philosopher might have been interested--on purely psychological grounds, of course--in watching the thoughts as they rose one by one to the surface of those deep, clear wells (was truth at the bottom of them?--I doubt), like the strange shapes of beauty that reveal themselves to seamen, coyly and slowly, through the purple calm of the Indian Sea.
Twice I have chosen a watery simile; but I know no other element combining, as her glances did, liquid softness with l.u.s.tre.
When near her, you were sensible of a strange, subtle, intoxicating perfume, very fragrant, perfectly indefinable, which clung, not only to her dress, but to every thing belonging to her. From what flowers it was distilled no artist in essences alive could have told. I incline to think that, like the "birk" in the ghost"s garland,
"They were not grown on earthly bank, Nor yet on earthly sheugh."
Guy took Miss Bellasys in to dinner, and I found myself placed on her other side. I had been introduced to her ten minutes before, but had little opportunity for "improving the occasion," as the Nonconformists have it, for she never once deigned a look in my direction.
My right-hand neighbor was an elderly man of a full habit, whom it would have been cruel to disturb till the rage of hunger was appeased, so I was fain to seek amus.e.m.e.nt in the conversation going on on my left.
There was no indiscretion in this, for I knew Guy would never touch secrets of state in mixed company.
For some time they talked nothing but commonplaces, evidently feeling each other"s foils. The real fencing began with a question from Flora--if he was not surprised at seeing her there that evening.
"Not at all," was the reply; "I knew we must meet before long. It is only parallels that don"t; and there is very little of the right line about either you or me."
"Speak for yourself," Miss Bellasys said; "I consider that a very rude observation."
"Pardon me," retorted Guy; "I seldom say rude things--never intentionally. I don"t know which is in worst taste, that, or paying point-blank compliments. Without being mathematical, you may have heard that the line of beauty is a curve."
Flora laughed.
"It is difficult to catch you. What have you been doing since we parted?"
"That is just the question that was on my lips, so nearly uttered that I consider I spoke first. Now, will you confess, or must I cross-question some one else? I _will_ know. It is easy to follow you, like an invading army, by the trail of devastation."
"So you do care to know?" the soft voice said, that could make the nerves of even an indifferent hearer thrill and quiver strangely.
After once listening to it, it was very easy to believe the weird stories of Norse sorceresses, and German wood-spirits and pixies, luring men to death with their fatally musical tones.
"Simple curiosity," Guy replied, coolly, "and a little compa.s.sion for your victims. They might be friends of mine, you know."
Miss Bellasys bit her lip, half provoked, half amused, apparently, as she answered, "The dead tell no tales."
"No, but the wounded do, and they cry out pretty loudly sometimes. I suppose all the cases did not terminate fatally. Will you confess?"
"I have nothing to tell you," Flora said, very demurely and meekly, only for once her eyes betrayed her. "Mamma took me down into Devonshire, where we have an aunt or two, for sea-breezes and seclusion.
I rather liked at first having nothing on earth to do, and nothing--yes, I understand--really nothing to think about. I used to sleep a great deal, and then drive a little obstinate pony, to see views. But I don"t care much about views--do you? Then mamma was always wanting me to help her look for sh.e.l.ls and wild-flowers; and the rocks hurt my feet, and the bushes never would leave me alone in the woods." She shuddered slightly here.
"The Bushes! a Devonshire family of that name, I presume?" Guy interrupted, with intense gravity. "How wrong of them! They are very ill-regulated young men down in those parts, I believe."
"Don"t be absurd; I never saw a creature for months between fifteen and fifty. Are not those ages safe?" (A shake of the head from Livingstone.) "I began to be very unhappy; I had no one to tease; my aunts are too good-natured, and mamma is used to it. At last I had the greatest mind to do something desperate--to write to you, for instance--merely to see the household"s horror when your answer came. You would have answered, would you not? I should not have opened it, you know, but given it to mamma, like a good child."
"Of course; I know you show all your letters to your mother. But that ruralizing must have been fearful for you, _poverina_! People were talking a good deal of agricultural distress, but this is the most piteous case I"ve heard of. So there were really no men to govern in that wood?"
"Not even a little boy," said Flora, decisively. "There were two or three from Oxford in the neighborhood; I used to see them sitting outside their lodgings in the sun, like rabbits, but they always ran in before--"
"Before you could get a shot at them, you mean?" broke in Guy; "you ought to have crept up, and stalked them cleverly."
Flora threw hack her handsome head. "I don"t war with children. It went on just as I tell you till we left for our round of winter visits, which have been very stupid and correct--till now."
I hardly caught the two last words, she spoke them so low. There was silence for several minutes, and then Guy leaned back to address me.