Two Years Ago, Volume II

"Well," he said, "all we can do is to walk down to the car, and let them follow; and, meanwhile, I will give you my wise opinion about this education question, whereof I know nothing."

"It will be all oracular to me, for I know nothing either;" and she put her arm through his, and walked on.

"Did you hurt yourself then? I am sure you are in pain."

"I? Never less free from it, with many thanks to you. What made you think so?"

"I heard you breathe so hard, and quite stamp your feet, I thought. I suppose it was fancy."

It was not fancy, nevertheless. Major Campbell was stamping down something; and succeeded too in crushing it.

They walked on toward the car, Valencia and Headley following them: ere they arrived at the place where they were to meet it, it was quite dark: but what was more important, the car was not there.

"The stupid man must have mistaken his orders, and gone home."

"Or let his horse go home of itself, while he was asleep inside. He was more than half tipsy when we started."

So spoke the Major, divining the exact truth. There was nothing to be done but to walk the four miles home, and let the two truants follow as they could.

"We shall have plenty of time for our educational lecture," said Lucia.

"Plenty of time to waste, then, my clear lady."

"Oh, I never talk with you five minutes—I do not know why—without feeling wiser and happier. I envy Valencia for having seen so much of you of late."

Little thought poor Lucia, as she spoke those innocent words, that within four yards of her, crouched behind the wall, his face and every limb writhing with mingled curiosity and rage, was none other but her husband.

He had given place to the devil: and the devil (for the "superstitious" and "old-world" notion which attributes such frenzies to the devil has not yet been superseded by a better one) had entered into him, and concentrated all the evil habits and passions which he had indulged for years into one flaming hell within him.

Miserable man! His torments were sevenfold: and if he had sinned, he was at least punished. Not merely by all which a husband has a right to feel in such a case, or fancies that he has a right; not merely by tortured vanity and self-conceit, by the agony of seeing any man preferred to him, which to a man of Elsley's character was of itself unbearable;—not merely by the loss of trust in one whom he hail once trusted utterly:– but, over and above all, and worst of all, by the feeling of shame, self-reproach, self-hatred, which haunts a jealous man, and which ought to haunt him; for few men lose the love of women who have once loved them, save by their own folly or baseness:—by the recollection that he had traded on her trust; that he had drugged his own conscience with the fancy that she must love him always, let him do what he would; and had neglected and insulted her affection, because he fancied, in his conceit, that it was inalienable. And with the loss of self-respect, came recklessness of it, and drove him on, as it has jealous men in all ages, to meannesses unspeakable, which have made them for centuries, poor wretches, the butts of worthless playwrights, and the scorn of their fellow-men.

Elsley had wandered, he hardly knew how or whither, for his calling to Mellot was the merest blind,—stumbling over rocks, bruising himself against tree-trunks, to this wall. He knew they must pass it. He waited for them, and had his reward. Blind with rage, he hardly waited for the sound of their footsteps to die away, before he had sprung into the road, and hurried up in the opposite direction,—anywhere, everywhere,– to escape from them, and from self. Whipt by the furies, he fled along the road and up the vale, he cared not whither.

And what were Headley and Valencia, who of necessity had paired off together, doing all the while? They walked on silently side by side for ten minutes; then Frank said,—

"I have been impertinent, Miss St. Just, and I beg your pardon."

"No, you have not," said she, quite hastily. "You were right, too right,—has it not been proved within the last five minutes? My poor sister! What can be done to mend Mr. Vavasour's temper? I wish you could talk to him, Mr. Headley."

"He is beyond my art. His age, and his talents, and his—his consciousness of them," said Frank, using the mildest term he could find, "would prevent so insignificant a person as me having any influence. But what I cannot do, God's grace may."

"Can it change a man's character, Mr. Headley? It may make good men better—but can it cure temper?"

"Major Campbell must have told you that it can do anything."

"Ah, yes: with men as wise, and strong, and noble as he is; but with such a weak, vain man—"

"Miss St. Just, I know one who is neither wise, nor strong, nor noble: but as weak and vain as any man; in whom God has conquered—as He may conquer yet in Mr. Vavasour—all which makes man cling to life."

"What all?" asked she, suspecting, and not wrongly, that he spoke of himself.

"All, I suppose, which it is good for them to have crushed. There are feelings which last on, in spite of all struggles to quench them—I suppose, because they ought to last; because, while they torture, they still ennoble. Death will quench them: or if not, satisfy them: or if not, set them at rest somehow."

"Death?" answered she, in a startled tone.

"Yes. Our friend, Major Campbell's friend, Death. We have been seeing a good deal of him together lately, and have come to the conclusion that he is the most useful, pleasant, and instructive of all friends."

"Oh, Mr. Headley, do not speak so! Are you in earnest?"

"So much in earnest, that I have resolved to go out as an army chaplain, to see in the war somewhat more of my new friend."

"Impossible! Mr. Headley; it will kill you!—All that horrible fever and cholera!"

"And what possible harm can it do me, if it does kill me, Miss St. Just!"

"Mr. Headley, this is madness! I—we cannot allow you to throw away your life thus—so young, and—and such prospects before you! And there is nothing that my brother would not do for you, were it only for your heroism at Aberalva. There is not one of the family who does not love and respect you, and long to see all the world appreciating you as we do; and your poor mother—"

"I have told my mother all, Miss St. Just. And she has said 'Go; it is your only hope.' She has other sons to comfort her. Let us say no more of it. Had I thought that you would have disapproved of it, I would never have mentioned the thing."

"Disapprove of—your going to die? You shall not! And for me, too: for I guess all—all is my fault!"

"All is mine," said he quietly: "who was fool enough to fancy that I could forget you—conquer my love for;" and at these words his whole voice and manner changed in an instant into wildest passion. "I must speak—now and never more—I love you still, fool that I am! Would God I had never seen you! No, not that. Thank God for that to the last: but would God I had died of that cholera! that I had never come here, conceited fool that I was, fancying that it was possible, after having once—No! Let me go, go anywhere, where I may burden you no more with my absurd dreams!—You, who have had the same thing said to you, and in finer words, a hundred times, by men who would not deign to speak to me!" and covering his face in his hands, he strode on, as if to escape.

"I never had the same thing said to me!"

"Never? How often have fine gentlemen, noblemen, sworn that they were dying for you?"

"They never have said to me what you have done."

"No—I am clumsy, I suppose—"

"Mr. Headley, indeed you are unjust to yourself—unjust to me!"

"I—to you? Never! I know you better than you know yourself—see in you what no one else sees. Oh, what fools they are who say that love is blind! Blind? He sees souls in God's own light; not as they have become: but as they ought to become—can become—are already in the sight of Him who made them!"

"And what might I become?" asked she, half-frightened by the new earnestness of his utterance.

"How can I tell! Something infinitely too high for me, at least, who even now am not worthy to kiss the dust off your feet."

"Oh, do not speak so: little do you know—! No, Mr. Headley, it is you who are too good for me; too noble, single-eyed, self-sacrificing, to endure my vanity and meanness for a day."

"Madam, do not speak thus! Give me no word which my folly can distort into a ray of hope, unless you wish to drive me mad. No! it is impossible; and, were it possible, what but ruin to my soul? I should live for you, and not for my work. I should become a schemer, ambitious, intriguing, in the vain hope of proving myself to the world worthy of you. No; let it be. 'Let the dead bury their dead, and follow thou me.'"

She made no answer—what answer was there to make? And he strode on by her side in silence for full ten minutes. At last she was forced to speak.

"Mr. Headley, recollect that this conversation has gone too far for us to avoid coming to some definite understanding—"

"Then it shall, Miss St. Just. Then it shall, once and for all: formally and deliberately, it shall end now. Suppose,—I only say suppose,—that I could, without failing in my own honour, my duty to my calling, make myself such a name among good men that, poor parson though I be, your family need be ashamed of nothing about me, save my poverty? Tell me, now and for ever, could it be possible—"

He stopped. She walked on, silent, in her turn.

"Say no, as a matter of course, and end it!" said he, bitterly.

She drew a long breath, as if heaving off a weight.

"I cannot—dare not say it."

"It? Which of the two? yes, or no?"

She was silent.

He stopped, and spoke calmly and slowly. "Say that again, and tell me that I am not dreaming. You? the admired! the worshipped! the luxurious!—and no blame to you that you are what you were born—could you endure a little parsonage, the teaching village school-children, tending dirty old women, and petty cares the whole year round?"

"Mr. Headley," answered she, slowly and calmly, in her turn, "I could endure a cottage,—a prison, I fancy, at moments,—to escape from this world, of which I am tired, which will soon be tired of me: from women who envy me, impute to me ambitions as base as their own; from men who admire—not me, for they do not know me, and never will—but what in me —I hate them!—will give them pleasure. I hate it all, despise it all; despise myself for it all every morning when I wake! What does it do for me, but rouse in me the very parts of my own character which are most despicable, most tormenting? If it goes on, I feel I could become as frivolous, as mean, aye, as wicked as the worst. You do not know—you do not know—. I have envied the nuns their convents. I have envied Selkirk his desert island. I envy now the milkmaids there below: anything to escape and be in earnest, anything for some one to teach me to be of use! Yes, this cholera—and this war—though only, only its coming shadow has passed over me,—and your words too—" cried she, and stopped and hesitated, as if afraid to tell too much—"they have wakened me—to a new life—at least to the dream of a new life!"

"Have you not Major Campbell?" said Headley, with a terrible effort of will.

"Yes—but has he taught me? He is dear, and good, and wise; but he is too wise, too great for me. He plays with me as a lion might with a mouse; he is like a grand angel far above in another planet, who can pity and advise, but who cannot—What am I saying?" and she covered her face with her hand.

She dropped her glove as she did so. Headley picked it up and gave it to her: as he did so their hands met; and their hands did not part again.

"You know that I love you, Valencia St. Just."

"Too well! too well!"

"But you know, too, that you do not love me."

"Who told you so? What do you know? What do I know? Only that I long for some one to make me—to make me as good as you are!" and she burst into tears.

"Valencia, will you trust me?"

"Yes!" cried she, looking up at him suddenly: "if you will not go to the war."

"No—no—no! Would you have me turn traitor and coward to God; and now, of all moments in my life?"

"Noble creature!" said she; "you will make me love you whether I wish or not."

What was it, after all, by which Frank Headley won Valencia's love? I cannot tell. Can you tell, sir, how you won the love of your wife? As little as you can tell of that still greater miracle—how you have kept her love since she found out what manner of man you were.

So they paced homeward, hand in hand, beside the shining ripples, along the Dinas shore. The birches breathed fragrance on them; the night-hawk churred softly round their path; the stately mountains smiled above them in the moonlight, and seemed to keep watch and ward over their love, and to shut out the noisy world, and the harsh babble and vain fashions of the town. The summer lightning flickered to the westward; but round them the rich soft night seemed full of love,—as full of love as their own hearts were, and, like them, brooding silently upon its joy. At last the walk was over; the kind moon sank low behind the hills; and the darkness hid their blushes as they paced into the sleeping village, and their hands parted unwillingly at last.

When they came into the hall, through the group of lounging gownsmen and tourists, they found Bowie arguing with Mrs. Lewis, in his dogmatic Scotch way,—

"So ye see, madam, there's no use defending the drunken loon any-more at all; and here will my leddies have just walked their bonny legs off, all through that carnal sin of drunkenness, which is the curse of your Welsh populaaation."

"And not quite unknown north of Tweed either, Bowie," said Valencia, laughing. "There now, say no more about it. We have had a delightful walk, and nobody is the least tired. Don't say any more, Mrs. Lewis: but tell them to get us some supper. Bowie, so my lord has come in?"

"This half-hour good!"

"Has he had any sport?"

"Sport! aye, troth! Five fish in the day. That's a river indeed at Bettws! Not a pawky wee burn, like this Aberglaslyn thing."

"Only five fish?" said Valencia, in a frightened tone.

"Fish, my leddy, not trouts, I said. I thought ye knew better than that by this time."

"Oh, salmon?" cried Valencia, relieved. "Delightful. I'll go to him this moment."

And upstairs to Scoutbush's room she went.

He was sitting in dressing-gown and slippers, sipping his claret, and fondling his fly-book (the only one he ever studied con amore), with a most complacent face. She came in and stood demurely before him, holding her broad hat in both hands before her knees, like a school-girl, her face half-hidden in the black curls. Scoutbush looked up and smiled affectionately, as he caught the light of her eyes and the arch play of her lips.

"Ah! there you are, at a pretty time of night! How beautiful you look, Val! I wish my wife may be half as pretty!"

Valencia made him a prim curtsey.

"I am delighted to hear of my lord's good sport. He will choose to be in a good humour, I suppose."

"Good humour? ça va sans dire! Three stone of fish in three hours!"

"Then his little sister is going to do a very foolish thing, and wants his leave to do it; which if he will grant, she will let him do as many foolish things as he likes without scolding him, as long as they both shall live."

"Do it then, I beg. What is it? Do you want to go up Snowdon with Headley to-morrow, to see the sun rise? You'll kill yourself!"

"No," said Valencia very quietly; "I only want to marry him."

"Marry him?" cried Scoutbush, starting up.

"Don't try to look majestic, my dear little brother, for you are really not tall enough; as it is, you have only hooked all your flies into your dressing-gown."

Scoutbush dashed himself down into his chair again.

"I'll be shot if you shall!"

"You may be shot just as surely, whether I do or not," said she softly; and she knelt down before him, and put her arms round him, and laid her head upon his lap. "There, you can't run away now; so you must hear me quietly. And you know it may not be often that we shall be together again thus; and oh, Scoutbush! brother! if anything was to happen to you—I only say if—in this horrid war, you would not like to think that you had refused the last thing your little Val asked for, and that she was miserable and lonely at home."

"I'll be shot if you shall!" was all the poor Viscount could get out.

"Yes, miserable and lonely; you gone away, and mon Saint Père too: and Lucia, she has her children—and I am so wild and weak—I must have some one to guide me and protect me—indeed I must!"

"Why, that was what I always said! That was why I wanted you so to marry this season! Why did not you take Chalkclere, or half-a-dozen good matches who were dying for you, and not this confounded black parson, of all birds in the air?"

"I did not take Lord Chalkclere for the very reason that I do take Mr. Headley. I want a husband who will guide me, not one whom I must guide."

"Guide?" said Scoutbush bitterly, with one of those little sparks of practical shrewdness which sometimes fell from him. "Aye, I see how it is! These intriguing rascals of parsons—they begin as father confessors, like so many popish priests; and one fine morning they blossom out into lovers, and so they get all the pretty women, and all the good fortunes,—the sneaking, ambitious, low-bred—"

"He is neither! You are unjust, Scoutbush!" cried Valencia, looking up. "He is the very soul of honour. He might be rich now, and have had a fine living, if he had not been too conscientious to let his uncle buy him one; and that offended his uncle, and he would allow him nothing. And as for being low-bred, he is a gentleman, as you know; and if his uncle be in business, his mother is a lady, and he will be well enough off one day."

"You seem to know a great deal about his affairs."

"He told me all, months ago—before there was any dream of this. And, my dear," she went on, relapsing into her usual arch tone, "there is no fear but his uncle will be glad enough to patronise him again, when he finds that he has married a viscount's sister."

Scoutbush laughed. "You scheming little Irish rogue! But I won't! I've said it, and I won't. It's enough to have one sister married to a poor poet, without having another married to a poor parson. Oh! what have I done that I should be bothered in this way? Isn't it bad enough to be a landlord, and to have an estate, and be responsible for a lot of people that will die of the cholera, and have to vote in the house about a lot of things I don't understand, or anybody else, I believe, but that, over and above, I must be the head of the family, and answerable to all the world for whom my mad sisters many? I won't, I say!"

"Then I shall just go and marry without your leave! I'm of age, you know, and my fortune's my own; and then we shall come in as the runaway couples do in a play, while you sit there in your dressing-gown as the stern father—Won't you borrow a white wig for the occasion, my lord?– And we shall fall down on our knees so,"—and she put herself in the prettiest attitude in the world,—"and beg your blessing—please forgive us this time, and we'll never do so any more! And then you will turn your face away, like the baron in the ballad,—

'And brushed away the springing tearHe proudly strove to hide,'

Et cetera, et cetera,—Finish the scene for yourself, with a 'Bless ye, my children; bless ye!'"

"Go along, and marry the cat if you like! You are mad; and I am mad; and all the world's mad, I think."

"There," she said, "I knew that he would be a good boy at last!" And she sprang up, threw her arms round his neck, and, to his great astonishment, burst into the most violent fit of crying.

"Good gracious, Valencia! do be reasonable! You'll go into a fit, or somebody will hear you! You know how I hate a scene. Do be good, there's a darling! Why didn't you tell me at first how much you wished for it, and I would have said yes in a moment."

"Because I didn't know myself," cried she passionately. "There, I will be good, and love you better than all the world, except one. And if you let those horrid Russians hurt you, I will hate you as long as I live, and be miserable all my life afterwards."

"Why, Valencia, do you know, that sounds very like a bull?"

"Am I not a wild Irish girl?" said she, and hurried out, leaving Scoutbush to return to his flies.

She bounded into Lucia's room, there to pour out a bursting heart—and stopped short.

Lucia was sitting on the bed, her shawl and bonnet tossed upon the floor, her head sunk on her bosom, her arms sunk by her side.

"Lucia, what is it? Speak to me, Lucia!"

She pointed faintly to a letter on the floor—Valencia caught it up— Lucia made a gesture as if to stop her.

"No, you must not read it. Too dreadful!"

But Valencia read it; while Lucia covered her face in her hands, and uttered a long, low, shuddering moan of bitter agony.

Valencia read, with flashing eyes and bursting brow. It was a hideous letter. The words of a man trying to supply the place of strength by virulence. A hideous letter, unfit to be written here.

"Valencia! Valencia! It is false—a mistake—he is dreaming. You know it is false! You will not leave me too!"

Valencia dashed it on the ground, clasped her sister in her arms, and covered her head with kisses.

"My Lucia! My own sweet good sister! Base, cowardly," sobbed she, in her rage; while Lucia's agony began to find a vent in words, and she moaned on—

"What have I done? All that flower, that horrid flower: but who would have dreamed—and Major Campbell, too, of all men upon earth! Valencia, it is some horrid delusion of the devil. Why, he was there all the while—and you too. Could he think that I should before his very face? What must he fancy me? Oh, it is a delusion of the devil, and nothing else!"

"He is a wretch! I will take the letter to my brother; he shall right you!"

"Ah no! no! never! Let me tear it to atoms—hide it! It is all a mistake! He did not mean it! He will recollect himself to-morrow and come back."

"Let him come back if he dare!" cried Valencia, in a tone which said, "I could kill him with my own hands!"

"Oh, he will come back! He cannot have the heart to leave his poor little Lucia. Oh, cruel, cowardly, not to have said one word—not one word to explain all—but it was all my fault, my wicked, odious temper; and after I had seen how vexed he was, too!—Oh, Elsley, Elsley, come back, only come back, and I will beg your pardon on my knees! anything? Scold me, beat me, if you will! I deserve it all! Only come back, and let me see your face, and hear your voice, instead of leaving me here all alone, and the poor children too! Oh, what shall I say to them to-morrow, when they wake and find no father!"

Valencia's indignation had no words. She could only sit on the bed, with Lucia in her arms, looking defiance at all the world above that fair head which one moment dropped on her bosom, and the next gazed up into her face in pitiful child-like pleading.

"Oh, if I but knew where he was gone! If I could but find him! One word —one word would set all right! It always did, Valencia, always! He was so kind, so dear in a moment, when I put away my naughty, naughty temper, and smiled in his face like a good wife. Wicked creature that I was! and this is my punishment. Oh, Elsley, one word, one word! I must find him if I went barefoot over the mountains—I must go, I must—"

And she tried to rise: but Valencia held her down, while she entreated piteously—

"I will go, and see about finding him!" she said at last as her only resource. "Promise me to be quiet here, and I will."

"Quiet? Yes! quiet here!" and she threw herself upon her face on the floor.

She looked up eagerly. "You will not tell Scoutbush?"

"Why not?"

"He is so—so hasty. He will kill him! Valencia, he will kill him! Promise me not to tell him, or I shall go mad!" And she sat up again, pressing her hands upon her head, and rocking from side to side.

"Oh, Valencia, if I dared only scream! but keeping it in kills me. It is like a sword through my brain now!"

"Let me call Clara."

"No, no! not Clara. Do not tell her, I will be quiet; indeed I will; only come back soon, soon; for I am all alone, alone!" And she threw herself down again upon her face.