At a Winter's Fire
Page 7
BLACK VENN
I
"George," said Plancine.
"Please say it again," said George.
She dimpled at him and obeyed, with the soft suggestion of accent thatwas like a tender confidence. Her feet were sunk in Devonshire grass;her name was on the birth register of a little Devonshire sea-town; yetthe sun of France was in her veins as surely as his caress was on herlips.
Therefore she said "George" with a sweet dragging sound that greatlyfluttered the sensibilities of the person addressed, and not infrequentlyled them to alight, like Prince Dummling's queen bee, on the very mouthof that honeyed flower of speech.
Now Plancine put her cheek on her George's rough sleeve, and said she,--
"I have a confession to make--about something a little silly.Consequently I have postponed it till now, when it is too dark foryou to see my face."
"Never!" he murmured fervently. "A double cataract could not deprive meof that vision. It is printed here, Plancine."
He smacked his chest hard on the left side.
"Yet it sounds hollow, George?"
"Yes," he said. "It is a sandwich-box, an empty one. I would not consignyour image to such a deplorable casket. My heart was what I meant. How Ihate sandwiches--misers shivering between sheets--a vile gastronomiceconomy!"
"Poor boy! I will make you little dough-cakes when you go apainting."
"Plancine! Your image here, yes. But your dough-cakes--!"
"Then keep to your sandwiches, sir."
"I must. But the person who invented them was no gentleman!"
"Papa would like to hear you say that."
"Say what?"
"Admit the possibility of any social distinction."
"It is only a question of sandwiches."
"George, must you be a Chartist and believe in Feargus O'Connor?"
"My soul, I cannot go back on my principles, for all that the violets ofyour eyes have sprouted under the shadow of a venerable family-tree."
"That is very prettily said. You may kiss my thumb-nail with the whitespot in it for luck. No, sir. That is presuming. Now I am snug, and youmay talk."
"Plancine, I am a son of the people. I hold by my own. No doubt, if I hadblue blood to boast of, I should keep a vial of it in a prominent placeon the drawing-room mantelpiece. As it is, I confess my desire is tocarve for myself a name in art that shall be independent of alladventitious support; to answer to my vocation straight, upright, andmanly."
"That is better than nobility--though I have pride in my own. I wish papathought so. Yet he has both himself."
"The fine soul! For fifty years he has stood square to adversity with asmile on his face. Could I ever achieve that? Already I cry out onpoverty; because I want an unencumbered field for work, and--yes, oneother trifle."
"One other trifle, George?"
He took Plancine's face between his hands and looked very lovingly intoher eyes.
"I think I did the old man too much honour," he said. "You nestling ofeighteen--what credit to scout misfortune with such a bird at one'sside!"
"Ah! but papa is sixty-nine and the bird but eighteen."
"And eighteen years of heaven are a good education in happiness."
So they coo'd, these two. The June scents of the little garden werewafted all about them. The moon had come up out of the sea, and, findinga trellis of branches over their heads, hung their young brows withcoronals of shadowy leaves, like the old dame she was, rummaging in hertrinket box for something for her favourites.
In the dimly-luminous parlour (that smelt of folios and warm coffee) ofthe little dark house in the background, the figure of papa, poring atthe table over geological maps, was visible.
Fifty years ago an _emigre_, denounced, proscribed, and escaped from theruin of a shattered society: here, in '49, a stately, large-boned man,placidly enjoying the consciousness of a serene dignity maintained at theexpense of much and prolonged self-effacement--this was papa.
Grey hair, thinning but slightly near the temples; grey moustache andbeard pointed _de bouc_; flowered dressing-gown girdled about a heartas simple as a child's--this was papa, papa who grubbed over his ordnancesurveys while the young folks outside whispered of the stars.
Right beneath them--the latter--a broad gully of the hills went plungingprecipitously, all rolled with leaf and flower, to the undercliff of softblue lias and the very roof ridges of King's Cobb, whose walls andchimneys, now snowed with light, fretted a scallop of the striding baythat swept the land here like a scythe.
Plancine's village, a lofty appanage or suburb of this little seaboardtown at the hill-foot, seemed rather the parent stock from which theother had emancipated itself. For all down the steep slope that fledfrom Upper to King's Cobb was flung a _debris_ of houses that, like theice-fall of a glacier, would appear to have broken from the main bodyand gone careering into the valley below.
It was in point of fact, however, but a subordinate hamlet--a hanginggarden for the jaded tourist in the dog days, when his soul stifled inthe oven of the sea-level cliffs--an eyrie for Plancine, and for George,the earnest painter, a Paradise before the fall.
And now says George, "We have talked all round your confession, and stillI wait to give you absolution."
"I will confess. I read it in one of papa's books that is called the_Talmud_."
"Gracious me! you should be careful. What did you read?"
"That whoever wants to see the souls of the dead--"
"Plancine!"
"--must take finely sifted ashes, and strew them round his bed; and inthe morning he will see their foot-tracks, as a cock's. I did it."
"You did?"
"Last night, yes. And what a business I had afterwards sweeping them up!"
"And did you see anything?"
"Something--yes--I think so. But it might have been mice. There areplenty up there."
"Now you are an odd Plancine! What did you want with the ghosts of thedead?"
"I will tell you, you tall man; and you will not abuse my confidence.George, for all your gay independence, you must allow me a littlefamily pride and a little pathetic interest in the fortunes of the deadand gone De Jussacs."
"It is Mademoiselle De Jussac that speaks."
"It is Plancine, who knows so little:--that 'The Terror' would haveguillotined her father, a boy of fourteen: that he escaped to Prussia, toBelgium, to England; for six years always a wanderer and a fugitive: thathe was wrecked on this dear coast and, penniless, started life anewhere on his little accomplishments: that he made out a meagre existence,and late in the order of years (he was fifty) married an expatriatedcountrywoman, who died--George, my mother died when I was seventeenmonths old--and that is where I stop. My good, big father--so lonely, sopoor, and so silent! He tells me little. He speaks scantily of the past.But he was a Vicomte and is the last of his line; and I wanted the ghoststo explain to me so much that I have never learned."
The moonlight fell upon her sweet, pale, uplifted face. There were tearsin her eyes that glittered like frost.
But George, for all his love, showed a little masculine impatience.
"Reserve is very good," he said; "but we can't all be Lord Burleighs byholding our tongues. There is a sort of silence that is pregnant withnothing."
"George, you cannot mean to insult my father?"
"No, dear. But why does he make such a mystery of his past? I would havemine as clear as a window, for all to look through. Why does he treat mewith such suave and courteous opposition--permitting my suit, yetwithholding his consent?"
"If you could be less democratic, dear--"
"It is a religion with me--not a brutal indulgence."
"Perhaps he cannot dissociate the two. Then, he admires your genius andcommends your courage; but your poor purse hungers, my lover, and hedesires riches for his Plancine."
"And Plancine?"
"She will die a grey-haired maid for thee, 'O Richard! O my king!'"
"My sweet--my bird--my wife! Oh, that
you could be that now and kiss meon to fortune! I should be double-souled and inspired. A few months, andMadame la Vicomtesse should 'walk in silk attire.' I flame at thepicture. Why will your father not yield you gracefully, instead of plyingus with that eternal enigma of Black Venn?"
"Because enthusiasm alone may not command wealth," said a deep voice nearthem.
Papa had come upon them unobserved. The young man wheeled and chargedwhile his blood was hot.
"Mr. De Jussac, it is a shame to hold me in this unending suspense."
"Is it not better than decided rejection?"
"I have served like Jacob. You cannot doubt my single-hearted devotion?"
"I doubt nothing, my George" (about _his_ accent there was no tendercompromise)--"I doubt nothing, but that the balance at your bankers' isexcessive."
"You would not value Plancine at so much bullion?"
"But yes, my friend; for bullion is the algebraic formula that representscomfort. When Black Venn slips his apron--"
George made a gesture of impatience.
"When Black Venn slips his apron," repeated the father quietly, "I shallbe in a position to consider your suit."
"That is tantamount to putting me off altogether. It is ungenerous. It ispreposterous. You may or may not be right; but it is simply farcical(Plancine cried, "George!"--but he went on warmly, nevertheless) to makeour happiness contingent on the possible tumbling down of a bit of oldcliff--an accident that, after all, may never happen."
"Ah!" the quiet, strong voice went on; and in the old eyes turnedmoonwards one might have fancied one could read a certain pathos ofabnegation, or approaching self-sacrifice; "but it will, and shortly, forI prophesy. It was no idle cruelty of mine that first suggested thiscondition, but a natural reluctance to sign myself back to utterloneliness."
Plancine cried, "Papa! papa!" and sprang into his arms.
"A little patience," said De Jussac, pressing his moustache to the roundhead, "and you will honour this weary prophet, I think. I was up on thecliff to-day. The great crack is ever widening. A bowling wind, a loudthunderstorm, and that apron of the hill will tear from its bondage andsink sweltering down the slopes."
In the moment of speaking a tremor seized all his limbs, his eyes glaredmaniacal, his outstretched arm pointed seawards.
"The guillotine!" he shrieked, "the guillotine!"
In the offing of the bay was a vessel making for the unseen harbourbelow. It stood up black against the moonlight, its sails and yardspresenting some fantastic resemblance to that engine of blood.
George stepped back and hung his head embarrassed. He had more than oncebeen witness of a like seizure. It was the guillotine fright--the frightthat had smitten the boy of fourteen, and had pursued the man ever sincewith periodic attacks of illusion. Anything--a branch, a door-post, awindow, would suggest the hateful form during those periods--happilybrief--when the poor mind was temporarily unhinged. No doubt, in earlieryears, the fits had occurred frequently. Now they were rare, andgenerally, it seemed, attributable to some strong excitement or emotion.
Plancine knew how to act. She put her hand over the frantic eyes, and ledthe old man stumbling up the garden path. She was going to sing to himfrom the little sweet folk-ballads of the old gay France before thetrouble came--
_"The king would wed his daughter Over the English sea;But never across the water Shall a husband come to me."_
Love floated on the freshet of her voice straight into the heart of theyoung man who stood without.