‘As well as he can afford to like anybody, taking into account the small residue of affection that remains over and above his great regard for himself,’ interjected Celia, contemptuously.
‘But I have no feeling for him warmer than a commonplace friendship. I never shall have.’
‘Poor Ted! I am sorry for his sake, but I am very glad for yours.’
Celia went off to Brighton radiant with three trunks and two bonnet boxes, and the Manor-house sank suddenly into silence and gloom. Celia’s small frivolities were often troublesome, but her perennial gaiety of temper had pleasantly enlivened the spacious unpeopled house. Her fun was a mere school-girl’s fun, perhaps, at best, but it was genuine, the spontaneous outcome of animal spirits and a happy disposition. Celia would have chatted as merrily over a cup of tea and a herring in a garret at five shillings a week, as amidst the flesh pots of Hazlehurst Manor. She was a joyous, improvident, idle creature, with the unreasoning love of life for its own sake which makes a Neapolitan beggar happy in the sunshine, and an English gipsy contented under the low arch of his canvas tent, on the patch of waste grass by the wayside, whence he may be driven at any moment by a relentless constable.
Celia was gone, and Laura had ample leisure for serious meditation. In the first few days she was glad to be alone, to be free to think her own thoughts, to have no fear of encountering the keen glance of Celia’s penetrating eyes; not to see that canary head, perched on one side with an air of insufferable knowingness. Then, after a little while, a deep melancholy crept over her spirits, a bitter sense of disappointment, which she could not banish from her mind.
She had never forgotten that long leave-taking in the avenue. Surely, if anything could mean an engagement, the words spoken then, the kiss taken then, meant the most solemn engagement. Yet since that night six months had passed and John Treverton had made no sign. And in all that time his image had but rarely been absent from her thoughts. Day after day, hour after hour, she had expected to see him enter the garden, unannounced, as when she had seen him from the yew tree archway, standing looking quietly round him at the spring flowers and the smiling sunny lawn, where the shadows of the trees came and went like living things, where the earliest bees were humming, and the first of the butterflies skimming over beds of red and yellow tulips.
She had seen him every day during his last visit to the Sampsons, and that one week of friendly companionship had brought them very near together. In all that time he had said no word about the curious position which they occupied towards each other, and she had admired the delicacy of mind to which she ascribed this reticence. It seemed to her that no word ought to be said till the final word which fulfilled Jasper Treverton’s wish and united their two destinies for ever. And Laura saw no reason why that word should not be spoken in due time. She fancied that John Treverton liked her. He was somewhat fitful in his spirits during that week of sun and shower, variable as the weather; at times wildly gay, capping Celia’s maddest joke with one still madder; on other occasions lapsing into gloom, which provoked Celia to protest that he must have committed a murder in his early youth, and that the memory of his crime was haunting him.
‘Just like Eugene Aram,’ she had said; ‘now positively, Laura, he is like Eugene Aram; and I feel convinced that somebody’s bones are bleaching in a cave ready to be put together like the pieces of a puzzle, and to appear against him at the predestined moment. Don’t marry him, Laura. I’m sure there is some dreadful burden on his conscience.’
They had been infinitely happy together, in the most artless fashion, with the unthinking gladness of children whose calculations never travel beyond the present moment. Perhaps it was the delicious April weather, which spread a warm glaze of sunny yellow over the earth, and bathed the young leaves in vivid light, and painted the sky an Italian blue, and set the blackbirds and throstles singing from an hour before sunrise to an hour after sundown. This might in itself be enough for happiness. And then there was youth, a treasure so rich that none of us have ever learned to measure its value, till we have lost it; when we look back and lament it, as perhaps, after all is said, the dearest of all those dear friends we have buried; for was it not this which made those others so deeply dear?
Whatever the cause, those three, and more especially those two, had been happy. And yet after that week of innocent intimacy, after that parting kiss, John Treverton had remained away for more than half a year, and not by so much as a letter had he assured Laura that she still held a place in his heart and mind.
She thought of him now with bitterest self-reproach. She was angry with herself for having let her heart go out to him, for having made the tacit engagement involved in that farewell kiss.
‘After all it is only the fortune he cares about,’ she said to herself, ‘and after my foolishness that night he fancies himself so secure of me that he can stay in London and enjoy life in his own way, and then come and claim me at the last moment, just in time to fulfil the conditions of his cousin’s will. He is making the most of his last year of liberty. He will have no more of me than the law obliges him to have. The year has nearly gone, and he has given me one little week of his society. A cool lover, certainly. A hypocrite, too, for he put on looks and tones that seemed like deepest, strongest love. A gratuitous hypocrisy,’ pursued Laura, lashing herself to sharper scorn, ‘for I implored him to be frank with me. I offered him a loyal friendly alliance. But he is a man, and I suppose it is man’s nature to be false. He preferred to declare himself my lover, forgetting that his conduct would belie his words. I will never forgive him. I will never forgive myself for being so easily deceived The estate shall go to the hospital. If he were here to-morrow, kneeling at my feet, I would refuse him. I know the hollowness of his pretended love. He cannot fool me a second time.’
She had never been vain of her beauty. The secluded life she had led with her adopted father had left her simple as a cloistered nun in all her thoughts and habits. Edward Clare had told her that she was lovely, many times, and had praised her loveliness in his verses, with all the affectation, and some of the licence of that new school of poets of which he was an obscure member; but Laura had received all such praises as the effervescence of the poet’s frothy intellect rather than as a just tribute to her charms. Now, full of anger against John Treverton, she looked in her glass one winter night and wondered if she were really beautiful.
Yes, if the Guido in the dining-room below was beautiful — if features of purest modelling, dark hazel eyes, and a clear complexion faintly flushed with delicate carnation — if sculptured eye-lids, darkly fringed, a mouth half sad, half scornful, and dimples that showed momentarily in the mockery of a self-contemptuous smile — if these meant beauty, Laura Malcolm was assuredly beautiful. She was too true an artist not to know that this was beauty which smiled at her bitterly from the darkness of the glass.
‘Perhaps I am not his style,’ she said, with a little laugh. I have heard Edward Clare say that of girls I have praised. “Yes, she is very well, but not my style,” as if Providence ought to have had him in view whenever it created a pretty woman. “Not my style,” Edward would drawl languidly, as much as to say,” and therefore a failure.”’
Every idea of John Treverton now remaining in Laura’s mind was a thought of bitterness. She was so angry with him that she could not give him credit for one worthy act or one honourable feeling. As nearly as a soul so generous could hate did she now approach to the sin of hatred.
This was her mood one day in the beginning of December, indeed it had been her mood always for the last three months; but in the leisure of her late solitude her anger had intensified. This was her mood as she walked in the garden, in the cold sunshine, looking at the pale prim faces of the fading crysanthemums, — the perky china asters lending the last touch of bright colour to the dying year — the languorous late roses, flaunting their sickly beauty, like ball-room belles who refused to bow their heads to the sentence of time. It was a morning of unusual mil
dness: the arrow point of the old-fashioned vane pointed south-west; the leaves of the evergreen oaks were scarcely ruffled by the wind; the tall Scotch firs, red and rugged columns topped by masses of swart foliage, stood darkly out against a calm, clear sky.
This garden was Laura’s chief delight in her loneliness. God had gifted her with that deep and abiding love of nature, which is perhaps one of His richest gifts. They who possess it can never be utterly joyless.
She had walked in garden and orchard for more than an hour, when she came back by the old yew tree arch, and, just in the spot where she had seen him more than half a year ago, she saw John Treverton standing again to-day.
What an unstable thing is a woman’s anger against the man she loves. Laura’s first feeling at sight of John Treverton was indignation. She was on the point of receiving him with crushing politeness, of freezing him with coldest courtesy, when she perceived that he looked ill and careworn, and was gazing at her with eyes full of yearning tenderness. Then she forgot her wrongs in one moment, and went up to him and gave him her hand, saying gently, —
‘What have you been doing with yourself all this time?’
‘Knocking about London, doing very little good for myself or anyone else,’ he answered frankly.
Then he seemed to lose himself in the delight of being with her. He walked by her side, saying never a word, only looking at her with fond, admiring eyes; as if she had come upon him suddenly, like a revelation of hitherto unknown loveliness and delight.
At last he found a voice, but not for any brilliant utterance.
‘Are you really just a little glad to see me again?’ he asked. ‘Remember, you promised me a welcome.’
‘You have been in no haste to claim the fulfilment of my promise. It was made more than six months ago. You have had other welcomes in the meanwhile, no doubt, and have forgotten all about Hazlehurst Manor.’
‘The Manor-house, and she who occupies it, have never been absent from my thoughts.’
‘Really; and yet you have stayed away so long. That looks rather like forgetfulness.’
‘It was not forgetfulness. There have been reasons — reasons I cannot explain.’
‘And do they no longer exist?’
‘No,’ he gave a long sigh, ‘they are at an end now.’
‘You have been ill, perhaps,’ speculated Laura, looking at him with a solicitude she could not wholly conceal.
‘I have been far from well. I have been working rather harder than usual. I have to earn my bread, you know, Laura.’
‘Have you any profession now that you have left the army?’ asked Laura.
‘I left the army six years ago. I have managed to live by my own labour since that time. My career has been a chequered one. I have lived partly by art, partly by literature, and have not succeeded in winning a name in either profession. That does not sound a brilliant account, does it? Its only merit is truth. I am nobody. Your generosity and my cousin Jasper’s will may make me somebody. My fate depends on you.’
This was hardly the tone of a lover. It was a tone that Laura’s pride would have resented had she not inwardly believed that John Treverton loved her. There is a subtle power in the love which keeps silence mightier than all love’s eloquence. A hand that trembles when it touches another, one swift look from loving eyes, a sigh, a tone, will tell more than an oration. John Treverton was the most reticent of lovers, yet his reserve did not offend Laura.
They went into the grave old house together, and sat down to luncheon, tête à tête, waited upon by Trimmer, the old butler, who had lived more than thirty years with Jasper Treverton, and had lifted Laura out of the carriage when his master brought her to the manor a delicate child, looking wistfully round at strange objects with wide-opened eyes.
‘They looked just for all the world like man and wife,’ said Trimmer, when he went back to his pantry, ‘and I hope before long it’ll be that. They’ll make a fine couple, and I’m sure they’re fond o’ one another already.’
‘It isn’t in Miss Laura to marry a man she wasn’t fond of, not for all the fortunes in Christendom,’ retorted Mrs. Trimmer, who had been cook and housekeeper nearly as long as her husband had been butler.
‘Well, if I was young woman I’d marry a’most anybody rather than I’d lose such a ‘ome as Hazlehurst Manor,’ answered Trimmer. ‘I ain’t a money-grubber, but a good ‘ome aint to be trifled with. And if they don’t marry, and the estate goes to build a norsepital, what’s to become of you and me? Some folks in our position would be all agog for setting up in the public line and making our fortunes, but I’ve seen more fortunes lost than won that way, and I know when I’m well off. Good wages paid reg’lar, and everything found for me, is all I ask.’
After luncheon Laura and John went for a walk in the grounds. A mutual inclination led them to the shrubbery where they had parted that April night. The curving avenue of good old trees made a pleasant walk even at this season, when not a green leaf was left, and the ragged crows’ nests showed black amidst the delicate tracery of the topmost branches. The air was even milder than in the morning. It might have been an afternoon early in October. John Treverton stopped in front of the rugged trunk of the great chestnut under which Laura and he had parted. The young leaves had made a canopy of shade that night; now the big branches stood out dark and bare, stained with moss and weather. The grass at the foot of the tree was strewn with green husks and broken twigs, dead leaves, and shining brown nuts.
‘I think it was at this spot we parted,’ said John. ‘Do you remember?’
‘I have a vague recollection that it was somewhere about here,’ Laura answered, carelessly.
She knew the spot to an inch, but was not going to admit as much.
He took her hand, and drew it gently through his arm, as if they were starting upon a pilgrimage somewhere, then bent his head and kissed the delicate bare hand — a lovely tapering hand that could only belong to a lady, a hand which was in itself something for a lover to adore.
‘Darling, when are we to be married?’ he asked softly, almost in a whisper, as if an unspeakable shyness took hold of him at that critical moment.
‘What a question,’ cried Laura, with pretended astonishment. ‘Who has ever talked about marriage? You have never asked me to be your wife.’
‘Did I not? But I asked you if you were angry with your adopted father for his will, and you said No. That was as much as to say you were content we should gratify the good old man’s wish. And we can only do so by becoming man and wife. Laura, I love you more than I can ever say, and loving you as I do, though I am conscious of many shortcomings — yes, though I know myself in many respects unworthy to be your husband — a pauper — unsuccessful — without name or fame less than nobody — still, darling, I fall upon my knees here, at your feet; I, who never knelt to a woman before, and have too seldom knelt to my God, and sue to you in forma pauperis. Perhaps in all England there lives no man less worthy to be your husband, save for the one merit of loving you with all his heart and soul.’
He was kneeling before her, bareheaded, at the foot of the old chestnut tree, among the rugged roots that curved in and out amidst the grass. Laura bent down, and touched his forehead with her lips. It was hardly a kiss. The sweet lips fluttered on his forehead for an instant and were gone. No butterfly’s wing was ever lighter.
‘I will take you, dear,’ she said gently, ‘ with all your faults, whatever their number. I have a feeling that I can trust you — all the more, perhaps, because you do not praise yourself. We will try to do our duty to each other, and to our dead benefactor, and to use his wealth nobly, shall we not, John?’
‘Youwill use it nobly, love; you can do nothing that is not noble,’ he answered, gravely.
He was pale to the lips, and there was no gladness in his look, though it was full of love.
CHAPTER X. ENGAGED.
JOHN TREVERTON stayed at the Manor-house till after dark, alone with his betrothed, and happier than
he had ever been in his life. Yes, happy, though it was with a desperate happiness as of a child plucking wild flowers on the sunny edge of an abyss. He must have been something less or more than human if he had not been happy in Laura Malcolm’s company to-day, as they sat by the fire in the gloaming, side by side, her head leaning against his shoulder, his arm round her waist, her dark eyes hidden under drooping lids as they gazed dreamily downward at the smouldering logs; the room lit dimly by the fire-glow, grotesque shadows coming and going on the wall behind them, like phantom forms of good or evil angels hovering near them as they sat face to face with fate, the one unconscious of all danger, the other reckless and defiant.
Now that the word had been spoken, that they two were pledged to each other to the end of life, Laura let her heart go out to her lover without reserve. She was not afraid to let him see her fondness. She did not seek to make her love more precious to him by simulated coldness. She gave him all her heart and soul, as Juliet gave herself to Romeo. Lips that had never breathed a word of love, now murmured sweetest words in his ear; eyes that had never looked into a lover’s eyes gazed and lost themselves in the depths of his. Never was lover more innocently or unreservedly adored. If he had been boastful or self-assertive, Laura’s pride would have taken alarm. But his deep humility, and a shadow of melancholy which hung over him even when he seemed happiest, asked for her pity; and a woman is never better pleased with her lover than when he has need of her compassion.
‘And do you really love me, Laura?’ he asked, his face bent over the beautiful head which seemed to have found so natural a resting place upon his shoulder. ‘If there had been no such thing as my cousin Jasper’s will, and you and I had met in the outside world, do you think I am the man your heart would have chosen?’
‘That is too abstruse a question in metaphysics,’ she answered, laughingly. ‘I only know that my heart chose you, and that papa’s will — I must call him by the old name — did not influence my choice. Don’t you think that is quite enough for you to know?’
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