"I have done with all eleventh commandments; for I find it quite hard work enough to keep the ancient ten. But I find it, Mellot, in the deepest abyss of all; in the very depth from which the commandments sprang. But we will not talk about it here."

"Why not?" asked Valencia, looking up. "Are we so very naughty as to be unworthy to listen?"

"And are these mountains," asked Claude, "so ugly and ill-made, that they are an unfit pulpit for a sermon? No; tell me what you mean. After all, I am half in jest"

"Do not courtesy, pity, chivalry, generosity, self-sacrifice,—in short, being of use,—do not our hearts tell us that they are the most beautiful, noble, lovely things in the world?"

"I suppose it is so," said Valencia.

"Why does one admire a soldier? Not for his epaulettes and red coat, but because one knows that, coxcomb though he be at home here, there is the power in him of that same self-sacrifice; that, when he is called, he will go and die, that he may be of use to his country. And yet—it may seem invidious to say so just now—but there are other sorts of self-sacrifice, less showy, but even more beautiful."

"Oh, Mr. Headley, what can a man do more than die for his countrymen?"

"Live for them. It is a longer work, and therefore a more difficult and a nobler one."

Frank spoke in a somewhat sad and abstracted tone.

"But, tell me," she said, "what all this has to do with—with the deep matter of which you spoke?"

"Simply that it is the law of all earth, and heaven, and Him who made them.—That God is perfectly powerful, because He is perfectly and infinitely of use; and perfectly good, because he delights utterly and always in being of use; and that, therefore, we can become like God—as the very heathens felt that we can, and ought to become—only in proportion as we become of use. I did not see it once. I tried to be good, not knowing what good meant. I tried to be good, because I thought it would pay me in the world to come. But, at last, I saw that all life, all devotion, all piety, were only worth anything, only Divine, and God-like, and God-beloved, as they were means to that one end—to be of use."

"It is a noble thought, Headley," said Claude: but Valencia was silent.

"It is a noble thought, Mellot; and all thoughts become clear in the light of it; even that most difficult thought of all, which so often torments good people, when they feel, 'I ought to love God, and yet I do not love him.' Easy to love Him, if one can once think of Him as the concentration, the ideal perfection, of all which is most noble, admirable, lovely in human character! And easy to work, too, when one once feels that one is working for such a Being, and with such a Being; as that! The whole world round us, and the future of the world too, seem full of light even down to its murkiest and foulest depths, when we can but remember that great idea,—An infinitely useful God over all, who is trying to make each of us useful in his place. If that be not the beatific vision of which old Mystics spoke so rapturously, one glimpse of which was perfect bliss, I at least know none nobler, desire none more blessed. Pray forgive me, Miss St. Just! I ought not to intrude thus!"

"Go on!" said Valencia.

"I—I really have no more to say. I have said too much. I do not know how I have been betrayed so far," stammered Frank, who had the just dislike of his school of anything like display on such solemn matters.

"Can you tell us too much truth? Mr. Headley is right, Mr. Mellot, and you are wrong."

"It will not be the first time, Miss St. Just. But what I spoke in jest, he has answered in earnest."

"He was quite right. We are none of us half earnest enough. There is Lucia with the children." And she rose and walked across the garden.

"You have moved the fair trifler somewhat," said Claude.

"God grant it! but I cannot think what made me."

"Why think? You spoke out nobly, and I shall not forget your sermon."

"I was not preaching at you, most affectionate and kindly of men."

"And laziest of men, likewise. What can I do now, at this moment, to be of use to any one? Set me my task."

But Frank was following with his eyes Valencia, as she went hurriedly across to Lucia. He saw her take two of the children at once off her sister's hands, and carry them away down a walk. A few minutes afterwards he could hear her romping with them; but he could not have guessed, from the silver din of those merry voices, that Valencia's heart was heavy within her.

For her conscience was really smitten. Of what use was she in the world? Major Campbell had talked to her often about her duties to this person and to that, of this same necessity of being useful; but she had escaped from the thought, as we have seen her, in laughing at poor little Scoutbush on the very same score. But why had not Major Campbell's sermons touched her heart as this one had? Who can tell? Who is there among us to whom an oft-heard truth has not become a tiresome and superfluous commonplace, till one day it has flashed before us utterly new, indubitable, not to be disobeyed, written in letters of fire across the whole vault of heaven? All one can say is, that her time was not come. Besides, she looked on Major Campbell as a being utterly superior to herself; and that very superiority, while it allowed her to be as familiar with him as she chose, excused her in her own eyes from opening to him her real heart. She could safely jest with him, let him pet her, play at being his daughter, while she felt that between him and her lay a gulf as wide as between earth and heaven; and that very notion comforted her in her naughtiness; for in that case, of course, his code of morals was not meant for her; and while she took his warnings (as many of them at least as she chose), she thought herself by no means bound to follow his examples. She all but worshipped him as her guardian angel: but she was not meant for an angel herself; so she could indulge freely in those little escapades and frivolities for which she was born, and then, whenever frightened, run for shelter under his wings. But to hear the same, and even loftier words, from the lips of the curate, whom she had made her toy, almost her butt, was to have them brought down unexpectedly and painfully to her own level. If this was his ideal, why ought it not to be hers? Was she not his equal, perhaps his superior? And so her very pride humbled her, as she said to herself,—"Then I ought to be useful. I can be;—will be!"

"Lucia," asked she, that very afternoon, "will you let me take the children off your hands while Clara is busy in the morning?"

"Oh, you dear good creature? but it would be such a gêne! They are really stupid, I am afraid sometimes, or else I am. They make me so miserably cross at times."

"I will take them. It would be a relief to you, would it not?"

"My clear!" said poor Lucia, with a doleful smile, which seemed to Valencia's self-accusing heart to say, "Have you only now discovered that fact?"

From that day Valencia courted Headley's company more and more. To fall in love with him was of course absurd; and he had cured himself of his passing fancy for her. There could be no harm, then, in her making the most of conversation so different from what she heard in the world, and which in her heart of hearts she liked so much better. For it was with Valencia as with all women; in this common fault of frivolity, as in most others, the men rather than they are to blame. Valencia had cultivated in herself those qualities which she saw admired by the men whom she met, and some one of whom, of course, she meant to marry; and as their female ideal was a butterfly ideal, a butterfly she became. But beneath all lay, deep and strong, the woman's love of nobleness and wisdom, the woman's longing to learn and to be led, which has shown itself in every age in so many a fantastic and even ugly shape, and which is their real excuse for the flirting with, "geniuses," casting themselves at the feet of directors; which had tempted her to coquette with Elsley, and was now bringing her into "undesirable" intimacy with the poor curate.

She had heard that day, with some sorrow, his announcement that he wished to be gone; but as he did not refer to it again, she left the thought alone, and all but forgot it. The subject, however, was renewed about a week afterwards. "When you return to Aberalva," she had said, in reference to some commission.

"I shall never return to Aberalva."

"Not return?"

"No; I have already resigned the curacy. I believe your uncle has appointed to it the man whom Campbell found for me: and an excellent man, I hear, he is. At least, he will do better there than I."

"But what could have induced you? How sorry all the people will be!"

"I am not sure of that," said he with a smile. "I did what I could at last to win back at least their respect, and to leave at least not hatred behind me: but I am unfit for them. I did not understand them. I meant—no matter what I meant? but I failed. God forgive me! I shall now go somewhere where I shall have simpler work to do, where I shall at least have a chance of practising the lesson which I learnt there. I learnt it all, strange to say, from the two people in the parish from whom I expected to learn least."

"Whom do you mean?"

"The doctor and the schoolmistress."

"Why from them less than from any in the parish? She so good, and he so clever?"

"That I shall never tell to any one now. Suffice it that I was mistaken."

Valencia could obtain no further answer; and so the days ran on, every one becoming more and more intimate, till a certain afternoon, on which they were all to go and pic-nic, under Claude's pilotage, above the lake of Gwynnant. Scoutbush was to have been with them; but a heavy day's rain in the meanwhile swelled the streams into fishing order, so the little man ordered a car, and started at three in the morning for Bettws with Mr. Bowie, who, however loth to give up the arrangement of plates and the extraction of champagne corks, considered his presence by the river-side a natural necessity.

"My dear Miss Clara, ye see, there'll be nobody to see that his lordship pits on dry stockings; and he's always getting over the tops of his water-boots, being young and daft, as we've all been, and no offence to you; and to tell you truth, I can stand all temptations—in moderation, that is, save an' except the chance o' cleiking a fish."

CHAPTER XX.
BOTH SIDES OF THE MOON AT ONCE

The spot which Claude had chosen for the pic-nic was on one of the lower spurs of that great mountain of The Maiden's Peak, which bounds the vale of Gwynnant to the south. Above, a wilderness of gnarled volcanic dykes, and purple heather ledges; below, broken into glens, in which still linger pale green ashwoods, relics of that great primaeval forest in which, in Bess's days, great Leicester used to rouse the hart with hound and horn.

Among these Claude had found a little lawn, guarded by great rocks, out of every cranny of which the ashes grew as freely as on flat ground. Their feet were bedded deep in sweet fern and wild raspberries, and golden-rod, and purple scabious, and tall blue campanulas. Above them, and before them, and below them, the ashes shook their green filigree in the bright sunshine; and through them glimpses were seen of the purple cliffs above, and, right in front, of the great cataract of Nant Gwynnant, a long snow-white line zigzagging down coal-black cliffs for many a hundred feet, and above it, depth beyond depth of purple shadow away into the very heart of Snowdon, up the long valley of Cwm-dyli, to the great amphitheatre of Clogwyn-y-Garnedd; while over all the cone of Snowdon rose, in perfect symmetry, between his attendant peaks of Lliwedd and Crib Coch.

There they sat, and laughed, and talked, the pleasant summer afternoon, in their pleasant summer bower; and never regretted the silence of the birds, so sweetly did Valencia's song go up, in many a rich sad Irish melody; while the lowing of the milch kine, and the wild cooing of the herd-boys, came softly up from the vale below, "and all the air was filled with pleasant noise of waters."

Then Claude must needs photograph them all, as they sat, and group them first according to his fancy; and among his fancies was one, that Valencia should sit as queen, with Headley and the Major at her feet. And Headley lounged there, and looked into the grass, and thought it well for him could he lie there for ever.

Then Claude must photograph the mountain itself; and all began to talk of it.

"See the breadth of light and shadow," said Claude; "how the purple depth of the great lap of the mountain is thrown back by the sheet of green light on Lliwedd, and the red glory on the cliffs of Crib Coch, till you seem to look away into the bosom of the hill, mile after mile."

"And so you do," said Headley. "I have learnt to distinguish mountain distances since I have been here. That peak is four miles from us now; and yet the shadowed cliffs at its foot seem double that distance."

"And look, look," said Valencia, "at the long line of glory with which the western sun is gilding the edge of the left hand slope, bringing it nearer and nearer to us every moment, against the deep blue sky!"

"But what a form! Perfect lightness, perfect symmetry!" said Claude. "Curve sweeping over curve, peak towering over peak, to the highest point, and then sinking down again as gracefully as they rose. One can hardly help fancying that the mountain moves; that those dancing lines are not instinct with life."

"At least," said Headley, "that the mountain is a leaping wave, frozen just ere it fell."

"Perfect," said Valencia. "That is the very expression! So concise, and yet so complete."

And Headley, poor fool, felt as happy as if he had found a gold mine.

"To me," said Elsley, "the fancy rises of some great Eastern monarch sitting in royal state; with ample shoulders sloping right and left, he lays his purple-mantled arms upon the heads of two of those Titan guards who stand on either side his footstool."

"While from beneath his throne," said Headley, "as Eastern poets would say, flow everlasting streams, life-giving, to fertilise broad lands below."

"I did not know that you, too, were a poet," said Valencia. "Nor I, madam. But if such scenes as these, and in such company, cannot inspire the fancy of even a poor country curate to something of exaltation, he must be dull indeed."

"Why not put some of these thoughts into poetry?"

"What use?" answered he in so low, sad, and meaning a tone, meant only for her ear, that Valencia looked down at him: but he was gazing intently upon the glorious scene. Was he hinting at the vanity and vexation of poor Elsley's versifying? Or did he mean that he had now no purpose in life,—no prize for which it was worth while to win honour?

She did not answer him: but he answered himself,—perhaps to explain away his own speech,—

"No, madam! God has written the poetry already; and there it is before me. My business is not to re-write it clumsily but to read it humbly, and give Him thanks for it."

More and more had Valencia been attracted by Headley, during the last few weeks. Accustomed to men who tried to make the greatest possible show of what small wits they possessed, she was surprised to find one who seemed to think it a duty to keep his knowledge and taste in the background. She gave him credit for more talent than appeared; for more, perhaps, than he really had. She was piqued, too, at his very modesty and self-restraint. Why did not he, like the rest who dangled about her, spread out his peacock's train for her eyes; and try to show his worship of her, by setting himself off in his brightest colours? And yet this modesty awed her into respect of him; for she could not forget that, whether he had sentiment much or little, sentiment was not the staple of his manhood: she could not forget his cholera work; and she knew that, under that delicate and bashful outside, lay virtue and heroism, enough and to spare.

"But, if you put these thoughts into words, you would teach others to read that poetry."

"My business is to teach people to do right; and if I cannot, to pray God to find some one who can."

"Right, Headley!" said Major Campbell, laying his hand on the Curate's shoulder. "God dwells no more in books written with pens than in temples made with hands; and the sacrifice which pleases Him is not verse, but righteousness. Do you recollect, Queen Whims, what I wrote once in your album?

'Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,
So making life, death, and that vast for ever,
One grand, sweet song.'"

"But, you naughty, hypocritical Saint Père, you write poetry yourself, and beautifully."

"Yes, as I smoke my cigar, to comfort my poor rheumatic old soul. But if I lived only to write poetry, I should think myself as wise as if I lived only to smoke tobacco."

Valencia's eyes could not help glancing at Elsley, who had wandered away to the neighbouring brook, and was gazing with all his eyes upon a ferny rock, having left Lucia to help Claude with his photographing.

Frank saw her look, and read its meaning; and answered her thoughts, perhaps too hastily.

"And what a really well-read and agreeable man he is, all the while! What a mine of quaint learning, and beautiful old legend!—If he would but bring it into the common stock for every one's amusement, instead of hoarding it up for himself!" "Why, what else does he do but bring it into the common stock, when he publishes a book which every one can read!" said Valencia, half out of the spirit of contradiction.

"And few understand," said Headley, quietly.

"You are very unjust; he is a very discerning and agreeable person, and I shall go and talk to him." And away went Valencia to Elsley, somewhat cross. Woman-like, she allowed, for the sake of her sister's honour, no one but herself to depreciate Vavasour, and chose to think it impertinent on Headley's part.

Headley began quietly talking to Major Campbell about botany, while Valencia, a little ashamed of herself all the while, took her revenge on Elsley by scolding him for his unsocial ways, in the very terms which Headley had been using.

At last Claude, having finished his photographing, departed downward to get some new view from the road below, and Lucia returned to the rest of the party. Valencia joined them at once, bringing up Elsley, who was not in the best of humours after her diatribes; and the whole party wandered about the woodland, and scrambled down beside the torrent beds.

At last they came to a point where they could descend no further; for the stream, falling over a cliff, had worn itself a narrow chasm in the rock, and thundered down it into a deep narrow pool.

Lucia, who was basking in the sunshine and the flowers as simple as a child, would needs peep over the brink, and made Elsley hold her while she looked down. A quiet happiness, as of old recollections, came into her eyes, as she watched the sparkling and foaming water—

"And beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Did pass into her face."

Campbell started. The Lucia of seven years ago seemed to bloom out again in that pale face and wrinkled forehead; and a smile came over his face, too, as he looked.

"Just like the dear old waterfall at Kilanbaggan. You recollect it, Major Campbell?"

Elsley always disliked recollections of Kilanbaggan; recollections of her life before he knew her; recollections of pleasures in which he had not shared: especially recollections of her old acquaintance with the Major.

"I do not, I am ashamed to say," replied the Major.

"Why, you were there a whole summer. Ah! I suppose you thought about nothing but your salmon fishing. If Elsley had been there he would not have forgotten a rock or a pool. Would you, Elsley?"

"Really, in spite of all salmon, I have not forgotten a rock or a pool about the place which I ever saw: but at the waterfall I never was."

"So he has not forgotten? What cause had he to remember so carefully?" thought Elsley.

"Oh, Elsley, look! What is that exquisite flower, like a ball of gold, hanging just over the water?"

If Elsley had not had the evil spirit haunting about him, he would have joined in Lucia's admiration of the beautiful creature, as it dropped into the foam from its narrow ledge, with its fan of palmate leaves bright green against the black mosses of the rock, and its golden petals glowing like a tiny sun in the darkness of the chasm: as it was, he answered—

"Only a buttercup."

"I am sure it's not a buttercup! It is three times as large, and a so much paler yellow! Is it a buttercup, now, Major Campbell?"

Campbell looked down.

"Very nearly one, after all: but its real name is the globe flower. It is common enough here in spring; you may see the leaves in every pasture. But I suppose this plant, hidden from the light, has kept its flowers till the autumn."

"And till I came to see it, darling that it is! I should like to reward it by wearing it home."

"I daresay it would be very proud of the honour; especially if Mr.

Vavasour would embalm it in verse, after it had done service to you."

"It is doing good enough service where it is," said Elsley. "Why pluck out the very eye of that perfect picture?"

"Strange," said Lucia, "that such, a beautiful thing should be born there all alone upon these rocks, with no one to look at it."

"It enjoys itself sufficiently without us, no doubt," said Elsley.

"Yes; but I want to enjoy it. Oh, if you could but get it for me?"

Elsley looked down. There were fifteen feet of somewhat slippery rock; then a ragged ledge a foot broad, in a crack of which the flower grew; then the dark boiling pool. Elsley shrugged his shoulders, and said, smiling, as if it were a fine thing to say—"Really, my dear, all men are not knight errants enough to endanger their necks for a bit of weed; and I cannot say that such rough tours de force are at all to my fancy."

Lucia turned away: but she was vexed. Campbell could see that a strange fancy for the plant had seized her. As she walked from the spot, he could hear her talking about its beauty to Valencia.

Campbell's blood boiled. To be asked by that woman—by any woman—to get her that flower: and to be afraid! It was bad enough to be ill-tempered; but to be a coward, and to be proud thereof! He yielded to a temptation, which he had much better have left alone, seeing that Lucia had not asked him; swung himself easily enough down the ledge; got the flower, and put it, quietly bowing, into Mrs. Vavasour's hand.

He was frightened when he had done it; for he saw, to his surprise, that she was frightened. She took the flower, smiling thanks, and expressing a little commonplace horror and astonishment at his having gone down such a dangerous cliff: but she took it to Elsley, drew his arm through hers, and seemed determined to make as much of him as possible for the rest of the afternoon. "The fellow was jealous, then, in addition to his other sins!" And Campbell, who felt that he had put himself unnecessarily forward between husband and wife, grew more and more angry; and somehow, unlike his usual wont, refused to confess himself in the wrong, because he was in the wrong. Certainly it was not pleasant for poor Elsley; and so Lucia felt, and bore with him when he refused to be comforted, and rendered blessing for railing when he said to her more than one angry word; but she had been accustomed to angry words by this time.

All might have passed off, but for that careless Valencia, who had not seen the details of what had passed; and so advised herself to ask where Lucia got that beautiful plant?

"Major Campbell picked it up for her from the cliff," said Elsley, drily.

"Ah? at the risk of his neck, I don't doubt. He is the most matchless cavalier servente."

"I shall leave Mrs. Vavasour to his care, then—that is, for the present," said Elsley, drawing his arm from Lucia's.

"I assure you," answered she, roused in her turn by his determined bad temper, "I am not the least afraid of being left in the charge of so old a friend."

Elsley made no answer, but sprang down through the thickets, calling loudly to Claude Mellot.

It was very naughty of Lucia, no doubt: but even a worm will turn; and there are times when people who have not courage to hold their peace must say something or other; and do not always, in the hurry, get out what they ought, but only what they have time to think of. And she forgot what she had said the next minute, in Major Campbell's question—

"Am I, then, so old a friend, Mrs. Vavasour?"

"Of course; who older?"

Campbell was silent a moment. If he was inclined to choke, at least Lucia did not see it.

"I trust I have not offended your—Mr. Vavasour?"

"Oh!" she said, with a forced gaiety, "only one of his poetic fancies. He wanted so much to see Mr. Mellot photograph the waterfall. I hope he will be in time to find him."

"I am a plain soldier, Mrs. Vavasour, and I only ask because I do not understand. What are poetic fancies?"

Lucia looked up in his face puzzled, and saw there an expression so grave, pitying, tender, that her heart leaped up toward him, and then sank back again.

"Why do you ask? Why need you know? You are no poet."

"And for that very cause I ask you."

"Oh, but," said she, guessing at what was in his mind, and trying, woman-like, to play purposely at cross purposes, and to defend her husband at all risks; "he has an extraordinary poetic faculty; all the world agrees to that, Major Campbell."

"What matter?" said he. Lucia would have been very angry, and perhaps ought to have been so; for what business of Campbell's was it whether her husband were kind to her or not? But there was a deep sadness, almost despair, in the tone, which disarmed her.

"Oh, Major Campbell, is it not a glorious thing to be a poet? And is it not a glorious thing to be a poet's wife? Oh, for the sake of that—if I could but see him honoured, appreciated, famous, as he will be some day! Though I think" (and she spoke with all a woman's pride) "he is somewhat famous now, is he not?"

"Famous? Yes," answered Campbell, with an abstracted voice, and then rejoined quickly, "If you could but see that, what then?"

"Why then," said she, with a half smile (for she had nearly entrapped herself into an admission of what she was determined to conceal)—"why then, I should be still more what I am now, his devoted little wife, who cares for nobody and nothing but putting his study to rights, and bringing up his children."

"Happy children!" said he, after a pause, and half to himself, "who have such a mother to bring them up."

"Do you really think so? But flattery used not to be one of your sins.

Ah, I wish you could give me some advice about how I am to teach them."

"So it is she who has the work of education, not he!" thought Campbell to himself; and then answered gaily,—

"My dear madam, what can a confirmed old bachelor like me know about children?"

"Oh, don't you know" (and she gave one of her pretty Irish laughs) "that it is the old maids who always write the children's books, for the benefit of us poor ignorant married women? But" (and she spoke earnestly again) "we all know how wise and good you are. I did not know it in old times. I am afraid I used to torment you when I was young and foolish."

"Where on earth can Mellot and Mr. Vavasour be?" asked Campbell.

"Oh, never mind! Mr. Mellot has gone wandering down the glen with his apparatus, and my Elsley has gone wandering after him, and will find him in due time, with his head in a black bag, and a great bull just going to charge him from behind, like that hapless man in 'Punch.' I always tell Mr. Mellot that will be his end."

Campbell was deeply shocked to hear the light tone in which she talked of the passionate temper of a man whom she so surely loved. How many outbursts of it there must have been; how many paroxysms of astonishment, shame, and grief,—perhaps, alas! counterbursts of anger— ere that heart could have become thus proof against the ever-lowering thunder-storm!

"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.