"Nay; we are happier now, believe me,—or at least I should be, if—But I must not think of my poor brother. Ah, if his guilt deprived you of one who was worthy of you, it would be some comfort to his sister to think at last that the loss was repaired. And you still have scruples?"
"Who that loves truly has not? How young, how lovely, how worthy of lighter hearts and fairer forms than mine! Give me back the years that have passed since we last met at Como, and I might hope!"
"And this to me who have enjoyed such happiness with one older, when we married, by ten years than you are now!"
"But you, Teresa, were born to see life through the Claude glass."
"Ah, you provoke me with these refinements; you turn from a happiness you have but to demand."
"Do not—do not raise my hopes too high," cried Maltravers, with great emotion; "I have been schooling myself all day. But if I am deceived!"
"Trust me, you are not. See, even now she turns round to look for you; she loves you,—loves you as you deserve. This difference of years that you so lament does but deepen and elevate her attachment!"
Teresa turned to Maltravers, surprised at his silence. How joyous sat his heart upon his looks,—no gloom on his brow, no doubt in his sparkling eyes! He was mortal, and he yielded to the delight of believing himself beloved. He pressed Teresa's hand in silence, and, quitting her abruptly, gained the side of Evelyn. Madame de Montaigne comprehended all that passed within him; and as she followed, she soon contrived to detach her children, and returned with them to the house on a whispered pretence of seeing if their father had yet arrived. Evelyn and Maltravers continued to walk on,—not aware, at first, that the rest of the party were not close behind.
The sun had set; and they were in a part of the grounds which, by way of contrast to the rest, was laid out in the English fashion; the walk wound, serpent-like, among a profusion of evergreens irregularly planted; the scene was shut in and bounded, except where at a distance, through an opening of the trees, you caught the spire of a distant church, over which glimmered, faint and fair, the smile of the evening star.
"This reminds me of home," said Evelyn, gently.
"And hereafter it will remind me of you," said Maltravers, in whispered accents. He fixed his eyes on her as he spoke. Never had his look been so true to his heart; never had his voice so undisguisedly expressed the profound and passionate sentiment which had sprung up within him,—to constitute, as he then believed, the latest bliss, or the crowning misery, of his life! At that moment, it was a sort of instinct that told him they were alone; for who has not felt—in those few and memorable hours of life when love long suppressed overflows the fountain, and seems to pervade the whole frame and the whole spirit—that there is a magic around and within us that hath a keener intelligence than intellect itself? Alone at such an hour with the one we love, the whole world besides seems to vanish, and our feet to have entered the soil, and our lips to have caught the air, of Fairyland.
They were alone. And why did Evelyn tremble? Why did she feel that a crisis of existence was at hand?
"Miss Cameron—Evelyn," said Maltravers, after they had walked some moments in silence, "hear me—and let your reason as well as your heart reply. From the first moment we met, you became dear to me. Yes, even when a child, your sweetness and your fortitude foretold so well what you would be in womanhood; even then you left upon my memory a delightful and mysterious shadow,—too prophetic of the light that now hallows and wraps your image! We met again,—and the attraction that had drawn me towards you years before was suddenly renewed. I love you, Evelyn! I love you better than all words can tell! Your future fate, your welfare, your happiness, contain and embody all the hopes left to me in life! But our years are different, Evelyn; I have known sorrows,—and the disappointments and the experience that have severed me from the common world have robbed me of more than time itself hath done. They have robbed me of that zest for the ordinary pleasures of our race,—which may it be yours, sweet Evelyn, ever to retain! To me, the time foretold by the Preacher as the lot of age has already arrived, when the sun and the moon are darkened, and when, save in you and through you, I have no pleasure in anything. Judge, if such a being you can love! Judge, if my very confession does not revolt and chill, if it does not present to you a gloomy and cheerless future, were it possible that you could unite your lot to mine! Answer not from friendship or from pity; the love I feel for you can have a reply from love alone, and from that reasoning which love, in its enduring power, in its healthful confidence, in its prophetic foresight, alone supplies! I can resign you without a murmur; but I could not live with you and even fancy that you had one care I could not soothe, though you might have happiness I could not share. And fate does not present to me any vision so dark and terrible—no, not your loss itself; no, not your indifference; no, not your aversion—as your discovery, after time should make regret in vain, that you had mistaken fancy or friendship for affection, a sentiment for love. Evelyn, I have confided to you all,—all this wild heart, now and evermore your own. My destiny is with you."
Evelyn was silent; he took her hand, and her tears fell warm and fast upon it. Alarmed and anxious, he drew her towards him and gazed upon her face.
"You fear to wound me," he said, with pale lips and trembling voice.
"Speak on,—I can bear all."
"No, no," said Evelyn, falteringly; "I have no fear but not to deserve you."
"You love me, then,—you love me!" cried Maltravers wildly, and clasping her to his heart.
The moon rose at that instant, and the wintry sward and the dark trees were bathed in the sudden light. The time—the light—so exquisite to all, even in loneliness and in sorrow—how divine in such companionship! in such overflowing and ineffable sense of bliss! There and then for the first time did Maltravers press upon that modest and blushing cheek the kiss of Love, of Hope,—the seal of a union he fondly hoped the grave itself could not dissolve!
CHAPTER VII
Queen. Whereon do you look? Hamlet. On him, on him,—look you how pale he glares!—Hamlet.
PERHAPS to Maltravers those few minutes which ensued, as they walked slowly on, compensated for all the troubles and cares of years; for natures like his feel joy even yet more intensely than sorrow. It might be that the transport, the delirium of passionate and grateful thoughts that he poured forth, when at last he could summon words, expressed feelings the young Evelyn could not comprehend, and which less delighted than terrified her with the new responsibility she had incurred. But love so honest, so generous, so intense, dazzled and bewildered and carried her whole soul away. Certainly at that hour she felt no regret—no thought but that one in whom she had so long recognized something nobler than is found in the common world was thus happy and thus made happy by a word, a look from her! Such a thought is woman's dearest triumph; and one so thoroughly unselfish, so yielding, and so soft, could not be insensible to the rapture she had caused.
"And oh!" said Maltravers, as he clasped again and again the hand that he believed he had won forever, "now, at length, have I learned how beautiful is life! For this—for this I have been reserved! Heaven is merciful to me, and the waking world is brighter than all my dreams!"
He ceased abruptly. At that instant they were once more on the terrace where he had first joined Teresa, facing the wood, which was divided by a slight and low palisade from the spot where they stood. He ceased abruptly, for his eyes encountered a terrible and ominous apparition,—a form connected with dreary associations of fate and woe. The figure had raised itself upon a pile of firewood on the other side of the fence, and hence it seemed almost gigantic in its stature. It gazed upon the pair with eyes that burned with a preternatural blaze, and a voice which Maltravers too well remembered shrieked out "Love! love! What! thou love again? Where is the Dead! Ha, ha! Where is the Dead?"
Evelyn, startled by the words, looked up, and clung in speechless terror to Maltravers. He remained rooted to the spot.
"Unhappy man," said he, at length, and soothingly, "how came you hither?
Fly not, you are with friends."
"Friends!" said the maniac, with a scornful laugh. "I know thee, Ernest Maltravers,—I know thee: but it is not thou who hast locked me up in darkness and in hell, side by side with the mocking fiend! Friends! ah, but no Friends shall catch me now! I am free! I am free! Air and wave are not more free!" And the madman laughed with horrible glee. "She is fair—fair," he said, abruptly checking himself, and with a changed voice, "but not so fair as the Dead. Faithless that thou art—and yet she loved thee! Woe to thee! woe! Maltravers, the perfidious! Woe to thee—and remorse—and shame!"
"Fear not, Evelyn,—fear not," whispered Maltravers, gently, and placing her behind him; "support your courage,—nothing shall harm you."
Evelyn, though very pale, and trembling from head to foot, retained her senses. Maltravers advanced towards the mad man. But no sooner did the quick eye of the last perceive the movement, than, with the fear which belongs to that dread disease,—the fear of losing liberty,—he turned, and with a loud cry fled into the wood. Maltravers leaped over the fence, and pursued him some way in vain. The thick copses of the wood snatched every trace of the fugitive from his eye.
Breathless and exhausted, Maltravers returned to the spot where he had left Evelyn. As he reached it, he saw Teresa and her husband approaching towards him, and Teresa's merry laugh sounded clear and musical in the racy air. The sound appalled him; he hastened his steps to Evelyn.
"Say nothing of what we have seen to Madame de Montaigne, I beseech you," said he; "I will explain why hereafter."
Evelyn, too overcome to speak, nodded her acquiescence. They joined the De Montaignes, and Maltravers took the Frenchman aside.
But before he could address him, De Montaigne said,—
"Hush! do not alarm my wife—she knows nothing; but I have just heard at Paris, that—that he has escaped—you know whom I mean?"
"I do; he is at hand; send in search of him! I have seen him. Once more I have seen Castruccio Cesarini!"