CHAPTER XXXV
ROSE WOUNDED
The light of morning was yet cold along the passages of the house when Polly Wheedle, hurrying to her young mistress, met her loosely dressed and with a troubled face.
'What 's the matter, Polly? I was coming to you.'
'O, Miss Rose! and I was coming to you. Miss Bonner's gone back to her convulsions again. She's had them all night. Her hair won't last till thirty, if she keeps on giving way to temper, as I tell her: and I know that from a barber.'
'Tush, you stupid Polly! Does she want to see me?'
'You needn't suspect that, Miss. But you quiet her best, and I thought
I'd come to you. But, gracious!'
Rose pushed past her without vouchsafing any answer to the look in her face, and turned off to Juliana's chamber, where she was neither welcomed nor repelled. Juliana said she was perfectly well, and that Polly was foolishly officious: whereupon Rose ordered Polly out of the room, and said to Juliana, kindly: 'You have not slept, dear, and I have not either. I am so unhappy.'
Whether Rose intended by this communication to make Juliana eagerly attentive, and to distract her from her own affair, cannot be said, but something of the effect was produced.
'You care for him, too,' cried Rose, impetuously. 'Tell me, Juley: do you think him capable of any base action? Do you think he would do what any gentleman would be ashamed to own? Tell me.'
Juliana looked at Rose intently, but did not reply.
Rose jumped up from the bed. 'You hesitate, Juley? What? Could you think so?'
Young women after a common game are shrewd. Juliana may have seen that
Rose was not steady on the plank she walked, and required support.
'I don't know,' she said, turning her cheek to her pillow.
'What an answer!' Rose exclaimed. 'Have you no opinion? What did you say yesterday? It's silent as the grave with me: but if you do care for him, you must think one thing or the other.'
'I suppose not, then—no,' said Juliana.
Repeating the languid words bitterly, Rose continued:
'What is it to love without having faith in him you love? You make my mind easier.'
Juliana caught the implied taunt, and said, fretfully:
'I'm ill. You're so passionate. You don't tell me what it is. How can
I answer you?'
'Never mind,' said Rose, moving to the door, wondering why she had spoken at all: but when Juliana sprang forward, and caught her by the dress to stop her, and with a most unwonted outburst of affection, begged of her to tell her all, the wound in Rose's breast began to bleed, and she was glad to speak.
'Juley, do you-can you believe that he wrote that letter which poor
Ferdinand was—accused of writing?'
Juliana appeared to muse, and then responded: 'Why should he do such a thing?'
'O my goodness, what a girl!' Rose interjected.
'Well, then, to please you, Rose, of course I think he is too honourable.'
'You do think so, Juley? But if he himself confessed it—what then?
You would not believe him, would you?'
'Oh, then I can't say. Why should he condemn himself?'
'But you would know—you would know that he was a man to suffer death rather than be guilty of the smallest baseness. His birth—what is that!' Rose filliped her fingers: 'But his acts—what he is himself you would be sure of, would you not? Dear Juley! Oh, for heaven's sake, speak out plainly to me.'
A wily look had crept over Juliana's features.
'Certainly,' she said, in a tone that belied it, and drawing Rose to her bosom, the groan she heard there was passing sweet to her.
'He has confessed it to Mama,' sobbed Rose. 'Why did he not come to me first? He has confessed it—the abominable thing has come out of his own mouth. He went to her last night . . .'
Juliana patted her shoulders regularly as they heaved. When words were intelligible between them, Juliana said:
'At least, dear, you must admit that he has redeemed it.'
'Redeemed it? Could he do less?' Rose dried her eyes vehemently, as if the tears shamed her. 'A man who could have let another suffer for his crime—I could never have lifted my head again. I think I would have cut off this hand that plighted itself to him! As it is, I hardly dare look at myself. But you don't think it, dear? You know it to be false! false! false!'
'Why should Mr. Harrington confess it?' said Juliana.
'Oh, don't speak his name!' cried Rose.
Her cousin smiled. 'So many strange things happen,' she said, and sighed.
'Don't sigh: I shall think you believe it!' cried Rose. An appearance of constrained repose was assumed. Rose glanced up, studied for an instant, and breathlessly uttered: 'You do, you do believe it, Juley?'
For answer, Juliana hugged her with much warmth, and recommenced the patting.
'I dare say it's a mistake,' she remarked. ' He may have been jealous of Ferdinand. You know I have not seen the letter. I have only heard of it. In love, they say, you ought to excuse . . . And the want of religious education! His sister . . .'
Rose interrupted her with a sharp shudder. Might it not be possible that one who had the same blood as the Countess would stoop to a momentary vileness.
How changed was Rose from the haughty damsel of yesterday!
'Do you think my lover could tell a lie?' 'He—would not love me long if
I did!'
These phrases arose and rang in Juliana's ears while she pursued the task of comforting the broken spirit that now lay prone on the bed, and now impetuously paced the room. Rose had come thinking the moment Juliana's name was mentioned, that here was the one to fortify her faith in Evan: one who, because she loved, could not doubt him. She moaned in a terror of distrust, loathing her cousin: not asking herself why she needed support. And indeed she was too young for much clear self-questioning, and her blood was flowing too quickly for her brain to perceive more than one thing at a time.
'Does your mother believe it?' said Juliana, evading a direct assault.
'Mama? She never doubts what you speak,' answered Rose, disconsolately.
'She does?'
'Yes.'
Whereat Juliana looked most grave, and Rose felt that it was hard to breathe.
She had grown very cold and calm, and Juliana had to be expansive unprovoked.
'Believe nothing, dear, till you hear it from his own lips. If he can look in your face and say that he did it . . . well, then! But of course he cannot. It must be some wonderful piece of generosity to his rival.'
'So I thought, Juley! so I thought,' cried Rose, at the new light, and Juliana smiled contemptuously, and the light flickered and died, and all was darker than before in the bosom of Rose. She had borne so much that this new drop was poison.
'Of course it must be that, if it is anything,' Juliana pursued. 'You were made to be happy, Rose. And consider, if it is true, people of very low birth, till they have lived long with other people, and if they have no religion, are so very likely to do things. You do not judge them as you do real gentlemen, and one must not be too harsh—I only wish to prepare you for the worst.'
A dim form of that very idea had passed through Rose, giving her small comfort.
'Let him tell you with his own lips that what he has told your mother is true, and then, and not till then, believe him,' Juliana concluded, and they kissed kindly, and separated. Rose had suddenly lost her firm step, but no sooner was Juliana alone than she left the bed, and addressed her visage to the glass with brightening eyes, as one who saw the glimmer of young hope therein.
'She love him! Not if he told me so ten thousand times would I believe it! and before he has said a syllable she doubts him. Asking me in that frantic way! as if I couldn't see that she wanted me to help her to her faith in him, as she calls it. Not name his name? Mr. Harrington! I may call him Evan: some day!'
Half-uttered, half-mused, the unconscious exclamations issued from her, and for many a weary day since she had dreamed of love, and studied that which is said to attract the creature, she had not been so glowingly elated or looked so much farther in the glass than its pale reflection.
CHAPTER XXXVI
BEFORE BREAKFAST
Cold through the night the dark-fringed stream had whispered under Evan's eyes, and the night breeze voiced 'Fool, fool!' to him, not without a distant echo in his heart. By symbols and sensations he knew that Rose was lost to him. There was no moon: the water seemed aimless, passing on carelessly to oblivion. Now and then, the trees stirred and talked, or a noise was heard from the pastures. He had slain the life that lived in them, and the great glory they were to bring forth, and the end to which all things moved. Had less than the loss of Rose been involved, the young man might have found himself looking out on a world beneath notice, and have been sighing for one more worthy of his clouded excellence but the immense misery present to him in the contemplation of Rose's sad restrained contempt, saved him from the silly elation which is the last, and generally successful, struggle of human nature in those who can so far master it to commit a sacrifice. The loss of that brave high young soul-Rose, who had lifted him out of the mire with her own white hands: Rose, the image of all that he worshipped: Rose, so closely wedded to him that to be cut away from her was to fall like pallid clay from the soaring spirit: surely he was stunned and senseless when he went to utter the words to her mother! Now that he was awake, and could feel his self- inflicted pain, he marvelled at his rashness and foolishness, as perhaps numerous mangled warriors have done for a time, when the battle-field was cool, and they were weak, and the uproar of their jarred nerves has beset them, lying uncherished.
By degrees he grew aware of a little consolatory touch, like the point of a needle, in his consciousness. Laxley would certainly insult him! In that case he would not refuse to fight him. The darkness broke and revealed this happy prospect, and Evan held to it an hour, and could hardly reject it when better thoughts conquered. For would it not be sweet to make the strength of his arm respected? He took a stick, and ran his eye musingly along the length, trifling with it grimly. The great Mel had been his son's instructor in the chivalrous science of fence, and a maitre d'armes in Portugal had given him polish. In Mel's time duels with swords had been occasionally fought, and Evan looked on the sword as the weapon of combat. Face to face with his adversary—what then were birth or position? Action!—action! he sighed for it, as I have done since I came to know that his history must be morally developed. A glow of bitter pleasure exalted him when, after hot passages, and parryings and thrusts, he had disarmed Ferdinand Laxley, and bestowing on him his life, said: 'Accept this worthy gift of the son of a tailor!' and he wiped his sword, haply bound up his wrist, and stalked off the ground, the vindicator of man's natural dignity. And then he turned upon himself with laughter, discovering a most wholesome power, barely to be suspected in him yet; but of all the children of glittering Mel and his solid mate, Evan was the best mixed compound of his parents.
He put the stick back in its corner and eyed his wrist, as if he had really just gone through the pretty scene he had just laughed at. It was nigh upon reality, for it suggested the employment of a handkerchief, and he went to a place and drew forth one that had the stain of his blood on it, and the name of Rose at one end. The beloved name was half-blotted by the dull-red mark, and at that sight a strange tenderness took hold of Evan. His passions became dead and of old date. This, then, would be his for ever! Love, for whom earth had been too small, crept exultingly into a nut-shell. He clasped the treasure on his breast, and saw a life beyond his parting with her.
Strengthened thus, he wrote by the morning light to Laxley. The letter was brief, and said simply that the act of which Laxley had been accused, Evan Harrington was responsible for. The latter expressed regret that Laxley should have fallen under a false charge, and, at the same time, indicated that if Laxley considered himself personally aggrieved, the writer was at his disposal.
A messenger had now to be found to convey it to the village-inn. Footmen were stirring about the house, and one meeting Evan close by his door, observed with demure grin, that he could not find the gentleman's nether- garments. The gentleman, it appeared, was Mr. John Raikes, who according to report, had been furnished with a bed at the house, because of a discovery, made at a late period over-night, that farther the gentleman could not go. Evan found him sleeping soundly. How much the poor youth wanted a friend! Fortune had given him instead a born buffoon; and it is perhaps the greatest evil of a position like Evan's, that, with cultured feelings, you are likely to meet with none to know you. Society does not mix well in money-pecking spheres. Here, however, was John Raikes, and Evan had to make the best of him.
'Eh?' yawned Jack, awakened; 'I was dreaming I was Napoleon Bonaparte's right-hand man.'
'I want you to be mine for half-an-hour,' said Evan.
Without replying, the distinguished officer jumped out of bed at a bound, mounted a chair, and peered on tip-toe over the top, from which, with a glance of self-congratulation, he pulled the missing piece of apparel, sighed dejectedly as he descended, while he exclaimed:
'Safe! but no distinction can compensate a man for this state of intolerable suspicion of everybody. I assure you, Harrington, I wouldn't be Napoleon himself—and I have always been his peculiar admirer—to live and be afraid of my valet! I believe it will develop cancer sooner or later in me. I feel singular pains already. Last night, after crowning champagne with ale, which produced a sort of French Revolution in my interior—by the way, that must have made me dream of Napoleon last night, with my lower members in revolt against my head, I had to sit and cogitate for hours on a hiding-place for these-call them what you will. Depend upon it, Harrington, this world is no such funny affair as we fancy.'
'Then it is true, that you could let a man play pranks on you,' said
Evan. 'I took it for one of your jokes.'
'Just as I can't believe that you're a tailor,' returned Jack. 'It 's not a bit more extraordinary.'
'But, Jack, if you cause yourself to be contemptible–'
'Contemptible!' cried Jack. 'This is not the tone I like. Contemptible! why it's my eccentricity among my equals. If I dread the profane vulgar, that only proves that I'm above them. Odi, etc. Besides, Achilles had his weak point, and egad, it was when he faced about! By Jingo! I wish I'd had that idea yesterday. I should have behaved better.'
Evan could see that the creature was beginning to rely desperately on his humour.
'Come,' he said, 'be a man to-day. Throw off your motley. When I met you that night so oddly, you had been acting like a worthy fellow, trying to earn your bread in the best way you could—'
'And precisely because I met you, of all men, I've been going round and round ever since,' said Jack. 'A clown or pantaloon would have given me balance. Say no more. You couldn't help it. We met because we were the two extremes.'
Sighing, 'What a jolly old inn!' Raikes rolled himself over in the sheets, and gave two or three snug jolts indicative of his determination to be comfortable while he could.
'Do you intend to carry on this folly, Jack?'
'Say, sacrifice,' was the answer. 'I feel it as much as you possibly could, Mr. Harrington. Hear the facts,' Jack turned round again. 'Why did I consent to this absurdity? Because of my ambition. That old fellow, whom I took to be a clerk of Messrs. Grist, said: "You want to cut a figure in the world—you're armed now." A sort of Fortunatus's joke. It was his way of launching me. But did he think I intended this for more than a lift? I his puppet? He, sir, was my tool! Well, I came. All my efforts were strained to shorten the period of penance. I had the best linen, and put on captivating manners. I should undoubtedly have won some girl of station, and cast off my engagement like an old suit, but just mark!—now mark how Fortune tricks us! After the pic-nic yesterday, the domestics of the house came to clear away, and the band being there, I stopped them and bade them tune up, and at the same time seizing the maid Wheedle, away we flew. We danced, we whirled, we twirled. Ale upon this! My head was lost. "Why don't it last for ever?" says I. "I wish it did," says she. The naivete enraptured me. "Oooo!" I cried, hugging her, and then, you know, there was no course open to a man of honour but to offer marriage and make a lady of her. I proposed: she accepted me, and here I am, eternally tied to this accurst insignia, if I'm to keep my promise! Isn't that a sacrifice, friend H.? There's no course open to me. The poor girl is madly in love. She called me a "rattle!" As a gentleman, I cannot recede.'
Evan got up and burst into damnable laughter at this burlesque of himself. Telling the fellow the service he required, and receiving a groaning assurance that the letter should, without loss of time, be delivered in proper style, the egoist, as Jack heartily thought him, fell behind his; knitted brows, and, after musing abstractedly, went forth to light upon his fate.
But a dread of meeting had seized both Rose and Evan. She had exhausted her first sincerity of unbelief in her interview with Juliana: and he had begun to consider what he could say to her. More than the three words 'I did it,' would not be possible; and if she made him repeat them, facing her truthful eyes, would he be man enough to strike her bared heart twice? And, ah! the sullen brute he must seem, standing before her dumb, hearing her sigh, seeing her wretched effort not to show how unwillingly her kind spirit despised him. The reason for the act—she would ask for that! Rose would not be so philosophic as her mother. She would grasp at every chance to excuse the deed. He cried out against his scheming sister in an agony, and while he did so, encountered Miss Carrington and Miss. Bonner in deep converse. Juliana pinched her arm,, whereupon Miss Carrington said: 'You look merry this morning, Mr. Harrington': for he was unawares smiling at the image of himself in the mirror of John Raikes. That smile, transformed to a chuckling grimace, travelled to Rose before they met.
Why did she not come to him?
A soft voice at his elbow made his blood stop. It was Caroline. She kissed him, answering his greeting: ' Is it good morning?'
'Certainly,' said he. 'By the way, don't forget that the coach leaves early.'
'My darling Evan! you make me so happy. For it was really a mistaken sense of honour. For what can at all excuse a falsehood, you know, Evan!'
Caroline took his arm, and led him into the sun, watching his face at times. Presently she said: 'I want just to be assured that you thought more wisely than when you left us last night.'
'More wisely?' Evan turned to her with a playful smile.
'My dear brother! you did not do what you said you would do?'
'Have you ever known me not to do what I said I would do?'
'Evan! Good heaven! you did it? Then how can you remain here an instant? Oh, no, no!—say no, darling!'
'Where is Louisa?' he inquired.
'She is in her room. She will never appear at breakfast, if she knows this.'
'Perhaps more solitude would do her good,' said Evan.
'Remember, if this should prove true, think how you punish her!'
On that point Evan had his own opinion.
'Well, I shall never have to punish you in this way, my love, he said fondly, and Caroline dropped her eyelids.
'Don't think that I am blaming her,' he added, trying to feel as honestly as he spoke. 'I was mad to come here. I see it all now. Let us keep to our place. We are all the same before God till we disgrace ourselves.' Possibly with that sense of shame which some young people have who are not professors of sounding sentences, or affected by missionary zeal, when they venture to breathe the holy name, Evan blushed, and walked on humbly silent. Caroline murmured: 'Yes, yes! oh, brother!' and her figure drew to him as if for protection. Pale, she looked up.
'Shall you always love me, Evan?'
'Whom else have I to love?'
'But always—always? Under any circumstances?'
'More and more, dear. I always have, and shall. I look to you now. I have no home but in your heart now.'
She was agitated, and he spoke warmly to calm her.
The throb of deep emotion rang in her rich voice. 'I will live any life to be worthy of your love, Evan,' and she wept.
To him they were words and tears without a history.
Nothing further passed between them. Caroline went to the Countess: Evan waited for Rose. The sun was getting high. The face of the stream glowed like metal. Why did she not come? She believed him guilty from the mouth of another? If so, there was something less for him to lose. And now the sacrifice he had made did whisper a tale of mortal magnificence in his ears: feelings that were not his noblest stood up exalted. He waited till the warm meadow-breath floating past told that the day had settled into heat, and then he waited no more, but quietly walked into the house with the strength of one who has conquered more than human scorn.