CHAPTER XII.
GOOD-BYE
"Cras ingens iterabimus æquor; do you know what that means, Dove?" asked Will.
"Something dreadful, I suppose," she said.
"Cras, on Monday night, iterabimus, I must leave, ingens æquor, for Germany. Didn't I say I should never leave England again without you, Dove? But this is only for a week or two, my darling; and it is on business; and I am come to crave your forgiveness and permission."
What did she say? Not one word. But, being seated at the piano just then, and having some knowledge of how she could most easily reach her lover's heart and make him sorry for his fickleness, she began to play, with great tenderness, with graceful and touching chords, that weird, wild, cruel air, 'The Coulin,' – the old Irish air that seems to have in it all the love and agony of parting which mankind has ever experienced. It is only now and again that humanity has expressed its pain or passion in one of those strong audible throbs – as when, for instance, God put the Marseillaise into the bursting heart of Rouget de Lille. One wonders how men live after writing such things.
And as for Will, he never could bear 'The Coulin;' he put his hand on her shoulder, and said:
"Don't play that any more, Dove. That isn't the parting of love at all – it is the parting of death."
"Ah, why should you say that?" she said, rising and creeping close to him, with tears suddenly starting to her eyes. "Why should you say that, Will? You don't expect us to be parted that way?"
"Come," he said, leading her out of the drawing-room into the open air. "The man who wrote 'The Coulin' had probably a broken heart; but that is no reason why we should break ours over his misery. My father is teaching Carry and Totty to fish for sticklebacks in the pond; shall we go and help them?"
He had gone down to bid good-bye to St. Mary-Kirby and its people. The warm valley was very tempting at this time; but did not peremptory business call him away? For after the first yellow flush of the buttercups had died out of the meadows, they were growing white with the snow of the ox-eye; and the walnut trees were changing from brown to green; and instead of the lilacs, the bushy, red-budded honeysuckle was opening, and burdening the air with its perfume.
Then they had fine weather just then; would it be finer on the Rhine? The white heat of midday was without haze. Sharp and clear were the white houses, specks only, on the far uplands; the fir-woods lay black against the blinding sky; and down here in the valley the long-grassed meadows seemed to grow dark in the heat, though there was a light shimmering of sunny green surrounding like a halo each pollard-willow by the riverside. In the clear pools the grey trout threw black shadows on the sand beneath, and lay motionless, with their eyes watching your every movement on the bank. St. Mary-Kirby lay hot and white among the green meadows, and by the side of the cool stream; but the people of St. Mary-Kirby prayed for rain to swell the fruit of their orchards and fields.
On their way down to a little gate, which, at one end of Mr. Anerley's garden, allowed you to go out upon a small bank overlooking the pond, Will explained to his companion the necessity for his going abroad, the probabilities of his stay, and so forth. She knew that he was going with Count Schönstein; but she did not know that Annie Brunel was to be of the party. Will had no particular reason for not mentioning the circumstance; but as he strictly confined himself to the business aspect of the case, Miss Brunel was somehow omitted.
Nor, when they arrived at the pond, and found Mr. Anerley superintending the operations of two young anglers, did he consider it necessary to tell his father that Annie Brunel was going with them. Perhaps she had slipped out of his mind altogether. Perhaps he fancied he had no right to reveal the Count's private arrangements. At all events, Miss Brunel's name was not at that time mentioned.
"The stickleback," observed Mr. Anerley, sententiously, when they drew near, "must be of very ancient lineage. Any long-continued necessity on the part of any animal produces a corresponding organ or function; can you explain to me, therefore, why Scotchmen are not born with a mackintosh?"
"No," said Dove.
"Because Nature has not had time to develope it. You observe that my stickleback here, whom I have just caught, has had time to acquire special means of defence and attack. I, a man, can only clumsily use for defence or attack limbs which are properly adapted for other purposes – "
"Which proves that mankind has never experienced the necessity of having specially destructive organs," said Will, to Dove's great delight.
She knew not which, if either, was right but the philosopher of Chesnut Bank had such a habit of inflicting upon his womankind theories which they did not understand, and could not contradict, that she had a malicious pleasure in witnessing what she supposed was his discomfiture.
"It serves you right, papa," she said. "You presume on our ignorance, when you have only mamma and me. Now you have somebody to talk to you in your own way."
"When I observed," continued Mr. Anerley, "that mankind had no special organ of attack and defence, I ought to have excluded women. The tongue of woman, an educational result which owes its origin to – "
"Don't let him go on, Dove," said Will, "or he'll say something very wicked."
"Has papa been talking nonsense to you all day, Carry?" asked Dove.
"No," said the matter-of-fact Carry, "it was the story of the 'King of the White Bears.'"
"I pghesumed on theigh ignoghance," said Mr. Anerley, mimicking his adopted daughter's pronunciation.
"We must give him up, Dove," said Will. "A man who will employ ridicule in a scientific argument is not worth answering. If he were not my father, I should express my feelings more strongly; as it is – "
Here Mrs. Anerley appeared, her pretty kindly face lit up by some unusual and pleasurable excitement. She was almost out of breath too.
"Hubert, do you know what's going to happen?"
"Never having been able, my dear, to calculate the probable line of your actions – "
"Be quiet. The Bishop is coming to open the church, when the alterations are complete. And, Mrs. Bexley says, that as their house is so far off, he will lunch with us."
"Dear me!" observed Mr. Anerley, "a bishop! I shall become quite respectable. What sort of wine will the exalted creature propose to drink – if a bishop drinks at all?"
"There will be several clergymen, you know, and – "
"With a bishop in the house, shall I be able to see any lesser lights? I shall allow you women to sit down in the chair he has used, as you all do when the Prince of Wales appears in public. There is a Hindoo custom resembling this – not wholly a religious observance, you know – "
Mr. Anerley stopped, perhaps luckily; pretending to have a dreadful struggle with an obstinate stickleback.
"Mr. Bexley is charmed with the embroidery that Dove has done for the altar-cloth," continued Mrs. Anerley; "and even poor old Mr. Ribston came hobbling up to me and said 'as it was werry nice indeed; only, ma'am, I should ha' preferred it without the bits o' red, which is the mark of the Scarlet Woman. Not as I mean,' he said, though, 'that either you, ma'am, or Mrs. Bexley, would turn us into Papishes without our knowin' of it; only there's some games up as I hear of, and one has to be p'tickler, and not be mixed up wi' them as is ruinin' the Church!'"
"Very proper, too," said Mr. Anerley, having arranged the stickleback question. "I should think that old Ribston fancied he had hit you and Dove pretty hard there. Would you think Dove was a pupil of the Scarlet Woman, Carry?"
"Who is the Scarlet Woman?" said Carry, with her big brown eyes staring.
"Mother Redcap," said Mr. Anerley. "A relation of the old woman who lived in a shoe."
"Hubert," said Mrs. Anerley, sharply, "you may teach the children stickleback fishing; but you'd better leave other things alone. You may be pulling down more than you can build up again, as Mr. Ribston said about these old pillars in the nave."
"Mr. Ribston, my dear, is not a reflective man. He laments the destruction of anything old, not seeing that as we destroy antiquities so the years are making other antiquities. Mamma, box that girl's ears! she is laughing at me."
In the evening Will had to walk over to Balnacluith Place, in order to complete the arrangements with the Count as to their starting on the Monday evening. Dove went with him; and when they got there the red sunset was flaring over the gloomy old house, and lighting up its windows with streaks of fire. Here and there, too, the tall bare trunks of one or two Scotch firs turned scarlet against the faint grey-green of the east; and the smooth river had broad splashes of crimson upon it, as it lay down there among the cool meadows, apparently motionless.
Will's reticence was unfortunate. They had scarcely begun to talk about their journey when Count Schönstein mentioned something about Miss Brunel's probable arrangements.
"Is Miss Brunel going with you?" said Dove, her soft eyes lighting up with a faint surprise.
"Yes. Didn't you know?" replied Count Schönstein. "She is going to take a short holiday, and we hope to be honoured by her presence at Schönstein."
Dove looked at Will; he was examining a cartridge-pouch the Count had brought in, and did not observe her inquiring glance.
On their way home, he observed that she was very quiet. At first he thought she was subdued by the exceeding beauty of the twilight, which had here and there a yellow star lying lambent in the pale grey; or that she was listening to the strong, luscious music of the nightingales, which abound in the valley of St. Mary-Kirby. Presently, however, he saw that she was wilfully silent, and then he asked her what had displeased her. Her sense of wrong was of that tremulous and tender character which never reached the length of indignation; and just now, when she wanted to be very angry with him, she merely said, not in a very firm voice:
"I did not think you would deceive me, Will."
"Well, now," he said, "you have been wasting all this beautiful time and annoying yourself by nursing your grievance silently. Why didn't you speak out at once, Dove, and say how I have deceived you?"
"You said you were going abroad on business."
"So I am."
"Count Schönstein talks as if it were merely a pleasure excursion."
"So it is, to him."
"Miss Brunel is going with you."
"Well?"
"You know quite well what I mean," she said, petulantly. "Why didn't you tell me she was going with you? Why did you conceal her going from me, as if there was no confidence between us? – "
"My darling, I didn't conceal her going from you. I didn't tell you, because her going was no business of mine – because – because – "
"Because you thought I would be jealous," she said, with a little wilful colour in her face.
"My darling," said Will, gravely, "you don't consider what you're saying. You wrong Annie Brunel quite as much as you wrong me and yourself. I don't know what you've seen in her to warrant your supposing for an instant that – "
"Oh, Will, Will," she cried, passionately, imploringly, "don't talk like that to me, or you'll break my heart. Be friends with me, Will – dear Will – for if I'm not friends with you, what's the use of living? And I'm very sorry, Will; and I didn't mean it; but all the same you should have told me, and I hate her!"
"Now you are yourself, Dove," he said, laughing. "And if Miss Brunel were here just now, you would fling your arms round her neck, and beg her to forgive you – "
"I am never going to fling my arms round any person's neck," said Dove, "except, perhaps, one person – that is, when the person deserves it – but I don't think he ever will; and as for Miss Brunel, I don't know what business she has going abroad just now, and I don't know why I should be so fond of her, although I hate her quite the same; and if she were here just now, as you say, I would tell her she ought to be ashamed of herself, cheating people into liking her."
"You talk very prettily, Dove, but with a touch of incoherence. You ought to hear how Annie Brunel speaks of you; and you ought to know what a kindly, tender, almost motherly interest she has in you."
"Then you have seen her lately?" said Dove, peeping up.
"Yes, once or twice."
"Does she know that we are to be married?" asked Dove, looking down again.
"She knows that we are to be magghied. You foolish little darling, she saw it in your face the moment you met her; and you might have seen that she knew your secret."
"Actresses are witches, dear," said Dove, gravely. "They know everything."
"They are like witches in having suffered a good deal of persecution at the hands of the ignorant and vulgar."
"Is that me, dear?" she asked, demurely. "No? Then, I shan't make fun any more. But if you're really going away on Monday evening, Will, I want to bid you good-bye to-night – and not before all the people you know; and I'll tell you all that you have got to do when you are away in thinking about me. There's the moon getting up now behind Woodhill Church; and every night at ten, Will, all the time you are away, I'll go up to my room and look up at her, and you'll do the same, darling, won't you, just to please me? And then I'll know that my Will is thinking of me, and of St. Mary-Kirby; and then you'll know, darling, that I'm thinking of you, and if I could only send a kiss over to you, I'd do it. It won't be much trouble to you, will it? And if I'm lonely and miserable all the day, and if the 'Coulin,' that I can't help playing sometimes, makes me cry, I shall know that at ten you and I will be able to speak to each other that way – "
"I'll do everything you ask me," said Will, to her gently; "but – but don't play the 'Coulin' any more, Dove."
"Why, dear? Ah! you said it was the parting of death. Why did you say that?"
CHAPTER XIII.
"MIT DEINEN SCHÖNEN AUGEN."
Well, the first time Will fulfilled his promise to Dove was when he and Annie Brunel, Mrs. Christmas and the Count (Hermann and another of the Count's servants being in another carriage), were rolling southwards in the Dover express. Here and there he caught a glimpse of the moon, as it loomed suddenly and nearly over the top of some tall embankment; but somehow his attention was so much taken up by the young girl opposite him, that Dove and her pretty request were in danger of being forgotten.
Besides themselves there was only a young Frenchman in the carriage – a grave, handsome young man, with melancholy black eyes and a carefully waxed moustache – who sate and covertly stared at Miss Brunel all the way. Perhaps he had seen her in the theatre; but in any case, the beautiful, clear, dark artist-face of the young actress, with its large deep eyes, was quite sufficient to imbue a susceptible young Frenchman with a vague sadness. Fortunately, she dropped a glove; and he, having picked it up and handed it to her with a grave and earnest politeness, leant back in his seat, apparently thrilled with a secret happiness.
The little party was in very good spirits; and Annie Brunel was especially bright and cheerful in her subdued, motherly way. Will suddenly found himself released from the irritating pleasure of having to humour the whims and coax the moods of an almost childish, petulant, pretty and engaging girl; and talking instead with one who seemed to have a gift of beautifying and ennobling everything of which she spoke. Whatever she mentioned, indeed, acquired a new importance in his eyes. He had never discovered so many things of which he would like to know more; he had never discovered that the things he did know, and the places he had seen, and the people he had met, were so full of life, and colour, and dramatic interest.
"You two people talk like children going off for holidays," said the Count, disentangling himself from a series of discursive theatrical reminiscences offered him by Mrs. Christmas.
"So we are," said Annie Brunel.
The Count introduced himself into the conversation; and then the colour and light seemed to Will to die out of it. The fact was, Count Schönstein was very much pleased to see that Miss Brunel took so kindly to his friend, as it rendered his own relations with her more secure. He was very grateful to Will, also, for coming with him on this particular excursion; knowing thoroughly that he could never have induced Mrs. Christmas and Miss Brunel to go with him alone. These considerations were well enough in their way; but at the same time he did not think it quite fair that Will should have all the pleasure of Miss Brunel's society to himself. To be shut out from their conversation not only annoyed him, but made him feel old. As it was, Miss Brunel had a provoking habit of speaking to him as if he really were old, and only capable of affording her information. Worst of all, she sometimes inadvertently spoke of herself and Will as "we;" and referred to the Count as if he were some third party whom the two young people were good enough to patronise.
"But then," said the Count to himself, "she has not seen Schönstein. Anerley is perhaps a more suitable companion for her; but then she knows that he has no money, and that he has already mated himself. Once I have shown her Schönstein, I shall be able to dispense with his services: she will need no further inducement. And I never should have had the chance of showing her Schönstein but for him."
The night was so fine that they all remained on deck during the short passage over to Calais; walking up and down in the pale moonlight, that lay along the sea and touched the great black funnels and the tall, smooth masts and yards. Looking down upon the deck beneath, Will had seen Hermann tenderly wrap up the fat little English girl who was to be Miss Brunel's maid, and who was very melancholy indeed over parting with her mother, the Count's Kentish housekeeper; and then the stalwart keeper went forward to the bow and smoked cheap cigars fiercely for the rest of the voyage, thinking probably of the old companions he was going to see.
The Count was very quiet. He scarcely spoke. He sate down and wrapped himself up in his great Viennese travelling-coat; allowing Will and Miss Brunel to promenade the deck. It was simply impossible for any one to become sick on such a night; but I do not think the Count considered himself quite safe until he stood, tall, stout, and pompous, on Calais pier.
"You are a good sailor, I suppose, Anerley?" he said, grandly. "I do think it ridiculous when a man can't cross the Channel without becoming sick."
"A man would have to try very hard to be sick to-night. Hermann, you speak French, don't you?"
"Yes, sir," said the tall keeper, as he bundled the trembling Polly up the gangway, and then began to look out for such articles of his master's luggage as had not been booked to Cologne.
They were going the Rhine way, instead of viâParis and Strasbourg; and so in due time they found themselves in the Brussels and Cologne train. We have at present nothing to do with their journey, or any incident of it, except that which befel two of the party that evening in a commonplace hotel overlooking the Rhine.
Romance in a Rhine hotel! exclaims the reader; and I submit to the implied indignation of the protest.
Perhaps the first time you saw the Rhine you thought romance possible. Perhaps you went round that way on your wedding trip; but in any case, the man who lingers about the noble river, and hides himself away from hasty tourists in some little village, and finds himself for the first time in the dreamland of the German ballad-singers, with a faint legendary mist still hanging about the brown ruins, and with a mystic glamour of witchcraft touching the green islands and the dark hills, may forget the guide-books and grow to love the Rhine. Then let him never afterwards use the river as a highway. The eight or ten hours of perspiring Cockney – the odour of cooking – the exclamations and chatter – the parasol-and-smelling-bottle element which one cannot help associating with the one day's journey up or down the Rhine, are a nightmare for after years. One should never visit the Rhine twice; unless one has plenty of time, no companions, an intimacy with German songs, a liking for Rüdesheimer, a stock of English cigars, and a thorough contempt for practical English energy.
Yet it was the Rhine did all the mischief that night. Imagine for a moment the position. They had arrived in Cologne somewhere about five in the afternoon, and had driven to the Hôtel de Hollande, which, as everybody knows, overlooks the river. Then they had dined. Then they had walked round to the Cathedral, where the Count proudly contributed a single Friedrich towards helping King William in his efforts to complete the building. Then they had gone to one of the shops opposite, where the Count, in purchasing some photographs, insisted on talking German to a man who knew English thoroughly. Then he had stalked into Jean Marie Farina's place at the corner, and brought out one of Farina's largest bottles for Miss Brunel; he carrying it down to the hotel, the observant townspeople turning and staring at the big Englishman. By this time the sun had gone down, the twilight was growing darker, the faint lights of the city beginning to tell through the grey.
There were gardens, said the porter, at the top of the hotel – beautiful gardens, looking down on the river; if the gentlemen wished to smoke, wine could be carried up.
"No," said the Count. "I must commit the rudeness of going off to my room. I did not sleep, like you people, in the train."
So he bade them good-night and disappeared.
"But we ought to go up and see the gardens," said Annie Brunel.
"I think so," said Will. "Mrs. Christmas, will you take my arm? It is a long climb. And now that you have surrendered yourself to my care, may I recommend a luxury peculiar to the place? One ought never to sit in Rhine gardens without sparkling Muscatel, seltzer-water, and ice, to be drank out of frosted champagne-glasses, in the open air, with flowers around us, and the river below – "
"You anticipate," said Miss Brunel. "Perhaps the gardens are only a smoking-room, filled with people."
The "gardens" turned out to be a long and spacious balcony, not projecting from the building, but formed out of the upper floor. There were tables and chairs about; and a raised seat which ran along the entire front. The pillars supporting the roof were wound round with trailing evergreens, the tendrils and leaves of which scarcely stirred in the cool night air; finally, the place was quite empty.
Annie Brunel stepped over to the front of the balcony, and looked down; then a little cry of surprise and delight escaped her.
"Come," she said to Mrs. Christmas – "come over here; it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."
Beautiful enough it was – far too beautiful to be put down here in words. The moon had arisen by this time – the yellow moon of the Rhine – and it had come up and over the vague brown shadows of Deutz until it hung above the river. Where it touched the water there was a broad lane of broken, rippling silver; but all the rest of the wide and silent stream was of a dull olive hue, on which (looking from this great height) you saw the sharp black hulls of the boats. Then far along the opposite bank, and across the bridges, and down on the quays underneath were glittering beads of orange fire; and on the river there were other lights – moving crimson and green spots which marked the lazy barges and the steamers out there. When one of the boats came slowly up, the olive-green plain was cleft in two, and you saw waving lines of silver widening out to the bank on either side; then the throb of the paddle and the roar of the steam ceased; a green lamp was run up to the masthead, to beam there like a fire-fly; the olive river grew smooth and silent again; and the perfect, breathless peace of the night was unbroken. A clear, transparent night, without darkness; and yet these points of orange, and green, and scarlet burned sharply; and the soft moonlight on the river shone whiter than phosphorus. So still a night, too, that the voices on the quays floated up to this high balcony – vague, echo-like, undistinguishable.
Annie Brunel was too much impressed by the singular loveliness of the night and of the picture before her to say anything. She sate up on the raised bench; and looking out from between the pillars, Will could see her figure, framed, as it were, by the surrounding leaves. Against the clear dark sky her head was softly defined, and her face caught a pale tinge of the moonlight as she sate quite still and seemed to listen.
He forgot all about the iced wine and his cigar. He forgot even Mrs. Christmas, who sate in the shadow of one of the pillars, and also looked down on the broad panorama before her.
Then Miss Brunel began to talk to him; and it seemed to him that her voice was unusually low, and sad, and tender. It may have been the melancholy of the place – for all very beautiful things haunt us and torture us with a vague, strange longing – or it may be that some old recollections had been awakened within her; but she spoke to him with a frank, close, touching confidence, such as he had never seen her exhibit to any one. Nor was he aware of the manner in which he reciprocated these confidences; nor of the dangerous simplicity of many things he said to her – suggestions which she was too much preoccupied to notice. But even in such rare moments as these, when we seem to throw off the cold attudinizing of life and speak direct to each other, heart to heart, a double mental process is possible, and we may be unconsciously shaping our wishes in accordance with those too exalted sentiments born of incautious speech. And Will went on in this fashion. The past was past; let no harm be said of it; and yet it had been unsatisfactory to him. There had been no generous warmth in it; no passionate glow; only the vague commonplaces of pleasure, which left no throb of regret behind them. And now he felt within him a capacity, a desire, for a fuller and richer life – a new, fresh, hopeful life, with undreamed of emotions and sensations. Why should he not leave England for ever? What was England to him? With only one companion, who had aspirations like his own, who could receive his confidences, who might love with a passion strong as that he knew lay latent in his own heart, who had these divine, exalted sympathies —
He was looking up at the beautiful face of the young girl, cold and clear-cut like marble, in the moonlight; and he was not aware that he had been thinking of her. All at once that horrible consciousness flashed in upon him like a bolt of consuming fire; his heart gave one big throb, and he almost staggered back as he said to himself, with remorse, and horror, and shame —
"O God, I love this woman with my whole soul; and what shall I say to my poor Dove?"
She sate up there, pure and calm, like some glorified saint, and saw nothing of the hell of contending emotions which raged below in her companion's breast. Unconscious of it all, she sate and dreamed the dreams of a happy and contented soul. As for him, he was overwhelmed with shame, and pity, and despair. And as he thought of Dove, and St. Mary-Kirby, the dull sonorous striking of some great bell suddenly reminded him of his promise.
He hastily pulled out his watch – half-past ten, English time. She, down in the quiet Kentish vale, had remembered his promise (indeed, had she not dreamed of it all day?) had gone to her window, and tenderly thought of her lover, and with happy tears in her eyes had sent him many a kindly message across the sea; he– what his thoughts had been at the same moment he scarcely dared confess to his awakened self.