“I trust, sir, they were strangers to your own delinquencies. I hope they had no unpleasant reminders to give you of yourself.”
“Pardon, Madam. They related several of what you pleasantly call my delinquencies, but they only came in as the by-play of the scene where you were the great character. We figured as brigands. It was you always who stunned the victim; I only rifled his pockets – fact, I assure you. I’m sorry that china is smashed. It was Saxe, – wasn’t it?”
She nodded.
“And a present of Trafford’s too! What a pity! I declare I believe we shall not have a single relic of the dear fellow, except it be a protested bill or two.” He paused a moment or so, and then said, “Do you know, it just strikes me that if they saw how ill – how shamefully you played your cards in this Trafford affair, they ‘d actually absolve you of all the Circe gifts the world ascribes to you.”
She fixed her eyes steadfastly on him, and as her clasped hands dropped on her knees, she leaned forward and said: “What do you mean by it? What do you want by this? If these men, whose insolent taunts you had not courage to arrest or to resent, say truly, whose the fault? Ay, sir, whose the fault? Answer me, if you dare, and say, was not my shame incurred to cover and conceal yours?”
“Your tragedy-queen airs have no effect upon me. I ‘ve been too long behind the scenes to be frightened by stage thunder. What is past is past. You married a gambler; and if you shared his good luck, you oughtn’t to grumble at partaking his bad fortune. If you had been tired of the yoke, I take it you ‘d have thrown it behind you many a day ago.”
“If I had not done so, you know well why,” said she, fiercely.
“The old story, I suppose, – the dear darlings upstairs. Well, I can’t discuss what I know nothing about. I can only promise you that such ties would never bind me.”
“I ask you once again what you mean by this?” cried she, as her lips trembled and her pale cheeks shook with agitation. “What does it point to? What am I to do? What am I to be?”
“That’s the puzzle,” said he, with an insolent levity; “and I ‘ll be shot if I can solve it! Sometimes I think we ‘d do better to renounce the partnership, and try what we could do alone; and sometimes I suspect – it sounds odd, does n’t it? – but I suspect that we need each other.”
She had by this time buried her face between her hands, and by the convulsive motion of her shoulders, showed she was weeping bitterly.
“One thing is certainly clear,” said he, rising, and standing with his back to the fire, – “if we decide to part company, we have n’t the means. If either of us would desert the ship, there ‘s no boat left to do it with.”
She arose feebly from her chair, but sank down again, weak and overcome.
“Shall I give you my arm?” asked he.
“No; send Jane to me,” said she, in a voice barely above a whisper.
He rang the bell, and said, “Tell Jane her mistress wants her;” and with this he searched for a book on the table, found it, and strolled off to his room, humming an air as he went.
CHAPTER XLV. THE TIDELESS SHORES
They who only know the shores of the Mediterranean in the winter months, and have but enjoyed the contrast – and what a contrast! – between our inky skies and rain-charged atmosphere with that glorious expanse of blue heaven and that air of exciting elasticity, – they, I say, can still have no conception of the real ecstasy of life in a southern climate till they have experienced a summer beside the tideless sea.
Nothing is more striking in these regions than the completeness of the change from day to night. It is not alone the rapidity with which darkness succeeds, – and in this our delicious twilight is ever to be regretted; what I speak of is the marvellous transition from the world of sights and sounds to the world of unbroken silence and dimness. In the day the whole air rings with life. The flowers flaunt out their gorgeous petals, not timidly or reluctantly, but with the bold confidence of admitted beauty. The buds unfold beneath your very eyes, the rivulets sing in the clear air, and myriads of insects chirp till the atmosphere seems to be charged with vitality. This intense vitality is the striking characteristic of the scene; and it is to this that night succeeds, grand, solemn, and silent, at first to all seeming in unrelieved blackness, but soon to be displayed in a glorious expanse of darkest, deepest blue, with stars of surpassing size. To make this change more effective, too, it is instantaneous. It was but a moment back, and you were gazing on the mountain peaks bathed in an opal lustre, the cicala making the air vibrate with his song; a soft sea-breeze was blowing, and stirring the oranges amongst the leaves; and now all is dim and silent and breathless, as suddenly as though an enchanter’s wand had waved and worked the miracle.
In a little bay – rather a cleft in the shore than a bay – bounded by rocks and backed by a steep mountain overgrown with stunted olives, stood a small cottage, – so very small that it looked rather like a toy house than a human dwelling, a resemblance added to now as the windows lay wide open, and all the interior was a blaze of light from two lamps. All was still and silent within; no human being was to be seen, nor was there a sign of life about the place; for it was the only dwelling on the eastern shore of the island, and that island was Maddalena, off Sardinia.
In a little nook among the rocks, close to the sea, sat Tom and Lucy Lendrick. They held hands, but were silent; for they had come down into the darkness to muse and ponder, and drink in the delicious tranquillity of that calm hour. Lucy had now been above a week on the island, and every day Tom made progress towards recovery. She knew exactly, and as none other knew, what amount of care and nursing he would accept of without resistance, – where companionship would gratify and where oppress him; she knew, besides, when to leave him to the full swing of his own wild discursive talk, and never to break in upon his moods of silent reflection.
For upwards of half an hour they had sat thus without a word, when Tom, suddenly turning round, and looking towards the cottage, said, “Is n’t this the very sort of thing we used to imagine and wish for long ago, Lucy?”
“It was just what was passing through my mind. I was thinking how often we longed to have one of the islands on Lough Derg, and to go and live there all by ourselves.”
“We never dreamed of anything so luxurious as this, though. We knew nothing of limes and oranges, Lucy. We never fancied such a starry sky, or an air so loaded with perfume. I declare,” cried he, with more energy, “it repays one for all the disappointment, to come and taste the luxury of such a night as this.”
“And what is the disappointment you speak of, Tom?”
“I mean about our project-that blessed mine, by which we were to have amassed a fortune, and which has only yielded lead enough to shoot ourselves with.”
“I never suspected that,” said she, with a sigh.
“Of course you never did; nor am I in a great hurry to tell it even now. I’d not whisper it if Sir Brook were on the same island with us. Do you know, girl, that he resents a word against the mine as if it was a stain upon his own honour. For a while I used to catch up his enthusiasm, and think if we only go on steadily, if we simply persist, we are sure to succeed in the end. But when week after week rolled over, and not a trace of a mineral appeared when the very workmen said we were toiling in vain when I felt half-ashamed to meet the jeering questions of the neighbours, and used to skulk up to the shaft by the back way, – he remarked it, and said to me one morning, ‘I am afraid, Tom, it is your sense of loyalty to me that keeps you here, and not your hope of success. Be frank, and tell me if this be so.’ I blundered out something about my determination to share his fate, whatever it might be, and it would have been lucky if I had stopped there; but I went on to say that I thought the mine was an arrant delusion, and that the sooner we turned our backs on it, and addressed our energies to another quarter, the better. ‘You think so?’ said he, looking almost fiercely at me. ‘I am certain of it,’ said I, decisively; for I thought the moment had come when a word of truth could do him good service. He went out without speaking, and instead of going to Lavanna, where the mine is, he went over to Cagliari, and only came home late at night. The next morning, while we were taking our coffee before ‘setting out, he said to me, ‘Don’t strap on your knapsack to-day. I don’t mean you should come down into the shaft again.’ ‘How so?’ asked I; ‘what have I said or done that could offend you?’ ‘Nothing, my dear boy,’ said he, laying his hand on my shoulder; ‘but I cannot bear you should meet this dreary life of toil without the one thing that can lighten its gloom – Hope. I have managed, therefore, to raise a small sum on the mine; for,’ said he, with a sly laugh, ‘there are men in Cagliari who don’t take the despondent view you have taken of it; and I have written to my old friend at the Horse Guards to give you a commission, and you shall go and be a soldier.’ And leave you here, sir, all alone?’ ‘Far from alone, lad. I have that companion which you tell me never joined you. I have Hope with me.’
“‘Then I’ll stay too, sir, and try if he’ll not give me his company yet. At all events, I shall have yours; and there is nothing I know that could recompense me for the loss of it.’ It was not very easy to turn him from his plan, but I insisted so heartily-for I’d have stayed on now, if it were to have entailed a whole life of poverty-that he gave in at last; and from that hour to this, not a word of other than agreement has passed between us. For my own part, I began to work with a will, and a determination that I never felt before; and perhaps I overtaxed my strength, for I caught this fever by remaining till the heavy dews began to fall, and in this climate it is always a danger.”
“And the mine, Tom – did it grow better?” “Not a bit. I verily believe we never saw ore from that day. We got upon yellow clay, and lower down upon limestone rock, and then upon water; and we are pumping away yet, and old Sir Brook is just as much interested by the decrease of the water as if he saw a silver floor beneath it. ‘We’ve got eight inches less this morning, Tom; we are doing famously now.’ I declare to you, Lucy, when I saw his fine cheery look and bright honest eye, I thought how far better this man’s fancies are than the hard facts of other people; and I’d rather have his great nature than all the wealth success could bring us.”
“My own dear brother!” was all she could say, as she grasped his hand, and held it with both her own.
“The worst of all is, that in the infatuation he feels about this mining project he forgets everything else. Letters come to him from agents and men of business asking for speedy answers; some occasionally come to tell that funds upon which he had reckoned to meet certain payments had been withdrawn from his banker long sinca When he reads these, he ponders a moment, and mutters, ‘The old story, I suppose. It is so easy to write Brook Fossbrooke;’ and then the whole seems to pass out of his mind, and he’ll say, ‘Come along, Tom; we must push matters a little; I’ll want some coin by the end of the month.’
“When I grew so weak that I could n’t go to the mine, the accounts he used to give me daily made me think we must be prospering. He would come back every night so cheery and so hopeful, and his eyes would sparkle as he ‘d tell of a bright vein that they ‘d just ‘struck.’ He owned that the men were less sanguine, but what could they know? They had no other teaching than the poor experiences of daily labor. If they saw lead or silver, they believed in it. To him, however, the signs of the coming ore were enough; and then he would open a paper full of dark earth in which a few shining particles might be detected, and point them out to me as the germs of untold riches. ‘These are silver, Tom, every one of them; they are oxidized, but still perfectly pure. I ‘ve seen the natives in Ceylon washing earth not richer than this;’ and the poor fellow would make this hopeful tidings the reason for treating me to champagne, which in an unlucky moment the doctor said would be good for me, and which Sir Brook declared always disagreed with him. But I don’t believe it, Lucy, – I don’t believe it! I am certain that he suffered many a privation to give me luxuries that he would n’t share. Shall I tell you the breakfast I saw him eating one morning? I had gone to his room to speak to him before he started to the mine, and, opening the door gently, I surprised him at his breakfast, – a piece of brown bread and a cup of coffee without milk was his meal, to support him till he came home at nightfall. I knew if he were aware that I had seen him that it would have given him great distress, so I crept quietly back to my bed, and lay down to think of this once pampered, flattered gentleman, and how grand the nature must be that could hold up uncomplaining and unshaken under such poverty as this. Nor is it that he ignores the past, Lucy, or strives to forget it, – far from that. He is full of memories of bygone events and people, but he talks of his own part in the grand world he once lived in as one might talk of another individual; nor is there the semblance of a regret that all this splendor has passed away never to return. He will be here on Sunday to pay us a visit, Lucy; and though perhaps you ‘ll find him sadly changed in appearance, you ‘ll see that his fine nature is the same as ever.”
“And will he persist in this project, Tom, in spite of all failure and in defiance of hope?”
“That’s the very point I ‘m puzzled about. If he decide to go on, so must I. I ‘ll not leave him, whatever come of it.”
“No, no, Tom; that I know you will not do.”
“His confidence of success is unshaken. It was only t’ other night, as we sat at a very frugal supper, he said, ‘You ‘ll remember all this, Tom, one of these days; and as you sip your Burgundy, you ‘ll tell your friends how jolly we thought ourselves over our little acid wine and an onion.’ I did not dare to say what was uppermost in my thoughts, that I disbelieved in the Burgundy era.”
“It would have been cruel to have done it.”
“He had the habit, he tells me, in his days of palmiest prosperity, of going off by himself on foot, and wandering about for weeks, roughing it amongst all sorts of people, – gypsies, miners, charcoal-burners in the German forests, and such-like. He said, without something of this sort, he would have grown to believe that all the luxuries he lived amongst were bona fide necessities of life. He was afraid too, he said, they would become part of him; for his theory is, never let your belongings master your own nature.”
“There is great romance in such a man.”
“Ah! there you have it, Lucy; that’s the key to his whole temperament; and I ‘d not be surprised if he had been crossed in some early love.”
“Would that account for all his capricious ways?” said she, smiling.
“My own experiences can tell me nothing; but I have a sister who could perhaps help me to an explanation. Eh, Lucy? What think you?”
She tried to laugh off the theme, but the attempt only half succeeded, and she turned away her head to hide her confusion.
Tom took her hand between his own, and patted it affectionately.
“I want no confessions, my own dear Lucy,” said he, gently; “but if there is anything which, for your own happiness or for my honor, I ought to know, you will tell me of it, I am certain.”
“There is nothing,” said she, with a faint gasp.
“And you would tell me if there had been?”
She nodded her head, but did not trust herself to speak.
“And grandpapa, Lucy?” said he, trying to divert her thoughts from what he saw was oppressing her; “has he forgiven me yet, or does he still harp on about my presumption and self-sufficiency?”
“He is more forgiving than you think, Tom,” said she, smiling.
“I am not so sure of that. He wrote me a long letter some time back, – a sort of lecture on the faults and shortcomings of my disposition, in which he clearly showed that if I had all the gifts which my own self-confidence ascribed to me, and a score more that I never dreamed of, they would go for nothing, – absolutely nothing, so long as they were allied with my unparalleled – no, he did n’t call it impudence, but something very near it. He told me that men of my stamp were like the people who traded on credit, and always cut a sorry figure when their accounts came to be audited; and, perhaps to stave off the hour of my bankruptcy, he enclosed me fifty pounds.”
“So like him!” said she, proudly.
“I suppose it was. Indeed, as I read his note, I thought I heard him talking it. There was an acrid flippancy about it that smacked of his very voice.”
“Oh, Tom, I will not let you say that.”
“I ‘ll think it all the same, Lucy. His letter brought him back to my mind so palpably that I thought I stood there before him on that morning when he delivered that memorable discourse on my character after luncheon.”
“Did you reply to him?”
“Yes, I replied,” said he, with a dry sententiousness that sounded as though he wished the subject to drop.
“Do tell me what you said. I hope you took it in good part. I am sure you could not have shown any resentment at his remarks.”
“No; I rather think I showed great forbearance. I simply said, ‘My dear Lord Chief Baron, I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, of which I accept everything but the enclosure. – I am, faithfully yours.’”
“And refused his gift?”
“Of course I did. The good counsel without the money, or the last without the counsel, would have beeu all very well; but coming together, in what a false position the offer placed me! I remember that same day we happened to have an unusually meagre dinner, but I drank the old man’s health after it in some precious bad wine; and Sir Brook, who knew nothing about the letter, joined in the toast, and pronounced a very pretty little eulogium on his vigor and energy; and thus ended the whole incident.”
“If you only knew him better, Tom! if you knew him as I know him!”
Tom shrugged his shoulders, and merely said, “It was nicely done, though, not to tell you about this. There was delicacy in that.”
Lucy went on now to relate all his kind intentions towards Tom when the news of his illness arrived, – how he had conferred with Beattie about sending out a doctor, and how, at such a sacrifice to his own daily habits, he had agreed that she should come out to Cagliari. “And you don’t know how much this cost him, Master Tom,” said she, laughing; “for however little store you may lay by my company, he prizes it, and prizes it highly too, I promise you; and then there was another reason which weighed against his letting me come out here, – he has got some absurd prejudice against Sir Brook. I call it absurd, because I have tried to find out to what to trace it, and could not; but a chance expression or two that fell from Mrs. Sewell leads me to suppose the impression was derived from them.”
“I don’t believe he knows the Sewells. I never heard him speak of them. I ‘ll ask when he comes over here. By the way, how do you like them yourself?”
“I scarcely know. I liked her at first, – that is, I thought I should like her; and I fancied, too, it was her wish that I might – but – ”
“But what? What does this ‘but’ mean?”
“It means that she has puzzled me, and my hope of liking her depends on my discovering that I have misunderstood her.”
“That’s a riddle, if ever there was one! but I suppose it comes to this, that if you have read her aright you do not like her.”
“I wish I could show you a letter she wrote me.”
“And why can’t you?”
“I don’t think I can tell you even that, Tom.”
“What a mysterious damsel you have grown! Does this come of your living with that great law lord, Lucy? If so, tell him from me he has spoiled you sadly. How frank you were long ago!”
“That is true,” said she, sighing.
“How I wish we could go back to that time, with all its dreaminess and all its castle-building. Do you remember, Lu, when we used to set off of a morning in the boat on a voyage of discovery, as we called it, and find out new islands and new creeks, and give them names?”
“Do I not? Oh, Tom, were we not a thousand times happier then than we knew we were?”
“That’s a bit of a bull, Lucy, but it’s true all the same. I know all you mean, and I agree with you.”
“If we had troubles, what light ones they were!”
“Ay, that’s true. We were not grubbing for lead in those days, and finding only quartz; and our poor hearts, Lucy, were whole enough then.” He gave a half malicious laugh as he said this; but, correcting himself quickly, he drew her towards him and said, “Don’t be angry with me, dear Lu; you know of old what a reckless tongue I ‘ve got.”
“Was that thunder, Tom? There it is again. What is it?”
“That’s a storm getting up. It’s coming from the south’ard. See how the drift is flying overhead, and all the while the sea beneath is like a mill-pond! Watch the stars now, and you ‘ll see how, one by one, they will drop out, as if extinguished; and mark the little plash – it is barely audible – that begins upon the beach. There! did you hear that, – that rushing sound like wind through the trees? That’s the sea getting up. How I wish I was strong enough to stay out here. I ‘d like to show you a ‘Levanter,’ girl, – a regular bit of Southern passion, not increasing slowly, like a Northern wrath, but bursting out in its full fury in an instant. Here it comes!” and as he spoke two claps of thunder shook the air, followed by a long clattering roll like musketry, and the sea, upheaving, surged heavily hither and thither, while the air was still and calm; and then, as though let loose from their caverns, the winds swept past with a wild shrill whistle that swelled into a perfect roar. The whole surface of the sea became at once white, and the wind, sweeping across the crests of the waves, carried away a blinding drift that added to the darkness. The thunder, too, rolled on unceasingly, and great flashes of lightning broke through the blackness, and displayed tall masts and spars of ships far out to sea, rocking fearfully, and in the next instant lost to sight in the dense darkness.
“Here comes the rain, and we must run for it,” said Tom, as a few heavy drops fell. A solemn pause in the storm ensued, and then, as though the very sky was rent, the water poured down in cataracts. Laughing merrily, they made for the cottage, and though but a few yards off, were drenched thoroughly ere they reached it.
“It’s going to be a terrific night,” said Tom, as he passed from window to window, looking to the bars and fastenings. “The great heat always brings one of the Levant storms, and the fishermen here know it so well that on seeing certain signs at sunset they draw up all their boats on shore, and even secure the roofs of their cabins with strong spars and stones.”
“I hope poor old Nicholas is safe by this time. Could he have reached Cagliari by this?” said Lucy.
“Yes, he is snug enough. The old rogue is sitting at his supper this minute, cursing the climate and the wine and the place, and the day he came to it.”
“Come, Tom! I think he bears everything better than I expected.”
“Bears everything better! Why, child, what has he to bear that you and I have not to bear? Is there one privation here that falls to his share without coming to us?”
“And what would be the value of that good blood you are so proud of, Tom, if it would not make us as proof against petty annoyances as against big dangers?”
“I declare time and place make no change on you. You are the same disputatious damsel here that you used to be beside the Shannon. Have I not told you scores of times you must never quote what one has once said, when it comes in opposition to a present opinion?”
“But if I cease to quote you, Tom, whence am I to derive those maxims of wisdom I rely upon so implicitly?”
“Take care, young lady, – take care,” said he, shaking his finger at her. “Every fort has its weak side. If you assail me by the brain, I may attack you at the heart! How will it be then, eh?” Coloring till her face and neck were crimson, she tried to laugh; but though her lips parted, no sound came forth, and after a second or two of struggle, she said, “Good-night,” and rushed away.
“Good-night, Lu,” cried he after her. “Look well to your window-fastenings, or you will be blown away before morning.”
END OF VOL. I.