CHAPTER XV.
The world's life is shorter by a fortnight than it was on that lastday I told you of, and during that fortnight the ordinary amount ofthings have happened. The usual number of people have had their bodiesknocked to atoms and their souls into eternity by express trains; theusual number of men and maids have come together in the _Times_ columnin holy matrimony; and the usual number of unwelcome babies have beenconsigned to the canals. A great many players have laid down theircards, risen up, and gone away from the game of life; but whetherwinners or losers, they tell us not, neither shall we know awhile; andother players have taken their places, and have sat down with the zestof ignorance.
"Nature takes no notice of those that are coming or going."
She is briskly occupied at her old business--the business that seems tous so purposeless, progressless, bootless--the making only to unmake;the beautifying only to make hideous; the magnifying only to debase. Ohlife! life! Oh clueless labyrinth! Oh answerless riddle!
September is waning mellowly into death, like a holy man to whom aneasy passage has been vouchsafed; the land has been noisy with guns,and many partridges have been turned into small bundles of ruffledfeathers--little round, brown corpses. Bob Brandon walks stoutly upthe furzy hill sides and along the stony levels after the shy, scarcebirds; he is out and about all day, but you do not hear him whistlingor humming so often as you used to do. "He goeth heavily, as one thatmourneth." The fortnight is past, and yet another week, and stillEsther holds no speech of returning; her letters have waxed fewer,shorter, colder. Since that first one, mention of Gerard's name isthere in them none. Bob is not of a suspicious nature, but he can addtwo and two together. He has been doing that little dreary sum allthe last ten days, till his head aches. But though he can do this sumhimself, he will not suffer any one else to do it--at least in hispresence.
One day at dinner, when Bessy was beginning a little sour adaptationof the text, "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye," &c., toEsther, he interrupted her with downright outspoken anger and rebuke;and, though he apologised to her afterwards, and begged her pardon forhaving spoken rudely to her, yet she felt that that theme must not bedealt with again. He had promised to love her always in all loyalty,and whether she were loyal or disloyal to him made no difference. Hewill let no man, woman, or child speak evil of her in his hearing:
".........love is not love That alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove."
Jack Craven, too, is beginning to wonder a little when Esther is goingto return to the old farmhouse--beginning to feel rather lonely as hesits by himself on the window-ledge of an evening, smoking his pipe,with no one to take it out of his mouth now, and thinking on his unpaidfor steam ploughs and sterile mountain-fields, with no one to speakcomfortably to him, or console him with sweet illogical logic.
"All is not gold that glitters." Care gets up behind the man, howeverfine a horse he may be riding. Care is sitting _en croupe_ behind MissCraven, and she cannot unseat him. It strikes her sometimes with ashock of fear that she is succeeding _too_ well; that the admirationand liking and love she had hankered so greedily after, had strivenunfairly for, had made wicked lightnings from her eyes to obtain, wasready to be poured out lavishly, eagerly, honestly at her feet, and shedare not put out a finger to take them up. She had been walking milesand miles of nights, up and down her bedroom, from door to window, fromwindow to door, when all the rest of the house are abed and asleep.
"What _shall_ I do?--what _shall_ I do?" she cries out to her ownheart, while her hands clasp one another hotly, and the candles, sotall at dressing time, burn short and low. "Oh! if I had some one toadvise me!--not that I would take their advice, if it were to give upSt. John! Give him up! How can I give up what I have not got? Oh Bob,Bob, if you only knew how I hate you!--Only less than I hate myself!Oh! why was not my tongue cut out before that unlucky day when I said Iwould _try_ to like you? Try, indeed! If there is need for trying, onemay know how the trial will end. Shall I tell St. John? What! volunteeran unasked confession? Warn him off Robert's territory when he is notthinking of trespassing? And if I were to tell him--oh Heaven! I hadsooner put my hand into a lion's mouth--what _would_ he think of me?He, with his fastidious, strict ideas of what a woman should be and doand look? Shall I write and ask Bob to let me off? It would not breakhis heart; he is too good; only bad people ever break their hearts, asI shall do some day, I dare say. Oh! poor Bob, how badly I am treatingyou! Poor Bob! and his yellow roses that St. John made such fun of!How I wish that the thoughts of your long legs and your little sourPuritan sisters did not make me feel so sick! Oh! if you would but begood enough to jilt me! What _shall_ I do?--what _shall_ I do? Wait,wait, go on waiting for what will never come, probably, and when I havedegraded myself by waiting till hope is quite dead, go back whence Icame, and jig-jog through life alongside of Bob in a poke bonnet likehis mamma's. Ah Jack, Jack! why did I ever leave you? How I wish thatall Bobs and St. Johns and other worries were at the bottom of the RedSea, and you and I king and queen of some desert island, where therewas nothing nearer humanity than monkeys and macaws, and where therewas no rent nor workmen's wages nor lovers to torment us!"
One must go to bed at some time or other, however puzzled and ponderingone may be; and in furtherance of this end, Esther, having reachedthis turn in her reflections, begins to undress. In so doing shemisses a locket containing Jack's picture, which she always wearsround her neck. She must have dropped it downstairs, where perhapssome housemaid's clumsy foot may tread upon it, and mar the dear, uglyyoung face within. She must go and look for it, though the clock isstriking one. She takes up her candle, and runs lightly downstairs.The gas is out. Great shadows from behind come up alongside, and thenstretch ahead of her; the statues glimmer ghostly chill from theirdark pedestals. With a shock of frightened surprise she sees a streamof light issuing through the half-open door of the morning-room. Isit burglars, or are the flowers giving a ball, as in Andersen's fair,fanciful tale? She creeps gently up, and peeps in. The lamp still burnson the centre table, and pacing up and down, up and down, as she hasbeen doing overhead, is a man buried in deepest thought. Fear givesplace to a great, pleasant shyness. "I--I--I have lost my locket," shestammers.
He gives a tremendous start. "You up still!" he says, in astonishment."Lost your locket, have you? Oh! by-the-by, I found it just now; hereit is. Do you know (with a smile) I could not resist the temptation oflooking to see who you had got inside it. Are you very angry?"
"Very!" she answers, drooping her eyes under his. She could sit andstare into Bob's eyes by the hour together, if she liked, only that itwould be rather a dull amusement; with St. John it is different.
"Don't go; stay and talk a minute. It is so pleasant to think that weare the only conscious, sentient beings in the house--all the otherssleeping like so many pigs," he says, coming over to her with anexcited look on his face, such as calm, slow-pulsed English gentlemenare not wont to wear.
"No, no, I cannot--I must not."
She has taken the bracelets off her arms, and the rose from her hair:there she stands in her ripe, fresh beauty, with only the night and St.John to look at her.
"Five minutes," he says, with pleading humility, but putting his backagainst the door as he speaks.
"If you _prevent_ my going, of course I cannot help myself," sheanswers, putting on a little air of offended dignity to hide hertremulous embarrassment.
"Don't be offended! Do you know" (leaving his post of defence to followher)--"do you know what I have been doing ever since you went--_not_ tobed apparently?"
"Drinking brandy and soda-water, probably" (looking rather surly, andaffecting to yawn).
"That would have been hardly worth mentioning. I have been wonderingwhether my luck is on the turn. I have been da----I mean very unluckyall my life. I never put any money on a horse that he was not sure tobe nowhere. Luck does turn, sometimes, doesn't it? Do you think mine isturning?"
"How can
I tell?"
"You don't ask in what way I have been so unlucky. Why don't you? Haveyou no curiosity?"
"I never like to seem inquisitive," answers Esther, coldly, hopingthat he does not notice how the white hands that lie on her lap aretrembling.
"Do you recollect my telling you that I had made a great fool of myselfonce?"
"Yes."
"Do you care to hear about it, or do you not?" pulling at his droopingmoustache, in some irritation at her feigned indifference.
"Yes, I care," she answers, lighting up an eager, mobile face--fear,shyness, and the sense of the impropriety of the situation all cedingto strong curiosity.
"Well, it was about a woman, of course. _Cela va sans dire;_ a mannever can get into a scrape without a woman to help him, any more thanhe can be born, or learn his A B C."
"Was she handsome?" looking up, and speaking quickly.
That is always the first question a woman asks about a rival. I donot know why, I am sure, as many of the greatest mischiefs that havebeen done on earth have been done by ugly women. Rousseau's Madamed'Houdetot squinted ferociously.
"Pretty well. She had a thundering good figure, and knew how to useher eyes. By-the-by" (with an anxious discontent in his tone), "so doyou. I often wish you did not; I hate being able to trace one point ofresemblance between you and her."
"Did she refuse you?" asks Esther, hastily, too anxious for the sequelof the story to think of resenting the accusation made against her eyes.
"Not she! I should not have been the one to blame her if she had; onecannot quarrel with people for their tastes. She swore she liked mebetter than any one else in the world; that she would go down to Erebuswith me, be flayed alive for me--all the protestations usual in suchcases, in fact, I suppose," he ends bitterly.
"And threw you over?" says Essie, leaning forward with lips half apart,and her breast rising and falling in short, quick undulations.
"Exactly; had meant nothing else all along. I filled only the pleasantand honourable situation of decoy duck to lure on shyer game, and whenthe bird was limed--such a bird, too! a great, heavy, haw-haw brutein the Carabineers, with a face like a horse--she pitched me away ascoolly as you would pitch an old shoe--or as you would pitch _me_, Idare say, if you had the chance."
"And what did you do?" asks Essie, breathlessly, her great eyes, blackas death, fastened on his face.
St. John smiles--a smile half fierce, half amused.
"Run him through the body, do you suppose?--spitted him like a lark ora woodcock?--cut out his heart and made her eat it, as the man did tohis wife in that fine old Norman story? No; I could have done any ofthem with pleasure if I had had the chance; with all our veneering andFrench polish, I think the tiger is only half dead in any of us; but Idid not; I did none of them: I--prepare for bathos, please--I went outhunting; it was in winter, and, as misfortunes never come singly, Istaked one of the best horses I ever was outside of: that diverted thecurrent of my grief a little, I think."
He speaks in a jeering, bantering tone, scourging himself with the rodof his own ridicule, as men are apt to do when they are conscious ofhaving made signal asses of themselves in order to be beforehand withthe world.
"And she told you she was fond of you?" ejaculates Essie, raising hersweet face, sympathetic, indignant, glowing, towards him.
"Scores of times--swore it. I suppose it is no harder to tell a lie ahundred times than once; _ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute_. Tellme," he says, vehemently, leaning over her, and taking hold of herhand, as if hardly conscious of what he was doing--"you are a woman,you must know--tell me, is there no difference between truth and lies?have they both _exactly_ the same face? How is a man to tell themapart?"
They are both speaking in a low key, almost under their breath, forfear of drawing down upon themselves the apparition of Sir Thomas in_deshabille_ and a blunderbuss. Their faces are close together; she cansee the lines that climate and grief and passion have drawn about hiseyes and mouth--can see the wild, honest anxiety looking through hissoul's clear windows.
"I--I--don't know," she answers, stammering, and shivering a little,half with fear at his vehemence, half with the strong contagion of hispassion.
"Do you ever tell untruths?" he asks, hurriedly, scanning her face withanxious eyes, that try to look through the mask of fair, white flesh,and see the heart underneath. "Don't be angry with me, but I sometimesfancy that you might."
"_I!_ what do you mean?" snatching away her hand, and the angry bloodrushing headlong to her cheeks.
"Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Hazael was onlythe first of a long string who have asked that virtuously iratequestion.
His countenance clears a little. "You must forgive me," he says,repentantly. "I suppose it is my own unlucky experience that has mademe so suspicious; because my own day has been cloudy, I have wiselyconcluded upon the non-existence of the sun. But, come" (smiling alittle), "one good turn deserves another: have you nothing to tell mein return for the long list of successes I have been confiding to you?"
He watches her changing, flushing, paling face, with a keen solicitudewhich surprises himself. What can this downy, baby-faced rustic have toconfess? Now for Bob! Now is the time--now or never! Sing, oh goddess,the destructive wrath of St. John, the son of Thomas! What time, place,situation, can be suitabler for such a tale? It is an hour and a halfpast midnight; they love one another madly, and they are alone.
Are they alone, though? Is this one of the statues stepped down fromits pedestal in the hall that is coming in at the door, severely,chilly, fair, with a candle in its hand?
"Miss Craven!" ejaculates Constance (for it is she), stopping suddenlyshort, while a look of surprised displeasure ripples over her calm,smooth face.
Silence for a second on the part of everybody.
"It is a pity, St. John," says Miss Blessington, drawing herself up,and looking an impersonation of rigid, aggressive, pitiless virtue,"that you and Miss Craven should choose such a very unseasonable timefor your interviews; it is not a very good example for the servants, ifany of them should happen to find you here."
"The servants have something better to do than to come prying andeavesdropping upon their betters," retorts St. John, flushing angry-redto the roots of his hair, and not taking the most conciliatory line ofdefence.
"You are mistaken if you think I have been eavesdropping," saysConstance, with dignified composure, her grave face looking outchastely cold from the down-fallen veil of her yellow hair. "I couldnot sleep, and came down to look for a book. Pray don't let me disturbyour _tete-a-tete!_" making a movement towards going.
"Don't be a fool, Conny!" cries St. John, hastily, in bitter fear ofhaving compromised Esther by his ill-advised detention of her: "it isthe purest accident your having found Miss Craven and me together here!"
"I am well aware of that," she answers, with a little smiling sneer.
"You know what I mean, perfectly well: it is the purest accident our_being_ here. Miss Craven lost her locket, and----"
"And" (smiling still)--"and you have been helping her to look for it.Yes, I see. Well, I--hope you will find it. Good-night!" going out andclosing the door behind her.
"What did she say?--what does she mean?" cries Essie, panting, and witha face hardly less white than her dress.
"What does it matter what she means? She's a fool!" answers St. John,wrathfully. "Go to bed, and don't think about her; who cares?"
But he looks as if he did care a good deal.