CHAPTER XL.
Of the three persons whose repose has been disturbed by the amours ofThomas the footman, only one is able to take up again the thread ofinterrupted slumber. Miss Blessington, having returned to her chamber,and having meditated calmly for a quarter of an hour on the knot in herdestiny she has just untied, and having given one great sigh to thememory of the Gerard diamonds, lays down her golden scented head onher pillow again, and sleeps the sleep of the just. Miss Blessingtonhas well nigh mastered the secret of eternal youth and perennialbeauty--incapacity for feeling any emotion. It is hardly likely thatthe god Sleep, who loves a quiet house, will visit two such unquiettemples as the brains of St. John and Esther: he goes away from themutterly, taking his gentle poppyheads with him.
St. John walks miles and miles up and down his bedroom carpet,pondering, deeply and vexedly, not on what his own course of conductshall be--_that_ he is already determined upon--but on what effect MissBlessington's coldly sceptical reception of his wildly improbable yettrue tale is likely to have upon Esther.
And Esther herself, having conceived a mortal aversion for the shelterof the ginger-canopied pavilion, wraps a great shawl round her, and,sitting down on the deep window-seat, watches for the first streaks ofdawn, which, on these winter mornings, are long, long coming. Thoughit is a winter night, her hands burn hot and dry; for the last fewdays she has had a sharp pain in her side--to-night it is gettingyet sharper; it begins to hurt her to draw her breath. Two thoughtskeep buzzing about her brain: "I am going to be ill," and "I am goingto be turned away." She throws aside her shawl, but the dry burningstill continues. She has sat here for hours now, and the dawn's feetare beginning slowly to climb the steps from the eastern gate. Thebattle between day and night is yet undecided; almost equally theydivide the sky between them. Perhaps it is the night's excitementthat has given her this fever; perhaps the cold morning air wouldrefresh her. She waits until day's victory is complete, and then--beingalready dressed--puts on her hat and jacket, and steals noiselesslydownstairs, to the garden door that has been the cause of so muchmischief, out into the garden between the brown earthed beds, where thewinter aconite's small yellow heads and green tippets are beginning topush themselves into sight, and thence into the park.
There is no wind abroad, only heavy rain-clouds outwalling the infantsun, and the unarmed air has a piercing chillness in it. Esther hasnot proceeded far, and is standing thoughtful on the brow of a littleknoll, from whence one looks down on the dark flag-fringed pool, whenshe is aware of a footstep behind her; and the next instant St. JohnGerard stands by her side.
"What have you come here for? Why have you followed me?" she asks,turning upon him in hasty dismay. "Miss Blessington's windows look thisway--she will see us together."
"Let her see us," he answers, doggedly.
"She will never believe that it was by accident we have met," criespoor Esther, in great agitation.
"She will be right, then; it is not accident."
"She will think that it was an appointment!" she says, clasping herhands in unfeigned distress.
"Let her think so!"
"It is very well for you to talk in this way," she says, withpassionate reproach. "You are a man--you may defy the opinion of theworld; but is it so easy for me?"
"Why should her opinion concern either you or me?" he inquires,gravely. "What is she to either of us? Did not you last night, withyour own ears, hear my dismissal pronounced?"
She stoops her head until her hat almost conceals her face from him.
"She was angry," she says, in a low voice; "she will be sorry for thethings she said; she will forgive you."
"Will she?" he answers, quietly smiling. "I think not; to tell you thetruth, I don't mean to ask her."
She lifts her face, suddenly earnest, to him.
"You _must!_" she says, eagerly. "You must explain to her, as you triedto do last night, that what happened then" (a painful blush) "is nopossible reason why her engagement to you should be broken off. Youmust convince her of this--you must, indeed; for my sake _you must!_"
He looks down, frowning heavily.
"When a galley-slave's chains have been knocked off, must he handcuffhimself again?"
"Why did you handcuff yourself at first?" she asks, with impulsivevehemence. "Whose doing was it but your own? What madness firstimpelled you to ask her to marry you?"
"Because," he answers, with emotion, fixing his upbraiding eyes uponher--"because I was smarting miserably under the blow you had justgiven me--you, who had made me mistrust everything attractive, andwomanly, and innocent-seeming. I was obliged to marry some one; that isone of the many curses attached to being an eldest son, and the lastmale heir of an inconveniently old family. I said to myself, 'She istoo dull to deceive me, too passionless to disgrace me.' I chose herbecause she was, of all the women I knew, the one least capable ofcalling forth emotion of any kind whatever in me--consequently, the onemost powerless to make me suffer."
The words of his defence came quick and hurried. She is silent for amoment; then, uplifting imploring eyes to his: "Mr. Gerard," she says,tremblingly, "the twenty-four hours you asked me to allow you yesterdayare nearly expired: have you come to say 'good-bye' to me? If so, it iswell; you remember your promise?"
"I remember it," he answers, slowly, "and I am prepared to--_break_it. Don't look so reproachful, Esther! I am ready to make you as gooda one instead. I am ready to swear," he says, his face all kindling inthe grey cold morning with eager passion--"I am ready to swear to youthat I will never leave you again, unless you send me away, until deathdo us part. Will that promise do as well as the other?"
She gives a little cry of astonishment. "What do you mean?" she asks,faintly, moving a step farther away from him.
"I mean," he says, solemnly, his countenance all shining with the lightof a great new joy, "that I am sick of my life without you, Esther; andyou--you are sick of yours without me, aren't you?"
She cannot deny it, and is unwilling to allow it; so keeps a troubledsilence.
"There must be some reason," he continues, passionately, "for yourfailing health, for your thin white cheeks, for your total loss ofbeauty" (with a smile), "as Constance tersely worded it yesterday. Am Iright; or is it my conceit that makes me think that I have some concernin the change?"
"You are mistaken," she cries, hastily--the idea that pity for hermiserable appearance has brought him back to her flashing gallinglyacross her mind. "I was very fond of you--_very;_ it was a great griefto me when you threw me away from you; but I could have done withoutyou, if--if--I had not lost my boy."
She turns away, to hide her quivering lips and swelling tears: it is soseldom that she speaks of her dead, that the mere naming of him seemsto make his loss the clearer.
Gerard's face falls a little. "Could you?" he says, simply andsadly. "No doubt! I was unreasonable to suppose that _I_ could beindispensable to any one."
They walk on in silence side by side. It is beginning to rain, heavydrops ushering in a winter storm. The deer-barn is near--the deer-barn,with steep red roof, lichen-painted, standing on a little rise, amonga company of ancient hornbeams, whose twisted trunks lean this way andthat. For the last twenty years, every young lady that has come to stayat the hall has sketched the deer-barn.
"This is not fit weather for you to be out in," Gerard says,solicitously glancing at his companion's slight figure and fever-brighteyes. "Let us shelter here till the storm is over!"
Having reached it, Esther stands watching Heaven's quick large tearsfalling heavy on Earth's chill breast; St. John walks up and down onthe rough earth-floor, buried in thought. At length, rousing himself,he approaches Esther, and speaks, calmly at first, but with increasingvehemence as he proceeds:
"Esther, I have been thinking what a short section of my life, countingby days and weeks, the time that I have known you forms; that month atFelton, when we had scarcely eyes or ears for any one but each other,and this month here, when we have hardly exchanged two w
ords. I supposeI know very little about you, _really;_ you may be a very bad worthlessgirl, for all I know to the contrary. God knows I have not had muchreason to think you a very good one; and yet, good or bad--well, asyou say, and as I have no reason to doubt, that you can get on withoutme--I cannot, for the life of me, bear any longer the dragging of theendless empty days without you. Esther!" he says, with passionatehunger in his eyes, "I _want_ you! I _must_ have you for my own! Isthere now any reason why I should not?"
"Have you forgotten," she asks, with a melancholy smile, "the nightwhen you told me that you would never forgive me, either in this worldor the next? What have I done since to make you change your mind? I amno different to what I was then--unless, perhaps, I may be a littlewickeder; I have been most unhappy, and adversity makes one wicked."
"I suppose I have lost my senses," he answers, with excitement; "butit seems to me now that, even were you to deceive me again, as you didat Felton--if you were to cheat me, and tell me falsehoods with thesame baby-innocent face that you did there--that even then I should notrepent of my bargain. Of two evils it would be the least; it would bebetter than never to have possessed you at all. Only, child, one thingI beg of you," he continues, with reproachful entreaty: "if you mean totrick me a second time, don't let me find it out for a little while!Let me be happy for a year--a month--a week!"
Her eyes rest on the ground, and a painful red spreads on either cheek.Despite the honest yearning love that vibrates along his voice, shecannot cast out from her heart that galling suspicion that has stolenthere.
"You are very good," she makes answer, in a constrained voice; "and itis very generous of you trying to hide your real motive; but I can seeit: it is _pity!_ You look at me, and think, 'She was a pretty girlonce, and now she has grown old and thin and plain, and it is all forlove of me!' Yes, it is pity!"
"You are right," he answers, earnestly; "it is pity, profound pity,for the most miserable, discontented fellow upon God's earth--to wit,myself."
She raises her eyes slowly, and fixes them searchingly on his eagerflushing face; and, looking, can doubt no longer.
"If I was over-harsh to you that night at Felton," he continues,rapidly, "and I am willing now to own that I was--for, after all, itwas not against me that you had most greatly sinned--I have, at allevents, paid heavily enough for it. What do you suppose I have sufferedduring the last month, watching you day by day wearing out your younglife in a cold servile drudgery--hearing you strain your poor littletired voice in the interminable readings to that insatiable old man!Essie, I'm not a particularly pleasant fellow to live with--sometimesI believe I am particularly unpleasant--but, at _my worst_, I'm not sobad as old Blessington."
At that she laughs a little, but shakes her head.
"Why do you shake your head?" he asks, manlike, pursuing the hotlierthe more she seems to hold back. "Is it," he says (a heavy fearquickening his pulses, and making his voice come thick and harsh),"that you want to tell me by signs, what you dare not tell me in wordsto my face, that the old love is _dead_, killed by my hard words thatmiserable night at Felton? Oh, love! it must have been but a weaklything, if a few rough words could kill it."
She does not answer.
"You _did_ love me once, Esther," he continues, vehemently; "I know youdid! I knew it then, only, in my blind rage, I affected to disbelieveit. You _must_ have loved me, when you, who had always been so shy,so reserved, so maidenly to me, of your own accord--do you recollect,sweet?--held out your arms to me, and flung yourself upon my breast.God only knows how hard it was for me to put you away!"
At the recollection his speech calls up, her face is stirred with aconvulsive emotion; but still she holds her peace.
"Esther, speak!--and yet, perhaps, when you have spoken, I shall wishthat you had kept silence. Say anything you will, do anything you will,only don't kill me by telling me that so sweet a thing can be _dead!_"
She lifts her heavy eyes to him, and in them is the look of a huntedanimal. "Why do you torment me with these questions?" she asks,passionately. "If my love for you is dead, you ought to be thankful;for, while it was alive, it brought nothing but misery to either of us."
"If you think so, it must indeed be dead," he answers, deeply wounded.
"Why will you insist on driving me into a corner?" she asks, with theaccent of a person rendered irritable by pain. "Why will you force meto make admissions that I don't want to make? What is the good of myowning that I love you still, when I am determined never to marry you?"
"_Never to marry me!_" he repeats; unable, in his immense surprise, todo more than say her own words after her. A man is always overwhelmedwith astonishment at the idea of any woman not being overjoyed toespouse him.
"Never to marry you!" she reiterates, steadily. "I was a bad-enoughmatch for you before--without fortune, position, or connexion; peoplewould have pitied you then for being drawn into such a marriage; butnow----"
"But now, what?"
"But now that I am a _companion_," she continues, with a bitterpride--"an anomalous animal, just two shades higher than thelady's-maid in my own estimation, and probably not that in any oneelse's--a companion, too, of whom people can say the things that MissBlessington will say of me now----"
"What do you mean? What sort of things _can_ she say?"
But Esther maintains a shamed red silence.
"That you are completely _passee?_"
"No, not that!--that would not concern me much."
"That the way you cough in the evening fidgets her to death?"
"No, not that."
"That you are over-sensitive, as these sort of people always are?"(with a faint mimicking of Miss Blessington's slow languor ofarticulation).
"No, not that."
"What then?"
"You _must_ remember the things she said; you were there, and it is notmore than five hours ago," she answers, with some impatience.
"I forget every word she uttered except three."
"And what were they?"
"You are free."
"She did not mean them," says Esther, trying to speak withdispassionate calmness; "she was under an erroneous impression when shesaid them; she will take you back again."
"Take me back again!" he repeats, angrily. "Good heavens, Esther! areyou bent on driving me mad? Not satisfied with refusing me point-blankyourself, are you determined to insult me, by forcing upon me a womanfor whom, as you know--as you must have known from the first momentyou saw us together--I have never felt anything but the profoundest,coldest indifference?"
"I meant no insult," she replies, apologetically: "I only meant to saywhat is true--that _she_ is a suitable match for you--that _she_ isyour equal."
"Is she?" he retorts ironically. "You are very good, I'm sure; I askfor bread, and you give me a stone. For God's sake, Essie, if you willhave nothing to say to me yourself, at least spare me the degradationof listening to your kind and disinterested plans for my welfare!"
Under this severe snub, Miss Craven remains silent.
"Is it," he continues, presently, his indignation being a littlecooled, "the mere fact of my being well-off that damns me in your eyes?If so, I think I may plead 'not guilty,' seeing that this oppressivewealth of mine lies on the other side of Sir Thomas's death--an eventprobably, at least, as distant as the millennium."
She gazes out (not seeing it the while) at the driving rain, while atroubled look flits over her small grave face; but she says neither"Yea" nor "Nay."
"When I am asking you to give me your whole sweet life," he cries,impulsively, snatching one of her little cold hands, "are you soungenerous as to wish me to have absolutely nothing to offer you inreturn?"
Still silence.
"Essie!" he says, drawing her nearer to him, and looking resolutelydown into her timid reluctant eyes, "I don't ask you to have pity uponme--that is a puling, cowardly way of making love, I always think; ifthe only road to a woman's heart lies through her compassion, I hadrather never get there at all--but I ask you
to pity _yourself_. Tobe my wife, ill-tempered and jealous as I, no doubt, should often be,would be distinctly a better fate than to be old Blessington's drudge.Child! have you no pity for yourself?"
"None whatever," she answers, with emotion. "I am not in the leastsorry for myself; I richly deserve everything that is come to me. Aslong as I am unhappy myself, I can better bear the recollection of myvile conduct to the best and loyalest lover ever any woman had; if Ibegan to be happy, I think my remorse would kill me."
He drops her hand suddenly, with a gesture of anger.
"I have been sacrificed to him once already," he says, fiercely; "am Ito be sacrificed a second time to a sentimental recollection of him--tothe mere memory of his perfections?"
She raises her rejected hand and its fellow deprecatingly towards him."Don't be angry with me," she cries, pleadingly; "this has nothingto say to him; the reason why I will not marry you is that I am a_mesalliance_ for you."
"That is my concern, I imagine," he answers, stiffly.
"I think not," she rejoins, gently. "You have lost your senses, as youtold me just now; you are mad, and I am sane; therefore I can judgebetter than you yourself what is for your good: some day you will agreewith me."
"Never!" he replies, emphatically; and with that, she standing nigh,and the temptation being mighty, he flings his arms _sans ceremonie_about her supple body, and strains her to his breast.
Outside, the rain streams down with a continuous quiet noise; thedappled deer are herding their branchy heads together under the oldleafless hornbeams for shelter. For one moment Esther lies passive inher lover's arms, yielding to the bliss of that rough embrace; and,after all, among the blisses that we wot of, what is there so great as,
"After long grief and pain, To feel the arms of your true love Round you once again?"
Then her recollected resolution comes back. "Let me go," she says,faintly; "this is not right!"
"Right or wrong," he answers, doggedly, "it is the one moment worthbeing called 'life' that I have spent since I was fool enough to cut myown throat by parting from you."
"Let me go!" she says, again; and he, holding her still prisoner, butputting her a little farther from him, that he may the more distinctlysee the workings of her countenance, says steadily:
"Essie, I am not unjust; I will let you go this instant, to any quarterof the world that you wish, without a word of remonstrance, if you willonly look up in my face and say, 'St. John, I don't love you.'"
She lifts, with infinite difficulty, eyes in which pride and shypassion are fighting a duel to the death, and falters: "St. John, Idon't----" but, in the mid-utterance of that falsehood, her voice failssuddenly, and she buries her burning shamed face on his breast.
"I knew it," he cries, triumphantly, dropping a light kiss--for has nother hesitation confessed him her owner?--upon her bent head. "I riskedmy everything upon that test, and it has not failed me. Even yourmiserable pride, Esther, could not constrain you to such a lie! Withyour heart beating against mine, as if we had but one between us, yourlips did not dare frame those ugly words."
She gives no verbal answer; but, with head shame-drooped, tries, withtrembling hands, to push away the arms that so closely, warmly bind her.
"Oh love!" he cries, with an accent of impatient but tender upbraiding,"are you struggling to get away from me still? Am I never to persuadeany good thing to stay with me? Will you never forgive me the sin ofbeing an eldest son? God knows it is not my fault--that it was not mychoice to be born amongst the drones! Oh, Essie, is it just of you topunish me for what I cannot help?"
"I don't wish to punish you," she answers, trembling (seeing that shewished to be away from him, he has released her from his arms). "Thereal way to punish you would be to let you have your will--to say, 'Iwill marry you, St. John!'"
"In God's name punish me, then! No one ever took chastisement meeklierthan I will this."
"And what would the end be?" she asks, sadly. "You would be insanelyhappy for a little while--a month--two months, perhaps--and then youwould get tired of me. There is nothing in me, I think," she says,simply, "to keep a man's love after the first madness is over: I neverhad anything but a pretty face, and now even that is gone in the eyesof every one but you."
"What! in Linley's?" he asks, with a half-jealous smile.
She blushes, but goes on, without heeding the enquiry. "Some day youwould wake up and say, 'I have thrown myself away;' and I--I prefer tosay it for you now, while it is yet time."
He makes a movement to interrupt her, but she continues. "When a personhas once lost confidence in another, they can never get it _quite_ backagain; you would never _quite_ trust me. Only the other day you thoughthard things of me, because I seemed grateful to Mr. Linley for talkingfriendly to me: I saw it in your eyes as you rode past us that night:and--which is the last and greatest reason of all--you would not likepeople to say of your wife the things that Miss Blessington will enablethem to say of me."
"Even granting," breaks in Gerard, with indignant violence--"and Godforbid my ever granting anything of the kind!--that it is in her orany one else's power to blast your reputation, what pleasure could itpossibly give one girl to sully the good name of another, whom she mustknow in her heart of hearts to be as innocent as herself?"
"None whatever, perhaps, if I remain as I am," she answers,collectedly, though a little bitterly. "As Esther Craven, I am tooinsignificant to clash with her; but if I were to be your wife--if Iwere to be her successor in that position for which she is, in her ownand her friends' opinion, so well suited--would not she be likely togive her own explanation of the change? She would describe things asthey seemed to her, and people would believe her."
"Let them!" he answers scornfully. "If you loved me perfectly, the onlypeople that existed in the world for you would be yourself and me."
"I do not love you perfectly, then, I suppose," she answers, calmly;"for not even the enormous happiness of being with you always, of beinghalf your life, could compensate me for the degradation of bringing youa sullied name."
He turns away, with hands clenched and lips bitten, in the endeavour tobe master of his useless surging rage.
"St. John," she says resolutely, laying her hand upon one of his, "youhave made me two promises--one that you will go away and leave meto-day, and one that you will leave me never until I send you away. Ikeep you to the first: I send you away."
"But I will not be sent," he cries fiercely, giving the reins to hispassion. "The conditions under which that promise was made are utterlychanged; the obstacle that parted us _then_ no longer exists: there isnone between us now but what is of your own raising. I am, therefore,no longer bound by that oath; I will not go!"
"Very well," she answers, sighing: "then I must; and when one is tohave a foot or a hand cut off, it is best to do it at once. St. John, Iwill not sleep another night under the same roof with you! Goodbye!"
But he turns away sullenly. "You may say 'goodbye' to me, but I willnever say 'goodbye' to you: death is the only 'goodbye' I will acceptas valid between us."
She makes no rejoinder, but, slipping from his side out into the wildwintry rain, flies across the park away from him.
"Esther!--Esther!" he calls after her: but the "drip, drip" of thegreat swollen rain-drops from the eaves of the deer-barn is his onlyanswer.