CHAPTER XVII.
THEY VISIT THE CHAPEL OF PENRUTHYN AGAIN.
VERY grave was Cleve Verney as the vehicle disappeared. His uncle'sconversation had been very dismal. "Ethel, indeed! What an old bore heis, to be sure! Well, no matter; we shall see who'll win the game. He isso obstinate and selfish." There was, indeed, an enemy in front--anup-hill battle before him. He prayed heaven, at all events, that thevindictive old gentleman might not discover the refuge of Sir BoothFanshawe. Were he to do so, what a situation for Cleve! He would talkthe matter over with his uncle's attorneys, who knew him, with whom hehad often been deputed to confer on other things; who, knowing that hestood near the throne, would listen to him, and they would not be overzealous in hunting the old Baronet down. With those shrewd suspiciousfellows, Cleve would put it all on election grounds. Sir Booth was in akind of way popular. There would be a strong feeling against anyextreme or vindictive courses being taken by his uncle, and this wouldendanger, or at all events embarrass Cleve very seriously.
Away shadows of the future--smoke and vapours of the pit! Let us havethe sun and air of heaven while we may. What a charming day! how lightand pleasant the breeze! The sails rattle, quiver and fill, and stoopingto the breeze, away goes the _Wave_--and, with a great sigh, away goCleve's troubles, for the present; and his eye travels along thesea-board, from Cardyllian on to Malory, and so to the dimmer outline ofPenruthyn Priory.
As usual, they ran for Pendillion--the wind favouring--and at twoo'clock Cleve stood on the sea-rocked stones of the rude pier ofPenruthyn, and ordered his men to bring the yacht, seaward, round thepoint of Cardrwydd, and there to await him. There was some generalshipin this. His interview of the morning had whetted his instincts ofcaution. Round Cardrwydd the men could not see, and beside he wanted noone--especially not that young lady, whom the sight might move to heknew not what capricious resolve, to see the _Wave_ in the waters ofPenruthyn.
Away went the yacht, and Cleve strolled up to the ancient Priory, fromthe little hillock beyond which is a view of the sea half way toMalory.
Three o'clock came, and no sail in sight.
"They're not coming. I shan't see her. They must have seen our sail.Hang it, I knew we tacked too soon. And she's such an odd girl, I think,if she fancied I were here she'd rather stay at home, or go anywhereelse. Three o'clock!" He held his watch to his ear for a moment. "ByJove! I thought it had stopped. That hour seems so long. I won't give itup yet, though. That"--he was going to call him _brute_, but even underthe irritation of the hypothesis he could not--"that oddity. Sir Booth,may have upset their plans or delayed them."
So, with another long look over the lonely sea toward Malory, hedescended from his post of observation, and sauntered, ratherdespondingly, by the old Priory, and down the steep and pretty old road,that sinuously leads to the shore and the ruinous little quay, for whichboats of tourists still make. He listened and lingered on the way. Hismind misgave him. He would have deferred the moment when his last hopewas to go out, and the chance of the meeting, which had been his lastthought at night, and his first in the morning, should lose itself inthe coming shades of night. Yes, he would allow them a little time--itcould not be much--and if a sail were not in sight by the time hereached the strand he would give all up, and set out upon his dejectedwalk to Cardrwydd.
He halted and lingered for awhile in that embowered part of the littleby-road which opens on the shore, half afraid to terminate a suspense inwhich was still a hope. With an effort, then, he walked on, over thelittle ridge of sand and stones, and, lo! there was the boat with furledsails by the broken pier, and within scarce fifty steps the Maloryladies were approaching.
He raised his hat--he advanced quickly--not knowing quite how he felt,and hardly recollecting the minute after it was spoken, what he hadsaid. He only saw that the young lady seemed surprised and grave. Hethought she was even vexed.
"I'm so glad we've met you here, Mr. Verney," said artful MissSheckleton. "I was just thinking, compared with our last visit, howlittle profit we should derive from our present. I'm such a dunce inancient art and architecture, and in all the subjects, in fact, thathelp one to understand such a building as this, that I despaired ofenjoying our excursion at all as I did our last; but, perhaps you areleaving, and once more is too much to impose such a task as youundertook on our former visit."
"Going away! You could not really think such a thing possible, while Ihad a chance of your permitting me to do the honours of our poorPriory."
He glanced at Miss Fanshawe, who was at the other side of the chatty oldlady, as they walked up the dim monastic road; but the Guido was lookingover the low wall into the Warren, and his glance passed by unheeded.
"I'm so fond of this old place," said Cleve, to fill in a pause. "Ishould be ashamed to say--you'd think me a fool almost--how often I takea run over here in my boat, and wander about its grounds and walls,quite alone. If there's a transmigration of souls, I dare say mine onceinhabited a friar of Penruthyn--I feel, especially since I last came toWare, such an affection for the old place."
"It's a very nice taste, Mr. Verney. You have no reason to be ashamed ofit," said the old lady, decisively. "Young men, now-a-days, are so givenup to horses and field games, and so little addicted to anythingrefined, that I'm quite glad when I discover any nice taste oraccomplishment among them. You must have read a great deal, Mr. Verney,to be able to tell us all the curious things you did about this oldplace and others."
"Perhaps I'm only making a great effort--a show of learning on anextraordinary occasion. You must see how my stock lasts to-day. You arelooking into that old park, Miss Fanshawe," said Cleve, slily crossingto her side. "We call it the Warren; but it was once the Priory Park.There is a very curious old grant from the Prior of Penruthyn, which myuncle has at Ware, of a right to pasture a certain number of cows in thepark, on condition of aiding the verderer in keeping up the greenunderwood. There is a good deal of holly still there, and some relics ofthe old timber, but not much. There is not shelter for deer now. But younever saw anything like the quantity of rabbits; and there are really,here and there, some very picturesque fragments of old forest--capitalstudies of huge oak trees in the last stage of venerable decay anddecrepitude, and very well worthy of a place in your sketch-book."
"I dare say; I should only fear my book is hardly worthy of them," saidMiss Fanshawe.
"I forgot to show you this when you were here before." He stopped short,brushing aside the weeds with his walking-cane. "Here are the bases ofthe piers of the old park gate."
The little party stopped, and looked as people do on such old-worldrelics. But there was more than the conventional interest; or rathersomething quite different--something at once sullen and pensive in thebeautiful face of the girl. She stood a little apart, looking down onthat old masonry. "What is she thinking of?" he speculated; "is she sad,or is she offended? is it pride, or melancholy, or anger? or is it onlythe poetry of these dreamy old places that inspires her reverie? I don'tthink she has listened to one word I said about it. She seemed as much astranger as the first day I met her here;" and his heart swelled with abitter yearning, as he glanced at her without seeming to do so. And justthen, with the same sad face, she stooped and plucked two pretty wildflowers that grew by the stones, under the old wall. It seemed to himlike the action of a person walking in a dream--half unconscious of whatshe was doing, quite unconscious of everyone near her.
"What shall we do?" said Cleve, as soon as they had reached theenclosure of the buildings. "Shall we begin at the refectory andlibrary, or return to the chapel, which we had not quite looked overwhen you were obliged to go, on your last visit?"
This question his eyes directed to Miss Fanshawe; but as she did not soreceive it. Miss Sheckleton took on herself to answer for the party. Sointo the chapel they went--into shadow and seclusion. Once more amongthe short rude columns, the epitaphs, and round arches, in dim light,and he shut the heavy door with a clap that boomed through its lonelyaisles, and rejoiced in h
is soul at having secured if it were only tenminutes' quiet and seclusion again with the ladies of Malory. It seemedlike a dream.
"I quite forgot, Miss Fanshawe," said he, artfully compelling herattention, "to show you a really curious, and even mysterious tablet,which is very old, and about which are ever so many stories andconjectures."
He conveyed them to a recess between two windows, where in the shade isa very old mural tablet.
"It is elaborately carved, and is dated, you see, 1411. If you look nearyou will see that the original epitaph has been chipped off near themiddle, and the word '_Eheu_,' which is Latin for 'alas!' cut deeplyinto the stone."
"What a hideous skull!" exclaimed the young lady, looking at the strangecarving of that emblem, which projected at the summit of the tablet.
"Yes, what a diabolical expression! Isn't it?" said Cleve.
"Are not those _tears_?" continued Miss Fanshawe, curiously.
"No, look more nearly and you will see. They are worms--greatworms--crawling from the eyes, and knotting themselves, as you see,"answered Cleve.
"Yes," said the lady, with a slight shudder, "and what a wicked grin theartist has given to the mouth. It is wonderfully powerful! What rage andmisery! It is an awful image! Is that a tongue?"
"A tongue of fire. It represents a flame issuing from between the teeth;and on the scroll beneath, which looks, you see, like parchmentshrivelled by fire are the words in Latin, 'Where their worm dieth not,and the fire is not quenched;' and here is the epitaph--'Hic sunt ruinae,forma letifera, cor mortuum, lubrica lingua daemonis, digitus proditor,nunc gehennae favilla. Plorate. Plaudite.' It is Latin, and the meaningis, 'Here are ruins, fatal beauty, a dead heart, the slimy tongue of thedemon, a traitor finger, now ashes of gehenna. Lament. Applaud.' Somepeople say it is the tomb of the wicked Lady Mandeville, from whom wehave the honour of being descended, who with her traitor fingerindicated the place where her husband was concealed; and afterwards washerself put to death, they say, though I never knew any evidence of it,by her own son. All this happened in the Castle of Cardyllian, whichaccounts for her being buried in the comparative seclusion of thePriory, and yet so near Cardyllian. But antiquarians say the real dateof that lady's misdoings was nearly a century later; and so the matterrests an enigma probably to the day of doom."
"It is a very good horror. What a pity we shall never know thosesentences that have been cut away," said Miss Fanshawe.
"That skull is worth sketching; won't you try it?" said Cleve.
"No, not for the world. I shall find it only too hard to forget it, andI don't mean to look at it again. Some countenances seize one with atenacity and vividness quite terrible."
"_Very_ true," said Cleve, with a meaning she understood, as he turnedaway with her. "We are not rich in wonders here, but the old churchchest is worth seeing, it is curiously carved."
He led them towards a niche in which it is placed near the communionrails. But said Miss Sheckleton--
"I'm a little tired, Margaret; you will look at it, dear; and Mr.Verney will excuse me. We have been delving and hoeing all the morning,and I shall rest here for a few minutes." And she sat down on the bench.
Miss Margaret Fanshawe looked at her a little vexed, Cleve thought; andthe young lady said--
"Hadn't you better come? It's only a step, and Mr. Verney says it isreally curious."
"I'm a positive old woman," said cousin Anne, "as you know, and really alittle tired; and you take such an interest in old carving in wood--athing I don't at all understand, Mr. Verney; she has a book quite fullof really beautiful drawings, some taken at Brussels, and some atAntwerp. Go, dear, and see it, and I shall be rested by the time youcome back."
So spoke good-natured Miss Sheckleton, depriving Margaret of everyevasion; and she accordingly followed Cleve Verney as serenely as shemight have followed the verger.
"Here it is," said Cleve, pausing before the recess in which thisantique kist is placed. He glanced towards Miss Sheckleton. She was agood way off--out of hearing, if people spoke low; and besides, busymaking a pencilled note in a little book which she had brought to light.Thoughtful old soul!
"And about the way in which faces rivet the imagination and haunt thememory, I've never experienced it but once," said Cleve, in a very lowtone.
"Oh! it has happened to me often, very often. From pictures, I think,always; evil expressions of countenance that are ambiguous and hard toexplain, always something demoniacal, I think," said the young lady.
"There is nothing of the demon--never was, never could be--in thephantom that haunts me," said Cleve. "It is, on the contrary--I don'tsay angelic. Angels are very good, but not interesting. It is like animage called up by an enchanter--a wild, wonderful spirit of beauty andmystery. In darkness or light I always see it. You like to escape fromyours. I would not lose mine for worlds; it is my good genius, myinspiration; and whenever that image melts into air, and I see it nomore, the last good principle of my life will have perished."
The young lady laughed in a silvery little cadence that had a sadness init, and said--
"Your superstitions are much prettier than mine. My good cousin Anne,there, talks of blue devils, and my familiars are, I think, of thatvulgar troop; while yours are all _couleur de rose_, and so elegantlygot up, and so perfectly presentable and well bred, that I really thinkI should grow quite tired of the best of them in a five-minutes'_tete-a-tete_."
"I must have described my apparition very badly," said Cleve. "Thatwhich is lovely beyond all mortal parallel can be described only by itseffects upon one's fancy and emotions, and in proportion as these areintense, I believe they are incommunicable."
"You are growing quite too metaphysical for me," said Miss MargaretFanshawe. "I respect metaphysics, but I never could understand them."
"It is quite true," laughed Cleve. "I _was_ so. I hate metaphysicsmyself;' and they have nothing to do with this, they are so dry anddetestable. But now, as a physician--as an exorcist--tell me, I entreat,in my sad case, haunted by a beautiful phantom of despair, which I havemistaken for my good angel, how am I to redeem myself from this fatalspell."
A brilliant colour tinged the young lady's cheeks, and her great eyesglanced on him for a moment, he thought, with a haughty and even angrybrilliancy.
"I don't profess the arts you mention; but I doubt the reality of yourspectre. I think it is an _illusion_, depending on an undue excitementin the organ of self-esteem, quite to be dispelled by restoring thehealthy action of those other organs--of common sense. Seriously, I'mnot competent to advise gentlemen, young or old, in their perplexities,real or fancied; but I certainly would say to any one who had set beforehim an object of ambition, the attainment of which he thought would beinjurious to him,--be manly, have done with it, let it go, give it tothe winds. Besides, you know that half the objects which young men setbefore them, the ambitions which they cherish, are the merest castles inthe air, and that all but themselves can see the ridicule of theiraspirations."
"You must not go, Miss Fanshawe; you have hot seen the carving you camehere to look at. Here is the old church chest; but--but suppose the_patient_--let us call him--knows that the object of his--his _ambition_is on all accounts the best and noblest he could possibly have setbefore him. What then?"
"What then!" echoed Miss Fanshawe. "How can any one possibly tell--butthe patient, as you call him, himself--what he should do. Your patientdoes not interest me; he wearies me. Let us look at this carving."
"Do you think he should despair because there is no present answer tohis prayers, and his idol vouchsafes no sign or omen?" persisted Cleve.
"I don't think," she replied, with a cold impatience, "the kind ofperson you describe is capable of despairing in such a case. I think hewould place too high a value upon his merits to question the certaintyof their success--don't you?" said the young lady.
"Well, no; I _don't_ think so. He is not an unreal person; I know him,and I know that his good opinion of himself is humbled, and that headores with an
entire abandonment of self the being whom he literallyworships."
"Very adoring, perhaps, but rather--that's a great dog like a wolf-houndin that panel, and it has got its fangs in that pretty stag's throat,"said Miss Fanshawe, breaking into a criticism upon the carving.
"Yes--but you were saying 'Very adoring, but rather'--what?" urgedCleve.
"Rather silly, don't you think? What business have people adoring othersof whom they know nothing--who may not even like _them_--who maypossibly _dis_like them extremely? I am tired of your good genius--Ihope I'm not very rude--and of your friend's folly--tired as _you_ mustbe; and I think we should both give him very much the same advice, _I_should say to him, pray don't sacrifice yourself; you are much tooprecious; consider your own value, and above all, remember that evenshould you make up your mind to the humiliation of the altar and theknife, the ceremonial may prove a fruitless mortification, and theopportunity of accomplishing your sacrifice be denied you by yourdivinity. And I think that's a rather well-rounded period: don't you?"
By this time Miss Margaret Fanshawe had reached her cousin, who stood upsmiling.
"I'm ashamed to say I have been actually amusing myself here with myaccounts. We have seen, I think, nearly everything now in this building.I should so like to visit the ruins at the other side of thecourt-yard."
"I shall be only too happy to be your guide, if you permit me," saidCleve.
And accordingly they left the church, and Cleve shut the door with astrange feeling both of irritation and anxiety.
"Does she dislike me? Or is she engaged? What can her odd speeches mean,if not one or other of these things? She warns me off, and seemspositively angry at my approach. She took care that I should quiteunderstand her ironies, and there was no mistaking the reality of herunaccountable resentment."
So it was with a weight at his heart, the like of which he had neverexperienced before, that Cleve undertook, and I fear in a ratherspiritless way performed his duties as cicerone, over the other parts ofthe building.
Her manner seemed to him changed, chilled and haughty. Had there come asecret and sudden antipathy, the consequence of a too hasty revelationof feelings which he ought in prudence to have kept to himself for sometime longer? And again came with a dreadful pang the thought that herheart was already won--the heart so cold and impenetrable to him--thepassionate and docile worshipper of another man--some beast--some fool.But the first love--the only love worth having; and yet, of all lovesthe most ignorant--the insanest.
Bitter as gall was the outrage to his pride. He would have liked toappear quite indifferent, but he could not. He knew the girl wouldpenetrate his finesse. She practised none herself; he could see and feela change that galled him--very slight but intolerable. Would it not be afurther humiliation to be less frank than she, and to practise anaffectation which she despised.
Miss Sheckleton eyed the young people stealthily and curiously now andthen, he thought. She suspected perhaps more than there really was, andshe was particularly kind and grave at parting, and, he thought,observed him with a sort of romantic compassion which is so pretty inold ladies.
He did touch Miss Fanshawe's hand at parting, and she smiled a cold andtransient smile as she gathered her cloaks about her, and looked overthe sea, toward the setting sun. In that clear, mellow glory, howwonderfully beautiful she looked! He was angry with himself for the sortof adoration which glowed at his heart. What would he not have given tobe indifferent, and to make her feel that he was so!
He smiled and waved his farewell to Miss Sheckleton. Miss Fanshawe wasnow looking toward Malory. The boat was gliding swiftly into distance,and disappeared with the sunset glittering on its sides, round thelittle headland, and Cleve was left alone.
His eyes dropped to the shingle, and broken shells, and seaweed, thatlay beneath his feet, in that level stream of amber light. He thought ofgoing away, thought what a fool he had been, thought of futurity andfate, with a sigh, and renounced the girl, washed out the portraitbefore which he had worshipped for so long, with the hand ofdefiance--the water of Lethe. Vain, vain; in sympathetic dyes, theshadow stained upon the brain, still fills his retina, glides before himin light and darkness, and will not be divorced.