CHAPTER XVIII.
CLEVE AGAIN BEFORE HIS IDOL.
CLEVE could not rest--he could not return to Ware. He would hear hisfate defined by her who had grown so inexpressibly dear bybeing--unattainable! Intolerant of impediment or delay, this impetuousspirit would end all, and know all that very night.
The night had come--one that might have come in June. The moon wasup--the air so sweetly soft--the blue of heaven so deep and liquid.
His yacht lay on the deep quiet shadow, under the pier of Cardyllian. Hewalked over the moonlighted green, which was now quite deserted. Theearly town had already had its tea and "pikelets." Alone--if lovers ever_are_ alone--he walked along the shore, and heard the gentle sea ripplerush and sigh along the stones. He ascended the steep path that mountsthe sea-beaten heights, overlooking Cardyllian on one side, and Maloryon the other.
Before him lay the landscape on which he had gazed as the sun went downthat evening, when the dull light from the gold and crimson sky fellsoftly round. And now, how changed everything! The moon's broad diskover the headland was silvering the objects dimly. The ivied castle athis left looked black against the sky. The ruins how empty now! Howbeautiful everything, and he how prodigious a fool! No matter. We havetime enough to be wise. Away, to-morrow, or at latest, next day; and indue course would arrive the season--that tiresome House of Commons--andthe routine of pleasure, grown on a sudden so insupportably dull.
So he had his walk in the moonlight toward Malory--the softest moonlightthat ever fell from heaven--the air so still and sweet: it seemed anenchanted land. Down the hill toward Malory he sauntered, lookingsometimes moonward, sometimes on the dark woods, and feeling as fiveweeks since he could not have believed himself capable of feeling, andso he arrived at the very gate of Malory.
Here stood two ladies, talking low their desultory comments on thebeautiful scene, as they looked across the water toward the headland ofPendillion. And these two ladies were the same from whom he had partedso few hours since. It was still very early everywhere except atCardyllian, and these precincts of Malory, so entirely deserted at thesehours that there seemed as little chance of interruption at the gate, asif they had stood in the drawing-room windows.
Cleve was under too intense and impetuous an excitement to hesitate. Heapproached the iron gate where, as at a convent grille, the old and theyoung recluse stood. The moonlight was of that intense and brilliantkind which defines objects clearly as daylight. The ladies looked bothsurprised; even Miss Anne Sheckleton looked grave.
"How very fortunate!" said Cleve, raising his hat, and drawing near.Just then, he did not care whether Sir Booth should chance to see himthere or not, and it was not the turn of his mind to think, in the firstplace, of consequences to other people.
Happily, perhaps, for the quiet of Malory, one of Sir Booth's capriceshad dispensed that night with his boat, and he was at that momentstretched in his long silk dressing-gown and slippers, on the sofa, inwhat he called his study. After the first instinctive alarm, therefore,Miss Anne Sheckleton had quite recovered her accustomed serenity andcheer of mind, and even interrupted him before he had well got to theend of his salutation to exclaim--
"Did you ever, anywhere, see such moonlight? It almost dazzles me."
"Quite splendid; and Malory looks so picturesque in this light." He wasleaning on the pretty old gate, at which stood both ladies, sufficientlyfar apart to enable him, in a low tone, to say to the younger, withoutbeing overheard--"So interesting in every light, now! I wonder your mendon't suspect me of being a poacher, or something else very bad, I findmyself prowling about here so often, at this hour, and even later."
"I admire that great headland--Pendillion, isn't it?--so very much; bythis light one might fancy it white with snow," said Miss Sheckleton.
"I wish you could see Cardrwydd Island _now_; the gray cliffs in thislight are so white and transparent, you can hardly imagine so strangeand beautiful an effect," said Cleve.
"I dare say," said Miss Sheckleton.
"You have only to walk about twenty steps across that little roadtowards the sea, and you have it full in view. Do let me persuade you,"said Cleve.
"Well, I don't mind," said Miss Sheckleton. "Come, Margaret, dear," andthese latter words she repeated in private exhortation, and then aloudshe added--"We have grown so much into the habit of shutting ourselvesup in our convent grounds, that we feel like a pair of runaway nunswhenever we pass the walls; however, I _must_ see the island."
The twenty steps toward the sea came to be a hundred or more, and atlast brought them close under the rude rocks that form the little pier;in that place, the party stopped, and saw the island rising in thedistant sheen, white and filmy; a phantom island, with now and then agleam of silvery spray, from the swell which was unfelt within theestuary, shooting suddenly across its points of shadow.
"Oh! how beautiful!" exclaimed Miss Fanshawe, and Cleve felt strangelyelated in her applause. They were all silent, and Miss Sheckleton, stillgazing on the distant cliffs, walked on a little, and a little more, andpaused.
"How beautiful!" echoed Cleve, in tones as low, but very different."Yes, how beautiful--how fatally beautiful; how beloved, and yet howcold. Cold, mysterious, wild as the sea; beautiful, adored and _cruel_.How _could_ you speak as you did to-day? What have I done, or said, orthought, if you could read my thoughts? I tell you, ever since I saw youin Cardyllian church I've thought only of you; you haunt my steps; youinspire my hopes. I adore you, Margaret."
She was looking on him with parted lips, and something like fear in herlarge eyes, and how beautiful her features were in the brilliantmoonlight.
"Yes, I _adore_ you; I don't know what fate or fiend rules these things;but to-day it seemed to me that you hated me, and yet I adore you; _do_you hate me?"
"How wildly you talk; you can't love me; you don't know me," said thisodd girl.
"I don't know you, and yet I love you; you don't know _me_, and yet Ithink you _hate_ me. You talk of love as if it were a creation of reasonand calculation. You don't know it, or you could not speak so;antipathies perhaps you do not experience; is there no caprice in_them_? I love you _in defiance_ of calculation, and of reason, and ofhope itself. I can no more help loving you than the light and airwithout which I should die. You're not going; you're not _so_ cruel; itmay be the last time you shall ever hear me speak. You won't believe me;no, not a word I say, although it's all as true as that this lightshines from heaven. You'd believe one of your boatmen relating anynonsense he pleases about people and places here. You'll believe worsefellows, I dare say, speaking of higher and dearer things, _perhaps_--Ican't tell; but _me_, on _this_, upon which I tell you, _all_ dependsfor me, you won't believe. I never loved any mortal before. I did notknow what it was, and now here I stand, telling you my bitter story,telling it to the sea, and the rocks, and the air, with as good a chanceof a hearing. I read it in your manner and your words to-day. I felt itintuitively. You don't care for me; you can't like me; I see it in yourlooks. And now, will you tell me; for God's sake, Margaret, do tellme--is there not some one--you _do_ like? I know there is."
"That's _quite_ untrue--I mean there is _nothing_ of the kind," saidthis young lady, looking very pale, with great flashing eyes; "and oneword more of this kind to-night you are not to say to me. Cousin Anne,"she called, "come, I'm going back."
"We are so much obliged to you, Mr. Verney," said Miss Sheckleton,returning; "we should never have thought of coming down here, to lookfor this charming view. Come, Margaret, darling, your papa may want me."
An inquisitive glance she darted furtively at the young people, and Idare say she thought that she saw something unusual in theircountenances.
As _they_ did not speak, Miss Sheckleton chatted on unheeded, till, on asudden, Cleve interposed with--
"There's an old person--an old lady, I may call her--named RebeccaMervyn, who lives in the steward's house, adjoining Malory, for whom Ihave a very old friendship; she was so kind to me, poor thing, when Iwas a
boy. My grandmother has a very high opinion of her; and _she_ wasnever very easily pleased. I suppose you have seen Mrs. Mervyn; you'dnot easily forget her, if you have. They tell me in the town that she isquite well; the same odd creature she always was, and living still inthe steward's house."
"I know--to be sure--I've seen her very often--that is, half-a-dozentimes or more--and she _is_ a very odd old woman, like that benevolentenchantress in the 'Magic Ring'--don't you remember? who lived in thecastle with white lilies growing all round the battlements," answeredMiss Sheckleton.
"I know," said Cleve, who had never read it.
"And if you want to see her, _here_ she is, oddly enough," whisperedMiss Sheckleton, as the old woman with whom Sedley had conferred on thesea-beach came round the corner of the boundary wall near the gateway bywhich they were now standing, in her grey cloak, with dejected steps,and looking, after her wont, seaward toward Pendillion.
"No," said Cleve, getting up a smile as he drew a little back into theshadow; "I'll not speak to her now; I should have so many questions toanswer, I should not get away from her for an hour."
Almost as he spoke the old woman passed them, and entered the gate; asshe did so, looking hard on the little party, and hesitating for amoment, as if she would have stopped outright. But she went on withoutany further sign.
"I breathe again," said Cleve; "I was so afraid she would know me again,and insist on a talk."
"Well, perhaps it is better she did not; it might not do, you know, ifshe mentioned your name, for _reasons_," whispered Miss Sheckleton, whowas on a sudden much more intimate with Cleve, much more friendly, muchmore kind, and somehow pitying.
So he bade good-night. Miss Sheckleton gave him a little friendlypressure as they shook hands at parting. Miss Fanshawe neither gave norrefused her hand. He took it; he held it for a moment--that slenderhand, all the world to him, clasped in his own, yet never to be his,lodged like a stranger's for a moment there--then to go, for ever. Thehand was carelessly drawn away; he let it go, and never a word spoke he.
The ladies entered the deep shadow of the trees. He listened to thelight steps fainting into silent distance, till he could hear them nomore.
Suspense--still suspense.
Those words spoken in her clear undertone--terrible words, that seemedat the moment to thunder in his ears, "loud as a trumpet with a silversound"--were they, after all, words of despair, or words of hope?
"_One word more of this kind, to-night, you are not to say to me._"
How was he to translate the word "to-night" in this awful text? Itseemed, as she spoke it, introduced simply to add peremptoriness to herforbiddance. But was that its fair meaning? Did it not imply that theprohibition was limited only to that night? Might it not mean that hewas free to speak more--possibly to hear more--at a future time?
A riddle? Well! he would read it in the way most favourable to hishopes; and who will blame him? He would have no oracles--noambiguities--nothing but sharply defined certainty.
With an insolent spirit, instinct with an impatience and impetuosityutterly intolerant of the least delay or obstruction, the interval couldnot be long.