Two Years Ago Volume Ii Part 36

"Forgive me!" he cried; "I was too harsh, Valencia!"

"No!" she cried, looking up at him with a glorious smile. "Scold me! Be harsh to me! It is so delicious now to be reproved by you!" and as she spoke she felt as if she would rather endure torture from that man's hand than bliss from any other. How many strange words of Lucia's that new feeling explained to her; words at which she had once grown angry, as doting weaknesses, unjust and degrading to self-respect. Poor Lucia!

She might be able to comfort her now, for she had learnt to sympathise with her by experience the very opposite to hers. Yet there must have been a time when Lucia clung to Elsley as she to Frank. How horrible to have her eyes opened thus!--To be torn and flung away from the bosom where she longed to rest! It could never happen to her. Of course her Frank was true, though all the world were false: but poor Lucia! She must go to her. This was mere selfishness at such a moment.

"You will find Scoutbush, then!"

"This moment. I will order the car now, if you will only eat. You must!"

And he rang the bell, and then made her sit down and eat, almost feeding her with his own hand. That, too, was a new experience; and one so strangely pleasant, that when Bowie entered, and stared solemnly at the pair, she only looked up smiling, though blus.h.i.+ng a little.

"Get a car instantly," said she.

"For Mrs. Vavasour, my lady? She has ordered hers already."

"No; for Mr. Headley. He is going to find my lord. Frank, pour me out a cup of tea for Lucia."

Bowie vanished, mystified. "It's no concern of mine; but better tak' up wi' a G.o.dly meenister than a G.o.dless pawet," said the worthy warrior to himself as he marched down stairs.

"You see that I am a.s.serting our rights already before all the world,"

said she, looking up.

"I see you are not ashamed of me."

"Ashamed of you?"

"And now I must go to Lucia."

"And to London."

Valencia began to cry like any baby; but rose and carried away the tea in her hand. "Must I go? and before you come back, too?"

"Is she determined to start instantly?"

"I cannot stop her. You see she has ordered the car."

"Then go, my darling! My own! my Valencia! Oh, a thousand things to ask you, and no time to ask them in! I can write?" said Frank, with an inquiring smile.

"Write? Yes; every day,--twice a day. I shall live upon those letters.

Good-bye!" And out she went, while Frank sat himself down at the table, and laid his head upon his hands, stupefied with delight, till Bowie entered.

"The car, sir."

"Which? Who?" asked Frank, looking up as from a dream.

"The car, sir."

Frank rose, and walked downstairs abstractedly. Bowie kept close to his side.

"Ye'll pardon me, sir," said he in a low voice; "but I see how it is,-- the more blessing for you. Ye'll be pleased, I trust, to take more care of this jewel than others have of that one: or--"

"Or you'll shoot me yourself, Bowie?" said Frank, half amused, half awed, too, by the stern tone of the guardsman. "I'll give you leave to do it if I deserve it"

"It's no my duty, either as a soldier or as a valet. And, indeed, I've that opeenion of you, sir, that I don't think it'll need to be any one's else's duty either."

And so did Mr. Bowie signify his approbation of the new family romance, and went off to a.s.sist Mrs. Clara in getting the trunks down stairs.

Clara was in high dudgeon. She had not yet completed her flirtation with Mr. Bowie, and felt it hard to have her one amus.e.m.e.nt in life s.n.a.t.c.hed out of her hard-worked hands.

"I'm sure I don't know why we're moving. I don't believe it's business.

Some of his tantrums, I daresay. I heard her walking up and down the room all last night, I'll swear. Neither she nor Miss Valencia have been to bed. He'll kill her at last, the brute!"

"It's no concern of either of us, that. Have ye got another trunk to bring down?"

"No concern? Just like your hard-heartedness, Mr. Bowie. And as soon as I'm gone, of course you will be flirting with these impudent Welshwomen, in their horrid hats."

"Maybe, yes; maybe, no. But flirting's no marrying, Mrs. Clara."

"True for you, sir! Men were deceivers ever," quoth Clara, and flounced up stairs; while Bowie looked after her with a grim smile, and caught her, when she came down again, long enough to give her a great kiss; the only language which he used in wooing, and that but rarely.

"Dinna fash, la.s.sie. Mind your lady and the poor bairns like a G.o.dly handmaiden, and I'll buy the ring when the sawmon fis.h.i.+ng's over, and we'll just be married ere I start for the Crimee"

"The sawmon!" cried Clara. "I'll see you turned into a mermaid first, and married to a sawmon!"

"And ye won't do anything o' the kind," said Bowie to himself, and shouldered a valise.

In ten minutes the ladies were packed into the carriage, and away, under Mellot's care. Frank watched Valencia looking back, and smiling through her tears, as they rolled through the village; and then got into his car, and rattled down the southern road to Pont Aberglaslyn, his hand still tingling with the last pressure of Valencia's.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BROAD STONE OF HONOUR.

But where has Stangrave been all this while?

Where any given bachelor has been, for any given month, is difficult to say, and no man's business but his own. But where he happened to be on a certain afternoon in the first week of October, on which he had just heard the news of Alma, was,--upon the hills between Ems and Coblentz.

Walking over a high table-land of stubbles, which would be gra.s.s in England; and yet with all its tillage is perhaps not worth more than English gra.s.s would be, thanks to that small-farm system much be-praised by some who know not wheat from turnips. Then along a road, which might be a Devon one, cut in the hill-side, through authentic "Devonian"

slate, where the deep chocolate soil is lodged on the top of the upright strata, and a thick coat of moss and wood sedge cl.u.s.ters about the oak-scrub roots, round which the delicate and rare oak-fern mingles its fronds with great blue campanulas; while the "white admirals" and silver-washed "fritillaries" flit round every bramble bed, and the great "purple emperors" come down to drink in the road puddles, and sit, fearless flas.h.i.+ng off their velvet wings a blue as of that empyrean which is "dark by excess of light."

Down again through cultivated lands, corn and clover, flax and beet, and all the various crops with which the industrious German yeoman ekes out his little patch of soil. Past the thrifty husbandman himself, as he guides the two milch-kine in his tiny plough, and stops at the furrow's end, to greet you with the hearty German smile and bow; while the little fair-haired maiden, walking beneath the shade of standard cherries, walnuts, and pears, all grey with fruit, fills the cows' mouths with chicory, and wild carnations, and pink saintfoin, and many a fragrant weed which richer England wastes.

Down once more, into a glen; but such a glen as neither England nor America has ever seen; or, please G.o.d, ever will see, glorious as it is.

Stangrave, who knew all Europe well, had walked the path before; but he stopped then, as he had done the first time, in awe. On the right, slope up the bare slate downs, up to the foot of cliffs; but only half of those cliffs G.o.d has made. Above the grey slate ledges rise cliffs of man's handiwork, pierced with a hundred square black embrasures; and above them the long barrack-ranges of a soldier's town; which a foeman stormed once, when it was young: but what foeman will ever storm it again [Transcriber's note: punctuation missing from the end of this sentence in original. Possibly question mark.] What conqueror's foot will ever tread again upon the "broad stone of honour," and call Ehrenbreitstein his? On the left the clover and the corn range on, beneath the orchard boughs, up to yon knoll of chestnut and acacia, tall poplar, feathered larch:--but what is that stonework which gleams grey beneath their stems'? A summer-house for some great duke, looking out over the glorious Rhine vale, and up the long vineyards of the bright Moselle, from whence he may bid his people eat, drink, and take their ease, for they have much goods laid up for many years?--

Bank over bank of earth and stone, cleft by deep embrasures, from which the great guns grin across the rich gardens, studded with standard fruit-trees, which close the glacis to its topmost edge. And there, below him, lie the vineyards: every rock-ledge and narrow path of soil tossing its golden tendrils to the sun, grey with ripening cl.u.s.ters, rich with n.o.ble wine; but what is that wall which winds among them, up and down, creeping and sneaking over every ledge and knoll of vantage ground, pierced with eyelet-holes, backed by strange stairs and galleries of stone; till it rises close before him, to meet the low round tower full in his path, from whose deep casemates, as from dark scowling eye-holes, the ugly cannon-eyes stare up the glen?