A Rent In A Cloud Part 23

"You refuse! Now let me understand you, for this is too vital a point for me at least to make any mistake about--what is it that you refuse?"

"Don't you think the tone of our present discussion is the best possible reason for not prolonging it?"

"No! If we have each of us; lost temper, I think the wisest course would be to recover ourselves, and see if we cannot talk the matter over in a better spirit."

"Begin then by unsaying that odious word."

"What is the word?"

"Insist! You must not insist upon anything."

"I'll take back the word if you so earnestly desire it, Florence," said he gravely; "but I hope request will be read in its place."

"Now, then, what is it you request? for I frankly declare that all this time I don't rightly understand what you ask of me."

"This is worse than I suspected," said he angrily, "for now I see that it is in the mere spirit of defiance that you rejected my demand."

"Upon my word, Sir, I believe it will turn out that neither of us knew very much of the other."

"You think so?"

"Yes; don't you?"

He grew very pale, and made no answer, though he twice seemed as if about to speak.

"I declare," cried she, and her heightened colour and flas.h.i.+ng eye showed the temper that stirred her--"I declare I think we shall have employed all our lately displayed candour to very little advantage if it does not carry us a little further."

"I scarcely catch your meaning," said he, in a low voice.

"What I meant was, that by a little further effort of our frankness we might come to convey to each other that scenes like these are not pleasant, nor need they ever occur again."

"I believe at last I apprehend you," said he, in a broken accent. "You desire that our engagement should be broken off."

She made no answer, but averted her head.

"I will do my best to be calm, Florence," continued he, "and I will ask as much of you. Let neither of us sacrifice the prospect of a whole life's happiness for the sake of a petty victory in a very petty dispute. If, however, you are of opinion--" he stopped, he was about to say more than he had intended, more than he knew how to say, and he stopped, confused and embarra.s.sed.

"Why don't you continue?" said she, with a cold smile.

"Because I don't know what I was about to say."

"Then shall I say it for you?"

"Yes, do so."

"It was this, then, or at least to this purport: If you, Miss Florence Walter, are of opinion that two people who have not succeeded in inspiring each other with that degree of confidence that rejects all distrust, are scarcely wise in entering into a contract of which truthfulness is the very soul and essence, and that, though not very gallant on _my_ part, as the man to suggest it, yet in all candour, which here must take the place of courtesy, the sooner the persons so placed escape from such a false position the better."

"And part?" said he, in a hollow feeble voice.

She shrugged her shoulders slightly, as though to say that, or any similar word, will convey my meaning.

"Oh, Florence, is it come to this? Is this to be a last evening in its saddest, bitterest sense?"

"When gentlemen declare that they 'insist,' I take it they mean to have their way," said she, with a careless toss of her head.

"Good Heavens!" cried he in a pa.s.sion, "have you never cared for me at all? or is your love so little rooted that you can tear it from your heart without a pang?"

"All this going back on the past is very unprofitable," said she coldly.

He was stung by the contemptuous tone even more than by the words she used. It seemed as though she held his love so lightly she would not condescend to the slightest trouble to retain it, and this too at a moment of parting.

"Florence!" said he, in a tone of deep melancholy, "if I am to call you by that name for the last time--tell me, frankly, is this a sudden caprice of yours, or has it lain rankling in your mind, as a thing you would conquer if you could, or submit to, if you must?"

"I suspect it is neither one nor the other," said she with a levity that almost seemed gaiety. "I don't think I am capricious, and I know I never harbour a longstanding grievance. I really believe that it is to your own heart you must look for the reasons of what has occurred between us. I have often heard that men are so ashamed of being jealous, that they'll never forgive anyone who sees them in the fit."

"Enough, more than enough," said he, trembling from head to foot. "Let us part."

"Remember, the proposal comes from you."

"Yes, yes, it comes from me. It matters little whence it comes."

"Oh, I beg your pardon, it matters a great deal, at least to me. I am not to bear the reproaches of my aunt and my sister for a supposed cruelty towards a man who has himself repudiated our engagement. It would be rather hard that I was to be deserted and condemned too."

"Deserted, Florry!" cried he, as the tears stood in his eyes.

"Well, I don't mean deserted. There is no desertion on either side. It is a perfectly amicable arrangement of two people who are not disposed to travel the same road. I don't want to imply that any more blame attaches to _you_ than to _me_."

"How can any attach to me at all?" cried he.

"Oh, then, if you wish it, I take the whole of it."

"Shall I speak to your aunt, Miss Walter, or will you?"

"It does not signify much which of us is the first to acquaint her.

Perhaps, however, it would come with more propriety from you. I think I see her yonder near the cypress-trees, and I'm sure you'll be glad to have it over. Wait one moment, this ring--" as she endeavoured to draw a small ruby ring from her finger, Loyd saw the turquoise which she wore on the other hand--"this ring," said she, in some confusion, "is yours."

"Not this one," said he, sternly, as he pointed to the other.

"No, the ruby," said she, with an easy smile. "It was getting to hurt my finger."

"I hope you may wear the other more easily," said he with a bitter laugh.

"Thank you," said she, with a curtesy, and then turned away, and walked towards the house.

After Loyd had proceeded a few steps to overtake Miss Grainger, he stopped and hastened back to the villa. Such an explanation as he must make could, he felt, be only done by a letter. He could not, besides, face the questioning and cross-questioning the old lady would submit him to, nor endure the misery of recalling, at her bidding, each stage of their sad quarrel. A letter, therefore, he would write, and then leave the villa for ever, and without a farewell to any. He knew this was not a gracious way to treat those who had been uniformly affectionate and kind--who had been to him like dear sisters--but he dreaded a possible meeting. He could not answer for himself, either, as to what charges he might be led to make against Florence, or what weakness of character he might exhibit in the midst of his affliction. "I will simply narrate so much as will show that we have agreed to separate, and are never to meet more," muttered he. "Florence may tell as much more as she likes, and give what version of me she pleases. It matters little now how or what they think of one whose heart is already in the grave." And thus saying, he gained his room, and, locking the door, began to write. Deeply occupied in his task, which he found so difficult that several half-scrawled sheets already littered the table before him, he never felt the time as it pa.s.sed. It was already midnight before he was aware of it, and still his letter was not finished. It was so hard to say though and not too much; so hard to justify himself in any degree and yet spare _her_, against whom he would not use one word of reproach; so hard to confess the misery that he felt, and yet not seem abject in the very, avowal.

Not one of his attempts had satisfied him. Some were too lengthy, some too curt and brief some read cold, stern, and forbidding; others seemed like half entreaties for a more merciful judgment; in fact he was but writing down each pa.s.sing emotion of his mind, and recording the varying pa.s.sions that swayed him.

As he sat thus, puzzled and embarra.s.sed, he sprung up from his chair with terror at a cry that seemed to fill the room, and make the very air vibrate around him. It was a shriek as of one in the maddest agony, and lasted for some seconds. He thought it came from the lake, and he flung open his window and listened, but all was calm and still, the very faintest night air was astir, and not even the leaves moved. He then opened his door, and crept stealthily out upon the corridor: but all was quiet within the house. Noiselessly he walked to the head of the stairs, and listened; but not a sound nor a stir was to be heard. He went back to his room, agitated and excited. He had read of those conditions of cerebral excitement when the nerves of sense present impressions which have no existence in fact, and the sufferers fancy that they have seen sights, or heard sounds, which had no reality.