A Rent In A Cloud Part 28

"I don't want to terrify, I want to warn. If it were ever my fate to have a marriageable daughter, and some petty magistrate--some small district judge of Bengal--asked her for a wife, I'd say to my girl, 'Go and be a farm servant in New Caledonia. Milk cows, rear lambs, wash, scrub, toil for your daily bread in some land where poverty is not deemed the 'plague;' but don't encounter life in a society where to be poor is to be despicable--where narrow means are a stigma of disgrace.'"

"Joseph says nothing of all this. He writes like one well contented with his lot, and very hopeful for the future."

"Hasn't your niece, some ten or twelve thousand pounds?"

"Fifteen."

"Well, he presses the investment on which he asks a loan, just as any other roguish speculator would, that's all."

"Oh, don't say that, Mr. Calvert Joseph is not a rogue."

"Men are rogues according to their capacity. The clever fellows do not need roguery, and achieve success just because they are stronger and better than their neighbours; but I don't want to talk of Loyd; every consideration of the present case can be entertained without him."

"How can that be, if he is to be her husband?"

"Ah! If--if. My dear old friend, when and if comes into any question, the wisest way is not to debate it, for the simple reason that applying our logic to what is merely imaginary is very like putting a superstructure of masonry over a house of cards. Besides, if we roust talk with a hypothesis, I'll put mine, 'Must she of necessity marry this man, if he insists on it?'"

"Of course; and the more, that she loves him."

"Loves him! Have I not told you that you are mistaken there? He entrapped her at first into a half admission of caring for him, and, partly from a sense of honour, and partly from obstinacy, she adheres to it But she does so just the way people cling to a religion, because n.o.body has ever taken the trouble to convert them to another faith."

"I wish you would not say these things to me," cried she with much emotion. "You have a way of throwing doubts upon everything and everybody, that always makes me miserable, and I ask myself afterwards, 'Is there nothing to be believed?' Is no one to to be trusted?"

"Not a great many, I am sorry to say," sighed he. "It's no bright testimony to the goodness of the world, that the longer a man lives the worse he thinks of it. I surely saw the flutter of white muslin through the trees yonder. Oh dear, how much softer my heart is than I knew of! I feel a sort of choking in the throat as I draw near this dear old place.

Yes, there she is--Florence herself. I remember her way of waving a handkerchief. I'll answer it as I used to do." And he stood up in the boat and waved his handkerchief over his head with a wide and circling motion. "Look! She sees it, and she's away to the house at speed. How she runs! She could not have mustered such speed as that when I last say her."

"She has gone to tell Milly, I'm certain."

He made no reply, but covered his face with his hands, and sat silent and motionless. Meanwhile the boat glided up to the landing-place, and they disembarked.

"I thought the girls would have been here to meet us," said Miss Grainger, with a pique she could not repress; but Calvert walked along at her side, and made no answer.

"I think you know your way here," said she with a smile, as she motioned him towards the drawing-room.

CHAPTER XXI. THE RETURN.

WHEN Calvert found himself alone in the drawing-room, he felt as if he had never been away. Everything was so exactly as he left it There was the sofa drawn close to the window of the flower-garden where Florence used to recline; there the little work-table with the tall gla.s.s that held her hyacinths, the flowers she was so fond of; there the rug for her terrier to lie on. Yonder, under the fig-tree, hung the cage with her favourite canary; and here were the very books she used to read long ago--Petrarch and Tennyson and Uhland. There was a flower to mark a place in the volume of Uhland, and it was at a little poem they had once read together. How full of memories are these old rooms, where we have dreamed away some weeks of life, if not in love, in something akin to it, and thus more alive to the influences of externals than if further gone in the pa.s.sion! There was not a spot, not a chair, nor a window-seat that did not remind Calvert of some incident of the past.

He missed his favourite song, "A place in thy memory, dearest," from the piano, and he sought for it and put it back where it used to be; and he then went over to her table to arrange the books as they were wont to be long ago, and came suddenly upon a small morocco case. He opened it It was a miniature of Loyd, the man he hated the most on earth. It was an ill done portrait, and gave an affected thoughtfulness and elevation to his calm features which imparted insufferable pretension to them; Calvert held out the picture at arm's length, and laughed scornfully as he looked at it. He had but time to lay it down on the table when Emily entered the room. She approached him hurriedly, and with an agitated manner. "Oh, Colonel Calvert--" she began.

"Why not Harry, brother Harry, as I used to be, Milly dearest," said he, as he caught her hand in both his own. "What has happened to forfeit for me my old place _in_ your esteem?"

"Nothing, nothing, but all is so changed; you have grown to be such a great man, and we have become lost to all that goes on in the world."

"And where is your sister, will she not come to see me?"

"You startled her, you gave her such a shock, when you stood up in the boat and returned her salute, that she was quite overcome, and has gone to her room. Aunt Grainger is with her, and told me to say--that is, she hoped, if you would not take it ill, or deem it unkind--"

"Go on, dearest; nothing that comes from your lips can possibly seem unkind; go on."

"But I cannot go on," she cried, and burst into tears and covered her face with her hands.

"I never thought--so little forethought has selfishness--that I was to bring sorrow and trouble under this roof. Go back, and tell your aunt that I hope she will favour me with five minutes of her company; that I see what I greatly blame myself for not seeing before, how full of sad memories my presence here must prove. Go, darling, say this, and bid me good-bye before you go."

"Oh, Harry, do not say this. I see you are angry with us. I see you think us all unkind; but it was the suddenness of your coming; and Florence has grown so nervous of late, so disposed to give way to all manner of fancies."

"She imagines, in fact," said he, haughtily, "that I have come back to persecute her with attentions which she has already rejected. Isn't that so?"

"No. I don't think--I mean Florence could never think that when you knew of her engagement--knew that within a few months at furthest--"

"Pardon me, if I stop you. Tell your sister from me that she has nothing to apprehend from any pretensions of mine. I can see that you think me changed, Milly; grown very old and very worn. Well, go back, and tell her that the inward change is far greater than the outward one. Mad Harry has become as tame and quiet and commonplace as that gentleman in the morocco case yonder; and if she will condescend to see me, she may satisfy herself that neither of us in future need be deemed dangerous to the other."

There was an insolent pride in the manner of his delivery of these words that made Emily's cheek burn as she listened, and all that her aunt had often told her of "Calvert insolence" now came fully to her mind.

"I will go and speak to my aunt," she said at last

"Do so," said he, carelessly, as he threw himself into a chair, and took up the book that lay nearest to him. He had not turned over many pages--he had read none--when Miss Grainger entered. She was flushed and flurried in manner; but tried to conceal it.

"We are giving you a very strange welcome, Colonel--Mr. Calvert; but you know us all of old, and you know that dear Florry is so easily agitated and overcome. She is better now, and if you will come up stairs to the little drawing-room, she'll see you."

"I am all grat.i.tude," said he, with a low bow: "but I think it is, perhaps, better not to inconvenience her. A visit of constraint would be, to me at least, very painful. I'd rather leave the old memories of my happiness here undashed by such a shadow. Go back, therefore, and say that I think I understand the reason of her reserve; that I am sincerely grateful for the thoughtful kindness she has been minded to observe towards me. You need not add," said he with a faint smile, "that the consideration in the present case was unnecessary. I am not so impressionable as I used to be; but a.s.sure her that I am very sorry for it, and that Colonel Calvert, with all his successes, is not half so happy a fellow as mad Harry used to be without a guinea."

"But you'll not leave us? You'll stay here to-night?"

"Pray excuse me. One of my objects--my chief one--in coming over here, was to ask your nieces' acceptance of some trinkets I had brought for them. Perhaps this would not be a happy moment to ask a favour at their hands, so pray keep them over and make birthday presents of them in my name. This is for Florence--this, I hope Emily will not refuse."

"But do not go. I entreat you not to go. I feel so certain that if you stay we shall all be so happy together. There is so much, besides, to talk over; and as to those beautiful things, for I know they must be beautiful--"

"They are curious in their way," said he, carelessly opening the clasp of one of the cases, and displaying before her amazed eyes a necklace of pearls and brilliants that a queen might wear.

"Oh, Colonel Calvert, it would be impossible for my niece to accept such a costly gift as this. I never beheld anything so splendid in my life."

"These ear-drops," he continued, "are considered fine. They were said to belong to one of the wives of the King of Delhi, and were reputed the largest pearls in India."

"The girls must see them; though I protest and declare beforehand nothing on earth should induce us to accept them."

"Let them look well at them, then," said he, "for when you place them in my hands again, none shall ever behold them after."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I'll throw them into the lake yonder A rejected gift is too odious a memory to be clogged with."

"You couldn't be guilty of such rash folly?"

"Don't you know well that I could? Is it to-day or yesterday that the Calvert nature is known to you? If you wish me to swear it, I will do so; and, what is more, I will make you stand by and see the water close over them."