Guy Livingstone Part 23

The cast-steel smile which was peculiar to him hardened the colonel's face.

"You must come down on Miss Bellasys for compensation. She pays well, I have no doubt. You never get another _sou_ from our side, if it were to keep you from starving. My second thought was the best, after all; it saved time and--money. (He put the note back into his purse.) I'll give you one caution, though. Keep out of Mr. Livingstone's way. If he meets you, after hearing all this, he'll break your neck, I believe in my conscience." So he left him.

For the second time that evening Willis looked in the gla.s.s--the reflection was not so satisfactory. Was that unseemly crumpled ruin the white tie, sublime in its scientific wrinkles, on which its author had gazed with a pardonable paternal pride? No wonder that he stamped in wrath, not the less bitter because impotent, while he shook off the dust from his garments as a testimony against Ralph Mohun.

He repaired the damages, though, to the best of his power, and then went off to keep his appointment; but the _pates a la bechamelle_ were as ashes, and the _gelee au marisquin_ as gall to his parched, disordered palate. He made himself so intensely disagreeable that poor Heloise thenceforth swore an enmity against his compatriots, which endured to the end of her brief misspent existence. "_Gredin d'Anglais, va!_" she was wont to say, grinding her little white teeth melodramatically, whenever she recalled that dreary entertainment, and the failure of her simple stratagems to enliven her saturnine host.

CHAPTER XXVII.

"Then let the funeral bells be tolled, a requiem be sung, An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young; A dirge for her--the doubly dead, in that she died so young."

For the first few minutes after the train had moved off Guy was unable to collect his thoughts. As the tall figure of Mohun pa.s.sed from his view, it seemed as if a sustaining prop had been suddenly cut away from under him, and he felt more than ever helpless. The stubborn strength of his character a.s.serted itself before long, and he faced his great sorrow as he would have done an enemy in bodily shape; but neither then, nor for many days after, could he pursue any one train of reflection long unbroken.

First he began to think how Constance would look when he saw her. Would she be much changed? How beautiful she was the night they parted, with the blue myosotis gleaming through her bright hair! Would her eyes be as cold as he remembered them then (he had not seen their _last_ look), or would they forgive him at once, and tell him so? Not if she knew all.

And then, in hideous contrast to her pure stately beauty, there rose before him faces and figures which had shared his orgies during the past months, gay with paint and jewels, and meretricious ornament. There was a deeper horror in those mocking shapes than in the most loathsome phantasms of corporeal corruption that feverish dreams ever called up from the grave-yard. If his lips were unworthy, months ago, to touch Constance's cheek or hand, what were they now? He ground his teeth in the bitterness of self-condemnation. It would be easier to bear, if she met him coldly and proudly, than if she yielded at once, as her letter seemed to promise. Her letter! What became of the first one? If that had reached him, how much had been saved! Perhaps Constance's life--certainly much of his own dishonor. The idea did cross him that Flora might have been concerned in intercepting it, but it seemed improbable, and he drove it away. With all his revived devotion to Constance, he did not like to think hardly of her rival; in a lesser degree he had wronged her too.

You will rarely find the sternest or wisest of men disposed to be harsh toward errors that spring from a devotion to themselves. It is only just, as well as natural, that it should be so. If the second cause of the crime did not find an excuse for the defendant, I don't know where he or she would look for an advocate. St. Kevin need not have troubled himself: there were plenty of people ready to push poor Kathleen down. I think it is a pity they canonized him.

Through all Guy's reflections there ran this under-current--"how easily all might have been avoided if the slightest things had turned out differently." Just so, after a heavy loss at play, a man _will_ keep thinking how he might have won a large stake if he had played one card otherwise, or backed the In instead of the Out. I have heard good judges say that this pertinacious after-thought is the hardest part to bear of all the annoyance. Of course he worries himself about it, just as if "great results from small beginnings" were not the tritest of all truisms. I don't wish to be historical, or I would reflect how often the Continent has been convulsed by a dish that disagreed with some one, or by a s.h.i.+p that did not start to its time. The Jacobites were very wise in toasting "the little gentleman in black velvet" that raised the fatal mole-hill. Does not the old romance say that an adder starting from a bush brought on the terrible battle in which all the chivalry of England were strewn like leaves around Arthur on Barren Down?

Guy could still hardly realize to himself the certainty of Constance's approaching death. He tried to fix his thoughts on this till a heavy, listless torpor, like drowsiness, began to steal over him. He roused himself impatiently, and began to think how slow they were going.

Nevertheless, the green _coteaux_ that swell between Rouen and the sea were flying past rapidly, and they arrived at Havre, as Mohun had said, just in time to catch the Southampton packet.

There was threatening of foul weather to windward. The clouds, in ma.s.ses of indigo just edged with copper, were banking up fast, and the "white horses," more and more frequent, were beginning to toss their manes against the dark sky-line.

To the few travelers whom the stern necessities of business drove forth, lingering and s.h.i.+vering, from their comfortable inns on to the deck, already wet and unsteady, Livingstone was an object of great interest and many theories. His impatience to be gone was so marked that the conscientious official looked more than once suspiciously at his pa.s.sport.

Mr. Phineas Hackett, of Boston, U.S., Marchand (so self-described in the Livre des Voyageurs at Chamounix), made up his mind that he saw before him the hero of some gigantic forgery, or a fraudulent bankrupt on a large scale; but, just as he had fixed on the astute question which was to drive the first wedge into the mystery, Guy turned in his quick walk and met him full. I doubt if he even saw the smooth-shaven, eager face at his elbow; but he was thinking again of the lost letter, and the savage glare in his eyes made the heart of the "earnest inquirer" quiver under his black satin waistcoat. "D----d hard knot, that," he muttered, disconsolately, and retreated with great loss, to writhe during the rest of the pa.s.sage in an o.r.g.a.s.m of unsatisfied curiosity.

The weather looked worse every moment as the wild north wind came roaring from seaward with a challenge to the vessels that lay tossing within the jetty to come forth and meet him. The waste-pipe of the _Sea-gull_ screamed out shrilly in answer; and the brave old s.h.i.+p, shaking the foam from her bows after every plunge, as her namesake might do from its breast-feathers, steamed out right in the teeth of the gale.

A regular "Channel night"--a night which Mr. Augustus Winder, Paris traveler to H---- and Co., the mighty mercers of Regent Street, spoke of in after days with a shudder of reminiscence mingling with the pride of one who has endured and survived great peril; who has gone down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps, and seen the wonders of the deep. His a.s.sociates--the _elite_ of the silk-and-ribbon department--youths of polished manners and fascinating address, than whom _non alii leviore saltu_ took the counter in their stride--would gather round the narrator in respectful admiration, just as the young sea-dogs of Nantucket might listen to a veteran hunter of the sperm whale as he tells of a hurricane that caught him in the strait between the Land of Fire and terrible Cape Horn.

Mr. Winder represented himself as having a.s.sisted all on board, from the captain down to the cabin-boy, with his counsel and encouragement, and as having been materially useful to the man at the wheel. The fact was, that he cried a good deal during the night, and was incessant in his appeals to the steward and Heaven for help. In his appeals to the latter power he employed often a strangely modified form of the Apostles'

Creed; for his religious education had been neglected, and this was his solitary and simple idea of an orison. However, no one was present to detract from his triumph or to controvert his concluding words:

"An awful night, gents; but duty's duty, and the firm behaved handsome.

Mr. Sa.s.snett, I'll trouble you for a light, sir." And so he ignited a fuller-flavored Cuba, and drank, in a sweeter grog, "Our n.o.ble selves"--_olim haec meminisse juvabit_.

There was one striking contrast on board to the gallant Winder.

Livingstone did not go below, but walked the deck all night long, straining his eyes eagerly forward through the thick darkness and the driving rain.

Captain Weatherby regarded him approvingly, as, halting in his walk, Guy stood near him, upright and steady as a mainmast of Memel pine. "That's the sort I like to carry," the old sailor remarked confidentially to his second in command as they shared an amicable grog under the shelter of the companion.

The wind abated toward morning; and, as the dawn broke, they were under the lee of the Wight, and moving steadily into the quiet Solent.

Guy made his way straight to Ventnor. Twenty-four hours after her summons reached him, Constance knew that her lover had never received her first letter, and that now he was within five hundred yards of her, waiting to be called into her presence.

It was long before her answer came. It only contained a few hurried words, saying that it was impossible for her to see him that day, and begging him not to be angry, but to wait. The hand-writing was far more faltering and uncertain than that which had struck him so painfully with its weakness the day before. It spoke plainly of the effort which it had cost the invalid to trace even those brief lines. He did not try to delude himself any more, but all that day remained alone, face to face with his despair.

He went out after nightfall, and stole up cautiously to the house where Constance was staying.

It is not only ghosts that _walk_. Men, as powerless to retrieve the past as if they were already disembodied spirits, _will_ haunt the scenes and sepulchres of their lost happiness even before they die.

Though the world was all before them where to choose, I doubt not that the exiles from Paradise lingered long just without the sweep of the flaming sword.

Two rooms in the house were lighted, one with the faint glimmer peculiar to the shaded lamp of a sick-room. Guy's pulse bounded wildly at first, and then grew dull and still. In that room he knew Constance lay dying.

The other window was brightly lighted, but half shaded by a curtain.

While he gazed, this was torn suddenly aside, as if by an angry, impatient hand, and a man leaned out, throwing back the hair from his forehead, to catch the cold wind which was blowing sharply. Guy had never seen the dark, pa.s.sionate face before, but he know whose it was very well, though there was little family likeness to guide him. Cyril Brandon's features were small and finely cut, like his sister's; but there the resemblance ended. His complexion, naturally sallow, had been burnt three shades deeper by the Indian sun. His fierce black eyes, and thin lips, that seemed always ready to curl or quiver, made the contrast with Constance very striking.

Livingstone drew back into the farthest shadow of the garden trees. He knew how much reason Cyril had for hating him above all living men, and he did not wish to risk a meeting. Mohun's warning shot across his mind, and he felt it was rightly founded.

Brandon looked out for some minutes without moving, then he dropped his head suddenly on his arms with a heavy groan. The bright light was behind him, and Guy could see his clasped fingers twisting and tearing at each other, as if he wished to distract mental agony by the sense of bodily pain. The gazer saw that another besides himself had given up all hope; and, with a heavier heart than over, he stole away home--not to sleep, but to think, and wait for the morning.

About noon next day the expected message came:

"DEAR GUY,--I have got leave to see you at last, but it was very difficult to gain. It is only on these conditions: you are not to stay with me a moment beyond three hours, and you must leave Ventnor immediately afterward, and not return. I have promised all for you. It seems very hard; but we must not think of that now.

Come directly. C.B."

Ten minutes later there was only a closed door between Livingstone, and the interview he longed for and dreaded so much. His steel nerves stood him in good stead then; it was not at the crisis that these were likely to fail. When Constance heard his step, it was measured and firmly planted as she always remembered it. So it would have been if he had been walking to meet the fire of a platoon. Her aunt, Mrs. Vavasour, was with her, but left the room, as Guy opened the door, and so they met again as they had parted--alone.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"I charge thee, by the living's prayer, By the dead's silentness, To wring from out thy soul a cry That G.o.d may hear and bless; Lest heaven's own palm fade in my hand, And, pale among the saints I stand A saint companionless."

Constance was lying on a couch near the fire propped up by many pillows.

She felt weaker than usual: what she had gone through in the morning had exhausted her. Guy never knew, till long after, that the effort she had made to secure the meeting with him had, in all human probability, shortened her life by weeks. She thought it cheaply purchased at that price--and she was right. Even the excitement of the moment had hardly brought a tinge of color into the pure waxen cheeks, but the beautiful clear eyes were more brilliant than ever. A ribbon of the blue which was Guy's favorite was twisted in her bright glossy hair.

He saw nothing of this at first; he did not see her raise herself with a faint joyful cry as he advanced with his eyes cast down; he never knew how it was that he found himself kneeling by Constance, with her arms clinging fondly round his neck, and her voice murmuring in his ear, "I said you would come--I knew you would come."

Though her soft cheek lay so very near his lips, they never touched it.

He drew back, shuddering all over, and said, hoa.r.s.ely,

"I can not; I dare not; I am not worthy."

I do not know if she guessed what he meant, but she tried to lift his head, which was bent down on the cus.h.i.+on beside her, so that he might look into her true eyes as she answered,

"You must not think that--you must not say so. I know you have been angry and almost mad for many months, but you are not so now, and you never will be any more. It was my fault--yes, mine. If I had not been so cold and proud, you would never have left me. You thought I did not love you; but I did; my own, my darling, I did--so dearly!"

All Guy's stout manhood was s.h.i.+vered within him, utterly and suddenly, as 4000 years ago the rock was cloven in h.o.r.eb, the Mount of G.o.d. Now, too, from the rift in the granite the waters flowed; the first tears that he had shed since he was a very little child--the last that any mortal saw there--streamed hot and blinding from his eyes down on the thin, transparent hand that he held fast.