Two Years Ago Volume Ii Part 30

"He is so--so hasty. He will kill him! Valencia, he will kill him!

Promise me not to tell him, or I shall go mad!" And she sat up again, pressing her hands upon her head, and rocking from side to side.

"Oh, Valencia, if I dared only scream! but keeping it in kills me. It is like a sword through my brain now!"

"Let me call Clara."

"No, no! not Clara. Do not tell her, I will be quiet; indeed I will; only come back soon, soon; for I am all alone, alone!" And she threw herself down again upon her face.

Valencia went out. Certain as she was of her sister's innocence, there was one terrible question in her heart which must be answered, or her belief in all truth, goodness, religion, would reel and rock to its very foundations. And till she had an answer to that, she could not sit still by Lucia.

She walked hurriedly, with compressed lips, but quivering limbs, down stairs, and into the sitting-room. Scoutbush was gone to bed. Campbell and Mellot sat chatting still.

"Where is my brother?"

"Gone to bed, as some one else ought to be; for it is past twelve. Is Vavasour come in yet?"

"No."

"Very odd," said Claude; "I never saw him after I left you."

"He said certainly that he was going to find you," said Campbell.

"There is no need for speculating," said Valencia quietly; "my sister has a note from Mr. Vavasour at Pen-y-gwryd."

"Pen-y-gwryd?" cried both men at once.

"Yes. Major Campbell, I wish to show it to you."

Valencia's tone and manner was significant enough to make Claude Mellot bid them both good-night.

When he had shut the door behind him, Valencia put the letter into the Major's hand.

He was too much absorbed in it to look up at her; but if he had done so, he would have been startled by the fearful capacity of pa.s.sion which changed, for the moment, that gay Queen Whims into a terrible Roxana, as she stood, leaning against the mantelpiece, but drawn up to her full height, her lips tight shut, eyes which gazed through and through him in awful scrutiny, holding her very breath, while a nervous clutching of the little hand said, "If you have tampered with my sister's heart, better for you that you were dead!"

He read it through, once, twice, with livid face; then clashed it on the floor.

"Fool!--cur!--liar!--she is as pure as G.o.d's sunlight."

"You need not tell me that," said Valencia, through her closed teeth.

"Fool!--fool!" And then, in a moment, his voice changed from indignation to the bitterest self-reproach.

"And fool I; thrice fool! Who am I, to rail on him? Oh G.o.d! what have I done?" And he covered his face with his hands.

"What have you done?" literally shrieked Valencia.

"Nothing that you or man can blame, Miss St. Just! Can you dream that, sinful as I am, I could ever harbour a thought toward her of which I should be ashamed before the angels of G.o.d?"

He looked up as he spoke, with an utter humility and an intense honesty, which unnerved her at once.

"Oh, my Saint Pere!" and she held out both her hands. "Forgive me, if-- only for a moment--"

"I am not your Saint Pere, nor any one's! I am a poor, weak, conceited, miserable man, who by his accursed impertinence has broken the heart of the being whom he loves best on earth."

Valencia started: but ere she could ask for an explanation, he rejoined wildly--

"How is she? Tell me only that, this once! Has it killed her? Does she hate him?"

"Adores him more than ever. Oh, Major Campbell! it is too piteous, too piteous."

He covered his face with his hands, shuddering. "Thank G.o.d! yes, thank G.o.d! So it should be. Let her love him to the last, and win her martyr's crown! Now, Valencia St. Just, sit down, if but for five minutes; and listen, once for all, to the last words, perhaps, you will ever hear me speak; unless she wants you--?"

"No, no! Tell me all, Saint Pere!" said Valencia, "for I am walking in a dream--a double dream!" as the new thought of Headley, and that walk, came over her. "Tell me all at once, while I have wits left to comprehend."

"Miss St. Just," said he, in a clear calm voice, "it is fit, for her honour and for mine, that you should know all. The first day that I ever saw your sister, I loved her; as a man loves who can never cease to love, or love a second time. I was a raw awkward Scotchman then, and she used to laugh at me. Why not? I kept my secret, and determined to become a man at whom no one would wish to laugh. I was in the Company's service then. You recollect her jesting once about the Indian army, and my commanding black people, and saying that the Line only was fit for--some girl's jest?"

"No; I recollect nothing of it."

"I never forgot it. I threw up all my prospects, and went into the Line.

Whether I won honour there or not I need not tell you. I came back to England years after, not unworthy, as I fancied, to look your sister in the face as an equal. I found her married."

He paused a little, and then went on, in a quiet, business-like tone.

"Good. Her choice was sure to be a worthy one, and that was enough for me. You need not doubt that I kept my secret then more sacredly than ever. I returned to India, and tried to die. I dared not kill myself, for I was a soldier and a Christian, and belonged to G.o.d and my Queen.

The Sikhs would not kill me, do what I would to help them. Then I threw myself into science, that I might stifle pa.s.sion; and I stifled it. I fancied myself cured, and I was cured; and I returned to England again.

I loved your brother for her sake; I loved you at first for her sake, then for your own. But I presumed upon my cure; I accepted your brother's invitation; I caught at the opportunity of seeing her again-- happy--as I fancied; and of proving to myself my own soundness. I considered myself a sort of Melchisedek, neither young nor old, without pa.s.sions, without purpose on earth--a fakeer who had licence to do and to dare what others might not. But I kept my secret proudly inviolate. I do not believe at this moment she dreams that--Do you?"

"She does not."

"Thank G.o.d! I was a most conceited fool, puffed up with spiritual pride, tempting G.o.d needlessly. I went, I saw her. Heaven is my witness, that as far as pa.s.sion goes, my heart is as pure as yours: but I found that I still cared more for her than for any being on earth: and I found too the sort of man upon whom--G.o.d forgive me! I must not talk of that--I despised him, hated him, pretended to teach him his duty, by behaving better to her than he did--the spiritual c.o.xcomb that I was! What business had I with it? Why not have left all to G.o.d and her good sense?

The devil tempted me to-day, in the shape of an angel of courtesy and chivalry; and here the end is come. I must find that man, Miss St. Just, if I travel the world in search of him. I must ask his pardon frankly, humbly, for my impertinence. Perhaps so I may bring him back to her, and not die with a curse on my head for having parted those whom G.o.d has joined. And then to the old fighting-trade once more--the only one, I believe, I really understand; and see whether a Russian bullet will not fly straighter than a clumsy Sikh's."

Valencia listened, awe-stricken; and all the more so because this was spoken in a calm, half-abstracted voice, without a note of feeling, save where he alluded to his own mistakes. When it was over, she rose without a word, and took both his hands in her own, sobbing bitterly.

"You forgive me, then, all the misery which I have caused!"

"Do not talk so! Only forgive me having fancied for one moment that you were anything but what you are, an angel out of heaven."

Campbell hung down his head.

"Angel, truly! Azrael, the angel of death, then. Go to her now--go, and leave a humbled penitent man alone with G.o.d."

"Oh, my Saint Pere!" cried she, bursting into tears. "This is too wretched--all a horrid dream--and when, too--when I had been counting on telling you something so different!--I cannot now, I have not the heart."

"What, more misery?"

"Oh no! no! no! You will know all to-morrow. Ask Scoutbush."