Henrietta Temple Part 13

He lingered in the liquid and vivifying world, playing with the stream, for he was an expert and practised swimmer; and often, after nights of southern dissipation, had recurred to this natural bath for health and renovation.

The sun had now risen far above the horizon; the village clock had long struck seven; Ferdinand was three miles from Ducie Bower. It was time to return, yet he loitered on his way, the air was so sweet and fresh, the scene so pretty, and his mind, in comparison with his recent feelings, so calm, and even happy. Just as he emerged from the woods, and entered the grounds of Ducie, he met Miss Temple. She stared, and she had cause. Ferdinand indeed presented rather an unusual figure; his head uncovered, his hair matted, and his countenance glowing with his exercise, but his figure clothed with the identical evening dress in which he had bid her a tender good night.

'Captain Armine!' exclaimed Miss Temple, 'you are an early riser, I see.'

Ferdinand looked a little confused. 'The truth is,' he replied, 'I have not risen at all. I could not sleep; why, I know not: the evening, I suppose, was too happy for so commonplace a termination; so I escaped from my room as soon as I could do so without disturbing your household; and I have been bathing, which refreshes me always more than slumber.'

'Well, I could not resign my sleep, were it only for the sake of my dreams.'

'Pleasant I trust they were. "Rosy dreams and slumbers light" are for ladies as fair as you.'

'I am grateful that I always fulfil the poet's wish; and what is more, I wake only to gather roses: see here!'

She extended to him a flower.

'I deserve it,' said Ferdinand, 'for I have not neglected your first gift;' and he offered her the rose she had given him the first day of his visit. ''Tis shrivelled,' he added, 'but still very sweet, at least to me.'

'It is mine now,' said Henrietta Temple.

'Ah! you will throw it away.'

'Do you think me, then, so insensible?'

'It cannot be to you what it is to me,' replied Ferdinand.

'It is a memorial,' said Miss Temple.

'Of what, and of whom?' enquired Ferdinand.

'Of friends.h.i.+p and a friend.'

''Tis something to be Miss Temple's friend.'

'I am glad you think so. I believe I am very vain, but certainly I like to be-----liked.'

'Then you can always gain your wish without an effort.'

'Now I think we are very good friends,' said Miss Temple, 'considering we have known each other so short a time. But then papa likes you so much.'

'I am honoured as well as gratified by the kindly dispositions of so agreeable a person as Mr. Temple. I can a.s.sure his daughter that the feeling is mutual. Your father's opinion influences you?'

'In everything. He has been so kind a father, that it would be worse than ingrat.i.tude to be less than devoted to him.'

'Mr. Temple is a very enviable person.'

'But Captain Armine knows the delight of a parent who loves him. I love my father as you love your mother.'

'I have, however, lived to feel that no person's opinion could influence me in everything; I have lived to find that even filial love, and G.o.d knows mine was powerful enough, is, after all, but a pallid moonlight beam, compared with------'

'See! my father kisses his hand to us from the window. Let us run and meet him.'

CHAPTER XII.

_Containing an Ominous Incident_.

THE last adieus are bidden: Ferdinand is on his road to Armine, flying from the woman whom he adores, to meet the woman to whom he is betrothed. He reined in his horse as he entered the park. As he slowly approached his home, he could not avoid feeling, that after so long an absence, he had not treated Glas...o...b..ry with the kindness and consideration he merited. While he was torturing his invention for an excuse for his conduct he observed his old tutor in the distance; and riding up and dismounting, he joined that faithful friend. Whether it be that love and falsehood are, under any circ.u.mstances, inseparable, Ferdinand Armine, whose frankness was proverbial, found himself involved in a long and confused narrative of a visit to a friend, whom he had unexpectedly met, whom he had known abroad, and to whom he was under the greatest obligations. He even affected to regret this temporary estrangement from Armine after so long a separation, and to rejoice at his escape. No names were mentioned, and the unsuspicious Glas...o...b..ry, delighted again to be his companion, inconvenienced him with no cross-examination. But this was only the commencement of the system of degrading deception which awaited him.

Willingly would Ferdinand have devoted all his time and feelings to his companion; but in vain he struggled with the absorbing pa.s.sion of his soul. He dwelt in silence upon the memory of the last three days, the most eventful period of his existence. He was moody and absent, silent when he should have spoken, wandering when he should have listened, hazarding random observations instead of conversing, or breaking into hurried and inappropriate comments; so that to any worldly critic of his conduct he would have appeared at the same time both dull and excited.

At length he made a desperate effort to accompany Glas...o...b..ry to the picture gallery and listen to his plans. The scene indeed was not ungrateful to him, for it was a.s.sociated with the existence and the conversation of the lady of his heart: he stood entranced before the picture of the Turkish page, and lamented to Glas...o...b..ry a thousand times that there was no portrait of Henrietta Armine.

'I would sooner have a portrait of Henrietta Armine than the whole gallery together,' said Ferdinand.

Glas...o...b..ry stared.

'I wonder if there ever will be a portrait of Henrietta Armine. Come now, my dear Glas...o...b..ry,' he continued, with an air of remarkable excitement, 'let us have a wager upon it. What are the odds? Will there ever be a portrait of Henrietta Armine? I am quite fantastic to-day.

You are smiling at me. Now do you know, if I had a wish certain to be gratified, it should be to add a portrait of Henrietta Armine to our gallery?'

'She died very young,' remarked Glas...o...b..ry.

'But my Henrietta Armine should not die young,' said Ferdinand. 'She should live, breathe, smile: she------'

Glas...o...b..ry looked very confused.

So strange is love, that this kind of veiled allusion to his secret pa.s.sion relieved and gratified the overcharged bosom of Ferdinand. He pursued the subject with enjoyment. Anybody but Glas...o...b..ry might have thought that he had lost his senses, he laughed so loud, and talked so fast about a subject which seemed almost nonsensical; but the good Glas...o...b..ry ascribed these ebullitions to the wanton spirit of youth, and smiled out of sympathy, though he knew not why, except that his pupil appeared happy.

At length they quitted the gallery; Glas...o...b..ry resumed his labours in the hall, where he was copying an escutcheon; and after hovering a short time restlessly around his tutor, now escaping into the garden that he might muse over Henrietta Temple undisturbed, and now returning for a few minutes to his companion, lest the good Glas...o...b..ry should feel mortified by his neglect, Ferdinand broke away altogether and wandered far into the pleasaunce.

He came to the green and shady spot where he had first beheld her.

There rose the cedar spreading its dark form in solitary grandeur, and holding, as it were, its state among its subject woods. It was the same scene, almost the same hour: but where was she? He waited for her form to rise, and yet it came not. He shouted Henrietta Temple, yet no fair vision blessed his expectant sight. Was it all a dream? Had he been but lying beneath these branches in a rapturous trance, and had he only woke to the s.h.i.+vering dulness of reality? What evidence was there of the existence of such a being as Henrietta Temple? If such a being did not exist, of what value was life? After a glimpse of Paradise, could he breathe again in this tame and frigid world? Where was Ducie? Where were its immortal bowers, those roses of supernatural fragrance, and the celestial melody of its halls? That garden, wherein he wandered and hung upon her accents; that wood, among whose shadowy boughs she glided like an antelope, that pensive twilight, on which he had gazed with such subdued emotion; that moonlight walk, when her voice floated, like Ariel's, in the purple sky: were these all phantoms? Could it be that this morn, this very morn, he had beheld Henrietta Temple, had conversed with her alone, had bidden her a soft adieu? What, was it this day that she had given him this rose?

He threw himself upon the turf, and gazed upon the flower. The flower was young and beautiful as herself, and just expanding into perfect life. To the fantastic brain of love there seemed a resemblance between this rose and her who had culled it. Its stem was tall, its countenance was brilliant, an aromatic essence pervaded its being. As he held it in his hand, a bee came hovering round its charms, eager to revel in its fragrant loveliness. More than once had Ferdinand driven the bee away, when suddenly it succeeded in alighting on the rose. Jealous of his rose, Ferdinand, in his haste, shook the flower, and the fragile head fell from the stem!

A feeling of deep melancholy came over him, with which he found it in vain to struggle, and which he could not a.n.a.lyse. He rose, and pressing the flower to his heart, he walked away and rejoined Glas...o...b..ry, whose task was nearly accomplished. Ferdinand seated himself upon one of the high cases which had been stowed away in the hall, folding his arms, swinging his legs, and whistling the German air which Miss Temple had sung the preceding night.

'That is a wild and pretty air,' said Glas...o...b..ry, who was devoted to music. 'I never heard it before. You travellers pick up choice things.

Where did you find it?'

'I am sure I cannot tell, my dear Glas...o...b..ry; I have been asking myself the same question the whole morning. Sometimes I think I dreamt it.'

'A few more such dreams would make you a rare composer,' said Glas...o...b..ry, smiling.

'Ah! my dear Glas...o...b..ry, talking of music, I know a musician, such a musician, a musician whom I should like to introduce you to above all persons in the world.'

'You always loved music, dear Ferdinand; 'tis in the blood. You come from a musical stock on your mother's side. Is Miss Grandison musical?'

'Yes, no, that is to say, I forget: some commonplace accomplishment in the art she has, I believe; but I was not thinking of that sort of thing; I was thinking of the lady who taught me this air.'