Alice, or the Mysteries Part 24

"When it is, you will do so. Pray think no more of it. Are you going to the rectory?"

"No, not this morning; in fact, I leave B-----s.h.i.+re tomorrow. Pleasant family, the Mertons."

"And Miss Cameron--"

"Is certainly beautiful,--and very rich. How could she ever think of marrying Lord Vargrave, so much older,--she who could have so many admirers?"

"Not, surely, while betrothed to another?"

This was a refinement which Legard, though an honourable man as men go, did not quite understand. "Oh," said he, "that was by some eccentric old relation,--her father-in-law, I think. Do you think she is bound by such an engagement?"

Maltravers made no reply, but amused himself by throwing a stick into the water, and sending one of his dogs after it. Legard looked on, and his affectionate disposition yearned to make advances which something distant in the manner of Maltravers chilled and repelled.

When Legard was gone, Maltravers followed him with his eyes. "And this is the man whom Cleveland thinks Evelyn could love! I could forgive her marrying Vargrave. Independently of the conscientious feeling that may belong to the engagement, Vargrave has wit, talent, intellect; and this man has nothing but the skin of the panther. Was I wrong to save him?

No. Every human life, I suppose, has its uses. But Evelyn--I could despise her if her heart was the fool of the eye!"

These comments were most unjust to Legard; but they were just of that kind of injustice which the man of talent often commits against the man of external advantages, and which the latter still more often retaliates on the man of talent. As Maltravers thus soliloquized, he was accosted by Mr. Cleveland.

"Come, Ernest, you must not cut these unfortunate Mertons any longer.

If you continue to do so, do you know what Mrs. Hare and the world will say?"

"No--what?"

"That you have been refused by Miss Merton."

"That _would_ be a calumny!" said Ernest, smiling.

"Or that you are hopelessly in love with Miss Cameron."

Maltravers started; his proud heart swelled; he pulled his hat over his brows, and said, after a short pause,--

"Well, Mrs. Hare and the world must not have it all their own way; and so, whenever you go to the rectory, take me with you."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE more he strove To advance his suit, the farther from her love.

DRYDEN: _Theodore and Honoria_.

THE line of conduct which Vargrave now adopted with regard to Evelyn was craftily conceived and carefully pursued. He did not hazard a single syllable which might draw on him a rejection of his claims; but at the same time no lover could be more constant, more devoted, in attentions.

In the presence of others, there was an air of familiar intimacy that seemed to arrogate a right, which to her he scrupulously shunned to a.s.sert. Nothing could be more respectful, nay, more timid, than his language, or more calmly confident than his manner. Not having much vanity, nor any very acute self-conceit, he did not delude himself into the idea of winning Evelyn's affections; he rather sought to entangle her judgment, to weave around her web upon web,--not the less dangerous for being invisible. He took the compact as a matter of course, as something not to be broken by any possible chance; her hand was to be his as a right: it was her heart that he so anxiously sought to gain.

But this distinction was so delicately drawn, and insisted upon so little in any tangible form, that, whatever Evelyn's wishes for an understanding, a much more experienced woman would have been at a loss to ripen one.

Evelyn longed to confide in Caroline, to consult her; but Caroline, though still kind, had grown distant. "I wish," said Evelyn, one night as she sat in Caroline's dressing-room,--"I wish that I knew what tone to take with Lord Vargrave. I feel more and more convinced that a union between us is impossible; and yet, precisely because he does not press it, am I unable to tell him so. I wish you could undertake that task; you seem such friends with him."

"I!" said Caroline, changing countenance.

"Yes, you! Nay, do not blush, or I shall think you envy me. Could you not save us both from the pain that otherwise must come sooner or later?"

"Lord Vargrave would not thank me for such an act of friends.h.i.+p.

Besides, Evelyn, consider,--it is scarcely possible to break off this engagement _now_."

"_Now_! and why now?" said Evelyn, astonished.

"The world believes it so implicitly. Observe, whoever sits next you rises if Lord Vargrave approaches; the neighbourhood talk of nothing else but your marriage; and your fate, Evelyn, is not pitied."

"I will leave this place! I will go back to the cottage! I cannot bear this!" said Evelyn, pa.s.sionately wringing her hands.

"You do not love another, I am sure: not young Mr. Hare, with his green coat and straw-coloured whiskers; or Sir Henry Foxglove, with his how-d'ye-do like a view-halloo; perhaps, indeed, Colonel Legard,--he is handsome. What! do you blush at his name? No; you say 'not Legard:' who else is there?"

"You are cruel; you trifle with me!" said Evelyn, in tearful reproach; and she rose to go to her own room.

"My dear girl!" said Caroline, touched by her evident pain; "learn from me--if I may say so--that marriages are _not_ made in heaven! Yours will be as fortunate as earth can bestow. A love-match is usually the least happy of all. Our foolish s.e.x demand so much in love; and love, after all, is but one blessing among many. Wealth and rank remain when love is but a heap of ashes. For my part, I have chosen my destiny and my husband."

"Your husband!"

"Yes, you see him in Lord Doltimore. I dare say we shall be as happy as any amorous Corydon and Phyllis." But there was irony in Caroline's voice as she spoke; and she sighed heavily. Evelyn did not believe her serious; and the friends parted for the night.

"Mine is a strange fate!" said Caroline to herself; "I am asked by the man whom I love, and who professes to love me, to bestow myself on another, and to plead for him to a younger and fairer bride. Well, I will obey him in the first; the last is a bitterer task, and I cannot perform it earnestly. Yet Vargrave has a strange power over me; and when I look round the world, I see that he is right. In these most commonplace artifices, there is yet a wild majesty that charms and fascinates me. It is something to rule the world: and his and mine are natures formed to do so."

CHAPTER IX.

A SMOKE raised with the fume of sighs.

_Romeo and Juliet_.

IT is certain that Evelyn experienced for Maltravers sentiments which, if not love, might easily be mistaken for it. But whether it were that master-pa.s.sion, or merely its fanciful resemblance,--love in early youth and innocent natures, if of sudden growth, is long before it makes itself apparent. Evelyn had been prepared to feel an interest in her solitary neighbour. His mind, as developed in his works, had half-formed her own. Her childish adventure with the stranger had never been forgotten. Her present knowledge of Maltravers was an union of dangerous and often opposite a.s.sociations,--the Ideal and the Real.

Love, in its first dim and imperfect shape, is but imagination concentrated on one object. It is a genius of the heart, resembling that of the intellect; it appeals to, it stirs up, it evokes, the sentiments and sympathies that lie most latent in our nature. Its sigh is the spirit that moves over the ocean, and arouses the Anadyomene into life.

Therefore is it that MIND produces affections deeper than those of external form; therefore it is that women are wors.h.i.+ppers of glory, which is the palpable and visible representative of a genius whose operations they cannot always comprehend. Genius has so much in common with love, the imagination that animates one is so much the property of the other, that there is not a surer sign of the existence of genius than the love that it creates and bequeaths. It penetrates deeper than the reason, it binds a n.o.bler captive than the fancy. As the sun upon the dial, it gives to the human heart both its shadow and its light.

Nations are its wors.h.i.+ppers and wooers; and Posterity learns from its oracles to dream, to aspire, to adore!

Had Maltravers declared the pa.s.sion that consumed him, it is probable that it would soon have kindled a return. But his frequent absence, his sustained distance of manner, had served to repress the feelings that in a young and virgin heart rarely flow with much force until they are invited and aroused. _Le besoin d'aimer_ in girls, is, perhaps, in itself powerful; but is fed by another want, _le besoin d'etre aime_!

_If_, therefore, Evelyn at present felt love for Maltravers, the love had certainly not pa.s.sed into the core of life: the tree had not so far struck its roots but what it might have borne transplanting. There was in her enough of the pride of s.e.x to have recoiled from the thought of giving love to one who had not asked the treasure. Capable of attachment, more trustful and therefore, if less vehement, more beautiful and durable than that which had animated the brief tragedy of Florence Lascelles, she could not have been the unknown correspondent, or revealed the soul, because the features wore a mask.

It must also be allowed that, in some respects, Evelyn was too young and inexperienced thoroughly to appreciate all that was most truly lovable and attractive in Maltravers. At four and twenty she would, perhaps, have felt no fear mingled with her respect for him; but seventeen and six and thirty is a wide interval! She never felt that there was that difference in years until she had met Legard, and then at once she comprehended it. With Legard she had moved on equal terms; he was not too wise, too high for her every-day thoughts. He less excited her imagination, less attracted her reverence. But, somehow or other, that voice which proclaimed her power, those eyes which never turned from hers, went nearer to her heart. As Evelyn had once said to Caroline, "It was a great enigma!"--her own feelings were a mystery to her, and she reclined by the "Golden Waterfalls" without tracing her likeness in the gla.s.s of the pool below.

Maltravers appeared again at the rectory. He joined their parties by day, and his evenings were spent with them as of old. In this I know not precisely what were his motives--perhaps he did not know them himself.

It might be that his pride was roused; it might be that he could not endure the notion that Lord Vargrave should guess his secret by an absence almost otherwise unaccountable,--he could not patiently bear to give Vargrave that triumph; it might be that, in the sternness of his self-esteem, he imagined he had already conquered all save affectionate interest in Evelyn's fate, and trusted too vainly to his own strength; and it might be, also, that he could not resist the temptation of seeing if Evelyn were contented with her lot, and if Vargrave were worthy of the blessing that awaited him. Whether one of these or all united made him resolve to brave his danger, or whether, after all, he yielded to a weakness, or consented to what--invited by Evelyn herself--was almost a social necessity, the reader and not the narrator shall decide.

Legard was gone; but Doltimore remained in the neighbourhood, having hired a hunting-box not far from Sir John Merton's manors, over which he easily obtained permission to sport. When he did not dine elsewhere, there was always a place for him at the parson's hospitable board,--and that place was generally next to Caroline. Mr. and Mrs. Merton had given up all hope of Mr. Maltravers for their eldest daughter; and, very strangely, this conviction came upon their minds on the first day they made the acquaintance of the young lord.

"My dear," said the rector, as he was winding up his watch, preparatory to entering the connubial couch,--"my dear, I don't think Mr. Maltravers is a marrying man."

"I was just going to make the same remark," said Mrs. Merton, drawing the clothes over her. "Lord Doltimore is a very fine young man, his estates unenc.u.mbered. I like him vastly, my love. He is evidently smitten with Caroline: so Lord Vargrave and Mrs. Hare said."