Alice, or the Mysteries Part 26

"I wish I could think so. Oh, if you knew her! I have longed so often that you were acquainted with each other! It was she who taught me to sing your songs."

"My dear Mrs. Hare, we may as well throw up our cards," said the keen clear voice of Lord Vargrave: "you have played most admirably, and I know that your last card will be the ace of trumps; still the luck is against us."

"No, no; pray play it out, my lord."

"Quite useless, ma'am," said Sir John, showing two honours. "We have only the trick to make."

"Quite useless," echoed Lumley, tossing down his sovereigns, and rising with a careless yawn.

"How d'ye do, Maltravers?"

Maltravers rose; and Vargrave turned to Evelyn, and addressed her in a whisper. The proud Maltravers walked away, and suppressed a sigh; a moment more, and he saw Lord Vargrave occupying the chair he had left vacant. He laid his hand on Cleveland's shoulder.

"The carriage is waiting,--are you ready?"

CHAPTER X.

OBSCURIS vera involvens.*--VIRGIL.

* "Wrapping truth in obscurity."

A DAY or two after the date of the last chapter, Evelyn and Caroline were riding out with Lord Vargrave and Mr. Merton, and on returning home they pa.s.sed through the village of Burleigh.

"Maltravers, I suppose, has an eye to the county one of these days,"

said Lord Vargrave, who honestly fancied that a man's eyes were always directed towards something for his own interest or advancement; "otherwise he could not surely take all this trouble about workhouses and paupers. Who could ever have imagined my romantic friend would sink into a country squire?"

"It is astonis.h.i.+ng what talent and energy he throws into everything he attempts," said the parson. "One could not, indeed, have supposed that a man of genius could make a man of business."

"Flattering to your humble servant--whom all the world allow to be the last, and deny to be the first. But your remark shows what a sad possession genius is: like the rest of the world, you fancy that it cannot be of the least possible use. If a man is called a genius, it means that he is to be thrust out of all the good things in this life.

He is not fit for anything but a garret! Put a _genius_ into office!

make a _genius_ a bishop! or a lord chancellor!--the world would be turned topsy-turvy! You see that you are quite astonished that a genius can be even a county magistrate, and know the difference between a spade and a poker! In fact, a genius is supposed to be the most ignorant, impracticable, good-for-nothing, do-nothing sort of thing that ever walked upon two legs. Well, when I began life I took excellent care that n.o.body should take _me_ for a genius; and it is only within the last year or two that I ventured to emerge a little out of my sh.e.l.l. I have not been the better for it; I was getting on faster while I was merely a plodder. The world is so fond of that droll fable, the hare and the tortoise,--it really believes because (I suppose the fable to be true!) a tortoise _once_ beat a hare that all tortoises are much better runners than hares possibly can be. Mediocre men have the monopoly of the loaves and fishes; and even when talent does rise in life, it is a talent which only differs from mediocrity by being more energetic and bustling."

"You are bitter, Lord Vargrave," said Caroline, laughing; "yet surely you have had no reason to complain of the non-appreciation of talent?"

"Humph! if I had had a grain more talent I should have been crushed by it. There is a subtle allegory in the story of the lean poet, who put _lead_ in his pocket to prevent being blown away! 'Mais a nos moutons,'--to return to Maltravers. Let us suppose that he was merely clever, had not had a particle of what is called genius, been merely a hardworking able gentleman, of good character and fortune, he might be half-way up the hill by this time; whereas now, what is he? Less before the public than he was at twenty-eight,--a discontented anchorite, a meditative idler."

"No, not that," said Evelyn, warmly, and then checked herself.

Lord Vargrave looked at her sharply; but his knowledge of life told him that Legard was a much more dangerous rival than Maltravers. Now and then, it is true, a suspicion to the contrary crossed him; but it did not take root and become a serious apprehension. Still, he did not quite like the tone of voice in which Evelyn had put her abrupt negative, and said, with a slight sneer,--

"If not that, what is he?"

"One who purchased by the n.o.blest exertions the right to be idle," said Evelyn with spirit; "and whom genius itself will not suffer to be idle long."

"Besides," said Mr. Merton, "he has won a high reputation, which he cannot lose merely by not seeking to increase it."

"Reputation! Oh, yes! we give men like that--men of genius--a large property in the clouds, in order to justify ourselves in pus.h.i.+ng them out of our way below. But if they are contented with fame, why, they deserve their fate. Hang fame,--give me power."

"And is there no power in genius?" said Evelyn, with deepening fervour; "no power over the mind, and the heart, and the thought; no power over its own time, over posterity, over nations yet uncivilized, races yet unborn?"

This burst from one so simple and young as Evelyn seemed to Vargrave so surprising that he stared on her without saying a word.

"You will laugh at my champions.h.i.+p," she added, with a blush and a smile; "but you provoked the encounter."

"And you have won the battle," said Vargrave, with prompt gallantry. "My charming ward, every day develops in you some new gift of nature!"

Caroline, with a movement of impatience, put her horse into a canter.

Just at this time, from a cross-road, emerged a horseman,--it was Maltravers. The party halted, salutations were exchanged.

"I suppose you have been enjoying the sweet business of squiredom,"

said Vargrave, gayly: "Atticus and his farm,--cla.s.sical a.s.sociations!

Charming weather for the agriculturists, eh! What news about corn and barley? I suppose our English habit of talking on the weather arose when we were all a squirearchal farming, George-the-Third kind of people!

Weather is really a serious matter to gentlemen who are interested in beans and vetches, wheat and hay. You hang your happiness upon the changes of the moon!"

"As you upon the smiles of a minister. The weather of a court is more capricious than that of the skies,--at least we are better husbandmen than you who sow the wind and reap the whirlwind."

"Well retorted: and really, when I look round, I am half inclined to envy you. Were I not Vargrave, I would be Maltravers."

It was, indeed, a scene that seemed quiet and serene, with the English union of the feudal and the pastoral life,--the village-green, with its trim scattered cottages; the fields and pastures that spread beyond; the turf of the park behind, broken by the shadows of the unequal grounds, with its mounds and hollows and venerable groves, from which rose the turrets of the old Hall, its mullion windows gleaming in the western sun; a scene that preached tranquillity and content, and might have been equally grateful to humble philosophy and hereditary pride.

"I never saw any place so peculiar in its character as Burleigh," said the rector; "the old seats left to us in England are chiefly those of our great n.o.bles. It is so rare to see one that does not aspire beyond the residence of a private gentleman preserve all the relics of the Tudor age."

"I think," said Vargrave, turning to Evelyn, "that as by my uncle's will your fortune is to be laid out in the purchase of land, we could not find a better investment than Burleigh. So, whenever you are inclined to sell, Maltravers, I think we must outbid Doltimore. What say you, my fair ward?"

"Leave Burleigh in peace, I beseech you!" said Maltravers, angrily.

"That is said like a Digby," returned Vargrave. "_Allons_!--will you not come home with us?"

"I thank you,--not to-day."

"We meet at Lord Raby's next Thursday. It is a ball given almost wholly in honour of your return to Burleigh; we are all going,--it is my young cousin's _debut_ at Knaresdean. We have all an interest in her conquests."

Now, as Maltravers looked up to answer, he caught Evelyn's glance, and his voice faltered.

"Yes," he said, "we shall meet--once again. Adieu!" He wheeled round his horse, and they separated.

"I can bear this no more," said Maltravers to himself; "I overrated my strength. To see her thus, day after day, and to know her another's, to writhe beneath his calm, unconscious a.s.sertion of his rights! Happy Vargrave!--and yet, ah! will _she_ be happy? Oh, could I think so!"

Thus soliloquizing, he suffered the rein to fall on the neck of his horse, which paced slowly home through the village, till it stopped--as if in the mechanism of custom--at the door of a cottage a stone's throw from the lodge. At this door, indeed, for several successive days, had Maltravers stopped regularly; it was now tenanted by the poor woman his introduction to whom has been before narrated. She had recovered from the immediate effects of the injury she had sustained; but her const.i.tution, greatly broken by previous suffering and exhaustion, had received a mortal shock. She was hurt inwardly; and the surgeon informed Maltravers that she had not many months to live. He had placed her under the roof of one of his favourite cottagers, where she received all the a.s.sistance and alleviation that careful nursing and medical advice could give her.

This poor woman, whose name was Sarah Elton, interested Maltravers much. She had known better days: there was a certain propriety in her expressions which denoted an education superior to her circ.u.mstances; and what touched Maltravers most, she seemed far more to feel her husband's death than her own sufferings,--which, somehow or other, is not common with widows the other side of forty! We say that youth easily consoles itself for the robberies of the grave,--middle age is a still better self-comforter. When Mrs. Elton found herself installed in the cottage, she looked round, and burst into tears.

"And William is not here!" she said. "Friends--friends! if we had had but one such friend before he died!"

Maltravers was pleased that her first thought was rather that of sorrow for the dead than of grat.i.tude for the living. Yet Mrs. Elton was grateful,--simply, honestly, deeply grateful; her manner, her voice, betokened it. And she seemed so glad when her benefactor called to speak kindly and inquire cordially, that Maltravers did so constantly; at first from a compa.s.sionate and at last from a selfish motive--for who is not pleased to give pleasure? And Maltravers had so few in the world to care for him, that perhaps he was flattered by the grateful respect of this humble stranger.