Two Years Ago Volume Ii Part 58

"What I have done, I have undone!" said Stangrave, looking up. "If I have wronged her, I have offered to right her; if I have left her, I have sought her again; and if I left her when I knew nothing, now that I know all, I ask her here, before you, to become my wife!"

Tom looked inquiringly at Marie.

"Yes; I have told him all--all?" and she hid her face in her hands.

"Well," said Tom, "Mr. Stangrave is a very enviable person; and the match in a worldly point of view, is a most fortunate one for Miss Lavington; and that stupid rascal of a gendarme has broken my revolver."

"But I have not accepted him," cried Marie; "and I will not unless you give me leave."

Tom saw Stangrave's brow lower, and pardonably enough, at this.

"My dear Miss Lavington, as I have never been able to settle my own love affairs satisfactorily to myself, I do not feel at all competent to settle other people's. Good-bye! I shall be late for the steamer." And, bowing to Stangrave and Marie, he turned to go.

"Sabina! Stop him!" cried she; "he is going, without even a kind word!"

"Sabina," whispered Tom as he pa.s.sed her,--"a had business--selfish c.o.xcomb; when her beauty goes, won't stand her temper and her flightiness: but I know you and Claude will take care of the poor thing, if anything happens to me."

"You're wrong--prejudiced--indeed!"

"Tut, tut, tut!--Good-bye, you sweet little sunbeam. Good morning, gentlemen!"

And Tom hurried up the slope and out of sight, while Marie burst into an agony of weeping.

"Gone, without a kind word!"

Stangrave bit his lip, not in anger, but in manly self-reproach.

"It is my fault, Marie! my fault! He knew me too well of old, and had too much reason to despise me! But he shall have reason no longer. He will come back, and find me worthy of you; and all will be forgotten.

Again I say it, I accept your quest, for life and death. So help me G.o.d above, as I will not fail or falter, till I have won justice for you and for your race! Marie?"

He conquered: how could he but conquer! for he was man, and she was woman; and he looked more n.o.ble in her eyes, while he was confessing his past weakness, than he had ever done in his proud a.s.sertion of strength.

But she spoke no word in answer. She let him take her hand, pa.s.s her arm through his, and lead her away, as one who had a right.

They walked down the hill behind the rest of the party, blest, but silent and pensive; he with the weight of the future, she with that of the past.

"It is very wonderful," she said at last. "Wonderful ... that you can care for me.... Oh, if I had known how n.o.ble you were, I should have told you all at once."

"Perhaps I should have been as ign.o.ble as ever," said Stangrave, "if that young English Viscount had not put me on my mettle by his own n.o.bleness."

"No! no! Do not belie yourself. You know what he does not;--what I would have died sooner than tell him."

Stangrave drew the arm closer through his, and clasped the hand. Marie did not withdraw it.

"Wonderful, wonderful love!" she said quite humbly. Her theatric pa.s.sionateness had pa.s.sed;--

"Nothing was left of her, Now, but pure womanly."

"That you can love me--me, the slave; me, the scourged; the scarred--Oh Stangrave! it is not much--not much really;--only a little mark or two...."

"I will prize them," he answered, smiling through tears, "more than all your loveliness. I will see in them G.o.d's commandment to me, written not on tables of stone, but on fair, pure, n.o.ble flesh. My Marie! You shall have cause even to rejoice in them!"

"I glory in them now; for, without them, I never should have known all your worth."

The next day Stangrave, Marie, and Sabina were hurrying home to England!

while Tom Thurnall was hurrying to Ma.r.s.eilles, to vanish Eastward Ho.

He has escaped once more: but his heart is hardened still. What will his fall be like?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

LAST CHRISTMAS EVE.

And now two years and more are past and gone; and all whose lot it was have come Westward Ho once more, sadder and wiser men to their lives'

end; save one or two, that is, from whom not even Solomon's pestle and mortar discipline would pound out the innate folly.

Frank has come home stouter and browner, as well as heartier and wiser, than he went forth. He is Valencia's husband now, and rector, not curate, of Aberalva town; and Valencia makes him a n.o.ble rector's wife.

She, too, has had her sad experiences;--of more than absent love; for when the news of Inkerman arrived, she was sitting by Lucia's death-bed; and when the ghastly list came home, and with it the news of Scoutbush "severely wounded by a musket-ball," she had just taken her last look of the fair face, and seen in fancy the fair spirit greeting in the eternal world the soul of him whom she loved unto the death. She had hurried out to Scutari, to nurse her brother; had seen there many a sight--she best knows what she saw. She sent Scoutbush back to the Crimea, to try his chance once more; and then came home to be a mother to those three orphan children, from whom she vowed never to part. So the children went with Frank and her to Aberalva, and Valencia had learnt half a mother's duties, ere she had a baby of her own.

And thus to her, as to all hearts, has the war brought a discipline from heaven.

Frank shrank at first from returning to Aberalva, when Scoutbush offered him the living on old St. Just's death. But Valencia all but commanded him; so he went: and, behold his return was a triumph.

All was understood now, all forgiven, all forgotten, save his conduct in the cholera, by the loving, honest, brave West-country hearts; and when the new-married pair were rung into the town, amid arches and garlands, flags and bonfires, the first man to welcome Frank into his rectory was old Tardrew.

Not a word of repentance or apology ever pa.s.sed the old bulldog's lips.

He was an Englishman, and kept his opinions to himself. But he had had his lesson like the rest, two years ago, in his young daughter's death; and Frank had thenceforth no faster friend than old Tardrew.

Frank is still as High Church as ever; and likes all pomp and circ.u.mstance of wors.h.i.+p. Some few whims he has given up, certainly, for fear of giving offence; but he might indulge them once more, if he wished, without a quarrel. For now that the people understand him, he does just what he likes. His congregation is the best in the archdeaconry; one meeting-house is dead, and the other dying. His choir is admirable; for Valencia has had the art of drawing to her all the musical talent of the tuneful West-country folk; and all that he needs, he thinks, to make his parish perfect, is to see Grace Harvey schoolmistress once more.

What can have worked the change? It is difficult to say, unless it be that Frank has found out, from cholera and hospital experiences, that his paris.h.i.+oners are beings of like pa.s.sions with himself; and found out, too, that his business is to leave the Gospel of d.a.m.nation to those whose hapless lot it is to earn their bread by pandering to popular superst.i.tion; and to employ his independent position, as a free rector, in telling his people the Gospel of salvation--that they have a Father in heaven.

Little Scoutbush comes down often to Aberalva now, and oftener to his Irish estates. He is going to marry the Manchester lady after all, and to settle down; and try to be a good landlord; and use for the benefit of his tenants the sharp experience of human hearts, human sorrows, and human duty, which he gained in the Crimea two years ago.

And Major Campbell?

Look on Cathcart's Hill. A stone is there, which is the only earthly token of that great experience of all experiences which Campbell gained two years ago.

A little silk bag was found, hung round his neck, and lying next his heart. He seemed to have expected his death; for he had put a label on it--

"To be sent to Viscount Scoutbush for Miss St. Just."

Scoutbush sent it home to Valencia, who opened it, blind with tears.