A Rent In A Cloud Part 29

"Oh, you are not changed--not in the least changed," she cried, in a voice of real emotion.

"Only in some things, perhaps," said he, carelessly. "By-the-way, this is a miniature of me--was taken in India. It is a locket on this side.

Ask Emily to wear it occasionally for my sake."

"How like! and what a splendid costume!"

"That was my dress in full state! but I prefer my service uniform, and think it became me better."

"Nothing could become you better than this," said she, admiringly; and truly there was good warrant for the admiration; "but even this is covered with diamonds!"

"Only a circlet and my initials. It is of small value. These are the baubles. Do what you will with them; and now good-bye. Tanti saluu, as we used to say long ago to the ladies--Tanti saluu de la parte mia. Tell Milly she is very naughty not to have given me her hand to kiss before we parted; but if she will condescend to wear this locket, now and then, I'll forgive her. Good-bye."

And, before Miss Grainger could reply, he had opened the window and was gone.

When Calvert reached the jetty the boatman was not there; but the boat, with her oars, lay close to the steps; the chain that attached her to an iron ring was, however, padlocked, and Calvert turned impatiently back to seek the man. After he had gone, however, a few paces, he seemed to change his mind, and turned once more towards the lake. Taking up a heavy stone, he proceeded to smash the lock on the chain. It was stronger than he looked for, and occupied some minutes; but he succeeded at last. Just as he threw into the boat the loose end of the broken chain, he heard steps behind him; he turned; it was Emily running towards him at full speed. "Oh Harry, dear Harry!" she cried, "don't go; don't leave us; Florence is quite well again, and as far as strength will let her, trying to come and meet you. See, yonder she is, leaning on aunt's arm." True enough, at some hundred yards off, the young girl was seen slowly dragging her limbs forward in the direction where they stood.

"I have come some thousand leagues to see her," said he sternly, "through greater fatigues, and, perhaps, as many perils as she is encountering."

"Go to her; go towards her," cried Emily, reproachfilly.

"Not one step; not the breadth of a hair, Milly," said he. "There is a limit to the indignity a woman may put upon a man, and your sister has pa.s.sed it. If she likes to come and say farewell to me here, be it so; if not, I must go without it."

"Then I can tell you one thing, Colonel Calvert, if my sister Florence only knew of the words you have just spoken, she'd not move one other step towards you if, if--"

"If it were to save my life, you would say. _That_ is not so unreasonable," said he, with a saucy laugh.

"Here is Florence come, weak and tottering as she is, to ask you to stay with us. You'll not have the heart to say No to her," said Miss Grainger.

"I don't think we--any of us--know much about Mr. Calvert's heart, or what it would prompt him to do," said Emily, half indignantly, as she turned away. And fortunate it was she did turn away, since, had she met the fierce look of Calvert's eyes at the moment, it would have chilled her very blood with fear.

"But you'll not refuse me," said Florence, laying her hand on his arm.

"You know well how seldom I ask favours, and how unused I am to be denied when I do ask."

"I was always your slave--I ask nothing better than to be so still," he whispered in her ear.

"And you will stay?"

"Yes, till you bid me go," he whispered again; "but remember, too, that, when I ask a favour I can just as little brook refusal."

"We'll talk of that another time. Give me your arm now, and help me back to the house, for I feel very weak and faint. Is Milly angry with you?"

she asked, as they walked along, side by side.

"I don't know; perhaps so," said he, carelessly.

"You used to be such good friends. I hope you have not fallen out?"

"I hope not," said he, in his former easy tone; "or that if we have, we may make it up again. Bear in mind, Florence," added he with more gravity of manner, "that I am a good deal changed from what you knew me.

I have less pride, cherish fewer resentments, scarcely any hopes, and no affections--I mean, strong affections. The heart you refused is now cold; the only sentiment left me, is a sense of grat.i.tude, I can be very grateful; I am already so." She made no answer to this speech, and they re-entered the house in silence.

CHAPTER XXII. A LETTER OF CONFESSIONS.

THE following letter from Calvert to Drayton was written about three weeks after the event of our last chapter.

"The Villa.

"My dear Algernon,--I knew my black fellow would run you to earth, though he had not a word of English in his vocabulary, nor any clue to you except your name and a map of England. It must have, however, been his near kinsman-- the other 'black gentleman'--suggested Scarborough to him; and, to this hour, I cannot conceive how he found you. I am overjoyed to hear that you could muster enough Hindostanee to talk with him, and hear some of those adventures which my natural modesty might have scrupled to tell you. It would seem from your note, that he has been candour itself, and confessed much that a man of a paler and thinner skin might prefer to have shrouded or evaded. All true, D.; we have done our brigandage on a grand scale, and divided our prize money without the aid of a prize-court.

"Keep those trinkets with an easy conscience, and if they leave your own hands for any less worthy still, remember the adage, 'Ill got, ill gone,' and be comforted. I suppose you are right--you are generally right on a question of worldly craft and prudence--it is better not to attempt the sale of the larger gems in England. St Petersburg and Vienna are as good markets, and safer.

"El. J. has already told you of our escape into Cashmere: make him narrate the capture of Mansergh, and how he found the Keyserbagh necklace under his saddle. A Queen's officer looting! Only think of the enormity! Did it not justify those proceedings in which Instinct antic.i.p.ated the finding of a court-martial? The East, and its adventures--a very bulky roll, I a.s.sure you--must wait till we meet; and in my next I shall say where, and how, and when: for there is much that I shall tell that I could not write even to you, Algernon. Respect my delicacy, and be patient.

"I know you are impatient to hear why I am not nearer England--even at Paris--and I am just as impatient to tell you. The address of this will show you where I am. All the writing in the world could not tell you why. No, Drayton; I lie awake at night, questioning, questioning, and in vain. I have gone to the nicest anatomy of my motives, dissecting fibre by fibre, and may I be--a Queen's officer--if I can hit upon an explanation of the mystery. The nearest I can come is, that I feel the place dangerous to me, and, therefore, I cling to it. I know well the feeling that would draw a man back to the spot where he had committed a great crime. Blood is a very glutinous fluid, and has most cohesive properties; but here, in this place, I have done no enormities, and why I hug this coast, except that it be a lee-sh.o.r.e, where s.h.i.+pwreck is very possible, I really cannot make out Not a bit in love? No, Algy. It is not easy for a man like me to fall in love. Love demands a variety of qualities, which have long left me, if I ever had them. I have little trustfulness, no credulity; I very seldom look back, never look forward; I neither believe in another, nor ask belief in myself. I have seen too much of life to be a dreamer--reality with me denies all place to mere romance.

Last of all I cannot argue from the existence of certain qualities in a woman to the certainty of her possessing fifty others that I wish her to have. I only believe what I see, and my moral eyes are affected with cataract; and yet, with all this, there's a girl here--the same, ay, the same, I told you of long ago--that I'd rather marry than I'd be King of Agra, with a British governor-general for my water- carrier! The most maddening of all jealousy is for a woman that one is not in love with! I am not mad, most n.o.ble Drayton, though I am occasionally as near it as is safe for the surrounders. With the same determination that this girl says she'll not have me, have I sworn to myself she shall be mine. It is a fair open game, and I leave _you_, who love a wager, to name the winner. I have seen many prettier women-- scores ol cleverer ones. I am not quite sure that in the matter of those social captivarions into which manner enters, she has any especial gifts. She is not a horsewoman, in the real sense of the word, which, once on a time, was a sine qua non of mine; nor, in fact, has she a peculiar excellence in anything, and yet she gives you the impression of being able to be anything she likes. She has great quickness and great adaptiveness, but she possesses one trait of attraction above all; she utterly rejects _me_, and sets all my arts at defiance. I saw, very soon after I came back here, that she was prepared for a regular siege, and expected a fierce love-suit on my part I accordingly spiked my heavy artillery, and a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of peace- like indolence. I lounged about, chiefly alone; neither avoided nor sought her, and, if I did nothing more, I sorely puzzled her as to what I could mean by my conduct. This was so far a success that it excited her interest, and I saw that she watched and was studying me. She even made faint attempts at little confidences: 'Saw I was unhappy--had something on my mind;' and, for the matter of that, I had plenty--plenty on my conscience, too, if nature had been cruel enough to have inflicted me with one. I, of course, said 'No' to all these insinuations. I was not happy nor unhappy. If I sat at the table of life, and did not eat, it was because I had no great appet.i.te. The entertainment did not amuse me much, but I had nowhere particularly to go to. She went one day so far as to hint whether I was not crossed in love? But I a.s.sured her not, and I saw her grow very pale as I said it. I even suggested, that though one might have two attacks of the malady, like the measles, the second one was always mild, and never hurt the const.i.tution. Having thus piqued her a little about myself, I gradually unsettled her opinion on other things, frightened her by how the geologists contradict Genesis, and gave her to choose between Monsieur Cuvier and Moses. As for India, I made her believe that we were all heartily ashamed of what we were doing there, spoke of the Hindoo as the model native, and said that if the story of our atrocities were written, Europe would rise up and exterminate us. Hence I had not taken the C.B., nor the V.C., nor any other alphabetical glories. In a word, Drayton, I got her into that frame of resdessness and fever in which all belief smacks of foolish credulity, and the commonest exercise of trust seems like the indulgence of a superst.i.tion.

"All this time no mention of Loyd, not a hint of his existence. Yesterday, however, came a fellow here, a certain Mr. Stockwell, with a note of introduction from Loyd, calling him 'my intimate friend S., whom you have doubtless heard of as a most successful, photographer. He is going to India with a commission from the Queen,' &c. We had him to dinner, and made him talk, as all such fellows are ready to talk, about themselves and the fine people who employ them.

In the evening we had his portfolio and the peerage, and so delighted was the vulgar dog to have got into the land of coronets and strawberry-leaves, that he would have ignored Loyd if I had not artfully brought him to his recollection; but he came to the memory of 'poor Joe,' as he called him, with such a compa.s.sionating pity, that I actually grew to like him. He had been at the vicarage, too, and saw its little homely ways and small economies; and I laughed so heartily at his stupid descriptions and vapid jokes, that I made the a.s.s think he was witty, and actually repeat them.

All this time imagine Florry, pale as a corpse, or scarlet, either half fainting or in a fever, dying to burst in with an angry indignation, and yet restrained by maiden bashfulness. She could bear no more by eleven o'clock, and went off to bed under pretence of a racking headache.

"It is a great blow at any man's favour in a woman's esteem when you show up his particular friend, his near intimate; and certes, I did not spare Stockwell. You have seen me in this part, and you can give me credit for some powers in playing it.

"'Could that creature ever have been the dear friend of Joseph' said Milly, as he said good-night.

"'Why not?' I asked. 'They seem made for each other.'

"Florry was to have come out for a sail this morning with me, but she is not well--I suspect sulky--and has not appeared. I therefore give you the morning that I meant for her. Her excuses have amazed me; because, after my last night's success, and the sorry figure I had succeeded in presenting L. to her, I half hoped my own chances might be looking up. In fact, though I have been playing a waiting game so patiently, to all appearance, I am driven half mad by self restraint. Come what may, I must end this; besides, to day is the fourth: on the tenth the steamer from Alexandria will touch at Malta; L. will therefore be at Leghorn by the fourteenth, and here two days after--that is to say, in twelve days more my siege must be raised. If I were heavily ironed in a felon's cell with the day of my execution fixed, I could not look to the time with one-half the heart-sinking I now feel.

"I'd give--what would I not give?--to have you near me, though in my soul I know all that you'd say; how you'd preach never minding, letting be, and the rest of it, just as if I could cut out some other work for myself tomorrow, and think no more of her. But I cannot. No Drayton, I cannot, Is it not too hard for the fellow who cut his way through Lah.o.r.e with sixteen followers, and made a lane through her Majesty's light cavalry, to be worsted, defeated, and disgraced by a young girl, who has neither rank, riches, nor any remarkable beauty to her share, but is simply sustained by the resolve that she'll not have me?

Mind, D., I have given her no opportunity of saying this since I came last here: on the contrary, she would, if questioned, be ready--I'd swear to it she would--to say, 'Calvert paid me no attentions, nor made any court to me.'

She is very truthful in everything, but who is to say what her woman's instinct may not have revealed to her of my love?

Has not the woman a man loves always a private key to his heart, and doesn't she go and tumble its contents about, just out of curiosity, ten times a day? Not that she'd ever find a great deal either in or on mine. Neither the indictments for murder or manslaughter, nor that other heavier charge for H. T., have left their traces within my pericardium, and I could stand to back myself not to rave in a compromising fas.h.i.+on if I had a fever to-morrow. But how hollow all this boasting, when that girl within the closed window-shutter yonder defies me--ay, defies me! Is she to go off to her wedding with the inner consciousness of this victory? There's the thought that is driving me mad, and will, I am certain, end by producing some dire mischief-- what the doctors call a lesion--in this unhappy brain of mine. And now, as I sit here in listless idleness, that other fellow is hastening across Egypt, or ploughing his way through the Red Sea, to come and marry her! I ask you, D., what amount of philosophy is required to bear up under this?

"I conclude I shall leave this some time next week--not to come near England, though--for I foresee that it will soon be out where, how, and with whom I have been spending my holidays. Fifty fellows must suspect, and some half-dozen must know all about it America, I take it, must be my ground--as well there as anywhere else--but I can't endure a plan, so enough of this. Don't write to me till you hear again, for I shall leave this certainly, though where for, not so certain.

"What a deal of trouble and uncertainty that girl might spare me if she'd only consent to say 'Yes.' If I see her alone this evening, I half think I shall ask her.

"Farewell for a while, and believe me,

"Yours ever,

"HARRY C.

"P.S. Nine o'clock, evening. Came down to dinner looking exceedingly pretty, and dressed to perfection. All spite and malice, I'm certain. Asked me to take her out to sail to- morrow. We are to go off on an exploring expedition to an island--'que sais je?'

"The old Grainger looks on me with aunt-like eyes. She has seen a bracelet of carbuncles in dull gold, the like of which Loyd could not give her were he to sell justice for twenty years to come. I have hinted that I mean them for my mother-in-law whenever I marry, and she understands that the parentage admits of a representative. All this is very ign.o.ble on my part; but if I knew of anything meaner that would ensure me success, I'd do it also.

"What a stunning vendetta on this girl, if she were at last to consent, to find out whom she had married, and _what_.