A Rent In A Cloud Part 32

"Oh! do not ask me this; have pity on me."

"Where is your pity for me? Be quick, or it will be too late. Answer me--mine or his?"

"His to the last!" cried she, with a wild shriek; and clasping both her hands above her head, she would have fallen had he not held her.

"One chance more. Refuse me, and I leave you to your fate!" cried he, sternly.

She could not speak, but in the agony of her terror she threw her arms around and clasped him wildly. The dark dense cloud that rested on the lake was rent asunder by a flash of lightning at the instant, and a sound like a thousand great guns shook the air. The wind skimming the sea, carried sheets of water along and almost submerged the boat as they pa.s.sed.

"Yes or no!" shouted Calvert, madly, as he struggled to disengage himself from her grasp.

"No!" she cried, with a wild yell that rung above all the din of the storm, and as she said it he threw her arms wide and flung her from him.

Then, tearing off his coat, plunged into the lake.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Flung her into the lake]

The thick clouds as they rolled down from the Alps to meet the wind, settled over the lake, making a blackness almost like night, and only broken by the white flashes of the lightning. The thunder rolled out as it alone does in these mountain regions, where the echoes keep on repeating till they fill the very air with their deafening clamour.

Scarcely was Calvert a few yards from the boat than he turned to swim back to her, but already was she hid from his view. The waves ran high, and the drift foam blinded him at every instant. He shouted out at the top of his voice; he screamed "Florence! Florence!" but the din around drowned his weak efforts, and he could not even hear his own words. With his brain mad by excitement, he fancied every instant that he heard his name called, and turned, now hither, now thither, in wild confusion.

Meanwhile, the storm deepened, and the wind smote the sea with frequent claps, sharp and sudden as the rush of steam from some great steam-pipe.

Whether his head reeled with the terrible uproar around, or that his mind gave way between agony and doubt, who can tell? He swam madly on and on, breasting the waves with his strong chest, and lost to almost all consciousness, save of the muscular effort he was making--none saw him more!

The evening was approaching, the storm had subsided, and the tall Alps shone out in all the varied colours of rock, or herbage, or snow-peak; and the blue lake at the foot, in its waveless surface, repeated all their grand outlines and all their glorious tints. The water was covered with row-boats in every direction, sent out to seek for Florence and her companion. They were soon perceived to cl.u.s.ter round one spot, where a dismasted boat lay half-filled with water, and a figure, as of a girl sleeping, lay in the stern, her head resting on the gunwale. It was Florence, still breathing, still living, but terror-stricken, lost to all consciousness, her limbs stiffened with cold. She was lifted into a boat and carried on sh.o.r.e.

Happier for her the long death-like sleep--that lasted for days--than the first vague dawn of consciousness, when her senses returning, brought up the terrible memory of the storm, and the last scene with Calvert. With a heart-rending cry for mercy she would start up in bed, and, before her cry had well subsided, would come the consciousness that the peril was past, and then, with a mournful sigh, would she sink back again to try and regain sufficient self-control to betray nothing; not even of him who had deserted her.

Week after week rolled by, and she made but slow progress towards recovery. There was not, it is true, what the doctors could p.r.o.nounce to be malady--her heightened pulse alone was feverish--but a great shock had shaken her, and its effects remained in an utter apathy and indifference to everything around her.

She wished to be alone--to be left in complete solitude, and the room darkened. The merest stir or movement in the house jarred on her nerves and irritated her, and with this came back paroxysms of excitement that recalled the storm and the wreck. Sad, therefore, and sorrowful to see as were the long hours of her dreary apathy, they were less painful than these intervals of acute sensibility; and between the two her mind vibrated.

One evening about a month after the wreck, Emily came down to her aunt's room to say that she had been speaking about Joseph to Florry. "I was telling her how he was detained at Calcutta, and could not be here before the second mail from India; and her reply was, 'It is quite as well. He will be less shocked when he sees me.'"

"Has she never asked about Calvert?" asked the old lady.

"Never. Not once. I half suspect, however, that she overheard us that evening when we were talking of him, and wondering that he had never been seen again. For she said afterwards, 'Do not say before me what you desire me not to hear, for I hear frequently when I am unable to speak, or even make a sign in reply.'"

"But it is strange that nothing should ever be known of him."

"No, aunt Carlo says several have been drowned in this lake whose bodies have never been found. He has some sort of explanation, about deep currents that set in amongst the rocks at the bottom, which I could not understand."

The days dragged on as before. Miss Grainger, after some struggles about how to accomplish the task, took courage, and wrote to Miss Sophia Calvert, to inform her of the disastrous event which had occurred and the loss of her cousin. The letter was, however, left without any acknowledgment whatever, and save in some chance whisperings between Emily and her aunt, the name of Calvert was never spoken of again.

Only a few days before Christmas a telegram told them that Loyd had reached Trieste, and would be with them in a few days. By this time Florence had recovered much of her strength and some of her looks. She was glad, very glad to hear that Joseph was coming; but her joy was not excessive. Her whole nature seemed to have been toned down by that terrible incident to a state of calm resignation to accept whatever came with little of joy or sorrow; to submit to rather than partake of, the changeful fortunes of life. It was thus Loyd found her when he came, and, to his thinking, she was more charming, more lovable than ever. The sudden caprices, which so often had worried him, were gone, and in their place there was a gentle tranquillity of character which suited every trait of his own nature, and rendered her more than ever companionable to him. Warned by her aunt and sister to avoid the topic of the storm, he never alluded to it in any shape to Florence; but one evening, as, after a long walk together, she lay down to rest before tea-time, he took Milly's arm and led her into the garden. "She has told me all, Milly," said he, with some emotion; "at least, all that she can remember of that terrible day."

CHAPTER XXIV. THE LAST AND THE SHORTEST

LOYD was married to Florence; and they went to India, and in due time--even earlier than due time--he was promoted from rank to rank till he reached the dignity of chief judge of a district, a position which he filled with dignity and credit.

Few were more prosperous in all the relations of their lives. They were fortunate in almost everything, even to their residence near Simlah, on the slope of the Himalaya: they seemed to have all the goods of fortune at their feet In India, where hospitality is less a virtue than a custom, Loyd's house was much frequented, his own agreeable manners, and the charming qualities of his wife, had given them a wide-spread notoriety, and few journeyed through their district without seeking their acquaintance.

"You don't know who is coming here to dinner, to-day, Florry," said Loyd, one morning at breakfast; "some one you will be glad to see, even for a memory of Europe--Stockwell."

"Stockwell? I don't remember Stockwell."

"Not remember him? And he so full of the charming reception you gave him at Orta, where he photographed the villa, and you and Emily in the porch, and Aunt Grainger was.h.i.+ng her poodle in the flower-garden?"

"Oh, to be sure I do, but he would never let us have a copy of it, he was so afraid Aunt Grainger would take it ill; and then he went away very suddenly; if I mistake not, he was called off by telegram on the very day he was to dine with us."

"Perhaps he'll have less compunctions now that your aunt is so unlikely to see herself so immortalised. I'm to go over to Behasana to fetch him, and I'll ask if he has a copy."

His day's duties over, Loyd went across to the camp where his friend Stockwell was staying. He brought him back, and the photographs were soon produced.

"My wife," said Loyd, "wishes to see some of her old Italian scenes.

Have you any of those you took in Italy?"

"Yes, I have some half-dozen yonder. There they are, with their names on the back of them. This was the little inn you recommended me to stop at, with the vine terrace at the back of it Here, you see the clump of cypress-trees next the boat-house."

"Ay, but she wants a little domestic scene at the villa, with her aunt making the morning toilet of her poodle. Have you got that?"

"To be sure I have; and--not exactly as a pendant to it, for it is terrific rather than droll--I have got a storm-scene that I took the morning I came away. The horses were just being harnessed, for I received a telegram informing me I must be at Ancona two days earlier than I looked for to catch the Indian mail, and I was taking the last view before I started. I was in a tremendous hurry, and the whole thing is smudged and scarce distinguishable. It was the grandest storm I ever witnessed. The whole sky grew black, and seemed to descend to meet the lake, as it was lashed to fury by the wind. I had to get a peasant to hold the instrument for me as I caught one effect--merely one. The moment was happy, it was just when a great glare of lightning burst through the black ma.s.s of cloud, and lit up the centre of the lake, at the very moment that a dismasted boat was being drifted along to, I suppose, certain destruction. Here it is, and here are, as well as I can make out, two figures. They are certainly figures, blurred as they are, and that is clearly a woman clinging to a man who is throwing her off: the action is plainly that I have called it a 'Rent in a Cloud'."

"Don't bring this to-day, Stockwell," said Loyd, as the cold sweat burst over his face and forehead; "and when you talk of Orta to my wife, say nothing of the Rent in a Cloud."