Mathieu Ropars: et cetera Part 6

--"I am looking," said Genevieve, appearing in the effort to rally all the life left in her ".... Raise my head, Mathieu ... screen me from the sun...."

She checked herself with a stifled exclamation.

--"Ah! there she is! there she is!... She sees me ... she is lifting up her arms.... Francine ... my daughter ... my child!"

So impulsively did she lean forward, that but for Ropars, she would have thrown herself upon the rocks that sloped down to the sea. A flitting ray of life had lighted up her features; she sent kisses on her fingers to the child, and talked to it as though it could hear her; she raised her hands to Heaven, with rapid and broken e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns; she smiled and wept at once. Finally, her strength failed to endure so great emotion, and her head fell upon the quarter-master's shoulder. In alarm, he took her again in his arms, to carry her back into the house; but she made signs to him that she wished to remain out of-doors. He laid her down upon the bench, whereon the family had been used to sit together in the evening, in front of the sea, which was now lighted up by the rising sun. After a swoon that lasted some time, she opened her eyes, and asked for her daughter. Mathieu looked towards the powder magazine and said that Dorot had taken her away. She bowed her head with sorrowing resignation.

--"He has done right," she went on, in feeble accents; ... "besides, I feel ... that my sight grows thick.... I couldn't see her any more ...

and ... I still have something to say to you.... Come closer, Mathieu ... closer ... my voice is failing.... Give me your hand.... I want to be sure that you hear me."

Ropars knelt upon the sand, with one hand in that of his dying wife, and the other placed behind her, to support her.

--"You are going to stay alone," she continued. "Elsewhere, you could perhaps endure it; but here, in the midst of the ocean, it is not the life of a man, or of a Christian.... You are used to having some one keep you company ... some one to love you.... When I am gone ... another one must take my place."

--"Never!" broke in Ropars.

With her hand she silenced him.

--"Hus.h.!.+" said she gently; "you must needs think this, so long as I am before your eyes ... but when I am laid in the grave, you will then feel your want.... Believe not that I would reproach you, my poor husband....

I do not wish to carry away your happiness with me in my winding sheet.... No ... no ... wherever I may be, I shall need to know that you are well cared for."

--"Enough, Genevieve!" murmured the seaman, choking with emotion.

--"Let me go on to the end," she resumed; "I have still one plea to urge.... When you take off the c.r.a.pe from your arm, Mathieu ... promise me to think of the dear creature who is our child ... the child of both ... and who will remain with you, to remind you of me ... choose a wife who may fill my place towards her."

--"What is it that you are asking me, and whom could I give her for a mother, after yourself?" rejoined Ropars.

--"Some one" ... Genevieve went on ... "who would not grudge me the having been chosen first ... some honest heart that would take kindly to an orphan ... who would talk to her of me ... who would teach her to love G.o.d ... and to obey you!... If you promise me that this shall be so, Mathieu ... if you promise it on your honour ... and on your salvation, I shall fall asleep, at peace, and blessing you."

Ropars made the promise, amidst sighs and groans; but this was the dying woman's last effort. After having thanked him by an embrace, she let herself sink into her husband's arms. It almost seemed as though the power of her will had slackened the steps of Death, for the sake of this final compact. Scarcely was it completed, when her sufferings recommenced. Carried back to the alcove, she died there towards the close of the day. Her last words were a prayer, in which her husband's and her daughter's names were intermingled.

On the ensuing day, the grave in which Josephe already reposed was re-opened to receive Genevieve, for, during the past month, Death had reaped so abundantly that the barren island lacked s.p.a.ce for his doleful harvest. Informed of what had happened, by means of the signals agreed upon, the keeper of the powder-magazine brought Francine to the edge of his rock, and the child, on her knees, uttered a prayer for her mother's spirit, at the moment the funeral ceremony was ended, across the water.

This death was the last. Like those expiatory victims who, in sacrificing themselves, were wont to appease the anger of the G.o.ds, Genevieve seemed, in going down to the tomb, as though she closed its doors behind her. A fortnight later, and the yellow flag slid down the flag staff that over-topped the lazaretto, and those who had been quarantined, now cured, went away in the frigate's long-boat. They only left behind them, on the dreary island, a man whose hair had become perfectly white, and a child in mourning clothes.

THRICE ONLY.

I

Do not imagine that this is to be a love-story. Very few experiences furnish material for such. Rarer still is the ability to use the material, when it falls in one's way. At any rate, I make no pretension thereto.

But it sometimes happens during the earlier and more tumultuous period of a man's life, that casual occurrences take place, which do not indeed at the time immediately influence his actions or his fortunes, but which in later days may be recalled with interest. Of this sort--if I mistake not, or if I do not mar them in the telling--were my three meetings with Mary Verner. I only met her thrice.

The first time--many a year has sped away since; but it seems, if I shut my mental eye to events and feelings with which the interval has been crowded, and my bodily eye to the library table before me, as if the little scene were being enacted here, now, to-day.

Whence this power of summoning up the ghosts of long ago? Why should the comparatively recent refuse to be stamped upon the memory, and the old impressions refuse to fade? Let philosophers answer; I have no more inclination to write an essay than to tell a love-tale. My purpose I have already stated; though I omitted to mention that I write my own veritable experience--with a change of names, a studied obscurity of dates, and a very slight change otherwise.

The precise year I do not remember, nor, consequently, my own exact age; but I must have been about fourteen. George Verner, Mary's brother--poor fellow! I saw his death registered, the other day, in that odious corner of the _Times_--was my cla.s.s-mate and play-mate at a school some few miles from London. He was a good-looking and good-tempered fellow, if not remarkable for his abilities. It chanced that I was--in the choice language of the time and place--"a dab at Latin verses." I helped George once in a while with his exercises; and once in a while with the mince-pies, that his mother's a cook used to send him on the sly. The first time that I saw her--Mary Verner I mean, not the cook--was on a whole holiday; George, who lived in the neighbourhood, had invited me to pa.s.s it with him. The old family coach came for us at ten o'clock, with the fat old horses and the fat old family coachman, just for all the world as you may often meet them in the story-books that are called "exceedingly natural," and as you now-a-days rarely find them in real life. Pony-phaetons, britzkas, coupes, "Croydon-baskets," and nondescript vehicles that, being neither close carriages nor open, are palmed off as both--these have superseded the full-bodied of my early recollections.

I fancy that I see her now.... You perceive that though I note the modern change in the carriage department, I recognize none such in the phraseology of our tongue. I fancy I see her now. You may, if you please, alter the wording; but that's the plain English of it.

As we drove up the sweep that led from the lodge to the front entrance of a very beautiful suburban villa, I leaned out of the window, with the curiosity natural to a boy of fourteen, on strange ground.

Mary Verner--I knew, by the family likeness, that she was George's elder sister, the moment my eye lighted on her--was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g or watering her geraniums, in one of the recesses on either side of the porch.

"Here, Mary, here's Cuthbert _tertius_," said George, running up the steps, and pus.h.i.+ng me before him.

"I know him; how d'ye do? I'm glad to see you," was the frank reception, spoken in a clear, round-toned, springy voice, that seemed to drop without effort out of a rose-lipped mouth well-filled with well-knit teeth. And as she spoke smilingly, she opened a pair of large brown eyes that I have since thought--for boys don't know much about the law of colours--were designed to harmonize with what we call a clear brunette complexion. Certainly, if the ballad of "The Nut Brown Mayde" be a model imitation of the antique, Mary Verner might have sat for the portrait.

But it was not so much her eyes that took hold of me, open though they did by degrees, wider and wider, until I wondered when they would cease opening; nor her coal-black hair, dressed as you may see it in the likenesses by Sir Thomas Lawrence; nor her rosy mouth; nor her even teeth; nor her figure full of grace, _svelte_ as the French call it, for which we have no answering word. It was not these, or any of them. It was the carolling of her few words, so free and unconcerned in tone. If I had not met her subsequently, I might have forgotten her looks; I doubt whether her voice could have pa.s.sed from me.

I need not tax my memory or my invention about the trifling though happy events of that day. It was pretty evident who was mistress of the house, though the fond and proud mother of Mary Verner had the air of a dignified and well-bred woman. Silent or talking, it was Mary who dispensed the honours, at least so far as the stranger was concerned.

Probably it was the same with all comers; but this is only a surmise.

Well; the whole holiday came to an end, and we were driven back to the old school by the old coachman, our pockets full of chestnuts, and our boyish hearts full of a sense of supreme enjoyment, such we believe as, in later life, women feel after the best ball of the season, and men after a splendid whitebait dinner at Blackwall. I recollect telling the fellows in the dormitory what a jolly time we had been having, and how capitally George's pony leaped the fence on the common, round the corner, out of sight of the house. By the way, it was partly owing to that pony having engrossed so much of our time, that I had not regularly fallen in love with Mary Verner. Partly, I say, because I was further saved from this predicament by a standing devotion to my pretty cousin Rose, which the temptation had been strong enough, but not long enough to disturb. I never went to George's house again; and ere long the image of his sister was stowed away on one of the upper shelves of my memory.

There it might have been smothered in dust, or even converted into it, if chance had not taken it down and given it an airing.

II

Twenty-one--what a change from fourteen! How the pulse of life beats and bounds! I was running a tilt at the pastimes, and doffing aside the cares of early manhood, when for the second time, I came across Mary Verner. Plump upon her, I would say, if I thought you would pardon the coa.r.s.eness of the expression. At any rate--and to be genteel--it was unexpectedly. Twenty-one gives very few thoughts to fourteen. It may be a much longer distance thither, when one starts at seventy to go back; but it is surprising how much more quickly you get over the intermediate ground. Let that be; only I don't believe I had given a thought to Mary Verner, since the week or two that followed my first interview with her.

"Do come and dine with us on Monday," said my friend Mrs. F.; "there will be a very charming girl here, whom you would like to see."

"Positively?"

"_Sans faute!_"

"Then keep a place for me; I'll come."

I went. It was a formal dinner-party. In the drawing-room, before going to table, Mrs. F. came across to me.

"Now I'll introduce you to our belle of the evening. You may escort her down to dinner. There she is, half-hidden behind that drapery. You can't have noticed her."

"Miss Verner, let me present Mr. Cuthbert."

I should have recognized Mary Verner, as she looked up, with those widely-opening brown eyes of hers, if her name had not been mentioned.

As it was, it was quite natural for me to remark that I believed I had had the pleasure of seeing Miss Verner before.

And so in a few moments we were gossipping cosily about "old times," as we, not very old people, called them.

The beautiful child had expanded into a very lovely woman, preserving still the same characteristics of person and expression. The charm of her voice was the same. You may be sure that when seated by her side, with the becoming glow of lamp-light overhead heightening, if possible, those attractions which I rather hint than attempt to describe--you may be sure, I say, that I found her very captivating.