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.
“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 anticipated the finding
of a court-martial? The East, and its adventures—a very
bulky roll, I assure 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-shore, where shipwreck 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 noble
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 quâ 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 assumed an attitude 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 appetite. 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 assured 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 constitution. 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 superstition.
“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 compassionating 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 ass 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 Lahore 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 fashion 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
ignoble 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.
Think of the winter nights’ tales, of the charges that hang
over me, and their penalties. Imagine the Hue and Cry as
light reading for the honeymoon!”
He added one line on the envelope, to say he would write again on the morrow; but his promise he did not keep.
CHAPTER XXIII. A STORM.
THE boat excursion mentioned in Calvert’s letter was not the only pleasure-project of that day. It was settled that Mr. Stockwell should come out and give Milly a lesson in photography, in which, under Loyd’s former guidance, she had already made some progress. He was also to give Miss Grainger some flower-seeds of a very rare kind, of which he was carrying a store to the Pasha of Egypt, and which required some peculiar skill in the sowing. They were to dine, too, at a little rustic house beside the lake; and, in fact, the day was to be one of festivity and enjoyment.
The morning broke splendidly; and though a few clouds lingered about the Alpine valleys, the sky over the lake was cloudless, and the water was streaked and marbled with those parti-coloured lines which Italian lakes wear in the hot days of midsummer. It was one of those autumnal mornings in which the mellow colouring of the mature season blends with the soft air and gentle breath of spring, and all the features of landscape are displayed in their fullest beauty. Calvert and Florence were to visit the Isola de San Giulio, and bring back great clusters of the flowers of the “San Guiseppe” trees, to deck the dinner-table. They were also to go on as far as Pella for ice or snow to cool their wine, the voyage being, as Calvert said, a blending of the picturesque with the profitable.
Before breakfast was over the sky grew slightly, overcast, and a large mass of dark cloud stood motionless Over the summit of Monterone.
“What will the weather do, Carlo?” asked Calvert of the old boatman of the villa, as he came to say that all was in readiness.
“Who knows, ‘cellenza?” said he, with a native shrug of the shoulders. “Monterone is a big traitor of a mountain, and there’s no believing him. If that cloud scatters, the day will be fine; if the wind brings down fresh clouds from the Alps it will come on a ‘burrasca’.”
“Always a burrasca; how I am sick of your burrasca,” said he, contemptuously. “If you were only once in your life to see a real storm, how you’d despise those petty jobbles, in which rain and sleet play the loudest part.”
“What does he say of the weather?” asked Florence, who saw that Calvert had walked on to a little point with the old man, to take a freer view of the lake.
“He says, that if it neither blows hard nor rains, it will probably be fine. Just what he has told us every day since I came here.”
“What about this fine trout that you spoke of, Carlo?”
“It is at Gozzano, ‘cellenza; we can take it as we go by.”
“But we are going exactly in the opposite direction, my worthy friend; we are going to the island, and to Pella.”
“That is different,” said the old man, with another shrug of the shoulders.
“Didn’t you hear thunder? I’m sure I did,” cried Miss Grainger.
“Up yonder it’s always growling,” said Calvert, pointing towards the Simplon. “It is the first welcome travellers get when they pass the summit.”
“Have you spoken to him, Milly, about Mr. Stockwell? Will he take him up at Orta, and land him here?” asked Miss Grainger, in a whisper.
“No, aunt; he hates Stockwell, he says. Carlo can take the blue boat and fetch him. They don’t want Carlo, it seems.”
“And are you going without a boatman, Flurry?” Asked her aunt
“Of course we are. Two are quite cargo enough in that small skiff, and I trust I am as skilful a pilot as any Ortese fisherman,” broke in Calvert.
“Oh, I never disputed your skill, Mr. Calvert.”
“What, then, do you scruple to confide your niece to me?” said he, with a low whisper, in which the tone was more menace than mere inquiry.
“Is this the first time we have ever gone out in a boat together?”
She muttered some assurance of her trustfulness, but so confusedly, and with such embarrassment, as to be scarcely intelligible. “There! that was certainly thunder!” she cried.
“There are not three days in three months in this place without thunder. It is the Italian privilege, I take it, to make always more noise than mischief.”
“But will you go if it threatens so much?” said Miss Grainger.
“Ask Florry. For my part, I think the day will be a glorious one.”
“I’m certain it will,” said Florence, gaily; “and I quite agree with what Harry said last night Disputing about the weather has the same’ effect as firing great guns: it always brings down the rain.”
Calvert smiled graciously at hearing himself quoted.
It was the one sort of flattery he liked the best, and it rallied him out of his dark humour. “Are you ready?”—he had almost added “dearest,” and only caught himself in time—perhaps, indeed, not completely in time—for she blushed, as she said, “Eccomi.”
The sisters affectionately embraced each other. Emily even ran after Florence to kiss her once again, after parting, and then Florry took Calvert’s arm, and hastened away to the jetty. “I declare,” said she, as she stepped into the boat, “this leave-taking habit, when one is going out to ride, or to row, or to walk for an hour, is about the stupidest thing I know of.”
“I always said so. It’s like making one’s will every day before going down to dinner. It is quite true you may chance to die before the dessert, but the mere possibility should not interfere with your asking for soup. No, no, Florry, you are to steer; the tiller is yours for to-day; my post is here;” and he stretched himself at the bottom of the boat, and took out his cigar. The light breeze was just enough to move the little lateen sail, and gradually it filled out, and the skiff stole quietly away from shore, without even a ripple on the water.
“What’s the line, Florry?’ Hope at the helm, pleasure at the prow,’ or is it love at the helm?”
“A bad steersman, I should say; far too capricious,” cried she, laughing.
“I don’t know. I think he has one wonderful attribute; he has got wings to fly away with whenever the boat is in danger, and I believe it is pretty much what love does always.”
“Can’t say,” said she, carelessly. “Isn’t that a net yonder? Oughtn’t we to steer clear of it?”
“Yes. Let her fall off—so—that’s enough. What a nice light hand you have.”
“On a horse they tell me my hand is very light.”
“How I’d like to see you on my Arab ‘Said.’ Such a creature! so large-eyed, and with such a full nostril, the face so concave in front, the true Arab type, and the jaw a complete semicircle. How proud he’d look under you, with that haughty snort he gives, as he bends his knee. He was the present of a great Rajah to me—one of those native fellows we are graciously pleased to call rebels, because they don’t fancy to be slaves. Two years ago he owned a territory about the size of half Spain, and he is now something like a brigand chief, with a few hundred followers.”
“Dear Harry, do not talk of India—at least not of the mutiny.”
“Mutiny! Why call it mutiny, Florry? Well, love, I have done,” he muttered, for the word escaped him, and he feared how she might resent it.
“Come back to my lightness of hand.”
“Or of heart, for I sorely suspect, Florence, the quality is not merely a manual one.”
“Am I steering well?”
“Perfectly. Would that I could sail on and on for ever thus:
A life of such untroubled bliss.”
Calvert threw in a sentimental glance with this quotation.
“In other words, an existence of nothing to do,” said she, laughing, “with an excellent cigar to beguile it.”
“Well, but ‘ladye faire,’ remember that I have earned some repose. I have not been altogether a carpet knight I have had my share of lance and spear, and amongst fellows who handle their weapons neatly.”
“You are dying to get back to Ghoorkas and Sikhs, but I won’t have it I’d rather hear Metastasio or Petrarch, just now.”
“What if I were to quote something apposite, though it were only prose—something out of the Promessi Sposi?”
She made no answer, and turned away her head.
“Put up your helm a little: let the sails draw freely. This is very enjoyable; it is a right royal luxury. I’m not sure Antony ever had his galley steered by Cleopatra; had he?”
“I don’t know; but I do know that I am not Cleopatra nor you Antony.”
“How readily you take one up for a foolish speech, as if these rambling indiscretions were not the soul of such converse as ours. They are like the squalls, that only serve to increase our speed and never risk our safety, and, somehow, I feel to-day as if my temper was all of that fitful and capricious kind. I suppose it is the over-happiness. Are you happy, Florry?” asked he, after a pause.
“If you mean, do I enjoy this glorious day and our sail, yes, intensely. Now, what am I to do? The sail is flapping in spite of me.”
“Because the wind has chopped round, and is coming from the eastward. Down your helm, and let her find her own way. We have the noble privilege of not caring whither. How she spins through it now.”
“It is immensely exciting,” said she, and her colour heightened as she spoke.
“Have you superstitions about dates?” he asked after another pause.
“No; I don’t think so. My life has been so uneventful. Few days record anything memorable. But why did you ask?”
“I am—I am a devout believer in lucky and unlucky days, and had I only bethought me this was a Friday, I’d have put off our sail till to-morrow.”
“It is strange to see a man like you attach importance to these things.”
“And yet it is exactly men like me who do so. Superstitions belong to hardy, stern, rugged races, like the northmen, even more than the’ natives of southern climes. Too haughty and too self-dependent to ask counsel from others like themselves, they seek advice in the occult signs and faint whispers of the natural world. Would you believe it, that I cast a horoscope last night to know if I should succeed in the next project I undertook?”
“And what was the answer?”
“An enigma to this purpose: that if what I undertook corresponded with the entrance of Orion into the seventh house—Why are you laughing?”
“Is it not too absurd to hear such nonsense from you?”
“Was it not the grotesque homage of the witch made Macbeth a murderer? What are you doing, child? Luff—luff up; the wind is freshening.”
“I begin to think there should be a more skilful hand on the tiller. It blows freshly now.”
“In three days more, Florence,” said he gravely, “it will be exactly two years since we sailed here all alone. Those two years have been to me like a long, long life, so much of danger and trouble and suffering have been compassed in them. Were I to tell you all, you’d own that few men could have borne my burden without being crushed by it. It was not death in any common shape that I confronted; but I must not speak of this. What I would say is, that through all the perils I passed, one image floated before me—one voice was in my ear. It was yours.”
“Dear Harry, let me implore you not to go back to these things.”
“I must, Florence—I must,” said he, still more sadly. “If I pain you, it is only your fair share of suffering.”
“My fair share! And why?”
“For this reason. When I knew you first, I was a worn-out, weary, heart-sick man of the world. Young as I was, I was weary of it all; I thought I had tasted of whatever it had of sweet or bitter. I had no wish to renew my experiences. I felt there was a road to go, and I began my life-journey without interest, or anxiety or hope. You taught me otherwise, Florence; you revived the heart that was all but cold, and brought it back to life and energy; you inspired me with high ambitions and noble desires; you gave confidence where there had been distrust, and hope where there had been indifference.”
“There, there!” cried she, eagerly; “there comes another squall. You must take the helm; I am getting frightened.”
“You are calmer than I am, Florence dearest. Hear me out. Why, I ask you—why call me back to an existence which you intended to make valueless to me? Why ask me to go a road where you refuse to journey?”
“Do come here! I know not what I am doing. And see, it grows darker and darker over yonder!”
“You steered me into stormier waters, and had few compunctions for it. Hear me out, Florence. For you I came back to a life that I ceased to care for; for you I took on me cares, and dangers, and crosses, and conquered them all; for you I won honours, high rewards, and riches, and now I come to lay them at your feet, and say, ‘Weigh all these against the proofs of that other man’s affection. Put into one scale these successes, won alone for you; these trials, these wounds—and into the other some humdrum letters of that good-enough creature, who is no more worthy of you than he has the courage to declare it.’”
As he spoke a clap of thunder, sharp as a cannon-shot broke above their heads, and a squall struck the boat aloft, bending her over till she half filled with water, throwing at the same time the young girl from her place to the lee-side of the boat.
Lifting her up, Calvert placed her on the seat, while he supported her with one arm, and with the other hand grasped the tiller.
“Is there danger?” whispered she faintly.
“No, dearest, none. I’ll bale out the water when the wind lulls a little. Sit close up here, and all will be well.”
The boat, however, deeply laden, no longer rose over the waves, but dipped her bow and took in more water at every plunge.
“Tell me this hand is mine, my own dearest Florence—mine for ever, and see how it will nerve my arm. I am powerless if I am hopeless. Tell me that I have something to live for, and I live.”
“Oh, Harry, is it when my heart is dying with fear that you ask me this? Is it generous—is it fair? There! the sail is gone! the ropes are torn across.”
“It is only the jib, darling, and we shall be better without it. Speak, Florence! say it is my own wife I am saving—not the bride of that man, who, if he were here, would be at your feet in craven terror this instant.”
“There goes the mast!”
At the word the spar snapped close to the thwart and fell over the side, carrying the sail with it. The boat now lay with one gunwale completely under water, helpless and water-logged. A wild shriek burst from the girl, who thought all was lost.
“Courage, dearest—courage! she’ll float still. Hold close to me and fear nothing. It is not Loyd’s arm that you have to trust to, but that of one who never knew terror!”
The waves surged up now with every heaving of the boat, so as to reach their breasts, and, sometimes striking on the weather-side, broke in great sheets of water over them.
“Oh, can you save us, Harry—can you save us?” cried she.
“Yes, if there’s aught worth saving,” said he, sternly. “It is not safety that I am thinking of; it is what is to come after. Have I your promise? Are you mine?”
“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 passed.
“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.
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 cluster 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 shore.
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 pronounce 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 washing 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 mass 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.”