How they loved him, Vol. 1 (of 3)

There was none of the mischievous joy of a girl set at liberty to follow her own devices in her demeanour, as she traversed the distance that lay between the cottage and the sands, with her head bent and her eyes fixed on the ground. For, perhaps, in all her short life, Fenella had never felt so lonely and uncared-for as she did that afternoon. She had often grieved during her school days because she did not go home to see her mother; but the separation between them at that time was as nothing compared to the gulf that divided them now—a gulf which, some instinct told the girl, would never be bridged over but by the conventionalities of society.

She soon reached the ruined villa, and sitting on the floor of the open verandah, with her feet upon the sand, she leaned her cheek against a stucco pillar, green with the damp of time, and gave herself up to thought. Had she been less sad, the scene around would have excited all her interest, even in its solitude; it was so unlike anything to which she had been accustomed. Before her lay the broad, still ocean, and there were few moving things about to break the sense of isolation it engendered. Two or three boats were drawn up upon the sand; in the distance several more might be seen floating on the quiet waters; and to the right a faint trail of blue smoke, curling along the horizon, showed that the little steamer had started with its daily freight from the pier at Lynwern.

Fenella had seated herself with her back to Ines-cedwyn; had she turned her head she would have seen that the green slope down which she had wandered was the foreground of a range of chalk hills that sheltered the little village from the winter gales. She would have seen that the vegetation, such as it was, grew almost to the water’s edge; that sheep and donkeys and cattle browsed peacefully upon the common; that to the right of her, though hidden by a cliff, lay Lynwern, the town from which she had walked the night before, and to the left was a great landslip that had rolled almost into the sea, and was still crowned with the wild apple orchard it had carried with it.

But her heart was too full just then to see the wild beauties of the place to which she had come. The tears were too near her eyes for her to see anything distinctly. She kept them fixed upon the blue water, which broke with monotonous fidelity upon the golden sand, and ran back again with a subdued murmur, leaving a trail of froth and scum to mark its way.

Fenella believed, in her loneliness, that she had arrived at the very climax of all suffering—that there could never be anything worse for her to bear than she was bearing then. All her friends seemed to have retreated from her as the sea retreated from the sands, but with no hope of return. She had been parted from Honorée St Just and all her convent friends, and she had received nothing in return with which to fill up the vacancy their loss had made in her heart, and life seemed cruelly hard to the girl. Her love for her mother and her mother’s love for her had been the dream of her youth. She had believed in it as in the mercy of God. She had returned home ready to lean her whole weight upon it as on the staff of her existence, and it had snapped like a reed in her hand. And even Bennett had failed her; even poor Bennett, though it was not her fault, was absent at this crisis, and preferred Martha’s attendance to that of her young mistress.

No one wanted her—that was Fenella’s prevailing thought that afternoon. Every one would get on better without the trouble of her presence; she might as well be out of the world altogether. It was a dangerous thought to indulge in—a dangerous moment in which to present any new interest to fill up the void in the girl’s aching heart. She felt so forlorn that she would have been thankful to a dog for showing her any sympathy. And a dog was the first to do it.

Fenella had been so absorbed in her own melancholy thoughts that she had not observed that a little boat had come in at a short distance from where she sat—that is, the boat had come in as near as it could through the shallow water, and its occupants had jumped out, and waded through the ankle-deep tide to shore. And one of the occupants, being very short and bandy-legged and impetuous, had wetted himself from head to foot, and now came bounding forward—some doggish instinct telling him he would be welcome—and, with pricked ears and shining eyes, ensconced his dripping little body behind the shelter of Fenella’s black skirt, and from that ambush barked vociferously at his approaching master.

The girl started from her reverie; then perceiving the friendly disposition of the intruder, she put out her hand and patted the wet coat of the little terrier.

‘Trap! Trap! come back, sir; come back! Do you hear what I say to you?’ was shouted in an authoritative masculine voice; but Trap only wriggled his small red body about, and declined to have another sea-bath, as he imagined his owner was desirous of making him. Then a young man in boating gear strode up to Fenella’s side, and seizing the little terrier by the nape of the neck, flung him to some distance on the sand.

‘Oh! don’t hurt him!’ cried the girl; ‘poor little fellow, he didn’t mean to do any harm.’

The gentleman’s soft felt hat was crushed in one hand in a moment.

‘You are very good to say so,’ he replied, ‘but the brute has wetted your dress.’

Fenella blushed.

‘It is only an old frock,’ she said ingenuously; ‘he cannot hurt it. May I take him on my lap?’ for Trap had ventured by that time to crawl back to his master’s feet.

‘Trap will be but too much honoured,’ replied the young man, as he lifted the little animal and deposited him in Fenella’s open arms. Then he said, ‘I hardly hoped we should have met again so soon, and least of all should I have thought to meet you here.’

At these words, and at the sound of his voice, the girl started.

‘You don’t remember me,’ he continued, as he met her look of frank amazement, ‘neither had I any right to hope you should do so; but I have a better memory, you see. “I know you again to swear to.”’

As he repeated Bennett’s indignant remark, Fenella recognised him as the young man whom she had accosted at the Calais restaurant, and who had crossed with them to Dover. The colour rushed to her pale cheeks in a flood of crimson, but all she said was,—

‘How funny!’

‘What is funny?’

‘That you should be here, in this very place,’ said Fenella shyly.

‘But I think it is funnier that you should be here, or at least that you should have walked over here so soon, for I suppose you are staying at Lynwern.’

‘No; I am living at Ines-cedwyn with my nurse, but she has hurt her foot and cannot come out with me.’

The stranger put on a look of proper concern.

‘I’m very sorry to hear it; I hope she will soon be better. When did you arrive?’

‘Only yesterday; we were in London first with my mother.’

‘Well, I came straight through from Dover, for my people are staying at Lynwern, and they wished me to join them. I have been all the winter in Paris.’

‘Have you? for your holidays?’ demanded Fenella, as she caressed the little terrier, who had now settled himself for a comfortable nap in her arms.

The gentleman laughed.

‘Not exactly—though it is something like it. I belong to the army, and I am home on leave.’

‘The army!’ repeated the girl wonderingly. ‘Oh, then you are quite grown up!’

‘Nearly,’ he replied, still laughing. ‘I am twenty-two.’

His laugh was so pleasant and boyish, and his whole demeanour so friendly as he stood with one foot upon the floor of the verandah and looked down upon her, that after a while Fenella ventured to look up at him. He was an exceptionally handsome man, and to her unsophisticated eyes he appeared to be the handsomest she had ever seen. She thought so from the first moment she met him—she thought so to the very last. His power over her would have been, eventually perhaps, as great had his features been plain, but it would not have asserted its sway so rapidly. There is a magic in beauty which few minds are strong enough to resist. As the girl’s eyes met his, her lids were lowered, and he felt that his influence had commenced.

‘May I tell you,’ he said, bending down to her, ‘how pleased I am to have met you again, because I want to thank you for your kindness?’

‘What kindness?’

‘Why, in speaking to me at the restaurant, and asking if you could help me. Do you think I did not appreciate it, or that I am such a bear as to be ungrateful?’

‘I thought perhaps you couldn’t speak French,’ stammered the girl. ‘Some people who go abroad can’t; and I had just come from the convent, so I wanted to help you. But Bennett scolded me dreadfully about it. She said I had done very wrong indeed, and I am afraid she would say I was wrong in speaking to you now,’ continued Fenella, as she looked around her rather fearfully.

‘Who is Bennett?’

‘The woman who was with me. She was my nurse once, but she is mamma’s maid now, and I am under her care here.’

‘And do you always believe what Bennett says to you, then?’

‘Not always, perhaps; but wasn’t she right? Do you think I ought to have spoken to you?’

‘I think, if you had not, I should have missed knowing one of the most admirable traits of your character. It is not always wise, certainly, for a young lady to address a stranger, but I should think you might be safely left to follow your own instincts. Besides, I hope you saw I was a gentleman,’ he added, rather proudly.

‘No; I never thought about that,’ replied the girl. ‘I was afraid you were in trouble—that is all! But I am glad I was mistaken.’

‘I daresay your nurse is a very good sort of old woman,’ continued the young man, ‘but she can’t know much of the rules of society, can she?’

‘I suppose not; but no more do I. I have never been in society yet.’

‘All the better for you. Keep out of it as long as ever you can. Society is a huge sham—a community whose religion is to tell lies; and when a girl wants to be honest and follow the inclinations of her own kind heart, as you do, they tell her it is not proper, and society will never allow it.’

‘If that is true,’ sighed the girl, ‘I hope I shall never go into society; and any way it will be a long time, for I am only sixteen. But my mother likes it very much, I think.’

‘Will you forgive me if I ask you something very strange?’ said her new friend presently. ‘I want to know who your mother is, and what your name is?’

Fenella laughed softly.

‘Oh, how funny! we have been talking together all this time, and we don’t even know who we are. If you had gone away and forgotten to ask me that question, I should never have known. It would have been all like a dream, wouldn’t it?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t think I could have been contented to remember it only as a dream. I should have come back again to ask you that question.’

The look he threw at her as he pronounced the words made Fenella’s eyes droop again.

‘My name is Fenella Barrington,’ she said, in a low voice, ‘and my mother is Mrs Barrington.’

‘And have you no father?’

‘No; he died a long time ago.’

There was silence between them for a minute, and then the stranger said,—

‘You don’t ask who I am,—perhaps you don’t care to hear.’

‘Won’t you tell me?’ rejoined Fenella simply.

‘Certainly I will. I am Geoffrey Doyne, and I belong to the 30th Hussars. Don’t I look like a hussar?’

‘No; I think you look more like a boatman,’ said the girl, smiling. ‘When I saw you first to-day, I was in hopes you were a sailor.’

‘Why—in hopes?’

‘Because my father was a captain in the Royal Navy, and I love sailors for his sake.’

‘Then I wish I were one.’

‘But weren’t you allowed to choose which you would be?’

‘Certainly I was.’

‘And you preferred to be a soldier?’

‘I did.’

‘Then why should you wish to change?’ said Fenella, with open eyes. ‘I daresay it is nicer to be a soldier, after all—it must be so hard to go away to sea from all whom you love!’

‘Soldiers have to do that sometimes, too!’

‘Yes; there seems nothing but parting and sadness in this world.’

‘But you are too young to say that, Miss Barrington.’

‘Am I? I am not too young to think it.’

‘Are you going to make a long stay in Ines-cedwyn?’ was the next question he asked her.

‘I think so, but I am not sure. My mother has gone to Mentone, and she sent me here because I am not very strong, and the doctor said I required sea air. But it is very lonely, isn’t it? I would rather have gone with my mother,’ said Fenella, with tears in her eyes.

How Geoffrey Doyne would have liked to have the privilege of consoling her!

‘It is dull,’ he answered, ‘even at Lynwern. I can’t imagine why my people chose to come here, but I have an invalid sister who cannot stand a noisy watering-place, and as my leave will soon be up, they wanted to see something of me before I go back again.’

‘Back again!’ reiterated his companion.

‘Yes, to India; the 30th is at Kerampore at present. A horrid hole; I couldn’t stand it, and so I got eighteen months’ leave to England.’

‘And is this better than Kerampore?’

‘I hope it will be. I shall pass most of my time fishing. I have hired that little boat for the season. I have been out since eight o’clock this morning.’

‘And why did you land at Ines-cedwyn?’

‘I cannot tell you; a happy intuition guided me, I suppose; but the sands looked inviting, and our arms ached with pulling. However, I promised to get back to dinner. Do you live far from here?’

‘Bennett and I are staying at her brother Benjamin’s cottage in the village, half-a-mile from this. It is such a strange little place, you would laugh to see it, and there is sand on the floor instead of a carpet.’

‘That must be rather pleasant this warm weather; and I suppose you will be as little as possible in the house.’

‘Yes; my mother’s orders were that I was to be on the beach all day long, so Bennett says I am to bring my work and books down here every day.’

‘That will be charming. I envy you. And this old tumble-down house makes a convenient retreat from the sun. I wonder to whom it belongs?’

‘To nobody, Martha says,’ replied Fenella; ‘and the people of Ines-cedwyn won’t come near it at night because they declare that it’s haunted.’

‘What fools!’ laughed Mr Geoffrey Doyne; ‘they will mistake you for a ghost if they see you here, Miss Barrington.’

Fenella laughed too.

‘I should like to frighten them and keep them all away,’ she said; ‘and then I would sweep out one of the rooms, and bring down a table and some chairs, and make a little house where I could come and sit and have tea whenever I liked.’

‘And wouldn’t you ask me in to tea sometimes, Miss Barrington, if I came this way?’ pleaded Mr Doyne.

‘Yes, if you came this way,’ she answered gravely; ‘and little Trap too. He should have a saucer of milk all to himself, for I think he is a dear little fellow.’

‘Since you admire him, I wish I could leave him with you, for he is not a particular favourite of mine,’ said Geoffrey Doyne; ‘he belongs to one of my sisters, and I think him a great nuisance, especially in the boat when I am fishing. But as you are good enough to approve of him, I will bring him over to see you again some day, if I may?’

‘Thank you,’ said Fenella, as she patted the dog’s rough coat. At this juncture the boatman approached them, touching his hat.

‘I beg your pardon, sir, but if we’re to get back to Lynwern by six o’clock, we’d better be going,’ he said to young Doyne.

‘All right, Tugwell, I am ready. Good bye,’ he continued, turning to Fenella, who had risen to her feet. ‘I am so glad we have met again; I hope it won’t be for the last time.’

She did not echo his wish, but she put her hand in his as confidingly as a child, and then she stooped down again and patted the little dog.

Geoffrey Doyne waited with his hat in his hand until her farewells were concluded; then, with a bow and a smile, he whistled to Trap and turned away.

Fenella watched him and the boatman as they strode over the wet, glistening sand to the boat, which they pushed into the water. Then the man got on board with the dog under his arm, and with one bound Geoffrey Doyne went over the gunwale after him. Fenella saw his lithe, graceful figure standing in the boat as the man pushed off from shore; his face was turned towards her, and he waved his hat once again in the air before he took the oar and settled down to his work. She watched the long powerful strokes that bore the little bark away from Ines-cedwyn, and when it had rounded the cliffs that hid Lynwern from her sight, she felt somehow as if the sun had suddenly set, and the evening air was chilly. And yet there was a glow about her girlish heart that it had never experienced before—the first consciousness that comes to a woman of being appreciated by the other sex. Fenella’s life had not been worse than wasted (as so many school-girls’ lives are in the present day) by dreaming and talking of possible lovers. Her ideas on all such subjects were very crude and childlike; still the womanly instinct was strong within her—the yearning to love and to be loved—and only needed the touch of Nature to make its presence known. That first meeting with Geoffrey Doyne caused it to stir in its sleep—stir as a heavy sleeper might, when some unexpected sound makes him move and murmur for a moment uneasily, and then sink off to rest again.

For some time after the young man had left her she sat in the same place, gazing at the sea, over which the setting sun was now shedding rays of ineffable glory; sat there, reviewing each glance of his eyes, each tone of his voice, and thinking how nice and pleasant it was to have a friend to talk to, and how much she wished that Mr Doyne lived in Ines-cedwyn, in Benjamin Bennett’s cottage, and she could see and talk with him every hour of the day—it would make the place so much less dull for her and Bennett. With this remembrance came the wonder what her nurse would say when she heard that Fenella had again spoken to a gentleman who was a stranger to her. But then he wasn’t a stranger now (so the girl argued); he knew her name, and she knew his—Geoffrey Doyne! It was a pretty name, Fenella thought; and she said it over several times softly to herself,—‘Geoffrey Doyne! Geoffrey Doyne! Geoffrey Doyne!’ She was afraid Bennett might be angry and scold a little, but she quite made up her mind that she must tell her of the meeting. There was no deceit in Fenella’s nature; if ever she concealed a thing during her lifetime, it was in deference to an opinion which she considered superior to her own. She did not relish the idea of confessing this second piece of imprudence on her part to her old nurse (because it was the second, Bennett would consider it all the more culpable); still Fenella never dreamt of not confessing it. It was nearly seven o’clock when at last she could persuade herself to give over dreaming and take her way homewards. As she rose and left the ruined bungalow, she turned and cast a fond look back to it—a look that seemed to say, ‘I will return—and he will return! I love you for the happiness you have given me.’

Ah! the blindness of her ignorant heart,—she had better have cursed each stone of which it was composed. But had an angel barred her path that evening; had Michael himself, the Head of all the Heavenly Hosts, stood in her way with his shining sword, and told her it would be better for her had she laid down and died upon those stones before she left them, with the joyous hope of return filling her eyes with a light that had never beamed in them before—that it would be better for her if the boat that bore Geoffrey Doyne to Lynwern never reached its destination, but sunk with him and her faint remembrance of him beneath the waves,—would Fenella have believed even the Archangel of God Himself? No; she would have called him hard, and cruel, and unsympathetic; would have accused him of envy and malice, and all uncharitableness—and clung to her ideal, although there was but the merest outline of a fancied god to cling to. But, pour the poison once into the opened veins, and all your efforts to extract it afterwards will prove unavailing. So is it with a fatal passion. Let it once—only once—mix with the current of the heart’s blood, and it will never again be dissevered until that current is stopped by the chill hand of Death.