Mr. Crewe's Career — Complete

CHAPTER XXIX. THE VALE OF THE BLUE

Austen himself could not well have defined his mental state as he made his way through the big rooms towards the door, but he was aware of one main desire—to escape from Fairview. With the odours of the flowers in the tall silver vases on the piano—her piano!—the spirit of desire which had so long possessed him, waking and sleeping, returned,—returned to torture him now with greater skill amidst these her possessions; her volume of Chopin on the rack, bound in red leather and stamped with her initials, which compelled his glance as he passed, and brought vivid to his memory the night he had stood in the snow and heard her playing. So, he told himself, it must always be, for him to stand in the snow listening.

He reached the hall, with a vast relief perceived that it was empty, and opened the door and went out. Strange that he should note, first of all, as he parsed a moment at the top of the steps, that the very day had changed. The wind had fallen; the sun, well on his course towards the rim of western hills, poured the golden light of autumn over field and forest, while Sawanec was already in the blue shadow; the expectant stillness of autumn reigned, and all unconsciously Austen's blood was quickened though a quickening of pain.

The surprise of the instant over, he noticed that his horse was gone,—had evidently been taken to the stables. And rather than ring the bell and wait in the mood in which he found himself, he took the path through the shrubbery from which he had seen the groom emerge.

It turned beyond the corner of the house, descended a flight of stone steps, and turned again.

They stood gazing each at the other for a space of time not to be computed before either spoke, and the sense of unreality which comes with a sudden fulfilment of intense desire—or dread—was upon Austen. Could this indeed be her figure, and this her face on which he watched the colour rise (so he remembered afterwards) like the slow flood of day? Were there so many Victorias, that a new one—and a strange one—should confront him at every meeting? And, even while he looked, this Victoria, too,—one who had been near him and departed,—was surveying him now from an unapproachable height of self-possession and calm. She held out her hand, and he took it, scarce knowing—that it was hers.

“How do you do, Mr. Vane?” she said; “I did not expect to meet you here.”

“I was searching for the stable, to get my horse,” he answered lamely.

“And your father?” she asked quickly; “I hope he is not—worse.”

It was thus she supplied him, quite naturally, with an excuse for being at Fairview. And yet her solicitude for Hilary was wholly unaffected.

“Dr. Harmon, who came from New York, has been more encouraging than I had dared to hope,” said Austen. “And, by the way, Mr. Vane believes that you had a share in the fruit and flowers which Mr. Flint so kindly brought. If—he had known that I were to see you, I am sure he would have wished me to thank you.”

Victoria turned, and tore a leaf from the spiraea.

“I will show you where the stables are,” she said; “the path divides a little farther on—and you might find yourself in the kitchen.”

Austen smiled, and as she went on slowly, he followed her, the path not being wide enough for them to walk abreast, his eyes caressing the stray hairs that clustered about her neck and caught the light. It seemed so real, and yet so unrealizable, that he should be here with her.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that I did not express my gratitude as I should have done the evening you were good enough to come up to Jabe Jenney's.”

He saw her colour rise again, but she did not pause.

“Please don't say anything about it, Mr. Vane. Of course I understand how you felt,” she cried.

“Neither my father nor myself will forget that service,” said Austen.

“It was nothing,” answered Victoria, in a low voice. “Or, rather, it was something I shall always be glad that I did not miss. I have seen Mr. Vane all my life, but I never=-never really knew him until that day. I have come to the conclusion,” she added, in a lighter tone, “that the young are not always the best judges of the old. There,” she added, “is the path that goes to the kitchen, which you probably would have taken.”

He laughed. Past and future were blotted out, and he lived only in the present. He could think of nothing but that she was here beside him. Afterwards, cataclysms might come and welcome.

“Isn't there another place,” he asked, “where I might lose my way?”

She turned and gave him one of the swift, searching looks he recalled so well: a look the meaning of which he could not declare, save that she seemed vainly striving to fathom something in him—as though he were not fathomable! He thought she smiled a little as she took the left-hand path.

“You will remember me to your father?” she said. “I hope he is not suffering.”

“He is not suffering,” Austen replied. “Perhaps—if it were not too much to ask—perhaps you might come to see him, sometime? I can think of nothing that would give him greater pleasure.”

“I will come—sometime,” she answered. “I am going away to-morrow, but—”

“Away?” he repeated, in dismay. Now that he was beside her, all unconsciously the dominating male spirit which was so strong in him, and which moves not woman alone, but the world, was asserting itself. For the moment he was the only man, and she the only woman, in the universe.

“I am going on a promised visit to a friend of mine.”

“For how long?” he demanded.

“I don't know, said Victoria, calmly; probably until she gets tired of me. And there,” she added, “are the stables, where no doubt you will find your faithful Pepper.”

They had come out upon an elevation above the hard service drive, and across it, below them, was the coach house with its clock-tower and weather-vane, and its two wings, enclosing a paved court where a whistling stable-boy was washing a carriage. Austen regarded this scene an instant, and glanced back at her profile. It was expressionless.

“Might I not linger—a few minutes?” he asked.

Her lips parted slightly in a smile, and she turned her head. How wonderfully, he thought, it was poised upon her shoulders.

“I haven't been very hospitable, have I?” she said. “But then, you seemed in such a hurry to go, didn't you? You were walking so fast when I met you that you quite frightened me.”

“Was I?” asked Austen, in surprise.

She laughed.

“You looked as if you were ready to charge somebody. But this isn't a very nice place—to linger, and if you really will stay awhile,” said Victoria, “we might walk over to the dairy, where that model protege of yours, Eben Fitch, whom you once threatened with corporal chastisement if he fell from grace, is engaged. I know he will be glad to see you.”

Austen laughed as he caught up with her. She was already halfway across the road.

“Do you always beat people if they do wrong?” she asked.

“It was Eben who requested it, if I remember rightly,” he said. “Fortunately, the trial has not yet arrived. Your methods,” he added, “seem to be more successful with Eben.”

They went down the grassy slope with its groups of half-grown trees; through an orchard shot with slanting, yellow sunlight,—the golden fruit, harvested by the morning winds, littering the ground; and then by a gate into a dimpled, emerald pasture slope where the Guernseys were feeding along a water run. They spoke of trivial things that found no place in Austen's memory, and at times, upon one pretext or another, he fell behind a little that he might feast his eyes upon her.

Eben was not at the dairy, and Austen betraying no undue curiosity as to his whereabouts, they walked on up the slopes, and still upward towards the crest of the range of hills that marked the course of the Blue. He did not allow his mind to dwell upon this new footing they were on, but clung to it. Before, in those delicious moments with her, seemingly pilfered from the angry gods, the sense of intimacy had been deep; deep, because robbing the gods together, they had shared the feeling of guilt, had known that retribution would coma. And now the gods had locked their treasure-chest, although themselves powerless to redeem from him the memory of what he had gained. Nor could they, apparently, deprive him of the vision of her in the fields and woods beside him, though transformed by their magic into a new Victoria, keeping him lightly and easily at a distance.

Scattering the sheep that flecked the velvet turf of the uplands, they stood at length on the granite crown of the crest itself. Far below them wound the Blue into its vale of sapphire shadows, with its hillsides of the mystic fabric of the backgrounds of the masters of the Renaissance. For a while they stood in silence under the spell of the scene's enchantment, and then Victoria seated herself on the rock, and he dropped to a place at her side.

“I thought you would like the view,” she said; “but perhaps you have been here, perhaps I am taking you to one of your own possessions.”

He had flung his hat upon the rock, and she glanced at his serious, sunburned face. His eyes were still fixed, contemplatively, on the Yale of the Blue, but he turned to her with a smile.

“It has become yours by right of conquest,” he answered.

She did not reply to that. The immobility of her face, save for the one look she had flashed upon him, surprised and puzzled him more and more—the world—old, indefinable, eternal feminine quality of the Spring.

“So you refused to be governor? she said presently,—surprising him again.

“It scarcely came to that,” he replied.

“What did it come to?” she demanded.

He hesitated.

“I had to go down to the capital, on my father's account, but I did not go to the convention. I stayed,” he said slowly, “at the little cottage across from the Duncan house where—you were last winter.” He paused, but she gave no sign. “Tom Gaylord came up there late in the afternoon, and wanted me to be a candidate.”

“And you refused?”

“Yes.”

“But you could have been nominated!”

“Yes,” he admitted; “it is probable. The conditions were chaotic.”

“Are you sure you have done right?” she asked. “It has always seemed to me from what I know and have heard of you that you were made for positions of trust. You would have been a better governor than the man they have nominated.”

His expression became set.

“I am sure I have done right,” he answered deliberately. “It doesn't make any difference who is governor this time.”

“Doesn't make any difference!” she exclaimed.

“No,” he said. “Things have changed—the people have changed. The old method of politics, which was wrong, although it had some justification in conditions, has gone out. A new and more desirable state of affairs has come. I am at liberty to say this much to you now,” he added, fixing his glance upon her, “because my father has resigned as counsel for the Northeastern, and I have just had a talk with—Mr. Flint.”

“You have seen my father?” she asked, in a low voice, and her face was averted.

“Yes,” he answered.

“You—did not agree,” she said quickly.

His blood beat higher at the question and the manner of her asking it, but he felt that he must answer it honestly, unequivocally, whatever the cost.

“No, we did not agree. It is only fair to tell you that we differed—vitally. On the other hand, it is just that you should know that we did not part in anger, but, I think, with a mutual respect.”

She drew breath.

“I knew,” she said, “I knew if he could but talk to you he would understand that you were sincere—and you have proved it. I am glad—I am glad that you saw him.” The quality of the sunlight changed, the very hills leaped, and the river sparkled. Could she care? Why did she wish her father to know that he was sincere.

“You are glad that I saw him!” he repeated.

But she met his glance steadily.

“My father has so little faith in human nature,” she answered. “He has a faculty of doubting the honesty of his opponents—I suppose because so many of them have been dishonest. And—I believe in my friends,” she added, smiling. “Isn't it natural that I should wish to have my judgment vindicated?”

He got to his feet and walked slowly to the far edge of the rock, where he stood for a while, seemingly gazing off across the spaces to Sawanec. It was like him, thus to question the immutable. Victoria sat motionless, but her eyes followed irresistibly the lines of power in the tall figure against the sky—the breadth of shoulder and slimness of hip and length of limb typical of the men who had conquered and held this land for their descendants. Suddenly, with a characteristic movement of determination; he swung about and came towards her, and at the same instant she rose.

“Don't you think we should be going back?” she said.

Rut he seemed not to hear her.

“May I ask you something?” he said.

“That depends,” she answered.

“Are you going to marry Mr. Rangely?”

“No,” she said, and turned away. “Why did you think that?”

He quivered.

“Victoria!”

She looked up at him, swiftly, half revealed, her eyes like stars surprised by the flush of dawn in her cheeks. Hope quickened at the vision of hope, the seats of judgment themselves were filled with radiance, and rumour, cowered and fled like the spirit of night. He could only gaze, enraptured.

“Yes?” she answered.

His voice was firm but low, yet vibrant with sincerity, with the vast store of feeling, of compelling magnetism that was in the man and moved in spite of themselves those who knew him. His words Victoria remembered afterwards—all of them; but it was to the call of the voice she responded. His was the fibre which grows stronger in times of crisis. Sure of himself, proud of the love which he declared, he spoke as a man who has earned that for which he prays,—simply and with dignity.

“I love you,” he said; “I have known it since I have known you, but you must see why I could not tell you so. It was very hard, for there were times when I led myself to believe that you might come to love me. There were times when I should have gone away if I hadn't made a promise to stay in Ripton. I ask you to marry me, because I—know that I shall love you as long as I live. I can give you this, at least, and I can promise to protect and cherish you. I cannot give you that to which you have been accustomed all your life, that which you have here at Fairview, but I shouldn't say this to you if I believed that you cared for them above—other things.”

“Oh, Austen!” she cried, “I do not—I—do not! They would be hateful to me—without you. I would rather live with you—at Jabe Jenney's,” and her voice caught in an exquisite note between laughter and tears. “I love you, do you understand, you! Oh, how could you ever have doubted it? How could you? What you believe, I believe. And, Austen, I have been so unhappy for three days.”

He never knew whether, as the most precious of graces ever conferred upon man, with a womanly gesture she had raised her arms and laid her hands upon his shoulders before he drew her to him and kissed her face, that vied in colour with the coming glow in the western sky. Above the prying eyes of men, above the world itself, he held her, striving to realize some little of the vast joy of this possession, and failing. And at last she drew away from him, gently, that she might look searchingly into his face again, and shook her head slowly.

“And you were going away,” she said, “without a word I thought—you didn't care. How could I have known that you were just—stupid?”

His eyes lighted with humour and tenderness.

“How long have you cared, Victoria?” he asked.

She became thoughtful.

“Always, I think,” she answered; “only I didn't know it. I think I loved you even before I saw you.”

“Before you saw me!”

“I think it began,” said Victoria, “when I learned that you had shot Mr. Blodgett—only I hope you will never do such a thing again. And you will please try to remember,” she added, after a moment, “that I am neither Eben Fitch nor your friend, Tom Gaylord.”

Sunset found them seated on the rock, with the waters of the river turned to wine at the miracle in the sky their miracle. At times their eyes wandered to the mountain, which seemed to regard them from a discreet distance—with a kindly and protecting majesty.

“And you promised,” said Victoria, “to take me up there. When will you do it?”

“I thought you were going away,” he replied.

“Unforeseen circumstances,” she answered, “have compelled me to change my plans.”

“Then we will go tomorrow,” he said.

“To the Delectable Land,” said Victoria, dreamily; “your land, where we shall be—benevolent despots. Austen?”

“Yes?” He had not ceased to thrill at the sound of his name upon her lips.

“Do you think,” she asked, glancing at him, “do you think you have money enough to go abroad—just for a little while?”

He laughed joyously.

“I don't know,” he said, “but I shall make it a point to examine my bank-account to-night. I haven't done so—for some time.”

“We will go to Venice, and drift about in a gondola on one of those gray days when the haze comes in from the Adriatic and touches the city with the magic of the past. Sometimes I like the gray days best—when I am happy. And then,” she added, regarding him critically, “although you are very near perfection, there are some things you ought to see and learn to make your education complete. I will take you to all the queer places I love. When you are ambassador to France, you know, it would be humiliating to have to have an interpreter, wouldn't it?”

“What's the use of both of us knowing the language?” he demanded.

“I'm afraid we shall be—too happy,” she sighed, presently.

“Too happy!” he repeated.

“I sometimes wonder,” she said, “whether happiness and achievement go together. And yet—I feel sure that you will achieve.”

“To please you, Victoria,” he answered, “I think I should almost be willing to try.”

CHAPTER XXX. P.S.

By request of one who has read thus far, and is still curious.

Yes, and another who, in spite of himself, has fallen in love with Victoria and would like to linger a while longer, even though it were with the paltry excuse of discussing that world-old question of hers—Can sublime happiness and achievement go together? Novels on the problem of sex nowadays often begin with marriages, but rarely discuss the happy ones; and many a woman is forced to sit wistfully at home while her companion soars.

A verse, in this connection, which may be a perversion of Mr. Kipling's meaning, but not so far from it, after all. And yet, would the eagle attempt the great flights if contentment were on the plain? Find the mainspring of achievement, and you hold in your hand the secret of the world's mechanism. Some aver that it is woman.

Do the gods ever confer the rarest of gifts upon him to whom they have given pinions? Do they mate him, ever, with another who soars as high as he, who circles higher that he may circle higher still? Who can answer? Must those who soar be condemned to eternal loneliness, and was it a longing they did not comprehend which bade them stretch their wings toward the sun? Who can say?

Alas, we cannot write of the future of Austen and Victoria Vane! We can only surmise, and hope, and pray,—yes, and believe. Romance walks with parted lips and head raised to the sky; and let us follow her, because thereby our eyes are raised with hers. We must believe, or perish.

Postscripts are not fashionable. The satiated theatre goer leaves before the end of the play, and has worked out the problem for himself long before the end of the last act. Sentiment is not supposed to exist in the orchestra seats. But above (in many senses) is the gallery, from whence an excited voice cries out when the sleeper returns to life, “It's Rip Van Winkle!” The gallery, where are the human passions which make this world our world; the gallery, played upon by anger, vengeance, derision, triumph, hate, and love; the gallery, which lingers and applauds long after the fifth curtain, and then goes reluctantly home—to dream. And he who scorns the gallery is no artist, for there lives the soul of art. We raise our eyes to it, and to it we dedicate this our play;—and for it we lift the curtain once more after those in the orchestra have departed.

It is obviously impossible, in a few words, to depict the excitement in Ripton, in Leith, in the State at large, when it became known that the daughter of Mr. Flint was to marry Austen Vane,—a fitting if unexpected climax to a drama. How would Mr. Flint take it? Mr. Flint, it may be said, took it philosophically; and when Austen went up to see him upon this matter, he shook hands with his future son-in-law,—and they agreed to disagree. And beyond this it is safe to say that Mr. Flint was relieved; for in his secret soul he had for many years entertained a dread that Victoria might marry a foreigner. He had this consolation at any rate.

His wife denied herself for a day to her most intimate friends,—for it was she who had entertained visions of a title; and it was characteristic of the Rose of Sharon that she knew nothing of the Vanes beyond the name. The discovery that the Austens were the oldest family in the State was in the nature of a balm; and henceforth, in speaking of Austen, she never failed to mention the fact that his great-grandfather was Minister to Spain in the '30's,—a period when her own was engaged in a far different calling.

And Hilary Vane received the news with a grim satisfaction, Dr. Tredway believing that it had done more for him than any medicine or specialists. And when, one warm October day, Victoria herself came and sat beside the canopied bed, her conquest was complete: he surrendered to her as he had never before surrendered to man or woman or child, and the desire to live surged back into his heart,—the desire to live for Austen and Victoria. It became her custom to drive to Ripton in the autumn mornings and to sit by the hour reading to Hilary in the mellow sunlight in the lee of the house, near Sarah Austen's little garden. Yes, Victoria believed she had developed in him a taste for reading; although he would have listened to Emerson from her lips.

And sometimes, when she paused after one of his long silences to glance at him, she would see his eyes fixed, with a strange rapt look, on the garden or the dim lavender form of Sawanec through the haze, and knew that he was thinking of a priceless thing which he had once possessed, and missed. Then Victoria would close the volume, and fall to dreaming, too.

What was happiness? Was it contentment? If it were, it might endure,—contentment being passive. But could active, aggressive, exultant joy exist for a lifetime, jealous of its least prerogative, perpetually watchful for its least abatement, singing unending anthems on its conquest of the world? The very intensity of her feelings at such times sobered Victoria—alarmed her. Was not perfection at war with the world's scheme, and did not achievement spring from a void?

But when Austen appeared, with Pepper, to drive her home to Fairview, his presence never failed to revive the fierce faith that it was his destiny to make the world better, and hers to help him. Wondrous afternoons they spent together in that stillest and most mysterious of seasons in the hill country—autumn! Autumn and happiness! Happiness as shameless as the flaunting scarlet maples on the slopes, defiant of the dying year of the future, shadowy and unreal as the hills before them in the haze. Once, after a long silence, she started from a revery with the sudden consciousness of his look intent upon her, and turned with parted lips and eyes which smiled at him out of troubled depths.

“Dreaming, Victoria?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered simply, and was silent once more. He loved these silences of hers,—hinting, as they did, of unexplored chambers in an inexhaustible treasure-house which by some strange stroke of destiny was his. And yet he felt at times the vague sadness of them, like the sadness of the autumn, and longed to dispel it.

“It is so wonderful,” she went on presently, in a low voice, “it is so wonderful I sometimes think that it must be like—like this; that it cannot last. I have been wondering whether we shall be as happy when the world discovers that you are great.”

He shook his head at her slowly, in mild reproof.

“Isn't that borrowing trouble, Victoria?” he said. “I think you need have no fear of finding the world as discerning as yourself.”

She searched his face.

“Will you ever change?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “No man can stand such flattery as that without deteriorating, I warn you. I shall become consequential, and pompous, and altogether insupportable, and then you will leave me and never realize that it has been all your fault.”

Victoria laughed. But there was a little tremor in her voice, and her eyes still rested on his face.

“But I am serious, Austen,” she said. “I sometimes feel that, in the future, we shall not always have many such days as these. It's selfish, but I can't help it. There are so many things you will have to do without me. Don't you ever think of that?”

His eyes grew grave, and he reached out and took her hand in his.

“I think, rather, of the trials life may bring, Victoria,” he answered, “of the hours when judgment halts, when the way is not clear. Do you remember the last night you came to Jabe Jenney's? I stood in the road long after you had gone, and a desolation such as I had never known came over me. I went in at last, and opened a book to some verses I had been reading, which I shall never forget. Shall I tell you what they were?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“They contain my answer to your question,” he said.

“Victoria, can you guess who that friend is?”

She pressed his hand and smiled at him, but her eyes were wet.

“I have thought of it in that way, too, dear. But—but I did not know that you had. I do not think that many men have that point of view, Austen.”

“Many men,” he answered, “have not the same reason to be thankful as I.”

There is a time, when the first sharp winds which fill the air with flying leaves have come and gone, when the stillness has come again, and the sunlight is tinged with a yellower gold, and the pastures are still a vivid green, and the mountain stained with a deeper blue than any gem, called Indian summer. And it was in this season that Victoria and Austen were married, in a little church at Tunbridge, near Fairview, by the bishop of the diocese, who was one of Victoria's dearest friends. Mr. Thomas Gaylord (for whose benefit there were many rehearsals) was best man, Miss Beatrice Chillingham maid of honour; and it was unanimously declared by Victoria's bridesmaids, who came up from New York, that they had fallen in love with the groom.

How describe the wedding breakfast and festivities at Fairview House, on a November day when young ladies could walk about the lawns in the filmiest of gowns! how recount the guests and leave out no friends—for none were left out! Mr. Jabe Jenney and Mrs. Jenney, who wept as she embraced both bride and groom; and Euphrasia, in a new steel-coloured silk and a state of absolute subjection and incredulous happiness. Would that there were time to chronicle that most amazing of conquests of Victoria over Euphrasia! And Mrs. Pomfret, who, remarkable as it may seem, not only recognized Austen without her lorgnette, but quite overwhelmed him with an unexpected cordiality, and declared her intention of giving them a dinner in New York.

“My dear,” she said, after kissing Victoria twice, “he is most distinguished-looking—I had no idea—and a person who grows upon one. And I am told he is descended from Channing Austen, of whom I have often heard my grandfather speak. Victoria, I always had the greatest confidence in your judgment.”

Although Victoria had a memory (what woman worth her salt has not?), she was far too happy to remind Mrs. Pomfret of certain former occasions, and merely smiled in a manner which that lady declared to be enigmatic. She maintained that she had never understood Victoria, and it was characteristic of Mrs. Pomfret that her respect increased in direct proportion to her lack of understanding.

Mr. Thomas Gaylord, in a waistcoat which was the admiration of all who beheld it, proposed the health of the bride; and proved indubitably that the best of oratory has its origin in the heart and not in the mind,—for Tom had never been regarded by his friends as a Demosthenes. He was interrupted from time to time by shouts of laughter; certain episodes in the early career of Mr. Austen Vane (in which, if Tom was to be believed, he was an unwilling participant) were particularly appreciated. And shortly after that, amidst a shower of miscellaneous articles and rice, Mr. and Mrs. Vane took their departure.

They drove through the yellow sunlight to Ripton, with lingering looks at the hills which brought back memories of boys and sorrows, and in Hanover Street bade good-by to Hilary Vane. A new and strange contentment shone in his face as he took Victoria's hands in his, and they sat with him until Euphrasia came. It was not until they were well on their way to New York that they opened the letter he had given them, and discovered that it contained something which would have enabled them to remain in Europe the rest of their lives had they so chosen.

We must leave them amongst the sunny ruins of Italy and Greece and southern France, on a marvellous journey that was personally conducted by Victoria.

Mr. Crewe was unable to go to the wedding, having to attend a directors' meeting of some importance in the West. He is still in politics, and still hopeful; and he was married, not long afterwards, to Miss Alice Pomfret.