A Rent In A Cloud Part 12

She only bent down her head more deeply over her work, but did not speak.

"Yes; he was more candid than you," continued he. "He said you were engaged--that is--that you had owned to him that you liked him, and that when the consent he hoped for would be obtained, you would be married."

"How came he to write this to _you?_" said she, with a slight tremor in her voice.

"In this wise," said he, calmly. "He felt that he owed me an apology for something that had occurred between us on that morning; and, when making his excuses, he deemed he could give no better proof of frankness than by this avowal. It was, besides, an act of fairness towards one who, trusting to his own false light, might have been lured to delusive hopes."

"Perhaps so," said she, coldly.

"It was very right of him, very proper."

She nodded.

"It was more--it was generous."

"He _is_ generous," said she, warmly.

"He had need be."

"How do you mean, that he had need be?" asked she, eagerly.

"I mean this--that he will require every gift he has, and every grace, to outbalance the affection which I bear you--which I shall never cease to bear you. You prefer him. Now, you may regard me how you will--I will not consent to believe myself beaten. Yes, Florence, I know not only that I love you more than he does, but I love you with a love he is incapable of feeling. I do not wish to say one word in his dispraise, least of all to you, in whose favour I want to stand well; but I wish you--and it is no unfair request--to prove the affection of the two men who solicit your love."

"I am satisfied with his."

"You may be satisfied with the version your own imagination renders of it. You may be satisfied with the picture you have coloured for yourself; but I want you to be just to yourself, and just to me. Now if I can show you in his own handwriting--the ink only dried on the paper a day ago--a letter from him to me, in which he asks my pardon in terms so abject as never were wrung from any man, except under the pressure of a personal fear?"

"You say this to outrage me. Aunt Grainger," cried she, in a voice almost a scream, "listen to what this gentleman has had the temerity to tell me. Repeat it now, Sir, if you dare."

"What is this, Mr. Calvert? You have not surely presumed--"

"I have simply presumed, Madam, to place my pretensions in rivalry with Mr. Loyd's. I have been offering to your niece the half of a very humble fortune, with a name not altogether ign.o.ble."

"Oh dear, Mr. Calvert!" cried the old lady, "I never suspected this. I'm sure my niece is aware of the great honour we all feel--at least I do most sensibly--that, if she was not already engaged--Are you ill, dearest? Oh, she has fainted. Leave us, Mr. Calvert Send Maria here.

Milly, some water immediately."

For more than an hour Calvert walked the little gra.s.s-plot before the door, and no tidings came to him from those within. To a momentary bustle and confusion, a calm succeeded--lights flitted here and there through the cottage. He fancied he heard something like sobbing, and then all was still and silent.

"Are you there, Mr. Calvert?" cried Milly, at last, as she moved out into the dark night air. "She is better now--much better. She seems inclined to sleep, and we have left her."

"You know how it came on?" asked he in a whisper. "You know what brought it about?"

"No; nothing of it."

"It was a letter that I showed her--a letter of Loyd's to myself--conceived in such terms as no man of, I will not say of spirit, but a common pretension to the sense of gentleman, could write. Wait a moment, don't be angry with me till you hear me out. We had quarrelled in the morning. It was a serious quarrel, on a very serious question. I thought, of course, that all young men, at least, regard these things in the same way. Well, he did not. I have no need to say more; _he_ did not, and consequently nothing could come of it. At all events, I deemed that the man who could not face an adversary had no right to brave a rival, and so I intimated to him. For the second time he differed with me, and dared in my own presence to prosecute attentions which I had ordered him to abandon. This was bad enough, but there was worse to come, for, on my return home from this, I found a letter from him in the most abject terms; asking my pardon--for what?--for my having insulted him, and begging me, in words of shameful humility, to let him follow up his courtship, and, if he could, secure the hand of your sister, Now she might, or might not accept my offer. I am not c.o.xcomb enough to suppose I must succeed simply because I wish success; but, putting myself completely out of the question, could I suffer a girl I deemed worthy of my love, and whom I desired to make my wife, to fall to the lot of one so base as this? I ask you, was there any other course open to me than to show her the letter? Perhaps it was rash; perhaps I ought to have shown it first of all to Miss Grainger. I can't decide this point. It is too subtle for me. I only know that what I did I should do again, no matter what the consequences might be."

"And this letter, has she got it still?" asked Milly.

"No, neither she nor any other will ever read it now. I have torn it to atoms. The wind has carried the last fragment at this moment over the lake."

"Oh dear; what misery all this is," cried the girl in an accent of deep affliction. "If you knew how she is attached--" Then suddenly checking the harsh indiscretion of her words, she added, "I am sure you did all for the best, Mr. Calvert I must go back now. You'll come and see us, or perhaps you'll let me write to you, to-morrow."

"I have to say good-bye, now," said he, sadly. "I may see you all again within a week. It may be this is a good-bye for ever."

He kissed her hand as he spoke, and turned to the lake, where his boat was lying.

"How amazed she'll be to hear that she saw a letter--read it--held it in her hands," muttered he, "but I'll stake my life she'll never doubt the fact when it is told to her by those who believe it."

"You seem to be in rare spirits," said Barnard when Calvert returned to the inn. "Have you proposed and been accepted?"

"Not exactly," said the other, smiling, "but I have had a charming evening; one of those fleeting moments of that 'vie de famille' Balzac tells us are worth all our wild and youthful excesses."

"Yes!" replied Barnard, scoffingly; "domesticity would seem to be your forte. Heaven help your wife, say I, if you ever have one."

"You don't seem to be aware how you disparage conjugal life, my good friend, when you speak of it as a thing in which men of _your_ stamp are the ornaments. It would be a sorry inst.i.tution if its best requirements were a dreary temperament and a disposition that mistakes moodiness for morality."

"Good-night; I have had enough," said the other, and left the room.

"What a pity to leave such a glorious spot on such a morning," said Calvert, as he stood waiting while the post-horses were being harnessed.

"If we had but been good boys, as we might have been--that is, if _you_ had not fallen into matrimony, and _I_ into a quarrel--we should have such a day's fishing here! Yonder, where you see the lemon-trees hanging over the rock, in the pool underneath there are some twelve and fourteen 'pounders,' as strong as a good-size pike; and then we'd have grilled them under the chestnut-trees, and talked away, as we've done scores of times, of the great figure we were to make--I don't know when or how, but some time and in some wise--in the world; astonishing all our relations, and putting to utter shame and confusion that private tutor at Dorking who would persist in auguring the very worst of us."

"Is that the bill that you are tearing up? Let me see it What does he charge for that Grignolino wine and those bad cigars?" broke in Barnard.

"What do I know or care?" said Calvert, with a saucy laugh. "If you possessed a schoolboy's money-box with a slit in it to hold your savings, there would be some sense in looking after the five-franc pieces you could rescue from a cheating landlord, and add to your store; but when you know in your heart that you are never the richer nor the better of the small economies that are only realised at the risk of an apoplexy and some very profane expressions, my notion is, never mind them--never fret about them."

"You talk like a millionaire," said the other contemptuously.

"It is all the resemblance that exists between us, Bob; not, however, that I believe Baron Rothschild himself could moralise over the insufficiency of wealth to happiness as I could. Here comes our team, and I must say a sorrier set of screws never tugged in a rope harness.

Get in first I like to show all respect to the man who pays. I say, my good fellow," cried he to the postilion, "drive your very best, for mi Lordo here is immensely rich, and would just as soon give you five gold Marengos as five francs."

"What was it you said to him?" asked Barnard, as they started at a gallop.

"I said he must not spare his cattle, for we were running away from our creditors."

"How could you--"

"How could I? What nonsense, man! besides, I wanted the fellow to take an interest in us, and, you see, so he has. Old Johnson was right; there are few pleasures more exhilarating than being whirled along a good road at the top speed of post-horses."

"I suppose you saw that girl you are in love with?" said Barnard after a pause.

"Yes; two of them. Each of the syrens has got a lien upon my heart, and I really can't say which of them holds the preference shares.'"

"Is there money?"

"Not what a great Croesus like yourself would call money, but still enough for a grand 'operation' at Hom-burg, or a sheep-farming exploit in Queensland."

"You're more 'up' to the first than the last"

"All wrong! Games of chance are to fellows like you, who must accept Fortune as they find her. Men of _my_ stamp mould destiny."