A Rent In A Cloud Part 20

"Yes, he says here: 'Joe is, as you may imagine, full of business, and what between his interviews with official people, and his personal cares for his long journey, has not a moment to spare. He will, however, write tomorrow, detailing all that he has done and means to do. Of that late suggestion that came from you about referring us to a third party, neither Joseph nor myself desire to go back; indeed, it is not at a moment like the present we would open a question that could imperil the affections that unite us It is enough to know that we trust each other, and need neither guarantees nor guidance.'"

"The old knave!" cried Calvert "A priest is always a Jesuit, no matter what church he belongs to."

"Oh, Mr. Calvert."

"But he's quite right after all I am far too worldly-minded in my notions to negotiate with men of such exalted ideas as he and his son possess. Besides, I am suddenly called away. I shall have to leave this immediately. They are making a fuss about that unfortunate affair at Basle, and want to catch me as a witness; and as my evidence would damage a fellow I really pity, though I condemn, I must keep out of the way."

"Well, you are certain to find us here whenever you feel disposed to have your own room again. I have taken the villa for another year."

Not paying the slightest attention to this speech he went on: "There is one point on which I shall be absolute. No one speaks of me when I leave this. Not alone that you abstain yourself from any allusion to my having been here, and what you know of me, but that you will not suffer any other to make me his topic. It is enough to say that a question of my life is involved in this request. Barnard's fate has involved me in a web of calumny and libel, which I am resolved to bear too, to cover the poor fellow's memory. If, however, by any indiscretion of my friends--and remember, it can only be of my friends under this roof--I am driven to defend myself, there is no saying how much more blood will have to flow in this quarrel. Do you understand me?"

"Partly," said she, trembling all over.

"This much you cannot mistake," said he, sternly; "that my name is not to be uttered, nor written, mind that If, in his short visit, Loyd should speak of me, stop him at once. Say, 'Mr. Loyd, there are reasons why I will not discuss that person; and I desire that my wish be understood as a command.' You will impress your nieces with the same reserve. I suppose, if they hear that it is a matter which involves the life of more than one, that they will not need to be twice cautioned.

Bear, in mind this is no caprice of mine; it is no caprice of that Calvert eccentricity, to which, fairly enough sometimes, you ascribe many of my actions. I am in a position of no common peril; I have incurred it to save the fair fame of a fellow I have known and liked for years. I mean, too, to go through with it; that is, I mean up to a certain point to sacrifice myself. Up to a certain point, I say, for if I am pushed beyond that, then I shall declare to the world: Upon you and your slanderous tongues be the blame, not mine the fault for what is to happen now."

He uttered these words with a rapidity and vehemence that made her tremble from head to foot This was not, besides, the first time she had witnessed one of those pa.s.sionate outbursts for which his race was celebrated, and it needed no oath to confirm the menace his speech shadowed forth.

"This is a pledge, then," said he, grasping her hand. "And now to talk of something pleasanter. That old uncle of mine has behaved very handsomely; has sent me some kind messages, and, what is as much to the purpose, some money;" and, as he spoke, he carelessly drew from his pocket a roll of the bank-notes he had so lately won at play. "'Before making any attempt to re-enter the service,' he says, 'you must keep out of the way for a while.' And he is right there; the advice is excellent, and I mean to follow it. In his postscript he adds: 'Thank Grainger'--he means Miss Grainger, but you know how blunderingly he writes--'for all her kindness to you, and say how glad we should all be to see her at Rocksley, whenever she comes next to England.'"

The old lady's face grew crimson; shame at first, and pride afterwards, overwhelming her. To be called Grainger was to bring her back at once to the old days of servitude--that dreary life of nursery governess--which had left its dark shadow on all her later years; while to be the guest at Rocksley was a triumph she had never imagined in her vainest moments.

"Oh, will you tell him how proud I am of his kind remembrance of me, and what an honour I should feel it to pay my respects to him?"

"They'll make much of you, I promise you," said Calvert, "when they catch you at Rocksley, and you'll not get away in a hurry. Now let us go our separate ways, lest the girls suspect we have been plotting. I'll take the boat and row down to the steps. Don't forget all I have been saying," were his last words as the boat moved away.

"I hope I have bound that old fool in heavy recognisances to keep her tongue quiet; and now for the more difficult task of the young ones,"

said he, as he stretched himself full length in the boat, like one wearied by some effort that taxed his strength. "I begin to believe it will be a relief to me to get away from this place!" he muttered to himself, "though I'd give my right hand to pa.s.s the next week here, and spoil the happiness of those fond lovers. Could I not do it?" Here was a problem that occupied him till he reached the landing at the villa, but as he stepped on sh.o.r.e, he cried, "No, this must be the last time I shall ever mount these steps!"

Calvert pa.s.sed the day in his room; he had much to think over, and several letters to write. Though the next step he was to take in life in all probability involved his whole future career, his mind was diverted from it by the thought that this was to be his last night at the villa--the last time he should ever see Florence. "Ay," thought he, "Loyd will be the occupant of this room in a day or two more. I can fancy the playful tap at this door, as Milly goes down to breakfast--I can picture the lazy fool leaning out of that window, gazing at those small snow-peaks, while Florence is waiting for him in the garden--I know well all the little graceful attentions that will be prepared for him, vulgar dog as he is, who will not even recognise the special courtesies that have been designed for him; well, if I be not sorely mistaken, I have dropped some poison in his cup. I have taught Florence to feel that courage is the first of manly attributes, and what is more to the purpose, to have a sort of half dread that it is not amongst her lover's gifts. I have left her as my last legacy that rankling doubt, and I defy her to tear it out of her heart! What a sovereign antidote to all romance it is, to have the conviction, or, if not the conviction the impression, the mere suspicion, that he who spouts the fine sentiments of the poet with such heartfelt ardour, is a poltroon, ready to run from danger and hide himself at the approach of peril. I have made Milly believe this; she has no doubt of it; so that if sisterly confidences broach the theme, Florence will find all her worst fears confirmed. The thought of this fellow as my rival maddens me!" cried he, as he started up and paced the room impatiently. "Is not that Florence I see in the garden? Alone, too! What a chance!" In a moment he hastened noiselessly down the stairs, opened the drawing-room window and was beside her.

"I hope the bad news they tell me is not true," she said as the walked along side by side.

"What is the bad news?"

"That you are going to leave us."

"And are you such a hypocrite, Florry, as to call this bad news, when you and I both know how little I shall be needed here in a day or two?

We are not to have many more moments together; these are probably the very last of them; let us be frank and honest I'm not surely asking too much in that! For many a day you have sealed up my lips by the threat of not speaking to me on the morrow. Your menace has been, if you repeat this language, I will not walk with you again. Now, Florry, this threat has lost its terror, for to-morrow I shall be gone, gone for ever, and so to-day, here now, I say once more I love you! How useless to tell me that it is all in vain; that you do not, cannot return my affection. I tell you that I can no more despair that I can cease to love you! In the force of that love I bear you is my confidence. I have the same trust in it that I would have in my courage."

"If you but knew the pain you gave me by such words as these--"

"If you knew the pain they cost me to utter them!" cried he. "It is bringing a proud heart very low to sue as humbly as I do. And for what?

Simply for time--only time. All I ask is, do not utterly reject one who only needs your love to be worthy of it When I think of what I was when I met you first--you!--and feel the change you have wrought in my whole nature; how you have planted truthfulness where there was once but doubt; how you have made hope succeed a dark and listless indifference--when I know and feel that in my struggle to be better it is you, and you alone, are the prize before me, and that if that be withdrawn life has no longer a bribe to my ambition--when I think of these, Florry, can you wonder if I want to carry away with me some small spark that may keep the embers alive in my heart?"

"It is not generous to urge me thus," said she in a faint voice.

"The grasp of the drowning man has little time for generosity. You may not care to rescue me, but you may have pity for my fate."

"Oh, if you but knew how sorry I am--"

"Go on, dearest. Sorry for what?"

"I don't know what I was going to say; you have agitated and confused me so, that I feel bewildered. I shrink from saying what would pain you, and yet I want to be honest and straightforward."

"If you mean that to be like the warning of the surgeon--I must cut deep to cure you--I can't say I have courage for it."

For some minutes they walked on side by side without a word. At length he said in a grave and serious tone, "I have asked your aunt, and she has promised me that, except strictly amongst yourselves, my name is not to be mentioned when I leave this. She will, if you care for them, give you my reasons; and I only advert to it now amongst other last requests.

This is a promise, is it not?"

She pressed his hand and nodded.

"Will you now grant me one favour? Wear this ring for my sake; a token of mere memory, no more! Nay, I mean to ask Milly to wear another. Don't refuse me." He drew her hand towards him as he spoke, and slipped a rich turquoise ring upon her finger. Although her hand trembled, and she averted her head, she had not courage to say him no.

"You have not told us where you are going to, nor when we are to hear from you!" said she, after a moment.

"I don't think I know either!" said he in his usual reckless way. "I have half a mind to join Schamyl--I know him--or take a turn with the Arabs against the French. I suppose," added he, with a bitter smile, "it is my fate always to be on the beaten side, and I'd not know how to comport myself as a winner."

"There's Milly making a signal to us. Is it dinnertime already?" said she.

"Ay, my last dinner here!" he muttered. She turned her head away and did not speak.

On that last evening at the villa nothing very eventful occurred. All that need be recorded will be found in the following letter, which Calvert wrote to his friend Drayton, after he had wished his hosts a good-night, and gained his room, retiring, as he did, early, to be up betimes in the morning and catch the first train for Milan.

"Dear Drayton,--I got your telegram, and though I suspect you are astray in your 'law,' and don't believe these fellows can touch me, I don't intend to open the question, or reserve the point for the twelve judges, but mean to evacuate Flanders at once; indeed, my chief difficulty was to decide which way to turn, for having the whole world before me where to choose, left me in that indecision which the poet p.r.o.nounces national when he says,

I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, Musing in my mind what raiment I shall wear!

Chance, however, has done for me what my judgment could not I have been up to Milan and had a look through the newspapers, and I see what I have often predicted has happened The Rajahs of Bengal have got sick of their benefactors, and are bent on getting rid of what we love to call the blessings of the English rule in India. Next to a society for the suppression of creditors, I know of no movement which could more thoroughly secure my sympathy. The brown skin is right. What has he to do with those covenanted and uncovenanted Scotchmen who want to enrich themselves by bullying him? What need has he of governors-general, political residents, collectors and commanders-in-chief?

Could he not raise his indigo, water his rice-fields, and burn his widow, without any help of ours? particularly as our help takes the shape of taxation and vexatious interference.

"I suppose all these are very unpatriotic sentiments; but in the same proportion that Britons never will be slaves, they certainly have no objection to make others such, and I shudder in the very marrow of my morality to think that but for the accident of an accident I might at this very moment have been employed to a.s.sist in repressing the n.o.ble aspirations of n.i.g.g.e.rhood, and helping to stifle the cry of freedom that now resounds from the Sutlej to the Ganges. Is not that a tw.a.n.g from your own lyre, Master D.? Could our Own Correspondent have come it stronger?

"Happily, her Majesty has no further occasion for my services, and I can take a brief on the other side. Expect to hear, therefore, in some mysterious paragraph, That the mode in which the cavalry were led, or the guns pointed, plainly indicated that a European soldier held command on this occasion; and, indeed, some a.s.sert that an English officer was seen directing the movements on our flank.'

To which let me add the hope that the--Fusiliers may be there to see; and if I do not give the major a lesson in battalion drill, call me a Dutchman! There is every reason why the revolt should succeed. I put aside all the bosh about an enslaved race and a just cause, and come to the fact of the numerical odds opposed. The climate intolerable to one, and easily borne by the other; the distance from which reinforcements must come; and, last of all, the certainty that if the struggle only last long enough to figure in two budgets, John Bull will vote it a bore, and refuse to pay for it But here am I getting political when I only meant to be personal; and now to come back, I own that my resolve to go out to India has been aided by hearing that Loyd, of whom I spoke in my last, is to leave by the next mail, and will take pa.s.sage on board the P. and O. steamer Leander, due at Malta on the 22nd. My intention is to be his fellow-traveller, and with this resolve I shall take the Austrian steamer to Corfu, and come up with my friend at Alexandria. You will perhaps bepuzzled to know why the claims of friendship are so strong upon me at such a moment, and I satisfy your most natural curiosity by stating that this is a mission of torture. I travel with this man to insult and to outrage him; to expose him in public places, and to confront him at all times. I mean that this overland journey should be to him for his life long the reminiscence of a pilgrimage of such martyrdom as few have pa.s.sed through, and I have the vanity to believe that not many men have higher or more varied gifts for such a mission than myself. My first task on reaching Calcutta shall be to report progress to you.

"I don't mind exposing a weakness to an old friend, and so I own to you I fell in love here. The girl had the obduracy and wrong headedness not to yield to _my_ suit, and so I had no choice left to me but to persist in it. I know, however, that if I could only remain here a fortnight longer I should secure the inestimable triumph of rendering both of us miserable for life! Yes, Drayton, that pale girl and her paltry fifteen thousand pounds might have spoiled one of the grandest careers that ever adorned history! and lost the world the marvellous origin, rise, progress, and completion of the dynasty of the great English Begum Calvert in Bengal.

Count upon me for high office whenever penny-a-lining fails you, and, if my realm be taxable, you shall be my Chancellor of the Exchequer!

"You are right about that business at Basle; to keep up a controversy would be to invest it with more interest for public gossip. Drop it, therefore, and the world will drop it; and take my word for it, I'll give them something more to say of me, one of these days, than that my hair trigger was too sensitive! I'm writing this in the most romantic of spots. The moonlight is sleeping--isn't that the conventional?--over the olive plain, and the small silvery leaves are glittering in its pale light. Up the great Alps, amongst the deep creva.s.ses, a fitful flashing of lightning promises heat for the morrow; a nightingale sings close to my window; and through the muslin curtain of another cas.e.m.e.nt I can see a figure pa.s.s and repa.s.s and even distinguish that her long hair has fallen down, and floats loosely over neck and shoulders. How pleasantly I might linger on here, 'My duns forgetting, by my duns forgot.' How smoothly I might float down the stream of life, without even having to pull an bar! How delightfully domestic and innocent and inglorious the whole thing! Isn't it tempting, you dog? Does it not touch even _your_ temperament through its thick hide of worldliness? And I believe in my heart it is all feasible, all to be done.

"I have just tossed up for it Head for India, and head it is! So that Loyd is booked for a pleasant journey, and I start to-morrow, to ensure him all the happiness in my power to confer. For the present, it would be as well to tell all anxious and inquiring friends, into which category come tailors, bootmakers, jewellers, &c., that it will be a postal economy not to address Mr. Harry Calvert in any European capital, and to let the 'bills lie on the table,'

and be read this day six years, but add that if properly treated by fortune, I mean to acquit my debts to them one of these days.

"That I 'wish they may get it' is, therefore, no scornful or derisive hope of your friend,

"H. Calvert.