Barren Honour Part 15

So sings Beranger, well, if not wisely. But--add another score of years or so--what will the lodger say of his quarters? Those seven flights of stairs are dark and steep; the bread is hard and tasteless; the wine painfully sour and thin; the fuel runs short, and it is bitter cold, for Lisette is no longer there to hang her cloak over the crazy cas.e.m.e.nt, laughing at the whistle of the baffled wind.

Wyverne saw his uncle that night. The Squire was equally provoked and grieved; the intelligence took him completely by surprise, for he had never guessed that anything was going wrong; he would not allow at first that the engagement was irrevocably broken off, and wished to try what he could do to re-cement it; but Alan was so hopelessly firm on the point that Hubert was forced to yield. He believed in his nephew implicitly, and acquitted him of blame from first to last; but he was completely puzzled by Mrs. Lenox's strange conduct; he only dropped the subject when he saw how evidently it pained Alan to pursue it.

"I shall not write, even to reproach her," the latter said. "I am too heart-sick of her and her caprices. I suppose she will explain herself if we ever meet, and I have patience to listen."

When they parted, the Squire clasped Wyverne's hand hard, looking wistfully into his face.

"I--I did my best, boy," he said, huskily.

The old genial light came back for an instant, only an instant, into the other's weary eyes, and he returned the gripe right cordially.

"Do you think I don't know that?" he answered; "or that I shall ever forget it? We all did our best; but Aunt Mildred has her way, after all.

Take care of Helen; she will need it. And if you would write soon to tell me the truth about her, it would be so very kind."

The next morning Alan started for the North, alone. If the Christmas-tide was dreary at Wyverne Abbey, it was not a "merry" one at Dene. The Squire did not seek to disguise his discontent, though he said little on the subject of the broken engagement, either to his wife or Helen. There was a gloomy reserve in his manner towards the former, that showed that he more than suspected her of unfair play; to the latter he was unusually gentle and considerate. Miss Vavasour bore up bravely. No one looking at the girl's pale proud face would have dreamt of the dull, heavy pain coiled round her heart, like the serpent round Don Roderic in the tomb. She accepted her father's caresses gratefully, and her mother's with placid indifference. No words of recrimination had pa.s.sed between these two; but there is an instinct of distrust as well as of love or fear; the last few days had slain sympathy outright, and even the tough sensibility of the cool diplomatist was not always unmoved as she realized the utter estrangement. So even "my lady," though the game was won, did not feel in vein for the festivities of the season. Her conscience had long ceased to trouble her, when it was a question of expediency; she compa.s.sionated the sorrows of her misguided daughter about as much as a great surgeon does the sufferings of a patient who has just pa.s.sed under his knife; but she was not quite philosopher enough, wholly to disbelieve in Retribution. Her dreams of a brilliant future for Helen were sometimes disturbed by a vision of sad earnest eyes, pleading only that truth might be met by truth--she had answered their appeal so well!

It was an odd sort of life that Wyverne led at the Abbey. He took to shooting over his broad manors, with a dogged determination that rejoiced the hearts of his keepers and tenants and every one interested in the preservation of his game. He went out always early in the morning, and never returned till darkness set in; then he slept for a couple of hours, dined late, and sat smoking and musing far into the night. But it did him good in every way: the strong exercise and the keen north-country air stirred up the iron in his blood, and braced his nerves as well as his sinews. I believe that permanent melancholy implies a morbid condition, not only of the mind but the body. I believe--be it understood this is only a theory, so far--that a man will not _mope_ in the Queen's Bench, though he may hate himself occasionally, and find the position irksome, if he sticks to cold water and rackets. The genial hopefulness which had resisted so many rude shocks, was dead in Alan for ever and aye; but it was not in his nature to become sullen and saturnine; he rejoiced simply and sincerely when his uncle's letter brought good news of Helen; he was not selfish enough to quarrel with his lost love because her wreath was not always ostentatiously twined of the willow. Some men are never satisfied unless they leave more than half the misery behind them.

Wyverne had been at the Abbey about a month, when he got a letter which surprised him not a little. Mr. Haldane wrote, to beg his nephew to visit him, for a single night, and pressed it on the ground that his health was failing.

Castle Dacre was situated far up in the hills, thirty miles or so from the Abbey. They had nicknamed it "Castle Dangerous" through the country-side, for the roads all round it were so infamous as to be sometimes impa.s.sable. Very few, of late years, had found it worth their while to encounter such perils. It was a huge dreary pile--a tall grey keep in the centre, dating back to the time of the Danes: round this long low ranges of more modern buildings were grouped, all in the same pale gaunt granite. The trees cl.u.s.tering about the castle in clumps, and thickly studded over the bleak park, hardly took away from the bare desolate effect; some of them were vast in the trunk and broad in the top, but it seemed as if the bitter north wind had checked their growth, though it could not waste their strength. You shivered involuntarily when you looked at the house from the outside; the contrast was the more striking when you entered. The whole of the interior was almost oppressively light and warm; great fires blazed in huge grates in the most unexpected corners, and bright lamps burned in the remotest nooks of pa.s.sage, and hall, and corridor. A Belgravian establishment might have been maintained for a whole season at the cost of the coals and oil consumed in Dacre Castle; but such was the whim of its eccentric and autocratic master.

Alan Wyverne arrived very late, and did not see his uncle till they met at dinner. Mr. Haldane must always have been small and slight of frame; he was thin, now, to emaciation; there was not a particle of colour in the face or the delicate hands; the articulations in the last were so strongly marked as almost to spoil the perfection of their shape. His features might have been handsome once, and not disagreeable in their expression, but evil tempers and physical suffering had left ruinous traces there; the thin lips had forgotten how to smile, though they were meaning enough when they curled sardonically; he had a curious way of perpetually drawing himself together, as if struck with a sudden chill.

He was just the sort of man you would have set down as a great judge of pictures and collector of curiosities. So it was. The whole house was overflowing with the choicest productions of nature and art, gathered from every quarter of the known world. A long gallery was completely filled with the rarest specimens of china that the last three centuries could display. Some of our connoisseurs would have sold their souls for the plundering of that one chamber.

The dinner was simply perfection. You might have feasted for a whole season at half the best houses in London, and have missed the artistic effects which awaited you in that lonely castle of the far North. The wines of every sort were things to dream of. Mr. Haldane drank nothing but Burgundy. Even Alan Wyverne, accustomed as he was to witness deep wa.s.sail, felt wonder approaching to fear, as he saw his host drain gla.s.s after gla.s.s of the strong rich liquor without betraying a sign of its influence, either by the faintest flush on his thin parchment cheek, or a change of inflection in his low monotonous voice. It seemed as if he were trying to infuse some warmth into his veins, in defiance of a curse laid upon him--to remain frozen and statuelike forever.

While dinner lasted, the conversation went languishing on, never coming to a full stop, but never in the least animated. It was evident that the thoughts of both often wandered far away from the subject they were talking of. At last they drew their great arm-chairs up to the fire, one on each side of the horse-shoe table, with a perfect barricade of gla.s.s between them in the shape of decanters and claret-jugs. For the first ten minutes after they were left alone the host kept silence, leaning forward and spreading his hands over the fierce fire; they were so thin and white that the light seemed to pa.s.s through them as it does through transparent china. He raised his head suddenly and glanced aside at his companion, who was evidently musing, with an expression half inquisitive, half satirical, in his keen grey eyes.

"So everything is at an end between you and Helen Vavasour. I am very glad of it, and not the least surprised."

It is never pleasant to have one's reveries abruptly broken; the nerves are _agaces_, if nothing worse. Besides this, both words and manner grated on Alan's sensibilities disagreeably. He did not fancy those thin cynical lips p.r.o.nouncing that name with such scant ceremony; so his tone was anything but conciliatory.

"Thank you. I don't seem to care much about being congratulated, or condoled with, either; and I cannot conceive what interest the subject can have for you. You ignored it pretty decisively some months ago.

Perhaps you will be good enough to do so now."

The look on his face, that had been simply listless before, grew hard and defiant while he was speaking. If Bernard Haldane was inclined to take offence, he certainly controlled his temper wonderfully. He filled a great gla.s.s to the brim with Chambertin, held it for a minute against the blaze, letting the light filter through the gorgeous purple, and drained it slowly before he replied--

"I am not surprised at your engagement being broken off, because I know right well with whom you had to deal. I am glad, because I have always taken an interest in you, Alan. You don't believe it; but it is true nevertheless; and I do so still. I would sooner see a man I cared for dead, than married to Mildred Vavasour's daughter."

Wyverne's anger ceased, as soon as he saw that the old man had some reason, real or fancied, for his strange conduct; but he spoke coldly still.

"Strong words, sir. I suppose you have strong provocation to justify them?"

Bernard Haldane drew a folded letter from his breast-pocket, and put it into the other's hand, silently. The paper was yellow with age, the ink faint and faded; but Alan knew the handwriting instantly. His astonishment deepened as he read on. Was it possible that his cool, calculating, diplomatic aunt could have penned such words as these--words in which pa.s.sion seemed to live and vibrate still, untamed by pa.s.sage through thirty years?

Mr. Haldane drained two gla.s.ses in rapid succession while the letter was reading. There was no thickness or hesitation in his voice when he spoke again, but it was hard and hoa.r.s.e, as if his throat were dust-dry in spite of all the Burgundy.

"That is her last letter--the last of forty or more. I have them all still, and I think I know them all by heart. You may laugh out if you like; I shall not be angry. She wrote once more--not a letter, only a note--to break all off, without a word of remorse for herself or pity for me. A fresh fancy or a better match came across her, so she turned me adrift like a dog she was tired of. She would have given me a dog's death, too, if she could, I dare say; for, till she was married, she never felt safe. Do you wonder now, or blame me, for what I have said and done or _not_ done?"

Six weeks ago such a story as this would have won hearty sympathy from Alan Wyverne; but he had suffered too lately himself, to be moved by a tale of wrong thirty years old. He could not forget Bernard Haldane's answer to his own letter, and the idea would haunt him that in some way or other it had materially affected his matrimonial prospects.

"I neither wonder nor blame," he said, wearily. "If any one is right in visiting the sins of the mothers on the children, I suppose you were.

Certainly, 'my lady' has a good deal to answer for. I understand her look now, when I mentioned your name. Yes, I _do_ wonder at one thing. I don't understand why you married my father's sister."

The old man glanced darkly at the speaker from under his strong grey eyebrows.

"I hope my poor wife never knew the lie I uttered at the altar; or, if she did, that she forgave me before she died. But G.o.d knew it, and punished it. Alan--you are my nearest heir."

After those significant words there was silence for some minutes, only broken by a faint tinkle and gurgle, as the host filled his gla.s.s repeatedly, and his guest followed the example in more moderate fashion.

At last Mr. Haldane spoke again.

"Alan, I wonder what would be your line, if you came into this inheritance? Do you know, it is larger than the one you threw away?"

A few weeks ago, when Wyverne's fortunes were bound up with Helen Vavasour's, such a speech as that would have sent a hot thrill of hope through all his being: he heard it now with an indifference which was not in the least a.s.sumed.

"It would be a hazardous experiment," he answered, carelessly. "They say there is a great pleasure in h.o.a.rding, when you have more money than you know what to do with. I never tried it; perhaps I should take to avarice for a change. But I might take to playing again: it's just as likely as not; and then everything would go, if my present luck lasted--the pictures and the gems, and the china, and the mosaics. It would be a thousand pities, too; I don't believe there's such another collection in England."

Bernard Haldane seemed determined, that night, not to be provoked by anything that his nephew could do or say. He was so accustomed to be surrounded by helpless dependents, bowing themselves without remonstrance or resistance before his tyrannical temper, that he had got weary of obsequiousness. Alan's haughty _nonchalance_, though it evidently proceeded from dislike or displeasure, rather refreshed the old cynic than otherwise.

"You are honest at all events," he muttered; "it's no use trying to bribe you into forgetting injuries; if you _will_ bear malice,--there's an end of it. We won't speak of inheritances: they put unpleasant thoughts into a man's head, whose health is breaking faster every day."

Once more a shiver ran through the speaker's emaciated frame, as it cowered and shrunk together; and once more the thin white hands spread themselves eagerly to the blaze. After a pause he rose, evidently to go, and there was something actually approaching to cordiality in his manner.

"It is hardly fair to ask you to stay on in this dreary place; but it would please me very much if you would spare me a few days. They tell me the covers are full of game, and you can have a hundred beaters at half an hour's notice. You will be nearly as much alone here as at the Abbey, for I never appear till dinner-time, and I go to bed very early, as you see. The Burgundy is a good sleeping-draught, but it must be humoured.

You will stay over to-morrow, at least? I am glad of that. Perhaps you would like to see the keeper? Give any orders you please, not only about this, but about anything you may fancy: I _can_ answer for their being promptly obeyed. Good-night."

His step, as he left the room, was slow and feeble; but not the slightest uncertainty or unsteadiness of gait gave token of the deep incessant draughts of fiery liquor that would long ago have dizzied any ordinary brain. Every family of ancient name, besides its statesmen and soldiers, preserves the moist memory of some baccha.n.a.lian t.i.tan, whose exploits are inscribed on bowl, or tankard, or beaker. We may not doubt that there were giants in those days; but the prowess of the mightiest of all those stalwart squires would have been hardly tried, if he had "drunk fair" that night with the little, wan, withered hypochondriac.

CHAPTER XVII.

A WISE MAN IN THE EAST.

Day succeeded day, and Alan Wyverne still lingered at Dacre Castle. He could hardly have told you what kept him there. The shooting certainly was a great attraction, for, though the season closed in the first week of his stay, there were snipe and wild-fowl enough to have found work for half a dozen guns; but it was not the only one. The truth was, that a sort of liking had sprung up between the cynical host and his quiet guest. No amount of deep drinking could warm Bernard Haldane into an approach to conviviality; but his morose, moody temper decidedly softened during the few hours that he spent each evening in Alan's society. There was no sympathy perhaps, strictly speaking, between these two, but there was a certain affinity of suffering. The same soft white hand had stricken them both sorely, though one wound was yet green, and the other had been rankling more than a score of years. After that first night, neither made the faintest allusion to the subject; but ever and anon, when they were talking about pictures or other things in which both took an interest, the conversation would drop suddenly, and a silence would ensue as if by mutual consent; then, each felt conscious that his companion's thoughts were wandering in the same direction as his own, and with equal bitterness. After a few minutes you might have seen each break from his reverie, with the same half angry impatience, as if despising himself for the weakness of such idle musing, knowing all the while that the return of the dreaming-fit was as much a certainty and a question of hours as the rising of the morrow's sun.

Wyverne's visit would probably have been still further prolonged, if an invitation had not come one morning, suiting his present humour so exactly, that he accepted it without a moment's hesitation. An old comrade of Alan's was on the point of starting in his yacht for a roving cruise round the sh.o.r.es of Greece and Syria, with an intention of penetrating as far as the hunting-grounds that lie westward of the lower spurs of the Caucasus: indeed, there was a charming indefiniteness about the whole thing; the limits of their wanderings and the time of their return were to depend entirely on circ.u.mstances and the fancy of the travellers. Raymond Graham had heard of his friend's late disappointment, though he made no allusion to it in his letter, only enlarging on the sporting prospects of the expedition and the attractions of a very pleasant party. He thought it would be just the proposal to tempt Wyverne, and he guessed right.

None of the new-fashioned remedies beat some of the old ones, after all.

Change of climate and change of scene enable the sufferer to make a stand against sickness of body or mind just as effectually as they did four thousand years ago.

Hot blinding tears stream down Dido's stricken face as she steals on board her galley in the harbour of Tyre; for nights she will not close her heavy eyes, lest a dead man should stand by her couch pointing to the gash of Pygmalion's dagger; the boldest of her true friends and leal va.s.sals dares not trouble with a word of comfort that great hopeless sorrow. But see--the headlands of Cyprus are yet blue in the leeward distance, and the rich blood has begun to colour the pale cheek again; when the dark lashes lift, men see that the divine light is not quenched in the glorious eyes; nay, the sweet lips do not dissemble a faint, sad smile as she hears Bitias boasting loud of the bride he will win before sundown. Of a truth, I think the fair Queen's dreams will cease to be spectre-haunted, before her prow touches ground in the sands of Bagradas.

They are more definite now as to the seasons of donning and doffing their weeds, and will not set their tresses free a day too soon; but, O Benedict, my friend, are you sanguine enough to believe that so long a voyage would be needed, to replace despairing grief by decorous woe, in the desolate bosom of your widow, or mine?