Sword and Gown Part 11

On these grounds I venture to hope that all well-regulated readers will concur with me in p.r.o.nouncing Mr. Fullarton's conduct totally indefensible. It would have been so easy to have communicated his intelligence to any that it might concern, discreetly, at a fitting place and time, instead of casting it into the midst of a convivial a.s.sembly like a fulminating ball. Under other circ.u.mstances, he would probably have taken the quieter course; but he had been smarting for some time under a succession of provocations, real and fancied, from Royston Keene, and his own misadventure that morning had filled the cup of irritation brimful. It was the old exasperating feeling--

Earl Percy sees my fall.

Whatever might be the cost, he could not make up his mind to let slip so fair a chance of embarra.s.sing his imperturbable enemy. There is no saying what he would have given to see that marvelous self-command for once thoroughly break down. It is unfortunate that the best-laid plans can not always insure a triumph. The chaplain certainly did succeed in producing a "situation," and in reducing most of the party to that uncomfortable frame of mind which is popularly described as "wishing one's self any where;" but the person who seemed most completely unconcerned was the man at whom the blow was leveled.

The major shook his head with a quick gesture of impatience, just as if some insect had lighted on his forehead; beyond this, for any evidence of his being annoyed by it, Mr. Fullarton's last remark might have related to missionary prospects or Chinese politics. The steady color on his swarthy face neither lost nor gained a shade. There was not a sign of anger, or shame, or confusion in his clear, bold eyes; and, when he answered, there was not one fresh furrow on the brow that, at lighter provocation, was so apt to frown.

"I give you credit for being utterly ignorant of what you are talking about, Mr. Fullarton. You could not possibly guess how disagreeable the subject would be to me. As it can't be in the least interesting to any one else, suppose we change it?"

Just the same cold, measured voice as ever, with only a slight sarcastic inflection to vary the deep, grave tones; but a very close observer might have seen his fingers clench the handle of a knife while he was speaking, as if their gripe would have dinted the ivory.

It was hardly to be expected that the rest of the party would emulate the _sang-froid_ of the Cool Captain. Sailing under false colors is a convenient practice enough, and productive sometimes of many prizes; but divers penalties attach to its detection, on land as well as on sea.

Indeed, it involves the necessity of _somebody's_ appearing as a convicted impostor. On the present occasion--as the actor for whom the character was cast utterly declined to play it--the part fell to poor Harry Molyneux, who certainly looked it to perfection. In all his little difficulties and troubles, when hard pressed, he was wont to fall back upon the reserve of _la mignonne_, sure of meeting there with sympathy, if not with succor. He dared not do so now. He dared not encounter the reproach of the beautiful, gentle eyes that had never looked into his own otherwise than trustfully since they first told the secret that she loved him dearly. The half-smothered cry that broke from f.a.n.n.y's lips when the chaplain made his disclosure went straight to the heart of her treacherous husband. He felt as if he deserved that those pretty lips should never smile upon him again.

Oh, all my readers!--masculine especially--whose patience has carried you thus far, remark, I beseech you, the dangers that attend any dereliction from the duty of matrimonial confidence. What right have we to lock up the secrets of our most intimate friends, far less our own, instead of pouring them into the bosom of the [Greek: _bathukolpos akoitis_], which is capacious enough to hold them all, were they tenfold more numerous and weighty? Such reticence is rife with awful peril. In our folly and blindness, we fancy ourselves secure, while the ground is mined under our guilty feet, and the explosion is even now preparing, from which only our _disjecta membra_ will emerge. Of course, some cold-hearted caviler will begin to quote instances of carefully-planned and promising conspiracies, which miscarried solely because the details reached a feminine ear. It may have been so; but I don't see what business conspiracies have to succeed at all. Long live the Const.i.tution! Truly, such delightful confidences must be something one-sided, for the mildest Griselda of them all would be led as a "Martha to the Stakes" sooner than concede to her husband the unrestricted supervision of her correspondence. I have indeed a dim recollection of having heard of _one_ bride of seventeen, who, during the honeymoon, was weak and (_selon les dames_) wicked enough to submit to profane male eyes epistles received from the friends of her youth, in their simple entirety, instead of reading out an expurgated edition of the same. She had been brought up in a very dungeon of decorum by a terrible grandmother, a rigid moralist, whom no man ever yet beheld without a shiver; and during those first few weeks after her escape she was probably intoxicated by the novel sense of freedom, besides which, she was perfectly infatuated about "Reginald;" but all this could not exculpate her when arraigned before her peers. She lived long enough to repent and to rea.s.sert, to some extent, her lost matronly dignity, but she died very young--let us hope in fair course of nature. She had violated the first law of a guild more numerous and influential than that of the Freemasons. Examples are necessary from time to time, and, though the _Vehme-gericht_ may pity the offender, it may not therefore linger in its vengeance. Nevertheless, my brethren, our course is clear.

Let us resign to the chatelaine the key of the letter-bag and the censorship thereof. If, after due warning, our light-minded friends _will_ write to us in terms that mislike that excellent and punctilious inspectress, they must aby it in the cold looks and bitter innuendoes which will be their portion when they come to us in the next hunting season. Our conscience, at least, will be pure and undefiled, and we shall pa.s.s to the end of our pilgrimage _sans peur_, though perchance, even then, not _sans reproche_. "Servitudes," as Miggs, the veteran vestal remarked, "is no inheritance," but there are natures who thrive rarely in this tranquil and inglorious condition. Such men live, as a rule, pretty contentedly to a great old age, and die in the odor of intense respectability. Salubrious, it seems, as well as creditable to the patient, is a _regime_ of moderate hen-pecking, only it is necessary that he should be of the intermediate species between Socrates and Georges Dandin.

Mrs. Danvers would certainly have indulged openly in that immoderate exultation to which all minor prophets are p.r.o.ne when their predictions chance to be verified, but this was checked by her const.i.tutional timidity. She was horribly afraid of the effect that the revelation might have on her patroness; therefore what precise meaning was implied by the complicated contortions of her countenance no mortal can guess or know. Her sensations probably resolved themselves into an excess of admiration for the pastor in his new character of a denouncer of detected guilt and champion of imperiled innocence, added to which was a vague desire to lanch her own anathema maranatha at Royston Keene.

d.i.c.k Tresilyan took the whole thing with remarkable coolness, not to say complacency. He nodded his head, and smiled, and winked cunningly aside at Molyneux, as if to intimate that he had known all about it long ago, and, indeed, so far he had been admitted into the major's confidence on the night when the latter was supposed to have "lost his head." By what sophistries Royston had succeeded in masking his purpose and making his case good, even to such an unsuspicious mind and easy morality, the devil could best tell, who in such schemes had rarely failed him.

We have left Cecil to the last. My proud, beautiful Cecil--was she not born for better things than to be made the prize of all those plottings and counter-plottings--to surrender the key of her heart's treasures to one who was unworthy to kiss the hem of her robe--and now to have her self-command tried so cruelly to gratify the wounded vanity of a weak, shallow enthusiast?

She did not flinch or start when Mr. Fullarton's words caught her ear, but a heavy, chill faintness stole over her, till she felt all her limbs benumbed, and every thing before her eyes grew misty and dim. The numbness pa.s.sed away almost immediately, but still the figures around her appeared distorted and fantastically exaggerated; they seemed to be tossing and whirling round one steadfast centre, as the dead leaves in winter eddy round the marble head of a statue; that single centre-object remained, throughout, distinct and unaltered in its aspect, while all else was confused and uncertain--the face of Royston Keene. The sight of that face--not defiant or even stern, but immutable in its cold tranquillity--acted on Cecil as a magical restorative; it seemed as though he were able, by some mesmeric influence, to impart to her a portion of his own miraculous self-control. Before his reply to the chaplain was ended, she threw back her proud head with the old imperial gesture, as if scorning her own momentary weakness; no mist or shadow clouded the brilliant violet eyes; she might speak safely now, without risking a false note in the music. It was no light peril that she escaped; the betrayal of emotion under such circ.u.mstances would have weighed down a meeker spirit than The Tresilyan's with a sense of ineffaceable shame; for remember--however marked her partiality for Keene might have been--there had been no suspicion of an engagement between them. Had she broken down then, she would not have forgiven Royston to her dying day: she never _did_ forgive the chaplain. As it was--by a strange anomaly--at the very moment when she became aware of having been deluded and misled, in intention if not by actually spoken words--when she had most reason to hate or despise the "enemy who had done her this dishonor"--she felt his hold upon her heart strengthened, as though he had justified his right to command it. Not to women alone, but to all beautiful, wild creatures, the ancient aphorism applies: the harder they are to discipline, the better they love their tamer. Cecil thought, "there is not another man alive whose eyes could meet mine so daringly:" and the haughty spirit bowed itself, and did obeisance to its suzerain. Different in many respects as good can be from evil--in one, those two were as fairly matched as Thiodolf and Isolde. Who can tell what wealth of happiness might have been stored up for both, if they had only not met--too late?

These two words seem to me the most of any that are written or spoken.

They strike the key-note of so many human agonies, that they might form a motto, apter than Dante's, for the gates of h.e.l.l. Very few may hear them without a melancholy thrill; well--if they do not bring a bitter pang. Like those awful conjurations that blanched in utterance the lips of the boldest magi, they have a fearful power to wake the dead. Lo!

they are scarcely syllabled when there is a stir in the grave-yard where sad or guilty memories lie buried; the air is alive with phantoms; the watcher may close his eyes if he will: not the less is he sensible of the presence of those pale ghosts that come trooping to their vengeance. Many, many hours must pa.s.s before the spell is learned that will send them back to their tombs again.

Not long ago I heard a story that bears upon this. The man of whom it was told lost his love after he had fairly wooed and won her. It matters not what suspicion, or misconception, or treachery parted them; but parted they were for eight miserable years. Then the lady repented or relented, and came to her lover to make her confession. When she had done speaking, she looked up into his face: she saw no light of gladness or welcome there--only a deepening and darkening of the weary look of pain: the arms whose last tender clasp she had not forgotten yet, never opened to draw her to his breast. He bent his head down upon his shaking hands, and the heavy drops that are sometimes wrung from strong men in their agony began to trickle through his fingers. In old days he could never bear to see her sad for a moment; now, he sat as though he heard her not, while she lay at his feet, wailing to be forgiven. When he could perfectly control his voice he said,

"More than once, in my dreams, I have seen you so, and I have heard you say what you have said to-day. I answered then as I answer now--I never can forgive you. I do not know that you would not regain your old ascendency; I believe you are as dangerous, and I as weak, as ever. But I do know that, the more fascinating I found you, the harder it would be to bear. Thinking of what I had missed through that accursed time of famine would drive me mad soon. I have got used to my present burden: I won't give you the chance of making it heavier. Those tears of mine were selfish as well as childish; they were given to the happiness and hope that you killed eight years ago. Stay--we parted with a show of kindness then; we will not part in anger now."

He laid his lips on her forehead as he raised her up--a grave, cold, pa.s.sionless kiss, such as is pressed on the brow of a dear friend lying in his shroud. They never met alone again.

It is exasperating to think how long I have taken to describe events and emotions that pa.s.sed in the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes; but to place all the _dramatis personae_ in their proper positions does take time, unless the stage-manager is very experienced. Will you be good enough to imagine the picnic broken up (_not_ in confusion), and the "strayed revelers" on their way to Dorade? Nothing worthy of note occurred on the spot; a commonplace conversation having been started and maintained in a way equally creditable to all parties concerned.

CHAPTER XVII.

All the inquiries that the chaplain had "felt it his duty" to make respecting the antecedents of Royston Keene had failed to elicit any thing more discreditable than may be said of the generality of men who have spent a dozen years in rather a fast regiment, keeping up to the standard of the corps. Doubtless graver charges might have been imputed to him, if the whole truth had been known; but the living witnesses who could have proved them had good reasons for their silence. Whether successful or defeated, the Cool Captain was not wont to take the world into his confidence. As for betraying his own or another's secrets--his lips were about as likely to do _that_ as those of an effigy on a tomb-stone.

Naples was a cover that the reverend investigator had not drawn; so he was considerably startled by the following words in a letter from thence, received that morning: "I meet a lady constantly in society here, of whose history I am curious to know more. She is the wife of Major Keene, the famous Indian _sabreur_; but has been separated from him for several years. She never makes an allusion to his existence; it was by the merest chance that I heard this, and also that her husband is spending the winter at Dorade. Perhaps you can throw some light on the cause of the 'separate maintenance?' People are not particular here, and have no right to be; still, one would like to know. I fancy it can not be her fault; she is perfectly gentle in her manner, but rather cold--very beautiful too, in a placid, statuesque style." It is not worth transcribing the writer's farther speculations. If a silent, but ultra-fervent benediction can at all profit the person for whom it is intended, very few people have been so well paid for epistolary labor, as was, then, Mr. Fullarton's correspondent. The reason why has already been explained.

Well, he had made his great _coup_ without carefully counting the cost--that financial pleasure was still to come. He could not help feeling that it had been rather _fiasco_. The man whom he had purposed utterly to discomfit had throughout been provokingly at his ease; the best that could be made of it was, a drawn battle. A disagreeable consciousness crept over the chaplain of having made himself generally obnoxious, without reaping any equivalent advantage or even satisfaction. No one seemed to look kindly or admiringly at him since the disclosure, except Mrs. Danvers; and, glutton as he was of such dainties, the adulation of that exemplary but unattractive female began rather to pall on his palate. He was clear-sighted enough to be aware that Miss Tresilyan was probably offended with him beyond hope of reconciliation, but this did not greatly trouble him. He had been sensible for some time of the decay of his influence in that quarter.

Last of all rose on his mind, with unpleasant distinctness, Cecil's warning, "If I were a man, I should not like to have Major Keene as my enemy." He had thrown the lance over that enemy's frontier, and it was now too late to talk of truce. A dread of the consequences overcame him as he thought of the reprisals that might be exacted by the merciless and unscrupulous guerilla. True, it was not very evident what harm the latter could do him; nevertheless, he could not shake off a vague, depressing apprehension. More and more, as he strolled on, moodily musing, far in the rear of the rest, he felt inclined to appreciate the wisdom of the ancient proverb, "Let sleeping dogs lie." Years afterward he remembered with what a startled thrill, raising his eyes at a sharp angle of the path, he found himself face to face with Royston Keene.

For some seconds they contemplated each other silently--the priest and the soldier. A striking contrast they made. The one, heated, and excited, and nervous, both in appearance and manner, looking more like a culprit brought up for judgment than a pillar of the Established Church; the other, outwardly as undemonstrative as the rock against which he leaned--just a shade of paleness telling of the sharp mental struggle from which he had come out victorious--his whole bearing and demeanor precisely what might have been expected if he had been sitting on a court-martial.

The absurdity of the position struck the chaplain as soon as he collected himself from his first surprise. It never would do for _him_ to look as if he had any thing to be ashamed of; so, summoning to his aid all the dignity of his office and his own self-importance, with a great effort, he spoke steadily:

"I presume you wish to talk to me, Major Keene? I shall be glad to hear any thing that you may have to communicate or explain. It is my duty as well as my desire to be useful to any member of my congregation, however little disposed they may be to avail themselves of their privileges.

Interested, as I must be in the welfare of all committed to my charge, I need hardly say that the course you have chosen to pursue here has caused me great pain and anxiety--I own, not so much for your sake as that of others, to whom your influence was likely to be pernicious. What I heard this morning makes matters look still worse. I wish I could antic.i.p.ate any satisfactory explanation."

The old _ex cathedra_ feeling came back upon him while he was speaking; his tone, gradually becoming rounder and more sonorous, showed this. Was he so besotted by sacerdotal confidence as to fancy that he could win that grim penitent to come to him to be confessed or absolved?

Since the chaplain first saw him Royston had never changed his att.i.tude.

He was leaning with his shoulder against the corner of rock round which the path turned, standing half across it, so that no one could pa.s.s him easily. The dense blue cloudlets of smoke kept rolling out from his lips rapidly, but regularly, and his right hand twined itself perpetually in the coils of his heavy brown mustache. That gesture, to those who knew his temper well, was ever ominous of foul and stormy weather. He did not reply immediately, but, taking the cigar from his mouth, began twisting up the loose leaf in a slow, deliberative way. At last he said,

"You did that rather well this morning. How much did you expect to get for it? My wife is liberal enough in her promises sometimes, when she wants to make herself disagreeable, but she don't pay well. You might have driven a better bargain by coming to me. I would have given you more to have held your tongue." His tone was such as the other had never heard him use--such as most people would be loth to employ toward the meanest dependent. No description can do justice to the intensity of its insolence; it made even Mr. Fullarton's torpid blood boil resentfully.

"How dare you address such words to me?" he cried out, trembling with rage. "If it were not for my profession--"

"Stop!" the other broke in, rudely; "you need not trouble yourself to repeat that stale clap-trap. You mean to say that, if I were not safe from your profession, I should not have said so much. It isn't worth while lying to yourself, and I have no time to trifle. The converse is the truer way of putting it. You know better than I can tell you that, if you had been unfrocked, you would never have ventured half what you have done to day. You don't stir from hence till this is settled. Do you suppose I'll allow my private affairs to be made, again, an occasion for indulging your taste for theatricals?"

The chaplain flushed apoplectically. He just managed to stammer out,

"I will not remain another instant to listen to your blasphemous insults. If you mean to prevent me from pa.s.sing, I will return another way."

Scornfully He turned; but thrilled with priestly wrath, to feel His sacred arm locked in a grasp of steel.

A bolder man might have got nervous, finding himself on a lonely hill-side, face to face with such an adversary, reading, too, the savage meaning of those murderous eyes. Remember that Mr. Fullarton held Royston capable of any earthly crime. His own short-lived anger was instantly annihilated; the sweat of mortal terror broke out over all his livid face; his lips could hardly gasp out an unintelligible prayer for mercy.

The soldier's stern face settled into an expression of contempt: in his gentlest moods he could find little sympathy for purely physical fear.

"Don't faint," he said; "there is no occasion for it. Do you think I shall 'slay you as I slew the Egyptian yesterday?' Well, I have scanty respect for your office, especially when its privileges are abused. If it were not for good reasons, I would serve you worse than I did that drunken scoundrel who frightened you almost to death down there among the vines; but that don't suit my purpose. Listen: if you dare to interfere again, by word, or deed, or sign, in the affairs of me and mine, I know a better way of making you repent it."

As soon as he saw that there was no real danger to life or limb, the chaplain's composure began to return. He launched forth immediately into a gallant though incoherent defiance. Royston's features never for an instant changed or softened in their scorn.

"Fair words," he retorted; "but I'll make your bubbles burst. You don't monopolize _all_ the resources of the Private Inquiry Office;" and, stooping down, he whispered a dozen words in the other's ear. They related to a charge brought against Mr. Fullarton years ago, so circ.u.mstantial and difficult to disprove that, with all the advantages of counter-evidence at hand, it had well-nigh borne him down. He knew right well that, if it were once revived here abroad, where the lightest suspicion is caught up and used so readily, the consequences would be nothing short of utter ruin. He was a poor man, with a large family. No wonder if he quailed.

"You know--you know," he gasped, "that it is a vile, cruel falsehood."

To do him justice, he spoke the simple truth there.

With a cold, tranquil satisfaction, the major contemplated his victim's agony.

"I choose to know nothing about it, except that it carries more probability than most stories one hears. The world in general is, fortunately, not incredulous, and I have seen a man 'broke' on lighter evidence. Well, you will take your own course, and I shall take mine. I fancy we understand each other--at last."

By a superhuman effort the unlucky ecclesiastic did contrive to mutter something about his "determination to do his duty." Royston listened to him with his worst smile.

"I'll take my chance about that," he said. "I feel tolerably safe. Now I'll leave you to settle the affair between your interest and your conscience."

He turned on his heel, and strode away without another word. Long after he was out of sight the chaplain stood fixed in the same att.i.tude of panic-stricken, helpless despondency. By my faith! even in these degenerate days, we have petrifying influences left that may match the head of the Gorgon.

Meanwhile, the others were wending slowly homeward, truly in a very different mood from that in which they had gone forth that morning. Even as no man can be p.r.o.nounced happy till the hour of his death, so can no excursion or entertainment be called successful till night has fairly closed in. Caprice of climate is only one of the many sources of disappointment, and the event justifies so seldom our sanguine predictions that we have little right to complain of false and fallible barometers. It is worthy of remark how often these trifles ill.u.s.trate that trite and time-honored simile of Life. The vessel starts gayly enough, heeling over gracefully to the land-wind in the old, approved fashion--"Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm"--there is not a misgiving in the heart of any of the pa.s.sengers; they can not help pitying those left behind on the sh.o.r.e. What a cheery adieu they wave to the friends who come down to wish them "good-speed!" After a voyage more or less prolonged the same ship drifts in slowly sh.o.r.eward, over the harbor-bar, under the calm of the solemn sunset. Even the deepening twilight can not disguise the evidences of a terrible "sea-change." Not a trace of paint or gilding remains on the wave-worn, shattered timbers.