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Fated to Be Free: A Novel, a novel by Jean Ingelow |
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Chapter 34. Valentine And Laura |
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_ CHAPTER XXXIV. VALENTINE AND LAURA
Tamil Proverb.
She did not speak without book, for old Madam Melcombe was already said to haunt the churchyard. Not as a being in human guise, but as a white, widewinged bird, perfectly noiseless in its movements, skimming the grass much as owls do, but having a plaintive voice like that of a little child. Late in the night again, when all the stars were out sparkling in a moonless sky, and the household should long have been asleep, the same fancy or fear recurred. Two housemaids woke suddenly, and felt as if there was a moaning somewhere outside. They had been sleeping in the heat with their window open, and they looked out and saw a dark shadow moving in the garden, moving away from the house, and seeming to make as if it wrung its hands. After this, still peering out into the starlight, they lost sight of it; but they fancied that they heard it sigh, and then it stood a dark column in their sight, and seemed to fall upon the bed of lilies, and there lie till they were afraid to look any longer, and they shut their window and crept again into their beds. But the lilies? It might have been true that they saw somewhat, but if a spirit had haunted the dark garden that night, surely no trace of its sojourn would have remained on the bed of lilies; yet in the morning many, very many of their fragrant leaves were crushed and broken, as if in truth some houseless or despairing being had crouched there. The housemaids told their tale next morning, and it was instantly whispered in the house that the ghost had come again. The maids shook with fear as they went about, even in broad daylight. The gardener alone was incredulous, and made game of the matter. "Hang the ghost!" said he; but then he came from the eastern counties, and had no reverence for the old family "fetch." "Hang the ghost! why shouldn't that shadow have been the brown pony? Ain't he out at grass, and didn't I find the garden-door ajar this morning? He came in, I'll be bound." Then the gardener shouldered his spade, and finding a number of footmarks all over the place, specially about the bed of lilies, and certainly not those of a pony, he carefully obliterated them, and held his peace. Shaking his head when alone, and muttering, "They're a queer lot, these Melcombes--who'd have expected this now! If the dead ones don't walk, the live ones do. Restless, that's what it is. Restless, too much to eat. I should say, and too little to do. When the missis comes we shall have more sensible doings, and I wish the missis had never left us, that I do." Mrs. Peter Melcombe, thus welcomed back again in the gardener's mind, was then driving up to the door of Melcombe House, and Valentine was stepping out to receive her. It was natural that she should feel agitated, and Valentine accosted her so seriously as to increase her emotion. She had been able to recover her usually equable spirits after the loss of her child, it was only on particular occasions that she now gave way to tears. She was by no means of their number who love to make a parade of grief; on the contrary, emotion was painful to her, and she thankfully avoided it when she could. She retired with Laura, and after a reasonable time recovered herself, taking care to go at once into the room where her darling had slept, and where he had played, that she might not again be overcome. "I have dreaded this inexpressibly," she said, sobbing, to Laura, who was following her with real sympathy. "Valentine was very odd," answered Laura; "you would, I am sure, have got over your return quite calmly, if he had been less solemn. Surely, Amelia dear, he is altered." "He was oppressed, no doubt, at sight of me; he felt for me." Laura said no more, but several times during that first day she made wondering observations. She looked in vain for the light-hearted companionable young fellow with whom she had become intimate in cousinly fashion, and whom she had fully hoped to consult about a certain affair of her own. She saw an air of oppressive bitterness and absence of mind that discouraged her greatly. "There is no mistaking his expression of countenance," she thought; "he must have been disappointed in love." "Laura," exclaimed Mrs. Melcombe, when the two ladies, having left the dining-room, were alone together in the old grandmother's favourite parlour, now used as a drawing-room--"Laura, what can this mean? Is he dyspeptic? Is he hypochondriacal? I declare, if Mr. Craik had not been invited to meet us, I hardly see how we could have got through the dinner: he is very odd." "And surely the conversation was odd too," said Laura. "How they did talk about old Becky Maddison and her death this afternoon! How fervently he expressed his gladness that Mr. Craik had seen her to-day, and had administered the sacrament to her! I suppose you observed Valentine's hesitation when you asked if he believed her story?" "Yes; I felt for the moment as if I had no patience with him, and I asked because I wanted to bring him to reason. He can hardly wish to own before sensible people that he does believe it; and if he does not, he must know that she was an impostor, poor old creature." Then she repeated, "He is very odd," and Laura said-- "But we know but little of him. It may be his way to have fits of melancholy now and then. How handsome he is!" Amelia admitted this; adding, "And he looks better without that perpetual smile. He had an illness, I think, two years ago; but he certainly appears to be perfectly well now. It cannot be his health that fails him." There was the same surprise next morning. Valentine seemed to be making an effort to entertain them, but he frequently lapsed into silence and thought. No jokes, good or bad, were forthcoming. Mrs. Melcombe felt that if she had not received such a warm and pressing invitation to come to visit Melcombe, she must have now supposed herself to be unwelcome. She took out some work, and sat in the room where they had breakfasted, hoping to find an opportunity to converse with him on her own plans and prospects; while Laura, led by her affectionate feelings, put on her hat and sauntered down the garden--to the lily-bed of course, and there she stood some time, thinking of her dear old grandmother. She was not altogether pleased with its appearance, and she stooped to gather out a weed here and there. Presently Valentine came down the garden. He was lost in thought, and when he saw Laura he started and seemed troubled. "What can you be about, Laura dear?" he said. He had made up his mind that she had a pecuniary claim on him, and therefore he purposely addressed her with the affection of a relative. He felt that this would make it easier for her to admit this convenient claim. "What am I about?" answered Laura. "Why, Valentine, I was just picking off some of these leaves, which appear to have been broken. The bed looks almost as if some--some creature had been lying on it." "Does it?" said Valentine, and he sighed, and stood beside her while she continued her self-imposed task. "These lilies, you know," she remarked, "have great attractions for us." "Yes," said Valentine, and sighed again. "How he shivers!" thought Laura. "You cannot think," she said, rising from her task and looking about her, "how it touches my feelings to come back to the old place." "You like it then, Laura?" "Like it! I love it, and everything belonging to it." "Including me!" exclaimed Valentine, rallying for the moment and laughing. Laura looked up and laughed too, but without answering. Before there was time for that, she had seen the light of his smile die out, and the gloom settle down again. A sort of amazement seemed to be growing under his eyelids; his thought, whatever it was, had gradually returned upon him, and he was struck by it with a new surprise. "Valentine!" she exclaimed. "Yes," he answered steadily and gravely, and then roused himself to add, "Come out from under the shadow of this wall. The garden is all gloomy here in the morning; it makes me shiver. I want to speak to you," he continued, when they had passed through the door in the wall, and were walking on the lawn before the house. "And I to you," she replied. "It was kind of you to ask us to come here." "I suppose Mrs. Melcombe has decided to marry again," he began. "Yes, but she would like to tell you about that herself." "All right. I consider, Laura dear, that you have much more claim upon me than upon her." "Do you, Valentine, do you?" As they walked down into the orchard, Laura shed a few agitated tears; then she sat down on a grassy bank, and while Valentine, leaning against the trunk of a pear-tree, looked down upon her, she said-- "Then I wish you would help me, Valentine. The devotion that I have inspired, if I could only meet it as it deserves--" And then she went on in a tone of apology, "And it is only help that I want, for I have five hundred pounds of my own, if I could but get at it." "Where is the devotion?" exclaimed Valentine, suddenly rallying. "Let me only catch hold of that devotion, and I'll soon have it down on its knees, and old Craik's large red hands hovering over it and you, while he matches it as the Church directs to a devotion more than worthy of it, as I will the five hundred pounds with another." "Ah, but you can't," said Laura, laughing also, "because he's in America; and, besides, you don't know all." "Oh, he's in America, is he?" "Yes; at least I suppose he's on the high seas by this time, or he will be very shortly, for he's going up to New York." "_Up_ to New York! Where does he hang out then when he's at home?" "At Santo Domingo." "That at least shows his original mind. Not black, of course? Not descended from the woman who 'suddenly married a Quaker?'" "Oh no, Valentine--an Englishman." "An Englishman and live at Santo Domingo! Well, I should as soon have expected him to live in the planetary spaces. It would be much more roomy there, and convenient too, though to be sure a planet coming up might butt at him now and then." "It is rather a large island," said Laura. "But, Valentine----" "Well." "He speaks Spanish very well. He is comfortably off." "His speciality, no doubt, is the sugar-cane. Well, I shall consider him very mean if he doesn't let me have my sugar cheap, in return for my kindness." "You are sure you are going to be kind then." "Yes. if he is a good fellow." "He is a good fellow, and I am not worthy of him, for I behaved shamefully to him. He has written me a very gentlemanly letter, and he said, with perfect straightforwardness, that he did at one time believe himself to have quite got over his attachment to me, but--but he had been a good deal alone, had found time to think, and, in short, it had come on again; and he hoped he was now able to offer me not only a very agreeable home, but a husband more worthy of me. That's a mistake, for I behaved ill to him, and he well, and always well, to me. In short, he begged me to come over to New York in September: he is obliged to be there on business himself at that time. He said, taking the chances, and in the hope of my coming, he would name the very line of steamers I ought to come by; and if I could but agree to it, he would meet me and marry me, and take me back with him." "Somehow, Laura, I seem to gather that you do not consider him quite your equal." "No, I suppose, as I am a Melcombe----" "A Melcombe!" repeated Valentine with bitter scorn. "A Melcombe!" Laura felt the colour rush over her face with astonishment. She knew rather than saw that the little glimpse she had had of his own self was gone again; but before she could decide how to go on, he said, with impatience and irritation, "I beg your pardon; you were going to say----" "That he is in a fairly good position now," she proceeded, quoting her lover's language; "and he has hopes that the head of the firm, who is a foreigner, will take him into partnership soon. Besides, as his future home is in America (and mine, if I marry him), what signifies his descent?" "No," murmured Valentine with a sigh. "'The gardener Adam and his wife' (Tennyson)." "And," proceeded Laura, "nothing can be more perfectly irreproachable than his people are--more excellent, honest, and respectable." "Whew!" cried Valentine with a bitter laugh, "that is a great deal to say of any family. Well, Laura, if you're sure they won't mind demeaning themselves by an alliance with us----" "Nonsense, Valentine; I wish you would not be so odd," interrupted Laura. "I have nothing to say against it." "Thank you, dear Valentine; and nobody else has a right to say anything, for you are the head of the family. It was very odd that you should have pitched upon that particular line to quote." "Humph! And as I have something of my own, more than three thousand pounds in fact----" "And Melcombe," exclaimed Laura. "Ah, yes, I forgot. But I was going to say that you, being the only other Melcombe, you know, and you and I liking one another, I wish to act a brotherly part by you; and therefore, when you have bought yourself a handsome trousseau and a piano, and everything a lady ought to have, and your passage is paid for, I wish to make up whatever is left of your five hundred pounds to a thousand, that you may not go almost portionless to your husband." "I am sure, dear Valentine, he does not expect anything of the sort," exclaimed Laura faintly, but with such a glow of pleasure in her face as cheated Valentine for the moment into gladness and cordiality. "Depend upon it, he will be pleased notwithstanding to find you even a better bargain than he expected." Laura took Valentine's hand when he said this, and laid it against her cheek. "What's his name, Laura?" "His name is Swan." Thereupon the whole story came out, told from Laura's point of view, but with moderate fairness. Valentine was surprised; but when he had seen the letters and discovered that the usually vacillating Laura had quite made up her mind to sail to New York, he determined that his help and sanction should enable her to do so in the most desirable and respectable fashion. Besides, how convenient for him, and how speedy a release from all responsibility about her! Of course he remembered this, and when Laura heard him call her lover "Don Josef," she thought it a delightful and romantic name. But Mrs. Peter Melcombe was angry when Laura told her that Joseph had written again, and that Valentine knew all and meant to help her. She burst into tears. "Considering all I have suffered," she said, "in consequence of that young man's behaviour, I wonder you have not more feeling than to have anything to say to him. Humanly speaking, he is the cause of all my misfortunes; but for him, I might have been mistress of Melcombe still, and my poor darling, my only delight, might have been well and happy." Laura made no reply, but she repeated the conversation afterwards to Valentine with hesitating compunction, and a humble hope that he would put a more favourable construction on her conduct than Amelia had done. "Humanly speaking," repeated Valentine with bitterness, "I suppose, then, she wishes to insinuate that God ordained the child's death, and she had nothing to do with it?" "She behaved with beautiful submission," urged Laura. "I dare say! but the child had been given over to her absolute control, and she actually had a warning sent to her, so that she knew that it was running a risk to take him into heat, and hurry, and to unwholesome food. She chose to run the risk. She is a foolish, heartless woman. If she says anything to me, I shall tell her that I think so." "I feel all the more bitter about it," he muttered to himself, "because I have done the same thing." But Mrs. Melcombe said nothing, she contented herself with having made Laura uncomfortable by her tears, and as the days and weeks of her visit at Melcombe went on she naturally cared less about the matter, for she had her own approaching marriage to think of, and on the whole it was not unpleasant to her to be for ever set free from any duty toward her sister-in-law. Valentine, though he often amazed Laura by his fits of melancholy, never forgot to be kind and considerate to her; he had long patience with her little affectations, and the elaborate excuses she made about all sorts of unimportant matters. She found herself, for the first time in her life, with a man of whom she could exact attendance, and whom she could keep generally occupied with her affairs. She took delighted advantage of this state of things, insomuch that before she was finally escorted to Liverpool and seen off, people in the neighbourhood, remarking on his being constantly with her, and observing his only too evident depression, thought he must have formed an attachment to her; it was universally reported that young Mr. Melcombe was breaking his heart for that silly Laura; and when, on his return, he seemed no longer to care for society, the thing was considered to be proved. It was the last week in October when he reached Wigfield, to be present at his sister's wedding. All the woods were in brown and gold, and the still dry October summer was not yet over. John's children were all well again, and little Anastasia came to meet him in the garden, using a small crutch, of which she was extremely proud, "It was such a pretty one, and bound with pink leather!" Her face was still pinched and pale, but the nurse who followed her about gave a very good account of her, it was confidently expected that in two or three months she would walk as well as ever. "A thing to be greatly wished," said the nurse, "for Mr. Mortimer makes himself quite a slave to her, and Mrs. Walker spoils her." Valentine found all his family either excited or fully occupied, and yet he was soon aware that a certain indefinable change in himself was only the more conspicuous for his fitful attempts to conceal it. As to whether he was ill, whether unhappy, or whether displeased, they could not agree among themselves, only, as by one consent, they forbore to question him; but while he vainly tried to be his old self, they vainly tried to treat him in the old fashion. He thought his brother seemed, with almost studied care, to avoid all reference to Melcombe. There was, indeed, little that they could talk about. One would not mention his estate, the other his wife, and as for his book, this having been a great failure, and an expensive one, was also a sore subject. Almost all they said when alone concerned the coming marriage, which pleased them both, and a yachting tour. "I thought you had settled into a domestic character, St. George?" said Valentine. "So did I, but Tom Graham, Dorothea's brother, is not going on well, he is tired of a sea life, and has left his uncle, as he says, for awhile. So as the old man longs for Dorothea, I have agreed to take her and the child, and go for a tour of a few months with him to the Mediterranean. It is no risk for the little chap, as his nurse, Mrs. Brand, feels more at home at sea than on shore." On the morning of the wedding Valentine sauntered down from his sister's house to John Mortimer's garden. Emily had Dorothea with her, and Giles was to give her away. She was agitated, and she made him feel more so than usual; a wedding at which Brandon and Dorothea were to be present would at any time have made him feel in a somewhat ridiculous position, but just then he was roused by the thought of it from those ideas and speculations in the presence of which he ever dwelt, so that, on the whole, though it excited it refreshed him. He was generally most at ease among the children; he saw some of them, and Swan holding forth to them in his most pragmatical style. Swan was dressed in his best suit, but he had a spade in his hand. Valentine joined them, and threw himself on a seat close by. He meant to take the first opportunity he could find for having a talk with Swan, but while he waited he lost himself again, and appeared to see what went on as if it was a shifting dream that meant nothing; his eyes were upon, the children, and his ears received expostulation and entreaty: at last his name roused him. "And what Mr. Melcombe will think on you it's clean past my wits to find out. Dressed up so beautiful, all in your velvets and things, and buckles in your shoes, and going to see your pa married, and won't be satisfied unless I'll dig out this here nasty speckled beast of a snake." "But you're so unfair," exclaimed Bertram. "We told you if you'd let us conjure it, there would be no snake." "What's it all about?" said Valentine, rousing himself and remarking some little forked sticks held by the boys. "Why, it's an adder down that hole," cried one. "And it's a charm we've got for conjuring him," quoth the other. "And we only want Swanny to dig, and then if the charm is only a sham charm, the adder will come out." "I should have thought he was a sight better wheer he is," said Swan. "But you've been so masterful and obstinate, Master Bertie, since you broke your arm!" "It's not at all kind of you to disappoint us on father's wedding-day." "Well, Mr. Melcombe shall judge. If he says, 'Charm it,' charm you shall; for he knows children's feelings as well as grown folks's. There never was anybody that was so like everybody else." "It's conjuring, I tell you, cousin Val. Did you never see a conjuror pull out yards and yards of shavings from his mouth, and then roll them up till they were as small as a pea, and swallow them? This is conjuring too. We say, 'Underneath this hazelin mote;' that's the forked-stick, you know; and while we say it the adder is obliged to roll himself up tighter and tighter, just like those shavings, till he is quite gone." "_I_ can't swallow that!" exclaimed Valentine. "Well, off then." "But I won't have the stick poked down his hole!" cried Swan, while Hugh shouted down his defiance--
"Well, I shall allers say I'm surprised at such nonsense. What do you think he cares for it all?" "Why, we told you it would make him twist himself up to nothing. Go on, Hughie. It's very useful to be able to get rid of snakes." (He's getting very tight now!) "'And from three double to two double,
"It's only an old Cornish charm," said Valentine. "I often heard it when I was a boy." "I call it heathenish!" exclaimed Mr. Swan. "What do folks want with a charm when they've got a spade to chop the beast's head off with?" "But as he's gone, Swan," observed Valentine, "of course you cannot dig him out; so you need not trouble yourself to dig at all." "Oh, but that's not fair. We want, in case he's there, to see him." "No, no," said Swan dogmatically; "I never heard of such a thing as having the same chance twice over. I said if you'd sit on that bench, all on you, I'd dig him out, if he was there. You wouldn't; you thought you'd a charm worth two of that work, and so you've said your charm." "Well, we'll come and sit upon the bench tomorrow, then, and you'll dig him." "That'll be as I please. I've no call to make any promises," said Swan, looking wise. The only observer felt a deep conviction that the children would never see that snake, and slight and ridiculous as the incident was, Swan's last speech sunk deeply into Valentine's heart, and served to increase his dejection. "And yet," he repeated to himself, "I fully hope, when I've given up all, that I shall have my chance--the same chance over again. I hope, please God, to prove that very soon; for now Laura's gone, I'm bound to Melcombe no longer than it takes me to pack up my clothes and the few things I brought with me." _ |
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