Red as a Rose is She: A Novel

Fed by no kindly words, nourished only upon neglect and cold looks, Esther's love for Gerard yet strikes out great roots downwards – shoots forth strong branches upwards. A tree of far statelier growth it stands than in the days when the soft gales and gentle streams of answering love fanned and watered it. Who cares for what they can have? Who cries for the moon? It is the intermediate something – the something that lies just a handbreadth beyond the utmost stretch of our most painfully-strained arms, that we eat out our hearts in longing for.

Esther never goes beyond the park palings now, deterred by the fear of being waylaid by Linley. She need not have been alarmed. As long as she came naturally in his way, he was delighted to see her: as we stoop and pick gladly the fruit that drops off the tree at our feet. He had even, on a day when the frost forbade hunting, and when he had got tired of skating, taken the unwonted trouble of riding over to Blessington, to warm himself at the fire of those great black eyes, that have still for him the charm of novelty upon them; but women, many and fair, came too readily to his hand to make him very keen in the chase of any one individual woman. In former generations men used to be the pursuers, women the pursued. In this generation we, who have set right most things, have set right this also. Now, the hares pursue the harriers, the foxes the hounds, and the doves swoop upon the falcons.

During these latter evenings Mr Blessington has been very alert and wakeful – has insisted on being read to from tea to bed-time – a liberal hour. But, however hoarse and voiceless the young reader may be, Gerard never now comes to the rescue, never interferes, though the frequent teasing cough of the "damnable flirt" goes through his heart like a sword. With steady certainty, through frost and thaw, rain and shine, through all the alternations of an English winter, the young girl's health declines. To all but herself is this fact evident, and she, unaccustomed to illness – never having seen the signs of premature decay in others – thinks it is but a little weariness, a little languor, a nothing. It will pass when the swooned world revives into spring and the buttercups come.

Sunday is here again, the initial letter in the week's alphabet:

"The Sundays of man's life,Threaded together on Time's string,Make bracelets to adorn the wifeOf the eternal glorious King."

Ah me! the languid, yawning Sundays of most of us will make but sorry bracelets for any one, methinks. Sunday – the day on which the Shelford shopboys and shopgirls walk about gloriously apparelled, arm-in-arm, man and maid, filling their lungs with country air, – day on which the gentlefolks, such as are men of them, debarred from horse and hound and cue, smoke a cigar or two more than usual over the instructive pages of Messieurs De Kock, Sue, Balzac, &c.; while such as are women, being for the most part piously disposed, hold Goulburn's "Thoughts on Personal Religion," or Hannay's "Last Day of Our Lord's Passion," open on their velvet laps, and kill a reputation between each paragraph.

On this especial Sunday Esther has risen, feeling feebler, more nerveless than usual. Something in the influence of the weather – soft, sodden, sunless – weighs upon her with untold oppression. She would fain not go to church, remain at home, and lie on her bed; but this cannot be. Foremost in importance, in indispensability, among her duties are these Sunday ones. If the weather be tolerable, Mr. Blessington is always scrupulously punctual in attending Divine worship. Leaning on his valet's arm, he totters up the church, in his old tail-coat, tightly buttoned over his sunken chest, and, arrived at the Blessington pew, is deposited in a little nook thereof, partitioned (in some quirk of his, while he could yet see) from the rest. In this nook there is room for two people – to wit, for Mr. Blessington, and for the happy person who is to guide his devotions. And to conduct Mr. Blessington's prayers and praises is, I assure you, no sinecure. Almost entirely deaf, almost entirely blind, he is yet resolute to take a part in the services by no means less prominent than the clerk's. It is, therefore, his attendant's duty to shout the responses in his ear, in order to give him some clue to the portion of the ritual which has been arrived at and to check him with elbowings and nudgings, when his aberrations from the right path become so flagrantly noticeable as to distract the attention of the other worshippers. But too often, however, the attempts at repression on the part of the acolyte are so much labour lost. In the region of darkness and silence in which his infirmities have placed him, the old man frequently becomes impatient of the slow progress of the service as notified to him by the roars of his companion. Not seldom he proclaims, in a voice distinctly audible throughout the building, the point at which, according to his reckoning, priest and people should have arrived. "And with thy spirit," cries the squire, with unction in his deep, tremulous bass, while the sleek young rector's gentle "The Lord be with you" does not follow till five minutes later. In the Creed there is but one course to pursue: to start him, if possible, fair – happy, indeed, if he does not insist on turning to the altar somewhere towards the close of the second lesson or beginning of the Jubilate, – to start him fair, I say, and then in despair, give him his head. Fervently, loudly, rapidly, he announces his belief in the articles of the Christian faith, while parson, clerk, and congregation toil after him in vain. Occasionally – especially at such portions of the service as refer to our need of forgiveness, our sinfulness, our mortality, – he breaks out into senile tears; too deaf to hear his own penitent sobs, he has no idea of the loudness with which they reverberate through the church. Strangers, hearing, perk their heads up above their pews, and then fling them down again on their pocket-handkerchiefs convulsed with inextinguishable laughter; but the greater part of the assemblage are used to these spasms of grotesque devotion – it is only "t'oud squoire."

Esther always draws a long breath of relief when

"Lord, have mercy upon us!Christ, have mercy upon us!Lord, have mercy upon us!"

has been safely tided over without any unusually noisy burst of lamentation.

On the Sunday I speak of "t'oud squoire's" prayers were more unruly than usual. Whether it was that Esther's weakened voice was unable to guide them into the right channel, or to whatever other cause assignable, certain it is that his vagaries were more painfully evident – ludicrously to the congregation, distressingly to his family – than on any former Sunday within the memory of man. Many heads turn towards the Blessington pew; even the rector – meekest among M.A.s – looks now and again with gentle reproach at the old man, who is, with such aggressive loudness, usurping his office of leading the devotions of his flock. A proud woman is Esther Craven when the Liturgy comes to a close. In the sermon there are, thank God, no responses for the congregation to make; it is not even customary to cry, "Hear, hear!" "Hallelujah!" "More power to you!" at intervals. In the sermon, therefore, the old gentleman composes himself to sleep, and there is peace.

The Blessington pulpit is to-day occupied by a stranger – a Boanerges, or Son of Thunder, in the shape of a muscular, half-educated, fluent Irishman – a divine who would fain flog his hearers to heaven, show them the way upwards by the light of hell's flambeaux – one of that too numerous class who revel in disgusting descriptions, and similes drawn from our mortality. It is impossible to help listening to him, and difficult to help being sick. Esther listens, trembling, while he descants with minute relish on "the worm that never dies." The worm that never dies! Surely, a terrible picture enough, in its simple bareness, without enlargement thereupon! With imagination rendered more vivid, and reason weakened by sickness, the unhappy girl pictures that worm gnawing at her brother's heart – gnawing, crawling, torturing eternally. She covers her face with her hands; it is too horrible! A sort of sick feeling comes over her – a giddy faintness. If she can but reach the open air! She rises unsteadily, opens the pew-door, and walks as in a mist down the aisle, between the two rows of questioning faces, and so out. As she passes through the church-door she staggers slightly, and catches at the wall for support. Gerard, watching her anxiously, sees her unsteady gait, and the involuntary gesture of reaching out for some stay for her tottering figure. Instantly, without giving thought to the light in which his beloved may regard his proceeding, he, rising, quickly follows the young girl. She has just managed to reach a flat tombstone, and there sits, with her face turned thirstily westwards, whence a small soft wind blows fitfully.

"You are ill," he says, bending solicitously over her, and laying aside in that compassionate moment the armour of his coldness.

She does not answer for awhile; then, drawing a long breath, and trying to smile: "The church was so close," she says, sighingly; "and that smell of escaped gas always makes me feel faint, and – and" (with a shudder) – "that dreadful man – with his metaphors all taken from the charnelhouse!"

"I wish he were there himself, with all my heart," answers Gerard, devoutly; "he might there frame metaphors to his taste at his leisure."

"And it is so terrible to think that it is all true, isn't it?" she says, fixing her great awestruck eyes upon, his face, as if trying to find comfort and reassurance there; "that the reality exceeds even his revolting word-painting; that we shall be loathsome, all of us! – you and I and everybody – young and old, beautiful and ugly! How could God be so cruel as to let us know it beforehand?"

"Knowing it beforehand is better than knowing it at the time, which, at least, we are spared," replies St. John, composedly.

"But are we?" she cries, eagerly: "that is the question! Latterly I have been beset by a fearful idea that death is but a long catalepsy. In a catalepsy, you know, a person seems utterly without consciousness or volition; breath is suspended, and all the vital functions; and yet he feels and sees and hears more acutely than when in strong health. Why may not death, too, be a catalepsy?"

"Absurd!" he says. "My poor child, it is thoughts like these, gone wild, that fill madhouses. According to your theory, at what point of time does your catalepsy end? When we are dissolved into minutest particles of dust does each atom still feel and suffer?"

"My theory, as you call it, will not hold water, I know," she answers gravely, "but it does not haunt me any the less. There are times when one cannot reason – one can only fear."

"You should not give way to these morbid fancies," he says, chidingly; "they are making you ill."

"Am I ill, do you think? Do I look ill?" she asks, with startled eagerness.

The havoc worked in face and figure by the last few months is too directly under his eyes for him to answer anything but truthfully. "Very ill."

"You don't think I'm going to die?" she says, lowering her voice, and laying her hand on his arm, while her great feverish eyes burn into his very soul. "People are not any the more likely to die for being thin and weak, are they? Creaky doors hang the longest."

"Die! – God forbid!" he replies, trying to speak lightly. "Let us banish death from our talk. I suppose it is this place of tombs that has made him take such a leading part in it. Come, you are not at all fit to go back into church, and I am not anxious to hear the tail-end of that wormy discourse. The smell of brimstone is quite strong enough in my nostrils already. Let us go home!"

So they return to the house, and he still shows no inclination to leave her. He draws a chair for her near an open window, and stands with his hand resting on the back. It is almost like the old times – the old times that he thinks of,

"As dead men of good days,Ere the wrong side of death was theirs, when GodWas friends with them."

Something in the recollection of those days makes soft his voice, which is not wont to be soft. "You are not fit for this life," he says, stooping down his face towards her small wan one. "It requires a tough seasoned woman, in middle life. Tell me why you have undertaken it? Why are you not – not married?"

She turns away, crimsoning painfully. "Because no one has asked me, I suppose," she answers, trying to speak banteringly.

"But you were engaged when – when we parted?"

"Yes."

"And you are not now?"

With ungovernable, unaccountable impatience, he awaits the slow brief answer.

"No."

"Had he then – h'm! h'm! —discovered anything?" Gerard asks, finding some difficulty in framing the question politely.

She fires up quickly. "Discovered anything!" she repeats, indignantly. "Do you think it is impossible for me to be honest even once in my life? I told him myself."

"You broke it off, then?"

"No, I didn't."

"He did?"

"Yes."

"Poor fellow! he had good cause to be angry," says St. John; the old bitterness surging back upon him, as he reflects on the cowardly duplicity that had made waste two honest lives.

"But he was not angry," she cries, eagerly: "he was grieved – oh, so grieved! Shall I ever forgive myself when I think of how he looked when I told him?" (her eyes gazing out abstractedly at the "Rape of the Sabines," as her thoughts fly back to that quarried nook on the bleak autumnal hillside, where she had broken a brave man's heart). "But he was not angry. Oh, no! he never thought of himself! he thought only about me! Ah! that was love!"

"He would not marry you, however?" says St. John, exasperated at these laudations, which he imagines levelled as reproaches against himself.

"No," she answered quietly, "you are right; he would not marry me, though I begged him. But that was for my sake, too – not his own; he told me that he could not make me happy, for that I did not love him. He was wrong, though. I did love him – I love him now. If I did not love the one friend I have in all this great empty world, what should I be made of?" she concludes, while the tears come into her eyes.

"You have a great capacity for loving," says St. John, who, though not usually an ungenerous fellow, is maddened by the expressions of affection, the tears and regretful looks bestowed upon his rival. "I envy, though I despair of emulating you."

"Men have but one way of loving," she answers, gently; "women have several. I love him as the one completely unselfish being I ever met. I agree with you, that the way of loving you mean comes but once in a lifetime."

At her words, and the fidelity to himself which they so innocently imply, a fierce bright joy upleaps in his heart – a joy that clamours for utterance in violent fond words, in the wild closeness of forbidden embraces; but honour, that strong gaoler that keeps so many under lock and key, keeps him too.

"For Love himself took part against himselfTo warn us off; and Duty, loved of love —Oh! this world's curse, beloved but hated – came,Like death, betwixt thy dear embrace and mine,And crying, 'Who is this? Behold thy bride!'She push'd me from thee."

He only holds out his hand to her. "Esther, let us be friends. I am tired of this silence and estrangement; let there be peace between us!"

"I have always wished for it," she answers meekly, laying her little trembling hand in his – "you know I have; but let us be at peace apart, and not together; that will be better. How long," she asks, impulsively, lifting quivering red lips and dew-soft eyes to his – "how long – how much longer – do you mean to stay here?"

"Why do you ask?" he says, in a troubled voice, hurt pride and hot passion struggling together. "Surely in this great wide house there is room for you and me; I am not much in your way, surely?"

"You are," she answers, feverishly – "you are in my way; you would be, in the widest house that ever was built. Every day I long more and more to be a great way off from you. I think I could breathe better if I were."

He does not answer: leaning still over her in a dumb agonised yearning, that – with the chains of another still dragging about him – may not be outspoken.

"That day we met upon the stairs," she continues, eyes and cheeks aflame and lustrous with the consuming fire within her, "you promised me you would avail yourself of the first opportunity to leave this place; a month or more is gone since then. Surely the most exacting mistress could spare you for awhile now? Why have you broken your word, then? Why are you here?"

He is silent for a few moments, questioning his own soul – questioning that conscience whose monitions he has hitherto so stoutly resisted. Then he speaks, a flush of shame making red his bronzed cheek: "Because I have been dishonest to myself and to you. This place has had an attraction for me which I see now it would not have had had she only been here. I linger about it as a man lingers about the churchyard where his one hope lies buried."

"Don't linger any longer, then," she cries, passionately, taking his hand between both hers; "don't be dishonest any more! Tell yourself the truth, if you tell no one else, and go at once, before it is too late; for if you won't, I must!"

She is weeping freely as she speaks; her tears drop hot and slow, one after another, upon his hand.

He flings himself on his knees beside her, his mastery over himself reeling in the strong rush of long-pent passion.

"You tell me to go," he says, in a voice choked and altered with emotion, "and in the very act of telling me you cry. Which am I to believe, your words or your tears?"

"My words," she answers, trying to speak collectedly, and by gaining calmness herself to bring it back to him. "I have been dishonourable once – you know it; don't let me have the remorse of thinking that I made an honourable man palter with temptation – made him sully his honour for me. If I am the inducement that keeps you here, go; for my sake, go! I say it a hundred times; promise me you will go —soon, this week. Let me hear you swear it; you will not break your oath, I know!"

He is silent; hesitating to take that step of irrevocable banishment – banishment from the woman that he cast away in righteous wrath, and in whose frail life his own now seems to be bound up.

"Swear!" she says again, earnestly, with a resolute look in her soft face. "I beg it of you as a favour; for if you won't, though my only chance of daily bread lies here, I must go to-night."

The determination in her voice recalls him to his senses. "I will not drive you to such extremities," he says, coldly. "Give me only till to-morrow morning – twenty-four hours cannot make much difference to you, and a man going to be hanged likes to have a little respite – give me till to-morrow, and I will swear whatever you wish."

"That is right," she answers, trying to smile through her tears. "Some day you will thank me; you will say, 'She was a bad girl, but she did me one good turn!'"

The people are flocking out of church; the squire, in a low pony-chaise, driven by a groom as old and toothless as himself, and drawn by a pony (considering the comparative ages of horses and men) also nearly as old, is bowling gently up the drive.

"I must go," Esther says, rising hastily; "Mrs. Blessington hates red eyes as she hates a black dress, and for the same reason!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

At Blessington no one goes to church twice. It is the bounden duty of every Christian man, woman, and child to go to church in the morning; it is the duty of only the clergyman, the school-children, and the organist to go to church in the afternoon. The old people sleep side by side in the blaze of the saloon-fire; being, both of them, happily deaf, they are undisturbed by each other's grunts and snores.

Since the beginning of St. John's visit, the north drawing-room has been made over to him and his betrothed to be affectionate in, so that they may enjoy, uninterrupted, those fits of affection to which all engaged people are supposed, and sometimes unjustly supposed, to be liable. Whether they have reached the requisite pitch of warmth on the afternoon I speak of is, to say the least, doubtful; but, all the same, in the north drawing-room they are. Constance leans back in an armchair, rather listless. She is fond of work, and it is not right to work on Sunday: her feet repose on a foot-stool before her – her eyes are fixed upon them: she is thinking profoundly whether steel buckles a size smaller than the ones she is at present wearing would not be more becoming to the feet. St. John sits by the table; his left hand supports his head; his right scribbles idly, on a bit of paper, horses taking impossible fences, prize pigs, ballet-girls, little skeleton men squaring up at one another. He, too, is thinking – but not of shoe-buckles. He has got something to say to Miss Blessington – something unpleasant, unpolite; and he cannot, for the life of him, imagine how to begin to say it. Chance favours him. Miss Blessington, happening to look up, catches her lover's eyes fixed, with an expression she had never before seen in them – not on herself, as she, for the first second imagines, but (as a second glance informs her) on some object outside the window. Her gaze follows his, and lights upon "nobody very particular – only poor Miss Craven!" who, with head rather bent, is trudging by towards the garden. "How ill that girl looks!" she says, pettishly. "I really believe those sort of people take a pleasure in looking as sickly and woebegone as possible, in order to put one out of spirits,"

The opening he has been looking for has come. "Constance," ho says, bending his head, and speaking in a low voice, "what fatuity induced you not to send me word when you found that that girl was here?"

"You forbad me ever to mention her name to you," she answers, coldly; "and, to tell you the truth, I thought it was a good thing that you should see her. If you had not met again, you might have carried a sentimental recollection of her throughout life, which you can hardly do now that you have seen with your own eyes how completely she has lost her beauty."

St. John lifts his head, and stares at her in blank astonishment. "Lost its beauty!" – that

"Face that one would see,And then fall blind, and die, with sight of it,Held fast between the eyelids."

"Lost her beauty!" he repeats, in a sort of stupefaction.

"Well," she replies, languidly, "why do you repeat my words? You know I never admired her much. I never can admire those black women, but that is a matter of taste, of course. It is not matter of taste, however – it is matter of fact, that whatever good looks she once had are gone —gone."

Gerard smiles contemptuously. "I do believe that you women lose the sight of your eyes when you look at one another."

"What do you mean?" she asks, with some animation. "Is it possible that you don't agree with me as to her being quite passée?"

"I think her, as I always thought her," he answers, steadily, "the loveliest woman I ever beheld; a little additional thinness or paleness does not affect her much. Hers is not mere skin beauty: as you say, tastes differ, and I like those black women."

"That is a civil speech to make to me!" she answers, reddening – an insult to her appearance or her clothes being the one weapon that has power to pierce the scales of her armour of proof.

St. John smiles again. "When we engaged to marry one another, did we also engage to think each other the handsomest specimens of the human animal Providence ever framed?"

"It is, at least, not usual for a man to express an open preference for another woman to the girl to whom he is engaged."

"It is no question of preference," he answers, quietly. "I had no thought of drawing any comparison between you and Miss Craven at the moment; I was not thinking of you."

"You said she was the loveliest girl you had ever seen!" objects Constance, pouting.

"So I did – I do think her so," he rejoins, calmly. "If there is some defect in my eyes, hindering me from seeing things as they are, it is my misfortune, not my fault. Cannot you be content," he asks, banteringly, "with being the next loveliest?"