A Rent In A Cloud

Not one of his attempts had satisfied him. Some were too lengthy, some too curt and brief some read cold, stern, and forbidding; others seemed like half entreaties for a more merciful judgment; in fact he was but writing down each passing emotion of his mind, and recording the varying passions that swayed him.

As he sat thus, puzzled and embarrassed, he sprung up from his chair with terror at a cry that seemed to fill the room, and make the very air vibrate around him. It was a shriek as of one in the maddest agony, and lasted for some seconds. He thought it came from the lake, and he flung open his window and listened, but all was calm and still, the very faintest night air was astir, and not even the leaves moved. He then opened his door, and crept stealthily out upon the corridor: but all was quiet within the house. Noiselessly he walked to the head of the stairs, and listened; but not a sound nor a stir was to be heard. He went back to his room, agitated and excited. He had read of those conditions of cerebral excitement when the nerves of sense present impressions which have no existence in fact, and the sufferers fancy that they have seen sights, or heard sounds, which had no reality.

He thought he could measure the agitation that distressed him by this disturbance of the brain, and he bathed his temples with cold water, and sat down at the open window to try to regain calm and self-possession. For a while the speculation on this strange problem occupied him, and he wandered on in thought to ask himself which of the events of life should be assumed as real, and which mere self delusions. “If, for instance,” thought he, “I could believe that this dreadful scene with Florence never occurred, that it was a mere vision conjured up by my own gloomy forebodings, and my sorrow at our approaching separation – what ecstasy would be mine. What is there,” asked he of himself aloud, “to show or prove that we have parted? What evidence have I of one word that may or may not have passed between us, that would not apply to that wild scream that so lately chilled my very blood, and which I now know was a mere trick of imagination?” As he spoke, he turned to the table, and there lay the proof that he challenged before him. There, beside his half-written letter, stood the ring he had given her, and which she had just given back to him. The revulsion was very painful, and the tears, which had not come before, now rolled heavily down his cheeks. He took up the ring and raised it to his lips, but laid it down without kissing it These sent-back gifts are very sad things; they do not bury the memory of the loved one who wore them. Like the flower that fell from her hair, they bear other memories. They tell of blighted hopes, of broken vows, of a whole life’s plan torn, scattered, and given to the winds. Their odour is not of love; they smell of the rank grave, whither our hearts are hastening. He sat gazing moodily at this ring – it was the story of his life. He remembered the hour and the place he gave it to her; the words he spoke, her blush, her trembling hand as he drew it on her finger, the pledge he uttered, and which he made her repeat to him again. He started. What was that noise? Was that his name he heard uttered? Yes, someone was calling him. He hastened to the door, and opened it, and there stood Emily. She was leaning against the architrave, like one unable for further effort; her face bloodless, and her hair in disorder. She staggered forward, and fell upon his shoulder. “What is it, Milly, my own dear sister?” cried he; “what is the matter?”

“Oh, Joseph,” cried she, in a voice of anguish, “what have you done? I could never have believed this of you!”

“What do you mean – what is it you charge me with?”

“You, who knew how she loved you – how her whole heart was your own!”

“But what do you impute to me, Milly dearest?”

“How cruel! How cruel!” cried she, wringing her hands.

“I swear to you I do not know of what you accuse me.”

“You have broken her heart,” cried she vehemently. “She will not survive this cruel desertion.”

“But who accuses me of this?” asked he, indignantly.

“She, herself, does – she did, at least, so long as reason remained to her; but now, poor darling, her mind is wandering, and she is not conscious of what she says, and yet her cry is, ‘Oh, Joseph, do not leave me.’ Go to him, Milly; on your knees beseech him not to desert me. That I am in fault I know, but I will never again offend him.’ I cannot, I will not, tell you all the dreadful – all the humiliating things she says; but through all we can read the terrible trials she must have sustained at your hands, and how severely you have used her. Come to her, at least,” cried she, taking his arm. “I do not ask or want to know what has led to this sad scene between you; but come to her before it be too late.”

“Let me first of all tell you, Milly – ” He stopped. He meant to have revealed the truth; but it seemed so ungenerous to be the accuser, that he stopped, and was silent.

“I don’t care to hear anything. You may be as blameless as you like. What I want is to save her. Come at once.”

Without a word he followed her down the stairs, and across the hall, and up another small stair. “Wait a moment,” said she, opening the door, and then as quickly she turned and beckoned him to enter.

Still dressed, but with her hair falling loose about her, and her dress disordered, Florence lay on her bed as in a trance – so light her breathing you could see no motion of the chest Her eyes were partly opened, and lips parted: but even these gave to her face a greater look of death.

“She is sleeping at last,” whispered Miss Grainger. “She has not spoken since you were here.”

Loyd knelt down; beside: the bed, and pressed his cheek against her cold hand; and the day dawn, as it streamed in between the shutters, saw him still there.

CHAPTER XVII. PARTING SORROWS

HOUR after hour Loyd knelt beside the bed where Florence lay, motionless and unconscious. Her aunt and sister glided noiselessly about, passed in and out of the room, rarely speaking, and then but in a whisper. At last a servant whispered in Loyd’s ear a message. He started and said, “Yes, let him wait;” and then, in a moment after, added, “No, say no. I’ll not want the boat – the luggage may be taken back to my room.”

It was a few minutes after this that Emily came behind him, and, bending down so as to speak in his ear, said, “How I thank you, my dear brother, for this! I know the price of your devotion – none of us will ever forget it.”

He made no answer, but pressed the cold damp hand he held to his lips.

“Does he know that it is nigh seven o’clock, Milly, and that he must be at Como a quarter before eight, or he’ll lose the train?” said Miss Grainger to her niece.

“He knows it all, aunt; he has sent away the boat; he will not desert us.”

“Remember, child, what it is he is sacrificing. It may chance to be his whole future fortune.”

“He’ll stay, let it cost what it may,” said Emily.

“I declare I think I will speak to him. It is my duty to speak to him,” said the old lady, in her own fussy, officious tone. “I will not expose myself to the reproaches of his family – very just reproaches, too, if they imagined we had detained him. He will lose, not only his passage out to India, but, not impossibly, his appointment too.

“Joseph, Joseph, I have a word to say to you.”

“Dearest aunt, I implore you not to say it,” cried Emily.

“Nonsense, child. Is it for a mere tiff and a fit of hysterics a man is to lose his livelihood? Joseph Loyd, come into the next room for a moment.”

“I cannot leave this,” said he, in a low, faint voice: “say what you have to say to me here.”

“It is on the stroke of seven.”

He nodded.

“The train leaves a quarter before eight, and if you don’t start by this one you can’t reach Leghorn by Tuesday.”

“I know it; I’m not going.”

“Do you mean to give up your appointment?” asked she, in a voice of almost scornful reproach.

“I mean, that I’ll not go.”

“What will your friends say to this?” said she, angrily.

“I have not thought, nor can I think, of that now: my place is here.”

“Then I must protest; and I beg you to remember that I have protested against this resolve on your part. Your family are not to say, hereafter, that it was through any interference or influence of ours that you took this unhappy determination. I’ll write, this very day, to your father and say so. There, it is striking seven now!”

He made no reply; indeed, it seemed as if he had not heard her.

“You might still be in time, if you were to exert yourself.” whispered she, with more earnestness.

“I tell you again,” said he, raising his voice to a louder pitch, “that my place is here, and I will not leave her.”

A low, faint sigh was breathed by the sick girl, and gently moving her hand, she laid it on his head.

“You know me then, dearest?” whispered he. “You know who it is kneels beside you?”

She made no answer, but her feeble fingers tried to play with his hair, and strayed, unguided, over his head.

What shape of reproach, remonstrance, or protest, Miss Grainger’s mutterings took, is not recorded; but she bustled out of the room, evidently displeased with all in it.

“She knows you, Joseph. She is trying to thank you,” said Emily.

“Her lips are moving: can you hear what she says, Milly?”

The girl bent over the bed, till her ear almost touched her sister’s mouth. “Yes, darling, from his heart he does. He never loved you with such devotion as now. She asks if you can forgive her, Joseph. She remembers everything.”

“And not leave me,” sighed Florence, in a voice barely audible.

“No, my own dearest, I will not leave you,” was all that he could utter in the conflict of joy and sorrow he felt A weak attempt to thank him she made by an effort to press his hand, but it sent a thrill of delight through his heart, more than a recompense for all he had suffered.

If Emily, with a generous delicacy, retired towards the window and took up her work, not very profitably perhaps, seeing how little light came through the nearly closed shutters, let us not show ourselves less discreet, and leave the lovers to themselves. Be assured, dear reader, that in our reserve on this point we are not less mindful of your benefit than of theirs. The charming things, so delightful to say and so ecstatic to hear, are wonderfully tame to tell. Perhaps their very charm is in the fact, that their spell was only powerful to those who uttered them. At all events, we are determined on discretion, and shall only own that, though Aunt Grainger made periodical visits to the sick-room, with frequent references to the hour of the day, and the departures and arrival of various rail trains, they never heard her, or, indeed, knew that she was present.

And though she was mistress of those “asides” and that grand innuendo style which is so deadly round a corner, they never paid the slightest heed to her fire. All the adroit references to the weather, and the “glorious day for travelling,” went for naught As well as the more subtle compliments she made Florence on the appetite she displayed for her chocolate, and which were intended to convey that a young lady who enjoyed her breakfast so heartily need never have lost a man a passage to Calcutta for the pleasure of seeing her eat it. Truth was, Aunt Grainger was not in love, and consequently, no more fit to legislate for those who were than a peasant in rude health is to sympathise with the nervous irritability of a fine lady! Neither was Milly in love, you will perhaps say, and she felt for them. True, but Milly might be – Milly was constitutionally exposed to the malady, and the very vicinity of the disease was what the faculty call a predisposing cause. It made her very happy to see Joseph so fond, and Florence so contented.

Far too happy to think of the price he paid for his happiness, Loyd passed the day beside her. Never before was he so much in love! Indeed, it was not till the thought of losing her for ever presented itself, that he knew or felt what a blank life would hereafter become to him. Some quaint German writer has it that these little quarrels which lovers occasionally get up as a sort of trial of their own powers of independence, are like the attempt people make to remain a long time under-water, and which only end in a profound conviction that their organisation was unequal to the test But there is another form these passing differences occasionally take. Each of the erring parties is sure to nourish in his or her heart the feeling of being most intensely beloved by the other! It is a strange form for selfishness to take, but selfishness is the most Protaean of all failings, and there never was seen the mask it could not fit to its face.

“And so you imagined you could cast me off, Florence!” “And you, Master Joseph, had the presumption to think you could leave me,” formed the sum and substance of that long day’s whispering. My dear, kind reader, do not despise the sermon from the seeming simplicity of the text There is a deal to be said on it, and very pleasantly said, too. It is, besides, a sort of litigation in which charge and cross charge recur incessantly, and, as in all amicable suits, each party pays his own costs.

It was fortunate, most fortunate, that their reconciliation took this form. It enabled each to do that which was most imminent to be done – to ignore Calvert altogether, and never recur to any mention of his name. Loyd saw that the turquoise ring was no longer worn by her, and she, with a woman’s quickness, noted his observation of the fact I am not sure that in her eyes a recognition of his joy did not glisten, but she certainly never uttered a word that could bring up his name.

“So I am your guest, Madam, for ten days more!” said Loyd to Miss Grainger, as they sat at tea that night.

“Oh, we are only too happy. It is a very great pleasure to us, if – if we could feel that your delay may not prove injurious to you.”

“It will be very enjoyable, at all events,” said he, with an easy smile, and as though to evade the discussion of the other “count”.

“I was thinking of what your friends would say about it.”

“It is a very limited public, I assure you,” said he, laughing, “and one which so implicitly trusts me, that I have only to say I have done what I believed to be right to be confirmed in their good esteem.”

The old lady was not to be put off by generalities, and she questioned him closely as to whether an overland passage did not cost a hundred pounds and upwards, and all but asked whether it was quite convenient to him to disburse that amount She hinted something about an adage of people who “paid for their whistle,” but suggested some grave doubts if they ever felt themselves recompensed in after time by recollecting the music that had cost so dearly; in a word, she made herself supremely disagreeable while he drank his tea, and only too glad to make his escape to go and sit beside Florry, and talk over again all they had said in the morning.

“Only think, Milly,” said she, poutingly, as her sister entered, “how Aunt Grainger is worrying poor Joseph, and won’t let him enjoy in peace the few days we are to have together.”

But he did enjoy them, and to the utmost Florence very soon threw off all trace of her late indisposition, and sought, in many ways, to make her lover forget all the pain she had cost him. The first week was one of almost unalloyed happiness; the second opened with the thought that the days were numbered. After Monday came Tuesday, then Wednesday, which preceded Thursday, when he was to leave.

How was it, they asked themselves, that a whole week had gone over? It was surely impossible! Impossible it must be, for now they remembered the mass of things they had to talk over together, not one of which had been touched on.

“Why, Joseph dearest, you have told me nothing about yourself. Whether you are to be in Calcutta, or up the country? Where, and how I am to write? When I am to hear from you? What of papa – I was going to say, our papa – would he like to hear from me, and may I write to him? Dare I speak to him as a daughter? Will he think me forward or indelicate for it? May I tell him of all our plans? Surely you ought to have told me some of these things! What could we have been saying to each other all this while?”

Joseph looked at her, and she turned away her head pettishly, and murmured something about his being too absurd. Perhaps he was; I certainly hold no brief to defend him in the case: convict or acquit him, dear reader, as you please.

And yet, notwithstanding this appeal, the next three days passed over just as forgetfully as their predecessors, and then came the sad Wednesday evening, and the sadder Thursday morning, when, wearied out and exhausted, for they had sat up all night – his last night – to say good-bye.

“I declare he will be late again; this is the third time he has come back from the boat,” exclaimed Miss Grainger, as Florence sank, half fainting, into Emily’s arms.

“Yes, yes, dear Joseph,” muttered Emily, “go now, go at once, before she recovers again.”

“If I do not, I never can,” cried he, as the tears coursed down his face, while he hurried away.

The monotonous beat of the oars suddenly startled the half-conscious girl; she looked up, and lifted her hand to wave an adieu, and then sank back into her sister’s arms, and fainted.

Three days after, a few hurried lines from Loyd told Florence that he had sailed for Malta – this time irrevocably off. They were as sad lines to read as to have written. He had begun by an attempt at jocularity; a sketch of his fellow-travellers coming on board; their national traits, and the strange babble of tongues about them; but, as the bell rang, he dropped this, and scrawled out, as best he could, his last and blotted good-byes. They were shaky, ill-written words, and might, who knows, have been blurred with a tear or two. One thing is certain, she who read, shed many over them, and kissed them, with her last waking breath, as she fell asleep.

About the same day that this letter reached Florence, came another, and very different epistle, to the hands of Algernon Drayton, from his friend Calvert It was not above a dozen lines, and dated from Alexandria:

“The Leander has just steamed in, crowded with snobs, civiland military, but no Loyd. The fellow must have given up hisappointment or gone ‘long sea.’ In any case, he has escapedme. I am frantic. A whole month’s plottings of vengeancescattered to the winds and lost! I’d return to England,if I were only certain to meet with him: but a Faquir, whomI have just consulted, says, ‘Go east, and the worst willcome of it!’ and so I start in two hours for Suez. Thereare two here who know me, but I mean to caution them howthey show it; they are old enough to take a hint.

“Yours, H. C.

“I hear my old regiment has mutinied, and sabred eight ofthe officers. I wish they’d have waited a little longer, andneither S. nor W. would have got off so easily. From all Ican learn, and from the infernal fright the fellows who aregoing back exhibit, I suspect that the work goes bravelyon.”

CHAPTER XVIII. TIDINGS FROM BENGAL

I am not about to chronicle how time now rolled over the characters of our story. As for the life of those at the villa, nothing could be less eventful All existences that have any claim to be called happy are of this type, and if there be nothing brilliant or triumphant in their joys, neither is there much poignancy in their sorrows.

Loyd wrote almost by every mail, and with a tameness that shadowed forth the uniform tenor of his own life. It was pretty nigh the same story, garnished by the same reflections. He had been named a district judge “up country,” and passed his days deciding the disputed claims of indigo planters against the ryots, and the ryots against the planters. Craft, subtlety, and a dash of perjury, ran through all these suits, and rendered them rather puzzles for a quick intelligence to resolve, than questions of right or legality. He told, too, how dreary and uncompanionable his life was; how unsolaced by friendship, or even companionship; that the climate was enervating, the scenery monotonous, and the thermometer at a hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty degrees.

Yet Loyd could speak with some encouragement about his prospects. He was receiving eight hundred rupees a month, and hoped to be promoted to some place, ending in Ghar or Bad, with an advance of two hundred more. He darkly hinted that the mutinous spirit of certain regiments was said to be extending, but he wrote this with all the reserve of an official, and the fear that Aunt Grainger might misquote him. Of course there were other features in these letters – those hopes and fears, and prayers and wishes, which lovers like to write, almost as well as read, poetising to themselves their own existence, and throwing a rose-tint of romance over lives as lead-coloured as may be. Of these I am not going to say anything. It is a theme both too delicate and too dull to touch on. I respect and I dread it. I have less reserve with the correspondence of another character of our tale, though certainly, when written, it was not meant for publicity. The letter of which I am about to make an extract, and it can be but an extract, was written about ten months after the departure of Calvert for India, and, like his former ones, addressed to his friend Drayton:

“At the hazard of repeating myself, if by chance my formerletters have reached you, I state that I am in the serviceof the Meer Morad, of Ghurtpore, of whose doings the Timescorrespondent will have told you something. I have eightsquadrons of cavalry and a half battery of field-pieces – brass ten pounders – with an English crown on their breech.We are well armed, admirably mounted, and perfect devils tofight. You saw what we did with the detachment of the – th, and their sick convoy, coming out of Allenbad. The onlyfellow that escaped was the doctor, and I saved his life toattach him to my own staff. He is an Irish fellow, namedTobin, and comes from Tralee – if there be such a place – andbegs his friends there not to say masses for him, for he isalive, and drunk every evening. Do this, if not a bore.“By good luck the Meer, my chief quarrelled with the king’sparty in Delhi, and we came away in time to save beingcaught by Wilson, who would have recognised me at once.By-the-way, Baxter of the 30th was stupid enough to say,‘Eh, Calvert’ what the devil are you doing amongstthese niggers?’ He was a prisoner, at the time, and, ofcourse, I had to order him to be shot for his imprudence.How he knew me I cannot guess; my beard is down to mybreast, and I am turbaned and shawled in the most approvedfashion. We are now simply marauding, cutting offsupplies, falling on weak detachments, and doing a smallretail business in murder wherever we chance upon a stationof civil servants. I narrowly escaped being caught by atroop of the 9th Lancers, every man of whom knows me. Iwent over with six trusty fellows, to Astraghan, where Ilearned that a certain Loyd was stationed as Governmentreceiver. We got there by night, burned his bungalow, shothim, and then discovered he was not our man, but anotherLoyd. Bradshaw came up with his troop. He gave us aneight mile chase across country, and, knowing how the Ninthride, I took them over some sharp nullahs, and the croppersthey got you’ll scarcely see mentioned in the governmentdespatches. I fired three barrels of my Yankee six-shooter at Brad, and I heard the old beggar offer a thousandrupees for my head. When he found he could not overtakeus, and sounded a halt, I screamed out, ‘Threes about,Bradshaw, I’d give fifty pounds to hear him tell thestory at mess: ‘Yes, Sir, begad, Sir, in as good English,Sir, as yours or mine, Sir; a fellow who had served theQueen, I’ll swear.’“For the moment, it is a mere mutiny, but it will soon be arebellion, and I don’t conceal from myself the danger ofwhat I am doing, as you, in all likelihood, will suspect.Not dangers from the Queen’s fellows – for they shall nevertake me alive – but the dangers I run from my presentassociates, and who, of course, only half trust me… Doyou remember old Commissary-General Yates – J.C.V.R. Yates, the old ass used to write himself? Well, amongst the otherevents of the time, was the sack and ‘loo’ of his house atCawnpore, and the capture of ais pretty wife, whom theybrought in here a prisoner. I expected to find the pooryoung creature terrified almost out of her reason. Not a bitof it! She was very angry with the fellows who robbed her, and rated, them roundly in choice Hindostanee, telling oneof the chiefs that his grandfather was a scorched pig. Likea woman, and a clever woman, too, though she recognised me – I can almost swear that she did – she never showed it, and wetalked away all the evening, – and smoked our hookahs togetherin Oriental guise. I gave her a pass next morning toCalcutta, and saw her safe to the great trunk road, givingher bearers as far as Behdarah. She expressed herself asvery grateful for my attentions, and hoped at some futuretime – this with a malicious twinkle of her gray eyes – toshow the ‘Bahadoor’ that she had not forgotten them. So yousee there are lights as well as shadows in the life of arebel.”