Heart and Cross

“No more,” said I, “I have not heard from himself a long time now—and the public news only keeps us anxious. I am not quite so philosophical as Derwie—few things would make me so thankful as to hear that Bertie was on his way home.”

“Oh, I should be so glad!” said Clara, eagerly; then, after a pause and with a smile, “young men who want their friends to get dreadfully interested about them should all go out—don’t you think, Mrs. Crofton? There is Alice, for example. I thought everything was coming round quite nicely, and that Alice was going to be quite rational, and settle like other people, at last—but just when everything seemed in such excellent train, lo! here came this Indian business, and upset the whole again.”

“Upset what? I don’t understand what you mean,” said I, with a little wonder, partly affected and partly real.

“Oh, Mrs. Crofton! you do,” cried Clara; “you know mamma and I had just been making up our minds that Mr. Reredos was the person, and that all was to be quite pleasant and comfortable. He was so attentive, and Alice really so much better behaved than she had ever been before. Then this Indian business, you know, happened, and she was all in a craze again. She doesn’t say much, but I am quite sure it is nothing else that has upset her. Of course, looking at it in a rational way, Bertie and Alice can’t really be anything to each other. But he’s far away, and he’s in danger, and there’s quite an air of romance about him. And Alice is so ridiculous! I am quite sure in my own mind that this is the only reason why she’s so very cool to the Rector again.”

“It is very injudicious to say so, Clara,” said I; “of course she must be interested—her old playfellow—like a brother to you both; but as for interposing between her and an eligible”–

“Now, please don’t be rational,” pleaded Clara, “I know exactly what you are going to say—but after all she must marry somebody, you know, and where is the harm of an eligible establishment? Perhaps it would be as well if mamma did not use the word—but still!—oh! to be sure, dear, good, kind Bertie—the children are quite right,” said Clara, with a sweet suffusion of kindness and good feeling over all her face—“I am sure I love him every bit as much as I love Maurice—he was always like a brother, the dear fellow! I don’t say Alice should not be interested in him; but only it’s all her romance, you know. She’s not in love with him—if she were in love with him, I couldn’t say a word—it’s only sympathy, and friendship, and sisterhood, and all that; and because he’s in trouble she’ll forget all about herself, and send this good man, who is very fond of her, away.”

“These young ladies, you see, Clara,” said I, “they are not at all to be depended on; they never will attend to what we experienced people say.”

“Ah, yes, that is true,” said Alice’s younger sister, with a sigh of serious acquiescence, and the simplest good faith.

Clara, with her five babies, had forgotten that she was not her sister’s senior—while Alice, for her part, looking down from her quiet observatory in her brown silk dress upon Clara’s wonderful toilettes and blooming beauty, felt herself a whole century older than that pretty matron-sister, who was always so sweetly occupied with life, and had so little time for thought. I smiled upon them both, being near twenty years their senior, and thought them a couple of children still. So we all go on, thinking ourself the wisest always. In these days I began to moralize a little. I have no doubt Miss Polly had similar thoughts of me.

CHAPTER XVI

That evening I had the satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) of beholding a very similar condition of things to that which had occupied my attention in my own house at Easter. All the Harleys were at Waterflag, in honor of Willie’s birthday, including the pretty little Kate, whose first party this was, and—a more perplexing addition—their mother. Mrs. Harley was exactly what she had always been, but age had made her uncertain mind more uncertain, while it increased her anxiety to have her children “provided for,” as she called it. The colder Alice was to Mr. Reredos, the more warmly and tenderly her mother conciliated and courted him. Here was a good match, which might be lost for a caprice, one might have supposed the good woman to be thinking; and it was her duty to prevent that consummation, if possible. Mrs. Harley quite gave herself up to the task of soothing down the temper which Alice had ruffled, and whispering perseverance to the discouraged suitor. She referred to him on all occasions, thrust his opinions into anything that was going forward, contrived means of bringing him into immediate contact with Alice, which last brought many a little sting and slight to the unfortunate and too well-befriended lover—on the whole, conducted herself as a nervous, anxious, well-meaning woman, to whom Providence has not given the gift of comprehending other people’s individualities, might be supposed likely to do. As Mrs. Harley sat in her great chair by the fire in the Waterflag drawing-room, and looked round her upon her children and descendants, I did not wonder that she was both proud and anxious. There was Maurice with a new world of troublous thoughts in his face. I could no more understand what was their cause than I could interfere with them. Was it that dread following out of his investigations into Truth, wherever she might lead him, which he had contemplated with tragical but complacent placidity six months since—or had other troubles, more material, overtaken the Fellow of Exeter? I was somewhat curious, but how could I hope to know? Then there was Johnnie, poor, happy, deluded boy! Miss Reredos was of the company—and while she still saw nobody else who was more likely game, she amused herself with Johnnie, and overwhelmed his simple soul with joy. His book and his love together had changed him much, poor fellow; he was sadly impatient of being spoken to as a youth, or almost as a child, in the old sympathetic, tender custom which all his family had fallen into. He was jealous of being distinguished in any way from other people, and took the indulgences long accorded to his ill-health and helplessness fiercely, as if they had been so many insults. Poor Johnnie! he thought himself quite lifted above the old warm family affection, which clung so close to the weakest of the flock, by this new imaginary love of his. I wonder what that syren of his imagination felt when she saw what she had done! I imagine nothing but amusement, and a little pleasurable thrill of vanity. Many men made love to Miss Reredos, or had done so during the past career of that experienced young lady; few perhaps had thrown themselves at her feet tout entier, like our poor cripple Johnnie. She felt the flattery, though she cared little about the victim. I believe, while she foresaw quite coolly the misery she was bringing on the boy, she yet had and would retain a certain grateful memory of him all her life.

But it appeared that she had either tired of Maurice, or recognized as impracticable her flirtation with that accomplished young gentleman. They were on somewhat spiteful terms, having a little passing encounter of pique on the one side and anger on the other, whenever they chanced to come in contact. The pique was on the lady’s side; but as for Maurice, he looked as if it would have been a decided relief to his feelings to do her some small personal injury. There was a kind of snarl in his voice when he addressed her, such as I have heard men use to a woman who had somehow injured them, and whom they supposed to have taken a mean advantage of her woman’s exemption from accountability. “If you were a man I could punish you; but you are not a man, and I have to be polite to you, you cowardly female creature,” said the tone, but not the words of Maurice’s voice; and I could discover by that tone that something new must have happened which I did not know of. All the more fervently for the coolness of his mother and sisters to her, and for the constraint and gloomy looks of Maurice, did Johnnie, poor boy, hang upon the words and watch the looks of the enchantress—he saw nobody else in the room, cared for nobody else—was entirely carried beyond all other affections, beyond gratitude, beyond every sentiment but that of the exalted boyish passion which had, to his own consciousness, changed all his life and thoughts.

And there, on the other hand, was Alice, thwarting all the wishes and inclinations of her friends. Mrs. Harley forgave Johnnie, and turned all her wrath for his foolishness upon Miss Reredos; but she did not forgive Alice for those cold and brief answers, that unapproachable aspect which daunted the Rector, comfortable and satisfactory as was his opinion of himself. I could not help looking at these young people with a passing wonder in my mind over the strange caprices and cross-purposes of their period of life. Maurice, for instance—what was it that had set Maurice all astray from his comfortable self-complacency and dilettante leisure? Somehow the pleasure-boat of his life had got among the rocks, and nothing but dissatisfaction—extreme, utter, unmitigated dissatisfaction—was left to the young man, as I could perceive, of all his accomplishments and perfections. Alice was thrusting ordinary life away from her—thrusting aside love, and independence, and “an eligible establishment,” trying to persuade herself that there were other pursuits more dignified than the common life of woman—for—a caprice, Clara said. Johnnie, poor Johnnie, was happy in the merest folly of self-deception that ever innocent boy practised. Alas! and that was but the threshold of hard, sober existence, and who could tell what bitter things were yet in store for them? How hard is life! Perhaps Bertie Nugent at that moment lay stark upon some Eastern field of battle; perhaps he was pledging his heart and life to some of those languid-lively Indian Englishwomen, ever so many thousand miles off—who can tell? And why, because Bertie was in danger, should Alice Harley snub that excellent young Rector, and turn from his attentions with such an air of impatience, almost of disgust? Nobody could answer me these simple questions. Indeed, to tell the truth, I did not ask anybody, but quietly pursued the elucidation of them for myself.

And of course our conversation during the course of the evening ran upon matters connected with India and the last news. Derwent and Mr. Sedgwick held grave consultations on the political aspect of the matter and the future government of India. Miss Reredos shuddered, and put on pretty looks of earnest attention; Clara told the story of the conversation in the nursery; while, in the mean time, Alice expressed her interest neither by look nor word—only betrayed it by sitting stock-still, taking no part in the conversation, and restraining more than was natural every appearance of feeling. That silence would have been enough, if there had been nothing else, to betray her to me.

But I confess I was surprised to hear the eager part which Maurice took in the conversation, and the heat and earnestness with which he spoke.

“If there is one man on earth whom I envy it is Bertie Nugent,” said Maurice, when Clara had ended her nursery story. “I remember him well enough, and I know the interest Mrs. Crofton takes in him. You need not make faces at me, Clara—I don’t think he’s very brilliant, and neither, I daresay, does Mrs. Crofton; but he’s in his proper place.”

“Maurice, my dear, the place Providence appoints to us is always our proper place,” said Mrs. Harley, with the true professional spirit of a clergyman’s wife.

“Oh! just so, mother,” said the Fellow of Exeter, with a momentary return of his old, superb, superior smile, “only, you know, one differs in opinion with Providence now and then. Bertie Nugent, however, has no doubt about it, I am certain. I envy him,” added the young man, with a certain glance at me, as if he expected me to appreciate the change in his sentiments, and to feel rather complimented that my poor Bertie was promoted to the envy of so exalted a personage.

“I thought Mr. Maurice Harley despised soldiers,” said Miss Reredos, dropping her words slowly out of her mouth, as if with a pleasant consciousness that they contained a sting.

“On the contrary, I think soldiering the only natural profession to which we are born,” said Maurice, starting with an angry flush, and all but rudeness of tone.

“Don’t say so, please, before the children,” cried Clara. “War’s disgusting. For one thing, nobody can talk of anything else when it’s going on. And then only think what shoals of poor men it carries away, never to bring them back again. Ah, poor Bertie!” cried Clara, with a little feeling, “I wish the war were over, and he was safe home.”

“I am not sure that war is not the most wholesome of standing institutions,” said Maurice, philosophically. “Your shoals of poor men who go away, and never return, don’t matter much to general humanity. There were more went off in the Irish exodus than we shall lose in India. We can afford to lose a little blood.”

“Oh, yes, and sometimes it takes troublesome people out of the way,” said the Rector’s sister—“one should not forget that.”

“Extremely true, and very philosophical, for a woman,” said Maurice, with a savage look. “It drains the surplus population off, and makes room for those who remain.”

Clara and her mother, both of them, rushed into the conversation with the same breath as women rush to separate combatants. I should have been very much surprised had I been more deeply interested. But at present I was occupied with that imperturbable, uninterfering quietness with which Alice sat at the table, saying nothing;—how elaborately unconscious and unconcerned she looked!—that was much more important to me than any squabble between Maurice and the Rector’s sister—or than the Rector himself, or any one of the many and various individual concerns which, like the different threads of a web, were woven into the quiet household circle—giving a deep dramatic interest to the well-bred, unpicturesque pose of the little company in that quiet English room.

CHAPTER XVII

We stayed all that night at Waterflag, as we always did when we dined with the Sedgwicks, and of course I was subjected to a long private and confidential conversation with Mrs. Harley in my dressing-room, when we both ought to have been at rest. She poured out her anxieties upon me as she had done many a long year ago, when all these young people were unconscious little children, and Dr. Harley, poor good man, was newly dead. Only Time had changed both of us since then—she had become an old woman with silver-white hair under her snowy cap. I was old too, though my boy was but a child, and kept me nearer to youth than belonged to my years; but Mrs. Harley was as glad of this outlet to her anxieties, and felt as much relief in pouring these anxieties forth upon somebody else’s shoulders as ever.

“Ah, Clare!” she said, “you have only one, to be sure, and he’s nobly provided for; but we’re never so happy, though we don’t think it, as when they’re all children. There’s nothing but measles and such things to frighten one then—but now!—dear, dear! the charge of all these grown up young people, Clare, is far too much for a poor woman like me. I believe I shall break down all at once, one of these days.”

“Let us take it quietly,” said I, “they are very good, sensible, well-educated young people—they know what they are doing—don’t you think you might trust them to act for themselves?”

“They will, whether I trust them or not,” sighed poor Mrs. Harley. “Ah dear! to think how one toils and denies one’s self for one’s family, and how little account they make of one’s wishes when all is done! I think mine have quite set themselves—all but Clara, dear girl, who is so perfectly satisfactory in every way—to thwart and cross me, Alice—you know how unreasonable she is—I can do nothing with her. Just the thing of all others that I could have chosen for her, and such a nice, excellent, judicious young man. You saw how she behaved to him to-night.”

“But really, Mrs. Harley, if Alice doesn’t like him”—I interposed with humility.

“Oh, nonsense—she does like him—at least, she doesn’t like anybody else that I know of—and why shouldn’t she like him?” asked the exasperated mother. “You know, Mrs. Crofton, that my poor income dies with me—and there is Johnnie, poor child, to make some provision for, and when I die what will she do?—though to be sure,” concluded Mrs. Harley, drawing herself up a little, “I am not the sort of person to marry my daughters merely for an establishment—that never was my way. This case, you must perceive, Clare, is quite different. He is such a very nice—such an entirely satisfactory person; and the position—I was a clergyman’s wife myself, and I would choose that sphere rather than any other for Alice; and as for liking, I really cannot see a single reason why she should not like him, do you?”

“Why, no—except just, perhaps, that—I fear—she doesn’t,” said I, with hesitation; for I confess this superlative mother’s argument quite nonplused me. After all, why shouldn’t she like that good, young, handsome Rector? I reserved the question for private consideration, but was a little staggered by the strength of Mrs. Harley’s case.

“My opinion is that Alice thinks it rather a merit to refuse an eligible person,” said Mrs. Harley—“like all these young people. There is Maurice, too—you will not believe it, Clare—but Maurice has actually had the folly to fall in love with Francis Owen’s sister in Simonborough. I could not believe my ears when I heard of it first. Maurice, who has always been such a very prudent boy! She is a very nice, pretty girl, but, of course has not a penny—and Maurice has nothing but his fellowship. It is a pretty mess altogether. In the very best view of the case, if Maurice even had been content to think like other people, and had a nice living waiting for him, they might both have done better—he might have done a great deal better at least. But, no!—when they find somebody quite unsuitable, that is the very thing to please young people in these days; and there is my son, Clare—my eldest son—who was never intended for any profession but the Church—actually broaching all kinds of wild schemes about work, and talking of going to Australia, or taking a laborer’s hod, or any other wild thing he can think of; it is enough to break my heart!”

“Then do you mean that Maurice intends to throw up his fellowship, and marry?” said I, thinking this too good news to be true.

Mrs. Harley shook her head.

“It is all a muddle,” she said, “there is no satisfaction at all in it; she thought he flirted with Miss Reredos, and he thought she flirted with some of the officers; and Miss Reredos has such a grudge at him for falling in love with anybody but herself, that she did all she could to help them to a quarrel; and a very good thing, too, for of course they never would have been so mad as to marry, and I dislike long engagements exceedingly; only since then it is really almost impossible to endure Maurice in the house. He is so ill-tempered, it is really quite dreadful. I am sure, when I was young, I never gave my parents any uneasiness about me, yet my two eldest children seem to think it quite an amusement to worry me out of my life.”

“Let us believe they don’t do it on purpose,” said I; “troubles never come single, you know—and I daresay this is the most critical time of their life.”

“Ah, Alice should have had all these affairs over long ago!” said Mrs. Harley, disapprovingly; “Alice is seven and twenty, Mrs. Crofton—she ought to have been settled in life years ago. I am sure, considering all the opportunities she has had, it is quite disgraceful. I can’t help feeling that people—her father’s friends, for instance—will blame me.”

I found it difficult not to smile at this refinement of maternal anxiety, but after a while succeeded in soothing the good mother, whose mind was evidently eased by the utterance, and persuading her that everything would come right. She went away shaking her head, but smiling through her anxious looks. She laid down her burden at my door, and left it there. When she had gone I took up my portion of it with sundry compunctions. Bertie Nugent had been seven years away—when he went away Alice was scarcely twenty. They had of course been very much in each other’s society before this, but seven years is a long break, even for lovers. These two were not lovers; and was not Clara right when she stigmatized as the merest foolish romance any interest which Alice might have in her long-departed and indifferent playfellow? I began to blame myself for cherishing in my own mind the lingering hope that my wishes might still be accomplished concerning them. Perhaps that hope had, by some subtle means, betrayed itself to Alice, and had helped to strengthen her in her natural perversity and the romance of that vague visionary link which existed only in her mind and mine. I have known very similar cases more than once in my life—cases in which a childish liking, kept up only by chance inquiries or friendly messages at long intervals on one side or the other, has forestalled the imagination of the two subjects of it so completely, that both have kept from all engagements for years, until at long and last, encountering each other once again, they have discovered themselves to have loved each other all this time, and married out of hand. This vague sort of tie, which is no tie, has a more captivating hold upon the mind than a real engagement; but then it might come to nothing. And after an interval of seven years, was it not everybody’s duty to turn the dreamer away from that romantic distance to the real ground close at hand? I had considered the question many times with too strong a regard for Bertie (who, to be sure, had no particular solicitude about the matter, or he might have been home long ago) in my thoughts. Now I rather changed my point of view. If Alice liked Bertie, it was purely a love of the imagination. Why, for that Will-o’-the-wisp, was she to keep dreaming in the twilight while the broad daylight of life and all its active duties were gliding out of her reach? I resolved to bestir myself and startle Alice into common sense and ordinary prudence. Here was she, letting youth pass her, not perceiving how it went, looking so far away out of her horizon to that fantastic, unreal attraction at the other end of the world. Thinking over it I grew more and more dissatisfied. She was wrong to entertain, I was wrong to encourage, so uncomfortable a piece of self-delusion. It is true, Bertie was in danger, and surrounded with a flush of interest and anxiety which doubled his claims on everybody who knew him. Still it must not be permitted to continue—she must be roused out of this vain imaginary attachment which blinded her to the love that sought her close at hand. Why did she not like the Rector? I resolved to be at the bottom of that question, which I could not answer, before twenty-four hours were out.

CHAPTER XVIII

But who can tell what is to happen within twenty-four hours? When I left my dressing-room next morning, I found Derwent lingering in the corridor outside, waiting for me. He carried in his hand one of those ominous covers which thrill the hearts of private people with fears of evil tidings. He had been half afraid to bring it into me, but he did not hide either the startling hieroglyphics which proclaimed the nature of the dispatch, nor his own distressed and sorrowful face.

“What is the matter?” I cried, in breathless alarm, when I saw him; “something has happened!”

“I fear so,” said Derwent; “but softly—softly, Clare; in the first place it is not absolutely his name and there are such perpetual mistakes by this confounded telegraph. Softly, softly, Clare.”

I had seized the dispatch while he was speaking—I read it without saying a word—did I not know how it would be?—ah, that concise, dreadful, murderous word—killed! I knew it the moment I saw Derwent’s face.

“But, my love, it is not his name—look! it absolutely may be somebody else and not Bertie,” cried my husband.

Ah, Bertie! the sound of his dear, pleasant, homely name overcame me. There was no longer any Bertie in the world! I had borne the dreadful excitement of reading the dispatch, but I lost my self-command entirely when all the world of love and hope that had lived in him came before me in his name—it went to my heart.