by Ellen Wood
“As what, Mr. Andinnian?” was the stern question. “As I have read hers, I was going to presume to say,” replied Karl, his voice and eyes alike drooping.
Colonel Cleeve felt confounded. He would have called this the very height of impudence, but the young man standing before him was so indisputably refined, so modest, and spoke as though he were grieved to the heart.
“And, pray, what could you have promised yourself by thus presuming to love my daughter?”
“I promised myself nothing. On my word of honour as a gentleman, sir, I have not been holding out any kind of hopes or promises to myself. I believe,” added the young man, with the open candour so characteristic of him, “that I have been too happy in the present, in Miss Cleeve’s daily society — for hardly a day passed that we did not see each other — to cast so much as a thought to the future.”
“Well, sir, what excuse have you to make for this behaviour? Do you see its folly?”
“I see it now. I see it for the first time, Colonel Cleeve. For — I — suppose — you will not let me aspire to win her?”
The words were given with slow deprecation: as if he hardly dared to speak them. —
“What do you think, yourself, about it?” sharply asked the Colonel. “Do you consider yourself a suitable match for Miss Cleeve? In any way? In any way, Mr. Andinnian?”
“I am afraid not, sir.”
“You are afraid not! Good Heavens! Your family — pardon me for alluding to it, Mr. Andinnian, but there are moments in a life-time, and this is one, when plain speaking becomes a necessity.. Your family have but risen from the ranks, sir, as we soldiers say, and not much above the ranks either. Miss Cleeve is Miss Cleeve: my daughter, and a peer’s grand-daughter.”
“It is all true, sir.”
“So much for that unsuitability. And then we come to means. What are yours, Mr. Andinnian?” The young man lifted his head and his honest grey eyes to the half-affrighted but generally calm face. He could but tell the truth at all times without equivocation. —
“I fear you will consider my means even more ineligible than my family,” he said. “I have my pay and two hundred pounds a year. At my mother’s death another two hundred a year will come to me.” Colonel Cleeve drew down his lips. “And that is all — in the present and in the future?”
“All I can reckon upon with any certainty. When my brother shall succeed Sir Joseph Andinnian, he may do something more for me. My father suggested it in his last testamentary paper: and I think he will do it: I believe he will. But of this I cannot be certain; and in any case it may not be much.”
Colonel Cleeve paused a moment. He wished the young man would not be so straightforwardly candid, so transparently single-minded, putting himself, as it were, in all honour in his hands. It left the Colonel — the mildest man in the world by nature — less loophole to get into a proper passion. In the midst of it all, he could not help liking the young fellow.
“Mr. Andinnian, every word you say only makes the case worse. Two barriers, each in itself insurmountable lie, by your own showing, between you and my daughter. The bare idea of making her your wife is an insult to her; were it carried into a fact — I condemn myself to speak of so impossible a thing unwillingly — it would blight her life and happiness for ever.”
Karl’s pale face grew red as his coat. “These are harsh words, Colonel Cleeve.”
“They are true ones, sir: and justifiable. Lucy has been reared in the notions befitting her rank. She has been taught to expect that when she marries her home will be at least as well-appointed as the one she is taken from. My son is a great expense to me and my means are limited as compared with my position — I am plain with you, you see, Mr. Andinnian; you have been so with me — but still we live as our compeers live, and have things in accordance about us. But what could you offer Lucy? — allowing that in point of family you were entitled to mate with her. Why, a lodging in a barracks; a necessity to tramp with you after the regiment at home and abroad.” Karl stood silent, the pain of mortification on his closed lips. Colonel Cleeve put the case rather extremely; but it was near the truth, after all.
“And you would wish to bring this disgrace, this poverty, this blight on Lucy! If you—”
“No, sir, I would not,” was the impulsive interruption. “What do you take me for? Lucy’s happiness is a great deal dearer to me than my own.”
“If you have one spark of honour, Mr. Andinnian — and until now I believed you had your full share of it — if you do care in ever so small a degree for my daughter’s comfort and her true welfare; in short, if you are a man and a gentleman, you will aid me in striving to undo the harm that has been done.”
“I will strive to do what is best to be done,” replied Karl, knowing the fiat that must come, and feeling that his heart was breaking.
“Very well. Our acquaintance with you must close from this hour; and I must ask you to give me your word of honour never to attempt to hold future communication with my daughter in any way: never to meet her in society even, if it be possible for you to stay away and avoid it. In future you and Miss Cleeve are strangers.”
There was a dead silence. Karl seemed to be looking at vacancy, over the Colonel’s head.
“You do not speak, Mr. Andinnian.”
He roused himself with a sort of shudder. “I believe I was lost in glancing at the blighted life mine will be, Colonel Cleeve” And the Colonel, in spite of his self-interest, felt a kind of pity for the feelings that he saw were stung to the quick.
“Do you refuse to comply with my mandate?”
“No, sir. Putting the affair before me in the light you have put it, no alternative is left me. I see, too, that circumstanced as I am — and as she is — my dream of love has been nothing but madness. On my word of honour, Colonel Cleeve, could I have looked at the matter at first as I look at it now, and foreseen that we were destined to — to care for each other, I would have flown Miss Cleeve’s presence.”
“These regrets often come late in the day, Mr. Andinnian,” was the rather sarcastic answer.
“They have in this case.”
“Then I may rely on your honour?”
“You may indeed, sir. But that I see how right and reasonable your fiat is; how essential for Lucy’s sake, I could hardly have complied with it; for to part with her will be rending myself from every joy of life. I give you my sacred word of honour that I will not henceforth attempt to hold communication of any kind with her: I will not meet her if I can avoid it. That I should live to say this calmly!” added Karl to himself.
“I expected no less from you, Mr. Andinnian,” spoke the Colonel, stiffly but courteously. “I am bound to say that you have met this most lamentable affair in a proper spirit. I see I may rely upon you.”
“You may rely upon me as you would rely upon yourself,” said the young officer earnestly. “Should the time ever come that my fortunes ascend — it seems next door to an impossibility now, but such things have been heard of — and Lucy be still free—”
“That could make no alteration: want of fortune is not the only bar,” haughtily interrupted Colonel Cleeve. “The present is enough for us, Mr. Andinnian: let us leave the future.”
“True. The present is greatly enough; and I beg your pardon, Colonel Cleeve. I will keep my word both in the spirit and the letter. And now, I would make one request to you, sir — that you will allow me to see Lucy for an instant before we finally part.”
“That you may gain some foolish promise from her? — of waiting, or something of that kind!” was the angry rejoinder.
“I told you that you might rely upon me,” replied Karl with sad emphasis. “Colonel Cleeve, don’t you see what a bitter blow this is to me?” he burst forth, with an emotion he had not betrayed throughout the interview. “It may be bitter to Lucy also. Let us say a word of good-bye to each other for the last time.”
Colonel Cleeve hardly knew what to do. He did not like to say No; he did not like to say Yes
. That it was bitter to one, he saw; that it might be bitter to the other, he quite believed: and he had a soft place in his heart.
“I will trust you in this as I trust you in the other, Mr. Andinnian. It must be good-bye, only, you understand: and a brief one.”
He quitted the room, and sent Lucy in. Almost better for them both that he had not done so — for these partings are nearly as cruel as death. To them both, this severing asunder for all time seemed worse than death. Lucy, looking quiet and simple in her muslin, stood shivering.
“I could not depart without begging you to forgive me, Lucy,” Karl said, his tone less firm than usual with emotion and pain. “I ought to have exercised more thought; to have foreseen what must be the inevitable ending. Colonel Cleeve has my promise that I will never again seek you in any way: that from henceforth we shall be as strangers. Oh my darling! — I may surely call you so in this last hour! — this is painful I fear to you as to me.”
She went quite close to him, her eyes cast up to his with a piteous mourning in their depths; eyes too sad for tears.
“They have told me the same, Karl. There is no hope at all for us. But I — I wish in my turn to say something to you. Karl” — and her voice sank to a whisper, and she put out her hand as if inviting him to take it— “I shall never forget you; I shall never care for you less than I do now.”
He did not take her hand. He took her. Almost beside himself with the bitter pain, Karl Andinnian so far forgot himself as to clasp this young girl to his heart: as to rain down on her sweet face the sad kisses from his lips. But he remembered his promise to Colonel Cleeve, and said never a word of hope for the future.
“Forgive me, Lucy; this and all. Perhaps Colonel Cleeve would hardly grudge it to us when it is to be our last meeting on earth.”
“In the years to come,” she sobbed, her face lying under his wet tears, “when we shall be an old man and woman, they may let us meet again. Oh, Karl, yes! and we can talk together of that best world, Heaven, where there will be no separation. We shall be drawing near its gates then, looking out for it.”
A slight tap at the door, and Miss Blake entered. She had come to summon Lucy. Seeing what she did see — the tears, the emotion, the intertwined hands, Miss Blake looked — looked very grim and stately.
“Lucy, Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve have sent me to request you to go to them.”
“God bless you, Lucy,” he whispered. “God bless you, my best and dearest. Good-bye, for ever.”
With what seemed a cool bow to Miss Blake and never a word, for in truth he was unequal to speaking it, Lieutenant Andinnian passed into the hall, caught up his hat and sword that he had left there, and let himself out, buckling on the latter. Lucy had her hands to her face, hiding it. Miss Blake waited. —
“My dear Lucy, what am I to say?”
“Tell them that I wish to stay here alone for a few minutes. Tell them that Mr. Andinnian is gone.” Miss Blake, her hard, thin lips compressed with the cruellest pain woman can ever feel, took her way back again. Only herself knew, or ever would know, what this dreadful blow was to her — the finding that she had been mistaken in Karl Andinnian’s love. For anguish such as this women have lost life. One small drop, taking from the bitterness, there was — to know that he and his true love had bidden each other adieu for ever.
“Perhaps — in a few weeks, or months to come — when he shall have recovered his folly — he and I may be friends again,” she murmured. “Nay — who knows — may even become something warmer and dearer: his feeling for that child can only be a passing fancy. Something warmer and dearer,” softly repeated Miss Blake, as she traversed the hall.
“Lucy will come to you presently, Mrs. Cleeve. There’s no hurry now: Mr. Andinnian is gone.”
“What is Lucy doing, Theresa?”
“Sobbing silently, I think: she scarcely spoke to me. Fancy her being so foolish!”
Mrs. Cleeve went at once to the library. She and her husband were as much alike as possible: mild, good, unemotional people who hated to inflict pain: with a great love for their daughter, and a very great sense of their own importance and position in the world, as regarded pride of birth.
“Oh, Lucy dear, it was obliged to be. You are reasonable, and must know it was. But from my very heart I am sorry for you: and I shall always take blame to myself for not having been more cautious than to allow you to become intimate with Mr. Andinnian. It seems to me as though I had been living with a veil before my eyes.”
“It is over now: let it pass,” was Lucy’s faint answer.
“Yes, dear, it is over. All over for good. By this time twelvemonth, Lucy, I hope you will be happily married, and forget this painful episode in your life. Not, my child, that we shall like to part with you: only — it will be for your own welfare and happiness.”
Lucy pressed her slender white fingers upon her brow, and looked at her mother. There was a puzzled, doubting expression in her eyes that spoke of bewilderment.
“Mamma,” she said slowly, “I think perhaps I did not understand you. I have parted with Mr. Andinnian, as you and papa wished, and as — as I suppose it was right I should do; I shall never, I hope, do anything against your will. But — to try to make me marry will be quite a different thing. Were you and papa to tell me that you insisted on it, I could only resist. And I should resist to the end.”
Mrs. Cleeve saw that she had not been wise. To allude to any such future contingency when Lucy was smarting under the immediate pain of separation, was a mistake. Sighing gently, she sat down and took her daughter’s hand, stroking it fondly.
“Lucy, my dear, I will relate to you a little matter of my own early experience,” she began in a hushed tone. “I once had one of the affairs of the heart, as they are called. The young man was just as attractive as Mr. Andinnian, and quite worthy. But circumstances were unfavourable, and we had to part. I thought that all worth living for in life was over. I said that I should never care for any one else, and never marry. Not so very long afterwards, Captain Cleeve presented himself. Before he said a word to me, Lucy, before I knew what he was thinking of, I had learnt to like and esteem him: and I became his wife.”
“And did you love him?” questioned Lucy, in great surprise.
“Oh dear no. Not with the kind of love I had felt for another — the kind of love that I presume you are feeling for Mr. Andinnian. Such love never comes back to the heart a second time. But, Lucy, my married life has been perfectly successful and happy.
Once that great passion is over, you see, the heart is at rest, calmness and reason have supervened. Rely upon it, my dear, your married life will be all the happier for this little experience connected with Mr. Andinnian.”
Lucy said no more. She knew. And Mrs. Cleeve thought how dutiful her daughter was.
On the following day, a letter came to the Colonel from Karl. A well-written and sensible letter; not of rebellion, but of acquiescence. While it deplored his fate in separating from Lucy; it bowed to the necessity that enforced it. A note was enclosed for Lucy: it was unsealed, in case the Colonel should wish to read before giving it to her. The Colonel did so: he did not fear treason from Karl, but it was as ‘ well to be on the safe side and assure himself there was none. It contained only a few words, rather more coherent than Karl’s emotion of the previous day had allowed him to speak: and it bade her adieu for ever. Colonel Cleeve sent both notes to his daughter, and then lost himself in a reverie: from which he was aroused by the entrance of his wife.
“Lucinda, that is really a most superior young man: high-principled, true-hearted. A pity but he had rank and money.”
“Who is a superior young man?” asked Mrs. Cleeve, not having the clue.
“Lieutenant Andinnian.”
CHAPTER III.
Done at Sunset. —
THE warm June sun rode gaily in the bright-blue skies, and the sweet June Roses were in bloom. Mrs. Andinnian, entirely unconscious of the blight that had fallen on her younger son, was
placidly making the home happiness (as she believed) of the elder. Had she known of Karl’s sorrow, she would have given to it but a passing thought.
There was peace in the home again. The vexation regarding their young lady-neighbour had long ago subsided in Mrs. Andinnian’s mind. She had spoken seriously and sharply to Adam upon the point — which was an entirely new element in his experience; telling him how absurd and unsuitable it was, that he, one of England’s future baronets, and three-and-thirty years of age already, should waste his hours in frivolous talk with a girl beneath him. Adam heard her in silence, smiling a little, and quite docile. He rejoined in a joking tone.
“All this means, I suppose, mother, that you would not tolerate Miss Turner as my wife!”
“Never, Adam, never. You would have to choose between myself and her. And I have been a loving mother to you.”
“All right. Don’t worry yourself. There’s no cause for it.”
From this time — the conversation was in April, at the close of Karl’s short visit to them — the trouble ceased. Adam Andinnian either did not meet the girl so much: or else he timed his interviews more cautiously. In May Miss Turner went away on a visit: Adam seemed to have dismissed her from his mind: and Mrs. Andinnian forgot that she had ever been anxious.
Never a word of invitation had come from Sir Joseph. During this same month, May, Mrs. Andinnian, her patience worn out, had written to Foxwood, proffering a visit for herself and Adam. At the end of a fortnight’s time, she received an answer. A few words of shaky writing, in Sir Joseph’s own hand. He had been very ill, he told her, which was the cause of the delay in replying, as he wished to write himself. Now he was somewhat better, and gaining strength. When able to entertain her and her son — which he hoped would be soon — he should send for them. It would give him great pleasure to receive them, and to make the acquaintance of his heir.
That letter had reached Mrs. Andinnian the first day of June. Some three weeks had elapsed since, and no summons had come. She was growing just a little impatient again. Morning after morning, while she dressed, the question always crossed her mind: will there be a letter to-day from Foxwood? On this lovely June morning, with the scent of the midsummer flowers wafting in through the open chamber window, it filled her mind as usual.