by Ouida
De Vigne could not but smile at the poetry and enthusiasm of the reply — so like Alma herself; but as he smiled he sighed impatiently.
“I am ‘Sir Folko’ no longer, Alma; the name was never appropriate. I have always told you I am no stainless knight. Call me Granville. I have no one to give me the old familiar name now.”
“Granville!” murmured Alma, repeating the name to herself, with a deeper flush on her cheeks. “Granville! Yes it is a beautiful name, and I love it because it is yours; yet I love Sir Folko best, because others have called you Granville before me, but ‘Sir Folko’ is all my own!”
Her innocent speech stung him to the heart; he remembered how truth, and honour, and justice demanded of him to tell her who had “called him Granville before her.”
He interrupted her hastily:
“But you have not answered my question. How much do you love me? Come, tell me!”
“How can I tell you?” she answered, looking up in his face with a smile so tender that it was almost mournful. “It seems to me that no one could ever have loved as I do you. How much do I love you? Oh! I will tell you when you number the rose-leaves or count the river waves, then, but not till then, could I ever gauge my love for you!”
He pressed her closer to him, yet he asked a cruel question:
“But if I left you now — if I were ordered on foreign service, for instance, and died in battle, could you not find fresh happiness without me?”
She clung to him, all her radiant joy banished, her face white and her eyes wild with a prescient dread:
“Oh! why do you torture me so? such jests are cruel! I do not tell you I would die for you, that is a hackneyed phrase not fit for deep and earnest love like ours, though, Heaven knows, existence would be no sacrifice if given up to serve you; but I would live for you — I will live for you as no woman ever lived for man. I will increase all talents God has given me that you may be prouder of me; I will try and root out all my faults, that you may love me better. If ever you lose your wealth, as rich men have done, I will work for you, and glory in my task. To share the pomp of others would be misery, to share your poverty, joy. I will pray to Heaven that I may always be beautiful in your eyes; but if you ever love another, do not tell me, but kill me, as Alarcos slew his wife: to lose my life would be sweeter than to lose your love. If war calls you, I will follow — death and danger would have no terror by your side — and if you died in battle, I would be truer to you, till we met beyond the grave, than woman ever was to any living love. But — my God! you know how well I love you; why do you torture me thus!”
She had spoken with all that impassioned fervour natural to her, but passion so intense treads close on anguish; all the soft bloom of youth and joy forsook her lips, and her head drooped upon her bosom, which heaved with uncontrollable sobs. Poor child! they were the first of those waters of Marah which flow side by side with the hot springs of Passion. De Vigne pressed her to his heart, lifted her face to his, and called back life to her cheeks with breathless caresses, as if he would repay with that mute eloquence the love which touched him too deeply for her to answer it in words. It struck far down into his heart, this generous and high-souled tenderness. All its devotion and heroism; all its unselfishness, and warmth, and trust; all the diviner essence which breathed in it, marking it out from man’s and woman’s ordinary loves, brutal on the one side, exigeant and egotistical on the other; struck home to his better nature and there came upon him a mortal anguish of regret and shame that here he should give nothing, but gain all. In those few hours she had grown unutterably dear to him, though, save a few murmured and feverish words, his passions were too strong to form themselves to speech. But one other question he put to her:
“Darling, if you love me like this, would you be content with me for your sole companion, away from the pleasures of society, alone in a solitude of the heart? For me, with me, could you bear the world’s sneer? With the warmth of love around you, would you care what the world said of you? Should I be sufficient for you, if others look coldly and neglected you?”
Even now his literal meaning did not occur to her; she neither knew nor dreamt of any ties that bound him; and she still thought he was trying to see how little or how much she loved him.
“Why do you ask me?” she said, almost impatiently, her eyes growing dark and humid with her great love for him. “You know well enough that ‘for you,’ and ‘with you,’ are talismans all-powerful with me. Your smile is my sole joy, your coldness my sole sorrow. You are all the world to me; why will you doubt me?”
“I do not doubt you! It would be better for you if your love were less true, or mine more worthy it. Would to God we had met earlier!” —
But she did not hear his muttered words, nor see the hot tears that stood in his eyes; tears wrung from his very heart’s depths; tears of gratitude, regret, remorse, and wholly of tenderness, as he bent over her, pressing his burning lips to her flushed brow and soft cheeks, warm with a feverish glow, the glow of joy, predestined not to last And now the sun was near his setting, and all the earth was brilliant with the imperial glories that attend the gorgeous burial of a summer-day. Mingling rays of crimson and of gold stretched across the sky, steeping in light the snow-white fleecy clouds that rose up on the horizon, like the silvery mountain range of some far-off and Arcadian land. The roses glowed a deeper hue, the chesnut-boughs drooped nearer to the earth; the flowers hung their heads, drunk with the evening dew; the birds were rocked by the warm west wind; delicious odour from the lime-leaves filled the air, while already on the warm and radiant day descended the tender and voluptuous night.
The Sunset hour, when the busy day still lingers on the earth, bowed down with the weight of sins and sorrows with which in one brief twelve hours the sons of men have laden her; and the night sweeps down with noiseless wing from heaven, to lay her soft hand on weary human eyes, and lead them into dream-land, to rest awhile from toil and care; is ever full of Nature’s deepest poetry. The working man at sunset, leaves his plough and his hard toil for daily bread, and catches one glimpse of God’s great mystery of beauty, as he sees the evening dew glisten in the dying buds of the flowers his plough has slain. The Ave Maria at sunset, wings its solemn chant over the woods and mountains, golden in God’s own light, and mingles its human worship with the pure voiceless prayer of the fair earth. The soul of man at sunset, shakes off the dust of the working world, and with its rest has time to listen to the sweeter under-notes and more spiritual harmonies which lie under the rushing current of our outer life; and at sunset our hearts grow tenderer to those we hate, and more awake to all the silent beauty of existence which our strife, and fret, and follies mar and ruin; and — when we love — as the warm sunset fades, and the dreamy night draws on, all the poetry and passion that lie in us wake from their slumber, and our heart throbs with its subtle and voluptuous beauty.
The golden rays of the sun, while it still lingered over the earth, as a lover loth to part, fell upon Alma’s hair, and lit up her features with a strange radiance, touching the lips and cheeks into a richer glow, and darkening her eyes into a still deeper brilliance. They were silent; they needed no words between them, a whisper now and then was all; their thoughts were better uttered by the caresses he lavished upon her, in the vehemence of his new-born love. The dangerous spell of the hour stole upon them; her soft arms were round his neck; his lips rested on her flushed brow; while one hand played with a thick silky lock of her golden hair which had escaped from the rest and hung down to her waist, twisting it round his fingers and drawing it out, half in admiration of its beauty, half in absence of thought And as the sun sank out of sight below the horizon, and the little crescent of the moon rose clearer in the evening mists, and the air grew sweeter with the perfume of the early night, Alma might have known that the heart on which her young head rested, was throbbing loudly with fiercer and more restless passion than the loving and tender joy which made her heart its own unclouded heaven.
&n
bsp; And still he had not told her of his marriage; and still he said to himself, “I ought to leave her, but, God forgive me! I cannot.”
On their delicious solitude the sound of a horse’s hoofs broke suddenly, with the harsh clang and clamour of the outer world. All was so still around Alma’s sequestered home, especially in the summer evenings, when the animal life about the farm was at rest, that the unusual sound brought, by its sudden inroad, the serpent of social life into the solitude of the heart, from which for a while all memory of the prying and fretting world had been excluded.
The horse’s gallop ceased at the little gate, and the wicket was opened with a clash of its iron latch. De Vigne started, with a vague dread that some one had come to try and rob him of his new-won treasure. The strongest nerves grow highly strung at times; and when the poetry of life wakes in the hearts of men of action, and passion rises up out of their ordinarily calm existence, their whole souls stir with it, as the great seas, that do not move for light showers or low winds, arise at the sound of the tempest, till all nature is awed at their vehemence, and their own lowest depths tremble with the convulsion.
“What is the matter?” whispered Alma, as she saw his eyes straining eagerly to see who the new corner was.
“Nothing, nothing,” he answered hastily. He could not tell her that the vague dread upon him (upon him! he who had laughed at every danger, and held his own against every foe) was the terror and the horror of that woman whom the Law called his Wife. He gave a deep sigh of relief as he saw that it was only his own groom, Warren, coming up the path with a note in his hand; but the blood mounted to his forehead in anger at the interruption. With the contradictory waywardness of human nature, while he knew that he should never leave Alma, unless some imperative call aided him to drag himself from her side, he could have found it in his heart to slay the man who would force him, however innocently, from his paradise!
The note was merely from Dunbar, major of Ours, to ask to see him at once, on business of urgent military importance; but as the envelope was marked outside “Immediate,” his confidential servant had sent a groom off with it as soon as he had seen it De Vigne read the note in silence, only pointing to Alma the words on it, “Let me see you, if possible, early this evening,” and sat still, tearing the paper into little pieces, with his teeth set, his face deadly pale, and a bitter struggle in his heart — a struggle more hard and cruel, even than to most men, to one who had followed all his impulses, whose will had been unbridled from his cradle, with whom to wish and to have had always’ been synonymous, and whose passions were as strong as renunciation was unaccustomed. With a fierce oath muttered in his teeth he sprang to his feet; half awed by the sternness on his face, the grey pallor of his cheek, and the flashing fire of his eyes, she took his hands in her own with the caressing fondness of her usual manner.
“Must you go? Can’t you give me one half hour more? The hours were always so long when you were away; what will they be now? Give me ten minutes more — just ten minutes!”
Her loving, innocent words, the clinging touch of her hands, the witchery of her face, lifted up to his in the twilight shadows — what tortures they were to him!
“Hush, hush!” he said, fiercely, crushing her in a| passionate farewell embrace. “Do not ask me; for God’s sake, let me go while I can! Kiss me and forgive me, my worshipped darling, for all the sins in my past, and my acts and my thoughts, of which your guileless heart never dreams!”
She did not understand him; she had no clue to the wild desires rioting in his heart; but love taught her the sympathy, experience alone could not have given; her kisses, warm and soft as the touch of rose-leaves, answered his prayer, and her words were fond as human words could be.
“Since I love you, how could I help but forgive you whatever there might be? I do not know what your words mean, but I do know how well I love you; too well to listen to what others might ever say of you; too well to care what your past may have been. Good night God bless you!”
“God bless you!” murmured De Vigne, incoherently. “Let me go, let me go, Alma, while I have strength!”...
In another moment the ring of his horse’s hoofs rung loud on the stony road, growing fainter and fainter on the evening air, till it died away to silence; while Alma leaned out under the chesnut-boughs, looking up to the stars that were shining in the deep blue sky, now that the golden sunset had faded, with tears of joy on her long black lashes and sighs of delight on her warm lips, dreaming her sweet love idyll, and thinking of the morrow that would bring him to her again.
CHAPTER V.
A Bitterness greater than Death.
As soon as De Vigne reached town he drove to Dunbar’s, who in a very few words told him what he wanted of him, which was to exchange with him back into the Dashers, and go out to the Crimea in his stead; but in lieu of the eager assent he had anticipated from so inveterate a campaigner and thorough-bred a soldier, he was astonished to see De Vigne pause, hesitate, and wait irresolute.
“I thought you would like it, old fellow,” said Dunbar. “The exchange would be easily effected. I should be no good in the Crimea; the winter season would send me to glory in no time with my confounded bronchia, while you seemed to enjoy yourself so thoroughly out in India, polishing off those black devils, that I thought you’d be delighted to get a chance of active service again.”
“I enjoy campaigning; no man more so,” said De Vigne, shortly; “and to give up a chance of active service is almost as great a sacrifice to me as anything. At the same time, circumstances have arisen which make me doubt whether I can go in your stead or not Will you give me twenty-four hours to decide?”
“Very well — if you like. I know you will tell me this time to-morrow that you have already ordered your cases of Bass, and looked over your new rifles. You will never be able to resist the combined seductions of Turkish liaisons and Russian spearing,” laughed Dunbar.
De Vigne laughed too; though, Heaven knows, aughter was far enough from his heart:
“Very possibly. I’ll send you a line to-morrow evening, yes or no.”
“Oh, it’s sure to be yes,” said Dunbar. “You were always the very deuce for war and women, but I think campaigning carried the day.”
De Vigne laughed again, par complaisance; but he thought of one woman he had learnt to love more dearly than anything else in earth or heaven. He left Dunbar, went back to his house, and shut himself in his own room. He lit his cigar, opened the window, and leaned out into the night. His honour and his love were at war, and the calm and holy midnight irritated and inflamed, where at another time it might have soothed him. Never in all his life, with its errors, its hot instincts, its generous impulses, its haughty honour, never stained by a mean thought, but often hazarded by reckless passions, had his nature been so fairly roused as now. He knew that he had fallen far from his standard of truth and candour, in the concealment of his marriage, which had gone on from day to day till he had won the deepest love he had ever had, ostensibly a free man; and that knowledge cut him to the soul, and gave him the keenest remorse which he had ever known; for though he had done much sin in haste, his conscience was ever tender, and nothing could ever blunt him to any dereliction from frankness and honesty. But he knew, too, now, that the evil was done, and that to leave her would be to quench all the youth and glory from her young days, and refuse her the sole consolation in his power to give her, which was his love, no light treasure to a woman of her mind and nature.
“God help her!” he muttered to himself, as he looked down into the dark and silent street; “I will be truer to her than any husband ever was to wife. She is my wife by love, by reason, by right, and when others sneer at her or pass her coldly by because she has sacrificed herself for me, I will atone to her for all — I will give up the world, and live for her alone. Since I have crushed my little flower in my headlong path, I will make up to her by guarding her from all blight or storm. Would to Heaven I were worthy of her!”
Th
at night his resolve was made. To-morrow he would tell her of his marriage — tell her all. If she still loved him, and still wished to live for him, entirely as his heart was bound to the Service, he would throw up his commission and take her to Italy or the Ionian Islands, where he would lavish on her all the luxuries and pleasures wealth could bring, and give her what would be all-sufficient to her affectionate and unselfish nature — love. He would live for her alone; if, in time, he missed the glare and excitement of his past life with men, this sacrifice, in return, he at the least owed her; he would not bring her to the din of cities where coarse glances might pain the heart that had as yet known no shame, and where coarse judges would class her with the base Floras and Leilas of her sex.
Military duties kept him until late the next day. A soldier’s life is not all play, though the foes to a standing army are given to making it out such. Several things called his attention that morning, and he had afterwards to attend the first sitting of a court martial on one of those low practical jokes with which raw boys, bringing their public school vulgarities with them, stigmatise a Service that enrols the best gentlemen, the highest courage, and the most finished chivalry of Europe, whose enemies delightedly pounce on the exception to uphold it as the rule.
The court-martial was not over till between two and three; De Vigne then hastily got unharnessed, and threw himself across his horse. When he had once determined on a thing he never looked back; sometimes it had been better for him if he had. Yet, in the long run, I have known more mischief done by indecision of character than anything else in the world, and he is safe to be the strongest and stoutest-hearted who never looks back, whether he has determined on quitting Sodom or on staying in it The evil lies in hasty judgment, not in prompt action.