Elizabeth Eden. A novel

Front matter

% i_.I. BY _. C. BISHOP. " Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend, Seeking a higher object. Love was given. Encouraged, sanction'd, chiefly for that end. For this the passion to excess was driven, That self might be annull'd, her bondage prove The fetters of a dream opposed to Love." WOEDSWOBTH. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. Eon Bon: : SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1878. [All rights reserved.] LONDON: GILBERT AND EIVINGTON, PBINTEES, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.

Chapter I

Evert one had need to be agreeable and at their best, for Mrs. Harlay's smile had grown feebly false as she saw Mrs. Eden's return with Mr. Ravenscroft. A very real pang of vexation clutched her as a thought of Mademoiselle Gautier's extreme attrac tion, both of manner and form, flashed on her. "Where is Ernest?" she had asked hurriedly. " We have had ever so many adventures. We might as well have been on the Quest of the Sangreal. There was a wounded child in the chestnut, and then there was a sick woman in a place called the Dell ; and Mademoiselle Gautier very kindly looked after both of them, quite in the proper style ofdamosel errant. Sir Ernest sent us on before to tell you we were not altogether lost." " Wounded child ! She strangely neg lects her duties !" exclaimed Mrs. Harlay, who, after her conversation with the rec tor, was not sorry to possess a grievance for use, if occasion arose.

" And a sick woman ! Oh, heavens ! not fever ? Mrs. Eden, dearest Mrs. Eden, you did not risk yourself?" Mrs. Harlay drew away from her friend. " ' Hey diddle diddle, to visit the sick, Makes my old parent as cross as Old Nick,' " hummed Oily irreverently in an undertone to Crumpets. " I hope no one risked anything," replied Mrs. Eden, too light-hearted to accept the thought. "Was it fever? I implore you to tell me!" " I really am not sure, but we can establish a lazaretto. Look, I will draw a cordon sanitaire right through the tea-tray. The gentlemen shall be told off to smoke in a circle round the suspected. Mr. Ra venscroft, no trifling, I beg. But here are the chief centres of contagion. Let me proclaim your isolation, Sir Ernest." " Pray do not make a joke of it," said Mrs. Harlay. " I shall say nothing more now.

How are we to arrange plans about returning ? Mademoiselle must be fumi gated. Yes, I am truly displeased, made moiselle." It was not easy to soothe the nerves and appease the agitations caused by Made moiselle Gautier's unpopular charitable ness. Nor was Sir Ernest in a concilia tory mood. But as a joke with a good deal of unpleasant meaning in it, Mrs. Eden's quarantine was carried out. Gipsy tea of an earthy flavour was distributed by the men with weak attempts at concili ation. A giggle from Oily ceased suddenly as if it had been attempted in a vacuum. Mademoiselle Gautier remained silent, nor would she see the fun of isolating the VOL. II. b cream-ewer and sugar-bowl after she had touched them. There was no question of second cups, and it was found to be time to order the carriages for return.

Andrey was not allowed to return in Mrs. Eden's carriage, but squeezed in between the rector and Mrs. Harlay in their phaeton. " I will ask you, mademoiselle, to come in by the kitchen-door when you return. I will take measures to disinfect your clothes at any rate, " said the devoted mother. " Would it not be as well," said Mrs. Eden hastily, " that mademoiselle should come to Edenhurst for a day or two ?" The proposal suited Mrs. Harlay, who, if she settled to dismiss her governess for sundry reasons quite independent of ty phoid fever, could thus avoid any unhand someness in her way of doing it. Elizabeth and Sir Ernest walked to the house together, but nothing was said of special meaning. " Whatever happens, I can no longer leave the Dell as it is," said Sir Ernest ; " and I fear there are other nests of fever about."

" It was fever, then ?" " I fear, no doubt of it. I am glad you are taking that girl home with you to night. There is not much danger, I be lieve, and my aunt was unreasonable. She behaved — mademoiselle I mean — very kindly — bound up the child's leg, which bled a good deal, when the splinter was taken out — and she opened the chimney in the sick-room, which was stuffed with rags, and did several sensible things about the place. She is going to tell my old servant how to make some beef-tea." " She was right, don't you think so ?" " Certainly. The immediate duty must be done, and then we have the promises for our own. I wish I could drive back with you. May I come to-morrow ? I shall want to know how you are. This fever worries me." He looked very anxious, even pale, but b Elizabeth was radiant with life and hope as she bade him good-bye.

" I have read in your papers," said Mademoiselle Gautier, after they had driven out of the inner court of Harlay Abbot, " that you were careful to ' stamp out ' diseases ; is it part of the work leaving the sick people alone to die ?" " Where it is for the public good, yes," said Mr. Ravenscroft. " You are very advanced socialists, then, when there is no question of your purses, and got a long way beyond the teaching that crime is never allowable. Why do you blame assassins who shoot tyrants ? You ' stamp out' a sick person because their disease is inconvenient to you." " We are perfecting society, made moiselle, and purifying it of infection." " Very good, monsieur, but it is no longer according to Christian method — perhaps so much the better. But I did not expect a clergyman's wife, who sleeps strictly most part of Sunday, to be so enlightened."

Mrs. Eden was thinking of other things. The heavy carriage moved too fast as it lumbered up the hill, leaving the vale steeped in slanting sunlight. But the horses' hoofs seemed shod with lead as they trotted up the drive at Edenhurst. She longed for the quiet of her room, where she could live again the little events of the day, and dream of yet happier moments for the morrow. But first she saw mademoiselle to her room, and sent for her things ; nor was Elizabeth's dreaming-time long, since she did not fail to appear at dinner. She felt cheerfully ready for all labours that might come to her hand, even small talk and peace-making. Mr. Ravenscroft was surly, but with pains she exorcised his surliness. Mademoiselle Gautier was silent and de pressed. The way in which circumstances conspired with her was almost startling.

Cool and brave as she was, she feared lest some signs of the conflict of feeling in her might be visible. Nor did she accept without scruple the kindness of Elizabeth. Yet the thought, " She is but sharing with me what is my own," came to strengthen her; and again, "I will but use my chances; I will wage bonne guerre and be generous afterwards." These better impulses were, however, suddenly clouded when Mrs. Eden, turning to her, said, — " Do you not admire Harlay Abbot ? With a little re-arranging it will be the most perfect place in the county." Her resolve to be rich at Elizabeth's cost had not so demoralized Alphonsine as the sight of Mrs. Eden's success with Sir Ernest. She had not recognized any special regard for him in herself, but Elizabeth's happy consciousness and se cured tone vexed her, and roused a latent cruelty that seems to wait on women's jealousy of one another, however unfounded.

" Yes, I admire Harlay Abbot, and I should like to re-arrange it," she said slowly. Mr. Ravenscroft looked at her in sur prise, for he perceived a second meaning in her words ; but Mrs. Eden was frankly pleased, and thought how useful made moiselle would be in classifying the ' roba,' now flung away in cupboards. Then she asked Alphonsine to sing and play, and Mr. Ravenscroft was appeased by the pa thos of Mademoiselle Gautier's " Home, sweet Home," and perplexed, but also charmed by the Chopin into which she threw her troubled and reckless soul. In the morning Mademoiselle Gautier re viewed her position, discarding dangerous illusions. Her tenure of office at the rec tory hung by a thread. She had established no firm footing, she had secured no information worth the name. She was pro foundly discouraged, and accused herself of romantic folly.

Mrs. Eden's liking for her was her best hope, yet she hated the thought of distinct treachery. It had never entered her head that there need be none, and that Elizabeth was capable of loyal recognition of a true claim, and even would assist her to dis cover proofs if they existed. So Alphon sine was perplexed ; but when at eight o'clock a cup of tea was brought to her, there were two letters on the tray, which crystallized, as by a touch, her suspended resolutions. One was a stiff announcement from Mrs. Harlay that, after mademoiselle's conduct in inconsiderately exposing her pupils to infection, and her unbecoming reception of Mrs. Harlay's remonstrance, she must con sider her engagement over. A cheque for three months' salary, and for the price of a second-class ticket to Geneva via Luxem bourg, was included.

A request was added, with all the emphasis of a P.S., that Made moiselle Gautier would not return to the rectory. She would find her luggage at the " Eden Arms " in the village. " Good," said Alphonsine, closing her jaws firmly, as she opened the second letter, which had arrived the evening before from Geneva. It was from her mother, and contained bad news. The last of her father's capital had been lost in a final effort to retrieve his later mistakes. Madame Cheneviere wrote that he was sinking visibly under depression ; that he would not go out, and his memory was gone ; that Alphonsine must recognize the fact that only M. Duval's interposition saved her father from utter disgrace and immediate penury, and that she must be prepared to receive him with gratitude when he came to England, as he meant to do, and bring her back to Geneva.

" Your mad meddling with our English resource is bearing its fruit. How long am I to obey your rash advice and stand off? I doubt not but that you have done nothing but expose us to the risk of losing all. If I do not get solid proofs that you are advancing, Duval will write to the Lon don lawyers." "So," muttered Alphonsine; "always that Duval, and she wants proofs. Even this day I may have to play my last cards. There are yet some trumps in my hand, and little mother will be sorry she was so harsh ; and Duval — yes, Duval — shall regret it." She was pale when she came down to breakfast, but her hair was arranged to perfection. Her eyes were pathetic, but not the least red-edged. Her languid and appealing air just sufficed to excite interest, yet without risk of a scene. " Madame," she said, " I fear it will not be in my power to help you with your objets d'art.

Mrs. Harlay has dismissed me, and has even sent my clothes to the inn, lest I should cross her threshold." "By George!" ejaculated Mr. Ravens croft, so disgusted that he read straight through half a column of facetiæ in a local paper, and helped himself to all the fried bacon. " May I see Mrs. Harlay's note ? " asked Mrs. Eden very kindly and earnestly. Seeing that the dismissal was put on no other grounds than those of possible infection, she said, — " I insist, mademoiselle, on your staying here for a few days. You must not begin a journey if there is risk of fever. Mrs. Harlay will be glad to know you are safe." Alphonsine winced under the friendly looks and tones, but the thought of her father ill drowned all lesser regret. She accepted Mrs. Eden's kindness, and proposed beginning that day her task of looking over miniatures and curiosities, of which there were a good many in the various sitting-rooms.

Some of the pictures she wished to examine closely, as she believed she could identify a Terburg unknown hitherto to the critical world. For the first hour Mrs. Eden was inte rested in the work, and in the detection of private marks of which Mademoiselle Gau tier seemed to have the science at her fingers' ends ; but as the morning wore .on, she felt tired, and, leaving Alphonsine free to visit all the cabinets and "glory holes" of the house, she went to her sitting-room, and, leaning back in an arm-chair, gave herself up to anticipation of Sir Ernest's coming. On his love she surely reckoned, and that day he would certainly — he must speak of it. Yet a certain despondency crept through her hopes and happier thoughts. She believed his love so rich a treasure that she could not be worthy of it.

She sincerely thought herself of a lower nature, incapable of a like faith, and unready for heroism of any kind. Not herself of the visionary temperament, she reverenced it in him, and credited him with all her own conceptions of its high aims and motives. Then, suddenly thinking of herself, she went to a mirror let into the wall between the windows, and examined herself critically as she had never done before. She saw serious defects ; she was too tall, too one-coloured in her paleness ; her eyes were sunk, her cheek bones too high; she was not nearly so freshly handsome as that Genevese girl. She went upstairs and changed her dress for one less youthful. The pink ribbons and muslin of the morning accented her age. " I am looking ill," she thought ; " but if he loves me, it doesn't matter," for she judged his tenderness by her own.

" This air is faint with too many flowers," she said, when she returned to her sitting room ; " I will go out under the pine-trees." She wanted to feel the large space of heaven above her, the free breeze from the " forest " on her hot face and hands. From thence she could see a bit of the road by which Ernest would probably come. She was near the highest level of her life, though she believed herself to be but at the base of that mount of transfiguration in which all who love so fervently believe. But she was close to the supreme moment in which so complete is the present that there seem no past and no future, and so we have a fleet ing glimmer of the timeless world. It is not often given to man or woman to be conscious of that highest level of life, or they might shrink from the downhill future.

And even at that the ideal haunts them to the discredit of the actual. When their life has culminated, how many say, "Is that all ?" Does such trivial ebb and flow of the unfathomable sea of Being, represent the whole action of powers we had hoped and felt were God-like ? Elizabeth found abundant excuse for Ernest's tardiness, though it was not yet midday ; but, just when she had calculated his arrival to be improbable for the next half-hour, he stood suddenly beside her. She was self-controlled by habit and pride, but the blood rushing: to her heart left her pale as she stood up in hasty welcome of her guest. " I should have been here an hour ago to ask you how you were, and that good Samaritan of a governess, but I had orders to give about the Dell. Whether it is the last straw on the camel's back or not, I could not leave it any longer so.

It was a regular fever nest." " Kind deeds won't break the camel's back," said Mrs. Eden. " Do you care to hear what I have done about it ? " " Yes, I do care," she said quietly. " I have hired a house on the hill above, got the doctor's leave, and moved the whole family out of that cottage. It is to be disin fected and pulled down. Later on we will see about building some decent ones elsewhere." Mrs. Eden remained silent, digesting the " we," which might mean nulling or every thing, though in this sense no doubt a slip of the tongue. " So you know why I was three hours instead of two riding over." " It was good of you to come so soon. I don't think Mademoiselle Gautier is the worse for her charity — the worse, if you will forgive me, for Mrs. Harlay's want of charity. She has dismissed her this morning."

Sir Ernest pulled his moustaches and looked annoyed. " But you are very good to her," he said. " I like her, and she did not sit down and bewail herself, but set to work over my curiosities at once. I respect energy, you know." Neither spoke for a few minutes. Strik ing off daisy-heads with his switch absorbed Sir Ernest. Elizabeth arranged the trimmings of her dress with interest. Then she proposed that they should return to the house by the walk " which is a little round, but shady," she remarked. " They would so be in time for luncheon," for that meal was imminent ; and, though the sky fell, social order and hospitality must be held sacred as far as might be under the circum stances. Sir Ernest mechanically walked as Elizabeth had suggested, but he did not seem to have heard her speak. It was very silent in the thickets through which they passed.

Not a bird chirped, and only the sharp patter of a falling laurel-leaf now and then broke the monotony of their footsteps. Yet the throbbing of her heart surged in Elizabeth's ears, and beat for a moment like surf upon her brain, for Sir Ernest drew her hand within his arm, and held it there with a firm, nervous grasp, and she knew now for sure that she was loved. At such a moment the rapture of such knowledge, the keen ecstasy of certainly accepted love, is not measured by the love given, but by the capacity for its reception. Whatever was Sir Ernest's excellence, according to his lights and character, his love was of a shallow sort. It was dwarfed by the religious fervour which sometimes amounted in him to be a passion excluding all other passions. But in that moment Elizabeth never thought of measuring his love.

Such as it was, she possessed it. Silently she waited to hear the form of words in which Ernest should speak, asking her to be his wife, "yoked in all enterprise of noble ends," as she passionately hoped. He could not doubt the answer : had she not left her hand in his? She could not have mistaken him; she was quite sure — quite sure. But at last the divine words sounded in her ears, — "Mrs. Eden — Elizabeth — youknowhowl love you. Will you forgive my presumption? Will you hear me plead my cause ? Don't speak, I implore you, till I have excused myself. Yet my only excuse can be shortly made. Since Amalfi I have loved you : I would not acknowledge it. I knew the barrier of my worse than poverty." " Stop! stop!" muttered Elizabeth; "that should be nothing between us." "But it is — at leastithas been.

Elizabeth, a man's honour mustbemore to him than his love : and I have striven and prayed ; but yesterday I knew that it was God's will that I should tell you. Yes," he went on, with trembling voice and an inward appealing VOL. II. c manner, as if he were addressing a second self, within a manner ; which she had seen once or twice before ; " I asked for an in timation of His will, and it was favourable." Before the close of his declaration, Mrs. Eden had already felt a pang of disappointment. But she urged herself to venerate, with a still higher love, this piety in her lover. " So," he went on half dreamily, " I speak to-day what I might else have hidden for ever. It rests with you to dis miss me as an adventurer — presumptuous, unfaithful to his duty of self-restraint and unselfish service."

" Ernest ! " — and her voice trembled as she said his name — "I do not see these things as you do. I only know that you are very dear to me, and I don't know why you should have doubted me." They had paused under a massive ilex, but Sir Ernest still looked down on the dark soil and waited, uncertain, till Elizabeth, faltering and also looking down, drew nearer, to him. And something in him that blotted out thought, and left hope a laggard halting behind the present — something of which no words have yet rightly written — shook away his plans and purposes as if they had been the withs wherewith Samson was bound by the Philistines. He clasped Ehzabeth with wild pressure to his heart, and covered her bent head with eager kisses, and was in a trance of which he knew neither the beginning nor the end.

And yet it was a shallow passion ; and since Elizabeth believed it to be more, it would have been happier for her if, ten minutes sooner, the rector's step, crunching the gravel walk, had fallen on their ears. Ernest's fit of feverish passion had per suaded her that he and he only was her fitting mate in this world and the next. The foolish woman judged him by her self. The rector was too bookish to be an observant man, but as he was selfishly interested in Sir Ernest's courtship, he could not fail to see that it had greatly advanced since yesterday. Mrs. Eden, however, and c his nephew, too agitated to bear recognition of their agitation, assumed extreme reserve and ceremony in their manner, which in itself would have betrayed them. Mr. Harlay was well pleased. He had been more severely pinched for money than he had allowed his wife to know.

Now he hoped that "somehow or other" the money market would become easier to him, once Edenhurst was " in the family." " I have come up to ask after you all," he said, "but especially to offer my wife's regrets to Mademoiselle Gautier for not having been able to see her. I suppose she leaves to-night or to-morrow ? " The rector was a gentleman, and really vexed by his wife's fright and harshness. Mrs. Eden explained to him that Made moiselle Gautier was to stay a few days longer under her roof. " If there were fever, it would not appear for perhaps a fortnight." " But you yourself look illish, my dear Mrs. Eden. It's an English compliment, I know, to tell you so." " I shall be glad to get out of the glare. Come and have some luncheon." " I should like to say a word to the poor girl," said Mr. Harlay benignly.

The "poor girl" made him a nicely graduated reverence — not quite the same as if she had still belonged to his household, yet in excellent taste. She was better dressed than she had allowed herself to be while in actual service. A stranger would have thought her of equal social position, and just then, in beauty, the superior of her hostess. Frenchwomen have marvellous facility for rising to their parts, and the Chenevieres had been French a generation back. Elizabeth was indeed looking of a dead paleness, and she walked with slight un steadiness up the steps of her house ; but she thought, " It is my great happiness," and fought off her discomfort. " Have you come on any really good faience? " she said cheerfully to Alphonsine. " No, madame, but I have found an un doubted plaque of Luca della Robbia, and a cloisonne enamel, of which I am hardly equal to judge."

" See, Mr. Harlay ! " said Mrs. Eden, " I entertained an angel unawares, and here are heavenly treasures of her finding. Luncheon was announced. Mr. Ravens croft had left by an early train ; so, as Mrs. Eden and the rector walked first, Sir Ernest and Alphonsine crossed the wide hall together. Several circumstances had _ ripened quickly their slight acquaintance. The ready courage she had shown, and which was evidently natural to her, her quick appreciation of his wishes, Mrs. Eden's praise of her, and her apparent wish to serve Mrs. Eden, were so many recom mendations — hardly needed, indeed, by her madonna face and pleasant manner. She guessed that " something " had altered the relations of Sir Ernest and Elizabeth. He was absent in manner, even when he hoped she was " all right really."

" I am all right, thank you, but I fear Mrs. Eden is not." He looked hastily towards Mrs. Eden as she sat down. She smiled back a little shy smile, and he thought, after all, it was not strange if she were a little pale. Be sides, Elizabeth was in wild spirits — a rare event in her life. She drank a tumbler of claret cup at a draught — another rare event. She ate nothing, but her tongue ran away with her into the wildest nonsense, where with she pelted the rector, and made Mademoiselle Gautier break into French, quite unable to keep pace in English. Sir Ernest she hardly spoke to, feeling so one with him that it was needless. She had too complete confidence in his love to dream of humouring it. Her high spirits were forerunners, it is true, of illness, but also born of the new faith in herself be gotten by faith in him, her inspirer and the guardian of her future.

Her lonely past seemed mere mechanical life, unreal, and to be forgotten with indifference. She was weary of the dim shadows cast by her fastidious doubts and her habits of criticism. Hitherto her hfe had seemed choked by these weeds of the day, and its hght had been obscured by persons en tangled in them. But now, as she be lieved — yet, when she tried to think definitely of Ernest, she could not. At Amain and at Stresa she had thought certain things of him ; but now, as she sat and flung sparkling nonsense around her, Ernest had quite outgrown her thought, for he was her love. Alphonsine had answered wittily enough to the first of Elizabeth's quips and cranks ; then, glancing at Sir Ernest, who sat next her, she saw that inwardly he was not very well pleased, and she became silent too. He had little sense of humour, and was uncomfortable under its flashes.

He listened over-anxiously to Elizabeth, and perceived, more clearly than ever before, that she had a breadth of mind, and a culture which he had not. It was a moment when, for his peace of mind, it was very necessary that he should feel superior, and she was at every word disturbing his sense of conquest. Alphonsine observed his growing moodi ness, and perceived the large part vanity had in his character. Mrs. Eden was indeed over-talkative. Her imagination — usually a well-trained Pegasus — seemed newly winged, and would not suffer its ordinary harness. Life seemed as safe as heaven, without possible pitfall or storm, and why should she check her happy madness ? At last, not having eaten anything, she led the way into her sitting-room. The rector said good-bye with an anxious look at his nephew's grave face.

He repeated his good wishes for mademoiselle, but carefully fulfilled his wife's injunction, and did not go near enough for handshaking, which by no means distressed the young lady.

Chapter II

"Mademoiselle Gautier, how good you would be if you would play and sing ! " said Mrs. Eden. " I did not like the roses this morning, the perfume was too much ; but I shall now if you will give us some Schubert. Music and perfume suit each other." Mrs. Eden sat down in sudden collapse and weariness on a sofa, resting her head on the cushions of it, while Alphonsine went into the next room, where was the piano, and began the wild accom paniment to the song of the Erl King. Sir Ernest took up a book or two, and slightly frowned at their titles, but at last he drew a chair near Elizabeth's head. She was very silent and quiet now, and he stroked her soft hair and the long Ian .mid hand that hung listlessly by her side, but which he took and kissed, as he could not help doing. For again she seemed to him the one fact in his life — the light in which other lights, grew blurred — the power that could shape his course ; and even as he yielded to these overmastering impressions, he doubted and dreaded them as if in them were danger to his soul.