A Dead Past, etc

Front matter

A DEAD PAST. % $ob.l. BY Mrs. H. LOVETT CAMERON AUTHOR OF DECEIVERS EVER,'' " JULIET'S GUARDIAN," " POOR WISDOMS CHANCE. "PURE TOLD," "A NORTH COUNTRY MAID," &C, &C. " Trust no future, howe'er pleasant ; Let the dead past bury its dead." Longfellow. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : F. V. WHITE & CO., 31, SOUTHAMPTON ST., STRAND, W.C. 1885. l-KINTKIi BY i LI »m> CO., PEINTBBH, HAIK sTKI.KT, l.INCii LN'fl INN PIBLIJH, W.O. ; .' i> MMHH.K MI 1,1.. KfNOSTON-ON-TH \ M EES. CONTENTS VOL. I. CHAPTER PAGE I. — Ten Years Ago . . . , . i II. — The Naturalist's Daughter . . .15 III. — A Serious Request . . . . .28 IV. — "In the Sweet Summer Time" . . . 41 V. — Brother and Sister . . . . .62 VI.— The Boy's Love . . -77 VI 1. — In the Midst of Life . . . .96 VIII.— The Bad News . . . . ■ • »4 IX. — The Empty House . . . ■ • • T32 X. — Miss Grantley's Advice . . . 15 ' XL- A Lesson on Happiness . . . .169 XII. — Smackton-on-Sea . ■ • . . 187 XIII.— A Picnic at Keppingtun . . . . 205 XIV. — In a Dresden Hotel ... ■ 223 XV.— Coming Home . • 24r XVI.— About Roy . . . ■ z6° A DEAD PAST.

Chapter I. Ten Years Ago

" Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted." Burns. On the deck of a great Eastern bound steamer — crovvds hurrying hither and thither, bales of luggage lumbering up the Avay, sailors and railway porters tumbling over each other, the officers of the ship shouting forth distracted orders, passengers, men, women and little chil dren standing together in groups striving to hear each other's trembling words of farewell, and over all the screech of the steam from the two great smoking funnels overhead. Ten minutes more and the shore bell will be rung and the fare.vells will all have to come to vol. i. an end, and the India-bound ship will have started on her way. Only ten minutes ! yet Iioav much of grief and agony there remains still to be crowded into those few brief moments !

A husband is parting from his Avife whose delicate health does not allow her to accompany him, andAAdiom it is but too probable that he Avill never see again. A mother is Aveeping over her little children from whom that same deadly climate dooms her to be separated. An aged couple are clinging round the neck of the boy avIio is going out to seek his fortune, and to find, alas! his death, upon the other side of the Avorld. Oh, India ! fairest and richest jeAvel in Britain's croAvn, ho.v many of England's best and braATest sons have not laid down their liA'es in your service ; for Iioav many broken hearts have not your fever-stricken plains been ans .verable ; how many are the thousands who have gone forth, strong and full of hope, to perish miserably in that far distant land whose very breezes are but the breath of destruction !

They clung round each other, these poor unfortunates who were parting — some for years, and some for ever — repeating the last fond word, the last caress over and over again Avith a help less reiteration, gazing into each other's eyes despairingly as though they Avould fain carry aAvay every line of the dear face from which they were so soon to be severed. Such a couple stood thus together, a little remote from the busy scene, side by side, near the buhvarks of the ship. The crowded quay Avas above them, the iron arm of the crane swung its ponderous weight backwards and for- Avards over their heads amidst the confused shouts of the men who AVorked it. And yet because everybody was so full of hurry and excitement, so wrapped up either with the business or the grief Avhich specially engrossed them, these two people stood virtually alone — a man and a woman, both young and both tall, she so tall that her eyes — dark brown, sorrow-filled eyes — Avere on a level Avith his ; they clasped each other's hands with a straining despair, and looked with a speechless agony into each other's faces. 1—2 Brian Desmond Avas eight and twenty then, he had health and brains and good looks, and the vigour of a hearty vitality Avas in his strong, young limbs, but as he held Rosamond Earle's hands tight clasped within his oavii and looked his last into her beautiful eyes, he said to himself that life Avas at an end for him, and that death Avas the one solitary blessing which was now left to him to desire or to long for.

And yet this leaA-e-taking Avas but the frui tion of a still worse parting which had already sundered these two Avho had loved each other all their lives, and had driven them far as the poles asunder. " It is better," she said, brokenly, " far better that I should go away ; try to look at it in the right light, Brian, Avhat good could I be to you at home ; and you will get used to it in time, there are many other things for you to live for." " I have nothing to live for — nothing," he said, gloomily ; " Avithout you life is an absolute blank." The tears streamed over her face as she strove to answer him. " And yet I should be an ever present sorrow to you were I to remain. Con sider, Brian, how desperate, Iioav hopeless is our condition ; Iioav much more terrible to bear Avere Ave to meet constantly than when a Avhole hemisphere stretches between us !

" " Ah ! you might have Avaited — you might haAre waited," he groaned. " What Avas there to wait for ? Would your uncle and his sons have died so that we might be happy ? Would any one have given you an appointment ? Was there any chance that even a beggarly clerkship, or a meanly paid secretary ship would tumble into your arms? And had Ave not ahead}7 Avaited for this for years ; hoping against hope, striving against certainty, leaving no stone unturned so that we might find only a miserable hundred a year to depend upon? And what came of our waiting ? — nothing — al- Avays nothing. So long as I had a home did I mind Avaiting, Brian? Did I ever repine because my youth and my beauty were wasting aAvay, or because my faith in your powers of success became fainter year by year ? But when I lost my home, Avhen my father died, when I Avas turned out alone into the world, what then was I to do ?

Could I beg, or starve, or go out amongst strangers, to eat the bread of servitude and dependence ? " " You might have cast in your lot with me, and I would have Avorked for you " " No, no, dearest — I loved you too well for that ! Was it likely that I would drag you doAvn to beggar}-, by hanging my weight like a millstone about your neck ? And you could not Avork, Brian — there was nothing for you to Avork at — you have been brought up in idle ness — Avithout a profession — Avithout the power of application which is indispensable to a man who has to earn his living. Every one likes you, but no one has ever cared or will ever care to give you a helping hand — there are so many others in this struggling, teeming old country of ours better fitted for Avork than you are. Brian Desmond will be to his dying day the popular favourite of society, the good sportsman, the Avelcome guest at every house in the kingdom ; but marriage, unless he mar ries a woman Avith money, is a forbidden luxury to him.

To Avait for you longer would have been rank madness, Brian." " So you married old Samuel Earle instead ! " he said bitterly. " I haA'e married a worthy, kind-hearted man, who is good to me, and ayIio has placed me above want — Avhy go over the old ground again ? In these few last moments, Brian, spare me the reproaches Avhich, perhaps, I may deserve, but which are certainly unavailing now — God knoAvs I am unhappy enough ! " " Darling — darling ! " he cried, with a pas sionate despair, " mine always and ever, in heart and soul, Avherever you may be." She did not check him. This Avas no moment for the exhibition of a sham prudery Avhich she did not feel. She was putting a Avhole universe betAveen them, so that she might be as true to the man she had married as to the man Avhom she loved ; and she Avould not in this moment of a fare.vell, that was in all human probability eternal, cavil at the strong ex pression of a love Avhich had never been hidden between them.

For what mattered a few endearing words, a feAV passionate glances between those upon whom the doom of an everlasting separation had gone forth. ller tears flowed fast, raining down thickly upon the clenched hands which grasped her own. " Darling, I will not reproach you," he said tenderly ; " you are right, the bitterness should all be over noAV — let our parting be as of those who knoAv they will never see each other's faces more in this world? I never remember the time, Rosamond, when I did not love you — do you remember the old days at Keppington, Rosamond ? When I came home to spend my holidays at my uncle's, how Ave boys used to call for you at the vicarage gate on the early summer mornings, and you crept out of the dining-room Avindow to come out bird's-nesting, or minnoAv fishing, or rat hunting, or Heaven knoAvs what with us ?

We all worshipped you, but you always liked me better than my cousins, even then, darling, did you not ? " " Oh, don't, don't ! " she sobbed ; " you kno.v that you have been my idol, my king, ever since I could speak, or Avalk alone ; why remind me of the happy past that is dead and gone for ever ? " For a moment she wept unrestrainedly — he standing, watching her grief with eyes of anguish. "You knoAv," she cried, suddenly throwing back her head and dashing aAvay the tears from her eyes — " you know that to my dying day I shall love you the same, but you — you must be happy, Brian, not now I know, but after a bit, time will reconcile you to life, and you will marry." " Ah ! how can you say that ? " " Yes— for in marriage lies your only chance — some nice girl Avith money ; there are plenty to be found you know ; she will love you be cause you are the handsomest and dearest of men, and you, you will not love her, I know, as you have loved me, but you will be fond of her, and in time she will make your home happy and will fill up your life."

" I shall neA-er marry," he ansAvered reso lutely, " never as long as I live. As there is a God above us, Rosamond, I swear to you that never will I make any other woman my Avifc but you. I can always wait; how can one tell what changes life may not bring ? Ten, twenty, fifty years! what is time to such a love as mine? Will it not last for ever, shall anything ever change or dim its fervour ? Can I not always wait — wait on and hope?" lie spoke hotly and passionately, with a burning fer .-our that seemed to bear all before it, and he meant every Avord that he uttered, from the A-ery bottom of his heart, for he Avas young and the fever of his love burnt hotly within him. And Rosamond Avas glad, glad to think that he Avould keep true to her for ever. What woman with a Avoman's heart could have helped that gladness ?

She looked up into his eyes through a mist of tears, but as she looked she smiled. Ah ; through Iioav many weary months and years when time, and absence, and cold silence had rolled slowly between them, did not those hot, passionate oaths of eternal love come back to her ! Ringing in her ears out of the gloom of her sadness, with a \-ivid and thrilling distinctness that seemed to make them things of life ; for how many years were they not her chief est hope, her only comfort ! And, she too, believed in them and trusted in them as if they had been in very truth the religion of her soul. For of what avail is it that preachers haAre preached, and sages have written ever since the Avorld began, upon the frailty of human vows and the changeableness of human affections ! Do the }Toung believe in it ever ; do thev not one and all laugrh to themselves _/ o in their glad arrogance and say : " Ah, yes, that may be true for others, but for me it is different ; Ioa'C with me will never change, it is immortal ?

" Ah, beautiful theory, false as it is lovely and sweet as it is frail ! Must Ave all go through the same sad experience, each one for himself, before we can say Avith the preacher : "All — even love — is vanity." And so Brian, as he sAvore, believed in his own oaths, and Rosamond believed in them too. Then glancing beyond the strong young form of the man she loved, Mrs. Earle's eyes rested suddenly upon another figure that came clam bering up the companion stair on to the deck ; a short, fat, little old gentleman, with grey whiskers, avIio emerged pantingly from the loAver regions, lookin" hither and thither as he came up as though in search of some one. She neither moved farther from Desmond, nor did she withdraw her hands from his — only she tightened her hold for one instant upon his fingers, and a swift warning glance shot from her eyes into his.

Brian's back was turned to the neAV comer, but he understood. He gently dropped one of Rosamond's hands, and, retaining the other still in his grasp, turned round and met Samuel Earle as he came towards them. " Ah, Desmond ! not gone on shore yet ? You are determined to see the last of us, then ! " " I Avas wishing — your Avife," the Avords came out Avith an effort, " another good-bye." " And Ave are both of us crying over it," said Mrs. Earle, smiling through her tears ; " such old friends as Brian and I are, Sam, it seems quite terrible to us to part." " All, no doubt, no doubt, my dear ! These partings are very trying, and old playmates, such as you tAvo are, must no doubt feel it so ; " he looked kindly and sympathetically from one to the other. Something in his benign face touched Rosamond strangely, she twined her hands through her husband's arm, as though to gather strength from contact with him.

Brian Desmond turned very white and fell back a step. And then the shore bell rang. " Ah ! now you must go — and we are off. Well, good-bye, Desmond, and God bless you. I wish you good luck among the grouse this year, and don't forget to think of us sometimes Avhen you are out upon the Scotch moors. Write? Oh, of course we shall Avrite, and be very glad to get news from you, I can tell you. Up the country one is thankful enough for home letters. Well, take care of yourself, my dear boy ; I suppose by the time we come home again there'll be a Mrs. Brian and family for us to be introduced to, eh ? " And then Brian turned to her once more. The hand which the husband had been wringing so heartily he now held out to the wife. Her finders, cold as ice, rested for one moment in its grasp. " Good-bye," he said simply.

" Good-bye," her lips framed in a voiceless reply. Then he Avas gone, lost amongst the hurrying crowd that thronged the wrooden gang way from the vessel to the shore. Once again she saw him, standing amongst a countless multitude upon the quay, pale as death — haggard with despair and woe — waving a last farewell as the ship receded sloAvly but remorselessly from the land. The " Oriana " stood out Avell into the middle of Southampton Water and steamed aAvay, ever more rapidly towards the sea. But still Rosa mond stood, motionless and tearless, gazing back upon the swiftly vanishing shore, whilst still that other figure upon the quay was left, solitary iioav, long after all others had turned aAvay. Brian Desmond stood on alone until his eyes could no longer discern even the distant ship that bore away the Avoman who was lost to him for ever.

Chapter II. The Naturalist's Daughter

" A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded, A rose witb all its sweetest leaves yet folded." Byron. " Salmon-trout, roast chickens, peas, and potatoes. Now I wonder Iioav a cherry tart Avould do, or Avould it be too frivolous, Daddy ? " The A-oice seemed to come from the floor somewhere down by the white muslin window curtains. Professor Laybourne, who was engrossed in the minute examination of the mechanism of a grasshopper's thigh, which he was attentively studying through his famous microscope, raised his venerable head for one moment as the small childish voice struck upon his ear. " What is my Kitten chattering about down there ? " he said, making a pencil note upon the manuscript by his side, whilst a smile crossed for a moment, his grave, absorbed features. " I Avas only Avondering if old men liked cherry tart, Daddy."

" Whenever they can get it, I should say, Kitten ! Apropos of what is that wise remark, and AA-hat old man are you proposing to regale in so succulent a fashion ? " " What old man? Oh, Daddy ! I do believe you have beetles on the brain to such an extent that you are losing your memory. Have you forgotten that this is the day that your friend Mr. Desmond is coming to stay with you ? " And you call him an ' old man,' Kitten ; why he is quite a lad." " You said he was thirty-eight, Daddy," replied the small voice reproachfully. " I call that quite old. Why he is twenty-t.vo years older than I am, old enough to be my father — Avhy it's nearly forty," in a voice of horror. The Professor laughed. " You must consider me a sort of Methuselah, a fossil of pre-Adamite date, then. Do you know that I am over sixty, Kitten ?

" ■7 " Ah, but you are my Daddy," she answered, Avith indescribable tenderness in her voice. The great naturalist looked across the vast intervening obstacle of his heavy bureau- — crowded with books and papers, Avith instruments of every sort and kind for dissecting and examin ing every portion of the insect creation. He, whose Avorld-wide fame for the comprehension of that wonderful universe of almost invisible liA'ing things was absolutely unrivalled, had never yet been able to fathom the nature of the one small woman child that late in life had been born to him. She was still to him a riddle, a mystery — he could make nothing of her — of that frail body, that childish mind, that great loving heart and the gleams of swift intelligence which surely must have shot straight from his OAvn brain into that of the creature who OAved her being to him.

She was a puzzle to him, a wonderful contra diction, a strange mixture of his OAvn greatness and of the foolishness of that other simple childish nature whom for one short year of his life — upon an impulse of folly — he had linked vol. 1. to himself and called by the name of Avife, She, the woman Avho had been to him and to all the Avorld the Avitness of a weakness to which he had since looked back, almost with shame, had passed aAvay sAviftly out of his existence, almost as a field flower that fades as soon as it is gathered ; but this, this living evidence of his folly remained, this elf child who was his OAvn, and yet Avho Avas a marvel to him more delicate and more inscrutable than the gossamer insect which lay under the lens of his microscope. " Get up, Kitten. I hear nothing but your voice ; have you turned into a very fairy this morning and made yourself invisible ?

" " Daddy, I have got a great deal on my mind," replied Kitten gravely. There was a com motion amongst the window draperies, as though a breeze from the flo .ver garden Avithout stirred amongst their folds, and there rose from the corner behind his writing-table a small childish figure dressed in white cotton. She was a fairy in very truth. Ariel might have Avooed her. Puck, had she been inclined to so frivolous a Avaste of time, might have sported amongst the roses with her — the butterfly Avorld might almost have borne her aAvay upon their flutter ing wings. It seemed a marvel that anything so small and slight and delicate as she was could be a living, breathing human being. Her skin Avas fair as a lily, Avith a delicate Avild rose bloom upon her lips and cheeks, her hands were almost transparent in their tiny slenderness, and her hair was simply a dash of golden sunshine croAvnin..; her small head like an aureola of light.

And with it all, although her features were so fine and minute, her ears like sea shells, her little nose chiselled like a sculptor's model, she had those great, large, liquid eyes, blue as the heavens aboA-e, but heavy with a Avonderful sadness, such as is sometimes to be seen in the eyes of young infants Avho seem to be looking out upon the Avorld they have entered upon with a terrible prescience of its sin and its sorrow. There Avas something in Kitten's eyes Avhich made you feel uncomfortable ; it Avas as though her soul was too great for her body, and the spirit Avithin her were struggling to get free of «> the shackles of the flesh. For the rest, her mouth was as the mouth of any other ordinary mortal maiden, red-lipped and tender, and ca pable of giving forth smiles that Avere as SAveet and sunny as any man might Avish his home to be cheered and Avarmed with.

" Pray, what haA-e you got upon your mind, Miss Laybourne ? " inquired her father, with a smile in answer to his daughter's last observation. "Your dinner, Mr. Professor. I have noticed, Daddy, that although you are a very great man, your intellect is often more sluggish than mine. Noay give me a man (old or young) about to arri .-e by the six o'clock train on a certain day, my mind instantly fixes itself upon one idea, and that idea is naturally dinner ; your brain seems to be brought far more slowly and Avith incon ceivable difficulty to this point." " Not at all, Kitten," ansAvered the Professor, taking up a letter which lay amongst a dozen others upon the table by his side; " since I have heard this morning from Brian Desmond that he will not arrive till ten o'clock to-night, my intellect naturally bounded beyond the dinner hour at once, and fixed itself upon " " Supper !

" interrupted Kitten triumphantly. " What will you do then, elf child ? " " Turn dinner into supper, of course ; Iioav little invention men have." " Hear this Kitten discoursing upon mankind ! Where have you gathered your experience of my sex, my infant philosopher ; Avhat are the men whose habits you have observed? " " I know you, Daddy, and that ought to be enough ; besides, I knoAV Jenks and Bob, and, if I Avant to extend my studies, there is always Roy Grantley up at the Hall." " Ah ! — to be sure," replied her father, with rather a peculiar glance at his child. Hoav soon, he said to himself wonderingly, does the idea of love-making enter into the female mind ? Professor Laybourne certainly knevy but little about this subject, not half so much as did Keziah his old cook ; but somebody having put the notion into his head, he thought himself very clever to look so sharply at his daughter when she mentioned Roy Grantley's name.

Rut from that open baby-like face he gleaned nothing ; there Avas no blush upon her cheek, nor any faint consciousness in the utterance of the name that was certainly no more to her than that of Jenks the gardener, or Bob Avho " minded " the pony. " And what are avc to have for supper, then ? " he continued with a smile. " Why the same thing as dinner to be sure: salmon-trout cold, chickens cold, salad instead of peas, and cherry tart cold too ; that is to say, if you think he will eat cherry tart," she added with a curiously childish anxiety. " But you Avill have to go to bed, Kitten ; little girls can't sit up to late suppers. Besides, Desmond is coming to see me upon business, so Ave shall do just as Avell Avithout you to-night. Shall you be disappointed if I send you to bed at nine o'clock as usual, before he arrives ?

" Kitten laughed. She did not often laugh. Her fun was more often expressed in a certain demure dryness peculiar to herself — laughter Avas not, perhaps, indigenous to the soil of the Professor's household ; but when at rare intervals Kitten laughed, her laugh was very sweet to hear. It was never loud or noisy, it could hardly even be called hearty, and yet it was pleasant to listen to, like the rippling note of a caged bird that warbles a response to some inner gush of feeling of its own. Her laugh now was not so much called forth by her father's words as by a little vein of mischief that shot up, elf-like, in her own mind. " Do you think, then, that the ' Study of Man ' is so delightful to me that I cannot give it up for one night without sorroAv ? " she said playfully. " Besides," she added with a little nod,.

" I read Pope." " I know it, you elf. I wish you would learn. geography instead." " I have the ' Rape of the Lock ' to finish ; I shall read it to-night in bed whilst you and the other old man of thirty-eight are talking busi ness ; as if I didn't know Avhat your ' business ' is, Daddy. You only own one : ' Cages for gnats and cbains to yoke a flea, Dried butterflies and tomes of casuistry.' " " Kitten, you are spiteful, and I shall lock up your Pope if you quote it against your father ; now run aAvay, my little girl, you have hindered my Avork over long this morning." She fluttered aAvay out of the room, her thoughts back again with the cherry tart and the supper, and the Professor Avas left alone. But he did not go back to his microscope, he leant his pale face, lined and scored like an ancient parchment Avith study and thought, upon his hand and sighed.

"What is to become of her? " he said aloud. " Strange creature, half mine, half her mother's, inheriting something from each, and from both the fatal delicacy of constitution that Avas common to us both ; who is to care for her when I am gone? Into Avhose hands am I to leave my frail treasure, with her wild, untrained mind and her shreAvd, sensitive soul? Will Desmond help me, I Avonder, for the sake of the service I once rendered to his father? Ah, Ave shall see, we shall see. I can leave my manuscripts and my collections to my country, but to whom shall I leave my child, sweeter legacy than any other?" MeanAvhile, Kitten Avas in the kitchen, perched upon the wooden table, discoursing about the supper to the old Avoman Avho had been first her nurse and was iioav cook and housekeeper in the naturalist's household.

" Keziah, there's to be the salmon-trout Mr. Roy sent up to me last night, cooked whole and sent up cold, and a couple of chickens and a cherry tart, all to be cold ; and it's to be a supper, not a dinner, because papa's friend is coming by the last train, so it must all be ready on the table at ten o'clock. I shall have gone to bed, but " " LaAv bless your heart ! then there'll be only two of 'em, and Avhat do tAvo men Avant Avith a whole salmon-trout and t.vo chickens and a tart, to say nothing of the green stuffs ; and your papa that don't eat no more than one of his ow7n flies ? It's sheer AA-aste, I call it, to cook so much good food for tAvo men, and they'll do more talking than eating, between them, I'll be bound." Kitten dangled her small feet up and down as she sat upon the table ; the kitchen door, Avide open behind her, disclosed a wonderful back ground of greenery — a long vista of kitchen garden beauty framing in her Avhite-robed daintiness as if in a picture.