Hero Trevelyan: a tale

Chapter I. Ft

was a very pleasant party at the Percivals'. The Percivals always did give pleasant parties. They made a point of knowing a large number of people, and as at Torquay there are always numerous strangers coming and going, their entertainments, in addition to various other excellencies, had all the charm of variety. Captain Lincoln made his appearance this evening barely in time. Dinner was announced a few moments after he entered the drawing-room " How quickly you must have dressed," VOL. II. B HEEO TREVELYAN. Alice said to him. " I heard you come in not, I think, ten minutes ago. Where were you ? Were you walking ?" "No; I was at Dudley's," Fred replied. He said " at Dudley's," not " at the Tre velyans'," as he might have done with more reason, for, in fact, he had not seen Dudley at all ; but somehow at this moment he was not disposed to utter any thing that should suggest Hero's name.

" I was at Dudley's. I did run myself a little short of time," he said. And then the gong sounded, and they went into the dining-room. May Percival always looked well when she was in evening dress. Alice had the more attractive face of the two, but May was really the handsomer woman, and made more impression in a room than Alice did. She was clever, too, and men liked to talk to her, and in her own way she contributed her full share to the success of her mother's parties, and was very conscious that she did so, — looking down on Alice, or trying to persuade herself that she looked down on her, for the more foolish sort of admiration that she attracted. " Alice has always half a dozen butterflies about her," she would sometimes say contemptuously, but with a sort of sore ness and bitterness, too, in her contempt ; for she was too clear-sighted not to know that, sneer at Alice as she would, in other people's eyes she wanted something that Alice had.

She was bitter enough against Frederick Lincoln sometimes, because he, who knew her so much better than other people did, liked Alice best. The fact was, that Captain Lincoln found it pleasantest to be with Alice. He did like May, but May fatigued him. Her nature was too much at war with itself for her to be a soothing companion to him or B any body. He, too, like other people, cared when she was in her best moods to talk to her ; but she was often in a mood that made him have no desire except to get at a distance from her. She was looking handsome, but she was not, perhaps, in one of her best moods to-night. Fred talked to her a little, but she gave cross-grained answers to him. She was disposed to be satirical, and bitter, and perverse. Possibly the poor soul only wanted some one — Fred or another — to take her authoritatively in hand, and give her a wholesome scolding, and bring her to her better mind ; but then Fred did not feel that it was his business to bring her to her right mind ; and so, when she said some sharp thing to him, lie quietly turned away from her, and never guessed, as he did so, that he left her heart bleeding.

He only said to himself, " What a ■J pity she has such a temper!" and then fell to thinking of Hero, and contrasting her and May together. " She is handsomer than May — a hundred times handsomer, and, with all her faults, she is more womanly," he said. Captain Lincoln knew very well that Hero was in his mind a score of times to-night, and that he was thinking again and again, with a curious kind of compunction, of how he had hurt her. He remembered, too, how that thin, white hand had lain so near him, and he wondered if she would have let him touch it, could he have stayed to make his peace with her. He wished he could have stayed ; and yet, perhaps, there was a sort of charm to him in the abrupt termination of their quarrel before any reconciliation had come between them, leaving, as it did, something still to be done — something that he must say and that she must answer before they could regain their customary footing with one another; and this something, being very vague, gave scope for the play of his imagination.

He cared enough for her to speculate, more than once or twice, as to the way in which she would receive him, and the words that she would say to hhn when he saw her next. There were some interesting people in the room, and Captain Lincoln got into a long talk with one of them, that lasted through most of the time they were in the drawing room. He was not considered by the Per civals to be a ladies' man, and consequently he always escaped the fatiguing work that those victims to society are expected to undergo, and was allowed to entertain him self after his own fashion, — "Which, indeed, is the only rational fashion," May said, in her decided way. " I wish for my own part there were no such things as young men in existence, for they are only a nuisance to every body connected with them. Now, I will say for Fred that, even when he was one-and-twenty, he never went about in a room looking like the blocks in a hair dresser's shop."

She said this when the guests were gone, not looking at Fred when she said it, to whom, indeed, since her snappish reply to him, she had not spoken any more, but yet half wanting, though still in a proud, perverse way, to be friends with him again. " Did I not ? It is so long since I was one-and-twenty that I don't pretend to remember," he answered, with a laugh. " Do you not remember when you were one-and-twenty? I do," she said quickly; " you were here ; — on the day you came of age, I mean. And look, Fred," she said, after a moment's hesitation, " you gave me this bracelet. I gave you something, and you gave me this." " Yes, you gave me a Milton, and I have it yet," he said. " Is that the bracelet ? I recollect that I gave you one, but I shouldn't have known it again. I remember Alice's better.

Alice's had a circle of pearls in it. " Yes ; and she lost it the first night she ever put it on," May said, with one of her hard laughs. " Oh, yes. I kept it for so long — all the time I was at school — and then the first night I wore it, three or four years ago, it must have dropped ofl7 my arm. I was so sorry, Fred," Ahce said, in her earnest, pathetic way. " I daresay it was too big for you. How can you ever get bracelets not to slip over a morsel of a hand like that ?' ' Fred said, and took the pretty little hand in his, and laughed at it, and kissed it. " Oh, some bracelets are made to be any size you like. I never lost any other except that one," Alice said, simply. And then, for she was fond of pretty toys, she began to show him her other jewels — her brooches and her rings. It was her fault and not his that he could not go to help May, who was lighting the bedroom candles.

" Let me do this for you," he said, going to her after a minute ; but it was a minute too late then, and " I don't need any help," she answered curtly, and took up her own candlestick. It was no use to go to Hero early in the morning, for she never left her room before twelve o'clock, so Captain Lincoln stayed at home till mid-day, and then made his way to the Trevelyans'. It was a mild, bright day, with a soft sea-breeze,— a day such as Hero loved. The windows in her sitting-room looked to the sea, and she would often have her couch drawn to one of them, and would lie looking out, and breathing the clear air. " I wonder if in time it will bring my life back to me," Fred had heard her say once. He thought to himself as he walked along, " I wish we could get her down to the beach some day. How she would like it !

I wonder if it would not be possible ? I can fancy how much hke a child she would show her pleasure — how she would lie watching and counting the waves!" And then he pictured her face to himself, lying there in the sunshine. At the Trevelyans' door he met his brother coming out. " I am just going to post my letters. Will you come with me?" Dudley asked. And then, as they turned up the road together, " I have been writing to Dr. ," he said, gravely. " I am sorry to say we are all very uneasy this morning about Hero." "Uneasy!" Captain Lincoln echoed, in a quick tone. " Yes. She was ill in the night, and alarmed us. We had to send for Dr. Holland, and he has been with her twice again this morning. We would have telegraphed to town at once to see if — — could come down to us, but Holland proposes that we should wait over to-day for the chance of some improvement.

I am afraid, however, he considers it a very serious attack ; and, in fact, we are all in great distress about her," Mr. Lincoln said. It seemed as if the sunshine had all at once gone out of the day. For a few minutes, as they walked along the road together, Captain Lincoln did not know that the sky was blue, aud did not feel the south wind blowings in his face. " But what has brought this on ? She was as well as usual yesterday, was she not ? " he asked at last, abruptly. " No ; she was not well yesterday," Dudley answered. " She has had almost constant sharp pain for the last few days. Dr. Holland knew that, but it seems he mistook the cause. He says now that he had no idea from what she told him how much she was suffering. He can't understand her bearing pain as she does, you see. He seems as if he was suddenly startled to-day for the first time into a comprehension of how ill she is."

The two men walked quietly and gravely to the post-office and home again. There was little more to say. They were both thinking of Hero, but they each of them found it hard to speak of her. To Frederick Lincoln the news of her illness had given a shock that for the moment had had the effect of dulling all acute feeling in him of any kind. Some one whom he knew came up to him just as they got back to the house, and he left Dudley to go up to the door alone, and stood talking with his friend as he might have done at any ordinary time. He felt a sort of surprise at himself that he was not more sorry — that even for the poor Trevelyans' sake he could not more acutely realize this new blow that had fallen on them. He went with Dudley to his room, and stayed there reading for an hour or two in the quiet house, seeing no one but his brother, and once Grace, for a few moments.

She came in with an anxious face, not knowing he was there, and then, after the manner of feeble httle souls at the sudden sight, when they are in trouble, of any new face, nearly broke down before him. " Oh, Fred, are you not sorry for us ? I knew you would be so sorry," she said quickly to him, and began to tremble and half sob as he held her hand. " She has not been so ill from the very first, — nothing like so ill. Oh, I knew you would be so sorry ; you are always so good to us," said the poor little thing, and let herself be soothed and comforted by him as if she had been a child. Her perfect trust in his sympathy went to his heart, and the sight of her tears and her weakness and sorrow did what the bare news of Hero's illness had not been able to do. He could not go on with his book after she went away again.

He could not read it for the thoughts that came between him and the page he looked at of Hero lying ill — perhaps lying on her deathbed — within a few yards of where he sat. The high-hearted, beautiful, brave woman ! And he had parted from her yesterday with those hard angry words for her last words to him. He had remembered this before — he could not help remembering it at once — but he had only thought of it at first dully, as he had thought of every thing else. He did not think of it dully now : he thought that he would give a thousand pounds if he could have seen her last night just for five minutes more. He went back to the Percivals' in the after noon, for he had engaged to go out after luncheon with the girls, and then he had to meet their inquiries, and they jarred upon him. " Miss Trevelyan worse, is she ?

" May said. " Well, I am sure I don't wonder at it, considering the way in which she has been going on. Any body else as ill as she has been, ever since she came, would be forced to keep in their beds, or at any rate in their own rooms ; but I am sure scarcely a day has passed but she has seen you, or Randal, or us here, — or half a dozen other people for what I know. I always thought she would knock herself up at last." " I don't suppose that it is seeing people that has made her ill," Captain Lincoln replied; but May only gave one of the scornful half-laughs with which she usually received any expression of an opinion that differed from her own, and — " You may not suppose it, but it is far more likely to be that than any thing else," she said. " I have thought from the first that she would lay herself up before long."

And then his news had to be told to Ahce, and Alice broke into exclamations of sorrow, and besieged him with questions that he could not answer, till her pity and sympathy — so helpless as it was — moved him to a sort of unreasonable irritation. And meanwhile at the other house there were heavy enough hearts. " Yes — I have been in pain, but I thought I should get better. Ought I to have said more about it ? " Hero asked with a sort of pathos when the doctor saw her first. " You see, my people here are all so good that when my finger aches in a new way they make themselves unhappy about it, and so I can't bear to tell them when I am worse than usual. I thought this would go away — as other things have gone ; I did not suppose it woul get bad like this." She was suffering acute pain when she spoke so, — pain so sharp that she could scarcely speak at all.

For a week past, they vol. n. c found out now, there had been inflammation at the hip-joint, which had at last suddenly and violently increased. " We shall be able to subdue it, I trust," Dr. Holland said ; " but if there is no visible improvement in the course of four-and-twenty hours, I think we had better try if we can get Dr. to come down." So Mr. Lincoln had written to Dr. , to prepare him for the telegram that might follow, and through the day and night they watched by Hero's side, anxiously looking for some change in her; but no change for the better came. She was so ill all day that she could not hide her suffering, nor, brave though she was, could she do more than speak some few words now and then to comfort them. " It is so hard to have no more power than this over one's self," she said once, — "to be such a slave as this to a little pain."

" Ah, my darlings, what a burden I am to you ! " she cried to them again at another time. " Look how I wear you out ! If I were only once well again — only once well — how I would try to make it up to you." And then she took Mrs. Trevelyan's hand that she was holding in hers, and kissed it, and laid her cheek upon it. It was always thus — that when Hero was most ill then all her better nature came most into prominence, and the more she suffered the more she showed the unselfishness and sweetness and real nobleness that were in her. All those follies and vanities of hers were but as a cloak that she threw away from her whenever the need came to prove herself good and true. She was no better next morning, and so c then they telegraphed to Dr. , and late at night he came. But his coming brought no comfort to them.

"I cannot hide from you that she is in great danger," he said, as soon as he had seen her. And then afterwards he told Mr. Lincoln, speaking to him alone, " We may subdue the inflammation, but she has no strength to stand an attack hke this. She is sadly wasted already. The chances are that after the inflammation is reduced she will sink." " And in fact he speaks as if he had little hope of saving her," Dudley said to his brother, with a break in his voice that went to Fred's heart. The two men were in Dudley's study alone : Captain Lincoln had been there all the even ing, not doing any good by his presence, but yet kept there by a feeling, that it was no use reasoning about, of anxiety and suspense. He had been trying to occupy himself with reading, but he could not read much. Now and then he and Dudley had talked a little, but their talk had been broken and disjointed.

They had no spirit to talk together about ordinary things, and Dudley at any rate had scarcely been able to speak of Hero. For to Mr. Lincoln Hero had long been as dear as his own sister could have been ; she had made herself to him invariably gentle and lovable and beautiful, and the thought of her death was wringing his heart. " You cannot understand how much she has been to all of us," he said once to Fred. " To you, who never took to her, her influ ence over us, I daresay, seems incomprehen sible ; but she has a force of character, and a power of attaching people to her that I have seldom known equalled." And then Mr. Lincoln, sitting before his study fire as he spoke so, made a penthouse of his hand across his eyes ; and his brother gave no answer to him. Did it seem as strange to him as Dudley thought it did, that people should love Hero ?

He took up the newspaper and began to read it, but he was still thinking of Hero while his eyes followed the words. He was thinking that, let her be what she might — let her be noble and worthy, as Dudley thought her, or im perfect and full of faults, as he did — he would give the largest half of all he had in the world to save her life. Her face had been haunting him since he had known about her danger, — haunting him with its beauty, that he had begun to find it so pleasant to look upon, and with a remembrance — that was keen sometimes to actual sharp pain — of the last look that it had worn for him. He tried to forget that look, and the angry, half hurt, defiant eyes, and could not forget them. They rose up before him again arid again. They had even already more than once brought a halfdefined, extravagant feeling to him that, if she were to die, and he never were to see her any more, the remembrance of them would make him never care to look into a woman's face again.

Hero herself knew the danger she was in, for, with her usual courage, she had suffered them to have no concealment from her. " Grandmamma, you always tell the truth to me ; tell me if he thinks I shall die ?" she had asked Mrs. Trevelyan after Dr. had seen her. And then Mrs. Trevelyan told her the truth, with the tears running down her cheeks; and the girl put her arms out to her, and drew down the wet face beside her own face on the pillow. " He may be wrong, grandmamma; I hope he is wrong; I will live if I can," she merely said softly, after a few moments. " Look — I am not so very weak as he says; I can hold your hand — do you feel? — so fast!" and she clasped it, with a little half-unsteady laugh. " People have been weaker than this, a great deal, and have not died. And, grandmamma," she said, presently, half as if in jest, but with a soft, sweet earnestness in the great clear eyes, " I think God loves you too well to let me die — you too well, and me not well enough, perhaps ; for what would you do if I were to go?

It is I who am always bad, and yet it is you, then, who woidd be punished; and I don't think that would be justice, dear." "Oh! my darling, hush!" Mrs. Trevelyan cried, half shocked. But Hero only shook her head. " No, I don't think that it would be justice; I can't see that it would," she merely repeated, in the same meditative, quiet voice. "I do not want to die!" she had said already, passionately, to herself. " I want to live. I have been so happy ! I am not ready yet to die." But she had said this only in her own heart, or in silent prayers that no one around her heard. For, if the girl shrank from death, she did not let the others know it; she kept her weakness to herself, and, even when she grew more and more weak, still cheered, or tried to cheer, those around her with her brave and tender words.

" Be cause, at least, one need not be a coward," she said, " nor think one is not safe with God." Her great anxiety, indeed, throughout these days, was always for the two who loved her best, far more than for herself. " Dudley, you will have to be so good to them if I die," she said to Mr. Lincoln once, with the earnest tears starting to her eyes. She was tender over them with an in describable, beautiful tenderness, her love following them, and her thoughts dwelling upon them continually. "You see, all the rest of you would just be sorry for a little while, as is right; but what would my two do without me?" she said to Dudley and Grace one day. " If I were to go, it seems to me as if the thought of them would not let me lie still in my grave." But yet it seemed as though, in spite of that, she were going fast.

They had been able to reduce the inflammation ; but, as Dr. had warned them, the little strength that she had had almost given way. She was clinging so to life; and yet, cling as she would, life was slipping from her. One day when she was very weak, she clasped her feeble hands around Mr. Trevelyan's neck, almost with a sob. " Grandpapa, hold me fast !" she said. " Oh ! hold me so fast that I cannot get away !" You see, to this poor Hero Trevelyan life and the things of life were dear. The world, so far, had been sweet to her ; and she loved the faces that she knew, and the voices that had been around her from her childhood. It was not that she did not believe that in another world there were better things for her than these. But she was young ; she had been very happy ; she was so warm in the midst of this close human love that was around her that she clung to it, and did not want to leave it — not even for heaven, where the angels' faces would be strange to her.

A little more happiness here first — that was what she cried to God for; a little longer time here to gladden those who were dear to her, and be made glad by them. The sun shone into her room on one of those winter mornings, and the girl held out her arms to it with a passionate gesture. It was part of that life that had been so kind to her that was fading away from her — that she was struggling so to grasp still.

Chapter II

"\7~0U know that Hero did not die at this time, or I should not be writing her story now. She was so near to dying from pure weakness for a day or two that they almost gave up hope ; once for a few hours she even lay all but unconscious, mechanically swaUowing the wine that from time to time they put to her lips, but knowing no longer what hands were ministering to her, nor what hearts breaking by her side. But yet she did not die. After that extreme exhaustion she returned to life, slowly, indeed, and with many a pause — but she returned ; and a day dawned at last when the two to whom she was dearest bent over their regained treasure in an agony of tenderness — a passion of gratitude too great for words. " Thank God for life!" the girl too said to herself. She had opened her eyes again upon a world that was not passing from her ; she saw the glad faces round her with a happy heart.

" I wanted to live too ; I did not want you to have to cry for me. Ah ! thank God for life !" she said again. It was February, and a February that was like spring. They used to gather violets for her, and fill her room with the scent of them. The people who cared for her began to bring her or send her flowers. Frederick Lincoln sent flowers to her amongst the rest, but she looked on his first gift of this sort when it was brought to her with a little curl of the lip. " Captain Lincoln is very civil," she merely said, and when the flowers were put in water on the table that stood by her bedside she pushed them back a little, out of sight. During her illness Hero had asked about many people, and had sent messages to some, but she had asked very little indeed about Captain Lincoln. The weeks of her slow convalescence were very happy weeks.

Amongst those she lived with Hero Trevelyan had the power of always making herself the centre around which every thing else grouped itself, so that the household had seemed to fall to pieces when she had been removed out of her accustomed place. The illness of no other amongst them could have made the change that hers did, nor could so have appeared to take the soul out of every thing. Now it was as if hfe had come back to them all — as if the sun that had suffered eclipse had begun to shine again. " I wonder if I shall see her before I go away," Captain Lincoln had begun to think to himself. He had to join his regiment by the middle of the month, and already the second week of it had begun. To him too it was curious how much of a change Hero's illness had made — to how large an extent, when he could not see her any longer, the light of the house had seemed gone.

He had tried to account to himself for this by saying that it was in Hero's nature to make herself so prominent that her absence could not but be felt — that you were forced to miss her when she was gone, quite independent o liking or disliking, as you would be forced to miss the sun out of heaven were it to cease shining, though you should love stars and moon better than it. He said this to himself, and it was true in part, but yet, as he half knew, it did not explain the fact that he had daily felt the want of her — that his mind had been full of her — that the thought of her death had been terrible to him — that the news of her escape from death had made him feel, on the day he heard it, as if the earth laughed and sang. Nor did it explain the intense desire he felt to see her, if it should be only for five minutes, before he went away.