Riverston

Front matter

RIVERSTON BY GEOEGIANA M. CEAIE. 11 The power, whether of painter or poet, to describe rightly what he calls an ideal tiling, depends upon its being to him not an ideal but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well, but either from actual sight, or sight of faith."— Ruskjn. " Forgive me where J fail in truth. And. in Thy wisdom make me wise." Tennyson. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON : SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 65, CORNHILL. 1857. [THE BIGHT OF TBAX3LATI0N 13 BESEEVED.] CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAPTEE I. PAGE ARRIVAL 1 CHAPTEE U. NIGHT AND MORNING 13 CHAPTEE IU. AFTER DINNER 32 CHAPTEE IV. DISCURSIVE 66 CHAPTEE V. A SU1MER NTGHT 93 CHAPTEE VI. A PATE OF WOOERS 110 CHAPTEE VII. SYDNEY'S SORROW 137 CHAPTEE VEU. LETTER-WRITING 156 CHAPTEE IX DISCOVERY CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAPTEE X. PAGE IN THE GARDEN 185 CHAPTEE XL ELEANOR 204 CHAPTEE XII. IN A WOOD 2S8 RIVERSTON.

Chapter I. Aeeivax

Oltr adventure caused so much excitement in the house, and gave rise to so much speculative and ejaculatory conversation, that the hour at which we had originally expected Mr. Kingsley passed away before any of us began to wonder that he had not come. We had expected him to dinner : it was now half-past five, and the next train would not allow of his arrival for a couple of hours : we dined therefore without waiting for him. " It would be as well, my dear, to let Grace know," Mr. Wynter suggested ; <; she will be looking for him." VOL. II. B RIVERSTON. I proffered my services to convey the desired information to Mrs. Ramsay, and, as they were accepted, I took my walk after dinner to her house. It had been, as I before mentioned, a sultry day. Thunder was in the atmosphere, aud, though hitherto the sun had shone wdth even oppressive brilliancy, there were clouds now towards evening rising sombre and threatening from the south.

Their progress was swift. As I sat with Mrs. Eamsay, half an hour had not passed ere the firma ment was hung with their dark pall from zenith to horizon ; the glow of day gave place to an almost twilight, although lurid, gloom ; for a few minutes, labouring with a distant, soundless wind, their heavy masses, pile on pile, rode on, tumultuous and reeling, till on the sudden, staying, as it seemed, their course, one vivid flash swept the wide arch from north to south, and, answering it, thunder peal, and raving wind, and flooding rain let loose their simultaneous fury. For an hour they raged, and for an hour we watched and Ustened. We sat apart ; Mrs. Earn- ARRIVAL. 3 say's chair was near the chimney ; my seat was the broad ledge of the west window : across her half averted face the lightning only flung a partial gleam ; mine it lighted with its full blaze : she spoke little to me, and I as little to her : she was a good, reverent, pious woman, and good, reverent, and pious were her thoughts and the few words she spoke.

I was far from good, and the thoughts that came to me, the feelings that swayed me, were by no means all allied to heaven. For that fierce, disturbed nature had voices for me that my ears awoke to with a swift, wild joy ; sights that my eyes and brain made revel in, filling my veins with leap ing blood, thrilling my pulses, evoking even an in ward, strange, irrepressible, exultant laughter from me. Not that I wanted reverence. Reverence for all things worthy to be revered is, I thank God, a law of my being : in the wild fire of lightning, in the solemn roll of thunder, my soul knows the hand of God, ancl bows itself before his might ; but also with the fiercest spirit of the storm — with frantic wind, with deluging rain, with all the raging and seething turmoil of these torn elements, something RIVERSTON. there is too in me that claims — ay, and finds kindred.

I sat looking forth, my arms clasped round my knees, on the broad window ledge. No fear had I, though the lightning blazed upon my open face : all that was tameless in my nature was awake : from the fierce contention of wind and rain I drank in keen exhilarating life, which yet the stronger power, that over these held high dominion, kept down, suppressed, subjected — and with a strength and might and majesty to which my soul spoke a full-toned Amen ! Swift as had been the storm's approach, so also was its termination. Lightning and thunder, rain and wind, tumultuous raged for one short hour ; that past, the summer evening grew again into a calm and soft serenity : the flooded earth, the torn and drooping leaves — these were the sole traces that, as the slanting sun broke forth again, marked the past conflict.

The parting clouds had found that sun low on the horizon : ere I went it set, and swiftly following its setting there grew to bright a glory in the ARRIVAL. 5 sky that, entranced, I lingered still, and, wheeling forward Mrs. Ramsay's chair, waited beside her minute after minute to watch the progress of its sudden splendour. Well was it worth my lingering to witness. Over the west, in the pale azure, there hung a vast but thin and feathery cloud, fretted like a bird's wing, and glowing with a deepening and deepening radiance of crimsoned fire. Like the plumage of some gorgeous tropic bird it hung, a pinion wide-stretched, light yet gigantic, full-spread as though for flight, yet motionless as the low line of hills below it, or the unchangeable arch above. That azure arch was spotted to its zenith with flecks of light and airy cloud, like foam tossed upwards and stained into crimson ; and down on the horizon, where the melting colours mingled in a glory of intense light, blue glided into amber, ancl soft green. and gorgeous gilding, and a regal glow of purple.

The storm and the storm's spirit alike had passed : warm summer smiles, radiance of rich, dreamy, summer beauty, alone spoke in the glory of this sunset. I saw what, as she sat, Mrs. Ramsay could nut RIVERSTON. see, that a hand was opening the latched door into her garden : ere I spoke a figure issued from it, and footsteps were directed towards the house. " There is Mr. Kingsley ! " She looked and saw him, ancl a colour almost like youth came to her pale cheek : her eye light ened too and sparkled — her whole face seemed to grow young ; I scarcely knew her. My bonnet was not on — I could not go before he entered, yet I was vexed to force myself upon their meeting. I would have gathered up my garments and hastily adjourned to the adjoining room, but she arrested my departure, bidding me stay peace ably where I was, and I had scarcely retreated to the further window and sat me down when Mr. Kingsley entered.

It was a quiet meeting. He advanced and stood beside her, and held both her outstretched hands in his before he once spoke. " My clear Grace ! " he said then, and he stooped down and kissed her. She simply said, " God bless you ! " and if it had not been for the tones of either voice I should have thought the mutual welcome cold. ARRIVAL. 7 I remember Mr. Kingsley distinctly as he appeared before me at that moment. I saw a stature slightly dwarfed, though mainly in com parison with its breadth ; I saw a frame firm-knit and spare, muscular, bony, indicative of great strength ; I saw a breadth of misshapen shoulder surmounted by a head of vast proportions — -a head darkly adorned with a loose mane of locks, long, rich, bewildered, dusky as a night-cloud, descend ing almost to his shoulders, and lying thickly there, their dusky depths only stirring as the head they grew from turned or shook.

They were the offspring, as I afterwards per ceived, of a double vanity ; nor did they altogether fail to feed the appetite that allowed them, for they both concealed, in some measure, the defor mity of the shoulders, ancl certainly, in a striking degree, displayed the lavish bounty with which nature had sought in this exalting of one feature to recompense him for much robbery. Not, however, that her sole recompense lay in the bestowal of these luxuriant tresses ; some reparation also the face itself could boast. An RIVERSTON. inauspicious face it was at the first view — black, strongly marked, grim ; an iron face, bound into hard deep Unes, sorrowful and stern ; thus it appeared at first ; but with a second glance perception of one dark-gleaming splendour on its dusky front awoke. Until he inclined to me I did not perceive this ; but at a sudden motion towards me that he made when Mrs. Ramsay spoke my name — he turned the more sharply, inasmuch as my presence had till then been unnoticed by him — I was for a second startled, dazzled even, by the light that shone upon me.

It came from two of the keenest eyes that ever had rested on my face : dark they were as a winter's night, guarded by thick projecting eyebrows, furnished with a cur tain of naturally drooping eyelids, ancl jetty thick fringed lashes, yet was the glance they flashed upon me a very flame of fire. Mildly composed, almost serene, he had appeared to me at the mo ment of his entrance; his face, ugly as it was, had not shocked me; his deformed figure had borne itself with a certain composed ease and dignity that had impressed me favourably: his whole ARRIVAL, 9 demeanour, however, changed now at the sight of me with an almost magical celerity. Watchful, suspicious, wrathful in an instant grew the dark face; an intense consciousness of his deformity appeared to rouse itself in him, and, with this consciousness, an expression of the most morbidly keen pride ancl defiance that I ever saw upon a human face.

It was a transition ugly enough : I had liked him better at the first; the quiet ancl subdued tone of his appearance had been to my mind infinitely more full of propriety, more dignified, more touch ing even than was this second phase that he presented to me — this futile rising up in arms against his destiny — this needlessly exhibited de fiance towards an imaginary or possible derision, which, whether it was caUed forth by any thing especially obnoxious in my individual presence, or was the general front that he assumed towards strangers of whatever description, I could not but regard — apart from the little it said in favour of his temper — as savouring alike of weakness and a much too sensitive vanity. RIVERSTON. I made no hesitation about departing quickly. My bonnet was assumed, and my farewells made to Mrs. Ramsay, within five minutes after Mr. Kingsley's arrival, ancl I was quickly on my home ward way ; but it was almost dark, for I walked lingeringly — as dark as a starlit sky and a rising moon would allow a June night to be — when I regained Riverston.

Sydney all the evening had been too unwell to rise; she was still in bed when I returned, but as I passed her door I heard her moving, and at the sound went in to her. " Ah ! I am glad you have come back," she addressed me with perfect gravity as I entered ; " I did not like your being away in that storm." " I was under shelter." '• Oh, I was not afraid of your getting wet. But it occurred to me that you might perhaps feel some such horrid affinity with the spirits of the air that you would sail off with some of them, and I should never see you back again. I am glad you have not gone." " Don't flatter yourself that you wiU get rid ARRIVAL. of me so easily. Well, I came to see how you " I was just thinking of getting up, out of civility to Uncle Gilbert." "If that is your sole motive you may spare your self the trouble : your uncle won't be back to-night."

" How do you know ? " "Because I have just brought a messsge from him to that effect." " You have ! Have you seen him ? " " I have seen him." She looked into my eyes, but evidently she saw too little there to satisfy her : she had to ask for information in words. '■' Were you shocked ? " — a little hesitatingly. " Not particularly." " You were not ? " " I was not. I made a discovery that pleased me : I found that, ugly as Mr. Kingsley is, some one at Riverston has inherited the best feature in her face from him." A flush lit up Sydney's pale cheek ; a flash of reproach shot from her dark eyes. RIVERSTON. " Honor, you are ill-natured ! " " Don't be a child, Sydney ! " — and I broke out laughing; for indisputably the fact that I had told her was true.

Chapter II. Night And Morning

I know not from what cause it was, but I could not sleep that night. The short hours of darkness passed, the dawn came, and still I lay wakeful and restless. Such nights of watching come to me at certain seasons : I owe them to states of the atmosphere, to states of the body, oftenest, ancl, always then most painfully, to states of the mind. Seldom is sleep other than coy with me. Gently I have to woo her, supplicantly I must lie waiting her coming : often her hand will touch the door latch — raise it — almost seem to enter : then with a cruel caprice abruptly vanish, and leave me still wakeful for long hours. Supplicantly I said I waited : nay, not always is my mood suppliant. Beyond certain limits hu- RIVERSTON. mility will not carry me : my petition long denied, I rise defiant : sueing for hours in vain, I cease at length to implore.

My vigil then grows riot with unloosed thought: I give liberty to heart and brain: I let imagination free. The morrow will bring with it its sure hours of languid pain— I know that well ; abused nature then will claim res titution, but now at least I take my revenge on sleep. I laugh at her boasted power, I defy her cruel coyness : often I rise and half-dressed pace my room till my wearied limbs refuse me longer obedience : in nights dark as eclipse, in wind and storm, in m<>on and starlight, in chill dawn and early sun-blaze, not an hour of the long winter nights, not an h >ur of the slow-gathering splen dour of summer mornings, but has seen my watch. This night I could not sleep. I know not if it was the morning's alarm that kept me wakeful: possil ly, resenting my attempted scorn of her, Fear now chose to take revenge on me, and, holding wide my weary eyelids, to teach me that by one so frail as I her mighty power dared not be braved.

Some influence doubtless there was over me, for through this night a throbbing Ute was in each pulse and nerve : my fancies took strange colours : shadows, not of death, but of a paUid life stretched out to long, worn-out duration, rose before me: hope paled seeing that picture ; anguish came upon me : I called aloud : — " Not living death ! — not life," I cried, " without life's passionate essence, be my portion ! Stones for bread, ancl vinegar for water, give me these, oh God ! if thou will try me, ancl, with thy sternness, give me here and there one draught of wine — one morsel of life-giving food; but shut my life up in no death-like cloister! send me to no frozen regions ! chain me not clown — my burning heart — my restless brain — in dead grey calm — lest my soul rebel !"' My soul did rebel then ; it rebelled in fearful anticipation.

All that night was I tortured by a sense of my isolation ; ceaselessly it pursued me, bitterly ancl remorselessly it niade me know how solitary I stood, bound by no tie to any living soul, linked in no bond of joy or sorrow to any human being : cruelly it snatched my one crust of food away : it told me how the kindness round about RIVERSTON. me was weaker than a reed to lean on — a thing that a breath would dissolve or a moment sever me from : it taught me this lesson with an anguish that rent my soul. Not now for the first time was its truth impressed upon me: in night and day musings many a time these same thoughts had visited me, but to-night their gall was mixed with a poison bitterer that until now my lips had tasted. A subtle drug it was, conveying feverish motion through every nerve and pulse : narcotic juices mingled not with it ; deadly it was, but its deadliness worked beneath the semblance of a quicker hfe ; delirium, not stupor, was its instrument.

For an hour or more it racked me. I wrestled with it : I did not conquer, but I wrestled till my feeble strength failed me. Throughout my life rebellion against both God and man had been a fearful impulse of my nature ; submission was alien to me ; rebel and insurgent was I born ; from my childhood upwards had I been in arms against earth or heaven, fighting with man, fighting with destiny, conquering now, now falling, beaten, anon watering the earth with tears of indescribable an guish and remorse. To-night all my soul rose in mutiny : when my suffering was keenest, when I trembled with despair and terror — my heart fainting within me, my lips quivering into an anguished cry — then the spirit of rebellion came upon me ; swift it rushed through my veins, heart aDd brain were kindled : flushed, quivering, palpitating, words sprang from my lips : — " Give me my rights ! — give me what the an guished yearning of my nature cries for !

For two and-twenty years I have fed on scattered crumbs — I am gaunt ancl fierce with famine. Give me bread !" I cried, but the utterance of my wild petition brought no relief: Heaven that night was as ada mant : kind influence to sooth my quivering heart. soft pity to dry my burning tears, it had none. Not of this fierce sort are the prayers that pierce its gates. Succour came not to me ; the tumult of my spirit only ceased when in the dawn exhaustion took the shape of succour, and forced my wakeful eyelids shut with her imperious hand. VOL. IL c RIVERSTON. I slept, but my sleep was brief and fitful. The June sunbeams as they pierced my window wakened me, and, hopeless of returning slumber, I let their summons rouse me, and, rising, dressed myself. The morning was a bright one, and as yet the house was still ; leaving my room I descended the stairs quietly, ancl, unlocking the garden door, stepped out into the sharp refreshing air.

I bent my steps to a pleasant walk where the early sun shone brightly, and there I seated myself. I had brought a book with me, for I deemed that my bitter thoughts had made me their slave long enough, and opening it — it was a volume of Keats — I set myself to read. I read the verses half aloud ; their cadence pleased me like the melody of a song ; insensibly their calming in fluence stole over me. As I read, gradually the weight left my spirit, the darkness cleared from before my eyes. An hour or more elapsed ; then closing my book, refreshed and strengthened, I turned my steps homewards. It was stdl earlier than our usual hour of assembling together, but as I entered the breakfast-room, I found that that apartment was not empty ; opening the door, I became aware of a voice within, which, though I saw no figure from which it might proceed, my memory recaUed to me as Mr. Kingsley's. I saw no figure, I say, belonging to it.

The truth was, Mr. Kingsley sat with his back to the door, in a chair whose comfortable dimensions made most persons occupying it invisible to those standing behind. Here he sat, and hence he dis coursed. But if he himself was invisible, so also when I entered was I to him ; for, coming into the room at a moment when he was speaking, I merely made a mute salutation to Mr. Wynter, its sole other occupant, and, without advancing, seated myself, apart ancl quiet, at the further end, in the embra sure of the window. "More than one plan that I have tried has failed," Mr. Kingsley was in the midst of saying : " I am in great difficulty as to the course to pur sue. Any thing that they can construe into an act of interference has not a chance with them ; they would rise to oppose it to a man." RIVERSTON.

" Of course they would," was Mr. Wynter's quick response — " they would any where. You had far better let them alone, and confine your attention to the children." '• There is not a hope for the children while the parents remain the brutes they are," Mr. Kingsley returned with considerable energy. " You have no conception of the mental and moral condition of these men and women. They are more brutalized than the cattle in the fields. It is such utter darkness that I grow bewildered in it ; it is not only that I have to make Christians of them — I have first to make them human beings." " Which you will not do," Mr. Wynter inter rupted curtly; "not according to your notions of the matter. You will fail ; they will resist you, and you will find they are stronger than you, and you will have to give in.

And, more than this — you will have lost in the struggle whatever power you may have over them now." " I should fail with them," Mr. Kingsley said, with a gravity and earnestness that I liked better than Mr. Wynter's tone of dogmatism, " if I attempted to civilize them by force — either of words or deeds ; none but a madman would try that course ; but kindness can work its way with them. I am not hopeless, Frank ; I am only groping about for the fittest way of directing my efforts. I dare not openly uproot and sweep away ; all I can do at present is to undermine — ancl how to do tins with the surest effect, ancl the least appearance of obnoxious interference, is my greatest difficulty.'' " I believe it is a difficulty you will never get over. " Possibly not : but I will try." "The truth of the matter is, Gilbert" — Mr. Wynter's voice was not without a touch in it of irritation — "you are not fit for the position you are in." n " Why ?" with some energy.

" Because you are a score of times too fasti dious. You are not fit to have to do with such a population. So long as you see your men drink ing, and their wives smoking or scolding, or some thing of that sort, you will never get it out of your head but that they are sunk in the depths RIVERSTON. of barbarism. Tut, man ! every thing is good or bad by comparison ; and, upon my word, I don't believe that the state of your people is much worse than that of ours here in the south." " Suppose it were not — what would that prove ?" Mr. Kingsley demanded with some scorn in his deep tones. " It would prove very satisfactorily to my mind, that you exaggerate to yourself what you ought to do for them. Now, I am the last man in the world to preach indifference to the condition of the working classes; but at the same time there is a proper limit to every thing, ancl when you talk of trying to raise your people above their natural level, I think you are attempting to pass that limit.

Try to make them decent, ancl sober, and respect able, ancl success go with you ; but if you try to do more than this — if you try to introduce refine ments either of manners or education, that only properly belong to a higher class — I for one tell you plainly you are throwing your work away; you are striving for what you will never gain, and what, even if you did gain it, would be only an encumbrance and a disadvantage to you, for as fast as you educated your men above their station they would leave you. They would, to a dead certainty. No man creeps on the ground when he can staud upright." There was no response (one rose to my lips, but I did not speak it), ancl Mr. Wynter took two turns through the room in silence. Then again — " I don't know what has put all this into your head," he broke out.

" There was your father — as kind a landlord ancl a master as any man I ever knew — what did he do ? He never talked about civilizing the whole population. He tried to put down crime and drunkenness, and to have the children, where they could be spared, sent to school — that was all, and it was all I think that was called for from him. Why can you not let things go on as he has left them ?" " Because I dare not ! " was the abrupt response, ancl, with a sudden motion of quick impatience, Mr. Kingsley jerked back his chair, and rising from it turned ancl faced us. The action gave me satisfaction: I had had RIVERSTON. some curiosity to see the expression with which he had listened to Mr. Wynter's latter speeches; I was successful in catching a full view of it now before a fresh emotion changed it.

I found that I had already pictured it to myself not untruthfully; scorn and determination w-ere its prominent cha racteristics ; these gave a marked but not agree able power to the whole face. Its redeeming characteristic was the deep kindling passion that lighted up the eye. I noted then, and often after wards, that in Mr. Kingsley's face this feature frequently assumed an independent position : what it spoke the remaining features often failed to echo — at times they even directly contradicted it. I believe that it was less than any other under his own control — that from it the truth spoke, even when at times he might be inclined to hide it ; and possibly it was through consciousness of this truth telling propensity that he had gained the habit, which was common with him, of drooping the lid over it even while conversing.

But at this moment no drooping lid hid it ; erect it gazed, and full and radiant it shone. There was hope, strength, daring in it ; there was more — there was gentleness, and a loving pity, and a wide, proud, steady faith, shining in it and from it, clear, full. and beautiful. I never had heard before whether Mr. Kingsley was a pious man ; after this moment I never asked the question. Yet, pious though he might be, he was certainly not altogether a person to be respected. If he was good and strong in many things — and I believe he was — he had weaknesses too that were almost childish. Even in this moment that I looked at him, one of these displayed itself in the look with which he suddenly perceived my presence. Where were gentleness ancl love now ? What had be come of faith and hope ancl pity, and all the atten dant train of exalted sentiments ?

Alas, the de tection of my presence had dismissed them all ! " Miss Haig," said Mr. Wynter suddenly, " were you introduced to my brother ? Gilbert, did you not see Miss Haig last night ?" He bowed, hurriedly muttering a word or two, and the next moment, somewhat to my surprise, he crossed the room to where I sat. He came, I RIVERSTON. believe, prepared to shake hands with me. I, how ever, on my part — for to me the action of shaking hands has ever too much of a friendly and kindly sentiment in it to make me at any time wdling to lavish it on those to whom I am indifferent — having returned his first salute, sat motionless. That attitude he was quick enough to under stand : the hand beginning to be extended drew swiftly back, and without opening his lips he stood aside. Mr. Wynter came up, and took his stand be fore me.