Spell-bound

Chapter I. The Search

1~T was rather a long storm for a tropical -*- one, still it was comparatively soon over. In a wonderfully short space of time all was again calm and bright. The rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The thunder died away into a distant mutter. The wind sank, and murmured softly among the trees, as though it were tired, and were singing itself to sleep. The sky was once more clear. The stars looked out VOL. II. B SPELL- BOUND. like angels' eyes. The silver moon sailed in calm majesty up the heavens. The tent had been blown down, as Oak leigh had foreseen it would be, but none of the little party, nor even any of their horses, had been injured in the storm. The nurse and child were not, however, come back. The negro who had been sent to look for them had been much too fright ened to do anything but go a few yards, and then come back howling dismally.

Oakleigh now begged his wife to return as quickly as she could on horseback, with two of the servants, to their boat on the river, where she would be able to get dry clothes, while he and the rest of the men went in search of the nurse and child. " Oh ! Frederick," she cried, wildly, "for pity's sake let me go with you. I shall find her quicker than anyone." SPELL-BOUND. Soon seeing that it was impossible to persuade her, he let her have her own way. The night was warm. The moon shed down a mild heat. Oakleigh knew that his wife could not be as much injured as she would have been in a colder climate. He therefore made her drink a little brandy out of his pocket-flask, and then they all moved forward. They turned up the track along which the nurse had gone. Stella went first, and went so quickly that the men had quite enough to do to keep up.

Her face was deadly pale. Her lips were pressed together as if to keep back at once words of trembling hope and words of anguish. In her eyes there was a light as though her soul were so eager to know what news those eyes would have to tell, that it had come into them, and was sitting in anxious b SPELL-BOUND. waiting. The rain-drops hung upon her dishevelled hair, and glistened in the moonlight. The little breezes came and played among the damp folds of her dress, but stirred them gently, as if they pitied her. Every step she took she trod on leaves and flowers, as though she were a bride; and yet these blossoms, snatched rudely from stem and branch, and flung down by the wind, to lie bruised and withering, and drenched in the tears of the Summer, made a fit pathway for the sorrowing mother.

Thrice she passed trees which had been struck by the lightning, and thrice she turned away her eyes from the sight with a low moan. Once her foot trod upon a little bird which lay in the path. She stopped and picked it up, but when she found that it was cold and dead, killed by the rough hand of the storm, she shudder- SPELL-BOUND. ed, and put it down softly again among the long grass. The wet branches kissed her as she passed. Sometimes there lay across the path a large tree blown down by the wind. Her husband then would hurry forward to help her, but almost before he could reach her she had stepped lightly over it. For a long time they followed the track which the nurse and child had taken, but found no trace of them. At length Stella turned despairingly to her companions, " They could not have gone further than this," she cried.

"Let us try another track, madam," said Pierre, Mr. Oakleigh's shrewd, active French servant, who was an old South American traveller. "When people get frightened by a thunder-storm in the forest, they often lose their way." SPELL-BOUND. They did try another track, and as they met with no better success in it, turned into a third. Here they had not gone far when Stella, who still led them, suddenly stopped and recoiled a step or two. ' ' Look there !" she gasped, pointing to something dark which lay underneath a large fallen tree just before them. The men shrank back at first, till Pierre stepped forward ; then they helped him to draw out that object from underneath the heavy trunk. In her calm agony Stella would have watched them closely, but her husband gently turned her away, and made her hide her face upon his breast.

Then there was a silence, broken only by the laboured breath of the men, who seemed to find their task a somewhat hard one, and by tho drip of the rain-drops from the leaves. SPELL-BOUND. " It is poor Rhoda, the nurse !" cried out Pierre at length. " She must have been crushed by the tree as it fell, for she is quite dead ; but, madam, be comforted, for Notre Dame be praised, the child is not here !" Not here ! Did ever two words before turn so suddenly darkness into light in a woman's heart ? Not here ! With what a cry of joyful thankfulness those words re echoed from her lips through the forest ! By some miracle, then, her darling had escaped ; had most certainly crept away among the long grass and trees near at hand. Starting from her husband's arms, as if they had been some hatefal chain, and not those dear bonds into which she had so readily given herself, she began eagerly to search round about, calling to the child by the fondest names.

Oakleigh and the men all followed SPELL-BOUND. her example with renewed vigour. For a long while, upheld by hope, the mother con tinued her search ; but when, after all her efforts, not a sound of the baby voice met her ear, nor even a fragment of the child's dress her eyes, despair once more laid a heavy hand upon her ; and, exhausted both in body and mind, she sank insensible into the arms of those around her. Her husband bent over her and kissed her, as she lay there so still and fair in the moonlight ; and when he raised his head her face was wet, but not with the rain-drops which fell so thickly from the trees. Then he gave her into the charge of Pierre, and two of the other men, to convey her back to the boat, while he and the rest went on with the search. He could not give it up yet, for hope is a plant of strong growth in a father's heart.

And indeed there was SPELL-BOUND". 9 still some reason for hope. Near where the nurse's body was found there were no signs to give the slightest idea of any violence having been done to the child, and so few people passed through the forest it seemed unlikely that she could have been picked up. Carefully, gently Pierre and his companions bore Stella, who was a favourite with them all, towards the river. As they went along a hollow sound, as of earth being thrown up, met their ears. They crossed themselves and muttered an Ave, for they were passing by the spot where two of their number, whom Pierre, with the tact of his nation, had caused instantly and quietly to carry away poor Rhoda's body out of Mr. and Mrs. Oakleigh's sight, were hastily burying it. When they reached the boat they gave SPELL-BOUND.

Stella into the care of Kitty, her little English maid, who had been brought up at Mr. Sparshaw's village school, and who, since Mrs. Oakleigh married, had served her faithfully and well. Kitty put her mistress to bed as comfortably as she could under the circumstances, and by dint of different restoratives, at length .managed to bring her back to consciousness. She, however, only opened her eyes for two or three minutes, stared bewilderedly around her, and said, " Oh, Kitty, I feel so tired y I have had such horrible dreams !" then fell into a feverish sleep. Next morning, when Stella was fully awake and had collected her thoughts, she remembered all that had happened, not as a dark vision, but as a too distinct reality. After her mind had gone slowly through this process, the next thing she became SPELL-BOUND. 11 aware of was that her husband was sitting near her.

His back was turned to her, but in a little looking-glass, which hung on the other side of the tiny cabin, she could Bee his face, and could at once read there that the child was not found. The tears came fast and quick into the mother's eyes. But the second look she cast at the mirror made her for the moment almost forget her own sorrow. On that face, generally so full of bright active life, there was a* hopeless gloom, which touched the wife even more than the thought that she should never hear her child's baby -laughter again. Softly she rose and threw some clothes around her. Softly (though she was so weak that she moved with difficulty) she crept towards him ; nor did he know that she was so near till she fell upon his brest, crying out, SPELL-BOUND. "Oh, dearest, we have still each other.

Since it is God's will to take our darling from us, let us try to learn together to say, His will be done ! Perhaps even in this life He may one day give her back to us again." Then she looked up at him, and actually smiled one of her old bright smiles. That ■effort and that smile were, however, too much for her, and she once more lay insensible in his arms. But her high woman's mission to ■comfort and to strengthen was fully done. He felt that he had as yet not sought enough his God in his trouble. He felt that in the egotism of his own intense grief he had been forgetful of that of his wife. He felt that a strong man should stand up bravely to meet every sorrow. After that Stella was very ill ; so ill that SPELL-BOUND. 13 for a while her life was almost despaired of. Her mind and body had both had a shock from which they could with difficulty recover.

Fortunately for herself and her husband, they had true friends near them in that foreign land. The doctor who travelled with the expedition, a young German, with a weakness for bawling out " Die Wacht am Rhein " amid a cloud of tobacco-smoke, and for talking misty nonsense about everything, from the creation of man downward, but with nevertheless a kind heart and steady hand in his profession, was soon at Stella's bedside ; and the whole party, who were none of them far off, were before long around Oakleigh, doing all they could to comfort and help him. The Frau Professorinn came with her gold spectacles, her double chin, and her copy of " The Sorrows of Werther," which SPELL-BOUND. she was always reading, and always crying over, and established herself as head-nurse. This good lady had two rules of duty in this life.

One was to worship her Herr Professor, and the other was to do as much good as she could to her fellow-men. True, for the former she was too ready to neglect the latter. Had she come on the scene of a railway accident, and found her Professor with one of his fat fingers dislocated, she would not have heeded much everybody else around her having a broken limb. But as she now knew that that dear man was safe and sound not many yards off, sitting in an odour of stale to bacco and fresh onions, surrounded by a crowd of natural history curiosities, each one more hideous than its fellow, she de voted herself very warmly to her work of love towards little Stella. She sobbed SPELL-BOUND. 15 and laughed by turns over the story of her own courtship by the Professor, which she poured into the willing ear of Kitty, in strange English.

She was inexhaustible in expedients for the comfort of the patient. She had always a cheery smile ready for poor Oakleigh, and was never without a word of chaff for the young doctor. In short, she acted the part, if not of a sister, at least of a charming old mother of charity. Stella's mind often wandered a good deal. Sometimes she would repeat over and over again for an hour together, "Is it a bird, or is it a child? Whichever it is, it is dead, dead, dead !" Or her delirium would take a more lively turn, and she would prattle to Monica, or some of her old school-companions, about the trimming of her blue dress, or Miss De SPELL-BOUND. Vellembie's new bonnet, or that horrid difficult bit in the German grammar. Now and then she awoke the Frau Professorinn from a doze, and made that soft-hearted lady cry like the rain, by suddenly in the night sitting up in bed, rocking a pillow in her arms, and singing to it little baby-songs, as if it were her child.

The agonized suspense in which Oak leigh lived while his wife thus lay on the verge between this world and the next, blunted in some measure his grief for the loss of his child. He felt that Stella had never been so precious to him as she now was, and that, after all, half his love for the child had sprung out of his love for the mother. Throughout this period of terrible anxiety he could not give his at tention to making, with regard to the child, any wider inquiries ; the object SPELL-BOUND. 17 of which would have been to learn, if pos sible, who, on that evening, had passed that way along those forest tracks. At length Stella, what with her healthy young constitution, and what with the good care they gave her, struggled back to life. VOL. II. c

Chapter II. Together Again

' FIVE years have passed since Armine Marani ran away from his uncle. We left him in Mrs. Penle win's house, and we find him there still. That lady had first been persuaded by pity to let him stay the night. Then she had allowed him to remain a few days while Wilford, whom Monica enlisted in the boy's cause, wrote to his uncle to learn if his story were true. Next she had granted a little more time while another letter was despatched to Brinkworth, asking if they might put the SPELL-BOUND. 19 boy in some orphanage, which was answered in the affirmative. After that many months had passed without a place falling vacant in any of the orphanages at which they applied. Finally, Mrs. Penlewin, partly because she had grown fond of the boy and liked to hear his merry whistle in the garden and his light step on the stairs — partly because her kind old heart could not bear the thought of sending him back to be miserable with his relations — partly because she was glad to see Wilford and Monica with an object of common interest, such as Armine had become to them — but chiefly, perhaps, because long ago she had had a son of her own, whom she had lost at about Armine's age, resolved to ask his grandmother's and uncle's consent for the child to remain with her ; a consent that was very readily given. c2 SPELL-BOUND.

The mother and son were beginning to find that after all more was to be made out of their fertile brains than out of the North Devon soil. As they were going to give up their farm, Armine could be only a useless encumbrance to them, and they there fore resigned him gladly enough entirely to Mrs. Penlewin. The old lady had, as has been before said, a comfortable income, out of which her always rather economical habits had enabled her to lay by considerably, and she could therefore well afford to gratify her heart in this matter. So Armine grew up at Monica's feet and in Charles Wilford's study — for the curate, to please Monica (he would have brought up a young gorilla or an infant boa-constrictor on that condi tion), undertook, gratis, to be the boy's tutor. SPELL-BOUND. 21 The clergyman and the old and young lady were all fond of the boy and proud of him, but the bond was strongest between him and Monica.

Armine respected Mr. Wilford, who led him so patiently and cheerfully up the hill of the Classics, and who taught him to twine his rich but deli cate southern nature around a firm stem of manly English feeling. He loved Mrs. Penlewin, who had taken him, the orphan, to her home and heart, who boxed his ears, it is true, sometimes, when he played her mischievous tricks, such as painting Snow ball like a zebra and putting salt in the tea-pot, but who in general petted him and treated him as if he were a favourite grand son. But Monica he adored. He would often sit silently at her feet while she read or wrote, looking up at her with wondering eyes, as though she were a SPELL-BOUND. being from some higher sphere. One word from her had more power with him than a stern reprimand from Wilford or a lecture from Mrs. Penlewin.

And it was well for Armine that Monica had this in fluence over him, for as the depressing effects of those sad days spent in his uncle's house gradually passed away from his character, the boy's nature began to show a good deal of the fire and quick impulsive ness of his native south, and he was just the sort of lad who wants the gentle guid ance of a woman's hand. But the most remarkable thing about Armine was the decided talent he showed for his father's art. The moment the boy took up a chisel, it seemed to fit into his hand as if it had grown there. Wilford showed some of Armine's early efforts to a friend of his, who was a sculptor of some SPELL-BOUND. little name. The artist, who was no churlish shutter-up of the gates of his own profession against every new-comer, was pleased and interested, and offered to take the boy on moderate terms as a pupil when he should be fifteen, and to this both Wil ford and Armine readily agreed.

Monica was climbing up the ladder of literature — slowly, it is true, but as she made some advance, she had ceased to tor ment herself with doubts as to whether she was on her right path in life. She loved her art with all a true artist's single-hearted love, and for better for worse she resolved to cling to it. As for Charles Wilford, he still went on working in his parish, and silently loving Monica, like the true-hearted, foolish fel low that he was. Mrs. Penlewin was be ginning in her secret soul to think it rather SPELL-BOUND. a pleasant thing to have a niece whose writ ings were printed, but outwardly she still mocked at Monica's talking about her pro fession, and she also had not given up the hope of seeing her one day Mrs. Wilford. Stella and her husband had stayed in South America some time after the expedition with which they went out had come home.

Oakleigh was drawn on by that love of his profession which after a while had soothed to rest, though it could not kill, his sorrow for his child's loss, and which made it impossible for him to leave the world of wonder around him. Stel la followed him willingly, partly because she knew that he would be miserable if he did not listen to the call of his genius, and partly because she had a vague fancy that by remaining in the land she might find again her child, of whom, however, SPELL-BOUND. 25 they had not discovered a single trace. Lately Frederick and Stella had come back to England, on account of old Mr. Oakleigh's failing health. That gentleman was travelling out of the world by a slow, round-about road, and was making long speeches as he went, and adding daily some fresh ornament to the grand mauso leum he had built for himself ; but still there seemed all likelihood of his soon leaving this life.

He wrote to his dear nephew and niece, begging the one to come and be the support of his feeble steps, and the other the golden sunshine of his last days ; and though in the same letter he described the blue damask linings of his new landau in a way that did not seem quite the style of a man who was giv ing up this world's vanities, they could but comply with his wish. Besides, Stella had SPELL-BOUND. not been strong since that long illness, and Oakleigh thought the cooler climate of England might do her good. Soon after Armine, who was now fifteen, had gone to his new master the sculptor ; Monica too left home to stay a few days at Mr. Sparshaw's, with Stella and her husband, who were now there. What a joyous meeting that was ! There was Mr. Spar shaw, his good old face, as hale and bright as ever, beaming over his bottle of ruby port and his polished mahogany, for he would never allow in his house a dinner a la Russe, which he called a slovenly foreign custom, but always had the cloth removed and the table kept like a mirror.

There was Miss De Vellembie, who was also of the party, purring over Stella and Monica, those two perfect specimens of a matron and maiden reared at GoldenMount, SPELL-BOUND. like a benign old tabby. There was Mon ica, comng modestly, and yet not without gentle pride, to the sense that she was not living in vain. There were Frederick and Stella, come home in safety from their long wanderings. Yet in the midst of all their mirth there was a shadow which flitted in and out among the old man's smiles, f eb with a soft ening touch on the severer lines round Miss De Vellembie's mouth, rested now and then on Monica's brow, and touched in silent moments with thoughful sadness the bright intelligence of Oakleigh's face, but lingered most, sweet Stella, in your eyes. It was the shadow of the lost child.

" And do you really mean, then, Monica, never to marry ?" asked Stella, as they sat in the drawing-room by the twinkling fire light, after dinner, before the gentlemen SPELL-BOUND. joined them, while Miss De Vellembie dozed in her arm-chair, with a basket of plain work on one side and a volume of Hooker's Sermons on the other. " I hope I shall not ; but, you know, people may be seized with a disease late on in life," answered Monica, smiling. Silent Monica's tongue could move briskly enough when she was alone with one or two friends whom she loved and knew intimately, and with whom she could exchange thoughts familiarly. "But surely, Monica (you won't mind telling me, I know, and Miss De Vellembie is fast asleep, dreaming about Tiberius Gracchus, or some of those respectable old fellows she's so fond of) — surely you must have had a lover ?" said Stella, coaxingly.

"Yes, I see you have had one; and not only have had, but have." SPELL-BOUND. She went on as she bent forward to look into her friend's face, where the flickering blaze revealed a tell-tale blush : " Oh ! Monica, if you have a good man's true love, do not throw it away for a foolish fancy." "It is no fancy, but my fixed opinion, that no woman with a profession ought to marry," she replied earnestly. " It would be impossible for her to do her duty tho roughly at once by her art and her husband." " Then give up being a woman with a profession," cried Oakleigh's zealous little wife ; " believe me, there is nothing nobler or happier than for a woman to go through the world at a good man's side as his helper and comforter — nothing sweeter for her " — and now her voice trembled a little — " than the first moment her baby lies in her arms."

SPELL-BOUND. " This might be so, if every woman could meet exactly the right man, at exactly the right time." " But surely nothing is easier than that. Why, Frederick and I had not been toge ther ten minutes before we felt that we suited each other like tea-cup and saucer." " But what is to be the fate of the poor cups which stand patiently on the shelf year after year without their own particular saucer happening to come that way ?" said Monica, laughing merrily. " Why, I should think they had better end by taking an odd one. I'm sure any thing would be better than being an old maid, and shutting the windows in June, or feeding fifteen cats on partridge and bread-sauce, or telling about your neighbours stories longer than a dowager's train." SPELL-BOUND. " I mean, as an old maid, to do some thing yet more eccentric than any of these things.

I mean to shut myself up in a garret with a pet ink-bottle," said Monica, demurely. "But seriously speaking," she went on, " I know nothing more ridiculous and strange and unjust than the prejudice which most people have against the single life for women. To me it seems a very high and proud thing for a woman to walk through this world alone, keeping her name nobler and purer than any name a man conld give her ; living for some great Christian work ; or, if she be an artist, for God and her art; helping in his road through life, by gentle looks or heart-stir ring words, every man who comes near her, until she is to many a one almost as a Madonna, who is sought and looked up to in hours of difficulty or distress." SPELL-BOUND. " But it must be such a cold life ; with out love and warmth and colour."

"Far from that. The single woman makes friends at every step she takes by deeds of love and mercy. The wife's heart, though full of rich and beautiful things, is a narrow space ; but hers is so wide that everyone can creep into it and find rest there." " Well, it may be a good way of think ing, and, indeed, no doubt it is so, as you say it is, dear Monica ; but I can't really understand it," said Stella, shaking her head. "And still less can I understand about your novel-writing — how you can live at the same time with all the people in your book, and with those in the world around you. I am quite sure that if I tried to do it I should lose my own identity, and not know who I really was." SPELL-BOUND. " I do sometimes feel as if I were rather like Cinderella — one minute dancing with a prince among jewels and garlands, and the next brought suddenly home to a life of very common-place realities.

Often when I am in a most heart-rending situa tion with my hero and heroine, Aunt Pen lewin will come bustling in for me to add up her week's accounts, because looking at the figures makes her eyes ache." " After all, Monica, it is no doubt best that you should write, because your thoughts are so good and sweet it would be a pity for the whole world not to know them," said Stella, twining her arm around her friend's waist, and nestling her head against her shoulder while she looked up into her face as she had been looking up at Monica ever since she was a child. "But, darling, I don't like to think that VOL. II. d SPELL-BOUND. your authorship should make you have to live always alone." "I know the great parliament of ma trons will never for a moment allow how much best off we single women are.

Why, we can flirt when we like, sulk and smile when we like, wear what colours we like, and have what we like for dinner." There was a short pause after that, for the minds of both friends had drifted away from their playful talk to a sadder theme. " Stella," said Monica, at length, softly laying her hand on the other's cheek. " Stella, we have not talked at all yet about yourself. Dearest, in that sad past time of which I hardly like to speak to you, you cannot know how much my heart was with you." "I was sure of that. But we won't speak of it now, it would make me cry so, SPELL-BOUND. and that would sadden our first evening in this dear old house. And yet, Monica, though I have suffered so much, I would not for worlds lose one fragment of the past from my memory, not one look of my child's sweet eyes, not one word which in those hours of misery showed me more fully the depths of my husband's love."

They were silent then for a while, till Miss De Vellembie woke up with a start, and thinking she was in the midst of school-hours, cried out, "Young ladies, at tention !" d2