El Dorado. A novel

Front matter

At Every Library and of Every Bookseller. FOURTH EDITION OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA'S NEW WORK, PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. 2 Vols., demy, handsomely bound, 35s. PRONOUNCED BY THE ENTIRE PRESS TO BE MR. SALA'S BEST WORK. REMINGTON & CO., 5, Arundel Street, Strand, W.C EL DORADO. a Jiobel. IN TWO VOLUMES. BY ALFRED LEIGH. Author of "Maud Atherton." " I have beene assured by such of the Spanyardes as have seene Manoa, the emperiall Citie of Guiana, which the Spanyardes call El Dorado, that for the gTeatness, for the riches, and for the excellent seate, it farre exceedeth any of the world." Sir Walter Raleigh. VOL. II. S'onbon : REMINGTON AND CO., f, Arundel Street, Strand, W.C 1880. [All Rights Reserved.] CONTENTS. chapter page I. — An Altered Life Course ... ... ... i II. — A Vain Appeal ... ... ... ... 23 III. — In the Firelight ... ... ... ... 47 IV.— A Ghost Story ... ... ... ... 65 V. — The last Scene of a Drama's Fourth Act ... 94 VI. — Constance dreams again of El Dorado ... 105 VII. — New Voices ... ... ... ... 117 VIII.— Drifting ... ... ... ... 132 IX. — Two Answers ... ... ... 149 X.— "Yellow Boots"... ... ... ... 167 XL— Unsullied Once ... ... ... ... 189 XII. — An Anonymous Letter ... ... ... 205 XIII.— Light ... ... ... ... ... 222 XIV.— Victory or Defeat ... ... ... 236 XV.— Nemesis ... ... ... •■• ■■• 2S6 XVI.— A Woman's Loyalty ... ... •■• 268 XVII.— Graceville ... ... •■• ■•• ■•■ 276 XVIII.— The Finished Epic ... ... ••• 285 XIX.— For Ever ... ... •■■ 3°6 EL DORADO.

Chapter I. An Altered Life Course

While strangers were influencing the life of Gertrude Renetta, she herself, with no pre sentiment of impending change, lived with tranquil contentment in her world of dreams. In their home, life flowed smoothly enough, with few striking events to mark its course. "Was it strange that she should fancy nothing could alter this ; that she should believe change belonged to the outer world, and that its rough breath was as powerless to influence her as it was to shatter the dream fabrics which she loved to build ? Edward's recently published volume of VOL. II. B EL D0EAD0. poems had met with less success than any work of his which had preceded it. In part this was due to the fact that he had been only able to give a divided thought to their com position, his deepest faculties being devoted to his epic ; in part, to three or four reviews which appeared upon the book ; reviews which contrived, with consummate ingenuity of misrepresentation, to make the poems appear weak and unworthy, without uttering a single word which could not, by plausible sophistry, be justified from the charge of wilful untruth.

They did not wound Edward very deeply; an artist loves his dream children too well to be indifferent when they are unjustly attacked ; but he who can die from the wounds of censure must be either morbidly sensitive or childishly vain. "Whoever works nobly works successfully, if success means anything more than a harvest of gold, or the noisy shouts of ignorant approval ; but the artist must work for truth's sake only, and be content with the prospect of his own name being forgotten or abused, when the world is reaping the fruit of his genius and his toil. Moreover, Edward Claridas had no time for morbid regret, even if he had been in clined to cherish it. The plain, necessary, prosaic toil for bread, as well as the tyrannic fascination of mental labour, occupied him day and night. Lionel Vivian had repeatedly urged him to rest, but in vain, although he duiew that his secret was becoming daily more difficult to keep.

Perhaps even his dauntless strength of purpose and self-control would have failed to hide it any longer from his sister Emiby, if her head had not been fully occupied with other things. Human sympathy, after all, is a very imperfect thing; not from deliberate selfishness, but from its inability, through mental pre-occupation, to recognise the suffer in o* of others. Your old friend Brown wrote you a letter when your mother died, which touched you deeply by its affectionate sin cerity ; but he forgot it in his indignation at the quality of the claret that day at diuner ; your fair deity, Juliet, is not indifferent to the fact that her beauty has desolated your life, but the petty village successes of her hus band are a sweeter triumph to her than the love you laid reverently at her feet — -the broken toys of her baby are deeper realities to her than your broken heart.

Not that either Brown or Juliet are shallow-hearted — they have not forgotten you. But a nature must possess abnormal strength if it can always be as loyal to the past as to the present — if it can as vividly realise the facts which are remote, as the events which are near at hand. One evening Edward was engaged in pre paring the salient points of a brief fora more successful barrister, whose time was so fully occupied that he was frequently glad of such assistance, when Eliza Yellowink stumbled into the room, with her. habitual grace, and handed him two cards. "Who is it, Edward?" said Emily, who was sitting at the other end of the room, reading a novel in a low voice to Gert rude. " No one you know, dear," he said hurriedly, putting his papers away and rising to leave the room. Emily looked rather surprised at this unusual reticence ; but Edward, giving her no time for further enquiries, entered the adjoining room.

Here he found Major Lascelles and Colonel Renetta. The latter was a man of about fifty years of age, tall, well-dressed, and handsome, whose dark eyebrows and moustache were a striking contrast to his white hair. He had fine eyes, regular features, and a mouth too unyielding to be agreeable. His expression was one of haughty reserve. He bowed to Edward, saying — " I think I have the honour of speaking to Mr. Claridas ?" " That is my name," said Edward, nofc waiting to bandy compliments. " You have a young lady named Renetta in your house, I think?" " She is in the next room now." " I should like to see her at once." " I must ask your indulgence for a few minutes. Prom your card I infer that you stand in some near relationship to Miss Renetta ; but you will at once recognise the necessity of that relationship being clearly established, before I subject her to the agitation of an interview with you."

" I do recognise it ; and before I came here to-night I prepared proofs, legally as well as morally conclusive. These are in my lawyer's hands, and can be carefully examined by you to-morrow. In the meantime, let me introduce Major Lascelles (to whom I am indebted for this discovery), and ask you for a few minutes' conversation on this theme, assuming for the moment the truth of the assertion which I now make, and which I am fully prepared to prove." " And that assertion is — " " That Gertrude is my daughter, and there fore must no longer remain in a dependent position in your house." Edward experienced that sudden clash of thought and feeling which most of us have felt, when menaced by a sudden and unlooked for catastrophe. This blind, friendless girl had become so dear to him, that the prospect of parting with her for ever seemed equivalent to destroying the whole character of the home.

He answered quietly — "Assuming the fact of your relationship to be correct, no one can question your right for a moment. But I must ask you, Colonel Renetta, not to speak of your daughter as a dependent. She and my sister have been friends from childhood, and her position in this house has never been embittered by the sense of obligation." Colonel Renetta bowed, but made no reply to this. He felt that he had cause to be deeply grateful to this man, and to him the knowledge was more unbearable than the sense of bitter wrong. So he explained the train of circumstances which had led to this dis covery, produced a copy of Mrs. Evansleigh's letter to Miss Levere, and gave other proofs which convinced Edward of the justice of his claim. " I assume, when I have satisfied you that the originals are genuine, of which these papers are copies, you will offer no resistance to my daughter at once coming to my house ?

" " I have no right to offer any resistance. When will it be convenient for you to show me these papers ? I have little doubt con cerning them ; but it is a duty I owe to Miss Renetta that nothing should be done care lessly." " Will ten o'clock to-morrow mornino* be too early for you ?" "No" The Colonel handed him the card of a well known firm of solicitors. " Do you know these people ?" " Very well." " Have }*ou any objection to meet my friend and myself at their office?" " None whatever." " Then wo may regard it as an appointment ?" said the Colonel, rising. " Certainly ; and, in the meantime, I will prepare Gertrude for your visit." Edward could not call her " Miss Renetta" .again. " Thank you. I — I have not said any thing about your kindness to my daughter sir ; but — but I am deeply sensible of it."

Edward saw that the words cost the proud man effort, and intimated by a gesture that they were quite unnecessary. " You— you have placed me under a deep obligation, sir," stammered the Colonel, divided between a generous impulse of grati tude, and the meaner motive of a proud man resenting what he esteems the degradation of a favour. " If — if I can serve you in any way — if I may offer you any — any pecuniary compensation, I — " Edward interrupted him, with quiet dignity— " I must request, Colonel Renetta, that you will refrain from repeating any suggestion of that nature ; and, as I have never been guilty of the coarseness of patronage, perhaps you will be equally forbearing." Colonel Renetta, not seeing his way very clearly to a reply, wisely did not attempt one, but took his departure without further delay, casting, as he did so, a wistful look at the closed door of the room where his unknown dauo*hter sat, unconscious of the fact of his existence.

Edward entered the room immediately after his visitors had gone, and Emily saw at once by his face that something unusual had happened. She forbore, however, from questioning him, as she saw him silently resume his work. Gertrude went to the piano, and played soft, dreamy chords of harmonic reverie, varied now and then by a plaintive melody, unstudied and free as the song of a nightingale. To Edward there seemed an unusual sadness in these strains, as though they were vocal with thoughts of farewell. As she ceased playing, he came to the piano and led her to her usual seat by the fire. Then signing to Emily to take the chair beside her, he said, gently — " Dear Gertrude, there is something I wish to say to you. Will you forgive me if any word I may utter should give you pain?" " Nothing you can say will pain me," she said, " unless it tells of sorrow to you, and you have never spoken of that."

" What makes you think that I am about to speak of it now ? " " I did not think it, but I can detect a tone of sadness in your voice." " It is a selfish sorrow, then," he said, trying to speak lightly, " for I have bright news for you, Gerty, and that should mean gladness for us all." She turned to him inquiringly, with a vague fear in her face, and moved her lips as if to speak, but no sound escaped them. He continued, in the same tone of chivalrous tenderness — " You have promised not to be pained by my words. Will you allow me to ask you one or two questions ? " She silently inclined her head. " In the far past, dear Gertrude — before you came here — before you made our home brighter by your presence — " She made a gesture of dissent, but he continued — - " You have made it brighter for both of us. ■One cannot live in daily companionship with purity and genius like yours, without being better for it.

Emily has continually felt this, I know, and so have I." He had never spoken to her like this before, and she felt bewildered by the rush of thought and feeling in her mind. To have moved him even so much as this was more than she had ever dared to hope for, and she felt as deep a triumph at these words, as other women experience when the exclusive homage of a heart is laid at their feet. But the new rapture of this strange, sweet joy was shadowed by the vague dread of coming sorrow. She raised Emily's hand to her lips, but did not speak. Edward continued — " Before that time — before your long, lonely life at the school — have you no remembrance of a heart that loved you ? " She shook her head. " No memory of a mother's voice •? " She answered now, by a strong effort — " Sometimes I have dreamed of a voice that I loved, before the world grew stern and dreary to me — of caresses and love that were warm like sunshine.

But I was a mere baby then, and I have never known whether to trust these fancies or not." She spoke even more hesitatingly than was her wont. Her voice betrayed deep agitation, and her eyes were full of tears, though whether they had arisen from triumph or dread, from memory or the sense of helpless ness, she could not have told. Emily looked into Edward's face, with an instinctive fore knowledge of his next words. He did not return her look, but contiuued, still watching Gertrude's attentive face — " Have you never thought about your jiarents, dear Gertrude ? Have you never longed to know them? " " Often in the old time — never since I came here. Why do you talk to me like this?" she said, Avildly. "They both died when I was a child. I have been told so over and over again." " Your mother died when you were four years old, but information has come to me, unsought and undesired, which compels me to believe that your father is living yet."

She sprang from her chair, and made the wild hopeless gesture of one in darkness and danger, groping for light and safety. " You will not let him know I am here ! " Her pleading cry was almost like a wail. " I have no protector, no friends but you and Emily. If you let him take me away, my heart will break." He soothed her as though she had been a frightened child, before he answered, sadly — ■ " Dearest Gertrude, if the choice rested with me, nothing should separate us ; but it does not, for your father has a right which I cannot question, and he claims the immediate fulfilment of it." Only realising that she must leave this home where life had been so sweet to her, she sobbed with all the bitterness of a breaking heart. Signing to Emily to comfort her, Edward left the room, thinking she would probably recover her composure sooner in his absence.

He was himself deeply affected at the prospect of the coming separation, and touched by the poignancy of Gertrude's grief. The deepest element of this — her worship for him — lie did not for a moment suspect ; but he understood perfectly the dread with which she shrank from the companionship of strangers, and the influence of new sur roundings. He never imagined what he was to her, and her wild outburst of grief that night had not revealed her secret to him. But there are many kinds of love, and he did not doubt that he and his sister both held a place in her affection. She was very dear to him, as trusting weakness must always be to noble strength, as the pure life of a beautiful woman must ever be to a man with anything of the poetic nature. If the sud denness of this discovery made it difficult even for him (accustomed as he was to control impulse and hide feeling) to remain perfectly calm, what was more natural than that she, with widely different life experiences, should be overcome by it ?

When he re-entered the room where he had left her, as ter the lapse of nearly an hour, he found her on the sofa, resting her head upon Emily's shoulder, far more composed than he had anticipated. " Tell me all," she said, with a calmness that would have been noteworthy in a nature of far greater strength than hers ; "I can bear to hear it now." So Edward told her briefly and gently, of his visitors that evening, and their discovery, and of her father's determination to take her to his home at once. Gertrude listened to his story without any further violent outburst of sorrow ; and it was characteristic of her that she said nothing more about resisting her father's wishes. Her first impulse had been to defy them, but Edward had pronounced them just, and she obeyed every word of his with the unquestioning servitude of a love that was almost a fanatical worship.

But her calmness was quite as much owing to despair as to the unwonted strength with which great emergencies sometimes endow natures whose emotions are, under ordinary circumstances, their habitual guides. To her it seemed as though that night had desolated VOL. H. c EL DORADO. her life by imposing upon her a second blind ness, harder to be borne than the burden, the weight of which had been lightened by sympathy and time. She had been content to dwell in a darkness brightened by the com panionship of the woman whom she believed to be a heroine, and the man whom she almost idealised into a god. But this father whom she had never seen, and towards whom she felt no thrill of tenderness — this home where she would be compelled to mingle with strangers, who would not understand her, and whose characters would be as in scrutable to her as mystic poems written in an unknown tongue — what future gladness, what possibilities even of hopeful endurance could they unfold for her ?

It was nothing to her that in this new home she would receive the homage and flattery which are always yielded freely to an heiress who is young and beautiful ; it was nothing to her, that in the future, no material wish which indulgent fondness could grant, ■or capricious fancy desire, need remain un satisfied ; all this was worse than nothing to her, for it had in it an element of bitter mockery, like the glittering pageantry which burlesques the moment, when a sorrowing nation watches its hero laid in the cold bosom of the insensible earth. That night, when the time for retirement to rest had come, Edward did not instantly i^elease the hand Gertrude held out to him when she wished him good-night. " Be brave, Gerty," he said gently, " and hopeful too, the day may come when you will look gladly back upon to-night, and smile at the fears which trouble you now."

And moved by an impulse of sympathy, he stooped down and kissed her. He had never touched her lips before though they had lived for five years under the same roof, and in that moment his caress of sympathy was cruelty, though he knew it not. For it revealed to her depths of passion in EL DORADO. her own love which she had never suspected until now ; it forced even more vividly upon her the consciousness of all with which she was about to part ; and it had in it somethiug of the crowning bitterness of an eternal fare well. Of all the spiritual gifts which men have coveted, perhaps the most fascinating, and yet the most terrible, would be the power to read the secrets of every human breast as angels read them, whereby every house would become an epic, and a single London street would be found to enfold more marvel and mystery, more farce and tragedy, more rapture and despair, than the imagination of genius, through all the centuries of Time, has ever dared to dream.

In one little house three lives were close together in appearance, yet separated in spirit, more utterly than by the estrange ment of distance or of time. Emily Claridas had cried herself to sleep over Gerty's sorrow, and then in the dream world had forgotten her in thoughts of Guy Waldegrave and an airy love palace of her own. Edward, too, had forgotten Gertrude, had forgotten his own sorrows — had forgotten everything except the bright creations of his fancy — as he wrote alone with the silent rapture of an artist, to whom great thoughts come unsought. And meanwhile Gertrude sat in her room by the open window, as heedless of the cold night air which fanned her burning forehead, as of the serene stars whose light she could not see. She realised now all that this discovery of her father's existence meant, and she shrank from the lonely future, as prisoners in the Bastille have shrunk, knowing that the outer world is closed to them for ever, and that the pitiless walls of their cells will witness the gradual ruin of their minds, and the silent breaking of their hearts.

" To leave all that I love — perhaps to be forgotten by them," she murmured ; " yet he kissed me ! . . . Nothing can rob me of that Oh, God, Thou knowest how I have loved him ; be pitiful — let me die to-night." Heaven does not always, or even often grant such mad supplications as these ; but it is a false theology that asks us to believe they are heard with stern resentment ; for the life that began in obscurity, and, ended, in vicarious sacrifice, revealed the character of God ; and to the divine tenderness thus manifested, it must be evident that in the moments of suffering, through which some spirits pass, when life appears hopeless and the world seems dark, the strongest heart grows faint, and the thought of Death is sweet.

Chapter II

A VAIN APPEAL. It is only at night that articulate cries for death are uttered, for the light of mornin o brings with it the weariness of enforced acquiescence. When the woman you loved sent you back all the presents you had given her, with a ladylike note intimating, with feminine grace of diction, that she thought it expedient on the whole to forget the past (a suggestion she literally fulfilled by her sub sequent marriage with an illiterate million aire), it was not altogether unpardonable that you should indulge that night in a rather incoherent and very ridiculous soliloquy, to the general effect that the world contained nothing for you now but weariness and despair ; but your hot water in the morning reminded you that shaving was still a necessity. By the light of " night's candles " vulgar realities may be ignored, but when* jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops, such a course is impossible.

In spite of all that poets have said in its praise, daylight is essentially practical — the disagreeable fact of your life being desolate will not prevent your tailor from sending in his bills ; it is far from a consoling reflection that your heart is broken, but it does not affect the necessity that the income-tax should be paid. We rise and do our work in the world as best we can, but the silent weariness of day is harder to be borne than the acute misery of night. Gertrude Renetta awoke next morning with vague yet crushing consciousness of loss ; to her the day brought sorrow — and sorrow without light. It may seem to many that it betrayed contemptible weakness, to shrink thus from encountering any future, and that it was unnatural for a girl to feel no impulse of tenderness towards a father who would doubtless love her for her mother's sake, who had sought her out, and could tell her many things she had repeatedly longed to know.

But it must be borne in mind that an isolated life and continual darkness, had fostered the want of self-reliance, and the tendency of feeling to dominate over reason in Gertrude's nature. Her father was to her little more than the embodiment of a cruel change — how could any affection be possible between them ? But when Emily came into her room, she spoke quietly of the future. Her father's home was at Richmond — why should they not often meet together ? Emily caught at the idea, and suggested also a faithful and confidential correspondence between them, but Gertrude shook her head. "' I shall never write, Emily," she said sadly. " I cannot write common-place to you, and to dictate one's secret thoughts and feelings to a stranger would seem coarse and wrong to me." Emily changed the subject, seeing that Gertrude was pained by it, and tried to talk cheerfully of other things; after all they might be bearing the burden of purely imaginary evils.

Perhaps Colonel Renetta would freely recognise the affection between them ; perhaps he would let Gertrude be a frequent visitor at her old home, and Emilymight even be an occasional guest at Richmond. Viewed in this light, the separation between them did not seem so formidable after all, and Emily was a perfect mistress of the delightful sophistry which considers the pleasantest prospect to be always the most probable. At the solicitor's office Major Lascelles and Colonel Renetta were already waiting for Edward, when he called in punctual ful filment of his appointment to meet them. The two gentlemen were not unlike the frigid and the torrid zones, for Colonel Renetta in his greeting, his demeanour, and his voice, was as cold as an iceberg, while an ill-cooked cutlet at breakfast had lashed the Major into a fury.

The discovery of a thermometer which would measure the mental and moral condition of man, is reserved for the future — probably for the remote future — for supply is always regulated by demand, and the demand would inevitably be limited by the great expense of the luxury. Only consider how frequently the too rapidly rising Mercury would break the glass ! As Edward had anticipated, Colonel Renetta had prepared proofs that were absolutely conclusive of the relationship between Gertrude and himself. His marriage with Gertrude Evansleigh, the record in the parish register of Brading, of their child's baptism, further correspondence be tween Mrs. Evansleigh and Miss Levere, letters from the sister of Mrs. Evansleigh (who was still living, and who sent legally attested copies of letters in her possession, which Miss Levere had been in the habit of writing until the time of her death, with reference to the child under her charge) ; the papers together formed a chain of evidence in which not a single link was wanting.

The one doubt that suggested itself — Why had not these proofs of relationship been forthcoming when Gertrude's need was greatest ? — was easily answered. Mrs. Evansleigh and Miss Levere had died within a week of each other, and the knowledge of Gertrude's existence had not reached Mrs. Evansleigh's sister, who was at that time abroad, until some months later. When she at length heard it, and learned also of the death of Miss Levere, she had made some attempts to discover the child, but inquiries actuated only by a faint disinterested compassion, are apt to be languid ; hers had been utterly futile ; she believed the child's father to be dead, and therefore suffered the whole story to become to her merely a half remembered and unin fluencing tradition of the past. Edward examined all the papers carefully and deliberately, asking what questions were necessary, but making no further remarks.

At the conclusion of his scrutiny Colonel Renetta said — " Are you satisfied now, sir, that I have made out a case ? " " Undoubtedly you have done so. If I had come here this morning to quibble and dis pute, I should have been compelled to admit that you had established the justice of your claim ; as I only came in all candour to verify your statements, it is almost superfluous for me to say that I am satisfied." Edward had obtained far too complete a control both over his face and his voice, to betray annoyance, but he could not help feeling pained by Colonel Renetta's manner. No man was less inclined than he to expect or desire any expressions of gratitude for services he had rendered gladly, without either hope or thought of reward ; but it was not agreeable to be treated with a suspicion that was only half veiled, and a reticence that almost amounted to discourtesy.