Guardian and lover

Front matter

IBLWSil

BY Mr? ALEXANDER FRASER

GUARDIAN AND LOVER.

Contents

CHAP.

I. DRIFTING CLOUDS, .

II. MY FIRST SHADOW, .

Chapter I. Drifting Clouds

' If we can have any pleasing dreams, it is, as the French say, tant gagni, so much added to the pleasure of life. ' — Franklin.

EARL ! '

The voice is exceedingly low and gentle, and sweet as silver chimes, yet it startles me. I am lying on a broad window-sill, in an attitude that is physically pleasant, although it may be personally inelegant, plunged in day-dreams, fantastical, absurd, but nevertheless beautiful. Little more than the whites of my eyes are visible as I stare up intently at the white clouds drifting along the clear sky like bits of carded wool, or as though 'an angel in his upward flight had left his mantle floating ' in the blue ether.

One cloud has especially attracted my notice. It puts me strangely in mind of myself. It is a small and insignificant cloud, but its apparent pursuit of a bigger one is hot and hurried.

I stop for a moment in my study to wonder to myself whether it is the most sensible thing in the world for a girl arrived at the mature age of twenty years to allow herself to be interested, engrossed, I might say, in such trivialities as

A drifting clouds. Surely I might as lief go and play at blowing soap-bubbles ! but in spite of dire misgiving as to the quantum of wisdom I possess, I keep on pertinaciously looking at the particular cloud I have marked out as a sort of allegory of myself in the dim future.

' Shall I ? ' — I soliloquise quite solemnly, while I pull myself up with an energetic jerk from the indolent posture I have been indulging in, and sit bolt upright and square on the hard sill, with my feet tucked up under me, after the fashion of an oriental Begum, in the hope of deluding myself that the sill is cushioned, — ' Shall I, like that cloud, ever find myself in hot and hurried pursuit of a soul infinitely bigger than my own, and, reaching it, lose my weakness and insignificance in its nobility and strength?'

At this identical moment the little cloud nears the big one, and in the far distance they commingle.

I feel my face all flushed and aglow while my heart beats fast at the augury, when papa calls out to me, —

In an instant I am bending over him as he lies on the sofa.

Presently he opens his eyes ; large, blue languid eyes, with heavy white lids, like deep dark violets crushed in a weight of snow.

'What is my little one doing to amuse herself?' he questions.

' Watching the drifting clouds,' I answer, half ashamed of confessing to my excessively puerile occupation, and fearful of evoking a smile at my childish folly ; but papa does not give even the ghost of a smile — he only looks, if possible, sadder than before, as I speak.

' Drifting ! drifting! like all else in this world,' he murmurs, almost inaudibly, between his pale lips.

I stoop down on pretence of kissing them, but in reality I want to hear more plainly what he says.

' I am so tired and drowsy to-day ! It is the sultry weather,' he adds, wearily reclosing his eyes, while I steal away on tiptoe, back to my old seat, and look sorrowfully and fixedly across the room at his face.

What a superb face it is ! Perfect as a Greek god's.

Papa is my ideal of Glaucus, except that the lines round

Drifting Clouds. 3

his mouth are firmer than those that the hero of Pompeii possessed, I fancy, and there is not much resemblance in the old bfown coat, which my fingers have so often deftly patched up and mended, so as to leave no outward and visible sign of the dire emptiness of our coffers, to the exquisite purple and fine linen with which Glaucus was adorned.

There are dark shadows creeping over papa's brow now and then, even while half asleep, that seem to cast a gloom right across to where I sit ; but I try very hard, with the elastic buoyancy of youth, to shake them off me as they fall. The straight and chiselled features are wan and thin, and so sharply defined against the red wall, that my eyes fill and my heart sinks as I gaze, but the face has been wan and thin so long that hope does not desert me now, and I believe I was born with a sanguine temperament.

For five years our home has been in this rambling, old-fashioned house, that has been dignified for a couple of centuries by the loud-sounding title of Chateau La Roche. It is undeniably of the mongrel species. The Belgian architects evidently had no leaning towards the Corinthian or the Doric in the dark ages, and the chateau resulted in a cross between an old broken-down barn and a modern almshouse. Several portions of the building show marks of dilapidation, and on one side are masses of ivy, lichens, and mosses, that thrive and flourish luxuriantly, fostered by damp. Half the rooms are shut up, for the whole and sole benefit, apparently, of the mice. The La Roche mice, quadrupeds whose extraordinary obesity is known for leagues and leagues around, and whose lungs and muscular powers are undoubted, judging by the high galas they keep, and the raids they carry on upon wall and wainscot.

Heaps of long and dreary corridors intersect the house, where the peasant folk affirm that ghosts, white and fearful, keep their trysts at nightfall, and where Boreas whistles and sighs, while rheumatism reigns supreme.

There are only four rooms in use, and they are of the most unpretending character. The furniture is scant and moth-eaten, and luxury does not sit at our board, for my father, Philip Cathcart, albeit a scion of the rich Cathcarts of Warwickshire, is decidedly poor ; his bank-book is a myth, and his catalogue of debts was long, as long as my arm (and for a slip of a girl my arm is very long, giving abundant promise of the substantial position I may yet attain to in this world), but economy, rigid economy, nay, even more, a painful penuriousness and patient plodding, has succeeded in wiping out a score of them.

We have no glitter of gew-gaws, no hideous but priceless monstrosities in rarest china and virtu, the small but unmistakable evidences of a well-filled purse ; but we are wealthy in books, for papa is a bookworm, his fidi Achates are Plato and Plutarch, and his familiar friends all the ' ologies.' And we have heaps of the freshest glowing blossoms brimming over the dear old ugly bowls of common blue Dutch ware. Just at this moment the August sun is slanting his fervid beams edgewise into the southern room, beautifying and gilding up with his red glory all the musty, fusty old folios, just as the gas glare lights up the haggard, worn faces of play-actors.

With the soft radiance of sunlight the whole place wears a holiday aspect. Papa has fallen into a light sleep, and turning away from my mournful survey of his features, I lean out of the window, while Phoebus, riding rampant through the sky above, kisses my cheeks into brown berries, and implants mementoes of his caresses in great yellow freckles that do not add materially to improve the summit of my indisputably insignificant nose and the olive of my decided chin.

But I am philosophically indifferent. In the frame of mind I am in, I infinitely prefer enjoyment to being ever so beautiful, and so I revel freely and heartily in the warmth of the deep yellow sunbeams, with the sleeves of my bodice tucked up right to my elbows like a dairymaid, leaving my dusky arms bare, and my ebon curls flying like pennons at a masthead in the western breeze, that whispers sweet soft nothings into my ear, and calls up vivid pink to my cheek by the ' wooing o' it'

Across the oriel window bunches of roses trail heavily. Some are red as blood, some golden hued, some white as milk. Parting them gently, I look out. The house stands on a slight eminence, and slopes southwards, and from it one can see right past other houses and gardens down to what appears in the sunshine and moonlight just like a

Drifting Clouds. 5

little narrow line. It is the prettiest of rivers the Meuse, quivering and wriggling like a gigantic silvery worm between the verdant Belgian banks. Away to the far right gleam up, through a lengthy reach of trees, the white maisonettes of the Liegeois manufacturers ; and to the left lies an ancient cimetiere, enclosed by a dilapidated low stone wall, with its quaint-shaped tablets and tombs crowned with crosses and angels, and ornamented by wreaths of yellow immortelles.

My eyes rest dreamily upon the trees in our garden, laden with ripe, rich peaches, and follow the course of the gorgeous butterflies over the beds of homely flowers. The drooping clusters of the barberry shine like gold among the dark green leaves ; the rhododenron burns like a blood-red flame among the paler blossoms ? the scent of briony and clove pinks is wafted towards me ; the drowsy hum of the great brown bees, as they feast greedily off the luscious heads of the foxglove, sounds on my ear ; and blue dragonflies, with filmy wings, dart backwards and forwards, and gleam up like jewels against our old grey walls. The scene and the air is full of a pure voluptuousness, that appeals to my senses and gives me such keen enjoyment that I feel I could sit on this hard sill for ever !

I am as ignorant of life as a babe unborn. All the sin and the misery that I have heard forms three parts of it, are to me but misty, intangible things, that I have no desire to fathom or realise. It is quite enough pleasure to me to live, to revel in light and fragrance and health. I remember well the words, ' Man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards ;' but I am sceptical as to that cheerful aphorism being applicable to woman, in the happy, contented mood I am in. Later, who knows ? I may be forced to resort to the ' maddening draughts of Hippocrene,' of which poets tell, to keep up my belief that it is a fair world and a pleasant one. Now great healthy quaffs of fresh air, balmy with the fragrant breath of summer, are sufficiently strong to stimulate my capabilities to enjoy.

Chapter II. My First Shadow

' For marriage is a matter of more worth Than to be dealt in by attorneyship ; For what is wedlock forced but a hell, An age of discord and continual strife ? '

Shake p:are.

A BUNCH of mignonette strikes my bare arm, and rouses me out of my pleasant day-dream. I am not frightened in the least, for I know that poor old La Roche holds out no sort of temptation to either bandit or burglar, and that the only intruder on the square circumscribed morsel of turf that we designate a courtyard, because it is hemmed in by bricks, must be Susanne, a dear, ruddy-visaged, rough Flamande, soyer, abigail, and boots, a tria juncta in uuo, incongruous, but invaluable to us — or else Bertrand de Volnay. Moreover, I am aware that, with the sole exception of the individual in question, there is no one of the genus homo in all Belgium who would venture to pelt me familiarly with flower-sprigs. The action creates neither ire nor indignation in my breast — I simply smile, and say quietly, —

' Here is Bertrand, papa.'

Papa half uncloses his eyes, and murmurs languidly, ' Come in ;' and Bertrand evidently requires no further pressing, for he vaults over the sill and places himself in as close proximity as is possible to me. The sill is not very wide, and having an antipathy to being over-crowded, I squeeze myself into the very farthest corner of it ; and Bertram notices the movement, for he flushes up to the roots of his hair; and the effulgence of the smile he wore on entering ends in a purse of his full lips that does not become him, while he sits silent as a block of wood and as uninteresting.

He is a Belgian, the only son of an excessively wealthy and retired manufacturer of fire-arms at Liege. The De Volnays are, in fact, enormous landholders round about here, but bourgeois to the very core, and with doubtful right to the aristocratic ' De ' prefixed to their name.

La Roche belongs to them, and it was in the position of tenants that our acquaintance began five years ago, up to which time papa and I, a couple of waifs, led a Bohemian existence in the different continental cities — ever since my mother died, and left me, a troublesome, toddling child of twelve months, without her care and love.

I was fifteen and Bertrand seventeen, when he first brought me fruit and flowers from the richly filled hot-houses on the paternal estate, on the pretence that papa's health required such luxuries and delicacies ; and I have accepted them thankfully, and tried to be grateful ; but I begin to think gratitude is not one of my strong points. I look at Bertrand now as he sits beside me, with the light streaming through the high window full upon his face, and I wonder to myself whether he is what folk call ' handsome.'

I like fair men. I have taken my standard of beauty from papa, whose hair gleams up like gold, and whose descent is decidedly true Saxon. Saxon is inscribed legibly on his clear fair tints, on his thoroughbred nose, and on his hands, that are as white and soft as a woman's.

Bertrand's crisp black hair curls over his brow ; his eyes are black as sloes, and his complexion swarthy as that of a Creole. An excellent Spanish matador or an Italian bravo he would make ; but his good looks touch me as lightly as the shrivelled little leaf that has just fluttered down from a rose branch on my head.

Papa lies quietly on his sofa, watching Bertrand covertly, and with a curious half smile on his lips. Presently he says, — ■

' What ails you, Bertrand ? '

'What ails me?' is the reply, given jerkily, and accompanied by a curt laugh, that bears discord in its sound, and grates on my sensitive ear. ' Why, what should ail me?'

The hot blood mounts up quickly in his dark face, and suddenly, with a very rapid gesture, he seizes the bunch of mignonette that lies in my lap unnoticed, and hurls it out of the window.

I turn quickly towards him with undisguised astonishment in my eyes, and say angrily, —

' What made you fling away the flowers like that ? '

His lips relax slowly into a broad smile, and, bending over me close, he whispers very low, —

' Then you do care a little for my gift, mademoiselle ? ' I stare at him in unfeigned amazement. I love flowers, but the fact of these identical ones being his gift in no wise enhances my tenderness for 'Nature's blooming offsprings.' He goes out violently as a roaring lion in search of the castaways among the tall spiked blades of green grass, and returns meekly as a lamb to replace them in my hands. I take them without a word, whereupon he strides off to the farthest end of the room to ' cool his heels.' The subtle scent of the mignonette attracts my attention, and, oblivious of the donor's existence, I cry, —

' How dearly I love flowers ! — and this is the first mignonette I have seen this year, excepting a tiny tuft of it in an out-of-the-way corner of the old cimettire, growing on a baby's grave. Susanne told me the poor mother had planted it there because it means " little darling," and she watered it daily with her tears. It is a pretty idea for a poor ignorant paysanne, isn't it, papa ? '

' Yes, Pearl.' And papa looks at me hard and very wistfully, and his eyes glisten as he adds, — ' And what flower is appropriate for a big darling's grave ? What floral ornament are you going to adorn me with when I am lying there ? ' And he points to the graveyard.

The luckless bunch of mignonette finds its way a second time to the ground, and I fall on my knees by papa's side, sobbing fast and loud.

' Don't, don't speak like that, unless you want to break my heart ! Oh ! what should I do if you were lying there ? ' And as I realise in some measure the awful thought, the utter desolation, I shiver and moan, and will not be comforted. ' I should die too, papa ; I could not live to be all alone, with no one to love me in the wide, wide world ! '

' Save me ! ' murmurs a voice close to my ear ; and its tone is so strangely plaintive and passionate that it is difficult to recognise the usually light accents of Bertrand de Vol nay.

I glance up quickly, but when I see his flushed face, with eyes like live coals, bending over me, I collapse, and draw nearer to papa; and, taking his hands into mine, I fall to kissing them again and again.

The extreme delicacy of the fingers strikes me all of a sudden with a new and horrible fear and dread, and for a minute or two I stare with distended pupils, in a bewildered sort of way, first at the hands, and then at papa's face. He smiles faintly, and with the smile the light seems to come back to his eyes, and the colour to his thin cheek, and I give a hard gasp and breathe again. I cling to him still, for he is my all on earth — the only being in the world that I love.

I know that Bertrand still stands beside me, for I can hear his heart beating with a thump, thump, that sounds like a sledge-hammer ; but I keep my head studiously averted from him. At this moment his presence is more distasteful to me than it has ever been before.

He is silent for a little while, then, muttering some incoherent words of excuse for leaving thus hastily, he springs over the sill and is speedily lost to view.

I am thankful he is gone ; the air seems lighter, a load drops from me. I was happy in the morning, and my first shadow has come hand-in-hand with him. I give a sigh of relief, and try to calm my ruffled feelings by the counterirritant of rubbing my head up and down papa's arm, and ruffling my hair ; and he passes a poor feeble hand softly and caressingly over my tangled locks, out of a double motive of affection and love of tidiness.

' Don't you like Bertrand, Pearl ? '

' Y-e-s,' I drawl, with an immensity of indecision, and with a want of regard to Walker's dictionary, that says the affirmative ought to be pronounced short. Then I add quite blandly, ' When he is in a good temper, I sometimes wish he was my brother.'

Papa does not appear to be too well pleased at this candid avowal on my part, and another of those horrid shadows that depress me creeps over his brow.

' Tell me, Pearl, could you not learn to love Bertrand as a husband ? '

I shake my head very decidedly this time, and burrow my face on the shoulder near me, not to conceal a blush, but to hide a dreadful ' grimace.'

lO Guardian and Lover.

Oh, oh ! the memory of the little cloud and the big one flashes across me ; I remember the strong, noble soul in which my poor little weak one was to submerge one of these fine •days. Are all my pleasant day-dreams to be dispelled by anything half so commonplace as a marriage with Bertrand ? Is he, the individual I have grown to look upon as a table, or chair, or something of the neuter gender, harmless and unobtrusive, to be raised to the elevated position of a sword of Damocles over my head ! Bertrand my husband ! Bertrand, a species of curled darling, a carpet knight, fit to be made a plaything of in the boudoir of Belgian belles ! Bertrand, who has not an idea beyond what is la mode and chic, who has not an ambition save to belong to the most elite club in Brussels, or a pleasure save the races at Spa !

I shudder involuntarily, just as if a cold reptile, with beady black eyes, were trying to drag me into its loathsome ■coils. The very notion of such a union makes me feel as if iced water was trickling down my back.

' There can be no one else you like better, for you know no one,' suggests papa, resorting to plain unvarnished truth as an infallible argument in his favour.

' Very true,' I answer, driven to laconics for the want of a really good reason to give for my disinclination — nay, stronger still, for my aversion to become Bertrand's wife.

'And Bertrand is undeniably handsome, agreeable, and affluent — three excellent recommendations surely, and more than enough to satisfy most people.'

' I sigh an assent ; I am drifting fast into a slough of despond ; I try to rouse myself, to escape from the hole I have half slipped into. A woman, wiles were born with me ; so I assume one of my sweetest smiles, and try the influence of the most effective verb with papa — the verb ' to coax.'

' I don't want a husband at all ! I am quite happy — happy as the day is long — here and with you ! ' And I kiss him, to stop him speaking any more on the unpleasant subject. He submits patiently and passively, but the instant his lips are free he begins once more.

' Yes, my pet, but supposing anything were to happen to me — life is at best very uncertain, you know ! No, don't cry again, but be brave, and listen to me ! Suppose I were to die ? I have no friends, no money. Friendless and poor, who in this cold world would come forward to take charge of my poor little Pearl — until God willed that she should join me in another world ? '

' Pray God that might be very soon ! ' I whisper, in a trembling voice, that is choked with tears and broken with emotion, while I smuggle my cold hands lovingly into his.

' Bertrand loves you, Pearl ! He told me he did long ago, and asked my consent to try and win you, but I begged him to delay speaking to you. But since that I have reflected, and I should be glad to see you betrothed ! A little while ago I confess I had other wishes — other views. I hoped that some one else — a man whom I believed and trusted in more than in any other being in the world — might see you and take a fancy to you.'

I feel my cheek flush warmly at this, and a sudden inflation of womanly dignity and pride makes me turn up my nose at the bare notion of being ' fancied,' but beyond a moue mutine, I give no indication of wounded vanity, and papa proceeds, —

'Well, fate has willed it otherwise. Bertrand is steady, true, and able to bestow all the comforts of life upon you ; what more can you and I — alone and almost poverty-stricken — hope for ? Pearl, listen to me. I should die, oh ! so much happier, so much easier, if I could only leave you, my little one, in safe keeping. Think of all this, and try not to close your heart against Bertrand, if it is only for my sake — for my poor peace of mind ! '

There are tears, great bitter tears, in papa's voice. I can hear them plainly, and his words have wrought me up to such a state of misery and self-abnegation that I am ready, willing to marry any one he wishes — even the old man who brings us poultry and eggs of a morning — on the spot.

' When you die, papa,' — oh ! I can hardly articulate it — ' it will not matter to me what becomes of me. I will do anything — everything you desire ! '

' Is that a promise, darling ? '

* Yes. But now tell me you are not feeling worse, tell me that you think it will be a long, long time before I have to keep my dreadful promise ! ' I beg piteously.

' God willing/ he answers me, reverentially, but he does not say it as though life in itself was precious or tempting to him. How can I wonder at it ? — lying there day after day, hour after hour, with a man's gigantic brain, and the pitiable weakness of a little child ! Surely existence must be gall and wormwood, instead of honey and roses ! If he could only be as strong and well as I am, and see the beautiful world as I see it. 'The earth has no single attraction for me — all the bright bubbles of youth burst long ago, and later years have brought me nothing but weariness of the world, and an utter distaste for its tinsel joys. The only thing that binds me to life is yourself, Pearl ! '

I know it only too well. To me he has been everything — father, mother, brother, and sister — bearing with my faults, lending a ready ear to my childish troubles, sympathising in my joy. Night after night, midst the big cities where we have dwelt together, he never missed hearing my prayer — the prayer he taught me himself — that I should grow each day more like my mother, that he and I should live so as to meet her once more in heaven. He loves her so unutterably still, though she has slept in her quiet grave for nearly a score of years. I let him go on talking, and do not interrupt him except by clasping his hands close in my own.

' Since your mother died I have often longed for the peace and rest that could only come to me if I was lying by her side in that lonely spot in the Pyrenees. You cannot remember her face- — a face as beautiful and as pure as a flower, but not purer or more beautiful than her soul ; you ought to learn some of her story, Pearl ; but allusions to the past have been so painful — all my wounds seem to bleed afresh when I speak of the times that will come again no more ! I'll try to pluck up courage. Bring me my desk.'

I rise and fetch the big desk that has journeyed with us as long as I can remember from place to place, and which, in my childhood's days, was a sort of Blue Beard's closet to me. Brass bound, of Indian workmanship, and with an eccentric key, it has innumerable small drawers, that spring up unexpectedly like Jack-in-the-boxes, and used to excite a mysterious awe and wonder in my infantine mind.

Papa takes out a roll of old yellowish letters, bound together by a faded ribbon, and a velvet case. Opening the latter he leans back on his cushions and gazes intently on my mother's miniature. I stoop over his shoulder and gaze at it too. I have seen it before, but now as I look somehow the portrait seems to show a new loveliness. It is no Saxon beauty, with pink and white tints and cerulean orbs. Her cheeks are rich, and glowing with the crimson roses of the south. Her eyes are large and dark and luminous, and heavy blue black tresses crown her brow. I do not marvel that those almond eyes, full of moonlit splendour, should have stolen so deeply into papa's soul — that all hope and happiness died out of it when their light was quenched for ever. I watch him as he bends over the picture, and I see him turn paler and paler, while his breath comes short and hard.

' Are you ill ? ' I cry out anxiously.

He starts visibly, as if he had utterly forgotten my existence for the moment.

' No, only dreaming a little ! ' he answers, like one in a maze ; ' but I am awake now. Take this, Pearl, I wish you to keep it now, and night and day never forget to pray on your bended knees that your life may be as pure and as blameless as hers was ! '

He places the case in my hand, touching it as tenderly and as reverentially as if it were a living thing — holy and sacred, and his poor weak voice shakes as he adds, —