“True – true,” she said, after a moment's reflection, “my brother was then at college. It was my father, my poor father, whom you had some quarrel with. – But you will come to Shaws-Castle on Thursday, at two o'clock? – John will be glad to see you – he can be kind when he pleases – and then we will talk of old times – I must get on, to have things ready – Good evening.”
She would have passed him, but he took gently hold of the rein of her bridle. – “I will walk with you, Clara,” he said; “the road is rough and dangerous – you ought not to ride fast. – I will walk along with you, and we will talk of former times now, more conveniently than in company.”
“True – true – very true, Mr. Tyrrel – it shall be as you say. My brother obliges me sometimes to go into company at that hateful place down yonder; and I do so because he likes it, and because the folks let me have my own way, and come and go as I list. Do you know, Tyrrel, that very often when I am there, and John has his eye on me, I can carry it on as gaily as if you and I had never met?”
“I would to God we never had,” said Tyrrel, in a trembling voice, “since this is to be the end of all!”
“And wherefore should not sorrow be the end of sin and of folly? And when did happiness come of disobedience? – And when did sound sleep visit a bloody pillow? That is what I say to myself, Tyrrel, and that is what you must learn to say too, and then you will bear your burden as cheerfully as I endure mine. If we have no more than our deserts, why should we complain? – You are shedding tears, I think – Is not that childish? – They say it is a relief – if so, weep on, and I will look another way.”
Tyrrel walked on by the pony's side, in vain endeavouring to compose himself so as to reply.
“Poor Tyrrel,” said Clara, after she had remained silent for some time – “Poor Frank Tyrrel! – Perhaps you will say in your turn, Poor Clara – but I am not so poor in spirit as you – the blast may bend, but it shall never break me.”
There was another long pause; for Tyrrel was unable to determine with himself in what strain he could address the unfortunate young lady, without awakening recollections equally painful to her feelings, and dangerous, when her precarious state of health was considered. At length she herself proceeded: —
“What needs all this, Tyrrel? – and indeed, why came you here? – Why did I find you but now brawling and quarrelling among the loudest of the brawlers and quarrellers of yonder idle and dissipated debauchees? – You were used to have more temper – more sense. Another person – ay, another that you and I once knew – he might have committed such a folly, and he would have acted perhaps in character. – But you, who pretend to wisdom – for shame, for shame! – And indeed, when we talk of that, what wisdom was there in coming hither at all? – or what good purpose can your remaining here serve? – Surely you need not come, either to renew your own unhappiness or to augment mine?”
“To augment yours – God forbid!” answered Tyrrel. “No – I came hither only because, after so many years of wandering, I longed to revisit the spot where all my hopes lay buried.”
“Ay – buried is the word,” she replied, “crushed down and buried when they budded fairest. I often think of it, Tyrrel; and there are times when, Heaven help me! I can think of little else. – Look at me – you remember what I was – see what grief and solitude have made me.”
She flung back the veil which surrounded her riding-hat, and which had hitherto hid her face. It was the same countenance which he had formerly known in all the bloom of early beauty; but though the beauty remained, the bloom was fled for ever. Not the agitation of exercise – not that which arose from the pain and confusion of this unexpected interview, had called to poor Clara's cheek even the momentary semblance of colour. Her complexion was marble-white, like that of the finest piece of statuary.
“Is it possible?” said Tyrrel; “can grief have made such ravages?”
“Grief,” replied Clara, “is the sickness of the mind, and its sister is the sickness of the body – they are twin-sisters, Tyrrel, and are seldom long separate. Sometimes the body's disease comes first, and dims our eyes and palsies our hands, before the fire of our mind and of our intellect is quenched. But mark me – soon after comes her cruel sister with her urn, and sprinkles cold dew on our hopes and on our loves, our memory, our recollections, and our feelings, and shows us that they cannot survive the decay of our bodily powers.”
“Alas!” said Tyrrel, “is it come to this?”
“To this,” she replied, speaking from the rapid and irregular train of her own ideas, rather than comprehending the purport of his sorrowful exclamation, – “to this it must ever come, while immortal souls are wedded to the perishable substance of which our bodies are composed. There is another state, Tyrrel, in which it will be otherwise – God grant our time of enjoying it were come!”
She fell into a melancholy pause, which Tyrrel was afraid to disturb. The quickness with which she spoke, marked but too plainly the irregular succession of thought, and he was obliged to restrain the agony of his own feelings, rendered more acute by a thousand painful recollections, lest, by giving way to his expressions of grief, he should throw her into a still more disturbed state of mind.
“I did not think,” she proceeded, “that after so horrible a separation, and so many years, I could have met you thus calmly and reasonably. But although what we were formerly to each other can never be forgotten, it is now all over, and we are only friends – Is it not so?”
Tyrrel was unable to reply.
“But I must not remain here,” she said, “till the evening grows darker on me. – We shall meet again, Tyrrel – meet as friends – nothing more – You will come up to Shaws-Castle and see me? – no need of secrecy now – my poor father is in his grave, and his prejudices sleep with him – my brother John is kind, though he is stern and severe sometimes – Indeed, Tyrrel, I believe he loves me, though he has taught me to tremble at his frown when I am in spirits, and talk too much – But he loves me, at least I think so, for I am sure I love him; and I try to go down amongst them yonder, and to endure their folly, and, all things considered, I do carry on the farce of life wonderfully well – We are but actors, you know, and the world but a stage.”
“And ours has been a sad and tragic scene,” said Tyrrel, in the bitterness of his heart, unable any longer to refrain from speech.
“It has indeed – but, Tyrrel, when was it otherwise with engagements formed in youth and in folly? You and I would, you know, become men and women, while we were yet scarcely more than children – We have run, while yet in our nonage, through the passions and adventures of youth, and therefore we are now old before our day, and the winter of our life has come on ere its summer was well begun. – O Tyrrel! often and often have I thought of this! – Thought of it often? Alas, when will the time come that I shall be able to think of any thing else!”
The poor young woman sobbed bitterly, and her tears began to flow with a freedom which they had not probably enjoyed for a length of time. Tyrrel walked on by the side of her horse, which now prosecuted its road homewards, unable to devise a proper mode of addressing the unfortunate young lady, and fearing alike to awaken her passions and his own. Whatever he might have proposed to say, was disconcerted by the plain indications that her mind was clouded, more or less slightly, with a shade of insanity, which deranged, though it had not destroyed, her powers of judgment.
At length he asked her, with as much calmness as he could assume – if she was contented – if aught could be done to render her situation more easy – if there was aught of which she could complain which he might be able to remedy? She answered gently, that she was calm and resigned, when her brother would permit her to stay at home; but that when she was brought into society, she experienced such a change as that which the water of the brook that slumbers in a crystalline pool of the rock may be supposed to feel, when, gliding from its quiet bed, it becomes involved in the hurry of the cataract.
“But