“Ah, but you say the Greeks made Love a god. Were they wicked for it?”
“Our own God above is Love,” said Ernest, seriously, “as our own poets have said and sung. But it is a love of another nature—divine, not human. Come, we will go within, the air grows cold for you.”
They entered, his arm round her waist. The room smiled upon them its quiet welcome; and Alice, whose heart had not half vented its fulness, sat down to the instrument still to “talk love” in her own way.
But it was Saturday evening. Now every Saturday, Maltravers received from the neighbouring town the provincial newspaper—it was his only medium of communication with the great world. But it was not for that communication that he always seized it with avidity, and fed on it with interest. The county in which his father resided bordered on the shire in which Ernest sojourned, and the paper included the news of that familiar district in its comprehensive columns. It therefore satisfied Ernest’s conscience and soothed his filial anxieties to read from time to time that “Mr. Maltravers was entertaining a distinguished party of friends at his noble mansion of Lisle Court;” or that “Mr. Maltravers’s foxhounds had met on such a day at something copse;” or that, “Mr. Maltravers, with his usual munificence, had subscribed twenty guineas to the new county gaol.”... And as now Maltravers saw the expected paper laid beside the hissing urn, he seized it eagerly, tore the envelope, and hastened to the well-known corner appropriated to the paternal district. The very first words that struck his eye were these:
“We regret to state that this exemplary and distinguished gentleman was suddenly seized on Wednesday night with a severe spasmodic affection. Dr. ——— was immediately sent for, who pronounced it to be gout in the stomach. The first medical assistance from London has been summoned.
“Postscript.—We have just learned, in answer to our inquiries at Lisle Court, that the respected owner is considerably worse: but slight hopes are entertained of his recovery. Captain Maltravers, his eldest son and heir, is at Lisle Court. An express has been despatched in search of Mr. Ernest Maltravers, who, involved by his high English spirit in some dispute with the authorities of a despotic government, had suddenly disappeared from Gottingen, where his extraordinary talents had highly distinguished him. He is supposed to be staying at Paris.”
The paper dropped on the floor. Ernest threw himself back on the chair, and covered his face with his hands.
Alice was beside him in a moment. He looked up, and caught her wistful and terrified gaze. “Oh, Alice!” he cried, bitterly, and almost pushing her away, “if you could but guess my remorse!” Then springing on his feet, he hurried from the room.
Presently the whole house was in commotion. The gardener, who was always in the house about supper-time, flew to the town for post-horses. The old woman was in despair about the laundress, for her first and only thought was for “master’s shirts.” Ernest locked himself in his room. Alice! poor Alice!
In little more than twenty minutes, the chaise was at the door: and Ernest, pale as death, came into the room where he had left Alice.
She was seated on the floor, and the fatal paper was on her lap. She had been endeavouring, in vain, to learn what had so sensibly affected Maltravers, for, as I said before, she was unacquainted with his real name, and therefore the ominous paragraph did not even arrest her eye.
He took the paper from her, for he wanted again and again to read it: some little word of hope or encouragement must have escaped him. And then Alice flung herself on his breast. “Do not weep,” said he; “Heaven knows I have sorrow enough of my own! My father is dying! So kind, so generous, so indulgent! O God, forgive me! Compose yourself, Alice. You will hear from me in a day or two.”
He kissed her, but the kiss was cold and forced. He hurried away. She heard the wheels grate on the pebbles. She rushed to the window; but that beloved face was not visible. Maltravers had drawn the blinds, and thrown himself back to indulge his grief. A moment more, and even the vehicle that bore him away was gone. And before her were the flowers, and the starlit lawn, and the playful fountain, and the bench where they had sat in such heartfelt and serene delight. He was gone; and often, oh, how often, did Alice remember that his last words had been uttered in estranged tones—that his last embrace had been without love!
CHAPTER IX
“Thy due from me Is tears: and heavy sorrows of the blood, Which nature, love, and filial tenderness Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously!”
IT was late at night when the chaise that bore Maltravers stopped at the gates of a park lodge. It seemed an age before the peasant within was aroused from the deep sleep of labour-loving health. “My father,” he cried, while the gate creaked on its hinges; “my father—is he better? Is he alive?”
“Oh, bless your heart, Master Ernest, the squire was a little better this evening.”
“Thank Heaven!—On—on!”
The horses smoked and galloped along a road that wound through venerable and ancient groves. The moonlight slept soft upon the sward, and the cattle, disturbed from their sleep, rose lazily up, and gazed upon the unseasonable intruder.
It is a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English parks at midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and valley, its never-innovated and mossy grass, overrun with fern, and its immemorial trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet upon the graves, of a hundred generations. Such spots are the last proud and melancholy trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left to the laughing landscapes of cultivated England. They always throw something of shadow and solemn gloom upon minds that feels their associations, like that which belongs to some ancient and holy edifice. They are the cathedral aisles of Nature with their darkened vistas, and columned trunks, and arches of mighty foliage. But in ordinary times the gloom is pleasing, and more delightful than all the cheerful lawns and sunny slopes of the modern taste. Now to Maltravers it was ominous and oppressive: the darkness of death seemed brooding in every shadow, and its warning voice moaning in every breeze.
The wheels stopped again. Lights flitted across the basement story; and one above, more dim than the rest, shone palely from the room in which the sick man slept. The bell rang shrilly out from amidst the dark ivy that clung around the porch. The heavy door swung back—Maltravers was on the threshold. His father lived—was better—was awake. The son was in the father’s arms.
CHAPTER X
“The guardian oak Mourn’d o’er the roof it shelter’d: the thick air Labour’d with doleful sounds.”
MANY days had passed, and Alice was still alone; but she had heard twice from Maltravers. The letters were short and hurried. One time his father was better, and there were hopes; another time, and it was not expected that he could survive the week. They were the first letters Alice had ever received from him. Those first letters are an event in a girl’s life—in Alice’s life they were a very melancholy one. Ernest did not ask her to write to him; in fact, he felt, at such an hour, a repugnance to disclose his real name, and receive the letters of clandestine love in the house in which a father lay in death. He might have given the feigned address