Two Years Ago, Volume II

"I know it. Nursed my girl like an angel."

"Like what she is," said Tom.

"You said one true word once: that she was too good for us."

"For this world," said Tom; and fell into a great musing.

By those curt and surly utterances did Tardrew, in true British bulldog fashion, express a repentance too deep for words; too deep for all confessionals, penances, and emotions or acts of contrition; the repentance not of the excitable and theatric southern, unstable as water, even in his most violent remorse: but of the still, deep-hearted northern, whose pride breaks slowly and silently, but breaks once for all; who tells to God what he will never tell to man; and having told it, is a new creature from that day forth for ever.

CHAPTER XIX.

BEDDGELERT

The pleasant summer voyage is over. The Waterwitch is lounging off Port Madoc, waiting for her crew. The said crow are busy on shore drinking the ladies' healths, with a couple of sovereigns which Valencia has given them, in her sister's name and her own. The ladies, under the care of Elsley, and the far more practical care of Mr. Bowie, are rattling along among children, maids, and boxes, over the sandy flats of the Traeth Mawr, beside the long reaches of the lazy stream, with the blue surges of the hills in front, and the silver sea behind. Soon they begin to pass wooded knolls, islets of rock in the alluvial plain. The higher peaks of Snowdon sink down behind the lower spurs in front; the plain narrows; closes in, walled round with woodlands clinging to the steep hill-sides; and, at last, they enter the narrow gorge of Pont-Aberglaslyn,—pretty enough no doubt, but much over-praised; for there are in Devon alone a dozen passes far grander, both for form and size.

Soon they emerge again on flat meadows, mountain-cradled; and the grave of the mythic greyhound, and the fair old church, shrouded in tall trees; and last, but not least, at the famous Leek Hotel, where ruleth Mrs. Lewis, great and wise, over the four months' Babylon of guides, cars, chambermaids, tourists, artists, and reading-parties, camp-stools, telescopes, poetry-books, blue uglies, red petticoats, and parasols of every hue.

There they settle down in the best rooms in the house, and all goes as merrily as it can, while the horrors which they have left behind them hang, like a black background, to all their thoughts. However, both Scoutbush and Campbell send as cheerful reports as they honestly can; and gradually the exceeding beauty of the scenery, and the amusing bustle of the village, make them forget, perhaps, a good deal which they ought to have remembered.

As for poor Lucia, no one will complain of her for being happy; for feeling that she has got a holiday, the first for now four years, and trying to enjoy it to the utmost. She has no household cares. Mr. Bowie manages everything, and does so, in order to keep up the honour of the family, on a somewhat magnificent scale. The children, in that bracing air, are better than she has ever seen them. She has Valencia all to herself; and Elsley, in spite of the dark fancies over which he has been brooding, is better behaved, on the whole, than usual.

He has escaped—so he considers—escaped from Campbell, above all from Thurnall. From himself, indeed, he has not escaped; but the company of self is, on the whole, more pleasant to him than otherwise just now. For though he may turn up his nose at tourists and reading-parties, and long for contemplative solitude, yet there is a certain pleasure to some people, and often strongest in those who pretend most shyness, in the "digito monstrari, et diceri, hic est:" in taking for granted that everybody has read his poems; that everybody is saying in their hearts, "There goes Mr. Vavasour the distinguished poet. I wonder what he is writing now? I wonder where he has been to-day, and what he has been thinking of."

So Elsley went up Hebog, and looked over the glorious vista of the vale, over the twin lakes, and the rich sheets of woodland, with Aran and Moel Meirch guarding them right and left, and the greystone glaciers of the Glyder walling up the valley miles above. And they went up Snowdon, too, and saw little beside fifty fog-blinded tourists, five-and-twenty dripping ponies, and five hundred empty porter-bottles; wherefrom they returned, as do many, disgusted, and with great colds in their heads. But most they loved to scramble up the crags of Dinas Emrys, and muse over the ruins of the old tower, "where Merlin taught Vortigern the courses of the stars;" till the stars set and rose as they had done for Merlin and his pupil, behind the four great peaks of Aran, Siabod, Cnicht, and Hebog, which point to the four quarters of the heavens: or to lie by the side of the boggy spring, which once was the magic well of the magic castle, till they saw in fancy the white dragon and the red rise from its depths once more, and fight high in air the battle which foretold the fall of the Cymry before the Sassenach invader.

One thing, indeed, troubled Elsley,—that Claude was his only companion; for Valencia avoided carefully any more tête-à-tête walks with him. She had found out her mistake, and devoted herself now to Lucia. She had a fair excuse enough, for Lucia was not just then in a state for rambles and scrambles; and of that Elsley certainly had no right to complain; so that he was forced to leave them both at home, with as good grace as he could muster, and to wander by himself, scribbling his fancies, while they lounged and worked in the pleasant garden of the hotel, with Bowie fetching and carrying for them all day long, and intimating pretty roundly to Miss Clara his "opeeenion," that he "was very proud and thankful of the office: but he did think that he had to do a great many things for Mrs. Vavasour every day which would come with a much better grace from Mr. Vavasour himself: and that, when he married, he should not leave his wife to be nursed by other men." Which last words were spoken with an ulterior object, well understood by the hearer; for between Clara and Bowie there was one of those patient and honourable attachments so common between worthy servants. They had both "kept company," though only by letter, for the most part, for now five years; they had both saved a fair sum of money; and Clara might have married Bowie when she chose, had she not thought it her duty to take care of her mistress; while Bowie considered himself equally indispensable to the welfare of that "puir feckless laddie," his master.

So they waited patiently, amusing the time by little squabbles of jealousy, real or pretended; and Bowie was faithful, though Clara was past thirty now, and losing her good looks.

"So ye'll see your lassie, Mr. Bowie!" said Sergeant MacArthur, his intimate, when he started for Aberalva that summer. "I'm thinking ye'd better put her out of her pain soon. Five years is ower lang courting, and she's na pullet by now, saving your pardon."

"Hoooo—," says Bowie; "leave the green gooseberries to the lads, and gi' me the ripe fruit, Sergeant."

However, he found love-making in his own fashion so pleasant, that, not content with carrying Mrs. Vavasour's babies about all day long, he had several times to be gently turned out of the nursery, where he wanted to assist in washing and dressing them, on the ground that an old soldier could turn his hand to anything.

So slipped away a fortnight and more, during which Valencia was the cynosure of all eyes, and knew it also: for Claude Mellot, half to amuse her, and half to tease Elsley, made her laugh many a time by retailing little sayings and doings in her praise and dispraise, picked up from rich Manchester gentlemen, who would fain have married her without a penny, and from strong-minded Manchester ladies, who envied her beauty a little, and set her down, of course, as an empty-minded worldling, and a proud aristocrat. The majority of the reading-parties, meanwhile, thought a great deal more about Valencia than about their books. The Oxford men, it seemed, though of the same mind as the Cambridge men in considering her the model of all perfection, were divided as to their method of testifying the same. Two or three of them, who were given to that simpering and flirting tone with young ladies to which Oxford would-be-fine gentlemen are so pitiably prone, hung about the inn-door to ogle her: contrived always to be walking in the garden when she was there, dressed out as if for High Street at four o'clock on a May afternoon; tormented Claude by fruitless attempts to get from him an introduction, which he had neither the right nor the mind to give; and at last (so Bowie told Claude one night, and Claude told the whole party next morning) tried to bribe and flatter Valencia's maid into giving them a bit of ribbon, or a cast-off glove, which had belonged to the idol. Whereon that maiden, in virtuous indignation, told Mr. Bowie, and complained moreover (as maids are bound to do to valets for whom they have a penchant), of their having dared to compliment her on her own good looks: by which act she succeeded, of course, in making Mr. Bowie understand that other people still thought her pretty, if he did not; and also in arousing in him that jealousy which is often the best helpmate of sweet love. So Mr. Bowie went forth in his might that very evening, and finding two of the Oxford men, informed them in plain Scotch, that, "Gin he caught them, or any ither such skellums, philandering after his leddies, or his leddies' maids, he'd jist knock their empty pows togither." To which there was no reply but silence; for Mr. Bowie stood six feet four without his shoes, and had but the week before performed, for the edification of the Cambridge men, who held him in high honour, a few old Guards' feats; such, as cutting in two at one sword-blow a suspended shoulder of mutton; lifting a long table by his teeth; squeezing a quart pewter pot flat between his fingers; and other little recreations of those who are "born unto Rapha."

But the Cantabs, and a couple of gallant Oxford boating men who had fraternised with them, testified their admiration in their simple honest way, by putting down their pipes whenever they saw Valencia coming, and just lifting their hats when they met her close. It was taking a liberty, no doubt. "But I tell you, Mellot," said Wynd, as brave and pure-minded a fellow as ever pulled in the University eight, "the Arabs, when they see such a creature, say, 'Praise Allah for beautiful women,' and quite right; they may remind some fellows of worse things, but they always remind me of heaven and the angels; and my hat goes off to her by instinct, just as it does when I go into a church."

That was all; simple chivalrous admiration, and delight in her loveliness, as in that of a lake, or a mountain sunset; but nothing more. The good fellows had no time, indeed, to fancy themselves in love with her, or her with them, for every day was too short for them; what with reading all the morning, and starting out in the afternoon in strange garments (which became shabbier and more ragged very rapidly as the weeks slipped on) upon all manner of desperate errands; walking unheard-of-distances, and losing their way upon the mountains; scrambling cliffs and now and then falling down them; camping all night by unpronounceable lakes, in the hope of catching mythical trout; trying in all ways how hungry, thirsty, dirty, and tired a man could make himself, and how far he could go without breaking his neck, any approach to which catastrophe was hailed (as were all other mishaps) as "all in the day's work," and "the finest fun in the world," by that unconquerable English "lebensglückseligkeit," which is a perpetual wonder to our sober German cousins. Ah, glorious twenty-one, with your inexhaustible powers of doing and enjoying, eating and hungering, sleeping and sitting up, reading and playing! Happy are those who still possess you, and can take their fill of your golden cup, steadied, but not saddened, by the remembrance, that for all things a good and loving God will bring them into judgment. Happier still those who (like a few) retain in body and soul the health and buoyancy of twenty-one on to the very verge of forty, and seeming to grow younger-hearted as they grow older-headed, can cast off care and work at a moment's warning, laugh and frolic now as they did twenty years ago, and say with Wordsworth—

"So was it when I was a boy,
So let it be when I am old,
Or let me die!"

Unfortunately, as will appear hereafter, Elsley's especial bêtes noirs were this very Wynd and his inseparable companion, Naylor, who happened to be not only the best men of the set, but Mellot's especial friends. Both were Rugby men, now reading for their degree. Wynd was a Shropshire squire's son, a lissom fair-haired man, the handiest of boxers, rowers, riders, shots, fishermen, with a noisy superabundance of animal spirits, which maddened Elsley. Yet Wynd had sentiment in his way, though he took good care never to show it Elsley; could repeat Tennyson from end to end; spouted the Mort d'Arthur up hill and down dale, and chaunted rapturously, "Come into the garden, Maud!" while he expressed his opinion of Maud's lover in terms more forcible than delicate. Naylor, fidus Achates, was a Gloucestershire parson's son, a huge heavy-looking man, with a thick curling lip, and a sleepy eye; but he had brains enough to become a first-rate classic; and in that same sleepy eye and heavy lip lay an infinity of quiet humour; racy old country stories, quaint scraps of out-of-the-way learning, jovial old ballads, which he sang with the mellowest of voices, and a slang vocabulary, which made him the dread of all bargees from Newnham pool to Upware. Him also Elsley hated, because Naylor looked always as if he was laughing at him, which indeed he was.

And the worst was, that Elsley had always to face them both at once. If Wynd vaulted over a gate into his very face, with a "How de' do, Mr. Vavasour? Had any verses this morning?" in the same tone as if he had asked, "Had any sport?" Naylor's round face was sure to look over the stone-wall, pipe in mouth, with a "Don't disturb the gentleman, Tom; don't you see he's a composing of his rhymes!" in a strong provincial dialect put on for the nonce. In fact, the two young rogues, having no respect whatsoever for genius, perhaps because they had each of them a little genius of their own, made a butt of the poet, as soon as they found out that he was afraid of them.

But worse bêtes noirs than either Wynd or Naylor were on their way to fill up the cup of Elsley's discomfort. And at last, without a note of warning, appeared in Beddgelert a phenomenon which rejoiced some hearts, but perturbed also the spirits not only of the Oxford "philanderers," but those of Elsley Vavasour, and, what is more, of Valencia herself.

She was sitting one evening at the window with Lucia, looking out into the village and the pleasure-grounds before the hotel. They were both laughing and chatting over the groups of tourists in their pretty Irish way, just as they had done when they were girls; for Lucia's heart was expanding under the quiet beauty of the place, the freedom from household care, and what was more, from money anxieties; for Valencia had slipped into her hand a cheque for fifty pounds from Scoutbush, and assured her that he would be quite angry if she spoke of paying the rent of the rooms; Elsley was mooning down the river by himself; Claude was entertaining his Cambridge acquaintances, as he did every night, with his endless fun and sentiment. Gradually the tourists slipt in one by one, as the last rays of the sun faded off the peaks of Aran, and the mist settled down upon the dark valley beneath, and darkness fell upon that rock-girdled paradise; when up to the door below there drove a car, at sight whereof out rushed, not waiters only and landlady, but Mr. Bowie himself, who helped out a very short figure in a pea-jacket and a shining boating hat, and then a very tall one in a wild shooting-coat and a military cap.

"My brother, and mon Saint Père! Lucia! too delightful! This is why they did not write." And Valencia sprang up, and was going to run down stairs to them, when she paused at Lucia's call.

"Who have they with them'? Val,—come and look! who can it be?"

Campbell and Bowie were helping out carefully a tall man, covered up in many wrappers. It was too dark to see the face; but a fancy crossed Valencia's mind which made her look grave, in spite of her pleasure.

He was evidently weak, as from recent illness; for his two supporters led him up the steps, and Scoutbush seemed full of directions and inquiries, and fussed about with the landlady, till she was tired of curtseying to "my lord."

A minute afterwards Bowie threw open the door grandly. "My lord, my ladies!" and in trotted Scoutbush, and began kissing them fiercely, and then dancing about.

"Oh my dears! Here at last—out of that horrid city of the plague! Such sights as I have seen—" and then he paused. "Do you know, Val and Lucia, I'm glad I've seen it: I don't know, but I feel as if I should be a better man all my life; and those poor people, how well they did behave! And the Major, he's an angel! And so's that brick of a doctor, and the mad schoolmistress, and the curate. Everybody, I think, but me. Hang it, Val! but your words shan't come true! I will be of some use yet before I die! But I've—" and Valencia went up to him and kissed him, while he ran on, and Lucia said,—

"You have been of use already, dear Fred. You have sent me and the dear children to this sweet place, where we have been safer and happier than—" (she checked herself); "and your generous present too. I feel quite a girl again, thanks to you. Val and I have done nothing but laugh all day long;" and she began kissing him too.

"'How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear charmer away!'"

broke out Scoutbush. "What a pity it is now, that I should have two such sweet creatures making love to me, and can't marry either of them? Why did ye go and be my father's daughters, mavourneen? I'd have made a peeress of the one of ye, if ye'd had the sense to be anybody else's sisters."

At which they all laughed, and laughed, and chattered broad Irish together as they used to do for fun in old Kilanbaggan Castle, before Lucia was a weary wife, and Valencia a worldly fine lady, and Scoutbush a rackety guardsman, breaking half of the ten commandments every week, rather from ignorance than vice.

"Well, I'm glad ye're pleased with me, asthore," said he at last to Lucia; "but I've done another little good deed, I flatter myself; for I've brought away the poor spalpeen of a priest, and have got him safe in the house."

Valencia stopped short in her fun.

"Why, what have ye to say against that, Miss Val?"

"Why, won't he be a little in the way?" said Valencia, not knowing what to say.

"Faith, he needn't trouble you; and I shall take very good care—I wonder when the supper is coming—that neither he nor any else troubles me. But really," said he, in his natural voice, and with some feeling, "I was ashamed to go away and leave him there. He would have died if we had. He worked day and night. Talk of saints and martyrs! Campbell himself said he was an idler by the side of him."

"Oh! I hope Major Campbell has not over-exerted himself!"

"He? nothing hurts him. He's as hard as his own sword. But the poor curate worked on till he got the cholera himself. He always expected it, longed for it; Campbell said—wanted to die. Some love affair, I suppose, poor fellow?—and a terrible bout he had for eight-and-forty hours. Thurnall thought him gone again and again; but he pulled the poor fellow through, after all, and we got some one (that is, Campbell did) to take his duty; and brought him away, after a good deal of persuasion; for he would not move as long as there was a fresh case in the town; that is why we never wrote. We did not know till the last hour when we should start; and we expected to be with you in two days, and give you a pleasant surprise. He was half dead when we got him on board; but the week's sea-air helped him through; so I must not grumble at these northerly breezes. 'It's an ill wind that blows nobody good,' they say!"

Valencia heard all this as in a dream; and watched her chattering brother with a stupefied air. She comprehended all now; and bitterly she blamed herself. He had really loved her, then; set himself manfully to die at his post, that he might forget her in a better world. How shamefully she had trifled with that noble heart! How should she ever meet—how have courage to look him in the face? And not love, or anything like love, but sacred pity and self-abasement filled her heart, as his fair, delicate face rose up before her, all wan and shrunken, with sad upbraiding eyes; and round it such a halo, pure and pale, as crowns, in some old German picture, a martyr's head.

"He has had the cholera! he has been actually dying?" asked she at last, with that strange wish to hear over again bad news, which one knows too well already.

"Of course he has. Why, you are not going away, Valencia? You need not be afraid of infection. Campbell, and Thurnall, too, says that's all nonsense; and they must know, having seen it so often. Here comes Bowie at last with supper!"

"Has Mr. Headley had anything to eat?" asked Valencia, who longed to run away to her own room, but dared not.

"He is eating now like any ged, ma'am; and Major Campbell's making him eat too."