A Rent In A Cloud

“A stranger, who, rather than suffer you to incur the privation of a breakfast without fruit, rowed across the lake this morning to bring it.”

“Won’t he go, Milly? What is he bargaining about?” cried Miss Grainger, coming up.

But the young girl ran hastily towards her, and for some minutes they spoke in a low tone together.

“I think it an impertinence – yes, an impertinence, Milly – and I mean to tell him so!” said the old lady, fuming with passion. “Such things are not done in the world. They are unpardonable liberties. What is your name, Sir?”

“Calvert, Madam.”

“Calvert? Calvert? Not Calvert of Rocksley?” said she, with a sneer.

“No, Ma’am, only his nephew.”

“Are you his nephew, really nis nephew?” said she, with a half incredulity.

“Yes, Madam, I have that very unprofitable honour, if you axe acquainted with the family, you will recognise their crest;” and he detached a seal from his watch-chain and handed it to her.

“Quite true, the portcullis and the old motto, ‘Ferme en Tombant’ I know, or rather I knew your relatives once, Mr. Calvert;” this was said with a total change of manner, and a sort of simpering politeness that sat very ill upon her.

Quick enough to mark this change of manner and profit by it, he said, somewhat coldly, “Have I heard your name, Madam? Will you permit me to know it?”

“Miss Grainger, Sir. Miss Adelaide Grainger” – reddening as she spoke.

“Never heard that name before. Will you present me to this young lady?” And thus with an air of pretension, whose impertinence was partly covered by an appearance of complete unconsciousness, he bowed and smiled, and chatted away till the servant announced breakfast.

To the invitation to join them, he vouchsafed the gentlest bend of the head, and a half smile of acceptance, which the young lady resented by a stare that might have made a less accomplished master of impertinence blush to the very forehead. Calvert was, however, a proficient in his art.

As they entered the breakfast-room, Miss Grainger presented him to a young and very delicate-looking girl who lay on a sofa propped up by cushions, and shrouded with shawls, though the season was summer.

“Florence, Mr. Calvert Miss Florence Walter. An invalid come to benefit by the mild air of Italy, Sir, but who feels even these breezes too severe and too bracing for her.”

“Egypt is your place,” said Calvert; “one of those nice villas on the sea slope of Alexandretta, with the palm-trees and the cedars to keep off the sun;” and seating himself by her side in an easy familiar way, devoid of all excess of freedom, talked to her about health and sickness in a fashion that is very pleasant to the ears of suffering. And he really talked pleasantly on the theme. It was one of which he had already some experience. The young wife of a brother officer of his own had gained, in such a sojourn as he pictured, health enough to go on to India, and was then alive and well, up in the Hill country above Simlah.

“Only fancy, aunt, what Mr. Calvert is promising me – to be rosy-cheeked,” said the poor sick girl, whose pale face caught a slight pinkish tint as she spoke. “I am not romancing in the least,” said Calvert, taking his place next Milly at the table. “The dryness of the air, and the equitable temperature, work, positively, miracles;” and he went on telling of cures and recoveries. When at last he arose to take leave, it was amidst a shower of invitations to come back, and pledges on his part to bring with him some sketches of the scenery of Lower Egypt, and some notes he had made of his wanderings there.

“By-the-way,” said he, as he gained the door, “have I your permission to present a friend who lives with me – a strange, bashful, shy creature, very good in his way, though that way isn’t exactly my way; but really clever and well read, I believe. May I bring him? Of course I hope to be duly accredited to you myself, through my uncle.”

“You need not, Mr. Calvert I recognise you for one of the family in many ways,” said Miss Grainger; “and when your friend accompanies you, he will be most welcome.” So, truly cordially they parted.

CHAPTER V. OLD MEMORIES

WHEN Calvert rejoined his friend, he was full of the adventure of the morning – such a glorious discovery as he had made. What a wonderful old woman, and what charming girls! Milly, however, he owned, rather inclined to the contemptuous. “She was what you Cockneys call ‘sarcy,’ Loyd; but the sick girl was positively enchanting; so pretty, so gentle, and so confiding withal. By-the-way, you must make me three or four sketches of Nile scenery – a dull flat, with a palm-tree, group of camels in the fore, and a pyramid in the background; and I’ll get up the journal part, while you are doing the illustrations. I know nothing of Egypt beyond the overland route, though I have persuaded them I kept a house in Cairo, and advised them by all means to take Florence there for the winter.”

“But how could you practise such a deception in such a case, Calvert?” said Loyd, reproachfully.

“Just as naturally as you have ‘got up’ that grand tone of moral remonstrance. What an arrant humbug you are, Loyd. Why not keep all this fine indignation for Westminster, where it will pay?”

“Quiz away, if you like; but you will not prevent me saying that the case of a poor sick girl is not one for a foolish jest, or a – ”

He stopped and grew very red, but the other continued: —

“Out with it, man. You were going to say, a falsehood. I’m not going to be vexed with you because you happen to have a rather crape-coloured temperament, and like turning things round till you find the dark side of them.” He paused for a few seconds and then went on: “If you had been in my place this morning, I know well enough what you’d have done. You’d have rung the changes over the uncertainty of life, and all its miseries and disappointments. You’d have frightened that poor delicate creature out of her wits, and driven her sister half distracted, to satisfy what you imagine to be your conscience, but which, I know far better, is nothing but a morbid love of excitement – an unhealthy passion for witnessing pain. Now, I left her actually looking better for my visit – she was cheered and gay, and asked when I’d come again, in a voice that betrayed a wish for my return.”

Loyd never liked being drawn into a discussion with his friend, seeing how profitless such encounters are in general, and how likely to embitter intercourse; so he merely took his hat and moved towards the door.

“Where are you going? Not to that odious task of photography, I hope?” cried Calvert.

“Yes,” said the other, smiling; “I am making a complete series of views of the lake, and some fine day or other I’ll make water-colour drawings from them.”

“How I hate all these fine intentions that only point to more work. Tell me of a plan for a holiday, some grand scheme for idleness, and I am with you; but to sit quietly down and say, ‘I’ll roll that stone up a hill next summer, or next autumn,’ that drives me mad.”

“Well, I’ll not drive you mad. I’ll say nothing about it,” said Loyd, with a good-natured smile.

“But won’t you make me these drawings, these jottings of my tour amongst the Pyramids?”

“Not for such an object as you want them to serve.”

“I suppose, when you come to practise at the bar, you’ll only defend innocence and protect virtue, eh? You’ll, of course, never take the brief of a knave, or try to get a villain off. With your principles, to do so would be the basest of all crimes.”

“I hope I’ll never do that deliberately which my conscience tells me I ought not to do.”

“All right. Conscience is always in one’s own keeping – a guest in the house, who is far too well bred to be disagreeable to the family. Oh, you arch hypocrite! how much worse you are than a reprobate like myself!”

“I’ll not dispute that.”

“More hypocrisy!”

“I mean that, without conceding the point, it’s a thesis I’ll not argue.”

“You ought to have been a Jesuit, Loyd. You’d have been a grand fellow in a long black soutane, with little buttons down to the feet, and a skull-cap on your head. I think I see some poor devil coming to you about a ‘cas de conscience,’ and going away sorely puzzled with your reply to him.”

“Don’t come to me with one of yours, Calvert, that’s all,” said Loyd, laughing, as he hurried off.

Like many men who have a strong spirit of banter in them, Calvert was vexed and mortified when his sarcasm did not wound. “If the stag will not run, there can be no pursuit,” and so was it that he now felt angry with Loyd, angry with himself. “I suppose these are the sort of fellows who get on in life. The world likes their quiet subserviency, and their sleek submissiveness. As for me, and the like of me, we are ‘not placed.’ Now for a line to my Cousin Sophy, to know who is the ‘Grainger’ who says she is so well acquainted with us all. Poor Sophy, it was a love affair once between us, and then it came to a quarrel, and out of that we fell into the deeper bitterness of what is called ‘a friendship.’ We never really hated each other till we came to that!”

“Dearest, best of friends,” he began, “in my broken health, fortunes, and spirits, I came to this place a few weeks ago, and made, by chance, the acquaintance of an atrocious oldwoman called Grainger – Miss or Mrs., I forget which – who isshe, and why does she know us, and call us the ‘dearCalverts,’ and your house ‘sweet old Rocksley?’ I fancy shemust be a begging-letter impostor, and has a design – it willbe a very abortive one – upon my spare five-pound notes. Tellme all you know of her, and if you can add a word about hernieces twain – one pretty, the other prettier – do so.

“Any use in approaching my uncle with a statement of mydistresses – mind, body, and estate? I owe him so muchgratitude that, if he doesn’t want me to be insolvent, hemust help me a little further.

“Is it true you are going to be married? The thought of itsends a pang through me, of such anguish as I dare not speakof. Oh dear! oh dear! what a flood of bygones are rushingupon me, after all my pledges, all my promises! One ofthese girls reminded me of your smile; how like, but howdifferent, Sophy. Do say there’s no truth in the story ofthe marriage, and believe me – what your heart will tell youI have never ceased to be – your devoted

“Harry Calvert.”

“I think that ought to do,” said he, as he read over the letter; “and there’s no peril in it since her marriage is fixed for the end of the month. It is, after all, a cheap luxury to bid for the lot that will certainly be knocked down to another. She’s a nice girl, too, is Sophy, but, like all of us, with a temper of her own.

“I’d like to see her married to Loyd, they’d make each other perfectly miserable.”

With this charitable reflection to turn over in various ways, tracing all the consequences he could imagine might spring from it, he sauntered out for a walk beside the lake.