Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (249 page)

‘Mary, recollect yourself,’ said his grace. ‘I cannot be always at your feet. You were not so weak when we were first married. You let me leave you often then without any jealous remonstrance.’

‘I did not know you so well at that time,’ said Mary, ‘and if my mind is weakened, all its strength has gone away in tears and terrors for you. I am neither so
handsome nor so cheerful as I once was. But you ought to forgive my decay because you have caused it.’

‘Mary, never again reproach yourself with loss of beauty till I give the hint first. Believe me now, in that and every other respect, you are just what I wish you to be. You cannot fade any more than marble can — at least not to my eyes. As for your devotion and tenderness, though I chide its excess sometimes because it wastes and bleaches you almost to a shadow, yet it forms the very firmest chain that binds me to you. Now cheer up. Tonight you shall go to Hawkscliffe; it is only five miles off. I cannot accompany you because I have some important business to transact with Pakenham which must not be deferred. Tomorrow I will be at the castle before dawn. The carriage shall be ready, I will put you in, myself beside you. Off we go, straight to Verdopolis, and there for the next three months I will tire you of my company, morning, noon, and night. Now, what can I promise more? If you choose to be jealous, why, I can’t help it. I must then take to soda water and despair, or have myself petrified and carved into an Apollo for your dressing room. Lord! I get no credit with my virtue — ‘ By dint of lies and laughter the individual at last succeeded in getting all things settled to his mind. The duchess went to Hawkscliffe that night. Keeping his promise, for once, he accompanied her to Verdopolis the next morning — -

Lord Hartford still lies between life and death. His passion is neither weakened by pain, piqued by rejection, nor cooled by absence. On the iron nerves of the man are graven an impression which nothing can efface.

For a long space of time, good-bye reader. I have done my best to please you, and though I know that through feebleness, dullness, and iteration my work terminates rather in failure than triumph, yet you are bound to forgive, for I have done my best — -

January, 1838

MINA
 
LAURY PART II

 
Late
 
one fine still evening in January the moon arose over a blue summit of the Sydenham Hills and looked
 
down on a quiet road winding from the hamlet of Rivaulx. The earth was bound in frost – hard, mute and glittering. The forest of Hawkscliffe was as still as a tomb, and its black leafless wilds stretched away in the distance and cut off with a harsh serrated line the sky from the country. That sky was all silver blue, pierced here and there with a star like a diamond. Only the moon softened it, large, full, and golden. The by-road I have spoken of received her ascending beam on a path of perfect solitude. Spectral pines and vast old beech trees guarded the way like sentinels from Hawkscliffe. Farther on the rude track wound deep into the shades of the forest, but here it was open and the worn causeway, bleached with frost, ran under an old wall grown over with moss and wild ivy.

 
Over this scene the sun of winter had gone down in cloudless calm, red as fire, and kindling with its last beams the windows of a mansion on the verge of Hawkescliffe. To that mansion the road in question was the shortest cut from Rivaulx. And here a moment let us wait, wrapped, it is to be hoped, in furs, for a keener frost never congealed the Olympia.

 
Almost before you are aware a figure strays up the causeway at a leisurely pace, musing amid the tranquillity of evening. Doubtless that figure must be an inmate of the before-mentioned mansion, for it is an elegant and pleasing object. Approaching gradually nearer, you can observe most accurately a lady of distinguished carriage, straight and slender, something inceding and princess-like in her walk, but unconsciously so. Her ankles are so perfect, and her feet – if she tried, she could scarcely tread otherwise than she does – lightly, firmly, erectly. The ermine muff, the silk pelisse, the graceful and ample hat of dark beaver, suit and set off her light youthful form. She is deeply veiled; you must guess at her features – but she passes on and a turn of the road conceals her.

 
Breaking up the silence, dashing in on the solitude, comes a horseman. Fire flashes from under his steed’s hoofs out of the flinty road. He rides desperately. Now and then he rises in his stirrups and eagerly looks along the track as if to catch a sight of some object that has eluded him. He sees it, and the spurs are struck mercilessly into his horse’s flanks. Horse and rider vanish in a whirlwind.

 
The lady passing through the iron gates had just entered upon the demesne of Hawkscliffe. She paused to gaze at the moon which, now full risen, looked upon her through the boughs of a superb elm. A green lawn lay between her and the house, and there its light slumbered in gold. Thundering behind her, came the sound of hoofs, and, bending low to his saddle to avoid the contact of oversweeping
 
branches, that wild horseman we saw five minutes since rushed upon the scene. Harshly curbing the charger, he brought it almost upon its haunches close to the spot where she stood.

 
‘Miss Laury! Good evening!’ he said. The lady threw back her veil, surveyed him with one glance, and replied:

 
‘Lord Hartford! I am glad to see you, my lord. You have ridden fast. Your horse foams. Any bad news?’

 
‘No!’

 
‘Then you are on your way to Adrianopolis. I suppose you will pass the night here?’

 
‘If you ask me, I will.’

 
‘If I ask you! Yes; this is the proper half-way house between the capitals. The night is cold, let us go in’.

 
They were now at the door. Hartford flung himself from his saddle. A servant came to lead the over-ridden steed to the stables, and he followed Miss Laury in.

 
It was her own drawing room to which she led him, just such a scene as is most welcome after the contrast of a winter evening’s chill; not a large room, simply furnished, with curtains and couches of green silk, a single large mirrow, a Grecian lamp dependent from the centre softly burning now and mingling with the softer illumination of the fire, whose brilliant glow bore testimony to the keenness of the frost.

 
Hartford glanced round him. He had been in Miss Laury’s drawing room before, but never as her sole guest. He had, before the troubles broke out, more than once formed one of a high and important trio whose custom it was to make the lodge of Rivaulx their occasional rendezvous: Warner, Enara, and himself had often stood on that hearth in a ring round Miss Laury’s sofa, and he recalled how her face looking up to them with its serious, soft intelligence that blent no woman’s frivolity with the heartfelt interest of those subjects on which they conversed. He remembered those first kindlings of the flame that now devoured his life as he watched her beauty and saw the earnest enthusiasm with which she threw her soul into topics of the highest import. She had often done for these great men what they could get no man to do for them. She had kept their secrets and executed their wishes as far as in her lay, for it had never been her part to counse. With humble feminine devotedness she always looked up for her task to be set, and then not Warner himself could have bent his energies more resolutely to the fulfilment of that task than did Miss Laury. Had Mina’s lot in life been different, she never would have interfered in such matters. She did not interfere now: she only served. Nothing like intrigue had ever stained her course in politics. She told her directors what she had done, and she asked for more to do, grateful always that they would trust her so far as to employ her, grateful too for the enthusiasm of their loyalty; in short, devoted to them heart and mind because she believed in them to be devoted as unreservedly to the commom master of all.

 
The consequence of this species of deeply confidential intercourse between the statesmen and their beautiful lieutenant had been intense and chivalric admiration on the part of Mr Warner; strong fond attachment on that of General Enara; and on Lord Hartford’s the burning brand of passion. His Lordship had always been a man of strong and ill-regulated feelings, and in his youth (if report may be credited) of somewhat dissolute habits, but he had his own ideas of honour strongly implanted in his breast, and though he would not have scrupled if the wife of one of his equals, or the daughter of one of his tenants had been in the question, yet as it was he stood beset and nonplussed.

 
Miss Laury belonged to the Duke of Zamorna. She was indisputably his property, as much as the Lodge of Rivaulx or the stately wood of Hawkscliffe, and in that light she considered herself. All his dealings with her had been on matters connected with the Duke, and she had ever shown an habitual, rooted, solemn devotedness to his interest which seemed to leave her hardly a thought for anything else in the world beside. She had but one idea – Zamorna!Zamorna! It had grown up with her, become a part of her nature. Absence, coldness, total neglect for long periods together went for nothing. She could not more feel alienation from him than she could from herself. She did not even repine when he forgot her any more than the religious devotee does when his Deity seems to turn away his face for a time and leave him to the ordeal of temporal afflictions. It seemed as if she could have lived on the remembrance of what he had once been to her without asking for anything more.

 
All this Hartford knew, and he knew, too, that she valued himself in proportion as she believed him to be royal to his sovereign. Her friendship for him turned on this hinge: ‘We have been fellow-labourers and fellow-sufferers together in the same good cause’ These were her own words which she had uttered one night as she took leave of her three noble collegues just befre the storm broke over Angria. Hartford had noticed the expression of her countenance as she spoke, and thought what a young and beautiful being thus appealed for sympathy with minds scarcely like her own in mould.

 
However, let us dwell no longer on these topics. Suffuce it to say that Lord Hartford, against reason and without hope, had finally delivered himself wholly up to the guidance of his vehement passions; and it was with the resolution to make one desperate effort in the attainment of their end that he now stood before the lady of Rivaulx.

 
Above two hours had elapsed since Lord Hartford had entered the house. Tea was over, and in the perfect quiet of evening he and Miss Laury were left together. He sat on one side of the hearth, and she on the other – her work-table only between them, and on that her little hand rested within his reach. It was embedded in a veil of lace, the embroidering of which she had just relinquished for a moment’s thought. Lord Hartford’s eye was fascinated by the white soft fingers. His own heart at the moment was in a tumult of bliss. To be so near, to be received so benignly, so kindly – he forgot himself. His own hand closed half involuntarily upon hers. Miss Laury looked at him …. Shocked for a moment, almost overwhelmed , she yet speedily mastered her emotions, took her hand away, resumed her work, and with head bent down, seemed endeavouring to conceal embarrassment under the appearance of occupation.

 
The dead silence that followed would not do, so she broke it in a very calm, self-possessed tone.

 
‘That ring, Lord Hartford, which you were admiring just now belonged once to the Duchess of Wellington’

 
‘ And was it given you by her son?’ asked the General bitterly.

 
‘No, my lord, the Duchess herself gave it me a few days before she died. It has her maiden name ‘’Catherine Pakenham’’, engraved within the stone’.

 
‘But’, pursued Hartford, ‘I was not admiring the ring when I touched your hand. No; the thought struck me, if ever I marry I should like my wife’s hand to be just as white and snowy and taper as that.’

 
‘I am the daughter of a common soldier, my lord, and it is said that ladies of high descent have fairer hands than peasant women.’

 
Hartford made no reply. He rose restlessly from his seat and stood against the mantelpiece.

 
‘Miss Laury, shall I tell you which was the happiest hour of my life?’

 
‘I will guess, my lord. Perhaps when the bill passed which made Angria an independent kingdom.’

 
‘No. ‘ replied Hartford with an expressive smile.

 
‘Perhaps, then, when Lord Northangerland resigned the seals
 
- for I know you and the Earl were never on good terms’.

 
‘No. I hated his lordship, but there are moment of deeper felicity even than those which see the triumph of a fallen enemy’.

 
‘I will hope that it was at the Restoration.’

 
‘Wrong again! Why, madam, young as you are your mind is so used to the harness of politics that you can imagine no happiness or misery unconnected with them. You remind me of Warner.’

 
‘I believe I am like him’, returned Miss Laury. ‘He often tells me so himself, but I live so much with men and statesmen I almost lose the ideas of a woman’.

 
‘Do you?’ muttered Hartford with the dark sinister smile peculiar to him’.

 
Miss Laury passed over this equivocal remark and proceeded with the conversation.

 
‘I cannot guess your riddle, my lord, so I think you must explain it’.

 
‘Then, Miss Laury, prepare to be astonished. You are so patriotic, so loyal that you will scarcely credit me when I say that the happiest hour I have ever known fell on the darkest day in the deadliest crisis of Angria’s calamities’.

 
‘How, Lord Hartford?’

 
‘Moreover, miss Laury, it was at no bright period of your own life. It was to you an hour of the most acute agony; to me one of ecstasy’.

 
Miss Laury turned aside her head with a disturbed air and trembled. She seemed to know to what he alluded.

 
‘You remember the first of July, ’36?’ continued Hartford.

 
She bowed.

 
‘You remember that the evening of that day closed in a tremendous storm?’