CHAPTER I.

VALE.

“AT my own quarters trouble unutterable awaited me. While I had amused myself with the more piquant society of Gulnare, my sad sweet love--my Medora--had fled from her solitary bower. I found my household gods shattered; and standing among their ruins, I was fain to confess that I had deserved the stroke. She was gone. The poor child had borne my absence so uncomplainingly that I had been almost inclined to resent a patience that seemed like coldness. Had she been more demonstrative--had her affection or her jealousy assumed a more dramatic and soul-stirring form--it might have been better for both of us. But the poor child locked all her feelings so closely in her breast, that she had of late seemed to me the tamest and dullest of womankind--an automaton with a woe-begone face.

“The woman who waited upon her in that rude mountain home told me that she was gone. She had gone out early in the day--soon after my own departure--and had not been seen since that time. She had seen me in a carriage with a strange lady, and had, by some means, possessed herself of the secret of my visits to the lodge in the valley. This very woman had, perhaps, been C.’s informant, though she stoutly denied the fact when I taxed her with it.

“She was gone. It mattered little how she had obtained the information that had prompted her to this mad act. For some minutes I stood motionless on the spot where I had heard these tidings, powerless to decide what I ought to do. And then, sudden as a shaft of Apollo the destroyer, there darted into my brain the idea of suicide. That poor benighted child had left her cheerless home to destroy herself.

“I rushed from the house, pausing only to bid the woman send her husband after me with a lantern and a rope. What I was going to do I knew not. My first impulse was to seek her myself, along that desolate coast. She might wander for hours by the sea she loved so well, shrinking from that cold refuge, loth to fling herself into the strong arms of that stern lover for whom she would fain forsake me.

“I waited only till I saw D. emerge with his dimly-twinkling light, called to him to follow me, and then ran down the craggy winding way--the Devil’s Staircase--to the sands below.

“And then I remembered the heights above me--the little classic temple in which we had so often sat--and I shivered as I thought what a fearful leap madness might take from that rocky headland. I had told C. the story of Sappho,--of course giving her the ideal Sappho of modern poesy, and not the flaunting, wine-bibbing, strong-minded, wrong-minded Mitylenean lady of Attic comedy,--and we had agreed that Phaon--if indeed there ever existed such a person--was a monster.

“As I hurried along those lonely sands, dark with the shadows of the heights above, I remembered the soft spring sunset in which I had related the well-worn fable, and I could almost feel my love’s little hand clinging tenderly to my arm--the hand whose gentle touch I never was to feel again.

“I will not excruciate thee, reader, or bore thee, as the case may be, by one of those prolonged intervals of suspense whereby the venal hack of the Minerva Press would attempt to harrow thy feelings, and eke out his tale of strawless brick. For thee, too, life has had its fond hopes and idle dreams, its bitter disappointments, chilling disillusions, dark hours of remorse.

“Enough that in this crisis I suffered--suffered as I have never suffered since that day. My search was in vain; nor were the efforts of the men whom I sent in all directions of the coast--by the cliff and by the sands--of more avail. For two days and two nights I suffered the tortures of Cain. I told myself that this girl’s blood was upon my head; and if, in that hour when the thought of her untimely death was so keen and unendurable an agony, she could have appeared suddenly before me, I think I should have thrown myself at her feet and offered her the devotion of my life, the legal right to bear my name.

“She did not so appear, and the hour passed. Upon the third morning, after a delay that had seemed an eternity of torture, the post brought me a letter from C. She was at E----, whither she had gone, after long brooding upon my inconstancy.

‘I will not try to tell you all I have suffered,’ she wrote; ‘my most passionate words would seem to you cold and meaningless when measured against those Greek poets whose verse is your standard for every feeling. I will only say you have broken my heart. My story begins and ends in that one sentence. There must come an end even to such worship as mine. Oh! H., you have been very cruel to me! I have seen you with the beautiful foreign lady, whose society has been pleasanter to you than mine. Your carriage drove past me one day, as I stood half-hidden by the bushes upon a sloping bank above the road, and I heard her joyous laugh, and saw your head bent over her long dark ringlets, and knew that you were happy with her.

‘From the hour in which I discovered how utterly you had deceived me, my life has been one continued struggle with despair. You do not know how I loved those whom I left for your sake. In all the passion and pain of your Greek poetry, I doubt if there is a sentence strong enough to express the agony that I feel when I think of those dear friends, and stretch out my arms to them across the gulf that yawns between us. You read me a description of the ghosts in the dark under-world one day, before you had grown too weary of me to let me share your thoughts. I feel like those ghosts, H.

‘Why should I tire you with a long letter? I leave you free to find happiness with the lady whose name even I do not know.

‘Perhaps some day, when you are growing old, and have become weary of all the pleasures upon earth, you will think a little more tenderly of her who thought it a small thing to peril her soul in the hope of giving you happiness, and who awoke from her fond, foolish dream, to find, with anguish unspeakable, that the sacrifice had been as vain as it was wicked.’

“This letter melted me; and yet I was inclined to be angry with C. for the unnecessary pain her abrupt disappearance had inflicted upon me. I was divided between this feeling and the relief of mind afforded by the knowledge that my folly had not resulted in any fatal event. She had gone to E---- in a fit of jealousy, and she favoured me with the usual feminine reproaches so natural to the narrow female intellect--imagine a _man_ reminding his friend at every turn of the sacrifices he had made for friendship!--and she sent me the address of that humble inn where she had taken up her abode, and of course expected me to hasten thither as fast as post-horses could convey me.

“Nothing could be more hackneyed than the end of the little romance. I will not say that I was capable of feeling disappointed because the poor child had not drowned herself; but I confess that this commonplace turn which the affair had taken, grated on my sense of the poetical. It is possible that I had indeed learnt to measure everything by the standard of Greek verse; certain it is that it seemed a sinking in poetry to descend from Sappho’s fatal leap to a commercial-travellers’ tavern at E----.

‘I will start for E---- to-morrow morning,’ I said to myself; but without enthusiasm.

“Had I rescued my love from all-devouring ocean--had I found her wandering half-crazed upon the mountains, like that lorn maiden whom even savage beasts compassionated, when she roamed disconsolate, crying,

‘Tall grow the forest trees, O Menalcas,’--

I think I should have taken her to my heart of hearts, and sacrificed my freedom to secure her happiness. But this departure for E----, and the long reproachful letter, savoured of calculation; and against the manœuvres of feminine diplomacy I wore the armour of experience.

“I ordered post-horses for the following morning, and then set off in the direction of my friend’s hunting-lodge. ‘My bosom’s lord sat lightly on his throne,’ relieved from the burden of a great terror; but poor C.’s dreary letter was not calculated to put me in high spirits, and I hastened to refresh myself with the society of the sparkling Carlitz.

“I languished for the frivolous talk of people and places I knew--the _olla-podrida_ of sentiments and fancies, facts and fictions, spiced with that dash of originality, or at the least audacity, wherewith an accomplished woman of the world flavours her small-talk. Lightly and swiftly I trod the hill-side, pleased when the blue smoke curling from the familiar chimneys met my eager eyes.

‘Is it possible that I am in love with this woman?’ I asked myself, wonderingly.

“And then I remembered my despair and terror of yesterday, and the fond regret with which I had thought of poor C., yearning to clasp her to my heart, to promise eternal fidelity.

“The hour had passed. I tried in vain to recall the feeling. I felt that it was more worthy of me than the fickle fancy which led me to the feet of Madame Carlitz; but man is the creature of circumstance, and my best feelings had been _froissé_ by the conventional aspect which C.’s flight had assumed.

“A deep-mouthed thunder greeted me as I entered E. T.’s domain, the bass bow-wowing of some canine monster.

‘What new fancy?’ I asked myself, as a huge mastiff ran out at me, and made as if he would have rent me limb from limb. I was half inclined to seat myself on the ground, after the example of Ulysses, and the accomplished Mure of Cladwell; but before the creature could commence operations a familiar voice called to him, and E. T. himself emerged from the porch.

‘My dear H.,’ he exclaimed, ‘what an unexpected felicity! I thought you were at Vienna.’

‘Indeed! I cried, somewhat piqued. ‘Has not Madame Carlitz told you of my whereabouts?’

‘I have not seen her.’

‘You have not seen her!’ I exclaimed, in utter bewilderment.

‘No. Madame left yesterday morning with Mr. and Mrs. H. I only arrived last night. Come indoors, old fellow, and let us hear your adventures since our last meeting.

“I followed my friend across the little hall into the bare, tobacco-scented, bachelor sitting-room. The enchanter’s wand had been waived a second time, and the fairy vision had melted into thin air. Tiny dogs, dainty and fragile as animated Dresden china, ribbon-adorned guitar, satin-lined work-baskets, velvet-bound blotting-books, _déjeûners_ in old Vienna porcelain, card-bowl of priceless Worcester, leopard-skins, lounging-chairs, _portière_, and French prints had vanished; and in the place which these frivolities had embellished, I beheld the bare battered writing-table and shabby smoking-apparatus of my reckless friend, who stood with his arms a-kimbo, and a tawny-hided bull-dog between his legs, grinning--man and dog both, as it seemed to me--at my discomfiture.

‘What!’ cried E., ‘it was for the divine Carlitz your visit was intended? My shepherd told me there had been a fine London gentleman hanging about the place while madame and her following were here; but he could not tell me the fine gentleman’s name, and I little thought you were he. Come, my dear boy, fill yourself a pipe, and let’s talk over old times. You’ve been buried among your dryasdust books, I suppose, while I have been scouring Northern Europe in pursuit of the rapid reindeer and the sulky salmon.’

‘We’ll talk as much as you like presently,’ I replied, ‘but just let me understand matters first. When I left madame and the H.’s the other night, it was understood they were to remain here some time longer. What took her to town?--is the Bonbonnière season to begin?’

‘The Bonbonnière! My dear friend, this is really dreadful. The lamentable state of ignorance which results from the cultivation of polite learning is, to a plain man, something astounding. Learn, my benighted recluse, that the Bonbonnière Theatre will be opened for the performance of the legitimate drama early next month by the great Mackenzie, who inaugurates his season with the thrilling tragedy of _Coriolanus_, so interesting to the youthful mind from its association with the pleasing studies of boyhood. Madame Carlitz has sold her lease of the pretty little theatre; and on very advantageous terms, I assure you.’

‘She has sold her lease! Does she intend to leave the stage, or to take a larger theatre?’

‘She intends to do neither the one nor the other. She appears on a grander stage, and in an entirely new character. She is going to marry Lord V.’

‘Impossible!’

‘An established fact, my dear boy. The noble earl, as the fashionable journalists call him, has been nibbling at the enchantress’s bait for the last twelve months--rather a difficult customer to land, you know--turned sulky when he felt the hook in his jaw, and got away among the rushes; but Carlitz used her gaff, and brought him to land. And now the talk of the town is their impending union. The great ladies _de par le monde_ intend to cut her, I believe; but Carlitz has announced her intention of taking the initiative, and cutting _them_. “I shall cultivate the foreign legations,” she told little J. C. of the F. O., “and make myself independent of our home nobility.” And, egad, she is capable of doing it! She is like Robespierre,--_elle ira loin_,--because she believes in herself.’

‘But Carlitz!’ I gasped; ‘has she got a divorce?’

‘My benighted friend, the decease of M. Carlitz, or Don Estephan Carlitz, of the Spanish wine-trade, is an event as notorious in modern history as the demise of that respectable sovereign, Queen Anne. He died three months ago at the Cape, whence it was his habit to import that choice Amontillado in which he dealt. Madame was prompt to improve the occasion offered by her widowhood; but I have heard it whispered that the noble earl made it a condition that she should clear herself of debt before--to continue the fashionable journalist’s phrase--he led her to the hymeneal altar. Of course you are aware that the noble earl is amongst the meanest of mankind.’

“Yes, I knew V., a little middle-aged man, suspected of wearing a wig, and renowned for harmless eccentricities in the way of amateur coach-building. Alas, what perfidy! Those bright, sympathetic glances, those tender smiles, those low tremulous tones, had been all a part of one coldly-calculated design--the ladylike extortion of so much ready money from the pockets of weak, adoring youth. The divine Estelle had been all this time the plighted wife of Lord V., and had traded upon my admiration in order to secure the means of purchasing a coronet.

“I burst into a savage laugh, and when E. pressed me with questions, I told him the whole story. He, too, laughed aloud, but with evident enjoyment. And then he told me how my wily enchantress had borrowed his rustic retreat, and had come to these remote fastnesses in order to exasperate poor vacillating V. into a tangible offer, and how she had succeeded.

‘I was staying with another fellow further south,’ said my friend, ‘and received a few lines from madame the day before yesterday, resigning possession of my shanty, and announcing her approaching espousals; “you must come for the shooting at the Towers next autumn,” she said, in her postscript. Begins to patronize already, you see.’

“After this E. insisted on detaining me to dine with him. Our dinner was ill-cooked, ill-served; and my friend’s conversation was a mixture of London gossip and Norwegian sporting experiences. How I loathed the empty, vapid talk! How I envied this mindless animal his barbarous pleasure in the extermination of other animals, little inferior to himself! I went back to my own quarters in a savage humour, and it seemed to me that my anger included all womankind.

‘I have been fooled and deluded by one woman,’ I said to myself; ‘I will not give myself a prey into the hands of another. C. has chosen to inaugurate our separation. I will not attempt to reverse her decision. My duty I am prepared to do; but I will do no more.’

“Thus resolved, I seated myself at my rough study-table, and wrote a long letter to C.--a very serious, and I think a sufficiently kind, letter--in which I set forth the state of my own feelings. ‘I had hoped that we should find perfect happiness in each other’s society,’ I wrote, in conclusion; ‘I need scarcely tell you that hope has been most cruelly disappointed. You were the first to show that our happiness was an impossibility. You have been the first to sever the tie which I had fondly believed would be lasting. I accept your decision; but I do not consider myself absolved from the duty of providing for your future. For myself, I shall leave Europe for a wilder and more interesting hemisphere, where I shall endeavour to find forgetfulness of the bitter disappointments that have befallen me here.’

“I then told C. how I designed immediately to open an account for her at a certain bank, upon which she would be at liberty to draw at the rate of four hundred a year.

‘Have no fear for the future,’ I wrote; ‘a lady with a settled income of four hundred a year can find friends in any quarter of the globe, and need never be troubled with impertinent inquiries about her antecedents. I shall always be glad to hear of your welfare; and if you will keep me acquainted with your whereabouts--letters addressed to the “Travellers” will always reach me--I shall make a point of seeking you out on my return to England.’

“This letter I despatched, and the chaise that was to have taken me to E---- took me to London, where I made the necessary arrangements with my banker, and whence I departed for a tour of exploration in South America.

“It was after two years’ absence that I returned to discover that the account opened in C.’s name had never been drawn upon. And thus ended the story that had opened like an idyll. I have sometimes feared that an unhappy fate must have overtaken this poor foolish girl, and my recollection of her is not unmixed with remorse. But I have reflected that it was more likely her beauty had secured her an advantageous marriage, and that she was unable to avail herself of the provision I had made for her.

“I instituted a careful inquiry, in the hope of discovering her fate, but without result. Her parents at B---- were both dead--strange fatality!--and from no other source could I obtain tidings of my poor C. M. Thus ended my brief, broken love-story. It was with a feeling of relief that I told myself it had thus ended; for I could but remember that the course of events might have taken a very different turn, and one for me most embarrassing.

“If C. had been a woman of the world, or if she had fallen into the hands of some legal adventurer, I might have found myself fixed with a wife, and bound by a chain not to be broken on this side the grave. As it is, I retain my freedom, and only in my most pensive and sombre hours does the pale shadow of that half-forgotten love arise before me, gently reproachful.

“And in these rare intervals of life’s busy conflict, when the press and hurry give pause, and I sit alone in my tent, the words of the poor child’s letter come back to me with a strange significance. _Perhaps some day, when you are growing old and have become weary of all the pleasures upon earth, you will think a little more tenderly of her who thought it a small thing to peril her soul in the hope of giving you happiness._

“Life’s intricate journey has so many crossroads. Who can tell whether he has not sometimes taken the wrong turning? Should I have been happier if I had given G. a legal right to bore me for the remainder of my existence? Happier! For me there is no such possibility. To be happier, a man must first be happy; and happiness is a bright phantom which I have vainly pursued for the last fifteen years. I should at best have been differently miserable.

“I am still free, and I meet the lovely Lady V. in that seventh heaven of the great world to which she has contrived to push her way, and she gives me a patronizing smile and a lofty inclination of her beautiful head; and it is tacitly agreed between us that our rambles and picnics beneath the snow-clad hills are to be as the dreams of days that never were.”

Here the _Disappointments of Dion_ lost its chief interest for Eustace Thorburn, for here the record of his mother’s hapless love ended. Beyond this, and to the very close, he had read the book carefully, weighing every sentence, for it was the epitome of his father’s character. In every line there was egotism, in every page the confession of energies and talents wasted in the pursuit of personal gratification. For ever and for ever, the weary wretch pursues the same worthless prize--the prize more difficult of attainment than the new world of a Columbus, or the new planet of a Herschel. With less pains a man might achieve a result that would be a lasting heritage for his fellow-men, and might die with the proud boast of Ulysses on his lips--“I am become a name!”

Through fair and sunny Italy; in wild Norseland; in the granite and marble palaces of St. Petersburg; nay, beyond Caucasian mounts and valleys; amid the ruins of Persepolis; across the sandy wastes, and by the snow-clad mountains of Afghanistan; deep into the heart of Hindustan,--the worldling had pursued his phantom prey; and everywhere, in civilized city or in tiger-haunted jungle, the hunter after happiness found only disappointment.

“A tiger-hunt is the dreariest thing imaginable,” he wrote; “it is all waiting and watching, and prowling and lurking behind bushes; a dastardly, sneaking business, which makes one feel more ignoble than the tiger. For genuine excitement the race for the Derby is better; and a man can enjoy a fever of expectation at Epsom which he cannot equal in Bengal.”

And anon; “That most musical and meretricious of poets, Thomas Moore, has a great deal to answer for. I have been all through the East in search of his Light of the Harem, and have found only darkness, or the merest rushlights, the faintest twinkling tapers that ever glimmered through their brief span. And so I return disappointed from the Eastern world, to seek new disappointments in the West.”