CHAPTER V.

CURED.

The chief feeling that I experienced when I came to review the events of that evening, was, that my unexpected encounter with Cave Charteris seemed to have dragged my mother out of her grave again. Until that moment I had believed that, little by little, I was learning to bear my great loss with hope and patience, if not with cheerful resignation. I had begun to think of my darling as in another and better world than this—if not actually in heaven, at least amongst the redeemed, willing to wait the moment of her perfection, and entirely separated from all earthly pain and trouble.

I had commenced to lose sense of the waking nightmare that had haunted me for so many weeks after her funeral; of the sight of the dead pinched face under the shrouding sheet; the waxen hands folded stiffly on her sunken breast; and over it all those horrid heavy clods of clay, the rattle of which upon her coffin lid would echo in my heart, I verily believed, until they fell upon my own. I felt the loss of her counsel, her companionship, and her love as keenly—perhaps more keenly than when I had been first deprived of them; but I thought that time had cured me of the terrible human anguish with which I had laid her in the grave. But now it was all revived. The sight of Cave Charteris had brought it back again; brought back the memory of her maternal interest in him, her confidence in his affection for me, and her self-reproach when we discovered that his attentions meant nothing, that she had not better guarded her one ewe lamb from the deceitfulness of the world.

I sat down in my room, and tried to disentangle my thoughts from my present position and cast them back to that period when Mr. Charteris had been so intimate with us at Norwood, and to see if my riper judgment could acquit him of having wantonly played with my affections. But I remembered it all too plainly, and I could find no excuse for his behaviour. He had not had the plea of extreme youth to exonerate his want of thought. He was five-and-twenty, and I nineteen. He must have known in what light his persistent intimacy would have been accepted by my mother and myself. Besides, though he had never mentioned the subject of marriage, he had told me, over and over again, that he loved me, and hinted in every possible way at the probability of a future spent together.

It was the old story—he had loved and ridden away; and, for many months after his defection, I had sincerely believed my grief to be incurable. I was very young and innocent at that period, and credited my darling mother with cold-heartedness when she told me that a woman might love more than once in a lifetime, and better the second time than the first. I had been reared close to her side, and knew nothing of the wickedness of the world nor the elasticity of the human heart. I was one of those girls who believe that it is impossible for a married woman to flirt, or an engaged woman to break her word, without being branded with public scorn; and a great deal of my grief for Cave Charteris’s desertion was due to the humiliating idea that my neighbours had observed his attentions, and considered me degraded by the loss of them.

This sort of unworldly ignorance did not long continue. I was not stupid, and as my girlhood merged into womanhood, my eyes became opened to the depravity of the human race; and I learned to despise Cave Charteris instead of myself, and to see that he had been utterly unworthy of the affection and admiration I had lavished upon him.

Yet the romance of my first disappointment continued to haunt and vex me, long after common sense had bid me rejoice at the escape I had had from marrying a man who was false as well as fickle.

It may be remembered how difficult a task I found it to tell the history of my heart to poor dear Charlie Sandilands, when he came to see me at Norwood, on the day after my mother’s funeral. It was the false sentiment that still hung about Cave Charteris’s hair and eyes and voice, that made the task so difficult. I would not have taken the man back to my affections at that moment, if he had crawled to my feet to sue for forgiveness, because I knew him to have been utterly heartless with regard to me—yet I could have cried over a letter from him, or a lock of his hair, or an old glove that he had worn, simply because they reminded me of the faith which I had cherished and lost.

Women and men are very different in this respect. Where a man’s trust has been betrayed, he becomes hard and bitter, and thrusts from him, as far as possible, everything likely to bring the loss which he has sustained to his mind again. A woman may be as disinclined to pardon as himself—as determined never again to be deceived, but she cannot give up, all at once, every little tender memory that made her dead life so much brighter than her living one. She takes the ring off her finger—the hair from her locket—but she does not throw them away. They are like the dead to her. They have no more part in her existence, but they are sacred, and she covers them up with tears and prayers, as we strew rue and rosemary upon our corpses.

So, long after my own sense of what was good and true had condemned my weakness in shedding one tear for Cave Charteris, the beauty and animation and charm of manner which had first enthralled me continued to exercise their baneful influence over my mind. I had seen that beauty again to-day and heard that voice, and what did I think of them, looking and hearing with eyes and ears that had been healed of love’s sickness? Well! he was very handsome, very handsome indeed; there was no doubt of that! I remembered having heard it said, in olden days, that he had been painted by one of the Royal Academicians as ‘Jason,’ and having been very anxious to see the picture for which he stood.

I could well imagine that he had made an excellent model for ‘Jason.’ He was tall, but not too tall: men over six feet in height are seldom well proportioned. His characteristics were strictly Saxon. He had yellowish hair, cropped close to his head in soldier fashion: china blue eyes—not large, but very keen and piercing: a ruddy complexion, and finely-shaped nose and mouth. The worst fault in his appearance was the light colour of his eyebrows and lashes: and the worst fault in his expression was a look of animalism, which I seemed never to have noticed until I sat down in my own chamber and taxed my mental vision to view my old lover by the light of the new eyes with which I had regarded him that evening.

It was not only because I remembered his behaviour to myself that the expression of his face had seemed cruel to me, as he chattered so affably across the dinner-table. Five years’ self-indulgence had doubtless strengthened the outward signs of his inward character; but whether he had borne those signs in embryo when we were first acquainted, I could not then recall. If he had done so, I was probably too innocent to have interpreted them aright. But there was no mistake about them now.

I was considered to be an excellent judge of character, and I had examined Cave Charteris that evening as if he had been a perfect stranger to me; and read but too plainly, in the formation of his head and features, that though he might be as beautiful as the Adonis, his intellect was held in subjugation to his passions, and hatred or revenge would have the power to turn him from a polished man of the world into a brute.

As I came to this conclusion, deliberately and without the least rancour in my mind against him, I called out aloud, ‘_Thank God!_’ for I felt that I was healed. As the poor diseased and dying creatures whom we read of in the Holy Scriptures touched the hem of the King’s garment, and experienced an immediate cure, so, in one moment, the conviction dawned upon me that what I had been fearing was a mere ‘bogey,’ raised by the shock of Mr. Charteris’s sudden appearance amongst us; and, save for a slight feeling of shame that I should have troubled my head about him for so long, I should be able to meet him on the following morning with an outstretched hand and a heart full of gratitude for my deliverance.

Tessie had suggested, as I parted with her, that in a few days I might congratulate myself on having met him again. But a few hours had elapsed since then, and I was already full of self-congratulations. For, had I _not_ encountered him, I might have gone on nursing my sickly sentimental memory of the past, until the grave swallowed me and it together.

I felt such a sudden transition from the melancholy despondency with which I had entered my chamber, to a state of freedom and whole-heartedness, that I could almost have passed to the opposite extreme, and sung, in the gratitude of my spirit. I was like a person who has burthened himself for half his life with carrying about a heavy bundle that nearly weighs him to the ground, but which he considers it imperative, on account of its value, not to part with; but who, unexpectedly discovering it is composed of worthless rubbish, casts it from his shoulders. How light and airy he must feel! How light and airy _I_ felt when I saw my bundle of rubbish at my feet!

My dearest mother was no longer under the sod then. She had risen again to paradise, and taken the place my love had assigned her amongst angels like herself.

I threw myself on my knees beside my bed, and prayed to her more than to Heaven, begging her to look down and see how earnest and sincere I was in saying I was cured, and had no regret on earth, excepting that _she_ was not there to rejoice with me.

I was so excited at my discovery, that I could not sleep until I had seen the girls again, and disimbued their minds of the idea that I was fretting in my solitude.

I opened my door, and looked down the corridor. The light was streaming in a thin line of silver beneath theirs. I stepped across, and entered gently. Tessie was already in bed and half-asleep; but Ange was leaning in her nightdress on the windowsill, with her pretty bare feet upon the uncarpeted floor.

‘Ange! Ange!’ I exclaimed, ‘you careless child! you will catch your death of cold some day, if you are not more prudent.’

‘Is that Hilda?’ asked Tessie, rousing herself at the sound of my voice. ‘Ange, why are you not in bed yet? It must be an hour since we came upstairs. And as for you, Hilda, I hoped you were fast asleep.’

The little maid coloured up at being detected dreaming in the moonlight, and jumped lightly into bed; whilst I approached to her sister’s side.

‘No, Tessie dear, I have not been to sleep; but I am all right again now, and I thought I would like to come and tell you so.’

‘Oh, I am very glad, Hilda! Ange and I have been very unhappy about you.’

‘I know you were; but it has all passed away. Mr. Charteris’s presence recalled my dear mother, and the days when she was with us, so powerfully to my mind, that I felt quite paralysed at seeing him; but that kind of thing cannot last, you know. I have taken the woman’s universal remedy—‘a good cry,’ and my brain and heart are cleared by it. I hope Mr. Charteris did not notice my manner; but he will find it quite different to-morrow morning.’

‘I don’t think he did,’ replied Tessie; ‘we talked a good deal of you when papa and he came back again—until the Baron arrived, in fact. Mr. Charteris does not seem to remember much about the time when he knew you before; but he thought it quite natural that the sight of him should bring the remembrance of your mother back to you.’

‘Did he get his horse?’ I asked cheerfully.

‘He has hired one for to-morrow, and Jacques Despard is going to get a lot of colts up from the valley for him to see and choose from. And only fancy, Hilda, when Arthur Thrale heard of the boar-hunt to-morrow, he would insist upon accompanying them! and the Baron says he cannot ride a bit, and is sure to be thrown. Don’t you think they ought to prevent his going?’

‘How can they prevent it?’ exclaimed Ange, ‘the Piron is open to everybody. And Mr. Charteris said it would do Arthur Thrale good to be thrown, and take some of his “_sheek_” out of him. What is “_sheek_,” Hilda?’

‘Has Arthur Thrale been here again?’ I said, too vexed to laugh at the little maid’s pronunciation; for since Mrs. Carolus had told me of his mother’s letter, I had had reason to suspect that some, at least, of the lad’s money was lost at our house.

‘Yes, he came in as usual. They have all been as happy as possible, playing cards together,’ replied Ange, with an air of complete innocence. ‘I could hardly take my eyes off dear papa’s face this evening. He did look so perfectly contented, sitting there with his friends! I think there must be very few people in this world who can “come down” as gracefully as he has—dear good old father! He, who has been used to a Court, and the society of the highest nobles and the greatest geniuses in the land, to be able to amuse himself in that way with one or two chance acquaintances! But it is all his goodness. He hardly ever complains. He is more like an angel than a man!’

This was the little maid’s favourite assertion, and usually she expected no answer to it. But on this occasion the silence of Tessie and myself seemed to strike her unpleasantly, and she reiterated her words in the form of a question:

‘Isn’t he more like an angel than a man, Tessie?’

‘Papa is certainly very good and contented,’ replied her sister, but she sighed as she said it. ‘I have often wondered that he does not more regret the scenes he has been accustomed to.’

‘My wonder is that he ever left them,’ I remarked. ‘Why he left England in the first instance to bury himself abroad, and the Court of Prussia, where I understand he was such a prime favourite, in the second.’

‘Because he is so good!’ cried Ange, determinately.

‘He had his own reasons for doing so, I have no doubt,’ added Tessie, quietly, ‘but he has never told them to us.’

‘Well, I am surprised to think he can prefer St. Pucelle, and what one may call the “scratch” congregation he musters here, to the life he has been accustomed to. Cards and gossip must be sorry exchanges for the gaiety, intellect, and society that compose a Court circle. Besides, I hate cards.’ I had made up my mind to say something more about the cards before long. ‘They appear to me very uninteresting if played for love, and they are certainly very dangerous when played for money.’

‘Do you think papa would do anything that is dangerous?’ exclaimed Ange, firing up in a moment.

‘Perhaps not, but what is safe for your father may be dangerous for others; such a boy as young Thrale, for instance.’

‘Ah! if he went playing with anybody—yes! but that is just a part of papa’s goodness. He will do what he does not care for himself, to oblige another person. I am sure Arthur Thrale’s company is a great bore to him, but he will never tell him so, if he can keep him out of harm.’

‘Oh, I see!’ I replied, and said no more.

Ange took my words for what they seemed to be, but when I bent down to kiss Tessie’s face, I found it wet with tears.

‘If you think it wrong for young Thrale to come here, tell him of it,’ she whispered, ‘for I cannot.’

I did not answer her in words, but I kissed her a second time and squeezed her hand in acquiescence, and she understood what I meant. I did not intend to speak to Mr. Thrale, of whom I knew too little to be entitled to take any liberty with, but I thought that, if an opportunity occurred, I should be able to muster up courage to mention the subject to the Baron.

As I lay down that night, the thought of dear old Charlie Sandilands came into my head, and I felt so glad to think that I had not known the state of my heart when he asked me to be his wife. Because, if I had, I might, in the lonely position in which he found me, have been tempted to resign all further trouble by accepting his offer. So many women have been drawn into marriage for want of money, or companionship, or protection. And I knew now, even better than I did then, that I never could have been even decently contented as Charlie Sandiland’s wife.

[Illustration: [Fleuron]]