Warlock o' Glenwarlock: A Homely Romance

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE NAIAD

At length Cosmo was able to go out, and Joan did not let him go by himself. For several days he walked only a very little, but sat a good deal in the sun, and rapidly recovered strength. At last, one glorious morning of summer, they went out together, intending to have a real little walk.

Lady Joan had first made sure that her brother was occupied in his laboratory, but still she dared not lead her patient to any part of the garden or grounds ever visited by him. She took him, therefore, through walks, some of them wide, and bordered with stately trees, but all grown with weeds and moss, to the deserted portion with which he had already made a passing acquaintance. There all lay careless of the present, hopeless of the future, and hardly dreaming of the past. It was long since foot of lady had pressed these ancient paths, long since laugh or merry speech had been heard in them. Nothing is lovelier than the result of the half-neglect which often falls upon portions of great grounds, when the owner's fancy has changed, and his care has turned to some newer and more favoured spot; when there is moss on the walks, but the weeds are few and fine; when the trees stand in their old honour, yet no branch is permitted to obstruct a path; when flowers have ceased to be sown or planted, but those that bloom are not disregarded; while yet it is only through some stately door that admission is gained, and no chance foot is free to stray in. But here it was altogether different. That stage of neglect was long past. The place was ragged, dirty, overgrown. There was between the picture I have drawn and this reality, all the painful difference between stately and beautiful matronhood, and the old age that, no longer capable of ministering to its own decencies, has grown careless of them.

"At this time of the day there is plenty of sun here." said his nurse, in a tone that seemed to savour of apology.

"I think," said Cosmo, "the gardener told me some parts of the grounds were better kept than this."

"Yes," answered Joan, "but none of them are anything like what they should be. My brother is so poor."

"I don't believe you know what it is to be poor," said Cosmo.

"Oh, don't I!" returned Joan with a sigh. "You see Constantine requires for his experiments all the little money the trustees allow."

"I know this part," said Cosmo. "I made acquaintance with it the last thing as I was growing ill. It looks to me so melancholy! If I were here, I should never rest till I had with my own hands got it into some sort of order."

"Are you as strong as you used to be, Cosmo—I mean when you are well?" asked Joan, willing to change the direction of the conversation.

"A good deal stronger, I hope," answered Cosmo. "But I am glad it is not just this moment, for then I should have no right to be leaning on you, Joan."

"Do you like to lean on me, Cosmo?"

"Indeed I do; I am proud of it!—But tell me why you don't take me to a more cheerful part."

She made him no answer. He looked in her face. It was very pale, and tears were in her eyes.

"Must I tell you, Cosmo?" she said.

"No, certainly, if you would rather not."

"But you might think it something wrong."

"I should never imagine you doing anything wrong, Joan."

"Then I must tell you, lest it should be wrong.—My brother does not know that you are here."

Now Cosmo had never imagined that Lord Mergwain did not know he was at the castle. It was true he had not come to see him, but nothing was simpler if Lord Mergwain desired to see Cosmo as little as Cosmo desired, from his recollection of him at Castle Warlock, to see Lord Mergwain. It almost took from him what little breath he had to learn that he had been all this time in a man's house without his knowledge. No doubt, in good sense and justice, the house was Joan's too, however little the male aristocracy may be inclined to admit such a statement of rights, but there must be some one at the head of things, and, however ill he might occupy it, that place was naturally his lordship's, and he had at least a right to know who was in the house. Huge discomfort thereupon invaded Cosmo, and a restless desire to be out of the place. His silence frightened Joan.

"Are you very angry with me, Cosmo," she said.

"Angry! No, Joan! How could I be angry with you? Only it makes me feel myself where I have no business to be—rather like a thief in fact."

"Oh, I am so sorry! But what could I do? You don't know my brother, or you would not wonder. He seems to have a kind of hatred to your family!—I do not in the least know why. Could my father have said anything about you that he misunderstood?—But no, that could not be!—And yet my father did say he knew your house many years before!"

"I don't care how Lord Mergwain regards me," said Cosmo; "what angers me is that he should behave so to you that you dare not tell him a thing. Now I AM sorry I came without writing to you first!—I don't know though!—and I can't say I am sorry I was taken ill, for all the trouble I have been to you; I should never have known otherwise how beautiful and good you are."

"I'm not good! and I'm not beautiful!" cried Joan, and burst into tears of humiliation and sore—heartedness. What a contrast was their house and its hospitality, she thought, to those in which Cosmo lived one heart and one soul with his father!

"But," she resumed the next moment, wiping away her tears, "you must not think I have no right to do anything for you. My father left all his personal property to me, and I know there was money in his bureau, saved up for me—I KNOW it; and I know too that my brother took it! I said never a word about it to him or any one—never mentioned the subject before; but I can't have you feeling as if you had been taking what I had no right to give!"

They had come to the dry fountain, with its great cracked basin, in the centre of which stood the parched naiad, pouring an endless nothing from her inverted vase. Forsaken and sad she looked. All the world had changed save her, and left her a memorial of former thoughts, vanished ways, and forgotten things: she, alas! could not alter, must be still the same, the changeless centre of change. All the winters would beat upon her, all the summers would burn her; but never more would the glad water pour plashing from her dusty urn! never more would the birds make showers with their beating wings in her cool basin! The dead leaves would keep falling year after year to their rest, but she could not fall, must, through the slow ages, stand, until storm and sunshine had wasted her atom by atom away.

On the broad rim of the basin they sat down. Cosmo turned towards the naiad, such thoughts as I have written throbbing in his brain like the electric light in an exhausted receiver, Joan with her back to the figure, and her eyes on the ground, thinking Cosmo brooded vexed on his newly discovered position. It was a sad picture. The two were as the type of Nature and Art, the married pair, here at strife—still together, but only the more apart—Oberon and Titania, with ruin all about them. Through the straggling branches appeared the tottering dial of Time where not a sun-ray could reach it; for Time himself may well go to sleep where progress is but disintegration. Time himself is nothing, does nothing; he is but the medium in which the forces work. Time no more cures our ills, than space unites our souls, because they cross it to mingle.

Had Cosmo suspected Joan's thought, he would have spoken; but the urn of the naiad had brought back to him his young thoughts and imaginations concerning the hidden source of the torrent that rushed for ever along the base of Castle Warlock: the dry urn was to him the end of all life that knows not its source—therefore, when the water of its consciousness fails, cannot go back to the changeless, ever renewing life, and unite itself afresh with the self-existent, parent spring. A moment more and he began to tell Joan what he was thinking—gave her the whole metaphysical history of the development in him of the idea of life in connection with the torrent and its origin ever receding, like a decoy-hope that entices us to the truth, until at length he saw in God the one only origin, the fountain of fountains, the Father of all lights—that is, of all things, and all true thoughts.

"If there were such an urn as that," he said, pointing to the naiad's, "ever renewing the water inside it without pipe or spring, there would be what we call a miracle, because, unable to follow the appearance farther back, we should cease thought, and wonder only in the presence of the making God. And such an urn would be a true picture of the heart of God, ever sending forth life of itself, and of its own will, into the consciousness of us receiving the same."

He grew eloquent, and talked as even Joan had never heard him before. And she understood him, for the lonely desire after life had wrought, making her capable. She felt more than ever that he was a messenger to her from a higher region, that he had come to make it possible for her to live, to enlarge her being, that it might no more be but the half life of mere desire after something unknown and never to be attained.

Suddenly, with that inexplicable breach in the chain of association over which the electric thought seems to leap, as over a mighty void of spiritual space, Cosmo remembered that he had not yet sent the woman whose generous trust had saved him from long pangs of hunger, the price of her loaf. He turned quickly to Joan: was not this a fresh chance of putting trust in her? What so precious thing between two lives as faith? It is even a new creation in the midst of the old. Would he not be wrong to ask it from another? And ask it he must; for there was the poor woman, on whom he had no claim of individual, developed friendship, in want of her money! Would he not feel that Joan wronged him, if she asked some one else for any help he could give her? He told her therefore the whole story of his adventures on his way to her, and ending said,

"Lend me a half-sovereign—please—to put in a letter for the first woman. I will find something for the girl afterwards."

Joan burst into tears. It was some time before she could speak, but at last she told him plainly that she had no money, and dared not ask her brother, because he would want to know first what she meant to do with it.

"Is it possible?" cried Cosmo. "Why, my father would never ask me what I wanted a little money for!"

"And you would be sure to tell him without his asking!" returned Joan. "But I dare not tell Constantine. Last week I could have asked him, because then, for your sake, I would have told a lie; but I dare not do that now."

She did not tell him she gave her last penny to a beggar on the road the day he came, or that she often went for months without a coin in her pocket.

Cosmo was so indignant he could not speak; neither must he give shape in her hearing to what he thought of her brother. She looked anxiously in his face.

"Dear Cosmo," she said, "do not be angry with me. I will borrow the money from the housekeeper. I have never done such a thing, but for your sake I will. You shall send it to-morrow."

"No, no, dearest Joan!" cried Cosmo. "I will not hear of such a thing. I should be worse than Lord Mergwain to lay a feather on the burden he makes you carry."

"I shouldn't mind it MUCH. It would be sweet to hurt my pride for your sake."

"Joan, if you do," said Cosmo, "I will not touch it. Don't trouble your dear heart about it. God is taking care of the woman as well as of us. I will send it afterwards."

They sat silent—Cosmo thinking how he was to escape from this poverty-stricken grandeur to his own humble heaven—as poor, no doubt, but full of the dignity lacking here. He knew the state of things at home too well to imagine his father could send him the sum necessary without borrowing it, and he knew also how painful that would be to him who had been so long a borrower ever struggling to pay.

Joan's eyes were red with weeping when at length she looked pitifully in his face. Like a child he put both his arms about her, seeking to comfort her. Sudden as a flash came a voice, calling her name in loud, and as it seemed to Cosmo, angry tones. She turned white as the marble on which they sat, and cast a look of agonized terror on Cosmo.

"It is Constantine!" said her lips, but hardly her voice.

The blood rushed in full tide from Cosmo's heart, as it had not for many a day, and coloured all his thin face. He drew himself up, and rose with the look of one ready for love's sake to meet danger joyously. But Joan threw her arms round him now, and held him.

"No, no!" she said; "—this way! this way!" and letting him go, darted into the pathless shrubbery, sure he would follow her.

Cosmo hated turning his back on any person or thing, but the danger here was to Joan, and he must do as pleased her. He followed instantly.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE GARDEN-HOUSE

She threaded and forced her way swiftly through the thick-grown shrubs, regardless of thorns and stripping twigs. It was a wilderness for many yards, but suddenly the bushes parted, and Cosmo saw before him a neglected building, overgrown with ivy, of which it would have been impossible to tell the purpose, for it was the product of a time when everything was made to look like something else. The door of it, thick with accumulated green paint, stood half open, as if the last who left it had failed in a feeble endeavour to shut it. Like a hunted creature Joan darted in, and up the creaking stair before her. Cosmo followed, every step threatening to give way under him.

The place was two degrees nearer ruin than his room. Great green stains were on the walls; plaster was lying here and there in a heap; the floors, rotted everywhere with damp, were sinking in all directions. Yet there had been no wanton destruction, for the glass in the windows was little broken. Merest neglect is all that is required to make of both man and his works a heap; for will is at the root of well-being, and nature speedily resumes what the will of man does not hold against her.

At the top of the stair, Joan turned into a room, and keeping along the wall, went cautiously to the window, and listened.

"I don't think he will venture here," she panted. "The gardener tells me his lordship seems as much afraid of the place as he and the rest of them. I don't mind it much—in the daytime.—You are never frightened, Cosmo!"

As she spoke, she turned on him a face which, for all the speed she had made, was yet pale as that of a ghost.

"I don't pretend never to be frightened," said Cosmo; "all I can say is, I hope God will help me not to turn my back on anything, however frightened I may be."

But the room he was in seemed to him the most fearful place he had ever beheld. His memory of the spare room at home, with all its age and worn stateliness and evil report, showed mere innocence beside this small common-looking, square room. If a room dead and buried for years, then dug up again, be imaginable, that is what this was like. It was furnished like a little drawing-room, and many of the niceties of work and ornament that are only to be seen in a lady's room, were yet recognizable here and there, for everything in it was plainly as it had been left by the person who last occupied it. But the aspect of the whole was indescribably awful. The rottenness and dust and displacement by mere decay, looked enough to scare even the ghosts, if they had any scare left in them. No doubt the rats had at one time their share in the destruction, but it was long since they had forsaken the house. There was no disorder. The only thing that looked as if the room had been abandoned in haste, was the door of a closet standing wide open. The house had a worse repute than ghost could give it—worse than Joan knew, for no one had ever told her what must add to her father's discredit.

Something in a corner of the closet just mentioned, caught Cosmo's eye, and he had taken one step towards it, when a sharp moan from the lips of his companion arrested him. He turned, saw her face agonized with fresh fear, and was rushing to the window, when she ran AT him, pushed him back, and stood shaking. He thought she would have fallen, and supported her. They stood listening speechless, with faces like two moons in the daytime. Presently Cosmo heard the rustling of twigs, and the sounds of back-swinging branches. These noises came nearer and nearer. Joan gazed with expanding eyes of terror in Cosmo's face, as if anywhere else she must see what would kill her.

"Joan!" cried the same voice Cosmo had heard in the garden. She shook, and held so to Cosmo's arm that she left as sure marks of her fingers there as ever did ghost. The sympathy of her fear invaded him. He would have darted to meet the enemy, but she would not let him go. The shudder of a new resolve passed through her, and she began to pull him towards the closet. Involuntarily for a moment he resisted, for he feared the worse risk to her; but her action and look were imperative, and he yielded.

They entered the closet and he pulled the door to close it upon them. It resisted; he pulled harder; a rusted hinge gave way, and the door dropped upon its front corner, so that he had partly to lift it to get it to. Just as he succeeded, Joan's name on the voice of her fear echoed awfully through the mouldy silences of the house. In the darkness of the closet, where there was just room for two to stand, she clung like a child to Cosmo, trembling in his arms like one in a fit of the ague. It is mournful to think what a fear many men are to the women of their house. The woman-fear in the world is one of its most pitiful outcries after a saviour.

Hesitating steps were heard below. They went from one to another of the rooms, then began to ascend the stair.

"Now, Joan," said Cosmo, holding her to him, "whatever you do, keep quiet. Don't utter a sound. Please God, I will take care of you."

She pressed his shoulder, but did not speak.

The steps entered the room. Both Cosmo and Joan seemed to feel the eyes that looked all about it. Then the steps came towards the closet. Now was the decisive moment! Cosmo was on the point of bursting out, with the cry of a wild animal, when something checked him, and suddenly he made up his mind to keep still to the very last. He put a hand on the lock, and pressed the door down against the floor. In the faint light that came through the crack at the top of it, he could see the dark terror of Joan's eyes fixed on his face. A hand laid hold of the lock, and pulled, and pulled, but in vain. Probably then Mergwain saw that the door was fallen from its hinge. He turned the key, and the door had not altered its position too far for his locking them in. Then they heard him go down the stair, and leave the house.

"He's not gone far!" said Cosmo. "He will have this closet open presently. You heard him lock it! We must get out of it at once! Please, let me go, Joan, dear! I must get the door open."

She drew back from him as far as the space would allow. He put his shoulder to the door, and sent it into the middle of the room with a great crash, then ran and lifted it.

"Come, Joan! Quick!" he cried. "Help me to set it up again."

The moment something was to be done, Joan's heart returned to her. In an instant they had the door jammed into its place, with the bolt in the catch as Mergwain had left it.

"Now," said Cosmo, "we must get down the stair, and hide somewhere below, till he passes, and comes up here again."

They ran to the kitchen, and made for a small cellar opening off it. Hardly were they in it when they heard him re-enter and go up the stair. The moment he was safely beyond them, they crept out, and keeping close to the wall of the house, went round to the back of it, and through the thicket to a footpath near, which led to the highway. It was a severe trial to Cosmo's strength, now that the excitement of adventure had relaxed, and left him the weaker. Again and again Joan had to urge him on, but as soon as she judged it safe, she made him sit, and supported him.

"I believe," she said, "that wretched man of his has put him up to it. Constantine has found out something. I would not for the world he should learn all! You don't know—you are far too good to know what he would think—yes, and tell me to my face! It was not an easy life with my father, Cosmo, but I would rather be with him now, wherever he is, than go on living in that house with my brother."

"What had we better do?" said Cosmo, trying to hide his exhaustion.

"I am going to take you to the Jermyns'. They are the only friends I have. Julia will be kind to you for my sake. I will tell them all about it. Young Dr. Jermyn knows already."

Alas, it was like being let down out of paradise into purgatory! But when we cannot stay longer in paradise, we must, like our first parents, make the best of our purgatory.

"You will be able to come and see me, will you not, Joan," he said sadly.

"Yes, indeed!" she answered. "It will be easier in some ways than before. At home I never could get rid of the dread of being found out. As soon as I get you safe in, I must hurry home. Oh, dear! how shall I keep clear of stories! Only, when you are safe, I shall not care so much."

In truth, although she had seemed to fear all for herself, her great dread had been to hear Cosmo abused.

"What you must have gone through for me!" said Cosmo. "It makes me ache to think of it!"

"It will be only pleasant to look back upon, Cosmo," returned Joan with a sad smile. "But oh for such days again as we used to have on the frozen hills! There are the hills again every winter, but will the old days ever come again, Cosmo?"

"The old days never come again," answered Cosmo. "But do you know why, Joan?"

"No," murmured Joan, very sadly.

"Because they would be getting in the way of the new better days, whose turn it is," replied Cosmo. "You tell God, Joan, all about it; he will give us better days than those. To some, no doubt, it seems absurd that there should be a great hearing Life in the world; but it is what you and I need so much that we don't see how, by any possibility, to get on without it! It cannot well look absurd to us! And if you should ever find you canNOT pray any more, tell me, and I will try to help you. I don't think that time will ever come to me. I can't tell—but always hitherto, when I have seemed to be at the last gasp, things have taken a turn, and it has grown possible to go on again."