My stay at Kerton Manor was drawing to a close. I had lingered there too long already, and letters from neglected relatives and friends came, reproachful, with every post. The day before I went, Guy called me into his study.

"Frank," he said, "I am in a great strait of perplexity; my uncle has been attacking me this morning about Isabel and Charley. Bruce puts him up to it, of course."

"I thought it would come; but why on earth did not Bruce speak to you, if not to Forrester, himself? Perhaps it was from delicacy, though. Let us hope so."

"How philanthropic we are!" Guy retorted. "I don't believe any other man would have spoken of delicacy and that rough-hewn log of Scotch-fir in the same breath. My dear boy, the thing is as simple as possible--the man is a coward. He is as careful of that precious person of his as if it were worth preserving, so he shoots his arrows from behind Uncle Henry's Telamonian shield. Nothing is so acute and right-judging as the instinct of fear. He knows that if he had a fancy for a quarrel, either Charley or I would be too happy to indulge him."

"He can't be such a dastard," I said.

"I am sure of it; but he is not the less dangerous for that. Such men are always the most unscrupulous in revenge. I have seen murder in his eyes a score of times in the last fortnight. If our lines had fallen in the pleasant Italian places, he would have invested twenty scudi long ago in hiring a dagger. As it is, civilization and the rural police stand our friends; but I have strongly advised Charley not to trust himself near him in cover. By G--d, I think, for once in his life, he would hold straight!"

"You don't like him, that's evident."

The pupils of Livingstone's eyes contracted ominously; a lurid flash shot out from under his black, bent brows, and there came on his lip that peculiar smile that we fancy on the face of Homeric heroes--more fell, and cruel, and terrible than even their own frown--just before they leveled the spear. He laid his broad hand, corded across with a net-work of tangled sinews, on the table before him, and the stout oak creaked and trembled.

"If I were to strangle him," he said, "as I constantly feel tempted to do, I believe I should deserve well of the state. But, with all that, I don't like plotting against him under my own roof; it strikes me that is a phase of hospitality not strictly Arabian. My mother laments over him already as hardly dealt with. Then Uncle Henry is a great difficulty. He is not in the least one of the light comedy fathers who, during two acts, stamps about with many strange oaths and stormy denials, but in the last yields to fate and _soubrettes_, says 'Bless you, my children!'

and hands out untold gold. There is no more appeal from his decisions than from Major A----'s. He dislikes Bruce, of course; but he would just as soon think of objecting to a partner at whist as to a son-in-law because he happened to be unprepossessing. When the poor little Iphigenia is sacrificed on the shrine of expediency, you will see him, not veiling his face but taking snuff with the calm grace that is peculiar to him. Arguing with such a man is a simple absurdity."

"I can not advise you," I answered, sadly; "but it seems hard on Miss Raymond, too."

"Of course it is," Livingstone broke in; "and the worst of it is, the poor child looks to me to help her. I can't bear to think of what her life would be if she married Bruce. He would be constantly retaliating on her for what he is suffering now--for he does suffer. A pleasant idea that she, who is only meant to be petted, should be set up as a target for his jealousy and ill-humor! She would never be able to stand it, and Charley wouldn't if she could; and then there would be a _denouement_ like that which ruined Ralph Mohun. If there _is_ to be a row, it had better come before than after marriage. It's more moral, and saves an infinity of trouble. I think Charley is better away, too, just now.

Parndon wants us both to stay with him. We'll go; and so my conscience will stand at ease for the present. When we are on neutral ground I can help them, or, at all events, 'let the justice of the king pa.s.s by.'"

"Have you spoken to Forrester yet?"

"No; but he will do as I advise, and temporize, I am sure, though he would hardly give up Bella, even if I asked him. He means business for once, evidently. They will have plenty of time to concert their plans before the summer. Charley wants no help in that. As to carrying them out--we shall see. Well, you will go to-morrow. I am very sorry, for all reasons. I hope you have not been much bored here. Kerton counts on you for next winter."

I need not give my answer. I felt really loth to go; but, fortunately for my peace of mind, I could not guess at the changes that would be wrought in the hopes, the intentions, the destinies of all of us before I should stand in the fine old manor-house again.

If adieus are painful in reality, they ate intensely stupid on paper--a landscape without a foreground--so I spare you next morning's leave-takings.

Guy had said nothing to his cousin then of the plan he had determined on. I was glad of it. I was glad not to see, at parting, her sweet face so sad as I am sure it became when she heard that she was to struggle against Brace's persecutions and her own antipathies unaided and alone.

I wandered through many counties, and then went to Ireland. During the next few months I saw the faces I had left behind me many times, but only in my dreams.

CHAPTER XVI.

"The only living thing he could not hate Was reft at once--and he deserved his fate, But did not feel it less; the good explore For peace, these realms where guilt can never soar; The proud--the wayward--who have fixed below Their joy, and find this earth enough for woe, Lose in that one their all--perchance a mite-- But who in patience parts with all delight?"

Pleasant days they were when, through the soft spring weather, I wandered round the coasts of Kerry, Clare, and Galway, hooking salmon in broad pools, where the vexed water rests a while from its labors under wooded cliffs, and at the tail of roaring rapids, specked with white foam-clots, or sea-trout in the estuaries where the great rivers hurry down to their stormy meeting with the Atlantic rollers.

Every where I met the frank, cheery welcome that you must cross the Channel to find in its perfection.

It is sad to see how widely over that fair land the abomination of desolation has cast its shadow. Many halls are tenantless besides those of Tara. The ancient owners of the soil--where are they? Not a country in Europe but is conscious of these restless, careless, homeless Zingari. In distant provincial towns of France you hear their enormous blunders in grammar and musical Milesian brogue breaking the uniformity of dull legitimist _soirees_. Hombourg and Baden are irradiated with the glory of their whiskers. You find their blue eyes and open, handsome features diversifying the sameness of wooden-faced Austrian squadrons.

Nay, has it not been whispered that the proudest name in Ireland attained a bad eminence in the Grecian Archipelago as the captain of the wickedest of those long low craft that, in the purple dawn or ivory moonlight, steal silently out from behind the headlands of the Cyclades?

But let us do justice to those who remain behind.

The sceptre of Connemara has pa.s.sed away from the ancient dynasty. If the penultimate monarch could rise from his peaceful grave, his place would know him no more. If he traveled through all his thirty miles of seaboard, the Scotch laborers would doff their hats more respectfully to the steward of the "Law Life" than to the humane old homicide. The royal writ, which he defied from his place at St. Stephen's, might be served now, I imagine, without danger of the bailiff's breaking his fast on the same. Claret flows soberly from long-necked bottles whose corks bear the brand of the wine-merchant, high priced and legal, instead of from the cask of which the snug sandy cove and the roguish-looking hooker could have told tales. But, in spite of visionary rents, and poor-rates sternly real, the Irish squire still clings to the exercise of that hospitality which has been an heirloom with the tribes since the days of Strongbow.

One of my longest halting-places was at Ralph Mohun's, by whom, though personally unknown to him, I was made very welcome as a friend of Guy's.

My host deserves a more especial mention, for his history was a sad, though not an uncommon one.

He began life in a Cavalry regiment, wherein he conducted himself with fair average propriety till he met Lady Caroline Desborough. He fell in love with her--most people did--but, unluckily, when she married Mr.

Mannering, to whom she had been predestined since her _debut_, he could not bring himself to wear the willow decently and in order, like her other disappointed admirers.

It was the old unhappy story: her husband neglected Lady Caroline consistently--ill-treated her sometimes. Mohun pursued his purpose with the relentless obstinacy of his character. Eighteen months after her marriage they fled together.

He was not rich, so that the trial which ensued, with its heavy damages, completely crippled him. The partner of his crime was absolutely penniless. They went to Vienna, and Ralph entered the Austrian Cuira.s.siers, where he had some interest to push him. He had lingered some time within reach of England, to give Mannering an opportunity of demanding satisfaction. But the injured husband knew his man too well to trust himself within fifteen paces of Mohun's pistol. He chose a surer, safer revenge in taking no steps to procure a divorce, and so debarring Ralph from his only means of atonement--marriage with his victim.

He varied the dull routine of seducers, it is true, for he never wearied of, or behaved unkindly to, the woman he had ruined. Time brought many troubles on them, but never satiety or coldness. To the very last he worshiped her, and, to the utmost of his power, guarded her tenderly.

Rough, and hard, and morose as he was to others, she never heard his lips utter one harsh word.

But she was of a proud, sensitive spirit, and had miscalculated her strength when she thought she could bear dishonor. After that duel with which Austria rang, in which the best _schlager_ in his brigade fell, horribly mangled, the day after he had whispered a jest about Caroline Mannering, men were very cautious how they even looked askance at her; but the women--who could bridle their tongues or blunt their scornful glances? Briareus, armed to the teeth, would not affright our modern dowagers, or deter them from their prey. Wherever the carca.s.s of a fair fame lies, thither they flock, screaming shrilly in triumph, vulture-eyed, sharp-taloned--the choosers of the slain.

I pity from my heart the frailest, the most utterly fallen of her s.e.x, when once the social Nemesis hands her over to the chorus of the Eumenides.

We deride the _subsignanae_ who line the wall; we make a mock at their old-fashioned whist; we risk jokes whereat our partners smile approvingly on their false fronts and wonderful head-gears; but may the wittiest of us never know by experience how much worse is the bite than the bark of the Veteran Battalion!

Caroline Mannering had all this to contend with, for Vienna was a favorite resort in those days for the English, and she was constantly encountering some of her old set. She bore up bravely for a while, but it killed her. She never wearied her lover with her self-reproach, but crushed back her sorrows into her heart, and met him always with a gentle smile. That same smile contrasted so sadly, at last, with the wan, worn features, that it often made him bend his bushy brows to conceal the rising tears.

If her destiny had been different--if she had died ripe in years, after a life spent in calm matronly happiness, with all that she loved best round her, would she have been nursed so tenderly or mourned so bitterly by the nearest and dearest of them all as she was by her tempter to sin?

I think not. I believe that in all the world there never was a greater sorrow than that which Mohun endured as he saw his treasure slowly escaping him; never a desolation more complete and crushing than that which fell upon him as he stood by her corpse, with dry eyes, folded arms, and a heavy, frowning brow. It was not only that he felt her place could never be filled again--many feel that, and find it turn out so--but a part of his being was gone: all that was soft, and kind, and tender in his nature died with Caroline Mannering. He never could get rid of a certain chivalry which was inherent in him, so sometimes he would do a generous thing; but he did it so harshly as to deprive the act of the semblance of good-nature. I think he very seldom again felt sympathy or compa.s.sion for any living creature. Perhaps he thought the world had behaved hardly to his dead love, and so never forgave it. She pa.s.sed away very stilly and painlessly. She was leaning on his breast when he saw death come into her eyes: he shivered then all over, as if a cold wind had struck him suddenly, but spoke no word. She understood him, though. Her last motion was to draw his cheek down to hers with her thin, shadowy arm, and her last breath went up to the G.o.d who would judge them both in an unselfish prayer.

"She was rightly served," says Cornelia; "such women ought to be miserable."

O rigid mother of the Gracchi! how we all respect you, _tronante_ in the comfortable cathedra of virtue inexpugnable, perhaps una.s.sailed. Your dictum must stand for the present. The court is with you. But I believe other balances will weigh the strength of temptation, the weakness of human endurance, the sincerity of repentance, and the extent of suffered retribution, when the Father of all that have lived and erred since the world began shall make up His jewels. In that day, I think, the light of many orthodox virgins and dignified matrons will pale before the softer l.u.s.tre of Magdalene the Saint.

Mohun remained in the Austrian service some time after Caroline Mannering's death, and, by dint of good service and interest, rose rapidly; but, about eight years before I saw him, a distant relation left him the estate in the west of Ireland, where he had resided ever since, making occasional visits to the Continent, and beating up his old quarters, but rarely coming to England.

He did not mix much with the county society, such as it was; and his visitors were chiefly friends from England who had not forgotten him yet, or the military quartered in his neighborhood.

It was a dreary, desolate old house where he lived--ma.s.sive, square, and gray. There were wooded banks and hollows just round it; but farther afield the chill, bare moorland stretched away toward the sea, broken here and there by sullen sedgy tarns.

Here he spent his monotonous existence, riding hard and drinking obstinately, but never, even in the latter case, rising into conviviality. A long, bushy beard, and portentous mustache, grizzled, though he was scarcely past middle age, which could not conceal a deep sabre-scar, gave him a grim, sinister expression; and his voice had that brief imperious accent which is peculiar to men for many years used to give the word of command.

That worn, haggard face told a real tale. The furrows there had been plowed by an enduring remorse, very different from that comfortable, half-complacent regret which some feel at the retrospect of their youthful _fredaines_.

They shake their solemn old heads as they hold themselves up to us as a warning; they sermonize with edifying gravity on the impropriety of such misdemeanors; but we can trace through all this an under-current of satisfaction tenderly fatuitous, as they go back to the days of their gipsyhood, when Plancus was consul.

I have been amused with watching these eminent but somewhat sensual Christians on such occasions, and seeing the dull eyes begin to glisten, and the lips wrinkle themselves into a fat, unpleasant smile. _They_ have prospered since, and certainly it would be most absurd to torment themselves now about the souls and bodies which they once sacrificed to a whim. Over those ruins and relics the River of Oblivion has rolled long ago--let them sleep on there and take their rest.

Have we not the bright example of the prototype of this cla.s.s--the pious aeneas? How creditable was his behavior when he looked back over the black water on the trail of flame stretching from the funeral pyre where Dido lay burning!