Chapter VII: Albion’s Return (3)

Fire! Light! What have we here? Zamorna’s self, blazing in the frontispiece like the sun on his own standard. De Lisle has given him to us in full regimentals—plumed, epauletted, and sabred (I wish the last were literally true, by-the-bye!). All his usual insufferableness or irresistibleness, or whatever the ladies choose to call it, surrounding him like an atmosphere, he stands as if a thunderbolt could neither blast the light of his eyes nor dash the effrontery of his brow. Keen, glorious being! tempered and bright and sharp and rapid as the scimitar at his side when whirled by the delicate yet vigorous hand that now grasps the bridle of a horse to all appearance as viciously beautiful as himself. O Zamorna! what eyes those are glancing under the deep shadow of that raven crest! They bode no good. Man nor woman could ever gather more than a troubled, fitful happiness from their kindest light, Satan gave them their glory to deepen the midnight gloom that always follows where their lustre has fallen most lovingly. This, indeed, is something different from Percy. All here is passion and fire unquenchable. Impetuous sin, stormy pride, diving and soaring enthusiasm, war and poetry, are kindling their fires in all his veins, and his wild blood boils from his heart and back again like a torrent of new-sprung lava. Young duke? Young demon! I have looked at you till words seemed to issue from your lips in those fine electric tones, as clear and profound as the silver chords of a harp, which steal affections like a charm. I think I see him bending his head to speak to the Countess Zenobia or the Princess Maria or Lady Julia or perhaps Queen Henrietta, while he whispers words that touch the heart like a ‘melody that’s sweetly played in tune.’ A low wind rises and sighs slowly onward. Suddenly his plumes rustle; their haughty shadow sweeps over his forehead; the eye,—the full, dark, refulgent eye,—lightens most gloriously; his curls are all stirred; smiles dawn on his lip. Suddenly he lifts his head, flings back the feathers, and clusters of bright hair, and, while he stands erect and god-like, his regards (as the French say) bent on the lady, whoever it be, who by this time is of course seriously debating whether he be man or angel, a momentary play of indescribable expression round the mouth, and elevation of the eyebrows, tell how the stream of thought runs at that moment; the mind which so noble a form enshrines! Detestable wretch!—I hate him!

But just opposite, separated only by a transparent sheet of silver paper, there is something different: his wife, his own matchless Henrietta! She looks at him with serene eyes as if the dew of placid thought could be shed on him by the influence of those large, clear stars. It reminds me of moonlight descending on troubled waters. I wish the parallel held good all the way, and that she was as far beyond the reach of sorrows arising from her husband’s insatiable ambition and fiery impetuosity as Dian is above the lash of the restless deep. But it is not so: her destiny is linked with his; and however strange the great river of Zamorna’s fate may flow; however awful the rapids over which it may rush; however cold and barren the banks of its channel; however wild, however darkly beached and stormily billowed the ocean into which it may finally plunge, Mary’s must follow. Fair creature! I could weep to think of it. For her sake, I hope a bright futurity for her lord; pity that the shadow of grief should ever fall where the light of such beauty shines. Every one knows how like the duchess is to her father: his very image cast in a softer—it could not be a more refined—mould. They are precisely similar, even to the very delicacy of their hands. As Byron says, her features have all the statuesque repose, the calm classic grace, that dwells on the Earl’s. She, however, has one advantage over him: the stealing, pensive brilliancy of her hazel eyes, and the peaceful sweetness of her mouth, impart a harmony to the whole which the satanic sneer fixed on the corresponding features of Northangerland’s face totally destroys. The original paintings of these two engraved portraits, namely, Zamorna’s and his lady’s, hang in the grand refectory at Wellesley House. Five hundred guineas was the sum paid for each. They are de Lisle’s, and rank amongst his most splendid _chefs-d’œuvre_. I know of no parallels to them, except those of Percy and Zenobia in the central saloon at Ellrington Hall. Search all the world from Iceland to Australia, and you will not find four human beings, male and female, to compare with them.

Hector Mirabeau Montmorency, Esq.! These features are somewhat stern to gaze on after such a continuation of the beautiful. They are far, however, from being harsh and disagreeable. A great deal of stuff was written some years ago about the exaggerated and grotesque character of this gentleman’s physiognomy. I remember several libellous assertions to that effect in the long since exploded catch-penny of Captain Tree’s denominated: ‘The Foundling.’[8] But, indeed, where all the rest was a compound of the grossest falsehood, where Lord and Lady Ellrington, Mr. Sydney, the Duke of Wellington, the whole concern of the Philosopher’s Island,—tutors, masters of colleges, students and all,—were hashed up into one wild farrago of bombast, fustian and lies, why should the Lord of Derrinane escape more than others? It is not to be wondered at that this same work, which gave a detailed account of Zenobia Percy’s declaring in solemn soliloquy that she hated her husband—abhorred, loathed, detested her own Alexander—which afterwards showed her daring him in the most insolent language to his fate, glorifying the young Marquis of Douro, and anathematizing _him_; and which, to crown all, made Percy offer to commit an act that certainly was more than excusable—almost justifiable after such provocation,—namely, the final settling of so shrewish and shameless a wife, introduced a third person to prevent the deed, and made his interference successful. The volume which contained all this, I say, should excite but small accession of wonder by the few lines that describe Montmorency as a broad, low man, bandy-legged, squinting, his head covered with a shock of shaggy black hair, and his eyes of the consistency of boiled gooseberries: green, glassy, and ghost-like. The fact is Hector is a tall, well-proportioned, robust figure, with red hair, a florid complexion, an expression of eye which indicates good humour, powerful talent, and no small degree of ferocity. His countenance is certainly not so femininely elegant as that of Northangerland, nor so fierily magnificent as that of Zamorna, but it is the countenance of a gentleman and a Glass-towner, not of a brownie and a bear.

8 ‘The Foundling: A Tale of Our Own Times,’ by Captain Tree, is an unpublished story containing about thirty-five thousand words, which was commenced by Charlotte Brontë on May 31st, 1833, and completed on June 27th, 1823. The manuscript is described, and facsimiles of two pages of the manuscript are given, by Mr. T. J. Wise in his book, _A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of the Members of the Brontë Family_, published in 1917.—C. W. H.

Hist! Thornton is awakening!

‘Heigho, Charles, what are ye about there?’

‘Looking at pictures.’

‘Looking at pictures? Aye, that ye are with a vengeance! Do ye see what you’ve done? Daubed your hands with ink, and then rubbed them over every other portrait in the book. Well, child, thou dost try my patience! Take away your fingers this minute. There! he’s drawn a scrawl across Lady Julia Sydney’s bonny face and spoiled the handsomest lass in the book! Leave the room and get me _The Cook’s Guide_: you shall learn a page of recipes for this business before ever you have a morsel of supper. Poor Julia! she’s fairly changed into a blackamoor; and there’s John with an ink mark across his forehead that makes him frown like death. Faith, that was a lucky hit! I’ve a’most a good mind to forgive you for it; but I willn’t either: there’s a hundred pounds thrown away, and I won’t have such work.’

All this was very true. While examining the portraits I had been jotting down the few remarks here contained. The ink had been communicated by the pen to my fingers, and by them to each leaf as I turned it over. If crime can be expiated by punishment, however, my sin was soon washed away. Till ten o’clock that night I was engaged in lifting up my voice over the pathetic pages of _The Cook’s Guide, or, Every Man his own Housekeeper_—(I think that is the title of the abomination); and, let me assure the reader, such a penalty as this might be the guerdon of graver guilt.

C. BRONTË,
_May 30th_, 1834.

MINA LAURY

I

FROM the first part of the manuscript entitled ‘Passing Events,’ completed by Charlotte Brontë on her twentieth birthday, April 21st, 1836.

C. W. H.

MINA LAURY

I

THE Cross of Rivaulx![9] Is that a name familiar to my readers? I rather think not. Listen, then. It is a green, delightful, and quiet place, half way between Angria and the foot of the Sydenham Hills, under the frown of Hawkscliffe, and on the edge of its royal forest. You see a fair house whose sash-windows are set in ivy grown thick and kept in trim order. Over the front door there is a little porch of trellis-work, all the summer covered with a succession of verdant leaves and pink roses: globes, buds, and full-blown blossoms. Within this in fine weather the door is constantly open and reveals a passage terminating in a staircase of low white steps traced up the middle by a brilliant carpet. There are no decided grounds laid out about the Cross of Rivaulx; but a lawn-like greenness surrounds it, and the last remnants of Hawkscliffe shade it in the form of many wild-rose trees and a few lofty elms. You look in vain for anything like a wall or gate to shut it in. The only landmark consists in an old obelisk with moss and wild-flowers at its base and a half-obliterated crucifix sculptured on its side. Well, this is no very presuming place, but on a June evening not seldom have I seen a figure whom every eye in Angria might recognise stride out of the domestic gloom of that little hall and stand in pleasant leisure under the porch whose flowers and leaves were disturbed by the contact of his curls. It is but a lodge to the mighty towers of Hawkscliffe, which being five miles distant buried in the chase are of less convenient access. The day is breezeless, quite still and warm. The sun far declined, for afternoon is just melting into evening, sheds a deep amber light. A cheerful air surrounds the mansion, whose windows are up, its door as usual hospitably apart; and the broad passage reverberates with a lively conversational hum from the rooms which open upon it. The day is of that perfectly mild, sunny kind that by an irresistible influence draws people out into the balmy air; and see, there are two gentlemen lounging easily in the porch sipping coffee from the cups they have brought from the drawing-room, and a third has stretched himself on the soft moss in the shadow of the obelisk. But for these figures the landscape would be one of exquisite repose. They break the enchantment of sun, sky, pleasant home, and waveless trees. Their dress is military: they are officers from Angria, from the headquarters of Zamorna’s grand army. Two at least are of this description. The other, reclining on the grass, a slight figure in black, wears a civil dress. That is Mr. Warner, the Home Secretary. Another person was standing by him, whom I should not have omitted to describe. It was a fine girl dressed in rich black satin with ornaments like those of a bandit’s wife, in which a whole fortune seemed to have been expended; but no wonder, for they had doubtless been the gifts of a king! In her ears (she was not too refined for the barbaric magnificence of earrings) hung two long clear drops red as fire and suffused with a purple tint that showed them to be the true oriental ruby. Bright, delicate links of gold circled her neck again and again; and a cross of gems lay on her breast, the centre stone of which was a locket enclosing a ringlet of dark brown hair. With that little soft curl she would not have parted for a kingdom.

9 The name of Rivaulx was probably obtained from Rivaulx Abbey (now in ruins), founded in 1131 for the Cistercians. It is in the N. Riding of Yorkshire, in Rye Dale, at the foot of the Hambleton Hills.—C. W. H.

Warner’s eyes were fixed with interest on Miss Laury as she stood over him, a model of beautiful vigour and glowing health, a kind of military erectness in her form so elegantly built, and in the manner in which her neck sprung from her bust and was placed with graceful uprightness on her falling shoulders. Her waist too falling in behind, and her fine slender foot supporting her in a regulated position, plainly indicated familiarity from her childhood with the sergeants’ drill.

All the afternoon she had been entertaining: her exalted guests,—the two in the porch were no other than Lord Hartford and Enara,[10] and conversing with them frankly and cheerfully, but with a total absence of levity, a dash of seriousness, an habitual intentness of purpose that had more than once attracted to her the admiring glance of the Home Secretary. These and Lord Arundel were the only friends she had in the world. Female acquaintance she never sought, nor if she had sought would she have found them. And so sagacious, clever, and earnest was she in all she said and did that the haughty aristocrats did not hesitate to communicate with her often on matters of first-rate importance. Mr. Warner was now talking to her about himself.

10 General Henri Fernando de Euara, known in the army as ‘The Tiger.’—C. W. H.

‘My dear madam,’ he was saying in his imperious but still dulcet tone, ‘it is unreasonable that you should remain thus exposed to danger. I am your friend; yes, madam, your true friend. Why do you not hear me and attend to my representations of the case? Angria is an unsafe place for you; you ought to leave it.’

The lady shook her head: ‘Never till my master compels me; his land is my land.’

‘But—but, Miss Laury, you know that our army has no warrant from the Almighty of conquest. This invasion may be successful, at least for a time, and then what becomes of you? When the duke’s nation is wrestling with destruction, his glory sunk in deep waters, and himself diving desperately to recover it, can he waste a thought or a moment on a woman? You will be at the tender mercies of Quashia,[11] and of Sheik Medina,—I mean of the detestable renegade Gordon,—before you are aware.’

11 Quashia Quamina Kashna, an African chief.—C. W. H.

Mina smiled. ‘I am resolved,’ said she. ‘My master himself shall not force me to leave him. You know I am hardened, Warner; shame and reproach have no effect on me. I do not care for being called a camp-follower. In peace and pleasure all the ladies in Africa would be at the duke’s beck; in war and suffering he shall not lack one poor peasant girl. Why, sir, I’ve nothing else to exist for; I’ve no other interest in life. Just to stand by His Grace and watch him and anticipate his wishes, or when I cannot do that to execute them like lightning when they are signified; to wait on him when he is sick or wounded, to hear his groans and bear his heartrending animal-patience in enduring pain; to breathe if I can my own inexhaustible health and energy into him; and oh! if it were practicable, to take his fever and agony, to guard his interests, to take on my shoulders power from him that galls me with its weight; to fill gaps in his mighty train of service that nobody else would dare to step into; to do all that, sir, is to fulfil the destiny I was born to. I know I am of no repute among society at large, because I have devoted myself so wholly to one man. And I know that he very seldom troubles himself to think of what I do; and has never and can never appreciate the unusual feelings of subservience, the total self-sacrifice I offer at his shrine. But then he gives me my reward, and that an abundant one. Mr. Warner, when I was at Fort Adrian and had all the yoke of governing the garrison and military household I used to rejoice in my responsibility and to feel firmer the heavier the weight was assigned me to support. And when my master came over, as he often did, to take one of his general surveys, or on a hunting expedition with some of you, his officers, I had such delights in ordering the banquets and entertainments and in seeing the fires kindled up and chandeliers lighted in those dark halls, knowing for whom the feast was made ready; and it gave me a feeling of ecstasy to hear my young master’s voice as he spoke to you or Arundel or to that stately Hartford, and to see him moving about secure and powerful in his own stronghold, to know what true hearts he had about him, assured as I was that his generals and ministers were men of steel, and that his vassals under my rule were trusty as the very ramparts they garrisoned. The last summer evening that he came here the sun and flowers and quietness brightened his noble features with such happiness I could tell his heart was at rest, for as he lay in the shade where you are now I heard him hum the airs he long ago played on his guitar at Mornington. I was rewarded then to feel that the house I kept was pleasant enough to make him forget Angria, and recur to home. The west, the sweet west, is both his home and mine.’

Mina paused and looked solemnly at the sun now softened in its shine and hanging exceedingly low. In a moment her eyes fell again on Warner. They seemed to have absorbed radiance from what they had gazed on. Light like an arrow-point glanced in them as she said:

‘This is my time to follow. Ill not be robbed of those hours of blissful danger when I may be continually with him. My kind, noble master never likes to see my tears, and I will weep before him night and day till he grants what I wish. I am not afraid of danger. I have strong nerves. I don’t wish to fight like an Amazon; and fatigue I never felt. I will die or be with him.’

‘What has fired your eyes so suddenly, Miss Laury?’ asked Lord Hartford, now advancing with Enara from their canopy of roses.

‘The duke, the duke,’ muttered Henri Fernando; ‘she won’t leave him, I’ll be sworn.’

‘I can’t, general,’ said Mina.

‘No,’ answered the Italian; ‘and nobody shall force you. You shall have your own way, madam, whether it be right or wrong.’

Before Miss Laury could answer a voice from within the mansion spoke her name.

‘It is my lord!’ she exclaimed, and ran over the sward, through the porch, along the passage, to a summer parlour whose walls were painted a fine pale red, its mouldings burnished gilding, and its window-curtains artistical draperies of dark blue silk covered with gold waves and flowers. Here Zamorna sat alone. He had been writing. One or two letters, folded, sealed, and inscribed with western directions, lay on the table beside him. His gloves and cambric handkerchief with a crown wrought upon it in black hair appeared on his desk. He had not uncovered since entering the house three hours since; and either the weight of his dragoon helmet or the gloom of its impending plumes or else some inward feeling had clouded his face with a strange darkness. Mina closed the door and softly drew near. Without speaking or asking leave she began to busy herself in unclasping the heavy helmet. The duke smiled faintly as her little fingers played about his chin and luxuriant whiskers, and then, the load of brass and sable plumage being removed, as they arranged the pressed masses of glossy brown ringlets and touched with soft cool contact his feverish brow. Absorbed in the grateful task she hardly felt that His Majesty’s arm had encircled her waist, and yet she did feel it too and would have thought herself presumptuous to shrink from the endearment. She took it as a slave ought to take the caress of a Sultan, and obeying the gentle effort of his hand slowly sank on to the sofa by her master’s side.

‘My little physician,’ said he, meeting her adoring but anxious upward gaze with the full light of his countenance, ‘you look at me as if you thought I was not well. Feel my pulse.’

She folded that offered hand, white, supple, and soft with youth and delicate nature, in both her own, and whether Zamorna’s pulse beat rapidly or not his handmaid’s did as she felt the slender grasping fingers of the monarch laid quietly in hers. He did not wait for the report, but took his hand away again, and laying it on her raven curls said:

‘So, Mina, you won’t leave me though I never did you any good in the world? Warner says you are resolved to continue in the scene of war.’

‘To continue by your side, my lord.’

‘But what shall I do with you, Mina? Where shall I put you? My little girl, what will the army say when they hear of your presence? You have read history? Recollect that it was Darius who carried his concubines to the field, not Alexander! The world will say: “Zamorna attends to his own pleasures and cares not how his men suffer.”’

Mina writhed at these words as if the iron had entered into her soul. A vivid burning flush crimsoned her cheek, and tears of shame and bitter self-reproach gushed at once into her bright black eyes. Zamorna was touched acutely.

‘Nay, my little girl,’ said he, redoubling his caresses and speaking in his most soothing tone, ‘never weep about it. It grieves me to hurt your feelings, but you desire an impossibility, and I must use strong language to convince you that I cannot grant it.’

‘Oh, don’t refuse me again,’ sobbed Miss Laury. ‘I’ll bear all infamy and contempt to be allowed to follow you, my lord. My lord, I’ve served you for many years most faithfully, and I seldom ask a favour of you. Don’t reject the first request of the kind I have ever made.’

The duke shook his head, and the meeting of his lips, too placid for the firm compression, told that he was not to be moved.

‘If you should receive a wound, if you should fall sick,’ continued Mina, ‘what can surgeons and physicians do for you? They cannot watch you and wait on you and worship you like me, and you do not seem well now. The bloom is so faded on your complexion, and the flesh is wasted round your eyes. Do not look so calmly resolved: let me go!’

Zamorna withdrew his arm from her waist. ‘I must be displeased before you cease to importune me,’ said he. ‘Mina, look at that letter. Read the direction,’ pointing to one he had been writing. She obeyed. It was addressed to, ‘Her Royal Highness, Mary Henrietta, Duchess of Zamorna.’

‘Must I pay no attention to the feelings of that lady?’ pursued the duke, whom the duties of war and the conflict of some internal emotions seemed to render peculiarly stern. ‘Her public claims must be respected whether I love her or not.’

Miss Laury shrunk into herself. Not another word did she venture to breathe. An unconscious wish of wild intensity filled her that she were dead and buried, and insensible to the shame that overwhelmed her. She saw Zamorna’s finger with the ring on it still pointing to that awful name, a name that raised no impulse of hatred: far too high and blessed did the exalted lady seem for that; but only bitter humiliation and self-abasement. She stole from her master’s side feeling that she had no more right to sit there than a fawn has to share the den of a royal lion; and murmuring that she was very sorry for her folly, was about to glide in dismay and despair from the room. But the duke rising up arrested her, and bending his lofty stature over her as she crouched before him folded her again in his arms. His countenance relaxed not a moment from its sternness, nor did the gloom leave his magnificent but worn features as he said:

‘I will make no apologies for what I have said, because I know, Mina, that as I hold you now you feel fully recompensed for my severity. Before I depart I will speak to you one word of comfort which you may remember when I am far away and perhaps dead. My dear girl! I know and appreciate all you have done, all you have resigned, and all you have endured, for my sake. I repay you for it with one coin: with what alone to you will be of greater worth than worlds without it. I give you such true and fond love as a master can give to the fairest and loveliest vassal that ever was bound to him in feudal allegiance. You may never feel the touch of Zamorna’s lips again. There, Mina!’ And fervently and almost fiercely he pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘Go to your chamber; to-morrow you must leave for the west.’

‘Obedient till death,’ was Miss Laury’s answer as she closed the door and disappeared.

• • • • • • •

C. BRONTË,
_April 21st_, 1836.

MINA LAURY

II

FROM the final portion of an untitled manuscript which was completed on January 17th, 1838.

C. W. H.

MINA LAURY

II

MISS LAURY was sitting after breakfast in a small library. Her desk lay before her and two large ruled quartos filled with items and figures which she seemed to be comparing. Behind her chair stood a tall, well-made, soldierly young man with light hair. His dress was plain and gentlemanly; the epaulette, on one shoulder, alone indicated that he occupied an official capacity. He watched with a fixed look of attention the movements of the small finger which ascended in rapid calculation the long columns of accounts. It was strange to see the absorption of mind expressed in Miss Laury’s face, the gravity of her smooth white brow shaded with drooping curls, the scarcely perceptible and unsmiling movement of her lips, though those lips in their rosy sweetness seemed formed only for smiles. An hour or more lapsed in this employment, the room meantime continuing in profound silence broken only by an occasional observation addressed by Miss Laury to the gentleman behind her concerning the legitimacy of some item or the absence of some stray farthing wanted to complete the accuracy of the sum total. In this balancing of the books she displayed a most business-like sharpness and strictness. The slightest fault was detected and remarked on in few words, but with quick searching glance. However, the accountant had evidently been accustomed to her surveillance, for on the whole his books were a specimen of arithmetical correctness.

‘Very well,’ said Miss Laury, as she closed the volumes, ‘your accounts do you credit, Mr. O’Neill. You may tell His Grace that all is quite right. Your memoranda tally with my own exactly.’

Mr. O’Neill bowed.

‘Thank you, madam. This will bear me out against Lord Hartford. His lordship lectured me severely last time he came to inspect Fort Adrian.’

‘What about?’ asked Miss Laury, turning aside her face to hide the deepening of colour which overspread it at the mention of Lord Hartford’s name.

‘I can hardly tell you, madam; but his lordship was in a savage temper. Nothing could please him. He found fault with everything and everybody. I thought he scarcely appeared himself, and that has been the opinion of many lately.’

Miss Laury gently shook her head.

‘You shall not say so, Ryan,’ she replied in a soft tone of reproof. ‘Lord Hartford has a great many things to think about, and he is naturally rather stern. You ought to bear with his tempers.’

‘Necessity has no law, madam,’ replied O’Neill with a smile, ‘and I _must_ bear with them. But his lordship is not a popular man in the army. He orders the lash so unsparingly. We like the Earl of Arundel ten times better.’

‘Ah,’ said Miss Laury, smiling, ‘you and I are Westerns, Mr. O’Neill: Irish,—and we favour our countrymen. But Hartford is a gallant commander. His men can always trust him. Do not let us be partial.’

Mr. O’Neill bowed in deference to her opinion, but smiled at the same time, as if he doubted its justice. Taking up his books he seemed about to leave the room. Before he did so, however, he turned and said:

‘The duke wished me to inform you, madam, that he would probably be here about four or five o’clock in the afternoon.’

‘To-day?’ asked Miss Laury in an accent of surprise.

‘Yes, madam.’

She mused a moment, then said quickly: ‘Very well, sir.’

Mr. O’Neill now took his leave.

For a long time after the door had closed Miss Laury sat, with her head on her hand, lost in a tumultuous flush of ideas and anticipations awakened by that simple sentence: ‘The duke will be here to-day.’

The striking of a timepiece aroused her. She remembered that twenty tasks awaited her direction. Always active, always employed, it was not her custom to waste many hours in dreaming. She rose, closed her desk, and left the quiet library for busier scenes.

Four o’clock came, and Miss Laury’s foot was heard on the staircase descending from her chamber. She crossed the large light passage—an apparition of feminine elegance and beauty. The robe of black satin became at once the slender form, which it enveloped in full and shining folds, and her bright blooming complexion, which it set off by the contrast of colour. Glittering through her curls there was a band of fine diamonds, and drops of the same pure gems trembled from her small ears. These ornaments, so regal in their nature, had been the gift of royalty, and were worn now chiefly for the associations of soft and happy moments which their gleam might be supposed to convey. She entered the drawing-room and stood by the window. From thence appeared one glimpse of the highroad visible through the thickening shades of Rivaulx. Even that was now almost concealed by the frozen mist in which the approach of twilight was wrapped. All was very quiet both in the house and in the wood. A carriage drew near; she heard the sound. She saw it shoot through the fog; but it was not Zamorna. No; the driving was neither the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, nor that of Jehu’s postillions. She had not gazed a minute before her experienced eye discerned that there was something wrong with the horses.’ The harness had got entangled or they were frightened. The coachman had lost control over them: they were plunging violently. She rang the bell. A servant entered. She ordered immediate assistance to be despatched to the carriage on the road. Two grooms presently hurried down the drive to execute her commands, but before they could reach the spot one of the horses, in its gambols, had slipped on the icy road and fallen. The others grew more unmanageable, and presently the carriage lay overturned on the roadside. One of Miss Laury’s messengers came back. She threw up the window that she might communicate with him more readily.

‘Any accident?’ she asked; ‘anybody hurt?’

‘I hope not much, madam.’

‘Who is in the carriage?’

‘Only one lady, and she seems to have fainted. She looked very white when I opened the door. What is to be done, madam?’

Miss Laury answered directly: ‘Bring her into the house. Let the horses be taken to the stables. And the servants: how many are there?’

‘Three, madam: two postillions and a footman.’

‘Do you know the liveries?’

‘Can’t say, madam. Postillions in grey and white, footman in plain clothes. Horses frightened at a drove of Sydenham oxen, they say: very spirited nags.’

‘Well, you have my orders: bring the lady in directly, and make the others comfortable.’

‘Yes, madam.’

The groom touched his hat and departed. Miss Laury shut her window. It was very cold. Not many minutes elapsed before the lady in the arms of her own servants was slowly brought up the lawn and ushered into the drawing-room.

‘Lay her on the sofa,’ said Miss Laury.

She was obeyed. The lady’s travelling-cloak was carefully removed and a thin figure became apparent in a dark silk dress. The cushions of down scarcely sank under the pressure, it was so slight.

Her swoon was now passing off. The genial warmth of the fire which shone full on her revived her. Opening her eyes she looked up at Miss Laury, who was now bending close over her and wetting her lips with some cordial. Recognizing a stranger she shyly turned her glance aside and asked for her servants.

‘They are in the house, madam, and perfectly safe. But you cannot pursue your journey at present: the carriage is much broken.’

The lady lay silent. She looked keenly round the room, and seeing the perfect elegance of its arrangement, the cheerful and tranquil glow of its hearth-light, she appeared to grow more composed. Turning a little on the cushions which supported her, and by no means looking at Miss Laury, but straight the other way, she said:

‘To whom am I indebted for this kindness? Where am I?’

‘In a hospitable country, madam; the Angrians never turn their backs on strangers.’

‘I know I am in Angria,’ she said quickly, ‘but where? What is the name of the house? Who are you?’

Miss Laury coloured slightly; it seemed as if there was some undefined reluctance to give her real name.

‘I am only the housekeeper,’ she said. ‘This is a shooting-lodge belonging to a great Angrian proprietor.’

‘Who?’ asked the lady, who was not to be put off by indirect answers.

Again Miss Laury hesitated. She replied hastily:

‘A gentleman of Western extraction: a distant branch of the great Pakenhams. So at least the family records say; but they have been long naturalized in the Kast.’

‘I never heard of them,’ replied the lady. ‘Pakenham! That is not an Angrian name?’

‘Perhaps, madam, you are not particularly acquainted with this part of the country?’

‘I know Hawkscliffe,’ said the lady, ‘and your house is on the very borders, within the Royal Liberties; is it not?’

‘Yes, madam. It stood there before the great duke bought up the forest manor, and His Majesty allowed my master to retain this lodge and the privilege of sporting in the chase.’

‘Well, and you are Mr. Pakenham’s housekeeper?’

‘Yes, madam.’

The lady surveyed Miss Laury with another furtive side-glance of her large majestic eyes. Those eyes lingered upon the diamond earrings, the bandeau of brilliants that flashed from between the clusters of raven curls; then passed over the sweet face, the exquisite figure of the young housekeeper, and finally were reverted to the wall with an expression that spoke volumes. Miss Laury could have torn the dazzling pendants from her ears. She was bitterly stung.

In her turn she gazed on her guest. The lady was but a young creature, though so high and commanding in her demeanour. She had very small and feminine features, handsome eyes, a neck of delicate curve, and fair, long, and graceful little snowy aristocratic hands, and sandalled feet to match. It would have been difficult to tell her rank by her dress. None of those dazzling witnesses appeared which had betrayed Miss Laury. Any gentleman’s wife might have worn the gown of dark-blue silk, the tinted gloves of Parisian kid, and the fairy sandals of black satin in which she was attired.

‘May I have a room to myself?’ she asked, again turning her eyes with something of a smile toward Miss Laury.

‘Certainly, madam; I wish to make you comfortable. Can you walk upstairs?’

‘Oh, yes!’

She rose from her couch, and leaning on Miss Laury’s arm in a way that showed she had been used to that sort of support, they both glided from the room. Having seen her fair but haughty guest carefully laid on a stately crimson bed in a quiet and spacious chamber; having seen her head sink with all its curls into the pillow of down, her large shy eyes close under their smooth eyelids, and her little slender hands fold on her breast in an attitude of perfect repose, Miss Laury prepared to leave her. She stirred.

‘Come back a moment,’ she said. She was obeyed; there was something in her tone of voice which exacted obedience. ‘I don’t know who you are;’ she said, ‘but I am very much obliged to you for your kindness. If my manners are displeasing, forgive me; I mean no incivility. I suppose you will wish to know my name: it is Mrs. Irving; my husband is a minister in the northern kirk; I come from Sneachiesland. Now you may go!’

Miss Laury did go. Mrs. Irving had testified incredulity respecting her story, and now she reciprocated that incredulity. Both ladies were lost in their own mystification.

Five o’clock now struck. It was nearly dark. A servant with a taper was lighting up the chandeliers in the large dining-room where a table spread for dinner received the kindling lamplight upon a starry service of silver. It was likewise magnificently flashed back from a splendid sideboard all arranged in readiness to receive the great, the expected guest. Tolerably punctual in keeping an appointment when he meant to keep it at all, Zamorna entered the house as the fairy-like voice of a musical clock in the passage struck out its symphony to the pendulum. The opening of the front door, a bitter rush of the night-wind and then the sudden close, and the step advancing forwards, were the signals of his arrival.

Miss Laury was in the dining-room looking round and giving the last touch to all things. She just met her master as he entered. His cold lip pressed to her forehead and his colder hand clasping hers brought the sensation which it was her custom of weeks and months to wait for; and to consider when attained the ample recompense for all delay, all toil, all suffering.

‘I am frozen, Mina,’ said he; ‘I came on horseback for the last four miles; and the night is like Canada.’

Chafing his icy hand to animation between her own warm supple palms, she answered by the speechless but expressive look of joy, satisfaction, idolatry, which filled and overflowed her eyes.

‘What can I do for you, my lord?’ were her first words as he stood by the fire rubbing his hands cheerily over the blaze. He laughed.

‘Put your arms round my neck, Mina, and kiss my cheeks as warm and blooming as your own.’

It gave her a pang to resist the impulse that urged her to take him at his word; but she put it by, and only diffidently drew near the armchair into which he had now thrown himself, and began to smooth and separate the curls which were matted on his temples. She noticed as the first smile of salutation subsided a gloom succeeded on her master’s brow, which, however he spoke or laughed, afterwards remained a settled characteristic of his countenance.

‘What visitors are in the house?’ he asked; ‘I saw the groom rubbing down four black horses before the stables as I came in. They are not of the Hawkscliffe stud, I think?’

‘No, my lord. A carriage was overturned at the lawn gates about an hour since, and as the lady who was in it was taken out insensible I ordered her to be brought up here, and her servants accommodated for the night.’

‘And do you know who the lady is?’ continued His Grace; ‘the horses are good: first-rate.’

‘She says her name is Mrs. Irving, and that she is the wife of a Presbyterian minister in the north, but—’

‘You hardly believe her?’ interrupted the duke.

‘No,’ returned Miss Laury; ‘I must say I took her for a lady of rank. She has something highly aristocratic about her manners and aspect, and she appeared to know a good deal about Angria.’

‘What is she like?’ asked Zamorna; ‘young or old, handsome or ugly?’

‘She is young, slender, not so tall as I am, and I should say rather elegant than handsome; very pale, cold in her demeanour; she has a small mouth and chin, and a long fair neck.’

‘Humph! A trifle like Lady Stuartville,’ replied His Majesty. ‘I should not wonder if it is the countess; but I’ll know. Perhaps you did not say to whom the house belonged, Mina?’

‘I said,’ replied Mina, smiling, ‘that the owner of the house was a great Angrian proprietor, a lineal descendant of the Western Pakenhams, and that I was his housekeeper.’

‘She would not believe you! Give me your hand, Mina. You are not so old as I am.’

‘Yes, my lord; I was born on the same day, an hour after Your Grace.’

‘So I have heard, but it must be a mistake; you don’t look twenty, and I am twenty-five. Look at me, Mina, straight, and don’t blush!’

Mina tried to look, but she could not do it without blushing. She coloured to the temples.

‘Pshaw!’ said His Grace, pushing: her away, ‘my acquaintance of ten years cannot meet my eye unshrinkingly! Have you lost that ring I once gave you, Mina?’

‘Which ring, my lord? You have given me many.’

‘That which I said had the essence of your whole heart and mind engraven in the stone as a motto.’

‘FIDELITY?’ asked Miss Laury; and she held out her hand with a graven emerald on the forefinger.

‘Right!’ was the reply; ‘is it your motto still?’ And with one of his jealous glances, he seemed trying to read her conscience. Miss Laury at once saw that late transactions were not a secret confined between herself and Lord Hartford. She saw His Grace was unhinged and strongly inclined to be savage. She stood and watched him with a sad, fearful gaze.

‘Well,’ she said, turning away after a long pause, ‘if Your Grace is angry with me I’ve very little to care about in this world.’

The entrance of servants with the dinner prevented Zamorna’s answer. As he took his place at the head of the table, he said to the man who stood behind him:

‘Give Mr. Pakenham’s compliments to Mrs. Irving, and say that he will be happy to see her at his table if she will honour him so far as to be present there.’

The footman vanished. He returned in five minutes.

‘Mrs. Irving is too much tired to avail herself of Mr. Pakenham’s kind invitation at present, but she will be happy to join him at tea.’

‘Very well,’ said Zamorna. Then looking round: ‘Where is Miss Laury?’

Mina was in the act of gliding from the room, but she stopped mechanically at his call.

‘Am I to dine alone?’ he asked.

‘Does Your Grace wish me to attend you?’

He answered by rising and leading her to her seat. He then resumed his own, and dinner commenced. It was not until after the cloth was withdrawn and the servants had retired that the duke, whilst he sipped his single glass of champagne, recommenced the conversation he had before unpleasantly entered upon.

‘Come here,’ he said, drawing a chair close to his side.

Mina never hesitated, never delayed through bashfulness or any other feeling to comply with his orders.

‘Now,’ he continued, leaning his head towards hers and placing his hand on her shoulder, ‘are you happy, Mina? Do you want anything?’

‘Nothing, my lord.’ She spoke truly; all that was capable of yielding her happiness on this side of eternity was at that moment within her reach. The room was full of calm. The lamps burnt as if they were listening. The fire sent up no flickering flame, but diffused a broad, still, glowing light over all the room. Zamorna touched her; his form and features filled her eye; his voice her ear; his presence her whole heart; she was soothed to perfect happiness.

‘My Fidelity!’ pursued that musical voice, ‘if thou hast any favour to ask, now is the time. I’m all concession: as yielding as a lady’s glove. Come, Mina, what is thy petition? and thy request even to the half of my kingdom shall be granted!’

‘Nothing,’ again murmured Miss Laury. ‘Oh, my lord, nothing! What can I want?’

‘Nothing?’ he repeated. ‘What! No reward for ten years of faith and love and devotion; no reward for the companionship in six-months’ exile; no recompense to the little hand that has so often smoothed my pillow in sickness, to the sweet lips that have many a time in cool and dewy health been pressed to a brow of fever; none to the dark Milesian eyes that ‘once grew dim with watching through endless nights by my bed of delirium? Need I speak of the sweetness and fortitude that cheered sufferings known only to thee and me? of the devotion that gave me bread when thou wert dying of hunger? and that scarcely more than a year since! For all this and much more, must there be no reward?’

‘I have had it,’ said Miss Laury. ‘I have it now.’

‘But,’ continued the duke, ‘what if I have devised something worthy of your acceptance? Look up now and listen to me.’

She did look up, but she speedily looked down again. Her master’s eye was insupportable; it burned absolutely with infernal fire! ‘What is he going to say?’ murmured Miss Laury to herself. She trembled.

‘I say, love,’ pursued the individual, drawing her a little closer to him, ‘I will give you as a reward a husband. Don’t start, now! And that husband shall be a nobleman; and that nobleman is called Lord Hartford! Now, stand up and let me look at you.’

He opened his arms and Miss Laury sprang erect like a loosened bow.

‘Your Grace is anticipated,’ she said. ‘That offer has been made me before. Lord Hartford did it himself three days ago.’

‘And what did you say? Speak the truth now: subterfuge won’t avail you.’

‘What did I say? I don’t know; it little signifies; you have rewarded me, my lord, but I cannot bear this: I feel sick.’

With a deep, short sob, she turned white, and fell close by the duke, her head against his foot.

This was the first time in her life that Mina Laury had fainted, but strong health availed nothing against the deadly struggle which convulsed every feeling in her nature when she heard her master’s announcement. She believed him to be perfectly sincere. She thought he was tired of her and she could not endure it.

I suppose Zamorna’s first feeling when she fell was horror; and his next I am tolerably certain was intense gratification. People say I am not in earnest when I abuse him, or else I would here insert half a page of deserved vituperation—deserved and heartfelt as it is, I will merely relate his conduct without note or comment.

He took a wax taper from the table and held it over Miss Laury. Here could be no dissimulation. She was white as marble and still as stone. In truth then she did intensely love him, with a devotion that left no room in her thoughts for one shadow of an alien image. Do not think, reader, that Zamorna meant to be so generous as to bestow Miss Laury on Lord Hartford. No; he was but testing the attachment which a thousand proofs daily given ought long ago to have convinced him was undying.

While he yet gazed she began to recover. Her eyelids stirred and then slowly dawned from beneath the large black orbs that scarcely met his before they filled to overflowing with sorrow. Not a gleam of anger, not a whisper of reproach. Her lips and eyes spoke together no other language than the simple words: ‘I cannot leave you!’:

She rose feebly and with effort. The duke stretched out his hand to assist her. He held to her lips the scarcely tasted wine.

‘Mina,’ he said, ‘are you collected enough to hear me?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Then listen. I would much sooner give half, aye, the whole of my estates to Lord Hartford, than yourself! What I said just now was only to try you.’

Miss Laury raised her eyes and sighed like one awakening from some hideous dream, but she could not speak.

‘Would I,’ continued the duke, ‘would I resign the possession of my first love to any hands but my own? I would far rather see her in her coffin; and I would lay you there as still, as white, and much more lifeless than you were stretched just now at my feet before I would for threat, for entreaty, for purchase, give to another a glance of your eyes or a smile from your lips. I know you adore me now, Mina; for you could not feign that agitation, and therefore I will tell you what proof I gave yesterday of my regard for you. Hartford mentioned your name in my presence, and I avenged the profanation by a shot which sent him to his bed little better than a corpse.’

Miss Laury shuddered, but so dark and profound are the mysteries of human nature, ever allying vice with virtue, that I fear this bloody proof of her master’s love brought to her heart more rapture than horror. She said not a word, for now Zamorna’s arms were again folded round her, and again he was soothing her to tranquillity by endearments and caresses that far away removed all thought of the world, all past pangs of shame, all cold doubts, all weariness, all heart-sickness resulting from hope long deferred. He had told her that she was his first love, and now she seemed tempted to believe that she was his only love. Strong-minded beyond her sex; active, energetic, and accomplished in all other points of view, here she was as weak as a child. She lost her identity; her very life was swallowed up in that of another.

There came a knock to the door. Zamorna rose and opened it. His valet stood without.

‘Might I speak with Your Grace in the anteroom?’ asked Monsieur Rosier in somewhat of a hurried tone. The duke followed him out.

‘What do you want with me, sir? Anything the matter?’

‘I was walking through the passage two minutes since when I heard a step on the stairs: a light step as if of a very small foot. I turned, and there was a lady coming down.’

‘Well, did you know her?’

‘I did. I stood in the shade, screened by a pillar, and she passed very near without observing me. I saw her distinctly, and it was—’

‘Who, sir?’

‘The duchess!’

There was a pause which was closed by a clear and remarkably prolonged whistle from the duke. He took a leisurely turn through the room.

‘Mrs. Irving, the wife of a minister in the north! A satirical hit at myself! What can have brought her? Anxiety about her invaluable husband! Could not bear any longer without him: obliged to set off to see what he was doing. It’s as well Rosier told me, however. What shall I do? I must not be angry; she can’t do with that sort of thing just now.’

Ceasing his soliloquy, the duke turned again to his valet:

‘Which room did Her Grace go into?’

‘The drawing-room, my lord. She’s there now.’

Zamorna left the room.

Softly unclosing the drawing-room door he perceived the lady by the hearth. Her back was towards him, but there could be no mistake. The whole turn of form, the style of dress, the curled auburn head: all were attributes but of one person. He closed the door as noiselessly as he had opened it and stole forwards. Her attention was absorbed in a book she had picked up. As he stood unobserved behind her he could see that her eyes rested on the flyleaf, where was written in his own hand: