CHAPTER XI.

“THE DISAPPOINTMENTS OF DION.”

THE secretary went out into the park, and down to the neglected shrubbery-walk that wound along the river bank. This was the loneliest and wildest part of Mr. Jerningham’s domain, and solitude was what Eustace Thorburn wanted to-day. He had brought with him, not his own poem, but those two slender volumes which contained the history of his mother’s youth, and in the composition whereof he beheld the hand of his unknown father. He wanted to read this book a second time, even more slowly and thoughtfully than he had read it the first time. He wanted, if it were possible, to plumb the very depths of his father’s heart.

The still summer day and the woodland solitude were well fitted for meditation. Eustace walked about a mile and a half from M. de Bergerac’s cottage before he opened his book. The seat which he chose was a rude rustic bench, in a hollow of the bank, close to the edge of the river--a seat which at high tide was half covered by the water. The rugged sloping bank rose behind the rough wooden bench. The young man leaned lazily against the short burnt grass of the bank as he read.

The portion of the book most interesting to this one reader was that which told, in terms half cynical, half playful, of the writer’s brief delusion--the little Arcadian comedy of rustic life with the girl whose heart he had broken, and the bitter tragedy in which it ended.

The scene depicted in this portion of the story was wild and mountainous; snow-crowned hills formed the background of the landscape. The sea was close at hand; all was gigantic, rugged, uncivilized. Yet there was no mention of foreign customs or foreign people. There was a certain familiarity in everything, that was scarcely compatible with the idea that this rustic dwelling-place of Dion’s was remote from England; and Eustace decided that the scene of the story must have lain within the British dominions. The description of the landscape might apply to many spots in Scotland, in Wales, or even in Ireland. Clue to the exact locality there seemed, on first consideration, none; so faint were the indications, so general the features of the scene. The record had been evidently written long after the occurrences described. Only the cold light of memory illumined the pages; after-disappointments had embittered the spirit of the writer, and lent bitterness even to memory. It was, in very truth, the confession of a man infinitely worse than the author of _Dion_.

The following were the pages which told Eustace how rudely his mother’s brief dream had been broken:

“I think we had scarcely been a month at H. H. before I began to discover how profound was my mistake. Tenderness and affection, a fond admiration of my mental attributes that approached idolatry--these my poor C. gave me in liberal measure. But the higher tribute of self-abnegation she could not give me. Hers was one of those natures which are not made for sacrifice. The grandeur of heroic souls was wanting in this gentle breast. In the haven of a domestic circle, safely sheltered from the storms of fate, to a man whose days were occupied in that hard struggle for life which the world calls business, and who asked of the gods nothing brighter than a household angel, this dear girl would have seemed the sweetest of wives. I think of her always with supreme tenderness; but I cannot forget the weariness that crept upon me when I found how little sympathy there was between us.

“From all loud reproaches, even from the appearance of grief, she for a long time refrained. But I could see that she was not happy; and this fact was in itself a torture to a man of sensitive nature and irritable nerves. A look, a half-stifled sigh, ever and anon told me that I had not found a companion, but a victim. The smile whose angelic sweetness had charmed me in the bookseller’s lovely daughter had faded, nay almost vanished. It was like some mediæval legend: the supernal beauty met by the knight in the haunted darkness of an enchanted forest is transformed into a dull, earthly spouse; and the foolish knight, who had ridden home to his castle with a divinity, awakens to find himself mated to a peasant-girl.

“This was my first and most bitter disappointment. I look back now and ask myself what it was that I had hoped, and what substantial ground there had been for my hopes. Because this poor girl had a face like Guido’s Beatrice Cenci, because she praised my book in her low musical voice and simple commonplace phrases, I must needs fancy that I had found the Ægeria of my dreams, the companion-spirit, the inspiring and elevating influence which every poet seeks in the object of his love!

“I used to think my own thoughts very grand in those days. There were moments in which I yearned and hungered for some sharer in my dreams. I was steeped to the lips in Shelley’s poetry; I wanted to find a Cynthia,--

‘A second self, far dearer and more fair. * * * * * Hers too were all my thoughts: ere yet endowed With music and with light, their fountains flowed In poesy; and her still, earnest face, Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed Within, was turned on mine with speechless grace Watching the hopes which there her heart had learned to trace.

In me, communion with this purest being Kindled intenser zeal, and made me wise In knowledge, which in hers mine own mind seeing, Left in the human world few mysteries: How without fear of evil or disguise Was Cynthia! What a spirit, strong and mild, Which death, or pain, or peril could despise, Yet melt in tenderness!’

This was the bright ideal of my dream; and instead of this, what had I found? A gentle girl, whose education had scarcely outstepped the boundary-line of the all-abridging Pinnock, and who consumed hours in secret weeping because she had offended her father, a small trader in a small country town, and had forfeited her social position in that miserably narrow world which was the beginning and end of her universe. Alas for my fond delusions! Where was the

‘spirit strong and mild, Which death, or pain, or peril could despise?’

“There were, indeed, moments in which some pretty poetical thought slipped between my poor girl’s ‘scarlet-threaded lips;’ but she was too timid by nature to give voice to her brightest fancies, and I saw noble thoughts in her deep eyes which her lips never learned to translate. Sometimes, in the solemn stillness of a moonlight night, when we had wandered along some rugged mountain-path, and reached a spot whence we could look down upon the pathless waste of waters, which of all spectacles in Nature’s great theatre most affected this untaught girl, I could see that her mind took a kind of inspiration from the grandeur of the scene, and that the littleness of self was for the moment put away from her. Are there not, indeed, brief pauses of mental intoxication, in which the spirit releases itself from its dull mortal bondage, and floats starward on the wings of inspiration?

‘If we could stay here for ever,’ she said to me one night, when we sat in the little classic temple on D. P., looking down from that craggy headland upon the barren sea; ‘if this light could shine always, with those deep, solemn shadows sleeping under the shelter of the rocks, I think that one might forget all that is hardest in the world. Here I remember nothing except that you and I are together in the moonlight. Past, present, and future seem to melt into this hour. I can almost fancy the rocks and the waves feeling a sort of happiness like this--a sense of delight when the moon shines upon them. It is difficult to think that the waves feel _nothing_ when they come creeping along the sands with that half-stealthy, half-joyous motion, like the nymphs you talk of, dancing in secret, afraid to awaken the sea-god.’

‘If you had lived in the days when there were gods upon the earth, C., I think you would have fallen in love with Poseidon.’

“She was looking out across the sea, with a dreamy light in her eyes, and her lips half parted, as if she had indeed seen a band of snowy-kirtled nymphs dancing on the broad stretch of sand in the shadow of the headland.

‘Poss--who?’ she asked, wonderingly.

‘Poseidon; one of the elder sons of Time and the Great Mother, the sea-god of whom you spoke just now. I think if you had lived in the Golden Age, you would have met Tyro’s lover, and loved him, as she