Chapter 21

"God help thee, then! I'll see thy face no more. Like water spilled upon the plain, Not to be gathered up again, Is the old love I bore."

Before that long caress was ended, close behind them there broke forth a low, plaintive cry, such as might be wrung from the bravest of delicate women, in her extremity of pain, when stricken by a heavy brutal hand.

The hot blood ebbed back in Guy Livingstone's veins, and froze at its fountain-head. His punishment had begun already. Before her face, white as the dress she wore, was revealed through a break in the dark green foliage of the camellias, he knew that he had trifled away his life's happiness, and lost Constance Brandon.

She came forward slowly. With a valiant effort she had shaken off the first feeling of faintness that had crept over her, and there was scarcely a trace of emotion left on her features--calm and pale as the Angel of Death.

Guy had risen, and stood still, with his head bent down on his breast. For the first time in his life he was unable to raise his eyes, weighed down by the heavy sense of bitter disgrace and forfeited honor.

But the bright flush on Flora's cheek spoke more of exultation than of shame; the bouquet which she raised to her lips only half concealed a smile of triumph. She wreathed her slender neck haughtily while she met her rival's glance without flinching. She thought that, if she had played for a heavy stake--no less than the jeopardy of her fair fame--this time, at least, the game was her own.

Constance spoke first, in a voice perfectly measured and composed. There was not a false note in the soft, musical tones. After once conquering her emotion, she would have dropped dead at Flora's feet sooner than betray how she was wounded.

"When you have taken Miss Bellasys back, will you come to me for a moment, Mr. Livingstone? I will wait for you here."

Flora rose before Guy could answer. "Don't trouble yourself," she said, gayly. "Here is my partner for the polka looking anxiously for me. I am ready, Captain Ravenswood."

She turned, before reaching the door, to fire a last shot.

"It is the next galop I am to keep for you, is it not?"

This was to Guy; but there was no answer. He stood in precisely the same attitude, without a muscle of his face stirring or an eyelash quivering.

In all the Rifle Brigade there was not a more reckless dare-devil than Harry Ravenswood, nor one who adhered more devoutly to the convenient creed, "All is fair in war or love." But he saw that something had happened quite out of his line; and he did not venture on a single allusion to it as he led his partner back to the dancing-room, with a perplexed expression on his cheery face, which amused Flora intensely when she remarked it. When the subject came on for discussion afterward in the smoking-room at his club, he thus expressed himself, in language terse and elegantly allegorical.

"You see, Livingstone is a very heavy weight; a good deal better than most in the ring. When I saw him so floored as not to be able to come to time, I knew there had been some hard hitting going on thereabouts, so I kept clear."

The two who were left alone in the conservatory remained silent for a few seconds. Then Guy roused himself, and offered his arm to his companion with an impulse of courtesy that was simply mechanical. She took it without remark, and they passed out through the door which led into the garden.

There Constance left his side; and, for the first time, their eyes met as they stood face to face under the bright moon. Guy read his sentence instantly--a sentence from which there was no appeal. The very hopelessness of his situation restored its elasticity to the somewhat sullen pride which was the mainspring of his character. He stood, waiting for her to speak; and his eyes were not cast down now, but riveted on her face--gloomily defiant.

"I hope you will believe," Miss Brandon said, "that it was quite involuntarily I became a spy on your actions. I did not overhear one word; and my partner had that moment left me, when I saw--" Not all her self-command could check the shudder that ran through every limb, and the choking in her throat that would interrupt her.

"I have very little to add," she went on, more steadily. "After what I witnessed, I need hardly say that we only meet again as the merest strangers. You might think meanly of me, indeed, if I ever allowed your lips to touch my cheek or my hand again. Remember, I told you from the first we were not suited to each other; perhaps I deserve all I have met with for allowing myself to be overruled. You can not contradict a word of this, or say that it is unjust or severe."

Did she pause in the expectation or the hope of an excuse, or an appeal from her hearer? Only the hoarse answer came,

"I have forfeited the right to defend myself or to gainsay you."

"You would find it difficult to do either," Constance rejoined, rather more haughtily; perhaps she was disappointed in the tone of his reply. "One word more: if my name is ever called in question, I am sure no one will defend it more readily than yourself. My voice will never be heard against you; and if, hereafter, you shall desire my forgiveness more than you now do; remember, I have given it unasked and freely."

Guy's tone was pregnant with cold, cruel irony as he answered,

"I congratulate you on your position, Miss Brandon; it is quite unassailable. You are in the right now, as you always have been. You were right, of course, in always doling out the tokens of your love in such scanty measure as your pride and your priests would allow. They ought to canonize you--those holy men! I doubt if they have another disciple so superior to all human weaknesses. It must be very gratifying to so eminent a Christian to be able to forgive plenarily, without danger of the favor being returned. I have nothing to urge against your decision--that we part forever. You will have no difficulty in forgetting me, whom you ought never to have stooped to. Yet I will give you one caution. I am not romantic, as you know, and I generally mean what I say. If you should think hereafter of bestowing yourself on some worthier object, hesitate a little for _his_ sake, or wait till I am dead; otherwise, the day that makes his happiness certain may bring him very near his grave."

His voice had changed during the last words into a growl of savage menace, and his forehead was black and furrowed with passion.

It might have been his own excited fancy, or the passing just then of a light cloud over the moon; but, for an instant, he thought he saw her steady lip quiver and tremble. If so, be very sure it was not fear which caused the emotion, though even that the circumstances might have excused; rather, I think, it was a pang of self-reproach--a consciousness of having acted unwisely, though for the best; perhaps, too, the stubbornness of the heart she had ruled once--so strong and proud even in its abasement--was congenial to her own besetting sin: she liked the fierce threat better than the cool sarcasm. At any rate, she answered more gently than she had yet spoken.

"I believe you. But you know me better than to think a threat would influence me. Yet you need not fear my ever again trusting this world with my happiness. You will be very sorry hereafter for some things you have said to-night. Ask yourself--if I had loved you, as you seem to have expected, better than my own soul, would the result have been different? It is too late now to say any thing but--farewell. Will you not say it, as I do, kindly, or at least not in anger--Guy?"

She paused between the two last words, and their imploring accent was almost piteous. There must have been a strange fascination about Livingstone, for, saint as she was, no other living creature would have won such a concession from the Christian charity of Constance Brandon.

Had Guy spoken then, as he ought to have done, I believe all might have been amended; but an angry devil was busy within him, and would not let go his prey; he stood with his black brows downcast, and with folded arms, never seeming to notice the slender fingers that sought to touch his hand. True it is that nothing makes a man so unforgiving as the consciousness of having inflicted a bitter wrong. He heard a sigh, heavy and despairing as Francesca's when her dying prayer was spurned, a light shadow flitted across the streak of moonlit grass, and, when he raised his head, he was left alone, like Alp on the sea-shore, to judge the battle between a remorseful conscience and a hardened heart.

Livingstone was seen no more that night; Constance glided in alone, and her absence had been scarcely noticed. During the short time that she remained, no one could have guessed from her face that her heart was broken, any more than did Napoleon that the aid-de-camp who brought the news of Lannes' victory had been almost cut in two by a grape-shot.

I speak it diffidently, with the fear of the divine voice of the people before my eyes, as is but fitting in these equalizing days, when territories, the title to which is possession immemorial, are being plucked away acre by acre, and hereditary privileges mined one by one; but it seems to me, in this, perhaps, solitary attribute, "the brave old houses" still keep their pre-eminence.

They are not better, nor wiser in their generation (forbid it, Manchester!), nor even more daring in confronting danger than the thousands whose grandsires are creations of a powerful fancy or of a complaisant king-at-arms. In that terrible charge which swept away the Russian cavalry at Eylau, three lengths in front of the best blood in France rode the innkeeper's son. The "First Grenadier" himself was not more splendidly reckless, though he was a La Tour d'Auvergne. But in passive uncomplaining endurance, in the power of obliterating outward tokens of suffering, physical or mental, may we not still say, _Noblesse oblige_?

Hundreds of similar isolated instances may be quoted from the annals of the Third Estate; but, in the class I speak of, this quality seems a sixth sense wholly independent of, and often contradicting the rest of the individual's disposition.

I remember meeting in France an old Italian refugee. He had not much principle and very little pride; he was ready _quidvis facere aut pati_ to get a five-franc piece, which he would incontinently stake and lose at baccarat or ecarté, as he had done aforetime with a large ancestral inheritance; but his quiet fortitude under privations that were neither few nor light was worthy of Belisarius.

Very often, I am sure, his evening meal must have been eaten with the Barmecide; but his pale, handsome face, finished off so gracefully by the white, pointed beard, still met you, courteous and unruffled, the idea of an exiled doge, or a Rohan in disgrace. Once only I saw him moved--when the landlord of our inn, a vast bloated _bourgeois_, smote the Count familiarly on the shoulder, and bantered him pleasantly on the brilliant prospects of his eldest son. It was not unkindly meant, perhaps, but the old man shrunk away from the large fat hand as if it hurt him, and turned toward us a look piteously appealing, which was not lost on myself or Livingstone. When mine host, later in the evening, shook in his gouty slippers before an ebullition of Guy's wrath, excited by the most shadowy pretext, I wonder if he guessed at the remote cause of that outpouring of the vials? Count Massa did, for he smiled intensely, as only an Italian can smile when amply revenged.

One instance more to close a long digression. I have read of a baron in the fifteenth century who once in his life said a good thing. He was a coarse, brutal marauder, illiterate enough to have satisfied Earl Angus, and as unromantic as the Integral Calculus. He was mortally wounded in a skirmish; and when his men came back from the pursuit, he was bleeding to death, resting against a tree. When they lifted him up, they noticed his eyes fixed with a curious, complacent expression on the red stream that surged and gurgled out of his wound, just as a _gourmand_ looks at a bumper of a rare vintage held up to the light. They heard him growl to himself, "_Qu'il coule rouge et fort, le bon vieux sang de Bourgogne_." And then he fell back--dead.

O Publicola Thompson! Phösphor to the Tower Hamlets and Boanerges of the platform--will you not allow that, amid a wilderness of weeds, this one fair plant flourishes under "the cold shade?"