CHAPTER XII.

GOOD-BYE.

"Cras ingens iterabimus aequor; do you know what that means, Dove?" asked Will.

"Something dreadful, I suppose," she said.

"_Cras_, on Monday night, _iterabimus_, I must leave, _ingens aequor_, for Germany. Didn't I say I should never leave England again without you, Dove? But this is only for a week or two, my darling; and it is on business; and I am come to crave your forgiveness and permission."

What did she say? Not one word. But, being seated at the piano just then, and having some knowledge of how she could most easily reach her lover's heart and make him sorry for his fickleness, she began to play, with great tenderness, with graceful and touching chords, that weird, wild, cruel air, 'The Coulin,'--the old Irish air that seems to have in it all the love and agony of parting which mankind has ever experienced. It is only now and again that humanity has expressed its pain or passion in one of those strong audible throbs--as when, for instance, God put the _Marseillaise_ into the bursting heart of Rouget de Lille. One wonders how men live after writing such things.

And as for Will, he never could bear 'The Coulin;' he put his hand on her shoulder, and said:

"Don't play that any more, Dove. That isn't the parting of love at all--it is the parting of death."

"Ah, why should you say that?" she said, rising and creeping close to him, with tears suddenly starting to her eyes. "Why should you say that, Will? You don't expect us to be parted _that_ way?"

"Come," he said, leading her out of the drawing-room into the open air. "The man who wrote 'The Coulin' had probably a broken heart; but that is no reason why we should break ours over his misery. My father is teaching Carry and Totty to fish for sticklebacks in the pond; shall we go and help them?"

He had gone down to bid good-bye to St. Mary-Kirby and its people. The warm valley was very tempting at this time; but did not peremptory business call him away? For after the first yellow flush of the buttercups had died out of the meadows, they were growing white with the snow of the ox-eye; and the walnut trees were changing from brown to green; and instead of the lilacs, the bushy, red-budded honeysuckle was opening, and burdening the air with its perfume.

Then they had fine weather just then; would it be finer on the Rhine? The white heat of midday was without haze. Sharp and clear were the white houses, specks only, on the far uplands; the fir-woods lay black against the blinding sky; and down here in the valley the long-grassed meadows seemed to grow dark in the heat, though there was a light shimmering of sunny green surrounding like a halo each pollard-willow by the riverside. In the clear pools the grey trout threw black shadows on the sand beneath, and lay motionless, with their eyes watching your every movement on the bank. St. Mary-Kirby lay hot and white among the green meadows, and by the side of the cool stream; but the people of St. Mary-Kirby prayed for rain to swell the fruit of their orchards and fields.

On their way down to a little gate, which, at one end of Mr. Anerley's garden, allowed you to go out upon a small bank overlooking the pond, Will explained to his companion the necessity for his going abroad, the probabilities of his stay, and so forth. She knew that he was going with Count Schoenstein; but she did not know that Annie Brunel was to be of the party. Will had no particular reason for not mentioning the circumstance; but as he strictly confined himself to the business aspect of the case, Miss Brunel was somehow omitted.

Nor, when they arrived at the pond, and found Mr. Anerley superintending the operations of two young anglers, did he consider it necessary to tell his father that Annie Brunel was going with them. Perhaps she had slipped out of his mind altogether. Perhaps he fancied he had no right to reveal the Count's private arrangements. At all events, Miss Brunel's name was not at that time mentioned.

"The stickleback," observed Mr. Anerley, sententiously, when they drew near, "must be of very ancient lineage. Any long-continued necessity on the part of any animal produces a corresponding organ or function; can you explain to me, therefore, why Scotchmen are not born with a mackintosh?"

"No," said Dove.

"Because Nature has not had time to develope it. You observe that my stickleback here, whom I have just caught, has had time to acquire special means of defence and attack. I, a man, can only clumsily use for defence or attack limbs which are properly adapted for other purposes----"

"Which proves that mankind has never experienced the necessity of having specially destructive organs," said Will, to Dove's great delight.

She knew not which, if either, was right but the philosopher of Chesnut Bank had such a habit of inflicting upon his womankind theories which they did not understand, and could not contradict, that she had a malicious pleasure in witnessing what she supposed was his discomfiture.

"It serves you right, papa," she said. "You presume on our ignorance, when you have only mamma and me. Now you have somebody to talk to you in your own way."

"When I observed," continued Mr. Anerley, "that mankind had no special organ of attack and defence, I ought to have excluded women. The tongue of woman, an educational result which owes its origin to----"

"Don't let him go on, Dove," said Will, "or he'll say something very wicked."

"Has papa been talking nonsense to you all day, Carry?" asked Dove.

"No," said the matter-of-fact Carry, "it was the story of the 'King of the White Bears.'"

"I pghesumed on theigh ignoghance," said Mr. Anerley, mimicking his adopted daughter's pronunciation.

"We must give him up, Dove," said Will. "A man who will employ ridicule in a scientific argument is not worth answering. If he were not my father, I should express my feelings more strongly; as it is----"

Here Mrs. Anerley appeared, her pretty kindly face lit up by some unusual and pleasurable excitement. She was almost out of breath too.

"Hubert, do you know what's going to happen?"

"Never having been able, my dear, to calculate the probable line of _your_ actions----"

"Be quiet. The Bishop is coming to open the church, when the alterations are complete. And, Mrs. Bexley says, that as their house is so far off, he will lunch with us."

"Dear me!" observed Mr. Anerley, "a bishop! I shall become quite respectable. What sort of wine will the exalted creature propose to drink--if a bishop drinks at all?"

"There will be several clergymen, you know, and----"

"With a bishop in the house, shall I be able to see any lesser lights? I shall allow you women to sit down in the chair he has used, as you all do when the Prince of Wales appears in public. There is a Hindoo custom resembling this--not wholly a religious observance, you know----"

Mr. Anerley stopped, perhaps luckily; pretending to have a dreadful struggle with an obstinate stickleback.

"Mr. Bexley is charmed with the embroidery that Dove has done for the altar-cloth," continued Mrs. Anerley; "and even poor old Mr. Ribston came hobbling up to me and said 'as it was werry nice indeed; only, ma'am, I should ha' preferred it without the bits o' red, which is the mark of the Scarlet Woman. Not as I mean,' he said, though, 'that either you, ma'am, or Mrs. Bexley, would turn us into Papishes without our knowin' of it; only there's some games up as I hear of, and one has to be p'tickler, and not be mixed up wi' them as is ruinin' the Church!'"

"Very proper, too," said Mr. Anerley, having arranged the stickleback question. "I should think that old Ribston fancied he had hit you and Dove pretty hard there. Would you think Dove was a pupil of the Scarlet Woman, Carry?"

"Who is the Scarlet Woman?" said Carry, with her big brown eyes staring.

"Mother Redcap," said Mr. Anerley. "A relation of the old woman who lived in a shoe."

"Hubert," said Mrs. Anerley, sharply, "you may teach the children stickleback fishing; but you'd better leave other things alone. You may be pulling down more than you can build up again, as Mr. Ribston said about these old pillars in the nave."

"Mr. Ribston, my dear, is not a reflective man. He laments the destruction of anything old, not seeing that as we destroy antiquities so the years are making other antiquities. Mamma, box that girl's ears! she is laughing at me."

In the evening Will had to walk over to Balnacluith Place, in order to complete the arrangements with the Count as to their starting on the Monday evening. Dove went with him; and when they got there the red sunset was flaring over the gloomy old house, and lighting up its windows with streaks of fire. Here and there, too, the tall bare trunks of one or two Scotch firs turned scarlet against the faint grey-green of the east; and the smooth river had broad splashes of crimson upon it, as it lay down there among the cool meadows, apparently motionless.

Will's reticence was unfortunate. They had scarcely begun to talk about their journey when Count Schoenstein mentioned something about Miss Brunel's probable arrangements.

"Is Miss Brunel going with you?" said Dove, her soft eyes lighting up with a faint surprise.

"Yes. Didn't you know?" replied Count Schoenstein. "She is going to take a short holiday, and we hope to be honoured by her presence at Schoenstein."

Dove looked at Will; he was examining a cartridge-pouch the Count had brought in, and did not observe her inquiring glance.

On their way home, he observed that she was very quiet. At first he thought she was subdued by the exceeding beauty of the twilight, which had here and there a yellow star lying lambent in the pale grey; or that she was listening to the strong, luscious music of the nightingales, which abound in the valley of St. Mary-Kirby. Presently, however, he saw that she was wilfully silent, and then he asked her what had displeased her. Her sense of wrong was of that tremulous and tender character which never reached the length of indignation; and just now, when she wanted to be very angry with him, she merely said, not in a very firm voice:

"I did not think you would deceive me, Will."

"Well, now," he said, "you have been wasting all this beautiful time and annoying yourself by nursing your grievance silently. Why didn't you speak out at once, Dove, and say how I have deceived you?"

"You said you were going abroad on business."

"So I am."

"Count Schoenstein talks as if it were merely a pleasure excursion."

"So it is, to him."

"Miss Brunel is going with you."

"Well?"

"You know quite well what I mean," she said, petulantly. "Why didn't you tell me she was going with you? Why did you conceal her going from me, as if there was no confidence between us?----"

"My darling, I didn't conceal her going from you. I didn't tell you, because her going was no business of mine--because--because----"

"Because you thought I would be jealous," she said, with a little wilful colour in her face.

"My darling," said Will, gravely, "you don't consider what you're saying. You wrong Annie Brunel quite as much as you wrong me and yourself. I don't know what you've seen in her to warrant your supposing for an instant that----"

"Oh, Will, Will," she cried, passionately, imploringly, "don't talk like that to me, or you'll break my heart. Be friends with me, Will--dear Will--for if I'm not friends with you, what's the use of living? And I'm very sorry, Will; and I didn't mean it; but all the same you should have told me, _and I hate her_!"

"Now you are yourself, Dove," he said, laughing. "And if Miss Brunel were here just now, you would fling your arms round her neck, and beg her to forgive you----"

"I am never going to fling my arms round any person's neck," said Dove, "except, perhaps, one person--that is, when the person deserves it--but I don't think he ever will; and as for Miss Brunel, I don't know what business she has going abroad just now, and I don't know why I should be so fond of her, although I hate her quite the same; and if she were here just now, as you say, I would tell her she ought to be ashamed of herself, cheating people into liking her."

"You talk very prettily, Dove, but with a touch of incoherence. You ought to hear how Annie Brunel speaks of _you_; and you ought to know what a kindly, tender, almost motherly interest she has in you."

"Then you have seen her lately?" said Dove, peeping up.

"Yes, once or twice."

"Does she know that we are to be married?" asked Dove, looking down again.

"She knows that we are to be magghied. You foolish little darling, she saw it in your face the moment you met her; and you might have seen that she knew your secret."

"Actresses are witches, dear," said Dove, gravely. "They know everything."

"They are like witches in having suffered a good deal of persecution at the hands of the ignorant and vulgar."

"Is that me, dear?" she asked, demurely. "No? Then, I shan't make fun any more. But if you're really going away on Monday evening, Will, I want to bid you good-bye to-night--and not before all the people you know; and I'll tell you all that you have got to do when you are away in thinking about me. There's the moon getting up now behind Woodhill Church; and every night at ten, Will, all the time you are away, I'll go up to my room and look up at her, and you'll do the same, darling, won't you, just to please me? And then I'll know that my Will is thinking of me, and of St. Mary-Kirby; and then you'll know, darling, that I'm thinking of you, and if I could only send a kiss over to you, I'd do it. It won't be much trouble to you, will it? And if I'm lonely and miserable all the day, and if the 'Coulin,' that I can't help playing sometimes, makes me cry, I shall know that at ten you and I will be able to speak to each other that way----"

"I'll do everything you ask me," said Will, to her gently; "but--but don't play the 'Coulin' any more, Dove."

"Why, dear? Ah! you said it was the parting of death. Why did you say that?"