Part 5

--"Then by all the affection you bear me, Mathieu, I beseech you to signalize him at once to bring Francine out upon his terrace; when she is there, you will take me in your arms, you will carry me to the high rock, and if God grant me grace, I shall reach it with still life enough left to see my child once more, and to embrace her in spirit."

--"It shall be done so as you desire, Geneviève," said the quarter-master, who, impressed by the presentiments of the dying one, had abandoned hope, and had not strength to refuse her anything.

--"Quickly, then, very quickly!... for I feel that God is calling me."

Ropars rushed out, as though he feared there would scarcely be time; but he came in again almost in a moment, exclaiming that Francine was already on the terrace of the magazine with Dorot. Stretching out her hands to him, the dying woman uttered a feeble cry of joy. He wrapped her up in his winter-cape, and carried her gently in his arms as far as the parapet of their platform.

--"Where is she?" inquired Geneviève, her eyes blinded by the light of day, and trying in vain to look steadily; "I can't make out anything, Mathieu! where is the child: show me the child!"

--"Look down there at our feet," replied the seaman; "can you see the high rock?"

--"Yes."

--"Can you follow the bubbling of the sea along the reef?"

--"Yes, yes."

--"And away, yonder, over the reefs, can you distinguish the stone-work of the terrace?"

--"Down there? ... no ... there's only a cloud! I can see nothing.... Oh! if it be too late!... if she be there under my very eyes, and I can no longer see her!... My God, my God, once more, only once, let me see my child!"

These words, or rather these mother's cries, had been so full of sadness, that Ropars could not restrain his tears. He seated his sinking wife upon the parapet, and himself kneeled down to support her.

--"Courage, Geneviève!" he stammered out; "look well to this side ... between the line of the sea and the sky."

--"I am looking," said Geneviève, appearing in the effort to rally all the life left in her ".... Raise my head, Mathieu ... screen me from the sun...."

She checked herself with a stifled exclamation.

--"Ah! there she is! there she is!... She sees me ... she is lifting up her arms.... Francine ... my daughter ... my child!"

So impulsively did she lean forward, that but for Ropars, she would have thrown herself upon the rocks that sloped down to the sea. A flitting ray of life had lighted up her features; she sent kisses on her fingers to the child, and talked to it as though it could hear her; she raised her hands to Heaven, with rapid and broken ejaculations; she smiled and wept at once. Finally, her strength failed to endure so great emotion, and her head fell upon the quarter-master's shoulder. In alarm, he took her again in his arms, to carry her back into the house; but she made signs to him that she wished to remain out of-doors. He laid her down upon the bench, whereon the family had been used to sit together in the evening, in front of the sea, which was now lighted up by the rising sun. After a swoon that lasted some time, she opened her eyes, and asked for her daughter. Mathieu looked towards the powder magazine and said that Dorot had taken her away. She bowed her head with sorrowing resignation.

--"He has done right," she went on, in feeble accents; ... "besides, I feel ... that my sight grows thick.... I couldn't see her any more ... and ... I still have something to say to you.... Come closer, Mathieu ... closer ... my voice is failing.... Give me your hand.... I want to be sure that you hear me."

Ropars knelt upon the sand, with one hand in that of his dying wife, and the other placed behind her, to support her.

--"You are going to stay alone," she continued. "Elsewhere, you could perhaps endure it; but here, in the midst of the ocean, it is not the life of a man, or of a Christian.... You are used to having some one keep you company ... some one to love you.... When I am gone ... another one must take my place."

--"Never!" broke in Ropars.

With her hand she silenced him.

--"Hush!" said she gently; "you must needs think this, so long as I am before your eyes ... but when I am laid in the grave, you will then feel your want.... Believe not that I would reproach you, my poor husband.... I do not wish to carry away your happiness with me in my winding sheet.... No ... no ... wherever I may be, I shall need to know that you are well cared for."

--"Enough, Geneviève!" murmured the seaman, choking with emotion.

--"Let me go on to the end," she resumed; "I have still one plea to urge.... When you take off the crape from your arm, Mathieu ... promise me to think of the dear creature who is our child ... the child of both ... and who will remain with you, to remind you of me ... choose a wife who may fill my place towards her."

--"What is it that you are asking me, and whom could I give her for a mother, after yourself?" rejoined Ropars.

--"Some one" ... Geneviève went on ... "who would not grudge me the having been chosen first ... some honest heart that would take kindly to an orphan ... who would talk to her of me ... who would teach her to love God ... and to obey you!... If you promise me that this shall be so, Mathieu ... if you promise it on your honour ... and on your salvation, I shall fall asleep, at peace, and blessing you."

Ropars made the promise, amidst sighs and groans; but this was the dying woman's last effort. After having thanked him by an embrace, she let herself sink into her husband's arms. It almost seemed as though the power of her will had slackened the steps of Death, for the sake of this final compact. Scarcely was it completed, when her sufferings recommenced. Carried back to the alcove, she died there towards the close of the day. Her last words were a prayer, in which her husband's and her daughter's names were intermingled.

On the ensuing day, the grave in which Josèphe already reposed was re-opened to receive Geneviève, for, during the past month, Death had reaped so abundantly that the barren island lacked space for his doleful harvest. Informed of what had happened, by means of the signals agreed upon, the keeper of the powder-magazine brought Francine to the edge of his rock, and the child, on her knees, uttered a prayer for her mother's spirit, at the moment the funeral ceremony was ended, across the water.

This death was the last. Like those expiatory victims who, in sacrificing themselves, were wont to appease the anger of the Gods, Geneviève seemed, in going down to the tomb, as though she closed its doors behind her. A fortnight later, and the yellow flag slid down the flag staff that over-topped the lazaretto, and those who had been quarantined, now cured, went away in the frigate's long-boat. They only left behind them, on the dreary island, a man whose hair had become perfectly white, and a child in mourning clothes.

THRICE ONLY.

I

Do not imagine that this is to be a love-story. Very few experiences furnish material for such. Rarer still is the ability to use the material, when it falls in one's way. At any rate, I make no pretension thereto.

But it sometimes happens during the earlier and more tumultuous period of a man's life, that casual occurrences take place, which do not indeed at the time immediately influence his actions or his fortunes, but which in later days may be recalled with interest. Of this sort--if I mistake not, or if I do not mar them in the telling--were my three meetings with Mary Verner. I only met her thrice.

The first time--many a year has sped away since; but it seems, if I shut my mental eye to events and feelings with which the interval has been crowded, and my bodily eye to the library table before me, as if the little scene were being enacted here, now, to-day.

Whence this power of summoning up the ghosts of long ago? Why should the comparatively recent refuse to be stamped upon the memory, and the old impressions refuse to fade? Let philosophers answer; I have no more inclination to write an essay than to tell a love-tale. My purpose I have already stated; though I omitted to mention that I write my own veritable experience--with a change of names, a studied obscurity of dates, and a very slight change otherwise.

The precise year I do not remember, nor, consequently, my own exact age; but I must have been about fourteen. George Verner, Mary's brother--poor fellow! I saw his death registered, the other day, in that odious corner of the _Times_--was my class-mate and play-mate at a school some few miles from London. He was a good-looking and good-tempered fellow, if not remarkable for his abilities. It chanced that I was--in the choice language of the time and place--"a dab at Latin verses." I helped George once in a while with his exercises; and once in a while with the mince-pies, that his mother's a cook used to send him on the sly. The first time that I saw her--Mary Verner I mean, not the cook--was on a whole holiday; George, who lived in the neighbourhood, had invited me to pass it with him. The old family coach came for us at ten o'clock, with the fat old horses and the fat old family coachman, just for all the world as you may often meet them in the story-books that are called "exceedingly natural," and as you now-a-days rarely find them in real life. Pony-phaetons, britzkas, coupés, "Croydon-baskets," and nondescript vehicles that, being neither close carriages nor open, are palmed off as both--these have superseded the full-bodied of my early recollections.

I fancy that I see her now.... You perceive that though I note the modern change in the carriage department, I recognize none such in the phraseology of our tongue. I fancy I see her now. You may, if you please, alter the wording; but that's the plain English of it.

As we drove up the sweep that led from the lodge to the front entrance of a very beautiful suburban villa, I leaned out of the window, with the curiosity natural to a boy of fourteen, on strange ground.

Mary Verner--I knew, by the family likeness, that she was George's elder sister, the moment my eye lighted on her--was trimming or watering her geraniums, in one of the recesses on either side of the porch.

"Here, Mary, here's Cuthbert _tertius_," said George, running up the steps, and pushing me before him.

"I know him; how d'ye do? I'm glad to see you," was the frank reception, spoken in a clear, round-toned, springy voice, that seemed to drop without effort out of a rose-lipped mouth well-filled with well-knit teeth. And as she spoke smilingly, she opened a pair of large brown eyes that I have since thought--for boys don't know much about the law of colours--were designed to harmonize with what we call a clear brunette complexion. Certainly, if the ballad of "The Nut Brown Mayde" be a model imitation of the antique, Mary Verner might have sat for the portrait.

But it was not so much her eyes that took hold of me, open though they did by degrees, wider and wider, until I wondered when they would cease opening; nor her coal-black hair, dressed as you may see it in the likenesses by Sir Thomas Lawrence; nor her rosy mouth; nor her even teeth; nor her figure full of grace, _svelte_ as the French call it, for which we have no answering word. It was not these, or any of them. It was the carolling of her few words, so free and unconcerned in tone. If I had not met her subsequently, I might have forgotten her looks; I doubt whether her voice could have passed from me.

I need not tax my memory or my invention about the trifling though happy events of that day. It was pretty evident who was mistress of the house, though the fond and proud mother of Mary Verner had the air of a dignified and well-bred woman. Silent or talking, it was Mary who dispensed the honours, at least so far as the stranger was concerned. Probably it was the same with all comers; but this is only a surmise.

Well; the whole holiday came to an end, and we were driven back to the old school by the old coachman, our pockets full of chestnuts, and our boyish hearts full of a sense of supreme enjoyment, such we believe as, in later life, women feel after the best ball of the season, and men after a splendid whitebait dinner at Blackwall. I recollect telling the fellows in the dormitory what a jolly time we had been having, and how capitally George's pony leaped the fence on the common, round the corner, out of sight of the house. By the way, it was partly owing to that pony having engrossed so much of our time, that I had not regularly fallen in love with Mary Verner. Partly, I say, because I was further saved from this predicament by a standing devotion to my pretty cousin Rose, which the temptation had been strong enough, but not long enough to disturb. I never went to George's house again; and ere long the image of his sister was stowed away on one of the upper shelves of my memory. There it might have been smothered in dust, or even converted into it, if chance had not taken it down and given it an airing.

II

Twenty-one--what a change from fourteen! How the pulse of life beats and bounds! I was running a tilt at the pastimes, and doffing aside the cares of early manhood, when for the second time, I came across Mary Verner. Plump upon her, I would say, if I thought you would pardon the coarseness of the expression. At any rate--and to be genteel--it was unexpectedly. Twenty-one gives very few thoughts to fourteen. It may be a much longer distance thither, when one starts at seventy to go back; but it is surprising how much more quickly you get over the intermediate ground. Let that be; only I don't believe I had given a thought to Mary Verner, since the week or two that followed my first interview with her.

"Do come and dine with us on Monday," said my friend Mrs. F.; "there will be a very charming girl here, whom you would like to see."

"Positively?"

"_Sans faute!_"

"Then keep a place for me; I'll come."

I went. It was a formal dinner-party. In the drawing-room, before going to table, Mrs. F. came across to me.

"Now I'll introduce you to our belle of the evening. You may escort her down to dinner. There she is, half-hidden behind that drapery. You can't have noticed her."

"Miss Verner, let me present Mr. Cuthbert."

I should have recognized Mary Verner, as she looked up, with those widely-opening brown eyes of hers, if her name had not been mentioned. As it was, it was quite natural for me to remark that I believed I had had the pleasure of seeing Miss Verner before.

And so in a few moments we were gossipping cosily about "old times," as we, not very old people, called them.

The beautiful child had expanded into a very lovely woman, preserving still the same characteristics of person and expression. The charm of her voice was the same. You may be sure that when seated by her side, with the becoming glow of lamp-light overhead heightening, if possible, those attractions which I rather hint than attempt to describe--you may be sure, I say, that I found her very captivating.

We talked of her brother George; of the pleasant house wherein I first met her, and which was still her home; of her amiable and lady-like mother who was still living; of the old pony now gathered to his sires; of the old chestnut-trees even--in short, of all those unimportant associations, out of which, under such circumstances, one endeavours to establish a trivial and flitting but very pleasant little bond of sympathy.

I declare I was half ready to fall head over ears in love with her. And she took it all with a simple unaffected grace, that seemed to be her very nature.

But we did not have all the talk to ourselves. I had not the presumption to engross her entirely. Nor would it have been possible. She was--there is no need to go over it all again--she was Mary Verner.

Nearly opposite to us at table sat a Mr. Easton, a young barrister--young, that is professionally, for he was apparently a man of thirty or thereabouts. He would not have been singled out as a lady-killer, for he was none of your regular Adonises, such as hang by dozens, in portraiture, upon the walls of our Royal Academy Exhibitions, and lounge complacently in our Fop's Alley at the Opera. When, however, the excitement of conversation--in which he took an active and most intelligent part--developed the fine play of his features, you would have pronounced him a man who added, to a cultivated and superior mind, a look that bespoke such gift. In fact there was a manly air about him, that claimed respect, if it did not challenge attention.

About the time when I made this notable discovery, I recollected that at the moment of my introduction to Miss Verner, Mr. Easton was gossipping with her in the secluded corner half-hidden by the drapery, though he moved away, with perfect good breeding, to give place to the new-comer.

About this time, too, there began--at which end of the table, I forget--an occasional play of badinage, whereof Mr. Easton was the subject. For a grave and earnest man, he seemed to receive it all in exceedingly good part. To my surprise also--to say nothing of annoyance--my fair neighbour was brought, after a while, within its scope. Neither did she--I was forced to acknowledge within myself--evince either _mauvaise honte_ or sensitiveness. The truth was plain. They were engaged.

As a child's card-built house tumbles down when the table is shaken, so down went one of the prettiest little castles-in-the-air, that ever simpleton built out of cards of his own shaping.

Down it went; though I flatter myself I was too much a man of the world, to let a glimpse of its dislocated plan be apparent. Indeed, in a few seconds, I had rallied myself on my own absurdity; gulped down my disappointment; and resigned myself again to the charm that Mary Verner still shed around her, if its tint was somewhat changed. Besides, I availed myself of the sudden opportunity thus afforded, for testing the practical value of one of my favourite theories, when I was a young fellow and affected to bask in the sunshine of human nature: to wit, that, apart from serious love-making, when a woman in either married or betrothed, she has therefrom an additional feather in her social cap. So have I found it through life--always provided that the attractive and companionable qualities were otherwise in abundance. And this theory has at least given heartiness to my good wishes for my fairer acquaintances and friends. Is it not better to come to such a philosophical conclusion, than to be always envying other people's good fortune?

Shifting, therefore, my ground, I was rapidly possessed by a strong interest in Miss Verner's future welfare--much of which was undoubtedly genuine.

Delicately, and by gently leading her on, I gathered something of the story of her courtship, though I must needs confess that I cannot now call to mind a word of it. It may be of more interest to state that she was to make Mr. Easton the happiest of men, within six weeks or so of that time; and that the honey-moon was to be spent in a ramble on the Continent. Very emphatically and very sincerely did I wish her a pleasant time of it.

But the most agreeable evenings will come to a close. This one--with its revival of a boy's casual acquaintance, with its momentary castle-building, and its subsequent benevolence of feeling--this one, like all others, passed away. It did not die out, as the fag-end of a dinner-party sometimes will; it was cut short to me by the "good night!" of Mary Verner, as she took her departure, leaning on Mr. Easton's arm, in the train of an elderly female relative.

When the drawing-room door closed upon her graceful figure, I felt for a moment as though the gas had been suddenly turned off. I recollect, however, the hostess's observation, dropped to the accompaniment of a playfully malicious smile:

"Didn't I tell you, you would like my friend Mary Verner?"

"Yes," was the reply, "and I have passed a most delightful evening; but I don't think it quite fair, Mrs. F."--here there was a terrible smash of the theory--"to open the gates of Paradise, and then slam them in a poor fellow's face?"

I was to have gone, that night, to a ball in Devonshire Place, expressly to meet--Never mind; I was not in the humour for dancing or flirting. I went straight home, and to bed. I tossed about a good deal, and finally dreamed about George and the pony, and that I was climbing the old chestnut-trees. As for Mary Verner, I couldn't in my sleep conjure up her image. When I thought I had it--as is the way in dreams, you know, if you ever studied them--I couldn't get nearer to her than the plaguy old family coachman. It was only when broad awake, the next morning, that I found myself strongly impressed by this, my second meeting. But again--such is life and such is youth--the impression was soon stowed away on an upper shelf in memory's garret.

III.

Two years later; two years and two months.

Did you ever notice the marked difference between youth and old age--aye, and middle age, too--in the matter of reading newspapers? We--I speak of myself now as the writer--who are in the vanguard of the march through life, must have our _Times_ or our _Chronicle_, as regularly as our morning meal. Is it, as some spitefully assert, that we grow more self-complacent as we pore over the misfortunes or the errors of our fellows; or is it, that we seek refuge from the cares and disappointments of our own lot, in a close scrutiny of that of all the world beside, with the minutiæ of which the diligent, prying, gossipping press so unceasingly plies our curiosity? It is folly, perhaps, to raise the question, since this is not the place to discuss it; though it were not far from the truth to attribute much of the pettiness of our race, in these days, to this habit of abandoning our thoughts and impulses to the guidance of journalists who trade in them.

I only mean to say that being still youthful at twenty-three, I "cared for none of these things," As for heeding who was born, or buried, or married, beyond the circle of one's own intimate connections--I should as soon have set to work to trace the pedigree of a New Zealander. Probably, I heard in due time that Mary Verner had become Mrs. Easton. Certainly I did not learn it from the usual printed record. In short, I then very seldom read newspapers at all; and this I beg you to bear in mind. What a shocking ignoramus I should be voted, if I were to say so of this present time.

That, too, was the season of darkness, ere Albert Smith was the Lecturer _par excellence_; ere Oxford and Cambridge men, returning from their "long-vacation" rambles, disputed in the daily papers their respective prowess in scaling the precipices of Monte Rosa, or discovering new pathways up Mont Blanc. How changed are we to-day! Save for the voluminous records of the Crimean war, what Mamelons and Malakoffs would the pedestrians, Smith and Jones, be now fighting over, in the _Times_!

Nevertheless, though they made less fuss about it, Englishmen were then, as now, prone to scurrying off to Switzerland in the Autumn--some in the true cockney spirit--some because they found there the most sublime of all spectacles, together with the most exhilarating exercise for the body, and relaxation of mind in its fullest sense. With myself it amounted to a passion; "Cuthbert's hobby" it was dubbed by acquaintances, who could eke out delight from Leamington and Cheltenham.