Neither was Fanny Molyneux well satisfied with the turn affairs had taken lately. That poor little “white witch” was really alarmed by the unruly character of the spirit that she had been anxious to raise; she did not know the proper formula for sending it back to its own place; and, if she had, the stubborn demon would only have mocked at her simple incantations. Though she loved Cecil dearly, she was too much in awe of her to venture upon remonstrance or warning; indeed, the few mild hints that she did throw out had not met with such success as to tempt her to follow them up. So she was, perforce, reduced to an unarmed neutrality.
Her husband was perhaps the most thoroughly uncomfortable of the party. He knew the circumstances and bearings of the question better than any one else, and would have sacrificed a good deal (“his right hand,” I believe, is the proper phrase) to have averted the probable result. But he had not sufficient strength of mind to take the decided measures that might have been of some avail; in fact, he had a vague idea that to act on the offensive against his old comrade would be unpardonable treachery. Arguing with the latter was simply absurd; for this reason, if for no other, that from the moment his feelings became really interested, no amount of diplomacy would have induced him to enter upon the subject. Harry went about with a miserable, helpless sense of complicity weighing him down, which was much aggravated by a few words which dropped one morning from Dick Tresilyan.
Dick had been dining tête-à-tête with Keene on the previous evening after a hard day’s snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of a heavy night—a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without a certain pride, like the man in Congreve’s play, who exults in having “been drunk in excellent company.” “We had a very big drink,” he said, confidentially, “and the major got more than his allowance. He didn’t know what he was talking about at last, and he told me more of his affairs than most people know, I think; of course, I’m as safe as a church;” and Dick made a gallant but abortive attempt to wink with one of his swollen eyelids.
Molyneux shrank away from the speaker with something very like a suppressed groan—he had heard that said before, and remembered what came of it. Credulity was as dangerous when men thought Royston Keene had lost his head as when women flattered themselves he had lost his heart.
CHAPTER XIV.
If you will be good enough to look back on the one romance in which, like the rest of the world, you probably indulged yourself, you will remember, perhaps more distinctly than any other feature, the presentiment which haunted you from the very beginning. We were absurdly sanguine and hopeful in those days—full of chivalrous resolves and unlimited aspirations; but still the feeling would come back—if, indeed, it ever left us—that in the dim background there was difficulty and danger. We were not surprised when the small white speck rose out of the sea, and it needed no prophet to tell us then that the heavens would soon be black with clouds, and that there would be a great rain (which, indeed, was the case, for there ensued a long continuance of wet weather; it was a very tearful season). Oddly enough, that same presentiment did not make us particularly melancholy or uncomfortable, but seemed rather to give a zest to our simple pleasures, relieving them from any tinge of sameness or insipidity. When the dénouement came we did not exactly see things in the same light certainly, and it took some time to settle thoroughly down into our present theory, that “it was all for the best.”
It is the old story of Thomas the Rhymer over and over again (we were all rhymers once). The lover knows that there is peril in the path, but not the less joyously he strides on by the side of the beautiful queen. How sweetly they ring, the silver bells on the neck of the milk-white palfrey; not so sweetly, though, as her low, musical tones. So on they fare, till the world of realities is left far behind, and they find themselves at their journey’s end. It is very happy, that year spent in her kingdom; but so like a dream that he does not appreciate its pleasures so well at the moment as he will in the weary after-years. Yet the waking came too soon. The sojourner had not half grown tired of his resting-place; the bloom has not faded on the wondrous fruits and flowers: the strangely sweet wine has not lost its savor, when it is time for him to be gone, for a dreadful whisper runs through the company that to-morrow the teind to hell must be paid. Well, the black tax-gatherer is balked by a day, and the wanderer is back at Ercildoune again. Very dreary looks the gray, bare moorland. Do they call that foliage on the stunted fir-trees? It is only the ghost of a forest. The trim parterres have no beauty or fragrance for one that has lingered in more glorious gardens and plucked redder roses. Tabret and viol jangle harshly in the ears that have rioted in melodies made by fairy harpers. The village maidens may be comely, but they are somewhat clumsy withal; the earthen floor trembles under their feet when they lead their simple dances; very different from the steps that kept time to a wild, weird music, stirring but scarcely bending the grass-blades. There is no color in their flaxen locks, and little light in their 40 pale-blue eyes; these will not bear comparison with the smooth, braided tresses that glistened like blue-black serpents, or the glances that rained down liquid fire through the twilight of the forests of Elf-land. Slowly the discontented dreamer realizes the fact that the spell is still upon him—riveted when he stole that first fatal kiss in despite of his mistress’s warning. Nothing is left for him now but to expiate his folly in the loneliness of the gray old tower, and to look forth, hoping to see the grass-green robe gleam again against the setting sun, and to hear the silver bells chime once more in the still evening air. Vain—worse than vain. With stiffened limbs and grizzled hair, we are not worth beguiling.
This is essentially a masculine illustration, and only applies to Cecil Tresilyan thus far. She was sensible of the influence that strengthened its hold upon her every day, and did not now wish or try to resist it, but she grew proportionately doubtful and uneasy about the event. A feeling, very strange and new to one of a temperament like hers, began to creep over her now and then. At such times she owned that her eyes were the more eagerly and steadfastly fixed on the Present, because they did not dare to look into the Future. Yet, as far as she knew, there was no ground for much apprehension.
It is always so. Only when we are carrying something rare and precious do we appreciate the possible perils of the road. How much steeper the hills are now, how much deeper and darker the ravines, how much more frequent the crags that might so easily conceal a marauder, than when we passed them some months ago chanting the reckless roundel of the vacuus viator.