“My dear Hal,” he said, “don’t make an old woman of yourself by giving credit to scandal, or inventing it for yourself. If you choose to be worried before your time, I can’t help it; but it is more than unnecessary. Una can take care of herself perfectly well, without your playing the lion. Besides—what is the brother there for? You know there are some subjects I never talk about to you, and you don’t deserve that I should be communicative now. But listen—you shall not think of Cecil worse than she is: up to this time, I swear, even her lips are pure from me. Now I hope you are satisfied; you have made me break my rule, for once; drop the subject, in the devil’s name.”
Though fully aware of his friend’s unscrupulous character, Harry was satisfied that nothing very wrong had occurred so far. Royston never lied.
“I’m glad that you can say so much,” he replied; “the worst of it is, people will talk. I wonder that obnoxious parson has not made himself more disagreeable already. I didn’t go to church last Sunday afternoon, because I felt a conviction that he was going to be personal in his sermon.”
The major laughed his hard, unpleasant laugh. “Don’t let that idea disturb your devotions another time. He is not likely to bite or even to bark very loud: he don’t get my muzzle off in a hurry.”
Indeed, it was profoundly true that since the disclosure the chaplain’s reticence had become remarkable. When his own wife questioned him on the subject (very naturally), he checked her with some asperity, and read her a lecture on feminine curiosity that moved the poor woman, even to weeping. Mrs. Danvers was greatly surprised and disconcerted by the decision with which Mr. Fullarton rejected her suggestion, that he should aid and abet in thwarting Keene’s supposed designs. “He had thought it right,” he said, “to make Miss Tresilyan and others aware of the real state of the case; but he did not conceive that farther interference lay within the sphere of his duty.” It was odd how that same once arbitrarily elastic sphere had contracted since the prophet met the lion in the pathway! Dick Tresilyan—the only other person much interested in the progress of affairs—did not seem to trouble himself much about them. He was perpetually absent on shooting expeditions; but, when at home, it was observed that he drank harder than ever, getting sulky sometimes without apparent reason, and disagreeably quarrelsome.
Royston had only stated the simple fact when he said that Cecil was free from any stain of actual guilt or dishonor. Whether the credit of having borne her harmless was most due to her own prudence and remains of principle, or to her tempter’s self-restraint, we will not, if you please, inquire. It is as well to be charitable now and then. Her escape was little less than miraculous, considering how often she had trusted herself unreservedly to the mercy of one who was wont to be as unsparing in his love as in his anger. Let not this immunity be made an excuse for credulous confidence, or induce others to emulate her rashness. The Millenium will not come in our time, I fancy; and, till it arrives, neither child nor maiden may safely lay their hand on the cockatrice’s den. The ballad tells us that Lady Janet was happy at last; but she paid dearly through months of sorrow and shame for those three red roses plucked in the Elfin Bower. The precise cause of Keene’s forbearance it would be very difficult to explain: more than one feeling probably had to do with it.
If memory has any pleasures worth speaking of (which many grave and learned doctors take leave to doubt), certainly among the purest is the recollection of having once been endowed with the whole love of a rare and beautiful being which we did not abuse or betray. This is the only sort of lost riches on which we can look back with comfort out of the depths of present and pressing poverty; the pearl is so very precious that it confers on its possessor a certain dignity which does not entirely pass away, even when the jewel has slipped from his grasp, following the ring of Polycrates. Alas! alas! less generous than the blue Ægæan are the sullen waters of the deep. Mare mortuum. Only on these grounds can that wonderful self-possession be accounted for, which enables men, seemingly ill-fitted for the situation, to confront the world in all its phases with so grand a calmness. It is refreshing to see how even coquetry recoils from that armor of proof, and to fancy how the dead beauty might triumph over the defeat of her living rivals, laughing the seductions of their loveliness to scorn. Even in crises of graver difficulty, where sterner assailants are to be encountered than Helen’s magical smile or Florence’s magnetic eyes, the invisible presence seems to inspire her lover with supernatural valiance. Remember the story of Aslauga’s Knight; when once through the cloud of battle-dust gleamed the golden tresses, horse and man went down before him.
Royston was not half good enough to appreciate all this; yet some shadowy and undefined feeling, allied to it, may have helped to hold him back from pushing his advantage to the uttermost. Another and more selfish presentiment worked probably more powerfully. There was one phantom from which the Cool Captain never could escape; for years it had followed close on the consummation of all his crimes, and 56 was, in truth, their best avenger: his Nemesis was satiety. He knew too well how the sweetest flowers lost their color and fragrance, so soon as they were plucked and fairly in his grasp, not to shrink before the prospect of a certain disenchantment. This curse attaches to many of his kind: the instant the prize is won there arise misgivings as to its value; and defects develop themselves hourly in what seemed faultless perfection before. It is boys’ play to simulate being blasé; but the reality makes mature manhood disbelieve any thing sooner than inevitable retribution. Very often the thought forced itself upon Keene’s mind, “If I were to weary of her too?” and made him pause before he urged Cecil to the step that must have linked him to her fate forever.
Under other circumstances his patience might have held out still longer; but there were numberless difficulties and obstacles in the way of their meeting, and the perpetual constraint fretted Royston sorely. His principle always had been not openly to violate conventionalities without gaining an adequate equivalent; so he was more careful of Cecil’s reputation than she was inclined to be, and, among worse lessons, taught her prudence. They met very seldom alone. When Mrs. Danvers was present she made it her business to be as much as possible in the way; and her awkward attempts at interference were sometimes inexpressibly provoking. On one particular evening she had been unusually pertinacious and obtrusive. The major stood it tolerably well up to a certain point, but his savage temper gradually got the better of him; his face grew darker and darker, till it was black as midnight when he rose to go, and his lips were rigid as steel. It was evident he had come to some resolution that he meant to keep. When he was wishing Bessie “good-night,” he held her hand imprisoned for a moment without pressing it. “You are so good a theologian,” he said, “that perhaps you can tell me where a text comes from that has haunted me for the last hour. It speaks of some one who ‘loosed the bands of Orion.’” His manner and the sudden address disconcerted Mrs. Danvers so completely as to incapacitate her from reply: she suffered “judgment to go by default;” and left Royston under the impression that she had never read the Book of Job.
The next day he asked Cecil to elope with him.