‘Do you love her, Bertie?’
‘Love her! Good heavens! after all the sacrifices I have made! Look at me, as I am, and ask me if I love her! But what can I do? If I speak now we are all ruined; but if she could only be persuaded to wait—only to wait, perhaps for a few days, or a few months——’
‘Or a few years! And to wait for what? How can you expect any good to come to you, when you build everything upon your——’
‘Shut up, I tell you! Is it my fault? He ought to treat me differently. I never would have entertained such a thought, but for—— Bertie, listen to me. Will you go? They will hear reason from you.’
‘They ought not to hear reason. It is a cowardly shame! Yes, I don’t mind your angry looks—it is a shame! You and I have been too long together to mince matters between ourselves. I tell you I never knew anything more cowardly and wretched. It is a shame—a——’
‘The question is, not what you think of it,’ said the other sullenly, ‘but will you go?’
‘I suppose I must,’ was the reply.
When the visitor left, half an hour later, after more conversation of this same strain, can it be wondered at if Bertie Hardwick’s studies were no longer so steady as they had been? He shut up his books at last, and went out and walked towards the river. It was black and glistening, and very full with the Spring rains. The tide was coming up—the river was crowded with vessels of all kinds. Bertie walked to Chelsea, and got a boat there, and went up to Richmond with the tide. But he did not go to the ‘Star and Garter,’ where his cousin was dining with a brilliant party. He walked back again to his chambers, turning over in his tired brain a hundred anxieties. And that night he did sit up at work, and for half an hour had recourse to the wet towel. Not because he was working day and night, but because these anxieties had eaten the very heart out of his working day.
CHAPTER LXII.
From Pump Court, in the Temple, it is a long way to the banks of a little loch in Scotland, surrounded by hills, covered with heather, and populous with grouse—that is, of course, in the season. The grouse in this early Summer were but babies, chirping among the big roots of the ling, like barndoor chickens; the heather was not purple but only greening over through the grey husks of last year’s bloom. The gorse blossoms were forming; the birch-trees shaking out their folded leaves a little more and more day by day against the sky, which was sometimes so blue, and sometimes so leaden. At that time of the year, or at any other, it is lovely at Loch Arroch. Seated on the high bank behind the little inn, on the soft grass, which is as green as emeralds, but soft as velvet, you can count ten different slopes of hills surrounding the gleaming water, which receives them all impartially; ten distinct ridges, all as various as so many sportsmen, distinct in stature and character—from the kindly birch-crowned heads in front here, away to the solemn distant altitudes, folded in snow-plaids or cloud-mantles, and sometimes in glorious sheen of sunset robes, that dazzle you—which fill up the circle far away. The distant giants are cleft into three peaks, and stand still to have their crowns and garments changed, with a benign patience, greeting you across the loch. There are no tourists, and few strangers, except the fishermen, who spend their days not thinking of you or of the beauties of nature, tossed in heavy cobbles upon the stormy loch, or wading up to their waist in ice-cold pools of the river. The river dashes along its wild channel through the glen, working through rocks, and leaping precipitous corners, shrouding itself, like a coy girl, with the birchen tresses which stream over it, till it comes to another loch—a big silvery clasp upon its foaming chain. Among these woods and waters man is still enough; but Nature is full of commotion. She sings about all the hillsides in a hundred burns, with delicatest treble; she makes her own bass under the riven rocks, among the foam of the greater streams; she mutters over your head with deep, sonorous melancholy utterance in the great pine-trees, and twitters in the leaflets of the birch. Lovely birks!—sweetest of all the trees of the mountains! Never were such haunts for fairies, or for mountain girls as agile and as fair as those sweet birchen woods. ‘Stern and wild,’ do you say? And surely we say it, for so Sir Walter said before us. But what an exquisite idea was that of Nature—what a sweet, fantastic conceit, just like her wayward wealth of resource, to clothe the slopes of those rude hills with the Lady of the Woods! She must have laughed with pleasure, like a child, but with tears of exquisite poet satisfaction in her eyes, when she first saw the wonderful result. And as for you poor people who have never seen Highland loch or river shine through the airy foliage, the white-stemmed grace and lightness of a birch-wood, we are sorry for you, but we will not insult your ignorance; for, soft in your ear, the celebrated Mr. Cook, and all his satellites who make up tours in the holiday season, have never, Heaven be praised! heard of Loch Arroch; and long may it be before the British tourist finds out that tranquil spot.