CHAPTER X.

LOVE THE LIFEGIVER.

It was about four o'clock in the morning, or nearly twelve hours after his frightful fall, that Marmaduke Heath first woke to consciousness.

Mr. Long and myself were pa.s.sing the night in his apartment, which was a very roomy one, my tutor upon a sofa, and I in a comfortable arm-chair.

I had begged that for that once at least it should be so, for I knew the dear lad would like to set his eyes upon me when he first opened them.

Dr. Sitwell and his a.s.sistant, both agreed that if he woke at all from his heavy stertorous slumber, it would be in his sane mind; and it was so. Mr. Long was asleep, but I had so much to think about in the occurrences and disclosures of the preceding evening, that slumber had refused to visit me.

I was as unused as happy youth in general is to sleeplessness. I did not know at that time what it is to lay head upon pillow only to think upon the morrow with a brain that has done its day's work, and would fain be at rest; or worse, only to let the past re-enact itself under the wearied eyelids; to watch the long procession of vanished forms again fill the emptied scenes, and yet to be conscious of their unreality. How different in this respect alone is the experience of age and youth, and again of poverty and competence! A young man in tolerable circ.u.mstances, and who does not chance to be a sportsman, may never have seen the sun rise, that commonest of splendid spectacles to all men of humble station. For my own part, I had never done so in England until the occasion of which I speak, and I remember it very particularly. The weary time spent in listening to the various noises of the house, now to those consequent upon the retiring to rest of its inmates, and then to those more mysterious ones which do not begin till afterwards--the crickets on the hearth, the mice in the wainscot, the complaining of chairs and wardrobes, and the clocks, which discourse in quite another fashion than they do in the day. The slow hours consumed in watching the rushlight spots, first on the floor and then on the wall, and at last exchanged for the cool grey dawn, stealing in through cranny and crack, and showing my companions still in the land of dreams; later yet the drowsy crowing of c.o.c.ks, and presently, as the light grows and grows, notwithstanding shutter and curtain, the indescribably welcome song of the early robin, the busy chirping of the house-sparrow, followed by the whole tuneful choir of birds; then the lowing of cattle in the distance, and the distant barking of the watch-dog, so strangely different from that sad and solitary howl with which the same animal breaks the awful stillness of the night. About four, I say, as I looked for the thousandth time towards Marmaduke's bed, I saw him sitting up supporting himself on his elbow, and pushing his other hand across his brow, as if trying to call to mind where he was. In an instant I was at his bedside.

"Marmaduke, I am here," said I; "Peter Meredith."

"I am not at Fairburn Hall, am I?" asked he, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"No, Marmaduke, you are amongst friends."

"Then he is not here," gasped he--"nowhere near."

"He is miles away, my friend, and he will never come under this roof."

"Thank Heaven--thank Heaven!" cried the poor boy, sinking back upon the pillow; "it was only a dreadful dream, then. I shall die happy."

"You need not talk of dying, Marmaduke. On the contrary, let us hope you are about to begin a life unshadowed, natural, without fear."

"No, Peter, I must die. I feel that; but what is death to what I have been dreaming? Do you remember that poem which came down in the box of books, from Mr. Clint, last week, about a wretched man that was bound upon a wild horse and sent adrift in the Ukraine?" And then he repeated with some difficulty--

"'How fast we fled, away, away, And I could neither sigh, nor pray, And my cold sweat-drops fell like rain Upon the courser's bristling mane, But snorting still with rage and fear, He flew upon his far career; At times I almost thought indeed, He must have slackened in his speed; But no; my bound and slender frame Was nothing to his angry might, And merely like a spur became.'

Well, Peter, that was I. But instead of the wolves which followed upon his track, it was my uncle Ma.s.singberd who followed me. He had chosen to kill me as the Count Palatine would have killed Mazeppa, but he wanted also to see it done.

'All through the night I heard his feet, Their stealing rustling step repeat.'

Great Heaven, I hear them now!"

"Nay, Marmaduke, it is only I, your old tutor," said Mr. Long, tenderly, who had not been able to leave his sofa entirely without noise. "You must not give way to these fancies; you had a fall from Panther, that is all."

"Ay," returned the poor boy, "it was Panther, only I thought he was a wild horse, and not my pony at all.

'But though my cords were wet with gore, Which oozing through my limbs ran o'er; And in my tongue the thirst became A something fiercer far than flame;'

that was nothing; nothing to the knowledge that that man was close behind. Now that I am awake, I feel bruised from head to heel, my bones ache, my head seems as though it were about to burst, but that is nothing to--" the poor lad could not finish the sentence, but exclaimed with piteous vehemence--"do, Mr. Long, do promise me that I shall never see him more."

"You shall never see him more, if I can help it," returned my tutor, with unusual energy. "Yes, I think I can promise that you never shall."

I well knew that so cautious a man as Mr. Long would not have said so much without full warrant; it was evident to me at once that he had heard from Mr. Gerard all that had pa.s.sed between that gentleman and the baronet in the drawing-room, and was now determined to act with vigour in Marmaduke's behalf. Perhaps the coincidence of the lad's dream with what had in fact occurred, may have helped my tutor's decision, but now that he had once pa.s.sed his word, I felt sure that he would stand by Marmaduke to the last.

The sick boy seemed to feel this too, for he uttered many expressions of grat.i.tude and contentment, while he kept fast hold of his new protector's hand.

"But mind, Marmaduke, you must now make haste and get well, and not give way to despondency about yourself. I am going for the doctor, who is sleeping in the house, and whom I promised to call as soon as you awoke; and, Peter, don't you let him talk too much. For a boy like that to talk of death," added Mr. Long, aloud, as he drew on his slippers, "is to go half-way to meet it."

Marmaduke smiled feebly at this remark of his unconscious tutor's, and when he had left the room, observed, "There is no need of any doctors; this is my death-bed, Meredith, I know."

"Marmaduke," replied I, gravely, "I will not listen to such dreadful things; it is wrong, it is wicked, it will do you harm."

"No, Peter, there is nothing dreadful in the thing I mean, and it seems to soothe me when I speak of it. Since I have been ill, I have had a sign that tells me I must go. We shall not grow up together to be friends through life, as we had planned. I shall watch you perhaps--I hope I shall--and be happy in your happiness, but you will soon forget me. There will be a thousand things for you to think of; there have been such even now for you while I--it seems hard, does it not, Peter, that I should have grown up under the shadow of that man, and never felt the Sunshine? They say that boyhood is the blithest time of life, but I have never been a boy. I think I could almost tell him, if he stood here now, how he has poisoned my young life, and sent me to the grave without one pleasant memory to moisten my dying eyes. Yes, my friend, dying. I have seen a vision in the night far too sweet and fear not to have been sent from heaven itself. If there indeed be angels, such was she. They say the Heaths have always ghastly warnings when their hour is come, but this was surely a gentle messenger. I close my eyes and see that smile once more."

"Has she hair of golden brown?" inquired I, gravely, "and hazel eyes, large and pitiful, and does she smile sad and sweet as though one's pain would soon be over?"

"That is she, that is she," exclaimed Marmaduke, eagerly, while from his heavy eyelids the light flashed forth as from a thunder-cloud; "oh, tell me who and what she is!"

"Her name is Lucy Gerard," replied I, quietly, "and we are, at this moment, in her father's house."

Marmaduke's mention of her smile had revealed to me the secret alike of dream and vision. He must have been dimly conscious of the catastrophe that had occurred to him throughout, although he had confused himself, poor fellow, with Mazeppa, and the daughter of our host with a vision from the skies. His eyes were now closed, and with features as pale as the pillow on which he lay, he was repeating to himself her name as though it were a prayer.

"Marmaduke," said I, "we will talk no more, since it exhausts you thus; I hear Mr. Long returning with the doctor, be of good heart, and keep your thoughts from dwelling--"

"Yes," interrupted he, as though he would prevent the very mention of that grisly king of whom he had been but now conversing so familiarly, "I will, I will. It would indeed be bitter to die now."

CHAPTER XI.

WOOING BY PROXY.

The medical report of Marmaduke Heath was more than cheering; it was confident. "One of the very best features of that young man's case is this," said Dr. Sitwell, "he does not give way. Foolish youths of his age will sometimes, as it were, fall in love with Death, until it is absolutely close beside them, poor fellows, when they shrink from him like the best of us."

"You should rather say the worst of us, Dr. Sitwell," observed my tutor.

"Well, sir, as far as my experience goes," returned the doctor, cheerfully, "and I have 'a.s.sisted,' as Mr. Gerard here will have it, at the demise of many persons of the very first respectability, few of us are apt to welcome death; the majority, contrary to what is vulgarly believed, pay him no sort of attention whatsoever."

"And yet," remarked Mr. Harvey Gerard, slily, "he came over before the Conqueror, and possesses a considerable amount of land all over the country."

"True, sir, true," replied the doctor, gravely; "and those are attributes which should always command respect. With regard, however, to our young patient, he seems determined, notwithstanding his sufferings, to be cheerful, and bear up. I have told him how essential it is to do so, and the young gentleman is most reasonable, I am sure. 'I do not want to die, I wish to live,' were his very words--a most satisfactory and sensible state of mind. Fairburn Hall--he did not say this, but I knew what was pa.s.sing through his brain quite well--Fairburn Hall, and one of the oldest baronetcies in the kingdom, are something to live for--that is a great point in cases of this kind."

I am sure I felt thankful and glad to hear this account of my dear friend; yet I could not help wishing that Dr. Sitwell had been as correct in the cause of Marmaduke's clinging to life, as in the fact itself. For I too was stricken with love for Lucy Gerard, and would have laid down my life to kiss her finger tip. It is the fashion now to jeer at that which is called First Love, as though affection were not worth having until it has first exhausted itself upon a score of objects; nay, perhaps, the thing itself is as extinct as the Dodo. In my day, however, the Great Three-Hundred-a-Year Marriage-Question was not yet broached, and gentlemen did not complainingly publish their rejections at the hands of the fair s.e.x in the "Times" newspaper. Nearly half a century has pa.s.sed over my head since the time of which I write, and has not spared its snows, and yet, I swear to you, my old heart glows again, and on my withered cheek there comes a blush as I call, to mind the time when first I met that pure and fair young girl.

The worship of a lad is never lasting, it is said, although I know not upon what authority--society so seldom permitting the experiment to be made, that the dictum can hardly be established; but while it does last, at least, how clear and steady is the incense! how honest is the devotion! how complete the sacrifice! Since I have been an old fogey, it has been confided to me by more than one ancient flirt that they still experience a rapture when they chance to catch the affection of a boy.

They are kinder to him than they are to older men; they let him down easy; they respect the infatuation which they themselves have long lost the power of entertaining. How delicious, then, must such a conquest be to a maiden of seventeen! I claim for myself the possession of no tenderer nor truer feelings than other lads, but I know that a queen might have accepted the heart-homage which I paid to Lucy Gerard. And never was fealty more disinterested. I have written down not a little to my discredit; let me then say this much in my own favour. From the moment that Marmaduke Heath spoke to me as he did, upon his bed of sickness, of our host's daughter, I determined within myself not only to stand aside, and let him win her if he could, but to help him by all means within my power. If he lived for her alone, should I endeavour to slay him? If a promise, however distant, of a bright and happy future seemed at length to be held out for him whose life had been so saddened and so bitter, should I strive to make it void? I could not afford to lose her; no. I would have given all that I had in the world to hear her whisper, "I love you;" I would have beggared myself, I say, for those mere words; but could he, poor lad, afford the loss of her so well?

Doubtless, in modern eyes, we both appear mere foolish victims of calf-love; green hobbardy-hoys, dazzled with the first flutter of a petticoat. As for me, let it be so received, and welcome, although, my young male readers, this is to be said, You never saw Lucy Gerard.

Otherwise you would wonder little at my--well, at my poor folly. But with respect to Marmaduke, it must be admitted that his was not an ordinary case. Although a boy in years, he had long been sitting on the sh.o.r.es of old romance, and had probably more of the divine faculty for Love within him than all the ardent souls of five-and-thirty put together, who are at this moment turning their eyes about them for a suitable young person with whose income to unite their own. Since his mother died, he had scarcely beheld a virtuous woman, with the exception of dear Mrs. Myrtle, the housekeeper at the Rectory, whose appearance was calculated to excite respect rather than the sentimental emotions; and now he had suddenly been brought face to face with one whose equal for form and feature, for gentleness and graciousness, for modesty and courage, these eyes have never yet beheld. I have done. There shall be no more ecstasies, reader; an old man thanks you that you have borne with his doting garrulity even thus long.

Since the days of Earl Athelwold, and probably long before them, the wooing by proxy has been held to be a perilous undertaking; we cannot take the fingers of a fair lady within our own, and say, "This is not my hand at all," as though we were Bishop Berkeley; or still more, "This is somebody else's hand," which it manifestly is not. If credit is to be given to such protestations at all, there is no knowing where to stop; and yet we must be doing something tender, or we are not performing our duty as deputy. But how tenfold are the dangers of this enterprise, when the delegate of another has at one time contemplated performing the mission in question upon his own account. Of this peril--although fully determined to speak a good word for Marmaduke--I was well aware; I even considered within myself whether it would not be safer, upon the whole, to return at once to Fairburn Rectory, lest I should do my friend an involuntary wrong. Yes, I was walking in the garden at the Dovecot after breakfast, considering this, when I came upon Lucy Gerard herself, and flight became impossible to me, being mortal. I was pacing a winding path that ran beside the lawn, but was hidden from it by a glittering wall of laurel, and lo! there she stood, unconscious of my advent, beside--what? a statue? a sun-dial? No, a rose-tree, striving upwards by help of a little cross of white marble. Her face was westward, so that the morning sun shone like a glory on the wealth of hair that rippled down her shoulders: beside her indoor garments she wore only a little braided ap.r.o.n, full of pockets that held scissors, pruning-knife, the thing which is called "ba.s.s" I believe, and other horticultural weapons, and on her head the tiniest straw-hat, with a brim obviously intended to shelter more than one--a perfect garden-saint; and at her prayers! for while I looked, she knelt upon the gra.s.s-border (to shake some insect from a rose, I at first thought, or remove a faded leaf), and so, with bowed head, remained for several minutes. When she arose, and saw me hesitating whether to advance or retreat, she blushed a little, but in her usual quiet tone begged me not to be disturbed. "You could not know that this is forbidden ground here; it was my fault, who ought to have told you; our own folks all know it, and so few guests ever come to the Dovecot, that it never struck me, Mr. Meredith, to give you a Trespa.s.s notice."

"But since I am here, Miss Gerard, and the intrusion has been made--most innocently, I a.s.sure you--may I not be suffered to satisfy what, believe me, is not a mere vulgar curiosity?"

"I do not think," returned the young lady, with some hesitation, "that my father would object to your knowing our little secret; you are going to remain with us some time, he hopes, and--yes, I am sure you will respect what with us is held so secret. This cross and rose-tree are set above my little sister's grave. See, that is what we used to call her--LITTLE ELLA. She of whom I spoke to you in the drawing-room yesterday."