Читать книгу Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife - Caroline Clive - Страница 5

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THE next day, Elinor appeared at breakfast, coming into the room close at the side of her hostess, to whom she clung, and sat down in the next chair, which vexed Laura, for it was Mr. Leslie's habitual place. He took the one below Elinor, and endeavoured to engage her in conversation, but was received like an enemy, and did not seek to avoid Miss Chanson's looks of intelligence, who remarked silently on the repulses he suffered.

The impression on him, however, was not exactly what he allowed Laura to believe. He remarked the delicate shape of the pale face, the ease of the slight figure, the fine form of the hands, which, if not very white as yet, were formed in the noblest feminine model. Her gray gown was perfectly simple, and it was quite uninteresting to him whether it was cut fashionably or unfashionably. The eyes, which were kept cast down on her plate so pertinaciously, excited his curiosity; he wanted to find some phrase which should raise them, that he might see them. Interest was awakened, but do and say what he would, he never succeeded, during all that breakfast, in making her look at him. She disappeared when it was over, and he saw her not again till after dinner, when, on coming into the drawing-room, he found her seated close to Miss Chanson, diligently at work. The latter was becoming a little tired of such close companionship; she could not rise from her chair, but what Elinor did the same, thereby preventing many manoeuvres hitherto easy to practise.

"My dear child, if you like that place, keep it," said she; "the lamp suits your work, and I must go to talk to that stupid old lady, whom it is my duty to amuse."

"Shall I go," said Elinor. "They always used to send me to talk to Madame Les Forces."

"Did you succeed?" said Laura, laughing sarcastically.

"Yes, sometimes."

"But you don't know this lady—shall you have the courage?"

"Why not?"

"Nay, you will not speak one syllable to Mr. Leslie."

"No!"

"And why?" said Laura. "I talk to him—we all talk."

"The Reverend Mother said I must not."

"Did she say you might speak to none but women?" said Leslie, very gently.

"Yes!"

"Oh! that's excellent!" cried Laura. "My dear nun, you must get rid of some of those maxims; you are in a very different place from your nunnery. Don't make yourself ridiculous."

The young girl coloured excessively; she was too young to bear being ridiculous, too, fond of her habitual teachers to fancy they could be misinformed. She was perplexed, and rising, shrank away to the stupid lady, whose work she began admiring; and as long as no one else heard her voice, contrived to keep up a dialogue.

"What a quaint little creature!" said Miss Chanson, "But now I'll do my part to amuse the other stupid people, by giving you all some music."

"Do," said Mr. Leslie; "though you know I am so lost in dulness as to talk most when music is best."

"I know that; but at all events I entertain you even in that case."

She said this rather sentimentally; and Mr. Leslie opened the piano-forte, and talked a little nonsense while she arranged her books. When fairly embarked, and when other people collected round her, and they were all interested with her performance and their own, he drew gradually to the side of Elinor, and watched his chance of speaking to her. She listened to the music, which was very good, with great interest; but she drew away from him, and he could do no better than some dialogue with the stupid old lady.

At last, when there was a pause in the performance, he took up his courage, and said boldly to Elinor, "You perceive, Miss Ladylift, that they are all tired, and can play and sing no more. You ought to assist them—you ought to help in amusing us all."

She rose in a moment, as if bound to obey whoever commanded her, and walked towards the piano-forte.

"Mr. Leslie told me I ought to sing," she said. "Ought I?"

"To be sure, if you can. But what—not psalm tunes?"

"Very well, I will not. I know a great many airs which Frère du Lap taught all the pensionnaires."

"I should like to hear Frère du Lap's scholar very much," said Laura.

"Should you?" said Elinor, looking up at her, unconscious of the sarcasm; and she placed herself before the piano-forte.

Now nature had made her a present of a voice, such as she gives very rarely:

"It were the bul-bul, but his throat,

Tho' sweet, ne'er uttered such a note."

It was no merit of Elinor's; there seemed no object in bestowing it upon her; but she was lucky in being the one to get it, for its effect was to dispose the hearers to love her. It was as pure as the song of the angels heard by Handel, and set down by him as sung to the Shepherds; it had been well taught, also, so that it was a delight to the ear, a charm to the heart. Leslie, who was moving away, stopped as she began to sing, and turned to fasten his eyes upon her, as upon a new sense of delight, a pleasure revealed for the first time. She rose up when it was done; indeed, she had not actually sat down, but had bent one knee towards the level of the piano-forte, and played an accompaniment varying with the words. She was plainly a perfect mistress of her art; and, according to the fashion of drawing-rooms, her performance was greeted with clapping of hands, and a few bravas. She looked round, astonished; and if any one had desired another song, would have obeyed; but Miss Chanson came up with the last notes, and after a brief thank you, led her away, saying her voice seemed a little tired. She then organized other amusements, and the music was over for the evening.

Mr. Leslie contrived to elude them all, and very quietly coming up beside Elinor, he said to her:

"That song is one I shall never forget. I shall hear many more, I hope, but the first time one listens to a perfect thing it is remembered for ever."

Elinor shook her head. "My Mother told me you would say so."

"That I should say so? How could the Holy Mother know anything of me?"

"Not of you, but of all."

"She could, only say that all of us should be aware you have one of the finest voices in the world."

"Yes, she did say so—that you would try to persuade me of it."

"I don't wish it to be thought of me that I would persuade any one to believe an untrue thing. Let us consider for a moment," and he sat down beside her at the table, leaning upon it, and trying to look in her face, which was bent over her work. "You have heard the music of this evening?"

"Yes!"

"It was very good, was it not?"

"Very good, very strong; I never heard such before."

"But was there any voice as expressive as yours?"

"No!"

"Or that was so unlike a flute, or an organ, or a harp, but was so purely human; the perfection of human."

"I cannot hear my own voice."

"Surely, Miss Ladylift, you can."

Elinor knew she could, and he put the question plainly. She suddenly lifted up her large eyes upon him, and looked full into his for a moment—there was an anxiety to penetrate his meaning, but it yielded in another instant to the dread of encountering a stranger's gaze; however, he had seen those large eyes.

"You can if you will," said he; "everybody can judge themselves as well as they can judge other people, if they will be honest to themselves. And it is not being honest, to think worse of oneself than is the truth."

"My dear Mother told me my voice was such a voice as hundreds of others have."

"But what do you think yourself?"

"I believe her," said Elinor.

"Yes, surely," answered Leslie, afraid of alarming his companion. "She spoke her entire conviction, no doubt; still she judged from her Convent alone. There, perhaps, where all is holy, all dedicated to divine things, the inhabitants may be blessed, many of them, with gifts like the one you have in your voice; but it is not so in the world. You are in the world now; you must judge by what you see and hear; you may find there are things unlike those which the Reverend Mother knows."

"Oh! she cannot be mistaken," said Elinor.

"Only ask yourself whether she is," said Leslie. "If so, some things which were good guides in the convent, may lead wrong here."

Elinor answered nothing. The first doubt of the kind was painful, the more so because her honest nature saw that perhaps it was true.

After a pause, she said, "Who can I trust, then?"

"I know this outer world," said Leslie.

"But I do not know you," said Elinor; "I know nobody. I will do my best; you must not try to prevent me. If you liked my singing, I am glad of that; but perhaps you do not understand music, and then you cannot judge."

"No, perhaps I do not," said Leslie; "you know I can only say what I honestly feel."

"Yes, to be sure! I know you do that. Everybody does that," said Elinor, speaking as she had been unconsciously taught, and as she felt, that though there were wicked people in the world, nobody with whom one associates could be in the number of those wicked.

Mr. Leslie abhorred Laura for coming up and interrupting the conversation. She said she was sorry to see Elinor look so pale; no doubt she was used to very early hours in the Convent, and she had better go to bed. She did not say she thought her young friend tired; for knowing her not to be tired, she felt that Elinor would say No.

"You have persuaded the nun to talk, Mr. Leslie," said she; "how clever you are."

"It gives one an interest in succeeding, when the task is so difficult," said Mr. Leslie.

"No doubt; a woman who has the audacity to know or feel anything, and to say it, must expect the contempt of the nobler sex."

"Why so?" said Leslie, coolly.

"Men are so short-sighted, so easily taken in. If women affect simplicity and reserve, men see no further than just what those women give themselves the trouble to put on."

"Is that little girl a dissembler?"

"Oh! I suppose you can judge."

"I should judge not; but you know best."

"If I knew anything, I would not say it against my friend," said Laura. "My nature is more constant than that."

"More generous than that," said Leslie; "constant is not the word, for your acquaintance is so short. It is indeed very generous."

Laura liked the words, and did not understand further, and though she was not satisfied, she went away fancying she was.

Next morning, every one else being occupied in their rooms with what letter-writing or other business they might have, Laura, who could not lose any chance of being with Leslie, and Leslie, who could lose none of being with Elinor, and Elinor, who fixed herself upon Laura as her best safety in the new scenes, were all three in the library, standing about, looking at a print or a flower, and not knowing very well what to do. Elinor only was at ease, knitting gloves, move where she would.

"Suppose," said Leslie, "we show the wood-walk to Miss Ladylift. Would it not be a good employment of this delightful morning?"

Laura assented; that WE sounded so pleasantly to her.

Accordingly, each lady took up a parasol in the hall, and they all stepped into the perfumed air, and proceeded down some broad steps, which led from the garden to the steep wooded banks below the house. Elinor was delighted: the space, the depth below, the vast summer hall made by the wood, and the pavement of ferns, flowers, and briar, over which the shadows of the leaves scattered their moving patterns; the silence which seemed to come from far, and go afar, charmed her opening imagination. As they proceeded, a vague feeling of fear mingled with her pleasure. She had never known the sense of distance before.

"Shall we know how to go back," said she; "but no doubt you will."

"No fear of that," said Laura, looking behind at the walk they had come along; "the way is not difficult."

"And may you go here as far as you like?" said Elinor, thinking of her Convent restrictions.

"Who can doubt that?" said Laura, scornfully; "or that you may do so likewise? In a Convent they are children all their lives; but you must take off your leading-strings."

Elinor, till now, had never ceased to lean on some one for every action of her life. Yet she got a lesson then which went straight home, not to betray her want of help to those who could scoff her for it.

Leslie thought that the sooner she learned to doubt her former teachers the better. He had an idea he could give her lessons himself. They went on, therefore, on and on till Elinor, who had never known what it was to take a walk, was tired. She longed intensely for rest; her limbs ached; they required absolutely the new stringing of repose. Leslie observed it, and proposed to sit down, but Laura poured forth her playful scorn upon a girl who pretended not to be up to a mile-and-a-half walk. As for herself, she must confess to strength—half-a-dozen miles were nothing to her. Elinor felt ashamed; but was unconscious that Laura meant to insinuate that the fatigue was affected.

"I wish I could do like you," she said; "but I have not learned to walk."

"Dear baby," said Laura; "still at nurse? I wish I could carry you!"

Elinor looked at each companion, with the mournful simplicity of a child who has committed a fault it does not comprehend. Leslie was enchanted.

"It is a science you must practise," said he. "It was a fault not to have attended to your education in that respect."

Elinor was quite ready to acknowledge herself wrong, and to feel inwardly that her bringing up was not so faultless as she had thought.

At this moment, however, her wishes were all limited to rest, and gladly did she sink upon the seat at which Leslie prevailed on Laura to stop; but Laura was so restless, that Leslie at last started up with a new project in his head, and proposed that they two alone should make for the point at which Laura had intended to reach, and should leave their companion to enjoy a little repose before they returned for her to go home.

"Unless you are afraid," said Laura, turning round on Elinor.

"No, I am not afraid, for you say there is no danger," said Elinor.

And now Leslie hurried his companion away, and pushing himself into the highest spirits, rallied her on her activity, her delightful health and strength, till Laura, quite deceived, quickened her pace to the very utmost, and went over hill and dale at his side, with no idea but that of keeping up the contrast between herself and the timid Elinor.

It was not till he had carried her along with him to a point much nearer to the house than to Elinor, that he suddenly affected to remember their charge.

"Meantime, what have we done with your ward, your nursling? Is not it time to go back for her?"

He was well aware at this moment that Laura was most thoroughly wearied herself, and that by a little contrivance he was secure of going alone to conduct the young nun home again.

"What! had you forgotten her?" said Laura.

"Could I think of more than one?" said Leslie, with a look of gentleness.

"And that one was of course absent," said Laura.

"Ah! I see," said Leslie, affecting a little pique, "that I am little understood. But at this moment," he added, quieting his voice, "however that may be, we must run back to take up our charge, for do you know what o'clock it is?"

Laura looked at her watch.

"Why did you allow me to forget time in this way?" said she.

"Was I likely to remind you?" said Leslie. "But at all events I will repair my error, at whatever sacrifice. I will force myself"—"from you," he thought of saying, but that was rather too strong an expression to come easily, so he began again—"I will force myself through the world of briars by the brook side, which will take me back to Miss Ladylift more quickly than the path we have followed, and I will bring her to join you by the garden road, which is, I suppose, the nearest way to the house. Even your delightful intrepidity would shrink from the brook side, and, indeed, should it be otherwise, I would not permit you to hazard yourself so perilously."

He was on his feet as he said this, and Laura, heated and wearied, could do nothing but agree; he looked back as he plunged into the thicket, and waving his hand, saw, and smiled to see, that she was waiting for some such token, and then sank upon the bench almost as weary as Elinor had been.

It was very easy for him to force his way along the brook, over great stones, and among tangled creepers and underwood; and indeed, his desire to reach the place where he had left Elinor, made these obstacles almost unperceived, and brought him, in a very short time, straight to the root-house in which they had parted from her. He hoped she would be panting with alarm, and crouching almost weeping for the want of some one to reassure her; certainly she would not have ventured back alone. Could he see her white dress? not yet, trees were in the way; he could not see it—she was not there—yes, yes, quite in the corner, there was some one. Now, how gently he would he comfort her, and she would cling to his arm.

But there was no such scene in store for him. Elinor, as though confiding in the assurance of safety she had received, had laid her cheek upon her arm and had fallen asleep. The shadow of the root-house had probably fostered the inclination of her eyes to close; her lips were parted, her hair pushed off her face, her colour heightened by the heat; she lay or reclined there, at rest, and Leslie paused suddenly as he perceived her sleeping figure. But the presence of a human being, the involuntary motions of life near her broke her slumber; she opened her eyes, and the habitual associations of her education, caused her a burst of alarm as she perceived who was so close to her. She sprang up and a step or two away from him.

"Oh, do not harm me!" she cried, involuntarily; then she collected her senses, and a deep blush spread over her face.

"I would die sooner than harm you!" cried Leslie, fervently; but approaching no nearer than where he stood when she sprang up.

"I came," he added, after a pause, "I came to be of use, if possible. Miss Chanson is gone home, and I will take you to her."

"You need not," said Elinor, "she told me the way was very easy to find—I can find the way."

"But, why should I not?" said Leslie. "I left Miss Chanson on purpose to be of use to you. She did not despise my services, and she thought you would not."

"Oh, I do not even think of such a word," said Elinor, coming a step nearer.

"That is the only feeling that can make you refuse so very common a service," said Leslie, trying to wear an air of proud humiliation.

"Indeed, indeed, not! but I did not know—I thought—I had better go home alone." So you had, innocent Elinor, but he cared not for that.

"If you so much dislike me as a companion," said Leslie, "I will go."

"I cannot dislike you," said Elinor; "it would be wrong to dislike anybody."

"I thought you did," said Leslie; "still, in order to be of any use to you, I came to see whether you were still here."

"That was good of you, very good, thank you," said Elinor; "it was doing me good even when you thought so ill of me—when you thought I was so unjust. Pray forgive me."

"Yes, surely," said Leslie, holding out his hand.

She looked him steadily in the face for a few seconds, and then took his hand.

"You cannot think I would harm you now," said Leslie; "what your Reverend Mother said in the Convent, did not mean me."

"No, you are not what she meant. She said I should be told of merits I had not, but you tell me of my faults."

"You see, then, that Miss Chanson and others, every one, in fact, is right in making me a companion. Till you came here nobody guessed it could be wrong. You have brought your own ideas among us."

"Oh, no, don't say that; I did not mean it. I did not know what people did here, that is all."

"Exactly," said Leslie; "and now shall we go home?"

"Yes, if you please," said Elinor. She took up her parasol and they walked leisurely along.

"You never," said her companion, "saw forests, and great open skies, and plains, in the Convent?"

"Never," said Elinor. "But we walked in the garden, and might sow flower seeds, and have beautiful flowers, and sometimes we went to the common, and the hill."

"Did you read sometimes of other fine things, such as these woods?"

"Yes."

"Are they like what you expected?"

"No, I did not know how beautiful they are."

"I should like to show you what I saw as I came up the brook," said Leslie; "you are not tired now, are you? Will you come a little out of the way?"

Elinor assented, eagerly, wishing to atone for having been tired once to-day. Leslie went off the path, and she followed, till the bank became steep and very inconvenient. Then he held out his hand and she leaned upon it as if it had been a helping stick; she wanted it again, up a few steep stones in the bank, and when she was at the top of those she came upon a sight which made her pluck away her hand altogether to fold both in speechless delight. The brook just in front of her came down under rocks which nearly met above it, and leaped about twenty feet from the edge of its bed to the pool below. The white foam, the graceful motion and shape, the sweet confusing sound, the freshness, took her very soul by surprise, and she was melted to tears.

"There—I knew I should give you pleasure," said Leslie; "that is why I brought you here."

"But so much pleasure is wrong, is not it?" said Elinor. "I learned in my lessons that St. Francis, when he crossed some mountains which were very beautiful, kept his eyes always on the ground not to see them."

Leslie did not say aloud, "Abject fool!" he said it only to himself; to Elinor he said, "I should think that very wicked, because his Creator offered him the pleasure, and he would not take it."

"What do you mean?". said Elinor, aghast. "It is the waterfall gives me pleasure."

"Still," said Leslie, "it has got no pleasure of its own."

"Has not it? yes—no—yes, it pleases me, it delights me."

"But it runs on day and night without being happy."

"That is because it is not alive."

"It runs over the rock because water must fall when it comes to a height, and it makes a noise because any one thing filling on another must make a noise, and the trees grow over it, because there were seeds from which they sprang; but they are all dead, as you say, and not happy. The pleasure is something different from all those things. It is in your mind. It is a gift to you, conveyed by things which have it not, and, therefore, a gift for which you ought to be grateful and use it."

"Could St. Francis be wrong?" said Elinor.

"Nay, I really think if you were to refuse to look at all this, you would be ungrateful to me, who brought you here, in the first place, and much more you ought to enjoy it, when you are so made that your nature is to enjoy."

"You think I may like it as much as I can?"

"Ay, freely, freely; whatever is pleasant is in your nature to enjoy."

"Whatever is pleasant?" said Elinor, reflecting on the many things, the late rising, the neglected task, the idle play, the lingering over her toilette, which were pleasant but which she had been told were wrong, and warned against the pleasure of them. Leslie enjoyed the confusion into which she was running.

"Why, so it seems to me," said he, with a candid tone.

Elinor was silent; he was no longer in haste to proceed, he lingered with her, teaching her that pleasure was her lawful guide; and when, at last, they went forward, moved as slowly as she was inclined to move and wore away the time, so that when they got back to the house, Laura had, long before, been compelled to give up waiting for them; had gone in alone, had been forced to preside over luncheon and to eat with the rest, or affect to eat, and after delaying to the utmost, had been driven from all excuses, and forced to bid the servants bring round, the carriage, previously ordered for an expedition. Just as she and her guests were going through the hall to set out, Mr. Leslie appeared alone coming up to the door. A sudden hope shot through Laura's heart that he had been alone since she left him. Elinor might have lost her way in the wood, but of course she would soon be found; and with all this unworded she accosted him.

"So; have you been looking for her all this time..."

"For Miss Ladylift? oh, no! I brought her home very slowly, for she was so much tired. She went through the breakfast parlour to her own room."

"Slowly, indeed!" said Laura, disdainfully; "you have been two hours and a half on the way."

"To me it seemed twice that," said Leslie, in a very low voice. Laura's lips relaxed by a line, no more.

"You will come with us?" said she, looking at the phaeton which followed the great barouche, and in which, if he liked, he might offer to drive her.

"That would be most delightful," said Leslie, "but I had not time for my letters this morning. I must write them to-day—besides I must get a crust of bread; besides I am in no condition to sit by the side of delicate silks. No, I must sacrifice that happiness."

Laura tossed her head, and turned away; and Leslie was very glad to have got off this tax upon him.