Books: My Young Alcides

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> My Young Alcides

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Nevertheless, he did not seem to do harm to the workpeople.
Drunkenness was at least somewhat restrained, though far from
conquered, and the general spirit of the people was wonderful,
compared with those of other factories. Plans were under discussion
for a mission chapel, and the people themselves were thoroughly
anxious for it.

Lord Erymanth returning, kindly came to call on me in my new house,
and as I was out of the drawing-room at the time, he had ten minutes'
conversation with the gentleman whom he found reading at the window,
and was so much pleased with him that when making the tour of our
small domain, he said, "You did not introduce me, Lucy. Is that an
Australian acquaintance of Harold Alison's? I did not expect such
high cultivation."

"An Australian acquaintance, yes," said I, "and also a Polish count."

"Prometesky!"

"Prometesky," said I, to whom the name had begun to sound historical.
"I did not know you did not recognise him."

I was afraid my old friend would be angry with me, but he stood still
and said, "I never saw him except at his trial. I can understand now
the fascination he was said to have possessed. I could not
conscientiously assist your nephew in his recall, but I highly honour
the generous perseverance with which he has effected it; and I am
happy to acknowledge that the subject is worthy of his enthusiasm.
Animosity may be laid aside now, and you may tell Mr. Harold Alison
that I heartily congratulate him."

"And he--Count Stanislas we call him--sees now that he was mistaken,"
I said.

"Does he? That is the best of the higher stamp of men, my dear.
They know when they are wrong, and own it. In fact, that's the
greatest difference between men. The feeble and self-opinionated
never acknowledge an error, but the truly sincere can confess and
retrieve their hallucinations and prejudices. Well, I am glad to
have seen Prometesky, and to be disabused of aome ideas respecting
him."

Count Stanislas, on the other hand, received me with, "So that is
Erymanth! The tyrant, against whom we raged, proves a charitable,
benevolent, prosy old gentleman. How many illusions a few decades
dispel, and how much hatred one wastes!"

Lord Erymanth had told me that his sister would soon be at home, and
in September I was surprised by a call from Dermot. "Yes, I'm at
Arked," he said, "Killy Marey is full of Dublin workmen. My uncle
has undertaken to make it habitable for me, like an old brick, and,
in the meantime, there's not a room fit to smoke or sleep in, so I'm
come home like a dutiful son."

"Then your mother is come?"

"Oh yes; she is come for six weeks, and then she and the St. Glears
are to join company and winter at Rome."

"At Rome?"

"Prevention, you see," said Dermot, with a twinkle in his eye, as if
he were not very uneasy. "The question is whether it is in time.
She will have Piggy's attentions at Christmas. He is to come out for
the vacation."

Then he further told me that his mother had brought home with her a
Mrs. Sandford with a daughter, heiress to L60,000, and to a newly-
bought estate in Surrey, and newly-built house "of the most desirable
description," he added, shrugging his shoulders.

"And what sort of a young lady is she?"

"Oh, very desirable, too, I suppose."

"But what is she like?"

"Like? Oh, like other people," and he whistled a little, seeming
relieved when "Count Stanislas" came in, and soon after going to hunt
up Harry at the Hydriot works.

It made me uncomfortable; it was so evidently another attempt on his
mother's part to secure a rich home for him in England, and his tone
did not at all reassure me that, with his easy temper, he would not
drift into the arrangement without his heart in it. "Why should I be
so vexed about it? It might be very good for him," said I to myself.

No, his heart was not in it, for he came back with Harold, and
lingered over our fire beyond all reasonable time, talking amusing
random stuff, till he had left himself only ten minutes to ride home
in to dinner.

The next day Harold and I rode over to Arked together. Dermot was
the first person we saw, disporting himself with a pug-dog at the
door. "The fates have sped you well," said he, as he helped me down
from my pony. "My mother has taken Mrs. Sandford in state to call on
Mrs. Vernon, having arranged that Viola and I should conduct the
sixty-thousand pounder to admire the tints in the beech woods. The
young ladies are putting on their hats. Will it be too far for you,
Lucy, to go with us?"

Wherewith he fraternally shouted for "Vi," who appeared all in a rosy
glow, and took me upstairs to equip me for walking, extracting from
me in the meantime the main features of the story of the bloodhound,
and trembling while she gave exulting little nods.

Then she called for Nina (were they so intimate already?) and found
that young lady in a point device walking dress, nursing the pug and
talking to Dermot, and so we set forth for the beech-woods, very soon
breaking our five into three and two. Certainly Lady Diana ought to
have viewed Dermot's attentions to the sixty-thousand pounder as
exemplary, for he engrossed her and me so entirely with the
description of Harold's victory over a buck-jumper at Boola Boola,
that it was full a quarter of an hour before she looked round to
exclaim, "What is become of Viola?" And then we would not let her
wait, and in truth we never came again upon Viola and Harold till we
overtook them at the foot of the last hill, and they never could
satisfy Miss Sandford where they had been, nor what they had seen,
nor how they had missed us; and Dermot invented for the nonce a
legend about a fairy in the hill, who made people gyrate round it in
utter oblivion of all things; thus successfully diverting the
attention of Miss Sandford, who took it all seriously. Yes, she
certainly was a stupid girl.

Every moment that lengthened the veritable enchantment of that autumn
afternoon was precious beyond what we knew, and we kept Miss Sandford
prowling about the garden on all sorts of pretexts, till the poor
girl was tired out, as well she might be, for we had kept her on her
feet for three hours and a half, and she made her escape at last to
join Viola.

I always think of Harold and Viola, as I saw them at that moment, on
the top of the western slope of the lawn, so that there was a great
ruddy gold sky behind them, against which their silhouettes stood out
in a sort of rich dark purple shade.

"Oh, they are looking at such a sunset!" cried Miss Sandford,
climbing up the hill.

"Query!" murmured Dermot, for the faces were in profile, not turning
towards the sun in the sky, but to the sunbeams in one another's
eyes--sunbeams that were still there when we joined them, and, in my
recollection, seem to blend with the glorious haze of light that was
pouring down in a flood over the purple moorland horizon, and the
wood, field, and lake below. I was forced to say something about
going home, and Viola took me up to her room, where we had one of
those embraces that can never be forgotten. The chief thing that the
dear girl said to me was, "Oh, Lucy. How he has suffered! How shall
I ever make it up to him?"

Poor dear Viola, little did she think that she was to cause the very
sharpest of his sufferings.

Nay, as little did he, when we rode home together with the still
brilliant sky before us. I never see a lane ending in golden light,
melting into blue, and dark pine trees framing as it were the
brightness, with every little branch defined against it, without
thinking of that silence of intense, almost awe-struck joy in which
Harold went home by my side, only at long intervals uttering some
brief phrase, such as "This is blessedness," or "Thank God, who gives
women such hearts."

He had told her all, and it had but added a reverent, enthusiastic
pity and fervour to that admiring love which had been growing up so
long, and to which he had set the spark.

His old friend was admitted to share their joy, and was as happy as
we were, perhaps doubly so, since he had beheld with despair Harold's
early infatuation and its results, which had made him fear, during
those three wretched years, that all the lad's great and noble gifts
would be lost in the coarse excesses of his wild life, with barbarous
prosperity without, and a miserable, hardening home. That he should
have been delivered from it, still capable of refinement, still young
and fresh enough for a new beginning, had been a cause of great joy,
and now that all should be repaired by a true and worthy love, had
seemed beyond hope. We built our castles over the fire that evening,
Harold had already marked out with his eye the tract of Neme Heath
which he would reclaim; and the little he had already set me on doing
among the women and children at the potteries, had filled us with
schemes as to what Viola was to carry out.

Some misgivings there were even then. Lady Diana was not to be
expected to like Harold's L1,200 a year as well as Piggy's heirship
to the Erymanth coronet, or any of the other chances that might
befall an attractive girl of twenty.

For coldness and difficulties we were prepared, but not for the
unqualified refusal with which she met Harold the next morning,
grounding all on the vague term, "circumstances," preventing his even
seeing Viola, and cutting short the interview in the manner of a
grande dame whose family had received an insult.

Dermot, however, not only raging, but raving, on his side, assured
him of the staunchness of his sister, and her resolve to hold by him
through everything; and further, in sundry arguments with his mother,
got to the bottom of the "circumstances." She had put away from
herself the objection to the convict birth and breeding, by being
willing to accept Eustace, to whom exactly the same objections
applied; and when she called Eustace a man of more education and
manners, her son laughed in her face at the comparison of "that
idiot" with a man like Harold.

Then came the "past life," a much more tangible objection, but Dermot
was ready there, declaring that whatever Harold had done, considering
his surroundings, was much less heinous than his own transgressions,
after such a bringing up as his, and would his mother say that nobody
ought to marry him? Besides, to whom had she given Di? They were
not arguments that Lady Diana accepted, but she weakened her own
cause by trying to reinforce it with all the Stympson farrago, the
exaggeration of which Dermot, after his own meeting with Henry
Alison, and with Prometesky to corroborate him, was fully prepared to
explode, to the satisfaction even of Lord Eryinanth.

Harold himself was deeply sensible of the stain and burthen of his
actual guilt, more so, indeed, than he had ever been before, both
from the religious influences to which he had submitted himself, and
from the sense of that sweet innocence of his Viola's; but his
feeling had come to be that if his Heavenly Father loved and forgave
him, so, in a lesser way, Viola forgave him because she loved him.
He did not wonder at nor complain of Lady Diana's not thinking him
worthy of her good and lovely child. He would be thankful to submit
to any probation, five, seven, ten years without any engagement, if
he might hope at last. Even Lord Erymanth, when he saw how his
darling's soul was set on it, thought that thus much might be
granted.

But Lady Diana had still another entrenchment which she had
concealed, as it were, to the last, not wishing to shock and pain us
all, she said. Though she said she had reason to complain of not
having been told from the first that Harold had once been insane,
nothing could induce her to sanction her daughter's marriage with a
man whose mind had been disordered; nay, who had done mortal injury
in his frenzy. It was a monstrous idea!

Dermot's reply to this was, that nobody, then, ought to marry who had
had a delirious fever; and he brought Prometesky over to Arked to
testify to her how far the attack had been from anything approaching
to constitutional insanity. The terrible fall, of which Harold's
head still bore the mark, the shock, the burning sun, were a
combination of causes that only made it wonderful that he should have
recovered the ensuing brain fever, and the blow to his rival had been
fatal by the mere accident of his strength. A more ordinary man
would have done no serious harm by such a stroke, given when not
accountable. Lady Diana answered stiffly that this might be quite
true, but that there had been another cause for the temporary
derangement which had not been mentioned, and that it was notorious
that Mr. Alison, in consequence, had been forced to avoid all
liquors, and she appealed to Dermot as to the effects of a very small
quantity on his friend's brain.

Poor Dermot! it was bitter enough for him to have that orgie at
Foling brought forward against his friend. Nor could any
representation appease Lady Diana.

I thought her very cruel and unreasonable then, and I am afraid I
believe that if Harold had had ten, or even five thousand a year,
these objections would never have been heard of; but after years and
experience have cooled my mind, it seems to me that on several
grounds she was justified in her reluctance, and that, as Viola was
so young, and Harold's repentance had been comparatively recent, she
might fairly have insisted on waiting long enough to see whether he
were indeed to be depended upon, or if Viola's affection were strong
enough to endure such risk as there might be.

For Dermot, resolute to defend his friend, and declaring that his
sister's heart should not be broken, was the prime mover in Harold
going up to consult the most eminent men of the day on mental
disease, Prometesky going with him as having been his only attendant
during his illness, to give an account of the symptoms, and Dermot,
who so comported himself in his excitement as to seem far more like
the lover whose hopes might have depended on the verdict on his
doubtful sanity, than did the grave, quiet, self-contained man, who
answered all questions so steadily.

The sentence was so far satisfactory that the doctor confirmed
Prometesky's original view, that concussion of the brain, aggravated
by circumstances, had produced the attack, and that there was no
reasonable ground for apprehension of its recurrence, certainly not
of its being hereditary. But he evidently did not like the
confession of the strange horror of dogs, which Harold thought it
right to mention as having been brought on by the circumstances of
his accident, and he would not venture to say that any "exciting
cause" might not more easily affect the brain than if nothing had
ever been amiss. Yet when Dermot tarried, explaining that he was the
brother of a young lady deeply concerned, the doctor assured him that
whereas no living man could be insured from insanity, he should
consider the gentleman he had just seen to be as secure as any one
else, since there was no fear of any hereditary taint, and his having
so entirely outgrown and cast off all traces of the malady was a sign
of his splendid health and vigour of constitution.

But Lady Diana was still not satisfied. She still absolutely refused
all consent, and was no more moved at the end of three weeks than
before. Dear Harold said he did not wonder, and that if he had seen
himself in this true light, he would have loved Viola at a distance
without disquieting her peace, but since he had spoken and knew she
loved him, he could not but persevere for her sake. We could see he
said it with a steady countenance, but a burning heart. Neither he
nor I was allowed to see Viola, but there was Dermot as constant
reporter, and, to my surprise, Viola was not the submissive daughter
I had expected. Lady Diana had never had any real ascendancy over
her children's wills or principles. Even Viola's obedience had been
that of duty, not of the heart, and she had from the first declared
that mamma might forbid her to marry Harold, or to correspond with
him, and she should consider herself bound to obey; but that she had
given him her promise, and that she could not and would not take it
back again. She would wait on for ever, if otherwise it could not
be, but he had her troth plight, and she _would_ be faithful to it.
She would not give up her crystal cross, and she sent Harold her love
every day by her brother, often in her mother's very hearing, saying
she was too proud of him to be ashamed. She had resolved on her own
line of passive obedience, but of never renouncing her engagement,
and her brother upheld her in it; while her uncle let himself be
coaxed out of his displeasure, and committed himself to that
compromise plan of waiting which his sister viewed as fatal, since
Viola would only lose all her bloom, and perhaps her health.
Nothing, she said, was so much to be deplored for a girl as a long
engagement. The accepting a reformed rake had been always against
her principles, and she did not need even the dreadful possibility of
derangement, or the frightful story of his first marriage, to make
her inexorable. Viola, we were told, had made up her mind that it
was a case for perseverance, and all this time kept up dauntlessly,
not failing in spirits nor activity, but telling her brother she had
always known she should have to go through something, but Harold's
love was worth it, and she meant to be brave; how should she not be
when she knew Harold cared for her; and as to what seemed to be
objections in the eyes of others, did they not make her long the more
to compensate him?

"She has to make all her love to me, poor little woman, and very
pretty love it is," said Dermot.

Whether Harold made as much love in return to their ready medium I
cannot tell, for their conferences were almost always out of doors or
at the office, and Harold was more reserved than ever. He was not
carrying matters with the same high hand as his little love, for, as
he always said, he knew he had brought it all on himself.

He never complained of Lady Diana, but rather defended her to her son
for not thinking him fit for her daughter, only adhering to his
original standpoint, that where there was so much love, surely some
hope might be granted, since he would thankfully submit to any
probation.

We all expected that this would be the upshot of our suspense, and
that patience and constancy would prevail; and by the help of immense
walks and rides, and a good deal of interest in some new buildings at
the potteries, and schemes for the workmen, Harold kept himself very
equable and fairly cheerful, though his eyes were weary and anxious,
and when he was sitting still, musing, there was something in his
pose which reminded me more than ever of Michel Angelo's figures,
above all, the grand one on the Medicean monument. He consorted much
more now with Mr. Yolland, the curate, and was making arrangements by
which the school chapel might expand into a Mission Church, but still
I did not know that he was finding the best aid through this time in
the devotions and heart-searchings to which the young clergyman had
led him, and which were the real cause of the calm and dignified
humility with which he waited.

At last Lady Diana, finding herself powerless with her daughter, sent
a letter to Harold, beginning: "I appeal to your generosity." A very
cruel letter in some ways it was, representing that he had acquiesced
in her judgment, that there were certain unfortunate passages in his
past life which made it her painful duty to prevent her child from
following the dictates of an inexperienced heart. Then she put it to
him whether it were not a most unfortunate position for a young girl
to be involved in an engagement which could never be fulfilled, and
which was contrary to the commands of her only remaining parent, and
she showed how family peace, confidence, and maternal and filial
affection must suffer if the daughter should hold fast persistently
to the promise by which she held herself bound. In fact, it was an
urgent entreaty, for Viola's own sake, that he would release her from
her promise. Dermot was shooting at Erymanth, and neither he nor I
knew of this letter till Harold had acted. He rode at once to Arked,
saw Lady Diana, and declared himself convinced that the engagement,
having no chance of sanction, ought to be given up. Rather than keep
Viola in the wearing state of resistance and disobedience her mother
described, he would resign all hopes of her.

Lady Diana went to her daughter with the tidings, that Mr. Alison saw
the hopelessness of his suit, and released her from her promise.

"You have made him do so, mamma," cried Viola. "If he releases me I
do not release myself."

Finally, Lady Diana, astonished to find Harold so reasonable and
amenable, perceived that the only means of dealing with her daughter
was to let them meet again. Of course no one fully knows what passed
then. Harold told me, the only time he spoke of it, that "he had
just taken out his own heart and crushed it!" but Viola dwelt on each
phrase, and, long after, used to go over all with me. He had fully
made up his mind that to let Viola hold to her troth would neither be
right nor good for her, and he used his power of will and influence
to make her resign it. There was no concealment nor denial of their
mutual love. It was Viola's comfort to remember that. "But," said
Harold, "your mother has only too good reasons for withholding you
from me, and there is nothing for it but to submit, and give one
another up."

"But we do not leave off loving one another," said poor Viola.

"We cannot do what we cannot."

"And when we are old--"

"That would be a mental reservation," said Harold. "There must be no
mutual understanding of coming together again. I promised your
mother. Because I am a guilty man, I am not to break up your life."

He made her at last resign her will into his, she only feeling that
his judgment could not be other than decisive, and that she could not
resist him, even for his own sake. He took her for a moment into his
arms, and exchanged one long burning kiss, then, while she was almost
faint and quite passive with emotion, he laid her on the sofa, and
called her mother. "Lady Diana," he said, "we give up all claim to
one another's promise, in obedience to you. Do we not, Viola?"

"Yes," she faintly said.

He gave her brow one more kiss, and was gone.

He took his horse home, and sent in a pencil note to me: "All over;
don't wait, for me.--H. A."

I was dreadfully afraid he would go off to Australia, or do something
desperate, but Count Stanislas reassured me that this would be unlike
Harold's present self, since his strength had come to be used, not in
passion, but in patience. We dined as best we could without him,
waited all the evening, and sat up till eleven, when we heard him at
the door. I went out and took down the chain to let him in. It was
a wet misty night, and he was soaked through. I begged him to come
in and warm himself, and have something hot, but he shook his head,
as if he could not speak, took his candle, and went upstairs.

I made the tea, for which I had kept the kettle boiling all this
time, and Prometesky took his great cup in to him, presently
returning to say, "He is calm. He has done wisely, he has exhausted
himself so that he will sleep. He says he will see me at once to my
retreat in Normandy. I think it will be best for him."

Count Stanislas was, in fact, on the eve of departure, and in a
couple of days more Harold went away with him, having only broached
the matter to me to make me understand that the break had been his,
not Viola's; and that I must say no more about it.

Dermot had come over and raged against his mother, and even against
Harold, declaring that if the two had "stood out" they would have
prevailed, but that he did not wonder Harold was tired of it.

Harold's look made him repent of that bit of passion, but he was
contemptuous of the "for her sake," which was all Harold uttered as
further defence. "What! tell him it was for her sake when she was
creeping about the house like a ghost, looking as if she had just
come out of a great illness?"

Dermot meant to escort his mother and sister to Florence, chiefly in
order to be a comfort to the latter, but he meant to return to
Ireland as soon as they had joined the St. Glears. "Taking you by
the way," he said, "before going to my private La Trappe."

Prometesky took leave of me, not quite as if we were never to meet
again, for his experimental retreat was to be over at Christmas, and
he would then be able to receive letters. He promised me that, if I
then wrote to him that, Harold stood in need of him for a time, he
would return to us instead of commencing the novitiate which would
lead to his becoming dead to the outer world.

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