"No,not for ever.You are young still;you have half a lifetime before you.""Have I?"And for the moment one would hardly have recognized the sallow,spiritless face,that with all the delicacy of boyhood still,at times looked so exceedingly old."No,no,Mr.Halifax,who ever heard of a man beginning life at seven-and-thirty?""Are you really seven-and-thirty?"asked Maud.
"Yes--yes,my girl.Is it so very old?"
He patted her on the shoulder,took her hand,gazed at it--the round,rosy,girlish hand--with a melancholy tenderness;then bade "Good-bye"to us all generally,and rode off.
It struck me then,though I hurried the thought away--it struck me afterwards,and does now with renewed surprise--how strange it was that the mother never noticed or took into account certain possibilities that would have occurred naturally to any worldly mother.I can only explain it by remembering the unworldliness of our lives at Beechwood,the heavy cares which now pressed upon us from without,and the notable fact--which our own family experience ought to have taught us,yet did not--that in cases like this,often those whom one would have expected to be most quick-sighted,are the most strangely,irretrievably,mournfully blind.
When,the very next day,Lord Ravenel,not on horse-back but in his rarely-used luxurious coronetted carriage,drove up to Beechwood,every one in the house except myself was inconceivably astonished to see him back again.
He said that he had delayed his journey to Paris,and gave no explanation of that delay.He joined as usual in our midday dinner;and after dinner,still as usual,took a walk with me and Maud.It happened to be through the beech-wood,almost the identical path that I remembered taking,years and years ago,with John and Ursula.Iwas surprised to hear Lord Ravenel allude to the fact,a well-known fact in our family;for I think all fathers and mothers like to relate,and all children to hear,the slightest incidents of the parents'courting days.
"You did not know father and mother when they were young?"said Maud,catching our conversation and flashing back her innocent,merry face upon us.
"No,scarcely likely."And he smiled."Oh,yes--it might have been--I forget,I am not a young man now.How old were Mr.and Mrs.
Halifax when they married?"
"Father was twenty-one and mother was eighteen--only a year older than I."And Maud,half ashamed of this suggestive remark,ran away.
Her gay candour proved to me--perhaps to others besides me--the girl's entire free-heartedness.The frank innocence of childhood was still hers.
Lord Ravenel looked after her and sighed."It is good to marry early;do you not think so,Mr.Fletcher?"I told him--(I was rather sorry after I had said it,if one ought to be sorry for having,when questioned,given one's honest opinion)--Itold him that I thought those happiest who found their happiness early,but that I did not see why happiness should be rejected because it was the will of Providence that it should not be found till late.
"I wonder,"he said,dreamily,"I wonder whether I shall ever find it."I asked him--it was by an impulse irresistible--why he had never married?
"Because I never found any woman either to love or to believe in.
Worse,"he added,bitterly,"I did not think there lived the woman who could be believed in."We had come out of the beech-wood and were standing by the low churchyard wall;the sun glittered on the white marble head-stone on which was inscribed,"Muriel Joy Halifax."Lord Ravenel leaned over the wall,his eyes fixed upon that little grave.After a while,he said,sighing:
"Do you know,I have thought sometimes that,had she lived,I could have loved--I might have married--that child!"Here Maud sprang towards us.In her playful tyranny,which she loved to exercise and he to submit to,she insisted on knowing what Lord Ravenel was talking about.
"I was saying,"he answered,taking both her hands and looking down into her bright,unshrinking eyes,"I was saying,how dearly I loved your sister Muriel.""I know that,"and Maud became grave at once."I know you care for me because I am like my sister Muriel.""If it were so,would you be sorry or glad?"
"Glad,and proud too.But you said,or you were going to say,something more.What was it?"He hesitated long,then answered:
"I will tell you another time."
Maud went away,rather cross and dissatisfied,but evidently suspecting nothing.For me,I began to be seriously uneasy about her and Lord Ravenel.
Of all kinds of love,there is one which common sense and romance have often combined to hold obnoxious,improbable,or ridiculous,but which has always seemed to me the most real and pathetic form that the passion ever takes--I mean,love in spite of great disparity of age.Even when this is on the woman's side,I can imagine circumstances that would make it far less ludicrous and pitiful;and there are few things to me more touching,more full of sad earnest,than to see an old man in love with a young girl.
Lord Ravenel's case would hardly come under this category;yet the difference between seventeen and thirty-seven was sufficient to warrant in him a trembling uncertainty,and eager catching at the skirts of that vanishing youth whose preciousness he never seemed to have recognized till now.It was with a mournful interest that all day I watched him follow the child about,gather her posies,help her to water her flowers,and accommodate himself to those whims and fancies,of which,as the pet and the youngest,Mistress Maud had her full share.
When,at her usual hour of half-past nine,the little lady was summoned away to bed,"to keep up her roses,"he looked half resentful of the mother's interference.
"Maud is not a child now;and this may be my last night--"he stopped,sensitively,at the involuntary foreboding.
"Your last night?Nonsense!you will come back soon again.You must--you shall!"said Maud,decisively.
"I hope I may--I trust in Heaven I may!"