Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Seed Time/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX.
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
my heart's core; ay, in my heart of hearts."
A tap at the door. "Come in," I say, pausing in my wrestle with my bonnet strings—which I am trying to settle in a bow that will not disgrace Lady Flytton's smart chariot—and enter Silvia. Apparently she is not going to church, for although we start in five minutes' time, she wears a white morning gown and slippers.
"Will you do something for me?" she asks, sitting down.
"Tell me what it is first," I say, cautiously.
"You know Mr. Vasher?"
"Yes!"
"Will you give him this note after church?"
I look at the held-out billet, and for a moment hesitate. I love to help lovers; but I like him, and I do not like her; shall I hurt him by taking it? He is strong enough to take care of himself. "Yes, I will give it him," I say, and put it in my pocket.
"You are a good child," she says, and goes away.
I wonder if he will be in church? Yes, he is there, as I discover twenty minutes later, and he gives me a friendly look as I go up the aisle behind Mrs. Fleming. That old heathen Lady Flytton never goes to church. The Buffs give me a smile or two, and I wink affectionately at Mary Burns at a favourable opportunity. In the porch outside, when the service is over, I find Mr. Vasher, which is lucky; for supposing I had been obliged to run after him?
"And when are you coming back, little one?" he asks.
"Soon! To-morrow! Some time!" I say, flounderingly, then I thrust the note into his hand and flee.
"Did you give it him?" asks Silvia, as we are walking in the garden after luncheon.
"Yes."
"How hot it is!" she says, shrugging her shoulders, "there is a storm brewing!"
She speaks truth, the morning was sultry, the afternoon is worse, the air is charged and heavy with heat, the skies are closing in, black as night, the very birds have ceased singing: all creation seems to be holding its breath, awaiting one of nature's fierce convulsions. With the same instinct that has sent all the animals to their hiding-places, I go in, leaving Silvia pacing up and down, with clasped hands, and an intent look of listening upon her face. I am not ashamed to confess it, I am horribly, terribly afraid of a thunderstorm; the dread crack of the awful, invisible hosts above always makes me shiver, and through my eyelids the lightning seems to strike and blind me. After all, I must be a coward, for Jack does not mind it at all; he opens his eyes wide, and never puts his fingers in his ears. The sisters are fast asleep in a remote corner of the queer-shaped, many-angled room; every now and then a gentle snore attests to their happy unconsciousness. When I am old, I dare say I shall consider it a godly and suitable employment to spend my sabbath afternoons in slumber; being young and broadly awake, I find the time hang very heavily on my hands. I take a peep at "Good Words," I look at the pictures in the "Sunday at Home," finally I take up Lady Flytton's album, which I have indeed already explored, but still find interesting, thanks to the extraordinary unhandsomeness of her friends and relations; her defunct husband bearing the palm away from them all for general unsavouriness, imbecility, and grimace. I am just grinning at the photograph of a very short man, who has a most ferocious expression of countenance, and looks as though he were saying, "Laugh at me if you dare!" when the door opens, and Paul Vasher is announced. The sisters do not awake, and he does not see me. In another moment he is face to face with Silvia, who enters hastily through the glass-door.
"You sent for me," he says, "and I have come."
"Come out into the garden," she says, abruptly.
And they go out together, along the terrace, and disappear among the trees. An hour slips away, the light fails strangely; the skies are of ink, save where a lurid-tipped cloud betokens mischief; every leaf and tree and flower stands stirless; there is not a living thing to be seen.
Steps come quickly along the terrace, and Paul Vasher comes in alone. I am half leaping up to speak to him, when something in his face checks me, and I fall back; in another moment he is gone. The closing door awakens Lady Flytton, who sits up, and asks, sharply—
"Who was that just went out?"
"Mr. Vasher."
"Vasher here!" screams the old woman. "Has that little cat been up to some more of her tricks? Well, he didn't stay long!" And she composes herself to sleep again.
"Was I snoring, child?" asks Mrs. Fleming, with some anxiety.
"Not much."
Hark! A few drops of rain, heavy as lead, fall with a hissing sound upon the pavement; a low faint moan comes sweeping up over the land, and now with an awful, shivering reverberation, the heavens are rent in twain, the forked lightning leaps out, the flood-gates of heaven are loosed, and the storm is upon us. I bury my head in my hands to shut out the glare of the lightning, but through the hideous discord, I hear Mrs. Fleming's voice ask, in sharp fear, "Where is Silvia?"
Out yonder; out in the fury and teeth of the storm, as reckless, as wild as the hurricane itself; and God only knows what depths, of misery and shame she is sounding. Paul Vasher's face was not hard to read. And, child as I am, I know that she has played her last stake, and lost!
In her present mood she will court death, if I know anything of her character. Some one must find her, and bring her back. But who? I will. My life out there is as much in God's hand as here; and though I do not love her, I would do this much for my worst enemy. I take my hands from my eyes, snatch up a shawl lying near, and, heedless of Mrs. Fleming's exclamations of horror, step out on to the terrace. Down comes the waterspout in its resistless strength, almost beating me to earth; blinded with lightning, deafened with thunder, bewildered by the hurly-burly, I push on. looking hither and thither, in every nook and corner, but I cannot find her. Stronger and fiercer grows the storm. At my side a tree smitten in mid-air by an unseen hand, is whirled aloft, and hurled crashing to the ground; a rabbit, struck dead by lightning, lies in my path; overhead, from end to end of heaven, echoes that long, hollow, shuddering peal that always sounds to me like the shrieks and wild laughter of lost souls in Hades. At last I come upon her sitting under a tree, in a far-off corner, looking out at the storm as indifferently as though it were a pageant arranged for her especial amusement.
"Silvia!" I cry while yet I am a little way off, "Silvia!" But she never stirs, never lifts her head, or unclasps her hands, or seems to know my voice, while all about her lie the wreck and ruin of the wild hurricane; and a few yards away, an oak struck with lightning stands bare and ghastly, stripped of its bark. I am stepping towards her, when—oh, my God!—the heavens above us open; a great light shines upon our faces, and, cleaving the air, there rushes towards us a great crimson ball of flame. I shut my eyes, and stand motionless: is not this death? and with a hiss and a swirl, and a burning breath that scorches my face, it smites the ground at my feet, and a great smoke belches forth, and hides everything from my eyes. Dimly I grope my way round to the other side; I am not killed, therefore Silvia must be———But there she sits looking just as she looked before the bolt fell.
"Alive and unharmed, thank God!" I cry, taking her cold hand in mine.
"If it had only killed me," she says, in a whisper, pointing her finger at the sullen flames; "if I had been only one step nearer———"
"Come away!" I say gently, and she does not resist, but lets me lead her away like a child. Her face is pale as the dead; her lovely eyes look straight before her, as though they beheld only one object; her hair hangs dank and heavy down her dripping back. An uncommonly nice couple we look as we reach the house, with pools of water running from our clothes; as beaten down and draggled as yonder poor flowers that lie with broken stalks in their churned-up beds.
Mrs. Fleming shrieks at her daughter's face—and, indeed, she might well have taken some grievous hurt out in the storm to judge by her looks—but the girl pulls herself wearily away.
"Leave me alone," she says, and goes slowly up the stair, to the great embellishment of her aunt's carpeting, and I follow. On the landing she turns round.
"Come into my room, by-and-by," she says.
I have slipped out of my wet clothes, and am almost attired in dry ones, when Mrs. Fleming comes in bearing a tumbler of hot wine, which she makes me drink. It tastes very good, but surely it is rather strong?
She goes away, and I proceed with my toilet; but somehow, I don't seem to be quite mistress of my own legs, and in crossing the room I have to tack a good deal. My ideas, too, are very hazy. I find myself surveying various articles of my attire with a benignant and fixed smile, instead of putting them on; and I am by-and-by distinctly conscious that, with no apparent volition of my own, I am standing before my looking-glass, swaying from side to side, and saying, in an indistinct voice,
"My intentions is good, Jack, but my legs is weak." And after that I know nothing, save that I am blessedly, soundly asleep.
The clock is striking seven as I awake, and Mrs. Fleming is looking down on me with some anxiety.
"What does it all mean?" I say, rubbing my eyes; "I never went to sleep like this in the daytime before. Was it the thunderbolt?"
"No," says Mrs. Fleming; "I think it was the wine. I put brandy in it to keep the cold out, and forgot you were not used to it."
"And so I have been tipsy," I say, putting my hand to my head. "Oh, what would papa say if he could see me?"
"Say it was my fault," says Mrs. Fleming; "and now, my dear, don't trouble about that. Can you go to Silvia now? She has been asking for you."
"I will be ready in a minute; but, Mrs. Fleming, you will never tell any one about it, will you?"
"Never," she says, smiling, and goes away.
To my knock at Silvia's door, I receive no answer; pushing it open, I enter. She is standing by a window, looking at the smoke that rises from the spot where the bolt lies embedded. She is talking to herself, and does not seem to see or hear me, although I am before her eyes.
"I was wrong to wish it had killed me," she mutters. "After all it's a stupid thing to do—to die. Talk of the proud contempt of spirits risen! it is the living who have the best of it, and despise the dead. If I had died to-day, the women who hate me would have said, 'Poor creature!' he would have said, 'Poor Silvia.' I should have been poor Silvia, a weak loving fool to all eternity to him. I will live!—live to punish the scorn and coldness that has dared repay such love as mine—live to make him rue the day he made Silvia Fleming stoop to pray in vain. When he least expects me, I will be there: in the hour of his joy, I will stand by his side, and strike the cup from his lips; in his night of sorrow, I will rejoice over him-and since I cannot have his love, I will work his misery—and this I will do, so help me, God!"
The last lurid gleam of the storm is on her set face, and in her wide eyes. Has the afternoon actually crazed her brain?
"Are you there, child?" she says, turning round sharply. "Have you heard all the nonsense I have been talking?"
"Some of it."
"Bah!" she says; "I have a bad habit of talking aloud. You were a good little thing to come out and find me like that. It would not have been pleasant to be killed by that bolt, eh?"
"No," I say, shuddering; "but it was very near, a narrow escape. Have you told Mrs. Fleming?"
"Not I! How that old woman, my aunt, would have hopped, if she had seen it all! That red thing coming through the air; you and I with our mouths open; at least, yours was———" She goes off into a fit of laughter, that does not strike me as being particularly seemly. She ceases as suddenly as she began, her fancy changes.
"You can go now," she says. "Will you send my mother up to me?"
Truly, Silvia Fleming has somewhat odd manners. Down in the drawing-room 1 find the sisters looking out of a window at the desolation of the garden, and having delivered my message to Mrs. Fleming, proceed to inform Lady Flytton of the shave we have had, to which she listens with many upliftings of her hands and exclamations.
"And all that little cat's fault," she says. "Whatever will your mother say, when she hears that I took so little care of you? As to that Silvia, it's my belief she is being saved up for something worse!"