Francesca Carrara/Chapter 97
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
"Lean on me, love!
Oh, such a bridal night befits not such a bride;
........but if truth
And tenderness can pay thee back for comfort,
Thou shall ne'er regret the time."
The Bridal Night.
Francesca's heart beat quick when she quitted the forest. She saw the square grey turret of the church, with the clear full moon just above it. Another moment and she would be at Evelyn's side. Still, as the little wicket swung behind her, she paused, all other thoughts lost in the impression produced by the solemn beauty of the scene. Large clouds were coming up vapidly upon the wind, gloomy ministers of fate, charged with the rain, the storm, and the thunder; and from one of these the moon had but just emerged, and her gentle light touched the silvery edges, but entered not the dense mass which rested on the air, black and immovable. Light vapours floated round in fantastic shapes, soft and snowy, and yielding easy passage to every luminous ray. The long waving grass below was tremulous with the dew. The ivy, clinging round that side of the old church, shone with its broad green leaves, which caught a double radiance from the moon and from the small diamond panes of the Gothic windows which the long drooping branches enwreathed. There was an uncertain and sad loveliness on the atmosphere, which harmonised with humanity.
There is something in the shadowless sky and the unbroken moonshine which mocks us with repose. We have no part in it; our own unrest has no sympathy with the blue and spiritual horizon, whose hope is not with this life. The calm and quiet light is not of our busy and careful world; it belongs to sleep, to silence, and to dreams; and, alas! we gaze on it with the beating heart and the fevered pulse, while the thousand vain delusions of past and future cast their various shadows before our eyes. Who stands watching in the sleepless midnight, but one from whose pillow repose is banished by one all-present thought? Ambition, hate, love, alike have their vigils; and what have they in common with the cloudless sky, where the moon wanders, placid as the spirit of the good when resigned to die, and confident and filled with another and holier sphere? But the troubled element, the fitful flash, the murky vapours, the sullen heralds of the tempest; these have our own likeness cast upon them;—these are nearer to the earth. We read in the aërial struggle the prophecy of our own fate; and as the night-black canopy spreads over the horizon, so darkly does destiny close around ourselves.
Francesca's eye dwelt involuntarily on the graves beside. "Sad witnesses to human happiness!" thought she, and quickened her steps. She needed the relief of Evelyn's presence to banish the melancholy forebodings that came thronging fast to her mind. She started, and suddenly drew back within the shadow thrown out by the church wall. She heard a voice, and in the obscurity saw a group of figures! What could their errand be at that early hour? Surely that sound was familiar to her ear! Once before she had heard the ropes creak as they lowered the coffin into the deep pit; once before she had heard the rattle of the gravel falling on the lid, as if it struck on tho very heart; once before she had heard those words, sanctifying the sod over which they were uttered. Whose funeral rites could they be that needed such mysterious and secret solemnisation? The agony of ages passed within her soul—one dreadful thought flashed upon her. She sprang forward; her light step caught the ear of one of the mourners; he turned round, and the next moment, agitated and breathless, she was supported by Robert Evelyn.
The funeral service was concluded, and a few words, as he led her to the church, sufficed to explain the scene, which it was not meant she should have witnessed. Evelyn had felt it incumbent upon him to see the last duties paid to Major Johnstone, and only after nightfall could he and others of the party assemble for such purpose unmolested. Slight obstacles, one after another, had delayed the burial, and he had been waiting for some time, at once hoping and dreading Francesca's arrival. She made no remark; but as they passed one mound, where the wild-flowers grew in more lavish sweetness than on the others, she said, "That is Guido's grave;—nothing seems present here but death." Evelyn clasped her to his heart silently, and the action expressed with mute but tender eloquence, "There, at least, life and love beat for you, my own Francesca!"
On entering the church, she was met by the affectionate and cordial greeting of Lucy St. Aubyn. The unexpected kindness was too much for her; it was the last drop that overflowed the fountain of tears that had been gathering; and Lucy, who had been accustomed to see her so quiet, so self-possessed, felt her sympathy heightened by surprise, as she bent over and soothed her companion's burst of passionate weeping. Perhaps it excited even a tenderer pity; for those in the habit of giving way to their own feelings look upon self-possession rather as the sign of indifference than of control. Her appearance was soon accounted for. The moment that she heard from St. Aubyn the occasion that required his office, she resolved on accompanying him. She felt, with the quick sympathy one woman has to the feelings of another, that her presence would give Francesca both support and confidence, for she was sincerely attached to her. Besides, there is a strong current of romance in every feminine nature, that delights in the hazardous and the mysterious, especially in love affairs. Lucy, too, had a sufficiently tender recollection of Francis Evelyn to take an interest in his brother, who was also quite handsome enough to inspire that interest for himself. She was aware of the risk her husband ran in performing the ceremony—many a clergyman had been suspended for a lighter matter; but a woman, and a young woman especially, always takes the generous side of a question.
There was no time, however, to be lost; and Evelyn led his bride to the railing before the altar, where St. Aubyn stood ready to commence the ceremony. He whispered to Francesca, as she knelt, "The ring I have for you was once my mother's—I can give you no dearer pledge."
"Ah!" exclaimed she, in a choked and agitated voice, "it belongs, then, to the dead!"
The service proceeded; and the voice which had so little while since spoken the solemn farewell to a departed soul, now pronounced its blessing over the hopes and happiness of the living.
As Francesca knelt at the altar, there was a melancholy earnestness in her large black eyes, a spiritual expression on her pale features, that Lucy often recalled. She herself wept, for the recollection came often and bitter, that this was the last time they should ever meet; and the difficulties and dangers her companion was about to encounter rose with every possible exaggeration to her mind. Francesca seemed as if her feelings admitted not the weakness of tears; yet it was sad to leave almost the only friend she had ever known, and the grave of one so beloved as her brother. By that grave she had passed that very night, and, in the agitation and hurry, without one prayer or thought; yet, even while kneeling at Evelyn's side, it rose upon her mind as if she had slighted some dear friend.
Young was the bridegroom, and beautiful the bride, and never did blessing hallow love more entire and more devoted; and yet it was a melancholy ceremonial. The cold light of the moon touched every face with unnatural paleness; and the silence was unbroken and portentously profound. No bells, musical in their gladness, swelled upon the hushed air—no kindly gratulations came cheerful from joyful lips; and when Evelyn took Francesca's hand in his—now his own—his bride before the face of Heaven—he started at the marble coldness of the touch. Surely the shadow of eternity and the chill of the surrounding graves were upon her at that moment! She roused herself to say a few words of affectionate farewell to Lucy. "The dream of my whole life," whispered she, "is now fulfilled. In poverty, in exile, in death, I am his for ever."
Lucy embraced her in silence, and her husband's voice faltered, as he bade God bless them.
The youthful couple were left alone in the churchyard. "I have one last and dearest parting to make," said Francesca, and she knelt down beside the lowly grave of Guido.
"Weep not, dearest, for the dead," murmured Evelyn, in the low and gentle tones of love. "He was very dear; but the circle of a deeper affection is around you now, and the care of a still more tender fondness."
She rose, and put her hands into his. "When death," said she, in a voice that sounded like strange sweet music in the silence, "calls upon me to deliver up my soul, I cannot yield it more utterly than I now do to you."
A sudden noise of hurrying steps came upon the air—the red glare of torches disturbed the silvery quiet of the moonbeam—dark faces lowered upon them—and two men, by a rapid movement, secured each an arm of Evelyn, as a harsh voice exclaimed, "Stand, on your life!—you are my prisoner!"