Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (442 page)

The being of a far mightier mind, and compared with whom, every living thing round his path was little better than would have been the vitality of a polypus, walked forward, sometimes smiling at the little bits of English
 
scenery which no one save Bewick has ever copied on wood or steel, but far oftener casting the mental eye backward upon an object of love long laid in her grave, or forward, upon one whose grave he might be the means of making.

There are hours when our thoughts take in, and fully comprehend years as well as minutes; when the long chain which connects bygone, with present and with forthcoming years blazes like one vivid streak of lightening, and gives mans feelings almost a prophetic power to look into his future doom.

Such a power Mr Percy seemed to have obtained when he leaned on the gate of the avenue leading to Darkwall and thought of the Mary he had lost, and the Maria he was to meet.

After his eye had wandered a while over whitey green pastures and storm beaten moors he entered the Hall, and in its Breakfast room met the beautiful though melancholy looking mistress of the mansion

The old fashioned room with its Elizabethan windows and its roof pointed from the centres to the octagonal diverging supports did not attract his attention, but the Lady who welcomed him did — She entered with a took of studied solemnity, but with a shining in the eyes that said solemnity might sometimes tell lies.

Mrs Maria Thurston had known enough of sorrow, and God had intended her to both know and feel enough of love. She had before her a man capable of exciting every feeling that a woman can know — She had, as the possesor of her own person, a man, if I can write him down as such, who could not gain more than momentarily — her feelings, and who never could fill them at all. She had lost thoughts of him except in her ideas of dread of him, and so many years had elapsed since he had bestowed on her even one moment of, I fear,
selfish
fondness, that the remembrance of her bridal days caused the atonishment which one feels when thinking that ones childhood took for truth the gibberish of a nursery tale.

Now, and for long ago she knew that on rising she must dress to face a day of duties performed unthanked and, so far as her thoughts were concerned, objectless care.

What was it then that caused an expression to cross her face which even the servant who closed the door could notice, as Mr Percy greeted her with a tight rein upon his tongue but a hot spur within his mind? Whatever she felt an unusual visitant — colour — invaded her cheeks as she replied to his greeting of “Well Madam —

There is an unseen power which draws us onwards”

So in accordance with Schiller’s philosophy I am hither thus early from the coarseness of Ardmore cattle fair.”

“I suppose Sir you have yet been so kind as to do your utmost to correct that coarseness for I have understood that Mr Thurstons guest performed — positively for one night only in the Methodist Chapel at —
 
— ”

“Oh do not speak of it! You do not know me — When I am most inwardly serious I am most outwardly absurd — Last nights folly was a borrowed cloak to shelter me from the passing storm and to be returned when the blast should have hurried it by. It has not been the first occasion on which I have dressed myself in motley, but I can doff the fools cap as easily as don it — Why do you look so sad?”

“I did not know that my looks were changed from their usual character — But I am sure Sir that after the eccentricities of last night you will need refreshment this morning — more especially as I suppose you mean to spend the day on the moors.”

“Maria — Madam, I mean — No, Damn it, it shall out — Maria — I do not mean to spend the day on the moors — I am no sentimental milksop, and I like a day spent at the tail of a pointer or a foxhound as well as any fellow that ever donned a green or scarlet Jacket, but I have other likings, and I would rather bring down sorrow from a well loved face than wing the finest Bustard (if there is one left) on the plains of Wiltshire. I know you are unhappy Maria — Yes you may put on the mockery of a smile and look as though you would say you were not — but your lot in life has been among thorny paths and against inclement skies. God made you by nature to be all that a woman could be, so far as her sunshine can enlighten a blighted world — You have been made, by some other power not very nearly akin to God, no better than a weed tossed on the water I can see it and if I wish to strive for a few hours to cheat you out of the bitter consciousness of your fate impute my wish not to a sin on my part, but to tenderness for her who instead of being a weed tossed on the water ought to be a jewel worn in a crown.”

“Sir — Sir — Remember who I am — and for
my
sake forbear to — ”

“
I
remember
I
know well enough what thou art — I know the earthquake ground on which I tread — But, Maria, through distress and danger to come — through hours of self reproach that I am too stubborn to own to others — through scenes that make me sick of my life — thou
shalt
— thou
must
be now my guiding star. Do not let those tears run down thy cheek unless I am to kiss them off — Do not play with and look at thy eye glass as if it and not Alexander Percy were talking to thee — Remember, my Maria, that we stand on a point of time — sorrow has been behind us both — The balm of mutual love may be before us — for I
know
that thou lovest me, and thy words need not put themselves to the
 
trouble of a denial — and if we must part — Maria — remember a rough villain amid all his mental storms will have one sweet harbour in which that mind may anchor — An ill used lady will find that when she has to retire to a lonely room from the conclusion of thankless toils — she may, ere she lays her head on a (I would hope) peaceful pillow — feel that one man — up to all both of the good and evil of life — and who never prays for himself, is praying most unselfishly for her.”

Some of my readers may think that the foregoing report of the breakfast room conversation sounds overstrained, or raphsodical, but as I only

“tell the tale as ’twas told to me”

and can with the mental eye see plainly the noble looking, passionately feeling, well experienced and highly talented scoundrel standing over, and warmly regarding the mild, sweet tempered, but sorrow stricken lady, who (save in this new attraction for her feelings) saw nothing through future life save continual travel over stony roads — I can tell them that the talk was not the kernel, but the shell, and that, after a look of almost vindictive feirceness, one close embrace gave to Mr Percy’s arms one whom, at that hour he could not have lived without — and who in the whirl of her own feelings knew not whether she were dead or alive.

With cheek, now white, now red she sat beside Mr Percy, whose light complexioned countenance altered no more than did his orange whiskers but he pressed her dark curls to his bosom and said

“Maria — You must take a walk in the park or plantation — You look sickly, and my arm will be a good support during your walk — Don’t be frightened to take the arm that of all the ,,, arms in this world would be the first to protect thy dear little self. Now I shall bring thy bonnet and veil and mantle out of the entrance hall and I insist upon thy putting them on — so wipe thy eyes, my love, and believe that this hand which rather roughly grasps thy neck would be a powerful defender if any other hand dared grasp it”

Mrs Thurston — powerless under the impulse of contending feelings, mechanically walked into the hall and returned ready for a morning walk, but with her sweet confiding eyes looking, now at the powerful past, then at the awful future.

Seeing that she hesitated in entering Percy threw open the window which admitted of immediate access to the lawn, and taking her arm first, and next her waist compelled her by his impetuosity of will to resign herself to his direction during the mornings walk.

The Breakfast Room was left empty now, and the forenoon sunshine beamed as usual upon the customary display of old Furniture and uncouth china. The grim portrait of Mr Thurston frowned over the mantle piece. The fair, but wan looking lady of the mansion smiled sorrowfully from her gilded frame, beside it, but the image of the man who was fated to change the destinies of that
 
house was not there. His lofty forehead, orange whiskers, and sarcastic mouth were not to be found in the gloomy brow, black complexion, and purely malignant aspect of William Thurston.

While the room was empty of living occupants, times gone by, perhaps, looked down from the walls as forty centuries looked down from Cheop’s pyramid upon the victory of the “Sultan Kebir” over the chivalrous Mamelukes; But the room was not long empty for, ere long, in burst the brawny, Irish form of Hector. M.M Montmorency — while Mr H.M.M. Montmorency was tenderly enquiring from a servant after the welfare of his dear friend Alexander — Mrs Thurston and her guest entered through the still opened window which invited ones footsteps from the sward without.

Mrs Thurston’s raven tressess were rather disordered — and Mr Percy’s azure eyes twinkled very suspiciously so Mr Montmorency, with bowels yearning as much as ever Jacob’s or David’s did for Benjamin or Jonathan — advanced toward his lofty friend and fervently exclaimed —

“Oh, I love thee! I
do
like that squint — It is so very amiable!”

Then turning as if he had not been aware that Mrs Thurston had entered the apartment, Mr Montmorency apologized for his rough outburst of friendship, and earnestly longed to know if Mrs Thurston were well, and able to traverse the moors that day!

Mrs Thurston answered the Irish Barrister as shortly as possible and, as much as possible, without a glance at his dark searching countenance. Mr Percy recklessly keeping beside his fair hostess on the sopha threw a look at Hector, such as would have given one lightning blaze from the Silla de Carracca’s to the port of Cumana. A stranger, ignorant of human nature might have been puzzled to explain the meaning of the triumphant brightness of the gentleman’s glance or tell the reason for the perpetual check which he seemed forced to keep upon his usually voluble tongue, while addressing Mrs Thurston. Indeed once, when she was taking from the table a very large folio of local Antiquities to shew it to Montmorency he so far forgot himself as to say imperiously and warmly

“Halt,
Darling
— I’ll carry it”

and as she coloured violently and could not speak, while he muttered “Damn those slips of the tongue!” Montmorency’s snuff box came into requistion and it might have been observed that his scrutiny of the architectural engravings and coats of Arms was as inquisitive as could have been the gaze of Dr Dryasdust or
 
Jonathan Oldbuck but the Irish eyes were noticing, from their corners the changing cheek of the lady, and the cockles of his heart “rejoiced to find that she could not tear herself from that sofa and allowed Percy’s hand to fall upon her own without noticing the ‘accident’.

Looking at the plan of a Roman Camp alledged to have been discovered on the adjacent moors Montmorency remarked in a mild voice

“I always admire a commander who can kick aside your gradual approaches and take a fortification by storm. Zigzag work will do for the practice of the law, but it does not look natural or prove sucessful in war or in Love. to be sure a Spider would hardly agree with me, for it is very wary in catching its fly — but then when it has
got
it — who so brisk as the spider?”

As Mr Percy only answered by the pantomime of a sneering laugh, and the growling observation that a spider could kill a wasp, Mr Montmorency continued —

“Well, now, to business. You must know, however painful it may be to disclose the secret — and, believe me from the testimony of this bleeding bosom that it is a pain from which only burning tears could relieve me — a pain that no issue to the event, however happy, could wholly remove — for it lies
here
!”

“If you mean the inside coat pocket I judge it to be an unmanageable brief

“Oh no! proffessional business must lie asleep now!”

“Thank Heaven! Now Mar — Madam we may hope for happiness when
Law
sleeps.”

“Oh Percy

‘Alas, I feel I am no actor here!’

Our beloved fellow labourers, our fellow soldiers under
His
banner, our pilgrim companions, our virgin sisters, those who have fought under the cross by our side and who may with us eventualy win and wear a martyrs crown, are — but how can I declare it in your presence Madam — They are
in quod
!”