Read Ebook: A Devotee: An Episode in the Life of a Butterfly by Cholmondeley Mary

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Ebook has 385 lines and 24939 words, and 8 pages

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S. Adalhardt 34 " Adelelm 461 " Adrian 128 " Aelred 176 " Agatho 137 " Agnes 317 " Aidan 467 " Aldegund 460 " Aldric 96 " Alexander Acoemetus 228 SS. Anastasius and comp. 334 B. Angela es des bois et l'?cume des eaux, Bien d'autres s'en aller que le parfum des roses Et le chant des oiseaux.'

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

'Mummy,' said Peggy, a few days later, coming into her mother's sitting-room and pressing her round, cool cheek against Lady Pierpoint's, 'why does Sibyl want to marry Mr. Loftus?'

'Because she thinks she loves him, Peggy, as many other women have done before her.'

'I think I love him, too, in a way,' said Peggy. 'He is better than anybody. When I am with him, I feel--I don't know what I feel, only I know it's good, and I want to do something for him, or make him something really pretty for his handkerchiefs; but--I don't want to marry him.'

'That is as well, my treasure, as he is going to marry Sibyl.'

'I never thought he would marry anybody. I can't believe it. It seems as if it could not happen.'

'It will happen,' said Lady Pierpoint, 'if he lives.'

'Sibyl says,' continued Peggy, 'that he enters into her feelings as no one else does, and that she understands him, and that hardly anyone else does except her, because he is so superior.'

'Indeed!'

'And she says she can speak to him of aspirations and things that she can't even mention to Molly and me. She says it isn't our fault--it is only because we are different to her.'

'You are certainly very different,' said Lady Pierpoint, compressing her lips.

'And to think that she might have married Mr. Doll,' continued Peggy, as if Sibyl's actions were indeed inscrutable. 'Mr. Doll will be twenty-eight next August. He was twenty-seven when we were at Wilderleigh last year. If I had been Sibyl, I would have married him, and then I'll tell you, mummy, what I would have done. I would have asked Mr. Loftus to let us live with him at Wilderleigh, and I would have taken such care of him--oh! such care--and I would have spent whole bags of money on the farms and fences and things, and he would have been happy, and Mr. Doll would have been happy, too.'

'Peggy,' said Lady Pierpoint, 'shall I tell you a secret? I think that is exactly what Mr. Loftus hoped Sibyl would do.'

Mr. Loftus was attached to his nephew--people always looked upon Doll as his nephew, though he was in reality his first cousin--and to him and to him alone he told the circumstances which had led to his engagement.

What passed between the elder man and the young one during that interview will never be known. But when at last Mr. Loftus left him, Doll sat for a long time looking over the geraniums into the park. The somewhat dull, unimaginative soul that dwelt behind his handsome expressionless face was vaguely stirred.

'It's a mistake,' he said at last, half aloud. 'But Uncle George is on the square; he always is.'

And when he was ruthlessly twitted next day by his brother officers on being cut out by his uncle, he replied simply enough:

'He is a better man than me, as all you fellows know. She would not have looked at one of you any more than she would at me. I suppose she had a fancy for marrying a man who could spell, which none of us can.'

'Spelling or none,' said the youngest sub--'which is an indecent subject which should never be mentioned between gentlemen--anyhow, I mean to borrow a thousand or a fiver off him. Mr. Loftus always tipped me at school.'

One of Mr. Loftus's first actions was to stop the preliminary proceedings regarding the sale of Wilderleigh, which he had been arranging a month ago, on the afternoon when he had called on Lady Pierpoint. It was like awakening from a nightmare to realize that Wilderleigh would not be sold, after all. He almost wished that he might live long enough to set the place in order for Doll.

The engagement was a nine days' wonder, and those nine days were purposely spent by Mr. Loftus in London. He was aware that many cruel things would be said at his expense, and that the bare fact that a man of his years and in his state of health should marry a young heiress, and so great an heiress as Sibyl Carruthers, must call forth unfavourable comments. People who did not know him said it was perfectly shameful, and that it was just the sort of thing which those people who posed as being so extra good always did. How shocked Mr. Loftus had pretended to be when old Lord Bugbear, after his infamous life, married a girl of seventeen! And now he, Mr. Loftus, was doing exactly the same himself. Of course he had a very fascinating manner--just the kind of manner to impose on a young girl who, like Miss Carruthers, knew nothing of the world, and had been nowhere. And everyone knew he was desperately poor. Wilderleigh could hardly pay its way. A rumour had long been afloat that it would shortly be for sale. If he had not been so hard up for money it would have been different; but it was a most disgraceful thing, and Lady Pierpoint ought to be ashamed of having exposed the poor motherless girl left in her charge to his designs upon her. They wondered how much Lady Pierpoint, whose means were narrow, had been bought over for. The sums varied according to the sordidness of the different speculators, who of course named their own price.

Others who knew Mr. Loftus were puzzled and were silent. To know him at all was to believe him to be incapable of an ignoble action; yet this marriage had the appearance of being ignoble--not, perhaps, for another man, but certainly for him. His intimate friends were distressed, and greeted him with grave cordiality and affection, and hoped for an explanation. He gave none. And they remembered that never in his public or in his private life had he been known to give an explanation of his conduct, and came to the conclusion that they must trust him.

Mr. Loftus had recognised early in life that explanations explain nothing. If those who had had opportunities of knowing him well misjudged him after those opportunities, they were at liberty to do so as far as he was concerned. The weight of an enormous acquaintance oppressed him, and, though he had never been known to wound anyone by withdrawing from an unequal friendship, which he had not been the one to begin, and which was an effort to him to continue, still, he took advantage of being misunderstood to lay aside many such friendships. It was not pride which prompted this line of action on Mr. Loftus's part, though many put it down to pride, especially those who had held aloof from him at a certain doubtful moment, and in whose regard subsequent events had entirely reinstated him, and who complained that he expected to be considered infallible. It was, in reality, the natural inclination of a world-weary man of the world to lay aside, as far as he could courteously do so, the claims of the artificial side of life, its vain forms, its empty hospitalities.

He realized that for the purpose of winnowing its friendships the various events of life may be relied on to furnish the fitting occasions. Those who do not wish to offend others by leaving them need make no effort, for they will certainly be presently deserted by those who have never grasped the meaning of the character which has been the object of their transient admiration. 'If he is unequal he will presently pass away.' Mr. Loftus neither hurried the unequal, self-constituted friend, nor sought to detain him. But when he departed, shaking the dust from off his feet, the door was noiselessly closed behind him, and his knock, however loud, was not heard when he returned again.

A small batch of uneasy admirers left him on the occasion of his engagement. They said openly that they were much disappointed in him, and that he had shaken their belief in human nature.

His face softened as he thought of Sibyl. His nature, which, in its far-away youth, had been imaginative and romantic, had remained sympathetic. He gauged, as few others could have done had they been the object of it, the measure of her romantic attachment to himself. It was perhaps safer in his hands than in those of a younger man. For youth perpetrates many murders and mutilations in the name of love, as the schoolboy's love of a butterfly finds expression in a pin and a cork. But it would have cut Sibyl to the heart if she had even guessed that his tranquil mind took for granted that her adoration would not last until the stars fell from heaven and the earth fell into the sun. For 'Les esprits faibles ne sont jamais sinc?res.' That is a hard saying, but alas! and alas! that it is only the weak who believe that it is not true. The strong know better, but if they are merciful they are silent.

And the remembrance slid through his mind of Millais's picture of the dying cavalier, and the butterfly perched upon the drawn sword in the ardent sunshine. And he thought of the drawn sword of Damocles hanging over his own life, and Sibyl's love preening itself for one brief second upon it. And at the thought he smiled.

'Je suis l'amante, dit-elle. Cueillez la branche de houx.'

VICTOR HUGO.

'When all the world like some vast tidal wave withdraws.'--BUCHANAN.

Many persons prophesied that the marriage between Mr. Loftus and Sibyl would not take place, but it did.

On a burning day late in July they were married in London, for Sibyl's country place, where Mr. Loftus had hoped the wedding might have taken place, was shut up.

Lady Pierpoint did all in her power to make the wedding a quiet one, for his sake. Very few invitations were sent out, and there was no reception afterwards. But, nevertheless, though the season was at its last gasp, when the day came the unfashionable London church was crammed with that 'smart' world, half of which had condemned Mr. Loftus, while it showered invitations upon him.

Many hundreds of eyes were fixed upon his stately feeble figure as he moved slowly forward to place himself beside the young girl, whose emotion was plainly visible, and whose bouquet shook in her hand. The contrast between the two, as they stood together, was of that glaring description which appeals to the vulgar and conventional mind, on which shades of difference are lost.

Mr. Loftus went through the ceremony with equanimity. His grave face betrayed nothing except fatigue and the fact that he was suffering from a severe headache. Lady Pierpoint and Doll watched him with anxiety, while Peggy, standing close behind the bride, wept silently, she knew not why.

'Oh, mummy,' she said afterwards when it was all over, and Sibyl, anxious, preoccupied, had left Lady Pierpoint and Peggy and Molly, who had been mother and sisters to her, without a tear, without a regret, without a backward look, absorbed in the one fact that Mr. Loftus was ill--'oh, mummy, you say Sibyl loves him so much. Is that why she did not mind going away from all of us a bit? I know he had a headache, but she never used to mind when you had a headache, and when she was ill, do you remember how she always sent for you, even when I told her you were resting? And yet she used to be a little fond of us. But since he came she does not seem to care for us any more. If one loves anybody, does one forget the others?'

'Some women do,' said Lady Pierpoint, taking Peggy's red, tear-stained face in her hands and kissing it. She could not bear to own, even to Peggy, how wounded her warm maternal heart had been because Sibyl, whose delicacy had given her so many anxious hours, had shown no feeling at parting with her. Mr. Loftus had shown much more, when he had come to speak to her alone for a few minutes in her sitting-room, when the carriage was at the door.

'Some women,' said Lady Pierpoint, looking wistfully at her daughter, 'forget everyone else when they marry, and are very proud of it. They think it shows how devoted they are. A little cup is soon full, Peggy, and a shallow heart, if it takes in a new love, has no room left for the old ones. The new love is like the cuckoo in the nest--it elbows out everything else.'

'I will not be like that,' said Peggy, crushing her mother and her mother's bonnet in an impulsive embrace. 'I will have a deep, deep heart, mummy, and no one shall ever go out that once comes in--and--oh, mummy, you shall have the best bedroom in my heart always!'

'I have a very foolish girl for a daughter,' said Lady Pierpoint, somewhat comforted, smiling through her tears, 'and one who has no respect for my best bonnet.'

At Sibyl's wish she and Mr. Loftus went straight to Wilderleigh. They reached it after several hours' journey on the evening of their wedding-day. And gradually the nervous exhaustion and acute headache from which he had been suffering, and which had become almost unbearable in the train, relaxed their hold upon him. They were sitting in the cool, scented twilight on the terrace. Through the half-darkness came the low voice of the river talking to itself. Noise and light and other voices, and this dreadful day, were gone at last.

He gave a sigh of relief and smiled deprecatingly at her. They had hardly spoken since they were married. She was sitting near him, a slender figure in her pale gown, that shimmered in the feeble light. But there was light enough for her to see him smile, and she smiled back at him with her whole heart in her lovely eyes. No thought of self lurked in those clear depths, and Mr. Loftus, looking into them, and remembering how, on this her wedding day, her whole mind had been absorbed, to the entire oblivion of a bride's divided feelings, in the one fact that he was suffering, was touched, but not with elation.

The long listless hand lying palm upwards on his knee made a slight movement, and in instant response to it her hand was placed in his. His closed over it. Perhaps nothing could have endeared her more to him than the mute response that had waited on his mute appeal, and had not forestalled it.

His hand clasping hers, he drew her slightly, and, obeying its pressure, she leaned towards him.

'My Sibyl!' he said, and she involuntarily drew closer to him, for something in his voice and manner, in spite of their exceeding gentleness and tenderness, seemed to remove him from her. 'Fate has been hard upon you that I should have been ill on your wedding-day.'

'No,' she said, timidly pushing off from shore into the new world upon her little raft. 'Fate was kind, because to-day has been the first day when I could be with you and take care of you.'

'You take too much care of me.'

'I care for nothing else,' she said, her voice faltering, adoration in her eyes.

One white star peered low in the western heaven through the violet dusk.

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