Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/543

 . 8, 1862.] Howard took her niece for a tour on the Continent, resolving to wind it up in the south of France, there to wait the General’s arrival.

“Has Giuseppe brought the carriage an hour too soon?” said Mrs. Howard, as she heard a confused noise in the hall, and distinguished her name, “or is it—yes!—my dear, dear brother!” And General Maitland and Mrs. Howard met after a separation of thirty years.

Marston lifted the heavy striped curtain and stood against the moonlight; the opposite door opened and Marion entered; behind her a servant held a lamp high to light her young mistress. The Italian girl’s deep rich colouring, with the orange handkerchief on her glossy hair, contrasted well with the signorina’s pale muslin,—a white rose her only ornament. Another moment and the child was clasped once more in her father’s arms.

The first days of such reunion are not a happy time. The reality falls so far short of the anticipations formed, no matter how carefully those anticipations may have been curbed and guarded.

Friends feel, after long separation, that a rift has opened which letters have never plumbed and scarcely spanned. Each dreads to open an old, remembered wound, that perchance has healed long since, and scarcely left a scar; but the sudden start shows him too late that some chance-thrust has probed a newer, unsuspected anguish to the quick.

What meetings there are, too, in the cruel, unnatural, Indian life, when father and daughter, mother and son, even husband and wife, meet almost as strangers. Such meetings are worse than partings; for in most partings there is hope: in these meetings, too often, only chill disappointment.

Marston Howard derived less pleasure from the General’s return than his aunt and cousin. He began to be uneasily conscious that possession is not nine points of the law. Possession of what, though? Of Marion’s hand and heart. But he must ask confirmation in this possession of her father; and what had he to allege in support of his claim? Not her promise, for he had never sought it; and to seek it now would be ungentlemanly.

Chance relieved him from the dilemma. Mrs. Howard, in speaking of Marion one day, associated Marston’s name with hers, as she had long been used to associate them in her own mind. It was spark and tow.

“Eh? What? That young fellow got his eye on my little girl? Confound his impudence! A likely matter! Just as I’ve come home, old and broken down, to enjoy her myself, to think I’m going to give her up to a scamp of a—”

“But, my dear brother,” interposed Mrs. Howard, timidly.

“Not a bit of it; let him come and tell me himself; I’ll not keep him long for my answer; I’ll tell him what I think of him—talents, fortune, forsooth!” and the indignant General strode to the other end of the room and back, pulling his grey moustache.

’Pon my honour! I’ve heard it said that men are selfish—I deny it. I never was selfish; but those young fellows are, to want to leave me alone—stealing her little heart from her old father! And the child—has she given herself away without my consent?”

But poor Mrs. Howard, terrified at the storm she had brought down, hurried away, her handkerchief to her eyes, just as the chief offender entered, umbrella in hand, from his morning walk.

“Hallo! you, sir!” shouted the General; “a word with you, Mr. Howard, if you please,”—the irate tones of the soldier subsiding gradually before the cool dignity of the civilian.

What passed between the two gentlemen never transpired. Marston’s announcement that afternoon, that he was going on a three days’ shooting excursion into the hills, was probably one result of the interview: the General’s intimation to his sister that “Howard was a very fine young man, straightforward, and gentlemanlike,” was another.

Innocent Marion, who was recovering her playfulness as the first awe of her tall father wore off, made herself very merry about her cousin’s proposed expedition, and maliciously speculated whether his bag would suffice to provide one day’s game course at the table d’hôteltable d’hôte [sic].

Something in Marston’s manner, as he bade her good-night, made Marion pause on the stairs, and look back at him; and as he, too, looked up, she kissed her hand, and said again, in sweet accents, “Good-night—good-bye!”

The young man stood still till the last fold of her dress passed from his sight. A weight fell on his spirit: and when he re-entered the sitting-room, he felt that the first shaft of sorrow from the bow of life had penetrated the joints of his armour.

Mrs. Howard began to sigh for home. General Maitland and his daughter were to proceed to Italy—all to meet in the spring in Paris or London. The pleasure of making out routes, and looking-up maps and hand-books, kept Marion’s mind from dwelling on the parting. The General’s resolves were sudden; his decrees irreversible. On the third morning a travelling carriage, packed and loaded, stood at the door of the hotel. The six white horses kicked and shuffled, and shook the bells and tassels of their quaint head-gear, as the men in blouses crept in and out between their legs, violently but vainly endeavouring to disentangle that rope harness, that always was, and always will remain, in hopeless complication.

The General stood on the steps, in two great-coats and a plaid, superintending with authoritative gestures; the dashing Neapolitan courier, black-bearded and ear-ringed, gesticulated wildly; Myrawd, the General’s body-guard, a slim, graceful kitmutgar, in white robe and crimson turban, stood calmly observant under a palm-tree. Her father called “Marion,” quick and loud. One more embrace from her mother-aunt, and she came down the stairs and entered the carriage. The prim English maid was already in the front calêche; the courier sprang to her side; the native, complaining neither of sun nor wind, mounted behind. The maître d’hôtel, bare-headed, shut the carriage door; the postilions lashed