Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/544

 536 whips; and, kicking, screaming, rattling, jolting, the six horses and lumbering vehicle dashed off.

Not till they had left the glaring level road, and commenced a long ascent, did Marion raise her veil and speak. Then face and voice were both in order. Her first words were very consolatory to her father:

“How sorry poor Marston will be to-night to find us gone!”

General Maitland then told her that Giuseppe had returned late the night before, with a note. Mr. Howard had received a telegram from his clerk, summoning him in all haste to town: he expressed many regrets at being obliged to leave his aunt to Giuseppe’s escort.

Marion enjoyed her journey. She thought it very pleasant, travelling in such ease, with her father lavishing on her every care and attention. Past beautiful Monaco, lovely Mentone; along the giddy Cornice, with the white spray dancing below—to lordly Genoa; and over the blue Mediterranean, through squalid Civita Vecchia, to Imperial Rome. Letters passed regularly between the old capital of the world and the new. Marion did not write to Marston; she never had written to him, and it did not occur to her to do so now. She concluded that he would see her letters to her aunt, in which there was generally some special message for him, to which she received a message in reply.

Rome was an unfathomable enjoyment to Marion. Well read in its history, with unwearying pleasure she explored its ruins, tracing the old classic landmarks. There, patriots sacrificed self-interest, or life: here, mighty orators swept the many-stringed heart of the multitude with master hand. There, heroes bled: here, martyrs suffered in a nobler cause, and died triumphant over a mightier enemy, even death himself. A holier, deeper interest yet, filled her heart as she threaded the dark labyrinths consecrated by the memory of the saintly dead; pausing before the rudely sculptured cross, and martyr’s palm, or sacrificial lamb, and winged sceptre;—emblems of suffering and victory, death and resurrection.

The tastes also which Marston had awakened, ripened rapidly in the atmosphere of gallery and studio, and she drank deep draughts of exquisite delight from the rich, clear, harmonies pealing through vaulted aisle and pillared nave.

Nor was her father an uncongenial companion.

General Maitland was a man of education and intelligence: he remembered well the lessons of his youth. After long years he had brought back to Europe something of that boyish eager interest in things new and old that one sometimes sees in elderly men whose lives, though outwardly stirring, and wearing to the bodily frame, have not been drained by constant anxiety or sorrow.

In his youth General Maitland had made the grand tour; which, by the way, meant a great deal more then than now. He had associated with men whose names live in history; he had seen the whirlpool of Europe in which dynasties went down; and even dipped his oar in the outer circle of the seething waters. Truth to tell, he had worn his recollections of these days and things somewhat threadbare, and did not always give to the separate points their relative proportions. To some he gave an undue prominence (chiefly with the meritorious design of proving the superiority of those times to these; as an artist exaggerates a part to give force to the whole); while others that militated strongly against his views were gradually subdued and forgotten.

The veteran’s preface: “When I was taken prisoner in 17—,” had come at last to be the signal for rising from table.

It must be confessed that his ideas on many subjects did not march with the times. He depreciated modern literature, which he did not read; he was, therefore, totally unprepared for, and horribly scandalised by theories and principles which he hotly contested; then found, to his dismay, were universally recognised, and accepted as dogmas. Perhaps, this sojourn on the Continent, where, though the newest theories are sometimes hatched, they obtain less widely, and are discussed less freely—was a good preparation for England, where the sudden shock to his prejudices might have driven him desperate; or, back to Bengal by the next mail! It served as a sort of ascending temperature preparatory to the final fusion.

Sometimes—not often, but at gradually decreasing intervals—the father’s mind and the daughter’s came into collision. The younger set up a signal on the scene of the disaster, to exercise caution in future: she did not forsake her own line, and carry on the traffic by another’s.

Marion Maitland’s mind was progressive, keen, and of good strong fibre. She was essentially a woman of to-day. A woman; not a girl: for her powers of mind were strengthening daily: she grew fast. There is no better finishing-school than travelling.

The heart has to go through its preparatory schooling, its college course and final examination, as well as the intellect. It needs a longer education—perfection is a yet more distant goal—it awaits the award of a higher tribunal. The heart is bound to a longer, harder apprenticeship than its younger brother the head. Its books are men; its tutors many: all guided and directed by its Master, Judge, and Maker; who, alone holding the key to its wondrous mechanism, alone chooses and appoints His agents in the work. Numberless are His instruments: but on all hearts alike He, in His sovereign wisdom, inflicts, sooner or later, the “sharp surgery of pain.”

Marion had never known sorrow. Tenderly guarded, solicitously cared for, she had grown up in tranquil sunshine. To the coercion of stronger wills she had indeed been subjected; but in her case this had been salutary, as the stake and brambles to a sapling.

Her affections had been restricted to a narrow circle: they were the more intense. A great heart can hold a great deal: love is diffusive. But a child’s heart is not great: it is warm and soft. Its love deepens and refines, if restrained