Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/220

212 even yet go to America. She knew that her husband had no such thought: but she was one of a family of nine; and the remotest hint of a family separation so complete and final always clouded her countenance and her spirits. Her husband comforted her with the assurance that such an emigration became more improbable from year to year; and that there were certain circumstances in her father’s position now which made it evident that his duty would lie in England henceforth.

Margaret revived all the more rapidly for what she now saw. At that part of the horizon where the twilight and its mists seemed to have settled most darkly, a golden star rose up from the waters. It was the first spark of the moon; and as she showed her broad disk, the heaving of the sea-line against it delighted Margaret. She had never seen anything like it before.

She could have sat for hours watching the progress of the moon’s trail upon the sea,—gradual as the movement of the hand on the clock-face: but Richard and she had agreed to visit the ruins of the Priory by moonlight; and Richard held out his hand to lift her from the grass on which they were sitting.

As they turned to go, Margaret said that she now understood the mournful vehemence of her father’s regrets that his friend Eliot could not breathe one breath of Cornish air, when he was pining in the Tower.

“To think,” she exclaimed, “that he might have been living now,—might have been playing the host to us, in health and strength, if his friends could have obtained for him either a trial or release! I well remember seeing the bitter tears that were wrung from my father, when he strove for this, and when the cold answers came which told him that all his efforts were in vain.”

“He knew what such durance was,” Richard observed. “My father says that Mr. Hampden has never been the same man since that he was before the bolt of the Gate House prison was shot behind him.”

“I do not know,” said Margaret. “I cannot remember so far back. But how he could be in any way better than he is now, who would undertake to say?”

“It is only that he is of a graver countenance than was his wont; and perhaps that his strength of eye and of limb is less eminent. Ah! Margaret, we can understand now his affection for this spot, and his plan for our coming hither when we married.”

“I believe he often dreams of Port Eliot, and the Priory, and the sea,” said Margaret. “And he well may,” she observed, as she paused, and turned for another view of the bay, and the dim lines of the opposite coast, and the moonlit open sea. “That ship—you see it in the shadow yonder,—should be between us and the moon’s trail; and then it would be like the pictures. Pictures of the sea seem always to have a ship in the middle.”

“I wonder,” Richard observed, “why that vessel is so deep in the shadow. It looks dangerous to hug the land in that way: but I suppose she has a reason.”

“And we,” said Margaret, “have a reason for making better speed. My aunt will be sending searchers down to the sands, to see if we have fallen from the rocks.”

“She thinks we are at the Priory ruins, my dear. Hark! It seems as if she had sent our whole party there, to look for us.”

There were several merry voices singing about the ruins as the young couple arrived there. The travelling party had been a large one, for it included several bridesmaids,—Knightleys and Hampdens,—and the two Eliots, youths under the guardianship of Mr. Hampden; also cousin Harry Carewe, and his mother, Lady Carewe, who had had time, since she became a widow, to keep a strict and tender watch over the children of her long dead sister, Mrs. Hampden. All the party but Lady Carewe had turned out of the house for a ramble in the grounds before supper; and most of them had met at the Priory ruins, which were indeed the principal object within the park fence.

“O Margaret!” cried her young sister Alice, running up as soon as Margaret appeared in the broad moonlight of the lawn, “did you ever see such a beautiful place as this before?”

“No, dear; I never did,” her sister answered. Whereupon a booted and spurred figure emerged from the nearest arch, and made an obeisance of mock solemnity. It was John Eliot, who professed himself extremely flattered that his humble mansion was honoured with the approbation of his friends.

“It is not the mansion,” Alice unceremoniously declared. She did not care for fine rooms, and great staircases, and galleries full of pictures. It was the green slope towards the sea that was so charming, and the rocks, and the bay, and those beautiful ruins, where one might play hide-and-seek all day long.

“Is Henrietta taking her turn to hide?” Margaret asked. Henrietta, the next in age to Margaret, was in nominal charge of the younger ones; but it seemed as if she had forgotten them, and they her. Nobody could tell where she was; but everybody supposed she was moping by herself somewhere.

a voice said from behind.

“Who said that?” asked John Eliot.

“I myself, at your service,” replied Harry Carewe, coming into the light.

“O yes, we know your voice, Master Harry. What I asked was, where you found that poetry you were making free with.”

“Any body may have knowledge of that poetry who goes to my college,” replied Harry. “There are fellows there who gather up every line that John Milton writes and shows to any of his friends. I repeated that farrago of sweet melancholy to Henrietta weeks ago.”

“Ah! that is the way you won her ear,” John Eliot observed.

“Why should her ear not be won, and by me?” Harry asked, rather hotly.

“But where is she?” her brother-in-law inquired. “Come, Margaret, we will go and seek her in the ruins.”