A Rent In A Cloud. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ which the Italians designated the English family at the villa), it’s far better fun than hunting out rocky bits, or ruined fragments of masonry. Come, and I’ll promise you something prettier to look at than all your feathery ferns or drooping foxgloves.”

      Loyd tried to excuse himself. He was always shy and timid with strangers. His bashfulness repelled intimacy and so he frankly owned that he would only be a bar to his friend’s happiness, and throw a cloud over this pleasant intercourse.

      “How do you know but I’d like that?” said Calvert with a mocking laugh. “How do you know but I want the very force of a contrast to bring my own merits more conspicuously forward?”

      “And make them declare when we went away, that it is inconceivable why Mr. Calvert should have made a companion of that tiresome Mr. Loyd – so low-spirited and so dreary, and so uninteresting in every way?”

      “Just so! And that the whole thing has but one explanation – in Calvert’s kindness and generosity; who, seeing the helplessness of this poor depressed creature, has actually sacrificed himself to vivify and cheer him. As we hear of the healthy people suffering themselves to be bled that they might impart their vigorous heart’s blood to a poor wretch in the cholera.”

      “But I’m not blue yet,” said Loyd laughing. “I almost think I could get on with my own resources.”

      “Of course you might, in the fashion you do at present; but that is not life – or at least it is only the life of a vegetable. Mere existence and growth are not enough for a man who has hopes to fulfil, and passions to exercise, and desires to expand into accomplishments, not to speak of the influence that everyone likes to wield over his fellows. But, come along, jump into the boat, and see these girls! I want you; for there is one of them I scarcely understand as yet, and as I am always taken up with her sick sister, I’ve had no time to learn more about her.”

      “Well,” said Loyd, “not to offer opposition to the notion of the tie that binds us, I consent.” And sending back to the cottage all the details of his pursuit, he accompanied Calvert to the lake.

      “The invalid girl I shall leave to your attention, Loyd,” said the other, as he pulled across the water. “I like her the best; but I am in no fear of rivalry in that quarter, and I want to see what sort of stuff the other is made of. So, you understand, you are to devote yourself especially to Florence, taking care, when opportunity serves, to say all imaginable fine things about me – my talents, my energy, my good spirits, and so forth. I’m serious, old fellow, for I will own to you I mean to marry one of them, though which, I have not yet decided on.”

      Loyd laughed heartily – far more heartily than in his quiet habit was his wont – and said, “Since when has this bright idea occurred to you?”

      “I’ll tell you,” said the other gravely. “I have for years had a sort of hankering kind of half attachment to a cousin of mine. We used to quarrel, and make up, and quarrel again; but somehow, just as careless spendthrifts forget to destroy the old bill when they give a renewal, and at last find a swingeing sum hanging over them they had never dreamed of, Sophy and I never entirely cancelled our old scores, but kept them back to be demanded at some future time. And the end has been, a regular rupture between us, and she is going to be married at the end of this month, and, not to be outdone on the score of indifference, I should like to announce my own happiness, since that’s the word for it, first.”

      “But have you means to marry?”

      “Not a shilling.”

      “Nor prospects?”

      “None.”

      “Then I don’t understand – ”

      “Of course you don’t understand. Nor could I make you understand how fellows like myself play the game of life. But let me try by an illustration to enlighten you. When there’s no wind on a boat, and her sails flap lazily against the mast, she can have no guidance, for there is no steerage-way on her. She may drift with a current, or rot in a calm, or wait to be crushed by some heavier craft surging against her. Any wind – a squall, a hurricane – would be better than that. Such is my case. Marriage without means is a hurricane; but I’d rather face a hurricane than be water-logged between two winds.”

      “But the girl you marry – ”

      “The girl I marry – or rather the girl who marries me– will soon learn that she’s on board a privateer, and that on the wide ocean called life there’s plenty of booty to be had, for a little dash and a little danger to grasp it.”

      “And is it to a condition like this you’d bring the girl you love, Calvert?”

      “Not if I had five thousand a year. If I owned that, or even four, I’d be as decorous as yourself; and I’d send my sons to Rugby, and act as poor-law guardian, and give my twenty pounds to the county hospital, and be a model Englishman, to your heart’s content. But I haven’t five thousand a year, no, nor five hundred a year; and as for the poor-house and the hospital, I’m far more likely to claim the benefit than aid the funds. Don’t you see, my wise-headed friend, that the whole is a question of money? Morality is just now one of the very dearest things going, and even the rich cannot always afford it. As for me, a poor sub in an Indian regiment, I no more affect it than I presume to keep a yacht, or stand for a county.”

      “But what right have you to reduce another to such straits as these? Why bring a young girl into such a conflict?”

      “If ever you read Louis Blanc, my good fellow, you’d have seen that the right of all rights is that of ‘associated labour.’ But come, let us not grow too deep in the theme, or we shall have very serious faces to meet out friends with, and yonder, where you see the drooping ash trees, is the villa. Brush yourself up, therefore, for the coming interview; think of your bits of Shelley and Tennyson, and who knows but you’ll acquit yourself with honour to your introducer.”

      “Let my introducer not be too confident,” said Loyd, smiling; “but here come the ladies.”

      As he spoke, two girls drew nigh the landing-place, one leaning on the arm of the other, and in her attitude showing how dependent she was for support.

      “My bashful friend, ladies!” said Calvert, presenting Loyd. And with this they landed.

      CHAPTER VII. DISSENSION

      THE knowledge Calvert now possessed of the humble relations which had subsisted between Miss Grainger and his uncle’s family, had rendered him more confident in his manner, and given him even a sort of air of protection towards them. Certain it is, each day made him less and less a favourite at the villa, while Loyd, on the other hand, grew in esteem and liking with everyone of them. A preference which, with whatever tact shrouded, showed itself in various shapes.

      “I perceive,” said Calvert one morning, as they sat at breakfast together, “my application for an extension of leave is rejected. I am ordered to hold myself in readiness to sail with drafts for some regiments in Upper India!” he paused for a few seconds, and then continued. “I’d like anyone to tell me what great difference there is in real condition between an Indian officer and a transported felon. In point of daily drudgery there is little, and as for climate the felon has the best of it.”

      “I think you take too dreary a view of your fortune. It is not the sort of career I would choose, nor would it suit me, but if my lot had fallen that way, I suspect I’d not have found it so unendurable.”

      “No. It would not suit you. There’s no scope in a soldier’s life for those СКАЧАТЬ