Novelist. Through Deep Waters, By INALEON CASSILIS,

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2492, 30 June 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

Novelist. Through Deep Waters, By INALEON CASSILIS,

Author of " lima Raphael, Actrcss," " The Young Widower," "M. Caddie's Carpet Bay," &c,, &c.

CHAPTER Xll.—Costixued. It was, perhaps, well for Agnes that the terrible strain upon her whole system which had racked every nerve and dragged every faculty of mind and heart to its highest tension, induced, though but for a few hours, the deep sleep of that utter fatigue •which is almost prostration; else mind or body, or both, must have yielded to the pressure they were called upon to bear. Sleep gave rest, and rest gave strength, strength to face the knowledge that made that task yet harder, from the wild dread that the truth miqht be hurled, at her; of having to meet him, the one she loved. She did not think definitely ; trouble more imminent shut out all comparatively remote contingencies, and strange as it might seem, the knowledge of a love without hope strengthened that sense of protection which now she could analyse. She woke with the early morning sunlight streaming full upon her, and with the return to consciousness came back the thick cloud that a few hours' sleep had banished, and the sharp anguish of the love which she had received so innocently, knowing not what it was till it was too late, forced from lior the first tears she had shed aince all this had come upon her. She hid her face in the cushions of the couch on which, beater, down with brain weariness, she had fallen Jisleep, and wept passionately, such tears of shame and hopeless dreadful grief, as seemed to actually, take from us some part of our being and leave us, for a time at least, too exhausted for either thought or feel-

:ing. •Yet when thought could resume its place again, it was, at least as regarded Cola cle Cambaceres, more calm and peaceful. Suoh fearful storms sweeping over the mental system leare a certain numbness, and if that numbness be not peace, the ear, no longer deafened by the war of elements, can hear tho footsteps of peace coming softly through the "mist shadows." So complex is this wonderful human nature, that tho love which made Agnes

weep so passionately, yet gave her in these calmer moments that feeling of rest which made her cling to it tenaciously as to something tangible, that could help her, that at least, would, must, stand between her and tho thought of marriage. Some vague instinct, rather than knowledge of the truth, had added tenfold to the horror with which she had shrunk from the idea of looking upon Grant-Faulkner as a suitor, and in the fierce conflict which must yet come in the midst of the unspeakable dread, which was as it was intregal in that conflict, the love that was indeed "a part of sight." filled her mental vision, assisting, not obscuring, the yet higher claims 'of a Christian's obedience.

Another morning ! Agnes turned shivering from the sunlight and hid her face once more ] but when Lisetta came in she looked up and tried to smile. Lisetta paused and looked anxiously on the deathly pale features, and noted with a heavy sigh the unnatural glitter of the large hazel eyes. " Signorina,"said she with the respectful familiarity permitted to servants in Italy, "you will be ill— seriously ill—this cannot last."

"11l !" repeated the girl, rising, while a sudden flush rose for a moment to her face; but the tone was rather of hope than fear, and she added slowly, "Well it might be better."

The warm hearted Italian burst into tears and then Agnes put her arms round the faithful girl and soothed her gently.

" You must not weep, Lisetta," she said sorrowfully, "pray forme instead. I was wrong—it is wrong, I know to wish for illness. Perhaps this trouble will pass soon."

" Holy Madonna grant it!" said Lisetta, '• and oh ! Signorina—you will not, I know you will not —"

" Never, never," interrupted Agnes hastily, " Lisetta, no power shall make me do that; have no fear ; it is impossible.''

Lisetta kissed her young mistress's hand fervently.

" I knew it, Signorina—l knew you would not do it. Rut, Hignorina, he will be here to day, will he not?"

"Yes, Lisetta," she added firmly, " and when he comes I must see him. Hush! I want to speak to him ; where is mad re ?"

"She would not be up so early, Signorina.; but she did not seem quite well, Ursula told me just now."

Agnes said no more, and Lisetta, who understood without havingever read it, the precept of Solomon. " There is a time to speak and a time to he silent," did not break the silence which it pleased her young mistress to maintain.

Florence did not quit her room during the morning, and Agnes simply asked Ursula how her mother was, and passed on to the library. She shrank from meeting Lady de Clifford, and in the library she could be alone.

" I will see no one," sho said to Lisetta, "but Sir Selwyn GrantFaulkner ; take care if he comes that he is not denied."

She listened nervously as she sat in the room where she had passed so many hours, for the dreaded knock ; she started inwardly at every sound, at every footstep in the street, and when at length—not till the afternoon—the knock she had watched for so long and with such terror, came, her heart sank suddenly with that sickening feeling of apprehension that we have most of us at some time known, though few, perhaps, if any, with such bitter cause. She clasped for a moment instinctively, the cross she wore round her neck, and waited with lips set resolutely tho summons to Grant-Faulkner's presence. It was Lisetta who came in and told her that Sir Selwyn was waiting in the drawing-room to see her ; and Agnes rose, and not allowing herself time to pause and consider, went straight to the drawing-room, opened the door, and entered.

Grant-Faulkner was standing near the centre table, and he looked up as the door closed behind Agnes de Clifford. He could not but note the changfi in her; through all that remained there was yet a striking alteration ; the troubled brow, the " hunted " look in the dark eyes, a strange rigidity about the features especially in the lines of the mouth, as though she were stealing herself to go resolutely through some ordeal, from which a backward step weiv. fatal, a forward step beset with peril. He actually looked at her for full a minute before, he moved or spoke ; not touched, but surprised, and even hopeful; but she did not meet that look, she darod not, she knew that the shrinking horror which crept like a stream of ice through every nerve, every fibre of her frame must show itself in her eyes if she faced him now, till she had got more used to his presence ; and Grant-Faulkner misread the drooping eye and halting step. He spoke first, advancing and holding out his hand. " Agnes," he said, " wo parted last time in anger; do we meet this time in peace ?" But she did not give him her hand—■ " I cannot deceive you," she said in a low voice, and still without looking up, "I cannot give you hope—l can only ask mercy." " Mercy," repeated GrantFaulkner,'' I have not refused it, Agnes ; I grant it conditionally—and that condition you can if you will, fulfil. Are the terms so very

hard 1 I will love and cherish you, no wish shall be left ungratified, no hope disappointed ; could you not learn in time to love me ?"

She could have crushed him where ho stood ; the ficrco strength of her horror and contempt startled herself ; yet she controlled all outward sign, and answered still calmly—

"Impossible ! I cannot—l could not. Grant-Faulkner, must I appeal in vain to your honour, to your mercy." She paused, and added with a terrible effort—" to your pity ?"

"You ask all this," he. said with

a cruel sneer, " of a dishonoured

gentleman and a godless scoffer 1 You come to a poisoned fountain to ask the sweet waters of mercy and

pity, though you have stooped to ask it at last."

"Can you taunt me so V' she said falling on her knees before him, " and ask mo to love you ? can you not. even pity me because for my mother I ask mercy—-not for myself? If there is one memory of your own childhood have pity on mine ; if there is one thought of the mother who bore you, for her sake spare a mother from the sacrifice of her only child. lam kneeling to you, Grant-Faulkner ; cannot even this deep humiliation appeal to you —will nothing—oh, God ! will nothing move you ?" Was there one gleam of mercy in the face with which he looked down on the slender form, racked with such agony as would leave its mark on her whole after life —could her defenceless youth, her grief, her wondrous beauty, appeal to him in vain ? Nay, if even all this failed, would not her last abjuration prevail 1 Gould he see, unmoved, the woman he claimed as his wife, stooping in all her pride of blood and of womanhood to kneel to him and ask mercy where she had lately given haughty defiance and haughty contempt? Grant-Faulkner remembered—as men like him do remember —the defiancp, and he could reject the prayer ; and more than this, one thought would have cased him in armour of proof—the thought to which he would not give utterance but which almost quivered on his lips as ho said sternly—• "The time of mercy is past. Agnes, I told Florence do Clifford that if you knelt to mo and asked mercy I would not give it. I cannot go back from ray word. Your mother's fate is in your hands. You know it already from her own lips; you can choose. I will yet g'ive you time; but nothing - more." Ho folded his arms and paused, waiting for hor answer. But Agnes made none; a convulsive shudder passed over her frame, but she pleaded no more ; she roso slowly and stood motionless beforo him, she had not hoped to win—she had failed—and she had expocted failure—but she would not even now deceive, she would not ask for the time that could only bring one answer. Sir Selwyn spoke— " Time I have offered and time I will give. Time to consider whether you will resolve to yield some tittle of your own happiness to save your mother, to think moro calmly, to ask yourself whether your heart more than your conscience is not standing between you and the sacrifice I ask of you."

" Time," sho said, clasping hor

hands to hor breast, "to consider whether I will plunge headlong

nto guilt, that must bring its

punishment hero and hereafter. Never. For tho last time I give my answer. I will not be your

wife. Do your worst. You may destroy peace, happiness, honour, reputation, but the soul is beyond.'' ►She turned to the door as she spoke, but his grasp 011 her wrist

dotained her. " So be it," lie said, through his sot teeth, " a felon's fato for Florence do Clifford and for hor child

roodom to marry a base born man —nay, more ; if a Clifford can stoop o ask the pity of a man sho des-

pises and abhors, who can stoop to marry a man who, despite liis fame, is perhaps, after all, tho son of a slave."

If there had boon one grain lees of poison in the savage taunt, it

might liavo brought the conscious colour to lior faoo ; but it Eailed ovon to ai'ousa indignation, the lofty nature could not be stabbed by iso base a weapon.

"A man," she said, fixing her eyes on Grant-Faulkner with such perfect contempt in every look and tone as made liini wince, " in whom honour is a part of life, whoso spotless name needs 110 dofenco from me, and cannot bo injured by the breath of such as you. Ho lias at least redeemed the sin that was not his own, he has not dragged through the miro the noble name bequeathed to him as a sacred trust. T would rather bo the wife of Cola-Maria than the mother of Grant-Faulkner." Mechanically that man's fingers relaxed their clasp, iiistiuctivel}' he drew back, and a second time permitted her to quit his presence without by word or act endeavouring to detain her, baltled at tho last by the iiaturo which he could not understand, whose every pulsation of conscious lifo boat in a world to which ho was and over must bo a stranger. Wider than the vast tracts of ocean and of land which divide polo from pole are tho infinite wastes of rolling sea and trackless deserts that lie between the noble nature and the baso, tho soul that mounts upwards and tho soul that ever bends downwards grovelling on tho earth and hugging its slavery Vaguoly Grant-Faulkuor

felt this great truth which pervades tho loftier phase of that composite existence which we call human nature, and he know that though it must over sever his life from the life of Agnes de Clifford, it had no power to separate life from that of a man who lived in her world —-not in Grant-Faulkner's. A barrier to the ono, a link to the other ; a discord to the one was a harmony to the other ; and what power of man can turn load into gold, or endow the animal with the intelligence that rules and controls its lower nature 1

But the sleuth-hound can track, and the wa?p can sting the man, and so can the baser creature conquer in its turn. Revenge was left yet—• and swift and unerring the arrow so long hid in its quiver should fly to its mark. .Revenge (the weapon after all of the lower nature), the passion we share with the brutes lias, at any rate, the power to wound, perchance to crush the heart that despises it.

CHAPTER XIV. Florence de Clifford stood beEoro Grant-Faulkner. " Hush!" she said, laying her trembling' hand on his arm, "no words are needed ; I know all, I passed her now in the ante-room. One word was enough, but I have not given up all hope. Do you think that my brain has been idle, that I have not anticipated this and been prepared for it ? There is one more chance —to take Agnes away from London at once—to return to Italy; there away from all help, from all influence which can assist her in her present opposition, she may in time yield. Horn ember how young she is. She can hardly long maintain her present position, the dropping of water will wear away a stone. I have paved the way for such a step, during the last few days she has hardly seen anyone, I have refused all invitations 011 the plea of ill-health. Italy is her native climate, what more likely than this country should not agree with her? I will say that a hurried departure from England is necessary; I will write to Cambaceres (she ought to go to him once more to-morrow), and will explain to him that she cannot come—that we leave for Italy in a few days. What say you 1"

"As you will," he answered, " try this last resource, and if that fail—What day do you leave ?"

" To-day is Wednesday—on Monday at latest. No time must bo lost. I will speak to her tomorrow."

Grant-Faulkner said no more, but took up his hat and went out; and Florence sat down and wrote a hasty note to Cainbaceres, telling him that her daughter's ill-health gave cause for serious alarm, and the physician whom she had consulted said that Miss de Clifford rerequired her native air and must return to Italy as quick as possible. Could M. de Cambaceres finish the picture without this sitting? This was all she said. She did not speak of communicating again with the painter, leaving him in the dark as to what was to be done with the painting when it was finished, whether or no it was to b<? sent for exhibition, and her letter seemed to imply that the departure for Italy would be within two or three days. But in fact Florence was too agitated to think of details, and despatched the hurriedly written epistle without much consideration, beyond the knowledge that it would prevent the morrow's sitting. If the painter were to call she would see him herself, and knowing what he was, she fully trusted that if he did in truth love Agnes, he would lie careful not to meet her, and would, therefore, bo far more likely to write than to come in persou to settle any points that wen; left unmeutioned.

To Agues si 10 said nothing that, night, but the next morning she sent for her to her dressing-room. Agnes obeyed the summons at once, and found Lady do Clifford sitting alone.

"Agnes," she said briefly, as the girl paused. " I know now your final answer. I will not reproach you—l will not say more, I will only say this, on Monday we will leave for Italy. I cannot stop here and face the only fate that lies before me, if indeed," she added, pressing her hands tightly together, " if I can face it at all, and for you at least it would bo better, in a few weeks—it may bo less—my name will be disgraced, if," she added, with a sudden tierce gleam in her black eyes, "I live to know it—-to bear it—sooner shall these hands take this wretched life. Why look at me with such a face of horror? shall I be the first who lias sought, the last who will seek, escape from disgrace in death 1 Will you bo content to remain here, where you will have been courted, feted, admired, loved—remain to hear your mother's name and your own branded, to see her dragged as a criminal before the gaping crowd, Remain if you will—if you can—you may yet have to stand alone before the world which I dare not meet."

" No, 110, not that," said Agnes dizzily. " -Mother, forgive me—l cannot—l must do right ; you will not take your life—you cannot face God—not now."

Florence gazed blankly at her unhappy child. Was her reason staggering? for she spoke as if hardly knowing what she said. Struck by a new terror, Lady cle

Clifford controlled herself to speak

more collectedly. "Agnes," she said, "forget ray last words, I uttered them in an excitement which in your calmer moments you will understand and forgive ; go now and lie down, take rest; I cannot hear or speak more. I have borne enough already. Leave me—henceforth childless, I can better endure to be alone, than to see you, to whom I give birth, lift up your hand against me." Agnes did not attempt to reply, even to the reproach whose cruel injustice was its weakness. She turned and went out of her mother's presence like one in a dream ; but not to seek rest, that seemed to her now impossible—'Unless it were the rest for which she hoped, but dared not pray, the rest which might save her mother. Beyond this, one instinct, rather than thought, filled her ; to go to Pere Michel—to see him—to ask his help, in the wild hope that he might arrest the footsteps of the soul that seemed rushing so recklessly to judgment. But that step she knew her mother would, if possible, prevent, and her Italian siibtility did not desert her even now. She could wait till night— then—till then ! She paced up and down her boudoir, or sat down for a few moments, only to spring up again, and though from time to time she felt ill and dizzy, she could not rest, for there seemed a fire within her, and darkness around her, and once the wish that she could not put from her form a prayer : "Oh ! God, is it sin to pray for death ? Oh ! mercy, grant that help—take my life and save hers !" Could that prayer, wrung from such agony, be indeed counted sin 1 * * *

"Signor," said Ansolmo, as he opened the door to the Spanish painter, " there is a letter which came for you an hour ago—it is in the library." "The only one, amico?" "Oh ! no, Signor, but Lady do Clifford's servant brought it." "Grazie." The painter said no more, but went up to the library. From Lady do Clifford ! Was it to postpone the sitting? Vv as Agues ill 1 Strange if she were not; he set his teeth hard at the thought— the thought that she was suffering, and he had no power to speak one word of comfort; nay, that oven she lay at the gates of death, lie might not see her for the last time— he could not even know, from day to day, save through strangers, whether life or death were gaining the battle. On the library table lay Lady de Clifford's letter. What was hidden beneath this hurried departure to Italy 1 That Agues was really ill the painter did not doubt, why should he ? But not for this only, if for this at alt, his quick intelligence at once told him, was Florence de Clifford taking her child away from all influences that might support her in her opposition to a marriage with Grant-Faulkner. That Sir Selwyn had some power over Lady do C'iifford, which he was now unscrupulously exerting was plain, and of the nature of that power a man of the world could, horrible as the idea might be, form but one conjecture. And this was to be Agnes de Clifford's fate, and the man who loved her could not lift a hand to save her! No marvel that the West Indian stood like one paralysed. Let there be but a gleam of hope, let there be but the faintest indication of a possible course of action, and the active mind will speedily seize it; but utter hopeless ness, the impossibility of taking one single step to avert impending evil, or stirring a linger, of speaking a word, and that where the sacrifice of life, of all save eternity, would be made joyfully, seems to literally suspend, for a time at least, the functions of existence. For the sake of Agnes de Clifford the (Spanish painter would have willingly, nay, more than willingly, shed his blood drop by drop, though the shedding of each drop should be fierce torture. His was the love which filled the heart of the unhappy Giaour — She was a form ftf life and licrht, Which soon became a part of sight, And rose where o'er I turned my eya The morning star of memory. It was this, and it was much more ; for the love of the Giaour was, after all, the love of a heathen, who makes an apotheosis of earthly affection: "His hope on high, his all below." To the high-souled Spaniard religion was a reality, and his love was not above, nor independent of that religion, but in it, of it, through it, lighted by its light, strengthened by its strength. No element of jealousy—the curse of Southern love — tainted its pure stream. Sublime in its power of self-sacrifice, it could yield where honour claimed the first obedience, the right to win ; nay, if it should become sin, the lofty nature which sank from the very thought of sin would fight with it hand to hand till it conquered in the end, though the conflict might be long and bitter.

But crushed—superseded, that love could never be ; it might sleep, it could not die; it had lived, and must live until the heart that it blessed or broke ceased to beat, and as it had been the first, so it must be the last— Earth holds no other like to thee, Or if it doth, in vain for me.

Such love in men is rare ; with few mon is love tit once l-lio bread and the poetry of the inner life; but when it exists, should its priceless worth be sacrificed for a pride that cannot live beyond the earth ? Is

there not in the ideal manhood.

which no wear and tear of lower passions have robbed of its crystal purity, that which should, which must, break down the barriers of birth ; which by its presence rebukes and defies the world that would bury the diamond under common pebbles, and refuses to'allow even fame to plead the cause of a name, " sans peur et sans reproche ?"

Was Cola de Oanibaceres a stranger to such thoughts? Did they not crowd upon him thick and fast now 1 Were they not in truth the promptings of a noble and wronged nature ? But he put them from him as temptations. All Elsinger's arguments came back to him with tenfold force, from his own heart—as he believed alone— but in reality his own clear intellect too, went half way to meet them ; and because they staggered him, and ho could not ns readily find an answer to them as of yore, he turned from them and would not listen, and tried to face steadily the stern harsh fact, that the love which would give all could give nothing, that the heart which would shelter from the slightest sorrow, must see the deep waters break in, and only bleed in silence. Though part of his life were torn np by the roots, he must still suffer without rebellion —he must still endure.

Had he seen Agnes de Clifford for the last time 1 ? Would this illness end ? no, he could not say the word to himself; and yet that had been preferable to the alternative. Gould he think of her as the; wife of Grant-Faulkner; forced, by the overwhelming fear of the disgrace that might fall on her mother's name, with a mind unhinged, perchancc, by the throes through which it had passed, into a marriage hateful alike to heart and soul? Was there no right in love, even though unrequited,to stand between its object and such a fate as this ? He had almost turned to the door, spurred by the wild impulse to which the ready answer to the question gave birth ; but the very movement checked that impulse, and he paused.

This was the madness of a moment, and must pass. He must try and think that he had ssen her for the last time ; he must be content to claim the barren right to make a mere matter of business, which a letter could have explained, the excuse for learning at least something of her for standing once more, if not in her presence, where her presence had been, where it might be again,

Yet all through the night he could not grasp the, thought that she was, that she ought to be, dead to him. A hundred times he battled with it, but could not vanquish it; the noble heart clung with the strength of death to the passionate longing that would not be crushed, but only tightened its embrace with every effort to trample on it, only to see her once more ! Danger there was in that longing; he knew it well, and therefore did he struggle against it, but lie was as a child in the hands of a giant. "Alas !" says a great writer, "ifin a strong nature the will is of iron, so are the passions it would control of fire."

The morning found Cola de Cambaceres still resolved to shun the danger, but to claim that one right which seemed a mockery of a grief that might not hope, the right to learn whether the woman he loved were even now hovering between life and death. (To be continued.)