CHAPTER XI.
"Even beauty's shadow lies
Like darkness on the earth."
J. K. Hervey.
For weeks it seemed as if the fearful tragedy acted at their very threshold had left a gloom not to be dispelled on the whole party. Night and day the appalling death-note of the carbine rang in their ears; and one event, and one individual, was the sole topic of discourse. Still Francesca could feel horror only, not grief; and there were now hope and happiness at her heart, long strangers to its haunted circle. She had indeed been true to herself, and to her first and only love; the image of Robert Evelyn might again be the one cherished thought, the one perpetual dream of her solitude. It was like returning to her native country—returning to that dear and early vision. Again life wore the beauty of promise—the deep and sweet well of sympathy, so long dried up, flowed again. The first time that she passed along the fields and entered the dim glades of the forest, she felt what a new life had awakened within her. She no longer turned a cold and dispirited gaze on the objects around—she could enter into and rejoice in all natural loveliness. The magnificent autumn, the royal spendthrift of the year, was now wearing that proud regality so soon to depart into darkness and decay; and this it is, despite its purple and crimson, which laugh the glories of Tyre to scorn, that renders autumn the most melancholy of the seasons—the others have a further-looking hope. Winter softens into spring, spring blushes into summer, and summer ripens into autumn,—all going on into increased good. But autumn darkens into winter, and is the only quarter that ends as the destroyed and the desolate. There is in autumn no hope, that prophetic beautifier of the foregone year. But just now, the glorious conqueror of wood and field was in the first flush of its radiant hours; every object shone out transparent in the clear blue air of the bright brief noon. If the hedges had lost the may and the honeysuckle, the scarlet berries of the hip and the haw shone like carved coral—the rich orchard of the birds; the slender bindweed wound about with its pale and delicate flowers—so delicate, yet so deadly; and one or two late flowers yet put forth their wan blossoms, pining as if gentle exiles of the spring, and yet very, very lovely. The noisy cheerfulness of rural occupation was over—the grass was mown, the corn reaped, the fruit gathered; and the loudest sound in the lonely fields was when, adventuring too near some late brood, the partridge sought to deceive by a plaintive cry and seeming helplessness, crossing before your very feet, till, when drawn to a sufficient distance, suddenly the air vibrated to the flutter of her active pinions. Or sometimes, passing too near a sequestered copse, the shy tenants were startled, and the superb plumage of the pheasant dashed aside the branches, and the stately bird soared up on rattling wing.
But if autumn wear the insignia of nature's royalty, its purple and gold, in only the shaded lane or the green field with its one or two old trees, what is its more than eastern pomp in a wooded empire like the New Forest! The stalwart oaks yet retained their dark green foliage, and the yews and firs stood unchanged; all others bore the signs of that evanescent splendour, very type of all our earthly glories. The leaves now wore the colours which had been worn by the flowers—richer, perhaps, but wanting the tender bloom of the spring. Here the lime was clothed with a pale yellow, contrasted by the sycamore's glowing crimson; the elm showed a rich brown, mixed with dusky orange; the hawthorns were covered with red berries, relieved by the long wreaths of the drooping ivy. Thickets of hazel-nuts clattered as the squirrels sprang from spray to spray in search of their winter store; and the sloe was thickly hung with its dim purple fruit. The furze was dry and reddening, and only in one or two sheltered nooks did a late blossom hang from the withering heath.
There is something peculiarly mournful in the sound of the autumn wind. It has none of the fierce mirth which belongs to that of March, calling aloud, as with the voice of a trumpet, on all earth to rejoice; neither has it the mild rainy melody of summer, when the lily has given its softness and the rose its sweetness to the gentle tones. Still less has it the dreary moan, the cry as of one in pain, which is borne on a November blast; but it has a music of its own—sad, low, and plaintive, like the last echoes of a forsaken lute—a voice of weeping, but tender and subdued, like the pleasant tears shed over some woful romance of the olden time, telling some mournful chance of the young knight falling in his first battle, or of a maiden pale and perishing with ill-requited love. Onward passes that complaining wind through the quiet glades, like the angel of death mourning over the beauty it is commissioned to destroy. At every sweep down falls a shower of sapless leaves—ghosts of the spring—with a dry, sorrowful rustle; and every day the eye misses some bright colour of yesterday, or marks some bough left entirely bare and sear; and ever and anon, on some topmost branch, as the foliage is quite swept off, a deserted nest is visible—love, spring, and music, passed away together.
But the heart is its own world, and the outward influence takes its tone from that within. With how much lighter a step, with how much brighter an eye, did Francesca wander through the forest, even in the last desolation of autumn, than she did in all the bloom and buoyancy of spring! Not all the natural horror and pity, deeply and keenly felt at Francis's awful death, could disturb the sweet and secret satisfaction now garnered up in her inmost thoughts. All old belief in the good, the beautiful, and the true, revived within her. Doubt, that most oppressive atmosphere upon the moral existence, rolled away like a vapour from the future; once more she could hope and trust—she felt happy enough for forgiveness. It had not been human had she not sometimes bitterly contrasted her present state with what might have been its lot but for the cruel deception of Francis; but she was strong in her newly awakened reliance—she could look forward—the future owed her some recompense for the wretchedness of the past. The first time when she gave herself up to that aerial architecture, after the events we have just recorded, was her ensuing visit to Guido's grave. The sympathy was still entire between them, and it seemed as if her happiness were incomplete till shared with him; and beside that green and quiet mound his presence was so actual! Perhaps the stillness and seclusion aided the imagination—nothing was there to disturb or destroy the illusion. She threaded the narrow paths of the forest: in the pleasant company of her own thoughts—those paths through which Evelyn had so often wandered. Frequently before had this idea risen in her mind, but then it was sternly banished—now she dwelt upon it with eager delight. With what a feeling of joyful security did her heart go back to its old allegiance! Till now she had scarcely been aware of its strength, for she had known it but by its disappointment—now she fully admitted that early and passionate emotion with which Robert Evelyn had inspired her was indeed her destiny; both in the first developement of her affection, in the endeavour to make herself worthy of him, and in the mental strength acquired by the after-struggle with that very affection, when it seemed but as an unworthy weakness which needed to be subdued. His influence, and its consequences, had still been paramount—its good and its evil had formed her whole character.
A high and generous nature is always trustful. Francesca never for a moment feared Evelyn's constancy; that a knowledge of the deception practised would instantly bring him to her side, it never occurred to her to doubt; and in her full gratitude to fate, she relied upon their meeting again. She started—and the delicious reverie in which she had boon indulging was broken as she approached the grave of her brother. Another and a new-made one was beside it—there reposed the mortal remains of Francis Evelyn. Pale and faint, she took her usual seat on the sod which covered Guido's lowly pillow; but her eye and her thoughts fixed on its neighbour.
There is nothing more dreary than a new-made grave—so bare, so desolate, so comfortless, with the cold stones, and damp gravel scattered all carelessly round. After a little while the long grass and the sweet wild flowers sanctify the place—even as, in the human heart, gentle memories and subduing time throw a kindly soothing over the first bitter and rigid suffering. "It shall not long be left thus dreary," thought Francesca, and turned aside her face, but in vain; she could think of nothing but the murdered cavalier—for murdered he was in her eyes—whose coffin was hidden but by a little heap of recklessly flung earth. Again and again she recurred to the scene of his execution, whose horror was heightened by the familiar circumstances with which it was attended. The customary scaffold has its own awe—justice and obedience and usage surround the place; but to die a violent death, and by the hand of man, amid life's daily scenes, all associations so domestic and so ordinary, aggravates the ghastly spectacle, and makes the doom seem at once cruel and undeserved.
Francesca had never sufficiently commanded herself to pass through the farm-yard since Evelyn's death; but the sudden sight of the newly dug grave recalled every occurrence of that dreadful morning. She thought of his daring demeanour—of the fearlessness with which he met his fate—of his youth, and the promise which life held out to him. Young, high-born, handsome, rich, and brave—all these advantages were in one moment less than nothing. She fruitlessly struggled with the recollection that his evil had been her good—that but for the serious thoughts which throng before as the heralds of death, he might never have avowed the deception which he had practised—and never, on this side the grave, would she and Robert Evelyn have known how dearly and truly each loved the other. But this idea brought with it a chill and vague terror. Was happiness, then, surrounded, by loss and sacrifice?—was destiny to be propitiated but by a human victim? An unfathomable dread seemed to steal gradually over her spirits—only mournful images arose within her mind. Henriette, Guido, perishing in their good and beautiful youth!—Francis Evelyn cut off with—she dared not think how many unrepented faults! What was there in her that her fate should be better than theirs? In vain she strove to shake off her depression—she felt but the more subdued. The large tears fell like dew on the slender stalks of the wild flowers below—alas! were they omens?