CHAPTER 5.

 

            NOEL was received by his friend with the greatest cordiality. Independently of the associations and pursuits which they had common, it was no small luxury to Maynard to escape from his monotonous intercourse with the mining officials to the conversation of a friend and equal.

 

            The escort, recruited, paid, and dismissed, had taken its departure, and the friends passed the rest of the day in almost unintermitting conversation. At first they reclined in the broad Verandah by which the house was surrounded on three sides, and hence the view in every direction was magnificent. The rear

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was devoted to the stables and corral. Maynard had selected for his private residence the most picturesque, and almost the most inaccessible, spot in the whole neighbourhood. In his eagerness to surround his bride with all attainable beauty, he had fixed their abode in an open spot on the summit of the mountain, on the lower portion of which the works were situated. It was evident that such site must be liable to inconvenience, especially on the score of the absence of any water supply. But Maynard was assured by his architect that such an objection did not merit consideration in a country where no one dreamt of walking or driving, and everything was packed on mules.

 

            The view was indeed a fine one, consisting of mountains and gorges alternating in endless succession, though with base and sterile sides; the great silver-producing ranges of Guanaxuato being devoid of all vegetation, save only in the spot where Maynard’s lot had fallen. As they looked towards the north-east, the smoke of the works could be discerned far below, rising from among the pines. And now and then the din of the machinery and cries of the muléros reached the ears of the sitters in the verandah.

 

            Sunset lit up the whole scene with a softness of tone that mitigated the desolateness of its grandeur; and then the party abandoned a position which at that elevation becomes disagreeably and dangerously chilly in the evening, and spent the hours remaining until bedtime within doors.

 

            Margaret and Edmund said little to each other, yet each felt as if there was a perfect understanding between them. Her children, to Maynard’s surprise, took to the stranger at once, and played with him as readily as with their mother. They were literally little saints in the divine transparent innocence their appearance, having all their mother’s refined sweetness and spirituality, and even, in some slight degree, her subdued and thoughtful air.

 

            The conversation that followed their evening meal and the removal of the children, attracted Margaret’s attention and excited her interest to an extent which puzzled Noel. It turned upon his visit by the way to the capital, and the opinion he had been led to form about the impending intervention and its probable consequences. He fancied that Maynard evinced an anxiety on the matter for reasons even more closely personal than any affecting his mining enterprise. It also struck him

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as curious that the husband and wife rarely addressed each other, but directed their remarks to him. It seemed to him as if some foregone conclusion had been come to by Maynard, which Margaret deprecated, but owned her inability to withstand, and to counteract which she trusted to circumstances.

 

            One of the questions thus mooted was that of the safety of foreigners in the event of a hostile invasion by the European powers; for this was clearly the point to which public affairs were tending. It was generally believed that a joint expedition was even now approaching the shores of Mexico. And if the government, such as it was, determined to concentrate all its forces against the enemy, (for as such the Mexicans persisted in regarding the expected arrivals,) not only would it be impossible to transmit treasure to the coast for shipment, but who was to guarantee security to the dwellers on the lonely mountains?

 

            It was late in the evening when Maynard left the room to receive in his office, from one of his administradors, the day’s report of work done. His absence enabled Noel and Margaret to exchange the first free words since their meeting on the mountain path. Curiously enough, although each had longed to talk to the other, yet, when the opportunity came, neither seemed ready to take advantage of it. Margaret turned over some work that she held in her hand, and Noel took up a book from the table.

 

            ‘Pray,’ said he, ‘at length, what did you mean to-day by saying that you had long expected me?’

 

            Margaret felt a relief at his thus breaking the silence, and also at his not addressing her with the formal ‘Mrs. Maynard,’ though she had no idea that she derived satisfaction from that slight circumstance. Neither had she any idea what reply to make to the question. She would have expressed astonishment at his recollection of her remark, but that every minute circumstance of their meeting was deeply engraved upon her own memory. So she said, forcing a slight smile, –

 

            ‘I cannot tell. Ask me something else.’

 

            ‘When I remember,’ he said, ‘how intimately connected our respective friends and relations have long been, it seems very wonderful that we should not have met long ago in England, instead of waiting until I had to seek you out on this remote pinnacle.’

 

            ‘Is not everything wonderful?’ asked Margaret, in a slightly

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impatient tone, and added, – ‘yes, you are right. Though now I see you I find it difficult not to fancy that I have known you always.’

 

            ‘From hearing me mentioned by the Bevans, and James?’ he suggested but she only shook her head.

 

            ‘If either of us knows the other by report,’ he continued, I can certainly claim to know you best; for I must have heard you spoken of far oftener than you can possibly have heard of me. Why,’ he went on, with a growing animation that began to communicate itself to her, I even ventured to ransack your nest at Porlock Cove while it was yet warm with your presence, and saw your drawings, and talked with your nurse about your convent life – or death, rather. And then, Sophia Bevan’s letters are always at least half about you. How she would enjoy being here, chatting with us now! Poor dear Sophy! I hope yon learnt to appreciate her thoroughness?’

 

            ‘Oh yes, I have indeed. At first I did not understand her. I had seen so few people, and she was so clever, that I think I was frightened. Things seemed to come to her without her having to think for them. I thought then, by the way you were generally spoken of, that – that you would not have remained away from her all these years.’

 

            She said this with an arch smile, and an air that showed that she was now instinctively aware that Edmund had no tender feeling on the subject which she could wound by a blunt reference to it.

 

            ‘You understand our friendship better now, then?’ he asked.

 

            ‘I understand that being what I understood you to be, you had not those feelings for Miss –– for my cousin, which I could not understand your having, unless you were very different from what I had come to imagine.’

 

            ‘You mean that report in some way belied me to you?’

 

            ‘Only in making you out to be engaged to Sophia. It was because report made you what you are that I – I hardly thought you suited to each other.’

 

            ‘I see. Then I correspond to the eidolon, (which, as James will tell you, means, not idol, but image or likeness,) which report had drawn of me for you.’

 

            ‘I do not think I learnt you from reports,’ she returned; ‘they came afterwards. I suppose I am very foolish and fanciful but the idea always haunted me that somewhere in the

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world I had a brother, who was ever near, but yet failed to become visible to me. I even fancied what he was like, and felt certain that I should recognise him whenever I might see him. And sometimes it seemed to me, from what I heard at Linnwood, as if you must be something like him. Even Sophia laughed at me once for taking your part when she was scolding you in your absence; and I said I was not thinking of you at all, but of my imaginary brother, whom it seemed to me that she was finding fault with for something that I did not dislike in him.’

 

            ‘And you never saw him?’ said Noel, in so gentle and kindly a tone, as not to startle her into self-consciousness by a strange voice, until––?

 

            Raising her head so as to throw back the masses of auburn hair, which fell forward on her work, and looking him full in the face, she replied, –

 

            ‘I never saw anybody like him until to-day.’

 

            Noel did not immediately make any reply. It seemed to him that a veil had been removed from his eyes. He recalled his first distant glimpse of Porlock Cove, and the fair tenant of its limpid waters; and the lineaments which, drawing solely upon his imagination, he had given to his Psyche. He thought of the obscure suggestions contained in Sophia Bevan’s letters, and of Lord Littmass’s strange proposal, and Sophia’s comments thereon. These memories ran rapidly through his mind, blending themselves as they came with the revelation that Margaret had just made to him of her own interior life, a revelation which he now thought he understood far better than she did. He saw that Margaret and himself were indeed one and identical in temperament, in character, in soul; the other half of each other, long dreamt of, and yearned for; and now at length found – found when too late. He shuddered as his mind reached the thought; and as he shuddered he heard at the door the quick step of James Maynard.

 

            Maynard entered the room, saying in loud cheerful voice, –

 

            ‘Now, Margaret, you must be thinking of bed. Our traveller must be tired.’

 

            He had been absent only some fifteen or twenty minutes, but to both Margaret and Edmund it seemed that an eternity had unveiled itself in the interval. She rose, saying, –

 

            ‘Then I will at once say buenas noches;’ and placing her hand frankly in that of Noel, added, you will find a choice of

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sleeping places in your room. But I do not think that the usual Mexican pests will trouble you in this house, so that you need not use the hammock unless you prefer it.’

 

            And running up to her own room she threw herself down on her knees, and poured out her soul in thanksgiving for having had her brother sent to her at last.

 

            Maynard and Noel talked yet some time longer, and when at length Edmund went into the room prepared for him, he started to see the familiar air of comfort and home that it possessed, notwithstanding the foreign elements which entered into its composition. James looked keenly round it, and said in a tone of half-surly sprightliness, –

 

            ‘Ah, I see you have made friends with Margaret already,’ – a speech that ought to have been quite unintelligible to Noel, but was not. Looking round after James had left him, he found on the table some books, which, to judge by the lightly pencilled marks, must have been her special favourites; and on the walls were hung some of her own drawings, one of which was a watercolour sketch of Porlock Cove with its sandy beach and enclosing cliffs, and a white figure dimly apparent through superincumbent waters. And the legend beneath was that of Sabrina: –

 

                                   ‘Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave.’

 

It suggested to Noel, Margaret herself dwelling in a dream, and unconscious of the meaning of the world by which she was surrounded; or one in whom the current of being ran deep, like a stream at the bottom of a cleft mountain, unreached by light from the day above.

 

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