CHAPTER III.

ANYTHING BUT STILL LIFE.

PENALVA Court, about half a mile from the quay, is "like house in a story;" — a house of seven gables, and those very shaky ones; a house of useless long passages, useless turrets, vast lumber attics where maids see ghosts, lofty garden and yard walls of gray stone, round which the wind and rain are lashing through the dreary darkness; low oakribbed ceilings; windows which once were mullioned with stone, but now with wood painted white; walls which were once oak-wainscot, but have been painted like the mullions, to the disgust of Elsley Vavasour, poet, its occupant in March, 1854, who forgot that, while the oak was left dark, no man could have seen to read in the rooms a yard from the window.

He has, however, little reason to complain of the one drawing room, where he and his wife are sitting, so pleasant has she made it look, in spite of the plainness of the furniture. A bright log-fire is burning on the hearth. There are a few good books too, and a few handsome prints; while some really valuable knick-knacks are set out, with pardonable ostentation, on a little table covered with crimson velvet. It is only cotton velvet, if you look close at it; but the things are pretty enough to catch the eye of all visitors; and Mrs. Heale, the doctor's wife (who always calls Mrs. Vavasour "my lady," though she does not love her), and Mrs. Trebooze of Trebooze, always finger them over when they have an opportunity, and whisper to each other, half contemptuously, "Ah, poor thing! there's a sign that she has seen better days."

And better days, in one sense, Mrs. Vavasour has seen. I am afraid, indeed, that she has more than once regretted the morning when she ran away in a hack-cab from her brother Lord Scoutbush's house in Eaton Square, to be married to Elsley Vavasour, the gifted author of "A Soul's Agonies, and other Poems.' He was a lion then, with foolish women running after him, and turning his head once

and for all; and Lucia St. Just was a wild Irish girl, new t London society, all feeling and romance, and literally all; for there was little real intellect underlying her passionate sensibility. So when the sensibility burnt itself out, as it generally does and when children, and the weak health. which comes with them, and the cares of a household, and money difficulties, were absorbing her little powers, Elsley Vavasour began to fancy that his wife was a very commonplace person, who was fast losing even her good looks and her good temper. So, on the whole, they were not happy. Elsley was an affectionate man, and honorable to a fantastic nicety; but he was vain, capricious, over-sensitive, craving for admiration and distinction; and it was not enough for him that his wife loved him, bore him children, kept his accounts, mended and moiled all day long for him and his; he wanted her to act the public for him exactly when he was hungry for praise; and that not the actual, but an altogether ideal, public; to worship him as a deity, "live for him and him alone," "realize" his poetic dreams of narriage-bliss, and talk sentiment with him, or listen to him talking sentiment to her, when she would much sooner be safe in bed burying all the petty cares of the day, and the pain in her back too, poor thing! in sound sleep; and so it befell that they often quarrelled and wrangled, and that they were quarrelling and wrangling this very night.

Who cares to know how it began? Who cares to hear how it went on, the stupid, aimless skirmish of bitter words, between two people who had forgotten themselves? I believe it began with Elsley's being vexed at her springing up two or three times, fancying that she heard the children cry, while he wanted to be quiet, and sentimentalize over the roaring of the wind outside. Then she thought of nothing but those children. Why did she not take a book and occupy her mind? To which she had her pert, though just answer, about her mind having quite enough to do to keep clothes on the children's backs, and so forth, - let who list imagine the miserable little squab. ble, — till she says: "I know what has put you out so tonight nothing but the news of my sister's coming." He answers, "That her sister is as little to him as to any man ; as welcome to come now as she has been to stay away these three years."

-

"Ah, it's very well to say that; but you different person ever since that letter came." torments him into an angry self-justification

have been a

And so she (which she

takes triumphantly as a confession) that "it is very disa greeable to have his thoughts broken in on by one who has no sympathy with him and his pursuits, and who-" and at that point he wisely stops short, for he was going to throw down a very ugly gage of battle

Thrown down or not, Lucia snatches at it.

"Ah, I understand; poor Valentia! you always hated her."

"I did not; but she is so brusque, and excited, and --" "Be so kind as not to abuse my family. You may say what you will of me; but "

"And what have your family done for me, pray

?"

'Why, considering that we are now living rent-free in my brother's house, and-" She stops in her turn; for her pride and her prudence also will not let her tell him that Valentia has been clothing her and the children for the last three years. He is just the man to forbid her on the spot to receive any more presents, and to sacrifice her comfort to his own pride. But what she has said is quite enough to bring out a very angry answer, which she expect ing, nips in the bud by,

"For goodness' sake, don't speak so loud; I don't want the servants to hear."

"I am not speaking loud" (he has not yet opened his lips). "That is your old trick to prevent my defending myself, while you are driving one mad. How dare you taunt me with being a pensioner on your brother's bounty? I'll go up to town again, and take lodgings there. I need not be beholden to any aristocrat of them all. I have my own station in the real world, the world of intellect; I nave my own friends; I have made myself a name without his help; and I can live without his help, he shall find!"

"Which name were you speaking of?" rejoins she, looking up at him, with all her native Irish humor flashing up for a moment in her naughty eyes. The next minute she would have given her hand not to have said it, for, with a very terrible word, Elsley springs to his feet and dashes out of the room.

She hears him catch up his hat and cloak, and hurry out into the rain, slamming the door behind him. She springs up to call him back, but he is gone, and she dashes herself on the floor, and bursts into an agony of weeping over 66 young bliss never to return!" Not in the least. Her principal fear is lest he should catch cold in the rain. She takes up her work again, and stitches away in the comfortable cer

tainty that in half an hour she will have recovered her temper, and he also; that they will pass a sulky night; and to-morrow, by about mid-day, without explanation or formal reconciliation, have become as good friends as ever. "Perhaps," says she to herself, with a woman's sense of power, "if he be very much ashamed and very wet, I'll pity him and make friends to-night."

Miserable enough are these little squabbles. Why will two people, who have sworn to love and cherish each other utterly, and who, on the whole, do what they have sworn, behave to each other as they dare for very shame behave to no one else? Is it that, as every beautiful thing has its hideous antitype, this mutual shamelessness is the devil's ape of mutual confidence? Perhaps it cannot be otherwise with beings compact of good and evil. When the veil of reserve is withdrawn from between two souls, it must be withdrawn for evil, as for good, till the two natures, which ought to seek rest, each in the other's inmost depths, may at last spring apart, confronting each other recklessly with, "There, you see me as I am; you know the worst of me, and I of you; take me as you find me; what care I?"

Elsley and Lucia have not yet arrived at that terrible crisis, though they are on the path toward it- the path of little carelessnesses, rudenesses, ungoverned words and tempers, and, worst of all, of that half-confidence, which is certain to avenge itself by irritation and quarrelling; for if two married people will not tell each other in love what they ought, they will be sure to tell each other in anger what they ought not. It is plain enough already that Elsley has his weak point, which must not be touched, something about "a name, "which Lucia is to be expected to ignore, - as if anything which really exists could be ignored while two people live together night and day, for better for worse. Till the thorn is out, the wound will not heal; and till that matter (whatever it may be) is set right, by confession and absolution, there will be no peace for them, for they are living in a lie; and, unless it be a very little one indeed, better, perhaps, that they should go on to that terrible crisis of open defiance. It may end in disgust, hatred, madness; but it may, too, end in each falling again upon the other's bosom, and sobbing out through holy tears, "Yes, you do know the worst of me, and yet you love me still. This is happiness, to find one's self most loved when one most hates one's self! God, help us to confess our sins to thee, as we have done to each other, and to begin

life again like little children, struggling hand in hand out of this lowest pit, up the steep path which leads to life, and strength, and peace."

Heaven grant that it may so end! But now Elsley has gone raging out into the raging darkness, trying to prove himself to himself the most injured of men, and to hate his wife as much as possible, though the fool knows the whole time that he loves her better than anything on earth, even than that" fame," on which he tries to fatten his lean soul, snapping greedily at every scrap which falls in his way, and, in default, snapping at everybody and everything else. And little comfort it gives him. Why should it? What comfort, save in being wise and strong? And is he the wiser or stronger for being told by a reviewer that he has written fine words, or has failed in writing them, or to have silly women writing to ask for his autograph, or for leave to set his songs to music? Nay, shocking as the question may seem, is he the wiser and stronger man for being a poet of all, and a genius? provided, of course, that the word genius. is used in its modern meaning, of a person who can say prettier things than his neighbors. I think not. Be it as it may, away goes the poor genius, his long cloak, picturesque enough in calm weather, fluttering about uncomfortably enough, while the rain washes his long curls into swabs; out through the old garden, between storm-swept laurels, beneath dark groaning pines, and through a door in the wall which opens into the lane.

The lane leads downward, on the right, into the village. He is in no temper to meet his fellow-creatures, even to see the comfortable gleam through their windows, as the sailors cose round the fire with wife and child; so he turns to the left, up the deep stone-banked lane, which leads toward the cliff, dark now as pitch, for it is overhung, right and left, with deep oak-wood.

It is no easy matter to proceed, though, for the wind pours down the lane as through a funnel, and the road is of slippery bare slate, worn here and there into puddles of greasy clay, and Elsley slips back half of every step, while his wrath, as he tires, oozes out of his heels. Moreover, those dark trees above him, tossing their heads impatiently against the scarcely less dark sky, strike an awe into him, a sense of loneliness, almost of fear. An uncanny, bad night it is; and he is out on a bad errand; and he knows it, and wishes that he were home again. He does not believe, of course, in those "spirits of the storm," about