Rose, Blanche, and Violet, Volume 1 (of 3)

ROSE, BLANCHE, AND VIOLET.

PROLOGUE.

1835.

It was a sultry day in July, and the sun was pouring down from a cloudless heaven intense rays upon the High-street of * The heat made the place a desert; more indeed of a desert than even High-streets of country towns usually are. There was a burnt odour in the atmosphere, arising from the scorched pavement, and rayed forth from the garish brick houses. Silence and noon-day heat reigned over the scene. The deep stillness was brought out into stronger relief by the occasional bark of a dog, or rumbling of a solitary cart.

A few human beings dotted the street, at wide intervals. There was a groom standing at the stable-yard entrance of the Royal George, indolently chewing a blade of grass. The clergyman's wife, hot, dusty, and demure, was shopping. A farmer had just dismounted from a robust white cob, which he left standing at the door of a dismal red-brick house, on the wire blinds of which was painted the word--BANK. Higher up, three ragged urchins were plotting mischief, or arranging some game. A proud young mother was dandling her infant at a shop door, as if desirous that the whole street should be aware of the important fact of her maternity--to be sure, there never was such a beautiful baby before! In the window of that shop--it was a grocer's--a large black cat was luxuriously sleeping on a bed of moist sugar, sunning herself there, too lazy even to disturb the flies which crowded to the spot.

To one who, a stranger to the place, merely cast his eyes down that street, nothing could appear more lifeless--more devoid of all human interest--more unchequered by the vicissitudes of passion. It had the calm of the desert, without the grandeur. In such a place, the current of life would seem monotonously placid; existence itself scarcely better than vegetation. It is not so, however. To those who inhabited the place, it was known that beneath the stillness a stratum of boiling lava was ever ready to burst forth. Every house was really the theatre of some sad comedy, or of some grotesque tragedy. The shop which to an unfamiliar eye was but the depository of retail goods, with John Smith as the retailer, was to an inhabitant the well-known scene of some humble heroism, or ridiculous pretension. John Smith, smirking behind his counter, is not simply an instrument of commerce; he is a husband, a father, and a citizen; he has his follies, his passions, his hopes, and his opinions; he is the object of unreckoned scandals.

To the eye of the stranger who now leisurely paced the street, the town was dull and lifeless, because it had not the incessant noise of a capital, and because he knew nothing of the dramas which were being enacted within its walls. Yet even he was soon to learn that sorrow, "not loud but deep," was weeping ineffectually over a tragedy which touched him nearly.

He was a man of about thirty years of age, with the unmistakeable look of a gentleman, and, to judge from his moustaches and erect bearing, an officer in the army. As he passed her, the proud young mother ceased for a moment to think only of her child, and followed with admiring eyes his retreating form. The echo of his sharp, decisive tread rang through the silent street; and soon he disappeared, turning up towards a large house which fronted the sea.

He knocked at the door, and with an unconscious coquetry smoothed his dark moustache while waiting. The door was opened by a grey-haired butler.

"How d' ye do, Wilson? Are they at home--eh! what's this? you in mourning?"

"Yes, sir. What! don't you know, sir?"

"Good God! what has happened? Is Mrs. Vyner----?"

"Yes, sir, yes," replied the butler, shaking his head sorrowfully. "It has been a dreadful blow, sir, to master, and to the young ladies. She was buried Monday week."

The stranger was almost stupefied by this sudden shock.

"Dead!" he exclaimed; "dead! Good God!--So young, so young.--Dead!--So beautiful and good.--Dead!"

"Ah, sir, master will never get over it. He does take on so. I never saw any one, never; and the young ladies----"

"Dead!"

"Will you please to walk up, sir? Master would like to see you."

"No, no, no."

"It will comfort him; indeed, sir, it will. He likes to talk to any one, sir, about the party that's gone."

The tears came into the old man's eyes as he thus alluded to his lost mistress, and the stranger was too much affected to notice the singular language in which the butler spoke of "the party."

After a few moments' consideration, the stranger walked up into the drawing-room, while the servant went to inform Mr. Vyner of the visit. Left to himself, and to the undisturbed indulgence of those feelings of solemn sadness by which we are always affected at the sudden death of those we know, especially of the young--shaking us as it does in the midst of our own security, and bringing terribly home the conviction of that fact which health and confidence keep in a dim obscurity, that "in the midst of life we are in death"--the stranger, whom we shall now name as Captain Heath, walked up to a miniature of the deceased, and gazed upon it in melancholy curiosity.

Captain Heath had lost a dear friend in Mrs. Vyner, with whom he had been a great favourite. To his credit be it said, that, although the handsome wife of a man much older than herself, he had never for an instant misinterpreted her kindness towards him; and this, too, although he was an officer in the Hussars. Theirs was truly and strictly a friendship between man and woman, as pure as it was firm; founded upon mutual esteem and sympathy. Some malicious whispers were, indeed, from time to time ventured on--for who can entirely escape them?--but they never gained much credence. Mrs. Vyner's whole life was an answer to calumny.

Meredith Vyner, of Wytton Hall, Devonshire, was the kindest if not the most fascinating of husbands. A book-worm and pedant, he had the follies of his tribe, and was as open to ridicule as the worst of them; but, with all his foibles, he was a kind, gentle, weak, indolent creature, who made many friends, and, what is more, retained them.

There was something remarkable though not engaging in his appearance. He looked like a dirty bishop. In his pale puffy face there was an ecclesiastical mildness, which assorted well with a large forehead and weak chin, though it brought into stronger contrast the pugnacity of a short blunt nose, the nostrils of which were somewhat elevated and garnished with long black hairs. A physiognomist would at once have pronounced him obstinate, but weak; loud in the assertion of his intentions, vacillating in their execution. His large person was curiously encased in invariable black; a tail-coat with enormous skirts, in which were pockets capacious enough to contain a stout volume; the waistcoat of black silk, liberally sprinkled with grains of snuff, reached below the waist, and almost concealed the watch-chain and its indefinite number of gold seals which dangled from the fob; of his legs he was as proud as men usually are who have an ungraceful development of calf; and hence, perhaps, the reason of his adhering to the black tights of our fathers. Shoes, large, square, and roomy, with broad silver buckles, completed his invariable and somewhat anachronical attire.

People laughed at Meredith Vyner for his dirty nails and his love of Horace (whom he was always quoting, without regard to the probability of his hearers understanding Latin--for the practice seemed involuntary); but they respected him for his integrity and goodness, and for his great, though ill-assorted, erudition. In a word, he was laughed at, but there was no malice in the laughter.

As Captain Heath stood gazing on the miniature of his lost friend, a heavy hand was placed upon his shoulder; and on turning round he beheld Meredith Vyner, on whose large, pale face sorrow had deepened the lines: his eyes were bloodshot and swollen with crying. In silence, they pressed each other's hands for some moments, both unable to speak. At last, in a trembling voice, Vyner said, "Gone, gone! She's gone from us."

Heath responded by a fervent pressure of the hand.

"Only three weeks ill," continued the wretched widower; "and so unexpected!"

"She died without pain," he added, after a pause; "sweetly resigned. She is in heaven now. I shall follow her soon: I feel I shall. I cannot survive her loss."

"Do not forget your children."

"I do not; I will not. Is not one of them her child? I will struggle for its sake. So young to be cut off!"

There was another pause, in which each pursued the train of his sad thoughts. The hot air puffed through the blinds of the darkened room, and the muffled sounds of distant waves breaking upon the shore were faintly heard.

"Come with me," said Vyner, rising.

He led the captain into the bed-room.

"There she lay," he said, pointing to the bed: "you see the mark of the coffin on the coverlet? I would not have it disturbed. It is the last trace she left."

The tears rolled down his cheek as he gazed upon this frightful memento.

"In this room I sat up a whole night when they laid her in the coffin, and all night as I gazed upon those loved features, placid in their eternal repose, I was constantly fancying that she breathed, and that her bosom heaved again with life. Alas! it was but the mockery of my love. She remained cold to my kiss--insensible to the tenderness which watched over her. Yet I could not leave her. It was foolish, perhaps, but it was all that remained to me. To gaze upon her was painful, yet there was pleasure in that pain. The face which had smiled such sunshine on me, which had so often looked up to mine in love, that face was now cold, lifeless--but it was hers, and I could not leave it. My poor, poor girl!"

His sobs interrupted him. Captain Heath had no disposition to check a grief which would evidently wear itself away much more rapidly by thus dwelling on the subject, than by any effort to drive it from the mind. To say the truth, Heath was himself too much moved to speak. The long, sharply-defined trace of the coffin on the coverlet was to him more terrible than the sight of the corpse could have been; it was so painfully suggestive.

"The second night," continued Vyner, "they prevailed on me to go to bed; but I could not sleep. No sooner did I drop into an uneasy doze, than some horrible dream aroused me. My waking thoughts were worse. I was continually fancying the rats would--would--ugh! At last, I got up and went into the room. Who should be there, but Violet! The dear child was in her night-dress, praying by the side of the bed! She did not move when I came in. I knelt down with her. We both offered up our feeble prayers to Him who had been pleased to take her from us. We prayed together, we wept together. We kissed gently the pale rigid face, and then the dear child suffered me to lead her away without a word. It was only then that I suspected the depth of Violet's grief. She had not cried so much as Rose and Blanche. I thought she was too young to feel the loss. But from that moment I understood the strange light which plays in her eyes when she speaks of her mother."