Volume 2 Chapter 14 - The Maroon by Mayne Reid
The Obscuration
“Intawupted!” exclaimed Smythje, briskly restoring his person to its erect position. “What an infawnal haw!” he continued, drawing out his handkerchief, and dusting the knee on which he had been kneeling. “I wondaw who are the intwoodaws? Aw! ah! It’s the young fellaw, yaw cousin! Shawly it is; and—a—a pwetty girl with him—a dooced pwetty girl, ba Jawve!”
A satirical titter, loud enough to be termed a laugh, was heard issuing from between the white teeth of the Jewess. It somewhat discomfited Smythje: since he knew that the satire could only be pointed at the ridiculous tableau just broken up, and of which he had himself been the conspicuous figure. His sang froid, however, did not quite forsake him, for the Cockney possessed considerable presence of mind—the offspring of an infinite superciliousness. This at the moment came to his relief, bringing with it an idea that promised to rescue him from his embarrassment. The spy-glass lying upon the rock suggested the idea.
Dropping back upon his knee—in an attitude similar to that from which he had just arisen—he took up the telescope, and, once more rising to his feet, presented it to Kate Vaughan, as she stood bent and blushing.
The ruse was well intended, and not badly executed; but Mr Smythje had to deal with one as cunning as himself. It was of no use endeavouring to throw dust in the keen, quick eyes of Judith Jessuron; and the laugh was repeated, only in a louder and more quizzical tone.
It ended in Smythje himself joining in the laughter, which, under the circumstances, was the very best course he could have pursued.
Notwithstanding the absurdity of the situation, Herbert did not seem to share in his companion’s mirth. On the contrary, a shadow was visible upon his brow—not that produced by the gradually deepening twilight of the eclipse—but one that had spread suddenly over his face at sight of the kneeling Smythje.
“Miss Vaughan!” pronounced the Jewess, springing lightly upon the rock, and, with a nod of recognition, advancing towards the young Creole and her companion; “an unexpected pleasure this! I hope we are not intruding?”
“Not at all—nothing of the sawt, I ashaw yaw,” replied Smythje, with one of his profoundest bows.
“Mr Smythje—Miss Jessuron,” interposed Kate, performing the duty of introduction with dignified but courteous politeness.
“We have climbed up to view this eclipse,” continued Judith. “The same errand as yourselves, I presume?” added she, with a glance of quizzical malignity directed towards Kate.
“Aw, yes! sawtinly!” stammered out Smythje, as if slightly confused by the innuendo of the interrogative. “That is pwecisely the pawpose which bwought us heaw—to view this cewestial phenomenon fwom the Jumbé Wock. A spwendid observatowy it is, ba Jawve!”
“You have had the advantage of us,” rejoined Judith. “I feared we should arrive too late. Perhaps, we are soon enough?”
The satirical tone and glance were reiterated.
Perhaps Kate Vaughan did not perceive the meaning of this ambiguous interrogatory, though addressed to her even more pointedly than the former; at all events, she did not reply to it. Her eyes and thoughts were elsewhere.
“Quite in time, Miss Jessuwon!” answered Smythje. “The ekwipse is fawst assuming a most intewesting phase. In a few minutes the sun will be in penumbwa. If yaw will step this way, yaw may get a bettaw standing-place. Pawmit me to offaw yaw the tewescope? Aw, haw!” continued he, addressing himself to Herbert, who had just come forward, “aw, how do, ma fwiend? Happy to have the pwesyaw of meeting you again!”
As he said this, he held out his hand, with a single finger projecting beyond the others.
Herbert, though declining the proffered finger, returned the salutation with sufficient courtesy; and Smythje, turning aside to attend upon Judith, escorted her to that edge of the platform facing towards the eclipse.
By this withdrawal—perhaps little regretted by either of the cousins—they were left alone.
A bow, somewhat stiff and formal, was the only salutation that had yet passed between them; and even for some seconds after the others had gone aside, they remained without speaking to each other.
Herbert was the first to break the embarrassing silence.
“Miss Vaughan!” said he, endeavouring to conceal the emotion which, however, his trembling voice betrayed, “I fear our presence here will be considered an intrusion? I would have retired, but that my companion willed it otherwise.”
“Miss Vaughan!” mentally repeated the young creole, as the phrase fell strangely upon her ear, prompting her, perhaps, to a very different rejoinder from that she would otherwise have made.
“Since you could not follow your own inclination, perhaps it was wiser for you to remain. Your presence here, so far as I am concerned, is no intrusion, I assure you. As for my companion, he appears satisfied enough, does he not?”
The rapid exchange of words, with an occasional cachinnation, heard from the other side of the rock, told that a gay conversation was going on between Smythje and the Jewess.
“I regret that our arrival should have led even to your temporary separation. Shall I take Mr Smythje’s place and permit him to rejoin you?”
The reply was calculated to widen the breach between the two cousins.
It was indebted for its character to the interpretation which Herbert had placed upon Kate’s last interrogatory.
“Certainly, if it would be more agreeable to you to do so,” retorted Kate, in a tone of defiant bitterness.
Here a pause occurred in the conversation, which from the first had been carried on defiance against defiance. It was Herbert’s turn to speak; but the challenge conveyed in Kate’s last words placed him in a position where it was not easy to make an appropriate rejoinder, and he remained silent.
It was now the crisis of the eclipse—the moment of deepest darkness. The sun’s disc had become completely obscured by the opaque orb of the night, and the earth lay lurid under the sombre shadow. Stars appeared in the sky, to show that the universe still existed; and those voices of the forest heard only in nocturnal hours, came pealing up to the summit of the rock—a testimony that terrestrial nature was not yet extinct.
It was equally a crisis between two loving hearts. Though standing near, those wild words had outlawed them from each other, far more than if ten thousand miles extended between them. The darkness without was naught to the darkness within. In the sky there were stars to delight the eye; from the forest came sounds to solace the soul; but no star illumined the horizon of their hearts with its ray of hope—no sound of joy cheered the silent gloom that bitterly embraced them.
For some minutes not a word was exchanged between the cousins, nor spoken either to those who were their sharers in the spectacle. These, too, were silent. The solemnity of the scene had made its impression upon all; and, against the dark background of the sky, the figures of all four appeared in sombre silhouette—motionless as the rock on which they stood.
Thus for some minutes stood Herbert and Kate without exchanging word or thought. Side by side they were, so near and so silent, that each might have heard the breathing of the other.
The situation was one of painful embarrassment, and might have been still more so, but for the eclipse; which, just then complete, shrouded both in the deep obscurity of its shadow, and hindered them from observing one another.
Only for a short while did the darkness continue; the eclipse soon re-assuming the character of a penumbra.
One by one the stars disappeared from the canopy of the sky—now hastening to recover its azure hue. The creatures of darkness, wondering at the premature return of day, sank cowering into a terrified silence; and the god of the heavens, coming forth triumphantly from the cloud that had for a short while concealed him, once more poured his joyous effulgence upon the earth.
The re-dawning of the light showed the cousins still standing in the same relative position—unchanged even as to their attitudes.
During the interval of darkness Herbert had neither stirred nor spoken; and after the harsh rejoinder to which, in the bitterness of her pique, the young Creole had given words, it was not her place to continue the conversation.
Pained though Herbert was by his cousin’s reply, he nevertheless remembered his indebtedness to her—the vows he had made—the proud proffer at parting. Was he now to repudiate the debt of gratitude and prove faithless to his promise? Was he to pluck from his breast that silken souvenir, still sheltering there, though in secret and unseen?
True, it was but the memorial of an act of friendship—of mere cousinly kindness. He had never had reason to regard it in any other light; and now, more than ever, was he sure it had no higher signification.
She had never said she loved him—never said a word that could give him the right to reproach her. On her side there was no repudiation, since there had been no compromise. It was unjust to condemn her—cruel to defy her, as he had done.
That she loved another—was that a crime?
Herbert now knew that she loved another—was as sure of it as that he stood upon the Jumbé Rock. That interrupted tableau had left him no loop to hang a doubt on. The relative position of the parties proclaimed the purpose—a proposal.
The kneeling lover may not have obtained his answer; but who could doubt what that answer was to have been? The situation itself proclaimed consent.
Bitter as were these reflections, Herbert made an effort to subdue them. He resolved, if possible, to stifle his spleen; and, upon the ruin of his hopes, restore that relationship—the only one that could now exist between himself and his cousin—friendship.
With a superhuman effort he succeeded; and this triumph of virtue over spite, backed by the strongest inclinings of the heart, for a moment solaced his spirit, and rendered it calmer.
Alas! that such triumph can be only temporary. The struggle upon which he was entering was one in which no man has ever succeeded. Love undenied, may end in friendship; but love thwarted or unreciprocated, never!
“Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves its way between
Heights, that appear as lovers who have parted
In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,
That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;
Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,
Love was the very root of the fond rage
Which blighted their life’s bloom—”
Herbert Vaughan was perhaps too young—too inexperienced in the affairs of the heart—to have ever realised the sentiment so expressed; else would he have desisted from his idle attempt, and surrendered himself at once to the despair that was certain to succeed it.
Innocent—perhaps happily so—of the knowledge of these recondite truths, he yielded to the nobler resolve—ignorant of the utter impracticability of its execution.