Complete Works of Bram Stoker (129 page)

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Authors: Bram Stoker

He had much wished to make Betty a present, but he had hoped that his nomination to a place would have come at once, and that he would then be better able to give something worthy of the acceptance of a young lady who had so much of her own already. Now he found his chance of place gone — for the time at all events — and but a small store of guineas remaining of his inheritance. So it was with a somewhat saddened joy that he took his way to Chelsea that afternoon.

There was a source of interest in the household which, however, he did not share. Betty’s brother had come up on leave of a few days from his regiment, then quartered at York, and naturally the household was full of his presence. Rafe, who only knew of him as Betty’s half-brother, was not any too delighted, and held himself somewhat stiffly, though for Betty’s sake he tried to be as cordial as he could. Robert Pole, too, seemed to have some slight holding back from his sister’s suitor. He had a vague idea that the latter was in some sense an interloper; and as he had a special design in his own visit, not unconnected with certain debts incurred since the receipt of his commission, and which could only be removed through the agency of a rich sister, he wished, perhaps not unnaturally, to have that sister to himself as much as possible. With every minute he began to jar more and more on Rafe. There was with his sister a sort of taken-for-granted superiority, and an almost rudeness of manner which their having been children together made possible, but which in the jealous eyes of the lover — for such thinks no refinement sufficiently worthy for his beloved — seemed coarse and intolerable. Lovers have many crosses to bear in the time of their probation, and not the least of them are placed on their shoulders by the brothers and sisters of their beloved, whose familiarity seems a trifling with a sacred thing.

Betty could not but be conscious of the state of feeling between the two young men, and tried to keep the peace between them. Rafe felt that she was an angel, and loved her more than ever. He loyally strove to further her wishes, and would not see or understand when some specially caustic remark was aimed at him. Now and again he and Betty exchanged glances which showed that they understood each other, and in this silent sympathy he found a great reward for his forbearance. Aunt Priscilla was sublimely unconscious of all that was going on and took an early opportunity to whisper to Betty —

“How delightful it is that they understand each other so well. They have become great friends already.”

Once Betty feared there would be a scene.

Robert, with a brother’s freedom, took Betty’s | hand in his, and noticing the ring, said —

“Hallo! this is something new. I wonder at your wearing such a beggarly thing among those fine ones.” |

Betty blushed up to the roots of her hair, for she felt, as did Rafe, that an insult to the latter’s gift was intended, but as she did not wish to foment a quarrel she smiled with what heart she could and kissed the ring, saying —

“Never mind, brother, let who will have the rest — this is good enough for me!”

“Indeed but it’s not,” he answered, with a sneer; “I have given a better to an innkeeper’s daughter!”

Betty’s heart sank within her, but Rafe’s look reassured her. Then, as she had a shrewd idea as to what Master Robert’s visit was really due, she thought of a way — albeit one that seemed a little ungenerous — to make him at least behave with decorum. Master Robert wanted a lesson, and he should have it! So she answered —

“Oh! Robert, how can you be so extravagant! Surely it is not a necessity of being in the Green Horse that you should be so lavish! I did not know that a cornet’s pay allowed such openhandedness!”

Robert felt that he had gone too far. He! knew that he had yet to explain the disposal of the fifty guineas sent to him not long before in answer to an urgent request, and beyond this 1 again that another hundred at the present time would hardly suffice to meet his more present needs. So he determined on a discreet measure of silence, and tried to change entirely the whole current of conversation. After a moment’s thought he jumped up, calling out —

“Come, Betty! put on your hat, and we’ll all go pay a visit to Don Saltaro and see his museum. I haven’t seen a mummy or a mermaid, or a whale’s tooth since I left for York!”

Betty was glad of the change, and as she looked pleased, Robert was pleased to be out of the difficulty of his own creation. So in a good humour the three young people adjourned to Don Saltaro’s museum before the afternoon should have become too late for the presence of ladies in the coffee-house. They admired everything, and the Don, who thought much of his aristocratic neighbours, came himself and explained everything to them. With great ceremony he took down from its hook on the wall a splendid old Spanish sword, beautifully hiked and of immense length. This, he told them, had belonged to a captain of the Armada, and was evidently an heirloom.

“Look!” he said; “see here are the arms, and there a writing on it in the Spanish tongue. Young lady, your eyes are better than mine. Do you please to read it, that these young gallants may learn how the old Spaniard loved!”

Betty, blushing brightly, took the sword and read the legend on the blade —

“‘ El Amor del infiel es como la Espada destemplada.’”

“Can any of you construe it?” asked the Don. “No! Then is it to me, to whom are many tongues. ‘ The Love lacking faith is as a sword untempered.’ What think you of that, young lady?”

“It is true,” said Betty gravely. “There is a lesson in the sword of that old Spanish gentleman which every man and every woman should take to heart!” The Don cried: “Bravo! Bravo!” and Robert applauded, whilst Rafe looked his acquiescence.

Rafe did not return to supper, for he felt that it would be easier for Betty if he were not present to notice — and perhaps to cause — her brother’s rudeness. So at the gate he said farewell, not in his usual style but in a ceremonious way befitting a public occasion, and went back to the Temple in a waterman’s wherry.

The legend on the sword had given him an idea. He would have it worked out in some jewel for Betty! And as he was rowed down the river with the ebbing tide his idea took a definite form. He would have wrought, by some cunning goldsmith, a set of buttons in gold of some old Spanish device, such as that which embellished the sword, and on each should be graven a word of the legend. Then he bethought him whether it would be better in Spanish or English, for the wording of the sentence allowed either; and the happy idea came to him that he would have each button to contain a word of Spanish and a word of English, but in such a way that the sentence should run the reverse way, the last of one series being the first of the other.

The perfecting of his idea pleased him, and he forgot all the disagreeable part of his meeting with Betty’s brother; and so he landed at the stairs at Westminster and sought the sign of the “Golden Ball” at Windmill Street in the Haymarket. There he confided to Paul de Lamerre, the Crown goldsmith, his wishes. He rejoiced that the latter liked, the idea, and would therefore produce something which should be a pleasure to Betty.

CHAPTER IV

RAFE’S OPPORTUNITY

RAFE paid one more visit during Robert’s stay, for he did not wish it to appear as though he avoided the house on account of Betty’s brother; but he was secretly rejoiced when, on his following visit, Abigail told him that Master Robert had gone back to York. The young gentleman had returned to his regimental duties somewhat richer in worldly goods than when he had come; but he was also richer in certain caution and advice of a sisterly kind which rankled in his breast during the whole of the journey between London and York. Betty had impressed upon him the necessity of at least some measure of prudence in his expenditure, lest he should have to end his military duties before they were well, begun; she had also, but in a more guarded way, made it perfectly plain to him that his attitude to his new brother-in-prospect was not such as to insure in the family that peace and affection whence bounty for the prodigal had its only possible source.

“In fact,” summed up that fairly shrewd young gentleman, “I have made a cursed fool of myself, and Betty sends me packing with a flea in my ear!” — a conclusion which, though somewhat coarsely expressed, did infinite credit to his judgment. Henceforth he passes out of our story. He loved his life while it lasted; and his calls on Betty’s liberality became so extravagant that had he not had the misfortune to challenge a more expert and soberer swordsman than himself, it might have become necessary for her guardians to interfere. His one touch with Rafe had been truly but a slight one, but it had the consequence that the mind of the latter was made up to bestow on his lady a gift worthy of her, though at an expense which, when the goldsmith had received his payment, left only a few lonely guineas in the treasury of the kinsman of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Rafe kept the buttons in a case in. his pocket, waiting for a suitable opportunity of giving them to Betty; and when he found that the house was rid of the embarrassing presence of Robert he knew that the time had come.

That evening, when the sun was going down in the west, he asked Betty to come with him to the river bank and watch the sunset. She put on her hat, and they went out together. They walked by the rows of trees opposite the King’s House, and, passing up the marshlands, came to the jutting bank whence they could look over the watery waste and see the sunset mirrored in every bend of the river, every little tidal stream, and every stagnant pool.

Here there was a grove or clump of trees, and passing through these they stood on the edge of the bank with the full tide brimming right up to their very feet. All the pools and rivulets of the marshes of the opposite bank to right and left were full of water, and the marsh-land looked as if shot with gold or silver as the water caught the glow of the sunset or showed cold without it. The sun sank slowly down towards the far-off bend of the river, where the willows fringed the banks between Wandsworth and Putney and the river blazed in a glory.

The rise of the ground towards Clapham and Wandsworth seemed bolder than in a colder light, and on the further edge rose the gibbet, black and grim, which marked the winding of the Portsmouth road. As she pointed out the ‘beauties and answered Rafe’s queries Betty had a strange pleasure, for it was sweet beyond measure to be able to instruct her lover; but she shuddered when, in answer to his query, she told him of the black gibbet.

Then, as the sun sank, he took the case with the golden buttons from his pocket and handed them to her and told her, with sweet words and a look that was an anthem, that he had tried to get something which she would like and which might be worthy of her. When she opened the case and saw the buttons she gave a cry of delight and kissed his gift; then she took out a button and saw that there were words on it in Spanish and English, and at once she guessed at the legend and read it right through both ways. Then she turned to Rafe, and, secure that the grove of trees hid them from the gaze of any prying wanderer, put her-arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth and told him that she would value his dear gift till her dying day.

And so the sun sank into the water in a last flood of crimson and gold; and then in an instant the whole colour of the scene changed, the gold of the sunshine turning to the silver of the moonlight. The air seemed colder as the lovers retraced their steps to home, where they found Priscilla looking anxiously for them, for they had never been out so long together before. That evening, before he began to say good-night, Betty said to him very gravely, after a painful and manifest hesitation —

“Rafe dear, there is something troubling me. May I speak of it to you? May I ask you a question?”

“My darling, there is nothing in all the wide world that you may not say to me.” “Thank you, Rafe dear; you are kind to help me in what I want Rafe, I know you are not rich. Can you really afford to give me so valuable a present? My love, I fear lest my. brother’s taunt may have worried you.”

“How do you mean?” asked Rafe, for he hardly knew what to answer.

“Rafe, you will forgive me, but perhaps they” — and here she laid her hand on her bosom, wherein she had placed her lover’s gift — ”may come to more than you calculated, and indeed something cheaper will suit me as well.”

Rafe drew a long breath. He saw a way of answering without lying and without committing himself to the truth.

“Betty dear,” he said, “the buttons are already paid for, and with my own money — a part of my inheritance.” Then, wishing to divert her thoughts, he started up and said — “Come, I shall sing you a song,” and forthwith burst out the following in a rich baritone voice —

“Let Gallants pledge in wine their loves

And all such other trumpery!

But faith! not I — no toasts for me: —

My Heart and I are company.

“In gory fields good fellows rot —

And all for love of Country!

No fields for me, save furrowed ones —

And my old Heart for company.

“Your loves and wars alike bring tears,

And naught care I to pump any!

My quiet laugh sufficeth well —

And my old Heart for company.