Вальтер Скотт: St. Ronan's Well

“To augment yours – God forbid!” answered Tyrrel. “No – I came hither only because, after so many years of wandering, I longed to revisit the spot where all my hopes lay buried.”

“Ay – buried is the word,” she replied, “crushed down and buried when they budded fairest. I often think of it, Tyrrel; and there are times when, Heaven help me! I can think of little else. – Look at me – you remember what I was – see what grief and solitude have made me.”

She flung back the veil which surrounded her riding-hat, and which had hitherto hid her face. It was the same countenance which he had formerly known in all the bloom of early beauty; but though the beauty remained, the bloom was fled for ever. Not the agitation of exercise – not that which arose from the pain and confusion of this unexpected interview, had called to poor Clara's cheek even the momentary semblance of colour. Her complexion was marble-white, like that of the finest piece of statuary.

“Is it possible?” said Tyrrel; “can grief have made such ravages?”

“Grief,” replied Clara, “is the sickness of the mind, and its sister is the sickness of the body – they are twin-sisters, Tyrrel, and are seldom long separate. Sometimes the body's disease comes first, and dims our eyes and palsies our hands, before the fire of our mind and of our intellect is quenched. But mark me – soon after comes her cruel sister with her urn, and sprinkles cold dew on our hopes and on our loves, our memory, our recollections, and our feelings, and shows us that they cannot survive the decay of our bodily powers.”

“Alas!” said Tyrrel, “is it come to this?”

“To this,” she replied, speaking from the rapid and irregular train of her own ideas, rather than comprehending the purport of his sorrowful exclamation, – “to this it must ever come, while immortal souls are wedded to the perishable substance of which our bodies are composed. There is another state, Tyrrel, in which it will be otherwise – God grant our time of enjoying it were come!”

She fell into a melancholy pause, which Tyrrel was afraid to disturb. The quickness with which she spoke, marked but too plainly the irregular succession of thought, and he was obliged to restrain the agony of his own feelings, rendered more acute by a thousand painful recollections, lest, by giving way to his expressions of grief, he should throw her into a still more disturbed state of mind.

“I did not think,” she proceeded, “that after so horrible a separation, and so many years, I could have met you thus calmly and reasonably. But although what we were formerly to each other can never be forgotten, it is now all over, and we are only friends – Is it not so?”

Tyrrel was unable to reply.

“But I must not remain here,” she said, “till the evening grows darker on me. – We shall meet again, Tyrrel – meet as friends – nothing more – You will come up to Shaws-Castle and see me? – no need of secrecy now – my poor father is in his grave, and his prejudices sleep with him – my brother John is kind, though he is stern and severe sometimes – Indeed, Tyrrel, I believe he loves me, though he has taught me to tremble at his frown when I am in spirits, and talk too much – But he loves me, at least I think so, for I am sure I love him; and I try to go down amongst them yonder, and to endure their folly, and, all things considered, I do carry on the farce of life wonderfully well – We are but actors, you know, and the world but a stage.”

“And ours has been a sad and tragic scene,” said Tyrrel, in the bitterness of his heart, unable any longer to refrain from speech.

“It has indeed – but, Tyrrel, when was it otherwise with engagements formed in youth and in folly? You and I would, you know, become men and women, while we were yet scarcely more than children – We have run, while yet in our nonage, through the passions and adventures of youth, and therefore we are now old before our day, and the winter of our life has come on ere its summer was well begun. – O Tyrrel! often and often have I thought of this! – Thought of it often? Alas, when will the time come that I shall be able to think of any thing else!”

The poor young woman sobbed bitterly, and her tears began to flow with a freedom which they had not probably enjoyed for a length of time. Tyrrel walked on by the side of her horse, which now prosecuted its road homewards, unable to devise a proper mode of addressing the unfortunate young lady, and fearing alike to awaken her passions and his own. Whatever he might have proposed to say, was disconcerted by the plain indications that her mind was clouded, more or less slightly, with a shade of insanity, which deranged, though it had not destroyed, her powers of judgment.

At length he asked her, with as much calmness as he could assume – if she was contented – if aught could be done to render her situation more easy – if there was aught of which she could complain which he might be able to remedy? She answered gently, that she was calm and resigned, when her brother would permit her to stay at home; but that when she was brought into society, she experienced such a change as that which the water of the brook that slumbers in a crystalline pool of the rock may be supposed to feel, when, gliding from its quiet bed, it becomes involved in the hurry of the cataract.

“But my brother Mowbray,” she said, “thinks he is right, – and perhaps he is so. There are things on which we may ponder too long; – and were he mistaken, why should I not constrain myself in order to please him – there are so few left to whom I can now give either pleasure or pain? – I am a gay girl, too, in conversation, Tyrrel – still as gay for a moment, as when you used to chide me for my folly. So, now I have told you all, – I have one question to ask on my part – one question – if I had but breath to ask it – Is he still alive?”

“He lives,” answered Tyrrel, but in a tone so low, that nought but the eager attention which Miss Mowbray paid could possibly have caught such feeble sounds.

“Lives!” she exclaimed, – “lives! – he lives, and the blood on your hand is not then indelibly imprinted – O Tyrrel, did you but know the joy which this assurance gives to me!”

“Joy!” replied Tyrrel – “joy, that the wretch lives who has poisoned our happiness for ever? – lives, perhaps, to claim you for his own?”

“Never, never shall he – dare he do so,” replied Clara, wildly, “while water can drown, while cords can strangle, steel pierce – while there is a precipice on the hill, a pool in the river – never – never!”

“Be not thus agitated, my dearest Clara,” said Tyrrel; “I spoke I know not what – he lives indeed – but far distant, and, I trust, never again to revisit Scotland.”

He would have said more, but that, agitated with fear or passion, she struck her horse impatiently with her riding-whip. The spirited animal, thus stimulated and at the same time restrained, became intractable, and reared so much, that Tyrrel, fearful of the consequences, and trusting to Clara's skill as a horsewoman, thought he best consulted her safety in letting go the rein. The animal instantly sprung forward on the broken and hilly path at a very rapid pace, and was soon lost to Tyrrel's anxious eyes.

As he stood pondering whether he ought not to follow Miss Mowbray towards Shaws-Castle, in order to be satisfied that no accident had befallen her on the road, he heard the tread of a horse's feet advancing hastily in the same direction, leading from the hotel. Unwilling to be observed at this moment, he stepped aside under shelter of the underwood, and presently afterwards saw Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's, followed by a groom, ride hastily past his lurking-place, and pursue the same road which had been just taken by his sister. The presence of her brother seemed to assure Miss Mowbray's safety, and so removed Tyrrel's chief reason for following her. Involved in deep and melancholy reflection upon what had passed, nearly satisfied that his longer residence in Clara's vicinity could only add to her unhappiness and his own, yet unable to tear himself from that neighbourhood, or to relinquish feelings which had become entwined with his heart-strings, he returned to his lodgings in the Aultoun, in a state of mind very little to be envied.