Henrietta Temple: A Love Story
standing by her; the gentlemen, for a moment arrested from a political
discussion, formed a group in a distant part of the room, the rector
occasionally venturing in a practised whisper to enforce a disturbed
argument. Ferdinand glided in unobserved by the fair performer. Miss
Temple not only possessed a voice of rare tone and compass, but
this delightful gift of nature had been cultivated with refined art.
Ferdinand, himself a musician, and passionately devoted to vocal melody,
listened with unexaggerated rapture.
‘Oh! beautiful!’ exclaimed he, as the songstress ceased.
‘Captain Armine!’ cried Miss Temple, looking round with a wild,
bewitching smile. ‘I thought you were meditating in the twilight.’
‘Your voice summoned me.’
‘You care for music?’
‘For little else.’
‘You sing?’
‘I hum.’
‘Try this.’
‘With you?’
Ferdinand Armine was not unworthy of singing with Henrietta Temple. His
mother had been his able instructress in the art even in his childhood,
and his frequent residence at Naples and other parts of the south had
afforded him ample opportunities of perfecting a talent thus early
cultivated. But to-night the love of something beyond his art inspired
the voice of Ferdinand. Singing with Henrietta Temple, he poured forth
to her in safety all the passion which raged in his soul. The squire’s
lady looked confused; Henrietta herself grew pale; the politicians
ceased even to whisper, and advanced from their corner to the
instrument; and when the duet was terminated, Mr. Temple offered his
sincere congratulations to his guest. Henrietta also turned with
some words of commendation to Ferdinand; but the words were faint
and confused, and finally requesting Captain Armine to favour them by
singing alone, she rose and vacated her seat.
Ferdinand took up the guitar, and accompanied himself to a Neapolitan
air. It was gay and festive, a _Ritornella_ which might summon your
mistress to dance in the moonlight. And then, amid many congratulations,
he offered the guitar to Miss Temple.
‘No one will listen to a simple melody after anything so brilliant,’
said Miss Temple, as she touched a string, and, after a slight prelude,
sang these words:--
THE DESERTED.
I.
Yes, weeping is madness,
Away with this tear,
Let no sign of sadness
Betray the wild anguish I fear.
When we meet him to-night,
Be mute then my heart!
And my smile be as bright,
As if we were never to part.
II.
Girl! give me the mirror
That said I was fair;
Alas! fatal error,
This picture reveals my despair.
Smiles no longer can pass
O’er this faded brow,
And I shiver this glass,
Like his love and his fragile vow!
‘The music,’ said Ferdinand, full of enthusiasm, ‘is-----’
‘Henrietta’s,’ replied her father.
‘And the words?’
‘Were found in my canary’s cage,’ said Henrietta Temple, rising and
putting an end to the conversation.
CHAPTER VII.
_In Which Captain Armine Indulges in a Reverie_.
THE squire’s carriage was announced, and then came his lady’s shawl. How
happy was Ferdinand when he recollected that he was to remain at Ducie.
Remain at Ducie!
Remain under the same roof as Henrietta Temple. What bliss! what
ravishing bliss! All his life, and his had not been a monotonous one; it
seemed that all his life could not afford a situation so adventurous and
so sweet as this. Now they have gone. The squire and his lady, and the
worthy rector who recollected Armine so well; they have all departed,
all the adieus are uttered; after this little and unavoidable bustle,
silence reigns in the salon of Ducie. Ferdinand walked to the window.
The moon was up; the air was sweet and hushed; the landscape clear,
though soft. Oh! what would he not have given to have strolled in that
garden with Henrietta Temple, to have poured forth his whole soul to
her, to have told her how wondrous fair she was, how wildly bewitching,
and how he loved her, how he sighed to bind his fate with hers, and live
for ever in the brilliant atmosphere of her grace and beauty.
‘Good night, Captain Armine,’ said Henrietta Temple.
He turned hastily round, he blushed, he grew pale. There she stood, in
one hand a light, the other extended to her father’s guest. He pressed
her hand, he sighed, he looked confused; then suddenly letting go her
hand, he walked quickly towards the door of the salon, which he opened
that she might retire.
‘The happiest day of my life has ended,’ he muttered.
‘You are so easily content then, that I think you must always be happy.’
‘I fear I am not so easily content as you imagine.’
She has gone. Hours, many and long hours, must elapse before he sees her
again, before he again listens to that music, watches that airy grace,
and meets the bright flashing of that fascinating eye. What misery was
there in this idea? How little had he seemed hitherto to prize the joy
of being her companion. He cursed the hours which had been wasted away
from her in the morning’s sport; he blamed himself that he had not even
sooner quitted the dining-room, or that he had left the salon for a
moment, to commune with his own thoughts in the garden. With difficulty
he restrained himself from reopening the door, to listen for the distant
sound of her footsteps, or catch, perhaps, along some corridor, the
fading echo of her voice. But Ferdinand was not alone; Mr. Temple still
remained. That gentleman raised his face from the newspaper as Captain
Armine advanced to him; and, after some observations about the day’s
sport, and a hope that he would repeat his trial of the manor to-morrow,
proposed their retirement. Ferdinand of course assented, and in a moment
he was ascending with his host the noble and Italian staircase: and he
then was ushered from the vestibule into his room.
His previous visit to the chamber had been so hurried, that he had
only made a general observation on its appearance. Little inclined to
slumber, he now examined it more critically. In a recess was a French
bed of simple furniture. On the walls, which were covered with a rustic
paper, were suspended several drawings, representing views in the
Saxon Switzerland. They were so bold and spirited that they arrested
attention; but the quick eye of Ferdinand instantly detected the
initials of the artist in the corner. They were letters that made his
heart tremble, as he gazed with admiring fondness on her performances.
Before a sofa, covered with a chintz of a corresponding pattern with
the paper of the walls, was placed a small French table, on which
were writing materials; and his toilet-table and his mantelpiece were
profusely ornamented with rare flowers; on all sides were symptoms of
female taste and feminine consideration.
Ferdinand carefully withdrew from his coat the flower that Henrietta had
given him in the morning, and which he had worn the whole day. He kissed
it, he kissed it more than once; he pressed its somewhat faded form to
his lips with cautious delicacy; then tending it with the utmost care,
he placed it in a vase of water, which holding in his hand, he threw
himself into an easy chair, with his eyes fixed on the gift he most
valued in the world.
An hour passed, and Ferdinand Armine remained fixed in the same
position. But no one who beheld that beautiful and pensive countenance,
and the dreamy softness of that large grey eye, could for a moment
conceive that his thoughts were less sweet than the object on which they
appeared to gaze. No distant recollections disturbed him now, no memory
of the past, no fear of the future. The delicious present monopolised
his existence. The ties of duty, the claims of domestic affection, the
worldly considerations that by a cruel dispensation had seemed, as it
were, to taint even his innocent and careless boyhood, even the urgent
appeals of his critical and perilous situation; all, all were forgotten
in one intense delirium of absorbing love.
Anon he rose from his seat, and paced his room for some minutes, with
his eyes fixed on the ground. Then throwing off his clothes, and taking
the flower from the vase, which he had previously placed on the table,
he deposited it in his bosom. ‘Beautiful, beloved flower,’ exclaimed
he; ‘thus, thus will I win and wear your mistress!’
CHAPTER VIII.
_A Strange Dream_.
RESTLESS are the dreams of the lover that is young. Ferdinand Armine
started awake from the agony of a terrible slumber. He had been walking
in a garden with Henrietta Temple, her hand was clasped in his, her
eyes fixed on the ground, as he whispered delicious words. His face
was flushed, his speech panting and low. Gently he wound his vacant arm
round her graceful form; she looked up, her speaking eyes met his, and
their trembling lips seemed about to cling into a------
When lo! the splendour of the garden faded, and all seemed changed and
dim; instead of the beautiful arched walks, in which a moment before
they appeared to wander, it was beneath the vaulted roof of some temple
that they now moved; instead of the bed of glowing flowers from which
he was about to pluck an offering for her bosom, an altar rose, from the
centre of which upsprang a quick and lurid tongue of fire. The dreamer
gazed upon his companion, and her form was tinted with the dusky hue of
the flame, and she held to her countenance a scarf, as if pressed by the
unnatural heat. Great fear suddenly came over him. With haste, yet
with tenderness, he himself withdrew the scarf from the face of his
companion, and this movement revealed the visage of Miss Grandison.
Ferdinand Armine awoke and started up in his bed. Before him still
appeared the unexpected figure. He jumped out of bed, he gazed upon the
form with staring eyes and open mouth. She was there, assuredly she was
there; it was Katherine, Katherine his betrothed, sad and reproachful.
The figure faded before him; he advanced with outstretched hand; in his
desperation he determined to clutch the escaping form: and he found
in his grasp his dressing-gown, which he had thrown over the back of a
chair.
‘A dream, and but a dream, after all,’ he muttered to himself; ‘and yet
a strange one.’
His brow was heated; he opened the casement. It was still night; the
moon had vanished, but the stars were still shining. He recalled with an
effort the scene with which he had become acquainted yesterday for the
first time. Before him, serene and still, rose the bowers of Ducie.
And their mistress? That angelic form whose hand he had clasped in his
dream, was not then merely a shadow. She breathed, she lived, and under
the same roof. Henrietta Temple was at this moment under the same roof
as himself: and what were her slumbers? Were they wild as his own, or
sweet and innocent as herself? Did his form flit over her closed vision
at this charmed hour, as hers had visited his? Had it been scared away
by an apparition as awful? Bore anyone to her the same relation as
Katherine Grandison to him? A fearful surmise, that had occurred to him
now for the first time, and which it seemed could never again quit his
brain. The stars faded away, the breath of morn was abroad, the chant
of birds arose. Exhausted in body and in mind, Ferdinand Armine flung
himself upon his bed, and soon was lost in slumbers undisturbed as the
tomb.
CHAPTER IX.
_Which I Hope May Prove as Agreeable to the Reader as to Our
Hero_.
FERDINAND’S servant, whom he had despatched the previous evening to
Armine, returned early with his master’s letters; one from his ‘mother,
and one from Miss Grandison.
They were all to arrive at the Place on the day after the morrow.
Ferdinand opened these epistles with a trembling hand. The sight of