Chapter VIII: 'the Desire of the Moth for the Star.'

Ignorant of the little scene that had passed in the Collingwoods' drawing-room, Trevor Chute felt only something very nearly amounting to transports of rage when he thought of all that had occurred overnight at Sir Carnaby's club. The callous remarks of the frivolous old man stung him to the heart. So Clare as well as her father had blotted him out of their selfish world, and Desmond was the man who took his place!

Love, doubt, indignation, and jealousy tormented him by turns, or all together at once: love for Clare--the dear old love that had never died within him, and that, seeing her again and hearing her voice, had roused in all its former strength and tenderness; doubt whether she were worthy of it, and whether he had a place yet in her heart; indignation at the underbred indifference of her father to whatever he might think or feel, and jealousy of the influence of Desmond with them both.

Nor were the visions of hope and revenge absent. He pondered that if she loved him--if she still loved him--why leave it unknown? why should he trifle with himself and her? Why tamper with fate? Why not marry her in spite of her father and Desmond, too? In mere revenge he might make Clare his own, after all!

Then second, and perhaps better, thoughts came anon; for Trevor Chute, though to his friends apparently but an ordinary good fellow in most respects, a mere captain of the line, and so forth, was in spirit as genuine a soldier and a knight as chivalrous as any that ever rode at Hastings with the bastard Conqueror, or at Bannockburn; and thus, on reflection, his heart recoiled from making any advances to his old love--to the girl that had been torn from him, unless he obtained that which he considered hopeless--the permission of her father.

In India, why was it, when so many perished of jungle-fever and other pests, that he escaped with scarcely the illness of a day?--when among Nagas, Bhotanese, and Thibetians, matchlock balls and poisoned arrows whistled past him, and keen-edged swords crossed his, no missile or weapon had found a passage to his heart?

Amid these stirring scenes and episodes he had striven to forget everything--more than all, those days of his Guards' life in England; and now--now a lovely face--'only the face of a woman--only a woman's face, nothing more,' as the song has it, and a woman's voice, with all its subtle music, had summoned again all the half-buried memories of the past!

From day-dreams, tormenting thoughts, and weary speculative fancies, which were in some respects alien to his natural temperament, Chute was roused by his valet, Tom Travers, presenting him with a note on the inevitable silver salver.

If, as we have related, he was startled before by seeing an envelope with the Collingwood crest thereon still more was he startled now on receiving another addressed in the well-remembered handwriting of Clare! How long, long it seemed since last he had looked upon it!

While his heart and hands trembled with surprise, he opened Clare's note, which stated briefly that she had heard from Mr. Vane of their intention of going abroad, and begged that he would not forget his promise of once more visiting Ida, by whose request she now wrote.

'The pallor of her complexion and the lowness of her spirits alarm me greatly,' continued Clare. 'I can but hope that when the season is over, and we go to Carnaby Court, the quietness there and the pleasant shady groves in autumn may restore her to health; only papa always likes to have the house full of lively friends from town, as you know of old.'

'Did her hand tremble when she referred to the past?' thought Chute, viciously. 'Was Desmond hanging over her chair when she penned this? Why does she and not Ida write to me? Is this angling or coquetry? But Clare needs not to angle with me, and she never was a coquette.'

The truth was that poor Clare had written, but with the greatest reluctance, by desire of Ida, who, for secret and kind reasons of her own, wished her sister to address him; and the sight of her handwriting did not fail to produce much of the effect which the gentle Ida intended; for Chute, while resolving to pay a visit, meant it to be a farewell one; and if he saw Clare, to suppress all emotion, to seem 'as cool as a cucumber.'

And yet, but for his promise given, and in accordance with Jack Beverley's dying request, he would, on visiting London, no more have gone near the Collingwood family than have faced a volcano in full flame; perhaps he would not have come to London at all till the season was over; and now he was preparing to pay a second visit, but as he meant, a farewell one, to Ida, after dining--actually dining, per express invitation--with the father, who, in a spirit of selfish policy, had broken his engagement with Clare.

It was an absurdly anomalous situation, and altogether strange.

With all Trevor Chute's regard for Jerry Vane, many of his deepest sympathies were with his brave comrade, Beverley, whose last moments he had soothed, and to whose last faint mutterings he had listened when life ebbed in that hot and distant bungalow--mutterings of his past years and absent love--of the beechen woods of his English home.

Chute had a brotherly love for Ida, and had she not asked him to love _her_ as a sister?

He could remember a dainty, delicate little girl, with a rose-leaf complexion, a face of smiles and dimples, all gay with white lace and blue ribbon, and the floating masses of her auburn hair bound by a simple fillet of gold.

And the memory of these past times, with all their dear and deep associations, came strongly back to Trevor's heart when, within a short time of the receipt of Clare's note, he sat with Ida's thin white hand in his, gazing into the depths of her tender brown eyes, on her pale and delicate cheek, and confessing to himself how lovely she was, and how charming as a friend.

She was every way more calm and composed than when he visited her before, and she seemed much inclined to talk of their first intercourse and relations in the years that were gone; and more than once she stirred the depths of Trevor's honest heart by a few words, dropped as if casually, yet so delicately, from which he was led to infer that he had frequently formed the topic of conversation between her and Clare, and that he was not without an interest in the breast of the latter still.

After a pause he sighed, but with some little bitterness, as he thought of the formidable rival who had Sir Carnaby's 'warmest wishes,' and said:

'Am I, then, to suppose that you have pleaded for me with Clare?'

'Yes, dear Trevor,' she replied, as her slender fingers tightened upon his.

'There was a time when I did not require even you, Ida, to do so for me,' he replied, mistaking, perhaps, her meaning, for he was oversensitive. 'That is all past and gone now; but in the same kind spirit may I not plead with you for one who was very dear to you once--poor Jerry Vane?'

She coloured deeply, and then grew very pale again, and while the long lashes of her soft eyes dropped, she said:

'Do not speak of this again, Trevor--my heart is in Beverley's grave.'

'Yet,' he urged gently, 'a time may come----'

'It will never come.'

'Poor Jerry--as he loved you once, he loves you still. I hope, dear Ida, you pardon me for speaking of this to you.'

'I do from my heart, Trevor; but tell me, in the time that you have seen me--I mean since your return--have you not been struck by a certain strangeness of action about me?'

'I confess that I have.'

'I am conscious of it repeatedly,' she continued with a strange and sad smile.

'In the midst of an animated conversation, I have all at once perceived your thoughts to wander, an expression of alarm to creep over your face, a kind of shudder through your frame, and your hand to tremble.'

'It is so.'

'And this sudden emotion, Ida?

'Comes when I think of Beverley--or, rather, this emotion, which I can neither avert nor control, makes _me_ think of _him_ even when my thoughts have been elsewhere.'

'This is very strange,' said Trevor Chute, as some of what he deemed Beverley's 'wild speeches' came back to memory again.

'Strange indeed, Trevor; but morbid thoughts come over me, with the _thrill_ you have remarked, even in the sunshine and when with others, but more especially when I am alone; and there seems to be--oh, Trevor Chute, I know not how to phrase it, lest you think me absurd or eccentric,' she continued, while a wild, sad earnestness stole into her eyes, 'that there hovers near me, and unknown to all, a spirit--a something that is unseen and intangible.'

'This is but overheated fancy,' said Chute tenderly, and with commiseration; 'you should be alone as seldom as possible, and change of air and scene will cure you of all this gloom. On my return--if I should return to London--I shall hope to hear that you are, as you used to be, the bright and happy Ida of my own brighter and happier days.'

And rising now, he lingered with Ida's hand in his, intent on departure, as his last orders to his valet had been to pack at once for France or Germany; and Tom Travers, a faithful fellow, whose discharge he had bought from the Guards, and who had been with him in India and everywhere else, was fully engaged on that duty by this time.

'But, dear Ida,' he said, 'dismiss as soon as you can these gloomy ideas from your mind, and cease to imagine that anything so unnatural, so repugnant to the fixed laws of nature, as aught hovering near you _unseen_, forcing you to think of Beverley, could exist.'

'I do not require to be forced to think of Beverley,' said she, with tender sadness.

'Pardon me, I did not mean that,' said he.

'I know; but that which seems to haunt me at times may exist; the world is full of mystery, and so is all nature. We know not how even a seed takes root, or a blade of grass springs from the earth.'

'Ida, this is the cant of the spiritualists!' urged Trevor Chute; 'do not adopt it. What would Sir Carnaby think of such a theme?'

She slightly shrugged her shoulders, and with a little laugh said:

'Papa's views of life are very different from mine, and his ideas of the superiority of mind over matter must be vague, if, indeed, he has any views on the subject at all. Do you go to the Continent alone?'

'No, Jerry Vane proposes to accompany me.'

'Also leaving London in the height of the season!'

'His reasons are nearly the same as mine,' replied Chute. 'Have you any message to him?'

'None,' said she, colouring and looking down.

'None,' repeated Chute, in a half-reproachful tone.

'Save my kindest wishes. You know, Trevor, that I used Jerry very ill; I am well aware of that, but it is too late now to--to----' She paused in confusion, and then said, 'Poor Jerry, I pity him with unspeakable pity.'

'I would that he heard you,' said Chute, caressing her pretty hand.

'Why?'

'Does not Dryden tell us that pity melts the mind to love?'

'Do not repeat the admission I have made,' said Ida, as a shade of annoyance crossed her pallid face, adding firmly, 'Let him have no false hopes; my heart has a great tenderness, but no such love as he wishes, for him.'

'And now farewell, Ida, for a long time.'

'A pleasant journey to you,' said she, and tears started to her eyes, as he bowed himself out of her boudoir.

'Thanks--to-night may see me in Paris.'