CLARA VAUGHAN
A NOVEL
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL III.
R. D. Blackmore
London and Cambridge:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1864.
The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved.
LONDON:
R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.
CLARA VAUGHAN
BOOK IV. (continued).
CHAPTER X.
STORY OF EDGAR VAUGHAN.
Child Clara, for your own dear sake, as well as mineand my sweet love's, I will not dwell on thattempestuous time. If you cannot comprehend it withoutwords, no words will enable you. If you can, and Ifear you do, no more words are wanted; and, as anold man weary of the world, I know not whether toenvy or to pity you.
Hither and thither I was flung, to the zenith starof ecstasy or the nadir gulf of agony, according asmy idol pet chose to smile or frown. Though shewas no silly child, but a girl of mind and feeling,she had a store, I must confess, of clouds as well asdazzling sunlight in the empyrean of her eyes. Hernature, like my love, was full of Southern passion. Itis like the air they breathe, the beauty they behold.One minute of such love compresses in a thunder floodall the slow emotions stealing through the drought-scrimpedchannel, where we dredge for gold deposits,through ten years of Saxon courtship. Instead ofLily-bloom, she should have been called the Passion-flower.
My life, my soul--how weak our English wordsare--she loved me from the first, I can take my oathshe did, although her glory was too great for her to ownit yet, though now and then her marvellous eyes provedtraitors. Sometimes when she was racking me most,feigning even, with those eyes cast down, her pellucidfingers point to point, and her little foot tapping theorchid bloom, feigning, I say, in cold blood, to reckonher noble lovers--long names all and horribly hatefulto me--suddenly, while I trembled, and scowled likea true-born Briton, suddenly up would leap the silkydrooping lashes, and a spring of soft electric light wouldflutter through them to the very core of my heart.
As for me, I abandoned myself. I made no pretenceof waiting a moment. I flung my heart wide opento her, and if she wou