SIR HENRY HALLATON.
Warriors of long standing, who, like the Latin poet, have "militated,"
not without success, in many campaigns against the Fair, accept
reverses, scars, and even knock-down blows, with a wondrous affectation,
at least, of stoicism and unconcern. I have my own opinion on these
matters, and hold that the raw recruit, though he may bleed more freely,
may make wryer faces over his gashes, thrusts, and gun-shot wounds, yet
recovers their effects sooner and more completely than the drier and
tougher veteran. The heart, I think, is mended less and less easily
after each successive breakage. At last, like an old boot that has been
patched and cobbled over and over again, it lets in the enemy with a
sadly wasteful facility, and the careless Don Juan of twenty finds
himself a jealous, fretful, unhappy, yet dotingly devoted Don Alfonso at
fifty. There is retribution perhaps even here. A man who lavishes his
money in youth, becomes the slave of a guinea in old age. There must be
a day of reckoning for waste of time, health, intellect--why not also
for a reckless squandering of the affections? Whatever may have been its
practice, the moral code of chivalry was, doubtless, of the noblest and
the best. Men little know what they throw away in that thoughtless
prostitution of the heart which they are never taught to consider weak,
unmanly, and dishonourable. They abandon the brightest beacon to renown,
the surest guide to success, nay, one of the nearest paths to heaven.
All these are to be found in an honest love for a pure woman, and all
these are bartered every day for the smile of a coquette, or the empty
vanity of an hour.
When it is too late, there is something very piteous in that longing of
human nature for the good and the true, which causes it to accept, with
its eyes open, the false and the bad. A second marriage, when the first
had been a failure, was described by a well-known wit as "the triumph of
hope over experience;" surely the grasping at a shadow, when the
substance has proved unattainable, may be called the anodyne of illusion
for despair. "I only ask to be happy and to have every thing my own
way," is the unreasonable outcry of youth, embarking on a summer-sea
with fair wind and hopeful promise, though the golden islands are yet,
as they ever will be throughout the voyage, below the horizon, and the
safe anchorage of thoughtless childhood is already far on the lee.
"I have a right to be happy!" shouts manhood in stern defiance and
rebellion, when the waves are rising and the storm darkens around,
while he ploughs his way towards his aim by dint of ceaseless toil and
weary watches, and heart-breaking efforts that are in themselves
unhappiness and pain.
"I deserve to have been happy!" grumbles old age, though the haven is at
last in sight,--sorrowful but not penitent, regretting with revilings
and maledictions, not with remorse and self-reproach, the fair
opportunities neglected, the chances lost or thrown away,--ready on the
vaguest and wildest encouragement to 'boutship even now, and, reckless
of shrivelled sails and used-up stores, to put out into that dark,
dreary, disheartening sea once more.
It is well for man and woman too to have known a deep, engrossing, and
sincere affection; so elevating as to have ennobled their existence with
its lustre, so strong as to have swept all rivalry from its path, so
prosperous that they have never been driven to seek in paltry imitations
some fictitious solace for its loss.
Sir Henry Hallaton had been twice married; first, in his early youth,
when he became the victim of one of those women happily rare in our
English society, who literally go about seeking whom they may devour.
She accepted him after a week's acquaintance, and was tired of him in
less than a year. Then she ran away with a foreign Count, physically,
mentally, and socially, far inferior to her husband; and in moral
qualities, at least, _then_, not fit to black his boots. Who shall
explain these things? Sir Henry had a shot at the Count, and winged him;
but so madly was he in love with the woman by whom he had been thus
outraged, that he refused to try for a divorce. Had she not died a few
months later, he believed she might have returned to him--and he would
have taken her back! This consideration somewhat softened the pain he
was weak enough to feel in her loss. Then he married again a lady who
was devoted to _him_, this time, and who bore him a family, of which
his daughter Helen was the eldest. That he proved a faithful husband to
this true and affectionate wife, I cannot take upon myself to affirm,
but he was good to the children, and especially fond of his eldest.
After a few short years he lost his second wife too, and now began the
least excusable part of Sir Henry's life.
He was still handsome, with all the energy and most of the tastes of
youth. He was gay, popular, somewhat unscrupulous, and a great favourite
with women. The married ones liked him well enough, in all honour; and
of such he used to say, that "they could take care of themselves;" but
amongst the unmarried, many aspired to legal possession of himself and
his home; with these, unless he was much belied, he took cruel advantage
of feelings he ought never to have awakened, and hopes he never intended
to fulfil.
There were strange stories of Sir Henry's rides with Miss Fanny, and his
walks with Miss Violet, of the pic-nic that got Lady Jane into such a
scrape with her aunt, and the disappearance for several more hours than
was decorous of a young beauty, once the pride of half a dozen parishes,
subsequently ostracised for misdemeanours, in which she was far the
least erring culprit of the two. Scandals like these, however, neither
caused people to shut their doors against the reckless baronet, nor,
indeed, brought him into such disrepute as might have been expected with
that jury of matrons who constitute the court of appeal for county
society, and whose verdict in defiance of all evidence is almost always
given in condemnation of the accused. Had it not been for Helen, perhaps
Sir Henry, in an unguarded moment, would have surrendered himself once
for all, to recommence his search after happiness in matrimonial
fetters, calculated not only to impede his activity but creating much
untoward noise and jingle in his pursuit. The image of his child, I
believe, saved him many times from folly, more than once from guilt.
The temptation must have been very great, the seductions more than
ordinarily powerful, that could have induced Sir Henry either to abandon
his daughter and his home, or to place another in that home, over that
daughter's head. His last, and one of his most foolish escapades, had
been a sudden infatuation for Miss Ross. He was also not a little
ashamed of his discomfiture, at her cavalier rejection of his addresses,
and masterly retreat from his house.
The morning after her departure Sir Henry sat at breakfast, revolving in
his mind many matters of affection and sentiment, which did not,
however, seem to affect his spirits or his appetite. He was a late man,
and his family, consisting of three daughters, for the only son was
abroad with his regiment, generally dispersed to their several
occupations before he came down. Only Helen, after she had ordered
dinner and set the domestic works of the establishment in motion,
habitually paid him a visit to pour out his tea and chat with her papa
while he ate. To-day, she was later than usual, and her absence gave him
time to reflect on his demonstration and its repulse. Strange to say,
while he saw the folly of which he would fain have been guilty, and
laughed indulgently at his own infatuation, there was a degree of
soreness about his failure, more galling than that of disappointed
fantasy, or mere wounded self-love.
"Can it be that I _really_ care for this girl?" thought Sir Henry; "and
if so, that I of all men in the world am likely to be baffled in my
pursuit? Have I quite lost the art in which I was tolerably perfect
twenty, ten, ay, five years ago? and even if I have, is it not worth
anything to know that I can feel as I used, and am young in heart and
affections still?"
He would have got up and stared in the glass, deploring, as he often
did, the wrinkles about his eyes, the grey hairs in his whiskers, but
that Helen coming into the room began to pour out his tea and look
after the comforts of his repast.
She was a girl to be proud of, ay, and fond of too. Miss Ross described
her beauty graphically enough when she said it was that of an old Greek
_bas-relief_. The features were as regular, the brow as low and wide,
the under part of the face slightly prominent, and the mouth, when seen
in front, forming that beautiful curve so rarely modelled but in the
antique--such a mouth as denotes sensibility, firmness, courage,
sympathy, and other noble characteristics of womankind.
In addition to these advantages, Helen possessed what are called "Irish
eyes"--deep, soft, and winning, frank, modest, and full of intellect. I
can think of no other epithet to convey their lustre and their charm.
They were, probably, blue-grey, like Minerva's, but you never thought of
their colour, fringed as they were by curling eye-lashes darker than her
hair, and surmounted by firm, well-defined eye-brows of a yet deeper
shade than either. She was rather tall, too, and handsomely formed, with
shapely hands and feet; but the graceful figure suggested a fair amount
of strength and energy, nor were you surprised to learn that she could
ride, walk, garden, and milk a cow. There were few better waltzers
anywhere, and no such skater in the shire. Moreover, though she never
confessed to it, I believe she used to play cricket with her brother,
and was an undeniable long-stop.
Sir Henry looked fondly in her face, and his heart smote him to think
that he should ever have contemplated the possibility of setting any
other woman over his daughter's head.
"Letters, Nelly," said he, tossing her over a packet of them to open,
while he proceeded with his breakfast. "The old story, of course, county
meetings, advertisements for wire-fences, curse them! cheap wines;
nothing from Harry--he never writes but when he wants money--to be sure
that's nearly every mail--and two or three tradesmen's bills, which you
may put in the fire without opening."
"Why don't you _pay_ your bills?" said Miss Helen, who was rather fond
of lecturing her papa; it was her favourite way of petting him. "You let
them run up, and forget all about it; and then, when you want to buy a
horse, the money is required for something else. Now, look at me; I keep
the house accounts to a fraction, and pay them the first Monday in every
month to a minute."
Sir Henry laughed.
"How can I pay your debts and my own too? You spend all my money in soap
and sand-paper, you little tyrant, and expect me to find myself in
boots, gloves, saddlery, and the common necessaries of life. Nelly,
you're the plague of my existence!"
"I wish you would let me manage all these things for you," insisted Miss
Nelly, with great solemnity; "I'm sure you're cheated, papa, and you're
far too generous and open-hearted. Besides, you hate accounts, and I
_know_ you pay them often without adding them up. How I like figures! I
like managing--I like looking into things--I like having plenty to do."
"You'll have a house of your own to manage some day," answered her
father gaily, "and a husband too, you little witch. I'm sure I don't
envy him!"
But his face fell while he spoke; for he was thinking, when the fatal
time came, what should he do without his darling, the light, and joy,
and comfort of his home?
Miss Helen blushed. Perhaps she too had not been without her maiden
dreams of some such contingency hereafter. Perhaps she had foreshadowed
to herself the semblance of a future lord, whom she would tend as fondly
and love even more devotedly than papa. Perhaps already that phantom
shape had been filled in and coloured, and appeared visibly in the
flesh.
"Halloo, young woman!" exclaimed Sir Henry, tossing another letter
across the table, "here's something for you! An enormous envelope,
stamped with the arms of the Household Cavalry. Bravo, Nell! Have they
offered you a cornetcy, or a situation as bandmaster, or what?"
The blush deepened on Helen's face till it spread to the roots of her
thick dark hair; but she put back the unopened letter in her father's
hand, and, stealing round his chair, leaned on his shoulder, while she
stood behind him.
"Read it, papa," said she; "nobody in the world can have anything to say
to me that ought not to come to you first."
Again that pang of remorse shot through him, as he remembered his own
unworthiness. "What a good girl I have got!" he thought; "and what a
poor, irresolute wretch I am! I cannot trust myself for a day! I ought
to be better; I wish I could try to be better! Here have I been, ready
to gamble away my child's position and her every-day comfort for the
sake of a pair of black eyes and lanthorn jaws that I had never seen a
month ago, that I don't care for half as I do for Nell!--that don't care
a brass farthing for _me_! And I'd do it again, I _know_, under
temptation--that's the worst of it! Ah! I wish I had led a different
life, for Nelly's sake. I wonder if it's too late to begin now?"
Then he read his daughter's letter, a correct and harmless production as
could possibly be addressed to a young lady under the immediate
supervision of her papa, consisting indeed but of a few choice lines, to
express, with much politeness, the writer's intention of "availing
himself of Sir Henry's kindness, and of trespassing on his hospitality
for a couple of days' hunting the following week," with a studied
apology for addressing the daughter of the house, according to her
father's express directions, who had feared he might be away from home
when the letter arrived; the whole concluding with a vague allusion to a
ball of the previous season, which might mean anything, or might not.
"I told him to write to you, Nelly," said Sir Henry, tearing the letter
across and throwing it into the waste-paper basket; "it's lucky I did,
for I had forgotten all about it. And now I'm not quite sure which of
these fellows it is, they're all so alike, and they all ride chestnut
horses with great liberality, I must admit. Vanguard, Vanguard--which
was Vanguard? The little fellow with light hair, or the stout man who
spilt sherry over your dress? I believe I asked them all here next
week."
"Nonsense, papa!" replied Helen; "you're thinking of Sir Charles Carter
and Mr. Peacock. Captain Vanguard is the gentleman we met at Lady
Clearwell's, and who was so civil about his brougham when our carriage
got smashed."
"I remember!" exclaimed Sir Henry, suddenly enlightened, "a man with a
squint----"
"A squint!" returned Helen, indignantly. "Oh, papa! how can you say so?
He's got beautiful eyes; at least--I mean----" she added, picking
herself up with some confusion, "he hasn't the slightest vestige of a
squint! And you thought him good-looking."
"Did _you_ think him good-looking, Nelly?" said her father; "that's more
to the purpose."
"I never thought about it," answered the girl, tossing her head, yet
smiling a little with her deep expressive eyes. "He seemed
gentleman-like and good-natured, and you said you wanted to be civil to
him; so he'd better come here, I suppose, and I'll see that his room is
comfortable and his fire lit--that's _my_ department. Now, papa, if you
mean to be provoking, I'll go and attend to my own business: I've plenty
to do, and you're not to have any more tea. What an hour to have just
finished breakfast! Shall I ring?"
"Ring away, Nelly," said her father, putting a cigar in his mouth, and
sauntering off for his usual visit to the stables.
But Helen dipped into the waste-paper basket, and extracted therefrom
the two torn halves of Frank Vanguard's letter, which she pieced
together and perused attentively. Then she folded them carefully in
their envelope, also torn, and placed the whole in her apron pocket, ere
she rang the bell and sailed off on her daily avocations; from all which
I infer that, notwithstanding her denial, she _had_ thought about the
writer's good looks, and was, at least, perfectly satisfied that his
eyes had not the remotest tendency to a squint!