When Lady Arden arose in the morning all was calm and sunshine.
The storm of the night might have seemed a dream but for the still
visible traces of its ravages. The river was greatly swollen, and
several of the largest and finest of a range of magnificent old trees
which had grown on the brow of a sloping bank, forming a beautiful
feature in the landscape, now lay on the ground, literally uprooted by
the violence of the tempest. Their fate, however, was soon forgotten in
that of two young oaks, which had been planted beside each other on the
lawn, on the joint birth-day of her two sons. The lightning had
shattered both: Lady Arden viewed them for the moment with a shuddering
sensation of superstitious dread, the influence of which it required all
her good sense to resist.
Geoffery Arden, the only nephew of the late Sir Alfred, was standing on
the grass, with his arms folded, and looking rather askance than
directly at the remains of the blasted trees, while his eye-brows were
drawn up contemptuously, and a somewhat scornful smile curled his lip,
as he marked blind Lewin the Harper, his countenance full of woe,
feeling, with visibly trembling hands, each shattered branch of the
uprooted oaks, while the large tears were falling from his sightless
eyes.
The brothers Willoughby and Alfred, and their three sisters, all
seemingly attracted by the same object, issued one by one, from the
open glass door of the breakfast room, and gathered round the spot; each
looked playfully dismal for a moment, and the next uttered some laughing
remark. They were soon joined by their mother; and the group would have
formed a striking family picture. Lady Arden was still a very fine
woman: from her mild temper the sweetness of her countenance was yet
unimpaired, while the expression of maternal tenderness,--and this from
the late tenor of her thoughts was unconsciously mingled with something
of solicitude,--with which she viewed her children, her sons now
especially, and Alfred in particular, her favourite son, gave additional
interest to her appearance.
Alfred's sparkling eye and blooming cheek did not, however, seem to
justify much anxiety on his account; his brother too, though he had
always been more delicate, seemed at present in excellent health and
spirits, while the three sisters were young, handsome, and happy
looking. Geoffery Arden still stood apart, as though there were but
little fellowship of feeling between him and the rest of the group.
He was a lad of eighteen or nineteen before the marriage of his uncle,
the late Sir Alfred; and from a child had been in the habit of hearing
his father and mother, and such of their particular friends as sought to
flatter their secret wishes, speculate on the possibility of his uncle's
never marrying, and his being consequently heir to the Arden estates,
which were strictly entailed in the male line. Nay, his very nursemaid's
usual threat was, that if he cried when his face was being washed, he
should never be Sir Geoffery. At school, all the boys at play hours had
somehow or other acquired the habit of calling him Sir Geoffery; and at
college his companions, particularly those who wished to flatter him
into idle extravagance, constantly joked and complimented him about his
great _expectations_. Thus had those expectations, unjustly founded as
they were, grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength;
till, when his uncle did marry, he could scarcely help thinking himself
an injured, robbed, and very ill-treated person. Hope however revived a
little, on the first three children chancing to be daughters, and his
mother began again to say, he might have the Arden estates
yet:--stranger things had happened. "And you might marry one of the
girls, you know, Geoffery," she would continue,--"it would be some
compensation to poor Sir Alfred for having no son."
"Indeed I should do no such thing," he would reply. "I should just
please myself. It's not to oblige me, I suppose, that my uncle has no
son."
The birth of the twin brothers, immediately after this, put an end to
all further speculations on the subject; except, indeed, that Mrs. Arden
could not help observing that, "after all, the lives of two weakly
infants, as twins of course must be, with the measles, hooping-cough,
and all other infantile diseases before them, were not worth much."
Geoffery became sulky under his disappointment, and said very little;
but silently he hated the twins for having been born. Of what use were
they, he thought; for what purpose had they been brought into the world,
except indeed to ruin his prospects.
Had they never been born, they would not have wanted the property, and
he might have enjoyed it. Now he must go and drudge at a profession,
the very idea of which, after his imagination had been so long dazzled
by false hopes, he absolutely loathed.
He had been educated for the Bar, but had neglected his studies. He had
been dissipated without gaiety of heart, and a gambler from avarice. His
hopes had made him proud, while his fears had made him gloomy. In short,
he had contrived to extract the evil from every thing, while he had
avoided all that was good. As to his legal studies, he had never read
any portion with interest or attention but the law of male entail.
He was a bachelor, and likely to remain such: for he could not afford to
marry, unless he obtained a much larger fortune than he was entitled to
expect.
There was nothing he could exactly dare to do to injure his cousins;
but he hated them both, and kept an evil eye upon them. As for his
female cousins, he did not take the trouble of actively hating them, he
merely despised them as beings shut out from all possibility of
inheriting the property. Beautiful and high born as they were, he would
not have accepted the hand of any one of them had it been offered to
him.
Sir Willoughby was goodnaturedly weak, and very vain;--his was a vanity
however which, when it happened to be gratified, made him extremely
happy, by keeping him in the highest good humour with himself. From him
Geoffery won large sums at billiards, by flattering him on his play,
'till he induced him to give him, habitually, such odds as amounted, in
point of fact, to giving him the game, or, in other words, the sum
staked upon it.
Lady Arden often endeavoured to dissuade her son from acquiring so bad a
habit as that of gambling, but in vain; for Willoughby, like all weak
men, was obstinate to excess: he had besides a marvellous respect for
the salique law, and that jealousy of being guided, which unhappily
always forms a leading feature in the characters of those who stand most
in need of guidance. Yet he was fondly attached to his mother; his
greatest delight was to devise something for her pleasure or her
accommodation; he was always ready to make her munificent presents; in
short, he would do any thing to oblige her, with the exception of
following her suggestions.
Not that he always ungraciously refused requests that contained in them
nothing prohibitory; he had no particular objection sometimes to do a
thing he was asked to do; but a thing he was asked not to do, he was
always sure to do! And if it happened to be a thing which Geoffery
Arden wished should be done, he could always decide the point, by
artfully complimenting his cousin on the _firmness_ of his character.
Of Alfred, Geoffery could make nothing. He was frank, kind, and
open-hearted; yet clear-seeing and decided. With him his mother's
slightest wish but guessed at was a law: his sisters, too, could always
coax him out of any plan of pleasure of his own, and get him to go with
them. Not so those for whom he had no particular affection; he had never
yet been known, in any one instance, to sacrifice his opinion of what
was right, respectable, or amiable, to the persuasions of idle
companions; so that he was already respected as well as regarded by
thinking and discerning men much older than himself; some of them too,
men who had bought their experience dearly enough and who were surprised
into involuntary admiration of so young a person, who seemed to have his
intuitively.
His brother loved him in the most enthusiastic manner; more than he did
his mother, or any one else in the world; yet, strange to say, such was
Willoughby's dread of being governed, that even the brother whom he
loved so much, had not the slightest influence over him; nay, Alfred was
afraid to use persuasion of any kind, lest it should have a contrary
effect; and yet, if he ever let it appear that he was in the slightest
degree hurt or offended by this unmeaning and dogged obstinacy on the
part of his brother, Willoughby's despair would sometimes, though but
for a moment or two, manifest itself in a way perfectly terrifying; he
would rush towards a window, or a river side, and threaten to fling
himself out or in; so that Alfred, though he knew himself to be his
brother's sole confidant, and the first object of his affections, was
obliged, with great pain of course, to see him led away by designing
people, especially his cousin Geoffery, into many practices far from
prudent, yet not interfere; and even be thankful, when by refraining
from so doing, he could avoid the recurrence of the distressing scenes
alluded to. Willoughby had received a blow on the head when a child,
which had not then exhibited any serious consequences; whether this
circumstance had any connection with the occasional strangeness of his
temper or not, it was impossible to say, but Alfred sometimes secretly
feared it had. It was a thought, however, which he did not communicate
even to his mother. Such was the family, which on the morning we have
described, quitted Arden Park for London.