THE "ELOPEMENT."
When the gentlemen reached the lawn, they found it already covered, not
only with the company from all the other rooms, but likewise with crowds
of people from the Park, who came rushing in through different entrances
from all quarters.
In the midst of all this bustle and confusion, however, Mr. Cartwright
remembered his engagement with Mr. Stephen Corbold, and, only waiting
till he saw that the servants of his house were among the throng, he
sought Mrs. Cartwright, and finding, as he expected, her daughter close
beside her, whispered in her ear, "Oblige me, dearest Clara! by sending
Helen to your dressing-room for a small packet of very important papers
which I left on the chimney-piece. I cannot go myself; and there is not
a servant to be found."
Mrs. Cartwright immediately spoke the command to Helen, and the vicar
had the satisfaction of watching her make her way through the crowd, and
enter the window of the drawing-room.
Poor Helen was not happy enough to have enjoyed in any degree the
splendid bustle of the day, and the total repose and silence of the
house was quite refreshing to her. She passed through the drawing-room
into the hall, from whence not even the loud buzz of the multitude
without could reach her; and untying her bonnet, and throwing that and
her scarf on a slab, she sat down to enjoy for a few moments the cool
quiet of the lofty silent room.
At length she reluctantly rose to perform her mother's bidding, walked
slowly and languidly up the stairs, along the spacious corridor, and
into Mrs. Cartwright's dressing-room. This little apartment was no
longer the dear familiar scene of maternal fondness that it once was, or
Helen might here again have been tempted to sit down for the enjoyment
of temporary repose. But, in truth, she no longer loved that
dressing-room; and walking straight to the chimney-piece, she took the
packet she found there, and turned to retrace her steps.
It was with a start of disagreeable surprise, though hardly of alarm,
that she saw Mr. Stephen Corbold standing between her and the door. The
persevering impertinence of his addresses had long ago obliged her to
decline all communication with him, and it was therefore without
appearing to notice him that she now pursued her way towards the door.
But hardly had she made a step towards it, when the odious wretch
enclosed her in his arms. She uttered a loud shriek, and by a violent
effort disengaged herself; but ere she could reach the door, he had
closed, locked it, and put the key in his pocket.
A dreadful sensation of terror now seized upon her; yet even then she
remembered that she was in her mother's house, and a feeling of
confidence returned.
"You are intoxicated, sir!" said she drawing back from him towards the
bell. "But you surely cannot be so mad as to insult me here!"
"I will insult you nowhere, Miss Helen, if you will behave as you ought
to do to the man whom Heaven hath chosen for your husband. But as for
your ringing the bell, or screeching either, I'll fairly tell you at
once, it is of no use. There is not a single human being left in the
house but our two selves; so you may as well give me satisfaction at
once, and promise to marry me without more trouble, or else, I will make
you thankful for the same, without my ever asking you again."
"Open that door, sir, and let me out instantly," said Helen, pale as
death, yet still not believing that the monster before her would dare to
attempt any outrage. "Even Mr. Cartwright," she added, "would resent any
impertinence offered to me under my mother's roof. Let me pass, sir:
believe me, you had better."
"Believe me; I had better not, Miss Helen. You have been playing the
fool with me long enough; and as to my cousin Cartwright, he is quite of
the same opinion, I assure you. Charming Helen!" he exclaimed, again
stretching out his arms to enclose her, "be only half as kind as you are
beautiful, and we shall be the happiest couple in the world!"
"At least, sir, you must let me consult my mother about it," said Helen,
contriving to keep the table between them, and believing that he was
there only in consequence of his being intoxicated. "Let me ask my
mother's consent, Mr. Corbold."
Corbold laughed aloud. "You think me tipsy, my sweet girl; but if I am,
trust me it's no more than just to give me courage to teach you your
duty. My charming Helen! let go the table, and understand the thing at
once. My cousin. Mr. Cartwright is under some obligations to me, and he
means to settle them all by giving me a pretty fortune with you; and as
he knows that unhappily you are not converted as yet, and have shown
yourself not over christian-like in return for my love, it is he himself
who invented this scheme of having you sent up here when all the
servants were out of the house--and of my being here ready to meet you,
and to teach you your duty to him, and to your mother, and to your
heavenly father, and to me;--and so now you know all and every thing,
and I have got the key of the room in my pocket.--And will you consent
to be my wife, beginning from this very minute?"
Dreadful as Helen's terror was, her senses did not leave her; on the
contrary, all the strength of her mind seemed to be roused, and her
faculties sharpened, by the peril that beset her. She doubted not for a
moment that his statement respecting Mr. Cartwright's part in this
villany was true, and that she was indeed left in the power of this
detested being, with no help but the protection of Heaven and her own
courage. She fixed her eye steadily on that of Corbold, and perceived
that as he talked, the look of intoxication increased; she therefore
skilfully prolonged the conversation by asking him, if indeed she must
be his wife, where they were to live, whether her sister Fanny might
live with them, whether he ever meant to take her to London, and the
like; contriving, as she did so, to push the table, which still
continued between them, in such a direction as to leave her between it
and the door of her mother's bed-chamber. Corbold was evidently losing
his head, and appeared aware of it; for he stopped short in his replies
and professions of passionate love that he was making: and exclaiming
with an oath that he would be trifled with no longer, he suddenly thrust
the table from between them, and again threw his arms round Helen's
waist.
She was not, however, wholly unprepared to receive him. On first
approaching the table that had hitherto befriended her, she perceived on
it a large vial of spirits of hartshorn: this she had taken possession
of, and held firmly in her hand; and at the moment that Corbold bent his
audacious head to kiss her, she discharged the whole contents upon his
eyes and face, occasioning a degree of blindness and suffocation, that
for the moment totally disabled him. He screamed with the sudden pain,
and raised his hands to his tortured eyes. Before he removed them, Helen
had already passed through her mother's bed-room, and was flying by a
back staircase to the servants' room below. Without waiting to see if
she were pursued, she opened a back door that led into the stable-yard,
and, after a moment's consideration, proceeded across it, into a lane
which led in one direction to the kitchen gardens, and in the other into
the road to Oakley.
Even at that moment Helen had time to remember that if she turned her
steps towards the kitchen gardens, she should pass by a park gate which
would immediately lead her to all the safety that the protection of an
assembled multitude could give. But she remembered also that in a few
hours she should again be left in the hands of Mr. Cartwright, and,
inwardly uttering a solemn vow that nothing should ever again make her
wilfully submit to this, she darted forward, unmindful of her uncovered
head, and, with a degree of speed more proportioned to her agitation
than her strength, pursued the short cut across the fields to Oakley,
and entering the grounds by the gate which led to the lawn, perceived
Sir Gilbert, Lady Harrington, and their son, seated on a garden bench,
under the shelter of a widely spreading cedar-tree.
Helen knew that she was now safe, and she relaxed her speed, slowly and
with tottering steps approaching the friends from whom, notwithstanding
their long estrangement, her heart anticipated a warm and tender
welcome. Yet they did not rise to meet her.
"Perhaps," thought she, "they do not know me;" and it was then she
recollected that her hair was hanging dishevelled about her face without
hat or cap to shelter it. She was greatly heated, and her breath and
strength barely sufficed to bring her within a few yards of the party,
when totally exhausted, she sat down upon the turf, and burst into
tears.
Colonel Harrington had not written the letter to Helen, which the Vicar
of Wrexhill destroyed, without having put both his parents in his
confidence. Lady Harrington's fond affection for her god-daughter, which
her enforced absence had in no degree lessened, rendered the avowal of
her son's attachment a matter of unmixed joy; and though Sir Gilbert
declared that he would as soon stand in the relation of brother to his
Satanic Majesty as to Cartwright, he at length gave his apparently sulky
consent with perhaps as much real pleasure as his lady herself.
Both the one and the other, however, knew perfectly well that their son
would have been an excellent match for Helen, even when her father was
alive, and would, as it was supposed, have given her a fortune of forty
thousand pounds; and they felt some degree of triumph, neither unamiable
nor ungenerous in its nature, at the idea of securing to one at least of
poor Mowbray's family a station in society that not even their connexion
with Mr. Cartwright could tarnish.
The whole family understood the position of things at the Park too well
to be surprised at no answer being sent express to Colonel Harrington's
letter, and the following post was waited for with pleasurable though
impatient anxiety. But when it arrived without bringing any answer, and
another and another followed with no notice taken of a proposal of
marriage, which, as Sir Gilbert said, the proudest woman in England
might have been glad to accept, the misery of the young man himself, and
the anger and indignation of his parents, were about equally vehement.
Considering the opinion entertained by Sir Gilbert of what he was
pleased to term Mr. Cartwright's finished character, it is surprising
that no idea should even have occurred to him of the possible
suppression of this important epistle; but, in truth, the same
interpretation of it had suggested itself to the minds of them all. They
believed that Helen, from a sense of duty, had submitted the proposal to
her mother, and that, forbidden to accept it by the vindictive feelings
of the "parvenu priest," she had been weak enough to obey even his
commands, to leave the letter unanswered--a degree of timidity, and want
of proper feeling, productive of almost equal disappointment to all
three.
Impressed with such feelings against her, it is perhaps not very
surprising, that neither the heart-stricken lover, nor his offended
parents, rose to welcome the approach of poor Helen.
"Some family quarrel, I suppose," said Lady Harrington. "They seem to
have turned her out of doors in some haste."
"I will promise her that she shall not now find an entrance into mine,"
said Sir Gilbert. "Perhaps the young lady thinks better of it, and that
it may be as well to contradict pa and ma a little for the sake of being
Mrs. Harrington. Those who will not when they may, when they will they
shall have--" But before Sir Gilbert could finish his stave, Helen
Mowbray was stretched upon the turf.
Colonel Harrington, not too well knowing what he did, ran to the spot
where she lay, and hardly daring to look at her, stammered out--"Miss
Mowbray! Gracious Heaven, how fearfully she changes colour! So red, and
now so deadly pale! Speak to me, Helen--What has happened to you?--How
comes it that you are here? After----Oh, Helen, open your eyes, and
speak to me! Mother! mother! she is very ill!"
Lady Harrington now rose slowly and gloomily from her seat, and walked
to the place where Helen lay, her head supported by the arm of Colonel
Harrington; every tinge of colour fled from her cheeks, her eyes closed,
and no symptom of life remaining, excepting that tears from time to time
escaped from beneath her long eyelashes.
It is difficult to see a person one has ever loved, asleep, and yet
retain anger towards them; they look so helpless, so innocent, so free
from all that could have ever moved our spleen, that not the most
eloquent defence that language ever framed could plead their cause so
well as that mute slumber. Still more difficult would it be to look at a
fair creature in the state in which Helen now lay, and retain any
feeling harsher than pity.
"There is something more in all this, William, than we yet understand,"
said Lady Harrington, after gazing silently at Helen for some minutes.
"This poor child has not fainted, her tears prove that; but she is
suffering from bodily fatigue and mental misery.--Helen! rouse yourself.
Let us understand each other at once. Why did you not reply to my son
William's letter?"
Helen did rouse herself. She opened her eyes, and fixing them on Lady
Harrington, while the colour for a moment rapidly revisited her cheeks,
she said, in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible, "A letter from
Colonel Harrington?--To me?--A letter to me?--I never received it."
"Thank Heaven!" cried Colonel Harrington, springing from the ground, for
Helen's head no longer rested on his arm. "Oh! what suffering should we
have been spared, if we had done her but the justice to think of this!"
He hastily returned to his father, who, though he had not advanced a
step, had risen from his seat, and, to do him justice, was looking
towards Helen with great anxiety. "She never received it, sir!" said he,
in a voice husky from agitation: "Oh! come to her; soothe her with
kindness, my dearest father, and all may yet be happiness amongst us."
"What, Helen!--Helen, my poor girl, are you come to us with some new
trouble?--And did you indeed never get William's letter, my dear child?"
The mention of such a letter again dyed Helen's cheeks with blushes; but
she raised her eyes to Sir Gilbert's face, with a look that seemed to
ask a thousand questions as she replied, "I never received any letter
from Colonel Harrington in my life."
"I am devilish glad to hear it, my dear, that's all. So, then, you don't
know that----"
"Hold your peace, Sir Knight," said Lady Harrington, interrupting
him.--"And you come with me, sweet love. I'll lay my best herbal to that
dead leaf, that you are the only one perfectly faultless among us; and
that one, two, and three of us deserve to be--I can hardly tell what--in
the power of the vicar, I think, for having been so villanous as to
suspect you; and worse still, for having lived so close to you without
ever having found out whether you were really watched like a state
prisoner or not."
"Has the rascal dared----" cried Sir Gilbert, but before he could finish
his sentence, Lady Harrington and her son were leading Helen between
them towards the house, her ladyship laying a finger on her lip as she
passed her husband, in token that he was to say no more.
Having reached what Lady Harrington called a place of safety, where, as
she said the men could neither come nor hear, she made Helen lay herself
upon a sofa, and then said, "Now, my Helen, if you are ill at ease in
body, lay there quiet, and try to sleep; but if you are only, or chiefly
ill at ease in mind, let your limbs only remain at rest, and relieve
yourself and me by telling me every thing that has happened since we
parted last."
"It is a long and sad history, my dearest friend," replied Helen,
kissing the hand which still held hers, "but I am very anxious that you
should know it all; for so only can the action I have committed to-day
be excused."
"What action, Helen?--what is it you have done, my child?"
"I have eloped from my mother's house, Lady Harrington."
"But you have eloped alone, Helen?"
"Yes! alone."
"Well then, my dear, I will give you absolution for that. Perhaps there
are those among us who may not find it so easy to absolve you from all
blame for not doing it before. But now for particulars.--Will you have a
glass of water, Helen? Mercy on me! I believe it must be a glass of
wine. What can you have got to tell? You change colour every moment, my
dear child."
Helen's narrative, however, being of necessity less full then that
contained in the preceding pages, need not be repeated. It was given
indeed with all the force and simplicity of truth and deep feeling, and
told all she knew of Mr. Cartwright's plans and projects; but, excepting
what she had that day learned during her dreadful interview with
Corbold, she had little to add to what Lady Harrington knew before.
This interview, however, was itself fully enough to justify the
"elopement," of which Helen still spoke with such dismay; and, together
with the fact, again asked for, and again repeated, that no letter from
Colonel Harrington had reached her hands, was sufficient to make her
ladyship burst forth into a passion of indignation against the Vicar of
Wrexhill, and to make her, while overpowering Helen with the tenderest
caresses, bless her again and again for having at last flown to seek
shelter where it would be given with such heartfelt joy.
Soothed, consoled, and almost happy as Helen was made by this recovered
kindness, her anxiety to know why, and upon what subject Colonel
Harrington could have written to her, was becoming every moment more
powerful. There was something so very fond, so very maternal in Lady
Harrington's manner to her,--something that seemed to say that
she was of more consequence to her now than she had ever been
before,--something, in short, quite indescribable, but which gave birth
to such delicious hopes in the breast of Helen, that she almost feared
to meet the eye of the old lady, lest all she guessed, and all she
wished, should be read in her own.
It is possible, that with all the care she took to avoid the betraying
this anxiety, she did not succeed; for, in answer to some very delicate
and very distant hint, that it was extremely disagreeable to have one's
letters intercepted, Lady Harrington, though she only replied, "Yes, it
is, Helen," rose and left the room, only adding as she closed the door,
"Keep yourself quiet, my dear child: I shall return to you presently."
"Presently" is a word that certainly appears, by common usage, to admit
of very considerable variety of interpretation; and it was evident that
on the present occasion the two parties between whom it passed
understood it differently. Long before Lady Harrington again appeared,
Helen felt persuaded that some important circumstance must have occurred
to make her so completely change her purpose; yet the good lady herself,
when she re-entered the room, looked and was perfectly unconscious of
having made any delay at all inconsistent with her "presently."
She held a folded paper in her hand. "You have not asked me, Helen," she
said, "on what subject it was that my son wrote to you; and yet I
suspect that you have some wish to know. I have been down stairs to
consult him on the best mode of repairing your precious vicar's
treachery, and he suggested my putting into your hands the copy of the
letter which has been so basely intercepted; which copy, it seems, has
remained safely in his desk, while its original has probably fed the
flames in Mr. Cartwright's secret chamber, kindling thereby a
sympathetic and very consuming fire in the breast of the writer."
Helen stretched forth a very trembling hand to receive the paper; her
eyes were fixed upon it, either to read through its enclosure the
characters within, or to avoid at that moment meeting the eye of her
godmother.
"I shall leave you, my love, to peruse it alone; and presently, when I
think you have done so, will return to ask if you cannot in some degree
comprehend what must have been felt at its not obtaining an answer."
Having said this, Lady Harrington retired without waiting for a reply,
and leaving Helen unable for a moment to learn what her heart throbbed
with such violence to know.
The letter of which Helen now held the copy has been already presented
to the reader; and if she chance to be one of Helen's age, having at her
heart a love unbreathed to any human ear, she may guess what my Helen's
feelings were at finding such love had met an equal, an acknowledged
return. Such a one may guess Helen's feelings;--but no other can.
Lady Harrington's _presently_ now seemed to Helen as much shorter than
it really was as the last had seemed longer. She had read the letter but
four times through, and pressed it to her heart, kissed it, and so
forth, not half so much as she desired, and it deserved, when a knock
was heard at the door, and the old lady again entered.
The happy, but agitated girl stood up to receive her, and though she
spoke not a single word, the manner in which she rushed into her
maternal arms, and hid her face upon her bosom, spoke plainly enough
that the gallant colonel had no reason to despair.
"What must he have thought of me!" were Helen's first words--"And
you?--and Sir Gilbert?--Such a letter! Dearest, dearest Lady Harrington,
you could not really think I had ever received it!"
"You have struck the right chord there, my Helen. We all deserve to have
suffered ten thousand times more than we have done, for having for a
moment believed it possible you should have received that letter and not
invented some means to answer it--let the answer be what it might. And
this answer?--you have not yet told me what it is to be. I do not know
how much, or how little, you may happen to like William, my dear; but in
case you should have no insuperable aversion to him, the business is
made delightfully easy by this adventure. The elopement is done and
over already."
Helen only pressed Lady Harrington's hand to her heart, but said
nothing.
"Yes,--you have found the way to let me into your secret, without
speaking. This little heart throbs violently enough to prevent any
suspicion of indifference. But what am I to say to my impatient hero
below?--That you will, or you won't marry him, as soon as the lawyers
will let you?"
"Oh! Lady Harrington!"
"Come down stairs, my dear;--you had better come down, I do assure you;
for I expect Sir Gilbert will be up in a moment, and you cannot suppose
that William will remain behind; and my bed-room would by no means be so
dignified a scene for the denouement as the great saloon. Come, dear,
come."
And Helen went--trembling, blushing, with tears in her eyes, and such
palpitation at her heart that she was very sure she could not pronounce
a word. But what need was there of words? The happy colonel was soon
perfectly satisfied, and thanked her on his bended knee for a consent
more looked than spoken.
Even Sir Gilbert himself, though singularly attached to plain speaking,
seemed well content on the present occasion to dispense with it; and
pressed Helen to his heart, and kissed her forehead, and called her his
dear daughter, apparently with as much satisfaction as if she had
declared herself ready to accept of his son in the very best arranged
words ever spoken upon such an occasion.
When the first few decisive moments were past, and each one of the party
felt that all things were settled, or about to be settled, in exact
conformity to their most inward and earnest desires, and when Helen was
placed as the centre of the six loving and admiring eyes that were fixed
upon her, she closed her own; but it was neither to faint, nor to sleep,
but to meditate for a moment with the more intensity upon the miraculous
change wrought in her destiny within the last few hours.
"What are you thinking of, my Helen?" said the colonel, jealous, as it
should seem, of losing sight of those dear eyes, even for a moment.
"I am endeavouring to believe that it is all real," replied Helen with
beautiful simplicity.
"Bless you, my darling child," said the rough baronet, greatly touched.
"What an old villain I have been to you, Helen!--abusing you, hating
you, calling you all manner of hard names,--and your little heart as
true as steel all the time."
"Real?--real that you are beloved by me, Helen?" cried Colonel
Harrington, absolutely forgetting that he was not tete-a-tete with his
fair mistress.
"And how is she to answer him, with you and me peering in her face, my
lady? Ought we not to be ashamed of ourselves?--Come along this moment."
"Very well,--I will go, but only upon one condition, Helen. Remember,
William, she is to indulge in no disagreeable reminiscences, and no
melancholy anticipations, but look just as beautiful and as happy when I
come back, as she does now."
This farewell advice was not thrown away; for it assisted Colonel
Harrington to baffle, or to banish, all the fears and regrets respecting
her mother's displeasure at her conduct, which came like a cloud across
the bright perspective of Helen's hopes for the future. Her lover showed
himself, indeed, sufficiently adroit, both in turning to account all the
favourable circumstances attending their sudden engagement, and in using
his mother's authority to prevent her dwelling upon what was
unfavourable. "Might not a second home," he asked, "be of great
advantage both to Fanny and Miss Torrington? Might not the connexion
tend to keep Mr. Cartwright in order, and prevent his finally injuring
Charles? And lastly, did she not think it would give pleasure to that
Charles himself?"
To Lady Harrington Helen had frankly recounted the history of Corbold's
hateful persecution, from its first beginning in London, to the fearful
outrage it had led to on that eventful day; but she had begged her to
repeat no more of it to Sir Gilbert and the colonel than might be
sufficient to render her running away intelligible; and this request
having been strictly complied with, for Lady Harrington seemed as
unwilling as Helen to trust her men-folk with this history, Colonel
Harrington, in conversing with her on all she had felt and suffered
since her mother's marriage, spoke of him only as a presumptuous man who
had dared to persevere in addressing her after she had refused him.
It was, probably, the heightened colour of Helen as she listened to this
mention of his name that excited a greater degree of interest and
curiosity concerning him than her lover had at first bestowed upon him.
"Were these hateful addresses repeated by letter or in person, Helen?"
said he, fixing his eyes upon her agitated face.
"In person--in person," answered Helen, impatiently.
"Did your mother know, Helen, how greatly these addresses annoyed you?"
"I have often attempted to tell her; but she has always evaded the
subject, telling me strangely enough, and Heaven knows not very
correctly, that it was plain I did not know my own mind, or else that I
was guilty of affectation."
"Your mother, then, Helen, would have approved of this man's addresses?"
"I fear so."
"It was, then, to avoid her importunity that you left her house to-day?"
Helen looked uneasy and distressed under this questioning, but answered,
"No, Colonel Harrington; not her importunity, but his own."
The blood mounted to the young soldier's face, and an angry glance shot
from his eye, as if he suspected something approaching--but at great
distance--to the truth.
"He surely did not dare to be impertinent? Helen, you have not told me
all: you came here in a state of dreadful agitation; tell me, I conjure
you, all that has happened to you.--You will not, Helen? What am I to
think of this?--that you have been insulted in a manner that you will
not repeat to your affianced husband? For Heaven's sake, put an end to
this torture; I must know all."
"Your mother does know all, Colonel Harrington; make me not repeat the
hateful history again."
"Will you refer me to my mother? Will you permit me to tell her that you
have done so?"
"Why, Colonel Harrington," replied Helen, "should you wish to know more
than I have told you? But of course I cannot object to your knowing all
that has passed between us,--only I think he does not deserve the
trouble you take in speaking of him."
Much to the surprise of Sir Gilbert and his lady, who were very amiably
undergoing a real penance, by absenting themselves from the sight of
happiness which touched them so nearly, Colonel Harrington was seen
hurrying towards them, where they were beguiling the time as they could,
by inhaling the cool breath of evening under the cedar-tree.
"Take a turn with me, mother, will you?" said he in a voice not quite so
gay as they expected to hear from him.
Lady Harrington immediately rose, and passing her arm under his they
walked off together at a rapid pace to a distant walk.
"Mother!" he said stopping short and looking earnestly in her face,
"tell me, I beseech you, every thing that you have learnt from Helen
respecting that wretch Corbold. For some reason or other which I cannot
understand, she is averse to entering upon the subject with me; but she
assures me that you know every thing that has passed, and she has
authorized my asking you for the particulars."
"Has she, William? Then she is a silly girl for her pains. But it is
your fault, I dare say. You have been tormenting her with
cross-questions about a vulgar villain that neither of you ought ever
again to call to remembrance. Say no more about him or his precious
cousin either. Surely we can find more agreeable subjects to talk about
than the vicar and his cousin."
"Very likely, mother. But I cannot be easy till I know exactly what it
was which caused Helen to leave her mother's house in the manner she did
this afternoon. Have I not a right to inquire?--can you blame me for
doing so?"
"No, my dear William, I do not. But heavily shall I blame you if you
make an extorted confidence the source of quarrel between an officer of
rank in his majesty's service and a pettifogging methodist attorney of
Wrexhill."
"Is it possible, mother, that you know me so little as to think there
can exist the slightest chance of my doing this? Pray do not keep me in
this fever for the sake of protecting me from a duel with Mr. Stephen
Corbold."
"There you are, hot-head,--your father's own son beyond all question.
Now listen then to this infamous story, and take care that you do not
renew a sorrow that is past, by improperly resenting it."
After this preface, Lady Harrington ventured to repeat to her son the
narrative she had heard from Helen. He listened with very exemplary
tranquillity, only occasionally biting his lips, but uttering no single
word of any kind till it was concluded. He then said very quietly,--"Let
us return to poor Helen, mother.--How admirably has she behaved
throughout!"
Lady Harrington looked up into her son's face as if to discover whether
his calmness were genuine; but his pocket handkerchief at that moment
concealed his features, and, as he walked rapidly towards the house, she
could only take it for granted that all was right, and follow him.
Having reached the door of the room where he had left Helen, he opened
it, but waited outside till his mother overtook him.
"Go to her, mother," said he, "and confess that you have told me every
thing. I would rather you did this than me;--tell her too, that she has
behaved gloriously, and, when I think you have put her at her ease about
me, I will come to you."
So saying, he passed on, and entered a small parlour that was called his
own at the front of the house.
Sir Gilbert soon followed his lady, and, without going again over the
disagreeable narrative at length, the whole business was made
sufficiently intelligible to the baronet to make him extol in high terms
the courage and presence of mind of his future daughter. This occupied a
quarter of an hour excellently well, but still the colonel came not: and
Helen, though with no feeling of alarm, certainly kept her eye upon the
door with more steadiness than she was herself aware of. At length, Lady
Harrington began to show evident symptoms of that state of mind usually
called fidgeting. She rang the bell and asked if the colonel were at
home. The servant did not know. Tea was ordered, and when it came the
same question was repeated; but the same answer was not given, for the
man said that the colonel had been seen to go out about half an hour
ago.
"Who saw him go, John?" said her ladyship; "did you?"
"No, my lady,--it was the colonel's own groom."
"Send him here."
The groom came, and was questioned as to how and when he had seen his
master go out.
"I was in the harness-room, my lady, and the colonel came in, and took
down, one after another, all the coachman's whips from the pegs, and at
last, my lady, he chose the newest and the stoutest, and carried it away
with him:--but he said never a word."
"Wheugh!" whistled Sir Gilbert with very considerable continuity of
sound. "That will do, Dick--you may go. And so, his colonelship is gone
forth with the stoutest and the best horsewhip he could find. Well, upon
my word, I do not think he could have done better."
"Foolish boy!" exclaimed Lady Harrington. "He will get into some
abominable scrape or other!"
"Yes, my lady;--he will horsewhip the lawyer, you may depend upon
it:--and then he will have damages to pay. But, for an only son, William
is far from extravagant, and I really don't feel inclined to begrudge
him this little amusement."
"Nor I, either, Sir Gilbert, provided he takes care not to get into a
downright vulgar brawl."
"Come, come, Helen," said Sir Gilbert, turning towards her, "you must
not look pale, my child, for this. You are not afraid that there will be
any blunder, are you? and that the attorney will horsewhip the
soldier?--No harm will be done, depend upon it,--except to my new
horsewhip."