Nothing to Leonard could as yet be more distasteful or oppressive than
his share in this memorable election. In the first place, it chafed the
secret sores of his heart to be compelled to resume the name of Fairfeld,
which was a tacit disavowal of his birth. It had been such delight to
him that the same letters which formed the name of Nora should weave also
that name of Oran, to which he had given distinction, which he had
associated with all his nobler toils, and all his hopes of enduring
fame,--a mystic link between his own career and his mother's obscurer
genius. It seemed to him as if it were rendering to her the honours
accorded to himself,--subtle and delicate fancy of the affections, of
which only poets would be capable, but which others than poets may
perhaps comprehend! That earlier name of Fairfield was connected in his
memory with all the ruder employments, the meaner trials of his boyhood;
the name of Oran, with poetry and fame. It was his title in the ideal
world, amongst all fair shapes and spirits. In receiving the old
appellation, the practical world, with its bitterness and strife,
returned to him as at the utterance of a spell. But in coming to
Lansmere he had no choice. To say nothing of Dick, and Dick's parents.
with whom his secret would not be safe, Randal Leslie knew that he had
gone by the name of Fairfield,--knew his supposed parentage, and would be
sure to proclaim them. How account for the latter name without setting
curiosity to decipher the anagram it involved, and perhaps guiding
suspicion to his birth from Nora, to the injury of her memory, yet
preserved from stain?
His feelings as connected with Nora--sharpened and deepened as they all
had been by his discovery of her painful narrative-were embittered still
more by coming in contact with her parents. Old John was in the same
helpless state of mind and body as before,--neither worse nor better; but
waking up at intervals with vivid gleams of interest in the election at
the wave of a blue banner, at the cry of "Blue forever!" It was the old
broken-clown charger, who, dozing in the meadows, starts at the roll of
the drum. No persuasions Dick could employ would induce his father to
promise to vote even one Yellow. You might as well have expected the old
Roman, with his monomaniac cry against Carthage, to have voted for
choosing Carthaginians for consuls. But poor John, nevertheless, was not
only very civil, but very humble to Dick,--"very happy to oblige the
gentleman."
"Your own son!" bawled Dick; "and here is your own grandson."
"Very happy to serve you both; but you see you are the wrong colour."
Then as he gazed at Leonard, the old man approached him with trembling
knees, stroked his hair, looked into his face, piteously. "Be thee my
grandson?" he faltered. "Wife, wife, Nora had no son, had she? My
memory begins to fail me, sir; pray excuse it; but you have a look about
the eyes that--" Old John began to weep, and his wife led him away.
"Don't come again," she said to Leonard, harshly, when she returned.
"He'll not sleep all night now." And then, observing that the tears
stood in Leonard's eyes, she added, in softened tones, "I am glad to see
you well and thriving, and to hear that you have been of great service to
my son Richard, who is a credit and an honour to the family, though poor
John cannot vote for him or for you against his conscience; and he should
not be asked," she added, firing up; "and it is a sin to ask it, and he
so old, and no one to defend him but me. But defend him I will while I
have life!"
The poet recognized woman's brave, loving, wife-like heart here, and
would have embraced the stern grandmother, if she had not drawn back from
him; and, as she turned towards the room to which she had led her
husband, she said over her shoulder,--
"I'm not so unkind as I seem, boy; but it is better for you, and for all,
that you should not come to this house again,--better that you had not
come into the town."
"Fie, Mother!" said Dick, seeing that Leonard, bending his head, silently
walked from the room. "You should be prouder of your grandson than you
are of me."
"Prouder of him who may shame us all yet?"
"What do you mean?"
But Mrs. Avenel shook her head and vanished.
"Never mind her, poor old soul," said Dick, as he joined Leonard at the
threshold; "she always had her tempers. And since there is no vote to be
got in this house, and one can't set a caucus on one's own father,--at
least in this extraordinary rotten and prejudiced old country, which is
quite in its dotage,--we'll not come here to be snubbed any more. Bless
their old hearts, nevertheless!"
Leonard's acute sensibility in all that concerned his birth, deeply
wounded by Mrs. Avenel's allusions, which he comprehended better than his
uncle did, was also kept on the edge by the suspense to which he was
condemned by Harley's continued silence as to the papers confided to that
nobleman. It seemed to Leonard almost unaccountable that Harley should
have read those papers, be in the same town with himself, and yet
volunteer no communication. At length he wrote a few lines to Lord
L'Estrange, bringing the matter that concerned him so deeply before
Harley's recollection, and suggesting his own earnest interest in any
information that could supply the gaps and omissions of the desultory
fragments. Harley, in replying to this note, said, with apparent reason,
"that it would require a long personal interview to discuss the subject
referred to, and that such an interview, in the thick of the contest
between himself and a candidate opposed to the Lansmere party, would be
sure to get wind, be ascribed to political intrigues, be impossible
otherwise to explain, and embarrass all the interests confided to their
respective charge. That for the rest, he had not been unmindful of
Leonard's anxiety, which must now mainly be to see justice done to the
dead parent, and learn the name, station, and character of the parent yet
surviving. And in this Harley trusted to assist him as soon as the close
of the poll would present a suitable occasion." The letter was unlike
Harley's former cordial tone: it was hard and dry. Leonard respected
L'Estrange too much to own to himself that it was unfeeling. With all
his rich generosity of nature, he sought excuses for what he declined to
blame. Perhaps something in Helen's manner or words had led Harley to
suspect that she still cherished too tender an interest in the companion
of her childhood; perhaps under this coldness of expression there lurked
the burning anguish of jealousy. And, oh, Leonard so well understood,
and could so nobly compassionate even in his prosperous rival, that
torture of the most agonizing of human passions, in which all our
reasonings follow the distorted writhings of our pain.
And Leonard himself, amidst his other causes of disquiet, was at once so
gnawed and so humbled by his own jealousy. Helen, he knew, was still
under the same roof as Harley. They, the betrothed, could see each other
daily, hourly. He would soon hear of their marriage. She would be borne
afar from the very sphere of his existence,--carried into a loftier
region, accessible only to his dreams. And yet to be jealous of one to
whom both Helen and himself were under such obligations debased him in
his own esteem,--jealousy here was so like ingratitude. But for Harley,
what could have become of Helen, left to his boyish charge,--he who had
himself been compelled, in despair, to think of sending her from his
side, to be reared into smileless youth in his mother's humble cottage,
while he faced famine alone, gazing on the terrible river, from the
bridge by which he had once begged for very alms,--begged of that Audley
Egerton to whom he was now opposed as an equal; or flying from the fiend
that glared at him under the lids of the haunting Chatterton? No,
jealousy here was more than agony,--it was degradation, it was crime!
But, all! if Helen were happy in these splendid nuptials! Was he sure
even of that consolation? Bitter was the thought either way,--that she
should wholly forget him, in happiness from which he stood excluded as a
thing of sin; or sinfully herself remember, and be wretched!
With that healthful strength of will which is more often proportioned to
the susceptibility of feeling than the world suppose, the young man at
last wrenched himself for awhile from the iron that had entered into his
soul, and forced his thoughts to seek relief in the very objects from
which they otherwise would have the most loathingly recoiled. He aroused
his imagination to befriend his reason; he strove to divine some motive
not explained by Harley, not to be referred to the mere defeat, by
counter-scheme, of the scheming Randal, nor even to be solved by any
service to Audley Egerton, which Harley might evolve from the complicated
meshes of the election,--some motive that could more interest his own
heart in the contest, and connect itself with Harley's promised aid in
clearing up the mystery of his parentage. Nora's memoir had clearly
hinted that his father was of rank and station far beyond her own. She
had thrown the glow of her glorious fancies over the ambition and the
destined career of the lover in whom she had merged her ambition as
poetess, and her career as woman. Possibly the father might be more
disposed to own and to welcome the son, if the son could achieve an
opening, and give promise of worth, in that grand world of public life in
which alone reputation takes precedence of rank. Possibly, too, if the
son thus succeeded, and became one whom a proud father could with pride
acknowledge, possibly he might not only secure a father's welcome, but
vindicate a mother's name. This marriage, which Nora darkly hinted she
had been led to believe was fraudulent, might, after all, have been
legal,--the ceremony concealed, even till now, by worldly shame at
disparity of rank. But if the son could make good his own footing--there
where rank itself owned its chiefs in talent--that shame might vanish.
These suppositions were not improbable; nor were they uncongenial to
Leonard's experience of Harley's delicate benignity of purpose. Here,
too, the image of Helen allied itself with those of his parents, to
support his courage and influence his new ambition. True, that she was
lost to him forever. No worldly success, no political honours, could now
restore her to his side. But she might hear him named with respect in
those circles in which alone she would hereafter move, and in which
parliamentary reputation ranks higher than literary fame. And perhaps in
future years, when love, retaining its tenderness, was purified from its
passion, they might thus meet as friends. He might without a pang take
her children on his knees, and say, perhaps in their old age, when he had
climbed to a social equality even with her high-born lord, "It was the
hope to regain the privilege bestowed on our childhood, that strengthened
me to seek distinction when you and happiness forsook my youth." Thus
regarded, the election, which had before seemed to him so poor and vulgar
an exhibition of vehement passions for petty objects, with its trumpery
of banners and its discord of trumpets, suddenly grew into vivid
interest, and assumed dignity and importance. It is ever thus with all
mortal strife. In proportion as it possesses, or is void of, the diviner
something that quickens the pulse of the heart, and elevates the wing of
the imagination, it presents a mockery to the philosopher, or an
inspiration to the bard. Feel that something, and no contest is mean!
Feel it not, and, like Byron, you may class with the slaughter of Cannae
that field which, at Waterloo, restored the landmarks of nations; or may
jeer with Juvenal at the dust of Hannibal, because he sought to deliver
Carthage from ruin, and free a world from Rome.