Meanwhile Harley had listened to Mr. Dale's vindication of Leonard with
cold attention.
"Enough," said he, at the close. "Mr. Fairfield (for so we will yet call
him) shall see me to-night; and if apology be due to him, I will make it.
At the same time, it shall be decided whether he continue this contest or
retire. And now, Mr. Dale, it was not to hear how this young man wooed,
or shrunk from wooing, my affianced bride, that I availed myself of your
promise to visit me at this house. We agreed that the seducer of Nora
Avenel deserved chastisement, and I promised that Nora Avenel's son
should find a father. Both these assurances shall be fulfilled to-
morrow. And you, sir," continued Harley, rising, his whole form
gradually enlarged by the dignity of passion, "who wear the garb
appropriated to the holiest office of Christian charity; you who have
presumed to think that, before the beard had darkened my cheek, I could
first betray the girl who had been reared under this roof, then abandon
her,--sneak like a dastard from the place in which my victim came to die,
leave my own son, by the woman thus wronged, without thought or care,
through the perilous years of tempted youth, till I found him, by chance,
an outcast in a desert more dread than Hagar's,--you, sir, who have for
long years thus judged of me, shall have the occasion to direct your holy
anger towards the rightful head; and in me, you who have condemned the
culprit shall respect the judge."
Mr. Dale was at first startled, and almost awed, by this unexpected
burst. But, accustomed to deal with the sternest and the darkest
passions, his calm sense and his habit of authority over those whose
souls were bared to him, nobly recovered from their surprise. "My Lord,"
said he, "first, with humility I bow to your rebuke, and entreat your
pardon for my erring, and, as you say, my uncharitable opinions. We
dwellers in a village and obscure pastors of a humble flock, we,
mercifully removed from temptation, are too apt, perhaps, to exaggerate
its power over those whose lots are cast in that great world which has so
many gates ever open to evil. This is my sole excuse if I was misled by
what appeared to me strong circumstantial evidence. But forgive me again
if I warn you not to fall into an error perhaps little lighter than my
own. Your passion, when you cleared yourself from reproach, became you.
But ah, my Lord, when with that stern brow and those flashing eyes, you
launched your menace upon another over whom you would constitute yourself
the judge, forgetful of the divine precept, 'Judge not,' I felt that I
was listening no longer to honest self-vindication,--I felt that I was
listening to fierce revenge!"
"Call it revenge, or what you will," said Harley, with sullen firmness;
"but I have been stung too deeply not to sting. Frank with all, till the
last few days, I have ever been. Frank to you, at least, even now, this
much I tell you: I pretend to no virtue in what I still hold to be
justice; but no declamations nor homilies tending to prove that justice
is sinful will move my resolves. As man I have been outraged, and as man
I will retaliate. The way and the mode, the true criminal and his
fitting sentence, you will soon learn, sir. I have much to do to-night;
forgive me if I adjourn for the present all further conference."
"No, no; do not dismiss me. There is something, in spite of your present
language, which so commands my interest; I see that there has been so
much suffering where there is now so much wrath,--that I would save you
from the suffering worse than all,--remorse. Oh, pause, my dear Lord,
pause and answer me but two questions; then I will leave your after
course to yourself."
"Say on, sir," said Lord L'Estrange, touched, and with respect.
"First; then, analyze your own feelings. Is this anger merely to punish
an offender and to right the living,--for who can pretend to right the
dead? Or is there not some private hate that stirs and animates and
confuses all?"
Harley remained silent. Mr. Dale renewed,
"You loved this poor girl. Your language even now reveals it. You speak
of treachery: perhaps you had a rival who deceived you; I know not, guess
not, whom. But if you would strike the rival, must you not wound the
innocent son? And, in presenting Nora's child to his father, as you
pledge yourself to do, can you mean some cruel mockery that, under
seeming kindness, implies some unnatural vengeance?"
"You read well the heart of man," said Harley; "and I have owned to you
that I am but man. Pass on; you have another question."
"And one more solemn and important. In my world of a village, revenge
is a common passion; it is the sin of the uninstructed. The savage
deems it noble! but Christ's religion, which is the sublime Civilizer,
emphatically condemns it. Why? Because religion ever seeks to ennoble a
man; and nothing so debases him as revenge. Look into your own heart,
and tell me whether, since you have cherished this passion, you have not
felt all sense of right and wrong confused,--have not felt that whatever
would before have seemed to you mean and base, appears now but just means
to your heated end. Revenge is ever a hypocrite: rage, at least, strikes
with the naked sword; but revenge, stealthy and patient, conceals the
weapon of the assassin. My Lord, your colour changes. What is your
answer to my question?"
"Oh," exclaimed Harley, with a voice thrilling in its mournful anguish,
"it is not since I have cherished the revenge that I am changed, that
right and wrong grow dark to me, that hypocrisy seems the atmosphere fit
for earth. No; it is since the discovery that demands the vengeance.
It is useless, sir," he continued impetuously,--" useless to argue with
me. Were I to sit down, patient and impotent, under the sense of the
wrong which I have received, I should feel, indeed, that debasement which
you ascribe to the gratification of what you term revenge. I should
never regain the self-esteem which the sentiment of power now restores to
me; I should feel as if the whole world could perceive and jeer at my
meek humiliation. I know not why I have said so much,--why I have
betrayed to you so much of my secret mind, and stooped to vindicate my
purpose. I never meant it. Again I say, we must close this conference."
Harley here walked to the door, and opened it significantly.
"One word more, Lord L'Estrange,--but one. You will not hear me. I am a
comparative stranger, but you have a friend, a friend dear and intimate,
now under the same roof. Will you consent, at least, to take counsel of
Mr. Audley Egerton? None can doubt his friendship for you; none can
doubt that whatever he advise will be that which best becomes your
honour. What, my Lord, you hesitate,--you feel ashamed to confide to
your dearest friend a purpose which his mind would condemn? Then I will
seek him, I will implore him to save you from what can but entail
repentance."
"Mr. Dale, I must forbid you to see Mr. Egerton. What has passed beween
us ought to be as sacred to you as a priest of Rome holds confession.
This much, however, I will say to content you: I promise that I will do
nothing that shall render me unworthy of Mr. Audley Egerton's friendship,
or which his fine sense of honour shall justify him in blaming. Let that
satisfy you."
"Ah, my Lord," cried Mr. Dale, pausing irresolute at the doorway, and
seizing Harley's hand, "I should indeed be satisfied if you would submit
yourself to higher counsel than mine,--than Mr. Egerton's, than man's.
Have you never felt the efficacy of prayer?"
"My life has been wasted," replied Harley, "and I dare not, therefore,
boast that I have found prayer efficacious. But, so far back as I can
remember, it has at least been my habit to pray to Heaven, night and
morning, until at least--until--" The natural and obstinate candour of
the man forced out the last words, which implied reservation. He stopped
short.
"Until you have cherished revenge? You have not dared to pray since?
Oh, reflect what evil there is within us, when we dare not come before
Heaven,--dare not pray for what we wish. You are moved. I leave you to
your own thoughts." Harley inclined his head, and the parson passed him
by, and left him alone,--startled indeed; but was he softened? As Mr.
Dale hurried along the corridor, much agitated, Violante stole from a
recess formed by a large bay window, and linking her arm in his, said
anxiously, but timidly: "I have been waiting for you, dear Mr. Dale; and
so long! You have been with Lord L'Estrange?"
"Well!"
"Why do you not speak? You have left him comforted, happier?"
"Happier! No."
"What!" said Violante, with a look of surprise, and a sadness not unmixed
with petulance in her quick tone. "What! does he then so grieve that
Helen prefers another?"
Despite the grave emotions that disturbed his mind, Mr. Dale was struck
by Violante's question, and the voice in which it was said. He loved her
tenderly. "Child, child," said he, "I am glad that Helen has escaped
Lord L'Estrange. Beware, oh, beware how he excite any gentler interest
in yourself. He is a dangerous man,--more dangerous for glimpses of a
fine original nature. He may well move the heart of the innocent and
inexperienced, for he has strangely crept into mine. But his heart is
swollen with pride and ire and malice."
"You mistake; it is false!" cried Violante, impetuously. "I cannot
believe one word that would asperse him who has saved my father from a
prison, or from death. You have not treated him gently. He fancies he
has been wronged by Leonard, received ingratitude from Helen. He has
felt the sting in proportion to his own susceptible and generous heart,
and you have chided where you should have soothed. Poor Lord L'Estrange!
And you have left him still indignant and unhappy?"
"Foolish girl! I have left him meditating sin; I have left him afraid to
pray; I have left him on the brink of some design--I know not what--but
which involves more than Leonard in projects of revenge; I have left him
so, that if his heart be really susceptible and generous, he will wake
from wrath to be the victim of long and unavailing remorse. If your
father has influence over him, tell Dr. Riccabocca what I say, and bid
him seek, and in his turn save, the man who saved himself. He has not
listened to religion,--he maybe more docile to philosophy. I cannot stay
here longer,--I must go to Leonard."
Mr. Dale broke from Violante and hurried down the corridor; Violante
stood on the same spot, stunned and breathless. Harley on the brink of
some strange sin! Harley to wake, the victim of remorse! Harley to be
saved, as he had saved her father! Her breast heaved, her colour went
and came, her eyes were raised, her lips murmured. She advanced with
soft footsteps up the corridor; she saw the lights gleaming from Harley's
room, and suddenly they were darkened, as the inmate of the room shut to
the door, with angry and impatient hand.
An outward act often betrays the inward mind. As Harley had thus closed
the door, so had he sought to shut his heart from the intrusion of softer
and holier thoughts. He had turned to his hearthstone, and stood on it,
resolved and hardened. The man who had loved with such pertinacious
fidelity far so many years could not at once part with hate. A passion
once admitted to his breast, clung to it with such rooted force! But
woe, woe to thee, Harley L'Estrange, if tomorrow at this hour thou stand
at the hearthstone, thy designs accomplished, knowing that, in the
fulfilment of thy blind will, thou hast met falsehood with falsehood, and
deception with deceit! What though those designs now seem so consummate,
so just, so appropriate, so exquisite a revenge,--seem to thee the sole
revenge wit can plan and civilized life allow: wilt thou ever wash from
thy memory the stain that will sully thine honour? Thou, too, professing
friendship still, and masking perfidy under smiles! Grant that the wrong
be great as thou deem it,--be ten times greater: the sense of thy
meanness, O gentleman and soldier, will bring the blush to thy cheek in
the depth of thy solitude. Thou, who now thinkest others unworthy a
trustful love, wilt feel thyself forever unworthy theirs. Thy seclusion
will know not repose. The dignity of man will forsake thee. Thy proud
eye will quail from the gaze. Thy step will no longer spurn the earth
that it treads on. He who has once done a base thing is never again
wholly reconciled to honour. And woe--thrice woe, if thou learn too late
that thou hast exaggerated thy fancied wrong: that there is excuse, where
thou seest none; that thy friend may have erred, but that his error is
venial compared to thy fancied retribution!
Thus, however, in the superb elation of conscious power, though lavished
on a miserable object,--a terrible example of what changes one evil and
hateful thought, cherished to the exclusion of all others, can make in
the noblest nature, stood, on the hearth of his fathers, and on the abyss
of a sorrow and a shame from which there could be no recall, the
determined and scornful man.
A hand is on the door,--he does not hear it; a form passes the
threshold,-he does not see it; a light step pauses, a soft eye gazes.
Deaf and blind still to both.
Violante came on, gathering courage, and stood at the hearth by his side.