WHEREIN MY FATHER CONTINUES HIS STORY.
"There is not a mystical creation, type, symbol, or poetical invention
for meanings abstruse, recondite, and incomprehensible, which is not
represented by the female gender," said my father, having his hand
quite buried in his waistcoat. "There is the Sphynx, and the Enigma,
and the Chimera, and Isis, whose veil no man had ever lifted: they are
all ladies, Kitty, every one of them! And so was Persephone, who must
be always either in heaven or hell--and Hecate, who was one thing by
night and another by day. The Sibyls were females; and so were the
Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, the Fates, and the Teutonic Valkyrs,
Nornies, and Hela herself: in short, all representations of ideas,
obscure, inscrutable, and portentous, are nouns feminine."
Heaven bless my father! Augustine Caxton was himself again! I began to
fear that the story had slipped away from him, lost in that labyrinth
of learning. But, luckily, as he paused for breath, his look fell on
those limpid blue eyes of my mother's, and that honest open brow of
hers, which had certainly nothing in common with Sphynges, Chimeras,
Fates, Furies, or Valkyrs; and, whether his heart smote him, or his
reason made him own that he had fallen into a very disingenuous and
unsound train of assertion, I know not, but his front relaxed, and
with a smile he resumed--"Ellinor was the last person in the world to
deceive any one willingly. Did she deceive me and Roland that we both,
though not conceited men, fancied that, if we had dared to speak
openly of love, we had not so dared in vain? or do you think, Kitty,
that a woman really can love (not much, perhaps, but somewhat) two or
three, or half a dozen at a time?"
"Impossible," cried my mother. "And as for this Lady Ellinor, I am
shocked at her--I don't know what to call it!"
"Nor I either, my dear!" said my father, slowly taking his hand from
his waistcoat, as if the effort were too much for him, and the problem
were insoluble. "But this, begging your pardon, I do think, that
before a young woman does really, truly, and cordially centre her
affections on one object, she suffers fancy, imagination, the desire
of power, curiosity, or heaven knows what, to simulate, even to her
own mind, pale reflexions of the luminary not yet risen--parhelia that
precede the sun. Don't judge of Roland as you see him now,
Pisistratus--grim, and gray, and formal; imagine a nature soaring high
amongst daring thoughts, or exuberant with the nameless poetry of
youthful life--with a frame matchless for bounding elasticity--an eye
bright with haughty fire--a heart from which noble sentiments sprang
like sparks from an anvil. Lady Ellinor had an ardent, inquisitive
imagination. This bold fiery nature must have moved her interest. On
the other hand, she had an instructed, full, and eager mind. Am I vain
if I say, now at the lapse of so many years, that in my mind her
intellect felt companionship? When a woman loves, and marries, and
settles, why then she becomes--a one whole, a completed being. But a
girl like Ellinor has in her many women. Various herself, all
varieties please her. I do believe that, if either of us had spoken
the word boldly, Lady Ellinor would have shrunk back to her own
heart--examined it, tasked it, and given a frank and generous answer.
And he who had spoken first might have had the better chance not to
receive a 'No.' But neither of us spoke. And perhaps she was rather
curious to know if she had made an impression, than anxious to create
it. It was not that she willingly deceived us, but her whole
atmosphere was delusion. Mists come before the sunrise. However this
be, Roland and I were not long in detecting each other. And hence
arose, first coldness, then jealousy, then quarrels."
"Oh, my father, your love must have been indeed powerful, to have made
a breach between the hearts of two such brothers!"
"Yes," said my father; "it was amidst the old ruins of the castle,
there, where I had first seen Ellinor--that, winding my arm round
Roland's neck, as I found him seated amongst the weeds and stones, his
face buried in his hands--it was there that I said--'Brother, we both
love this woman! My nature is the calmer of the two, I shall feel the
loss less. Brother, shake hands, and God speed you, for I go!'"
"Austin," murmured my mother, sinking her head on my father's breast.
"And therewith we quarrelled. For it was Roland who insisted, while
the tears rolled down his eyes, and he stamped his foot on the ground,
that he was the intruder, the interloper--that he had no hope--that he
had been a fool and a madman--and that it was for him to go! Now,
while we were disputing, and words began to run high, my father's old
servant entered the desolate place, with a note from Lady Ellinor to
me, asking for the loan of some book I had praised. Roland saw the
hand-writing, and while I turned the note over and over irresolutely,
before I broke the seal, he vanished.
"He did not return to my father's house. We did not know what had
become of him. But I, thinking over that impulsive volcanic nature,
took quick alarm. And I went in search of him; came on his track at
last; and, after many days, found him in a miserable cottage amongst
the most dreary of the dreary wastes which form so large a part of
Cumberland. He was so altered I scarcely knew him. To be brief, we
came at last to a compromise. We would go back to Compton. This
suspense was intolerable. One of us at least should take courage and
learn his fate. But who should speak first? We drew lots, and the lot
fell on me.
"And now that I was really to pass the Rubicon, now that I was to
impart that secret hope which had animated me so long--been to me a
new life--what were my sensations? My dear boy, depend on it that that
age is the happiest, when such feelings as I felt then can agitate us
no more. They are mistakes in the serene order of that majestic life
which heaven meant for thoughtful man. Our souls should be as stars on
earth, not as meteors and tortured comets. What could I offer to
Ellinor--to her father? What but a future of patient labour? And in
either answer, what alternative of misery!--my own existence
shattered, or Roland's noble heart!
"Well, we went to Compton. In our former visits we had been almost the
only guests. Lord Rainsforth did not much affect the intercourse of
country squires, less educated then than now. And in excuse for
Ellinor and for us, we were almost the only men of her own age she saw
when in that large dull house. But now the London season had broken
up, the house was filled; there was no longer that familiar and
constant approach to the mistress of the Hall, which had made us like
one family. Great ladies, fine people, were round her; a look, a
smile, a passing word, were as much as I had a right to expect. And
the talk, too, how different! Before, I could speak on books,--I was
at home there! Roland could pour forth his dreams, his chivalrous love
for the past, his bold defiance of the unknown future. And Ellinor,
cultivated and fanciful, could sympathise with both. And her father,
scholar and gentleman, could sympathise too. But now--"