And thou that, silent at my knee,
Dost lift to mine thy soft, dark, earnest eyes,
Filled with the love of childhood, which I see
Pure through its depths,--a thing without disguise.
Thou that hast breathed in slumber on my breast,
When I have checked its throbs to give thee rest,
Mine own, whose young thoughts fresh before me rise,
Is it not much that I may guide thy prayer,
And circle thy young soul with free and healthful air?--HEMANS.
The events we have recorded, from the time of Clarence’s visit to
Mordaunt to the death of Lord Ulswater, took place within little more
than a week. We have now to pass in silence over several weeks; and
as it was the commencement of autumn when we introduced Clarence and
Mordaunt to our reader, so it is the first opening of winter in which we
will resume the thread of our narration.
Mordaunt had removed to London; and, although he had not yet taken
any share in public business, he was only watching the opportunity to
commence a career the brilliancy of which those who knew aught of his
mind began already to foretell. But he mixed little, if at all, with the
gayer occupants of the world’s prominent places. Absorbed alternately in
his studies and his labours of good, the halls of pleasure were seldom
visited by his presence; and they who in the crowd knew nothing of
him but his name, and the lofty bearing of his mien, recoiled from the
coldness of his exterior; and, while they marvelled at his retirement
and reserve, saw in both but the moroseness of the student and the gloom
of the misanthropist.
But the nobleness of his person; the antiquity of his birth; his wealth,
his unblemished character, and the interest thrown over his name by
the reputation of talent and the unpenetrated mystery of his life, all
powerfully spoke in his favour to those of the gentler sex, who judge us
not only from what we are to others, but from what they imagine we
can be to them. From such allurements, however, as from all else, the
mourner turned only the more deeply to cherish the memory of the dead;
and it was a touching and holy sight to mark the mingled excess of
melancholy and fondness with which he watched over that treasure in
whose young beauty and guileless heart his departed Isabel had yet left
the resemblance of her features and her love. There seemed between them
to exist even a dearer and closer tie than that of daughter and sire;
for, in both, the objects which usually divide the affections of the man
or the child had but a feeble charm: Isabel’s mind had expanded beyond
her years, and Algernon’s had outgrown his time; so that neither the
sports natural to her age, nor the ambition ordinary to his, were
sufficient to wean or to distract the unity of their love. When, after
absence, his well-known step trod lightly in the hall, her ear, which
had listened and longed and thirsted for the sound, taught her fairy
feet to be the first to welcome his return; and when the slightest
breath of sickness menaced her slender frame, it was his hand that
smoothed her pillow, and his smile that cheered away her pain; and when
she sank into sleep she knew that a father’s heart watched over her
through the long but untiring night; that a father’s eye would be the
first which, on waking, she would meet.
“Oh! beautiful, and rare as beautiful,” was that affection; in the
parent no earthlier or harder sternness in authority, nor weakness in
doting, nor caprice in love; in the child no fear debasing reverence,
yet no familiarity diminishing respect. But Love, whose pride is in
serving, seemed to make at once soft and hallowed the offices mutually
rendered; and Nature, never counteracted in her dictates, wrought,
without a visible effort, the proper channels into which those offices
should flow; and that Charity which not only covers sins, but lifts the
veil from virtues, whose beauty might otherwise have lain concealed,
linked them closer and closer, and threw over that link the sanctity of
itself. For it was Algernon’s sweetest pleasure to make her young hands
the ministers of good to others, and to drink at such times from the
rich glow of her angel countenance the purified selfishness of his
reward. And when after the divine joy of blessing, which, perhaps, the
youngest taste yet more vividly than their sires, she threw her arms
around his neck and thanked him with glad tears for the luxury he had
bestowed upon her, how could they, in that gushing overflow of heart,
help loving each other the more, or feeling that in that love there was
something which justified the excess?
Nor have we drawn with too exaggerating a pencil, nor, though Isabel’s
mind was older than her years, extended that prematureness to her heart.
For, where we set the example of benevolence, and see that the example
is in nought corrupted, the milk of human kindness will flow not the
less readily from the youngest breast, and out of the mouths of babes
will come the wisdom of charity and love!
Ever since Mordaunt’s arrival in town, he had sought out Wolfe’s abode,
for the purpose of ministering to the poverty under which he rightly
conjectured that the republican laboured. But the habitation of one,
needy, distressed, seldom living long in one place, and far less
notorious of late than he had formerly been, was not easy to discover;
nor was it till after long and vain search that he ascertained the
retreat of his singular acquaintance. The day in which he effected this
object we shall have hereafter occasion to specify. Meanwhile we return
to Mr. Crauford.