This chapter shall be, I think, what that delightful wight, Washington
Irving, would call a Salmagundi, or, as it should be, perhaps, a
_Salmi à la Gondi_; but, having mentioned that name, Irving, I
dedicate this book to you. It is long since we first met--long since
we last parted--and it may be long, long, ere we meet again.
Nevertheless, Heaven speed you, wherever you are, and send you forward
on your voyage, with a calm sea and a swelling sail! In all the many
that I have known, and among the few that I have loved and esteemed,
there is not now a living man that can compete with you in that
delightful conversation where the heart pours forth its tide, and
where fancy and feeling mingle together, and flow on in one ever
sparkling stream. The dim Atlantic--whose very name sounds like that
of eternity--may roll between us till death close the eyes of one or
the other; but till the things of this world pass away, you shall not
be forgotten.
Although we have now brought up the events in London nearly to the
same point as the events in the country, we must still leave Henry
Burrel strolling on through Emberton Park beside Blanche Delaware,
while we turn for a moment to his silent servant, who having, on the
same morning, walked with his usual slow and quiet step to the
post-office, brought home, and deposited upon his master's table, two
or three letters, after first gleaning every possible information that
their outside or their inside could furnish. He then proceeded to
inspect the contents of another epistle, which bore his own name and
superscription. The words therein written had a considerable effect
upon him, causing more twitches and contortions of the muscles of his
countenance than was usually visible upon that still and patient piece
of furniture. The first expression was certainly full of pleasure; but
that soon relapsed into deep thought, and then a grave shake of the
head, and close setting of the lower jaw, might be supposed to argue a
negative determination. "No, no, Mr. Tims," he muttered, "that won't
do! If one could make sure of getting clear off--well and good. But
first, there is the chance of my not being sent for the money--then
you would take good care to have me closely watched; and then, again,
I do not know whether the chance here at Emberton may not be worth ten
of the other--and I may come in for my share of the other too. No, no,
Mr. Tims, it won't do!--so I will come the conscientious upon you."
And down he sat to indite an epistle to Mr. Peter Tims, the agent of
Lord Ashborough. It was written in one of those fair, easy, but
vacillating, running-hands, which bespeak a peculiar and inherent gift
or talent for committing forgery; and was to the following effect:--
"Emberton, September, 18--
"Sir--Your honored letter was duly received this morning; and I hasten
to reply, as in duty bound. I am very sure that such honorable
gentlemen as my lord the earl and yourself would not undertake any
thing but upon good and reasonable grounds; but, hoping that you will
pardon my boldness in saying so much, yet I can not imagine that I
have any other than a straight forward duty to perform--namely, when
my master sends me for any sum of money, or other valuable thing, to
hasten to give it up into his hands as soon as I have received it;
which I would certainly do, in case he should send me up to London,
although I do not think it probable he will. It is very true,
certainly, that I do think our notions of property are very confined
and wrong; and that no man should have at his disposal a
superabundance, while another man is wanting the necessaries or even
the conveniences of life; and that, if things were equally
distributed, a better system must spontaneously arise. This much I
have learned by reading; and I heartily wish that the principles of
regeneration, which are at present in active existence among the
operative classes, may go on to complete a change of the old corrupt
system. Nevertheless, until such time as the intellect of the country
in general shall have worked such results, I can be doing no wrong in
following the laws and usages established; and shall, consequently,
abstain from acting upon the abstract principles of general utility,
until such time as the general welfare may require a physical
demonstration of popular opinion.
"In regard to certain passages of my past life, to which you are
pleased to refer; although I believe that I could perfectly justify
myself upon my own fixed principles for every thing that I have done
through life, yet I am sorry that any thing should have occurred to
make you for a moment doubt the integrity of a person you strongly
recommended to Mr. Beauchamp; and I am determined to do nothing that
shall confirm any evil opinion you may have unfortunately been led to
form, or to maim my master regret having listened to the
recommendation which you formerly thought fit to give your very humble
and most obedient servant,
"STEPHEN HARDING."
Having penned this delectable epistle, and read it over more than
once, with much genuine satisfaction at the skill with which he had
endeavored to raise his own character, while rejecting the offers of
Mr. Tims, Harding sealed it up, and hastened to put it in the post. He
then sauntered slowly through the town; and having visited the widow's
cottage, and conversed for a few minutes with her son, he proceeded to
walk on in the same direction which we have seen Burrel pursue upon a
former occasion, shortly after his first arrival at Emberton. The
purpose of the silent servant, however, was not to visit the old miser
of Ryebury in person; and, ere he had gone a quarter of a mile upon
the road, he was joined by the same bold vulgar personage who had,
during part of the journey, occupied a place in the stage-coach which
brought his master to Emberton.
They met evidently as old and familiar friends and with that sort of
easy nonchalance which bespoke that their meeting was not unexpected.
The servant pursued his way, scarcely pausing to say the necessary
passwords of civility, and the other turning onward upon the same
path, walked by his side, with his arms bent behind his back,
conversing, not exactly in an under voice, but rather in that
between-the-teeth sort of tone, which renders what is said more
difficult to be understood by any one not quite near, than even a
whisper.
The terms in which they spoke, also, were something enigmatical, and
none, probably, but the initiated, could have discovered their views
or purposes by such terms as the following.
"I have just been thinking last night, Master Harding," said his new
companion, "that we had better get the other job done as soon as
possible. We are wasting time, I thinks, and it seems to me as how you
are growing something squeamish."
"You are a fool, Tony" replied Harding, "you are a fool for thinking,
any thing of the kind. I'll tell you what, you may count yourself
extremely well off that you have fallen in with a man of principle and
education like myself, or you would have put your neck in a noose long
ago. You take no extended views of things; and, instead of acting upon
principle, which would always make you cautious in regard to times and
seasons, and means and methods, you go bolt on, and would run your
head into the stone pitcher, if I were not by to pull you back by the
heels."
"Well, I think you're a rum covey, now!" replied the other; and was
proceeding in the same strain, when he was stopped by his companion
exclaiming--"Hush, hush! Curse your slang, it will betray you as soon
as the mark of the hot iron would. Look here, now. I am no more
squeamish than you are. I always act upon principle; and as to the job
before us, considering the sum of general utility that is to be
gained, I see no objection to doing the matter completely--I mean,
making a finish of it. You understand? But where is the hurry? Let us
go cautiously to work, learn our ground, and get every thing prepared.
I say, where's the hurry?"
"As to the matter of that," answered the other, "there mayn't be no
great hurry, to be sure. But we're both wasting our time somewhat;
and, besides, they are looking out sharp after that other job--you see
they have digged for the plate like mad--so that there is no use
staying longer nor necessary, you know."
"Don't be afraid!" answered Harding, coolly, "they can make nothing of
that. Besides, look here, Smithson; if we wait four or five days
longer, there will be five-and-twenty thousand pounds down from
London."
"Whew!" whistled Mr. Anthony Smithson, laying one finger on the side
of his nose "That is a go! But are you sure?"
"I never say any thing without being sure," answered Harding, with
laconic pomposity. "So make yourself easy on that score. I say there
will be five-and-twenty thousand pounds down in three or four days;
and, if I know the old man right, the larger half will be in gold.
Have you tried Sally the maid?"
"It wont do!" answered the other, with somewhat of a rueful face. "She
has lived long enough with that old fellow to be as cautious as a
beak."
"Well, I suppose I must do that too!" answered the valet; "though it
is a little tiresome, Master Smithson, that all the hard work is to
fall upon me."
"Why, how the devil can I help it, Harding?" replied the other. "If
the girl will have nothing to say to me, what can I do, you know! No,
no, when it comes to the real hard work, you never find me behind!"
"Well, well," answered his worthy coadjutor, "I must come round her
myself somehow, though she be but a dirty, trapesing slut, that a man
of gentlemanly feelings will find some difficulty in making love
to--but, nevertheless, when one acts upon principle, one learns to
overcome one's repugnance to such things, from a consideration of the
mass of general utility to be obtained by a trifling sacrifice."
His companion grinned, but he was too well accustomed to Mr. Harding's
method a reasoning to express any farther surprise. After a few words
more on both sides, however, as they judged it expedient to be seen
together as little as possible, these two respectable persons
separated, and, while Anthony Smithson returned to the town, Harding
pursued his way onward; and having, on the strength of the
communication he had received, determined to proceed to Ryebury, he
took the same path that Burrel had followed before him. The beauties
of nature occupied less of his thoughts than those of his master; and
while, with solemn steps and slow, he wandered on his way, his ideas
were much fuller of shillings and sixpences, and trips across the
Atlantic, than of the verdant mead and purling stream.
As I believe I have before said, Master Harding was by no means an
ugly person; and the charms of his good looks, together with a
marvelous sweet voice, and a good deal more eloquence of its own
peculiar kind than any one could have suspected him to possess from
his usual taciturnity, he was what the French render, with somewhat
profligate decency, by calling the person so gifted _un homme à bonnes
fortunes_. His expedition against the heart of Sally, the miser's
maid, was more successful than that of his companion had been, and he
returned home flattering himself on having made more progress than he
had anticipated. In fact, he had been fortunate in finding Mr. Tims
out, and Sally at home; but as the intrigues of a slattern and a valet
form no part of the staple of this book, we shall leave the matter as
it is, without any farther elucidation.
In the mean while, Burrel--for so we shall still call him--had
sauntered on, whiling away the golden minutes of a fair day, on the
early side of thirty, in sweet conversation beside a beautiful girl. I
have described what their conversation was like before, and I leave
every one who can remember what were the sensations he experienced,
when deep and fervent love just began to break upon his heart, to
imagine how sweet were the winged minutes as they flew. Even the
unspoken consciousness was not a burden, but a joy; and though Blanche
Delaware might be said to tremble at the feelings that were growing
upon her, yet there was a sort of vague internal conviction that those
feelings were reciprocal--that they could not thus have crept over her
heart unless some, nay, many of the signs of similar sentiments, on
his side, had been sufficiently displayed to make her feel secure that
she did not love unsought. Still there would every now and then
come a shrinking apprehension across her mind, that she might be
deceived--that it might be all merely a courteous and engaging manner,
the same toward every one, which she in her ignorance had vainly
fancied particular to herself. But those thoughts were but for a
moment; and as Burrel walked onward by her side, there was in his
tone, in his manner, and still more in the current through which all
his thoughts appeared now to flow, a balmy influence that seemed to
soothe away every fear. She knew not well whence she derived that
balm; for had she tried--which, by the way, she did not--she could not
have found one particular word he spoke, which was more appropriate to
the vocabulary of love than to Johnson's Dictionary. It was,
perhaps--but she knew nothing about it. It was perhaps, that pouring
forth of the soul upon every topic, which can never take place but in
conversation with one we love and esteem; for the hours of love are
like a sunshiny day in the midst of summer, and all the flowers open,
and the birds sing, and the bright things come forth through the
heart's universe. It was this, perhaps, more than aught else in
Burrel's manner, that made Blanche Delaware believe that she herself
was loved.
It is sometimes a very difficult thing to get two people to
acknowledge in any language under the sun, the feelings that are
passing in their hearts. It is more especially difficult in a book;
for no author likes to tell how he and his managed the matter
themselves--at least, if he be not an ass or a coxcomb--and any thing
that is manufactured is almost always "flat, stale, and unprofitable."
A true story canters one easily over all such difficulties; and it so
fortunately happened, that Henry Burrel and Blanche Delaware
acknowledged it all without the slightest idea in the world that they
were doing any thing of the kind.
There had been something spoken accidentally, that went too deep, and
both felt, perhaps, though almost unconsciously, that nothing more
could be said on that topic without saying more still; and as there
was a third person by, of course the matter dropped, and equally, of
course, a long pause ensued, which grew unpleasant.
"I thought," said Burrel, at length, "that we were to meet with some
antiquities--even more interesting than the house itself--at least
your father said so;" and conscious that he had made an awkward
speech, and very little to the purpose, Burrel looked up and smiled,
though many other men would have looked down and colored.
"You are not far from them," replied Captain Delaware--for Blanche's
eyes were fixed upon the ground, and her thoughts were--not at Nova
Zembla. "But surely you are not tired?"
"Nay, nay, any thing but tired?" answered Burrel; "but your father
declared he would catechise me upon these ruins severely, and I was
only afraid that I should forget them altogether."
"A piece of inattention which Blanche or I would excuse much more
readily than my father," replied the good-humored sailor. "But we are
close upon them. You see those two wooded banks that fall across each
other, with the stream flowing out in foam from between them? They
form the mouth of a little glen, about a hundred yards up which stands
the Prior's Fountain, and farther still, the Hermit's Chapel. In
architecture, I believe, they are unique, and there is many a curious
tradition about both."
"Hush, hush, William!" cried his sister, seeing him about to proceed,
"never tell the traditions but upon the spot. Oh, an old legend, in
these days of steam and manufactory, can never be properly told,
except under the gray stone and the ivy, where the memories of a
thousand years are carved by the chisel of time on every tottering
pinnacle and moldering cornice, which vouch, by their unusual forms,
for the strange stories of their founders!"
"Oh, let us go on, by all means," said Burrel, smiling; "an old legend
is worthy of every accessory with which we can furnish it. But there
it is," he added, as they turned the angle of the bank, and, entering
the little glen, had before them a small Gothic building, covered with
the richest ornaments of the most luxurious age of Norman
architecture. "That, I suppose, is the chapel?"
"No, that is the Prior's Fountain," answered Captain Delaware; "and
certainly the monks must have attached some peculiar importance to it,
from covering it over with so splendid a structure."
Another minute brought them near it, and Burrel found that, under a
beautiful canopy of stone-work, supported by eight cluster pillars,
was placed a small stone fountain, full of the most limpid water,
which, welling from a basin somewhat like the baptismal font of a
Gothic church, poured through a little channel in the pavement, and
thence made a small, sparkling stream, which joined the larger one ere
it had run fifty yards. Attached to the basin by an iron chain, was a
cup of the same metal, of very ancient date, though, perhaps, more
modern than the fountain. This cup, as soon as they approached,
Captain Delaware dipped into the water, and, laughing gayly, held it
to Burrel.
"You must drink of the Prior's Fountain, Mr. Burrel," he said; "but
listen, listen before you do so. The monks, you know, having vowed
celibacy, found that the less they had to do with love the better; and
it being luckily discovered that the waters of this well were a
complete and everlasting cure for that malady, one of the priors
covered it over, as you see, and enjoined that, on commencing his
novitiate at Emberton, every pseudo-monk should be brought hither, and
made to drink one cup of the water. It is added, that the remedy was
never known to fail; and now, with this warning, Burrel, drink if you
will."
Burrel, by this time, had the cup in his hand, and for a single
instant his eyes sought those of Blanche Delaware. She was looking
down into the fountain, with one hand resting on the edge. There was a
slight smile upon her lip, but there was a scarcely perceptible
degree of agitation in her aspect at the same time, which Burrel
understood--or, at least, hoped--might have some reference to himself,
although she might believe as little as he did in the efficacy of the
waters of the fountain.
"No, no!" he replied at once, giving back the cup to Captain Delaware,
and laughing lightly, as people do when they have very serious
feelings at their hearts--"no, no! I dare not drink of such
waters--they are too cold, in every sense of the word, to drink after
such a walk as this. The very cup has frozen my hand!" he added, to
take out any point that he might have given to his speech.
"He is actually afraid, Blanche!" cried her brother laughing. "Come,
show him what a brave girl you are, and drain the cup to the bottom!"
"No, indeed!" answered Blanche Delaware. "Mr. Burrel is very right.
The water is a great deal too cold!" And, as she spoke, she blushed
till the tell-tale blood spread rosy over her fair forehead, and
tingled in her small rounded ear.
"Cowards both, as I live!" cried Captain Delaware, drinking off the
contents, and letting the cup drop--"cowards both, as I live!" and,
springing across the little streamlet, he took two or three steps
onward, toward the chapel.
"Let me assist you across!" said Burrel, offering his hand. As his
fingers touched those of Blanche Delaware, to aid her in crossing the
rivulet, they clasped upon her hand with a gentle pressure of
thanks--so slight that she could not be offended, so defined that she
could not mistake. The natural impulse of surprise was to look up; and
before she could recollect herself, she had done so, and her eyes met
Burrel's. What she saw was all kind, and gentle, and tender; but she
instantly cast down her eyes, with another blush that was painful from
its intensity, and with a single tear of agitation--and perhaps
delight.