KNOCKHOLT PARK.
The old home which Laurence Alsager had so long slighted, and to which
his heart suddenly turned with a strange wild longing, almost powerful
enough, he thought, to annihilate the space between it and Redmoor,
had seen many generations of Alsagers beneath its peaked and gabled
roof. The house stood in a fine park, and occupied a commanding
situation on the slope of a well-wooded hill. The features of the
scenery were such as are familiar in the midland counties: rich and
fertile beauty, with uplands ankle-deep in meadow-grass, tall
patriarchal trees, which stood in solemn unending conclave, group by
group or singly, with benignant outstretched arms, and wide-spread
mantle of green and russet; bright shallow streams, flashing under the
sunbeams, and rippling darkly in the shade. All the land about the
picturesque and irregular old house was laid out, partly by nature and
partly by art, on ornamental principles; and away to the right and
left stretched a wide expanse of farm-lands, whose aspect suggested a
practical knowledge of the science of husbandry, and a satisfactory
return in profit. The house was surrounded by a broad stone-terrace,
bounded by a low balustrade, and flanked at each of the corners by a
large stone-vase containing flowers, which varied with the season, but
were never missing from these stately _jardinières_. These vases were
tended, in common with the formal flower-garden and the particular pet
parterre which she called "her own," by Helen Manningtree, the orphan
ward of Sir Peregrine Alsager, whom Laurence remembered as a quiet
pretty little girl, who had been frank and free with him in her
childhood, timid and reserved when he had last seen her, just before
he had been driven abroad by the furies of disappointment and wounded
pride, and whom he was now to meet again, a graceful, gracious,
well-disciplined, and attractive woman.
Knockholt Park was one of those rare places which present a perfect
combination of luxury and comfort to the beholder, and impress the
latter element of their constitution upon the resident visitor. _Bien,
être_ seemed to reign there; and the very peacocks which strutted upon
the terrace, and tapped at the dining-room window as soon as Sir
Peregrine had taken his accustomed seat at the head of the long table,
seemed less restless in their vanity and brighter in their plumage
than their _confrères_ of the neighbouring gentlemen's seats. The
brute creation had fine times of it at Knockholt Park, except, of
course, such of their number as came under the denomination of vermin;
and those Sir Peregrine was too good a farmer, to say nothing of his
being too enthusiastic a sportsman, to spare. Horses were in good
quarters in the stables and the paddocks of Knockholt Park; and
well-to-do dogs were to be found everywhere, the kennel and the
dining-room included. Sir Peregrine had the liking for animals to be
observed in all kindly natures which are solitary without being
studious, and which affords to such natures a subtle pleasure, a
sympathy which does not jar with their pride, a companionship which
does not infringe upon their exclusiveness.
Sir Peregrine Alsager was essentially a solitary man, though he hunted
pretty regularly and shot a little; though he fulfilled the duties of
county hospitality with resignation, which county perceptions mistook
for alacrity; and though he associated as much as most resident
country gentlemen with the inmates of his house. These inmates were
Helen Manningtree and her _ci-devant_ governess, Mrs. Chisholm, a
ladylike accomplished person, and a distant relative of Sir Peregrine,
who had offered her a home with him when the charge of Helen had
devolved upon him, almost simultaneously with the death of Mrs.
Chisholm's husband,--an overworked young curate, who had fallen a
victim to an epidemic disease, in consequence of the prevalence of
which in the parish his rector had found it necessary to remove
himself and his family to a more salubrious climate, but had not found
it necessary to procure any assistance for the curate. They were
pleasant inmates, but scarcely interesting,--would hardly have been so
to a younger man; and there was a certain reserve in Sir Peregrine's
manner, though it never lacked kindness, and was distinguished for its
courtesy and consideration, which maintained their relative positions
quite unchanged. A young girl would have been an unintelligible
creature to Sir Peregrine, even if she had been his own daughter; and
he contented himself with taking care that all Helen's personal and
intellectual wants were amply supplied, and all her tastes consulted
and gratified: he left the reading of the enigma to others, or was
content that it should remain unread.
Life at Knockholt Park had rolled on very smoothly on the whole, until
the accident which recalled his son to his neglected home had befallen
Sir Peregrine; and if the master of the fine old house and the fine
old estate had had a good deal of loneliness, some bitterness, not a
little wistful haggard remembrance and yearning regret, a sense of
discordance where he longed for harmony, with a disheartening
conviction that he had not the faculties requisite for setting it
right, and would never find them in this world, among his daily
experiences, the decent and decorous mantle of pride had hidden these
discrepancies in the general order of things from every perception but
his own. If the hale old gentleman, on whom every eye looked with
respect, and who had filled his place with honour all the days of his
life, had unseen companions in those walks shared visibly by his dog
alone; if the handsome stately library where he sat o' nights, and
read all that a country gentleman is ever expected to read, was
haunted now and then by a shadowy presence, by a beckoning hand; if
the gentle whisper of a voice, whose music was heard in its full
melody among the angels only, came oftener and more often, as "the
tender grace of a day that was dead" receded more and more into the
past, and stirred the slow pulses of the old man's heart,--he was all
the happier, with such solemn happiness as remembrance and
anticipation can confer, and no one was the wiser.
If "county society" in those parts had been brighter as a collective
body, or if the individuals who composed it had had clearer notions of
military life, and the obligations of a lieutenant-colonel, the long
absence of Laurence Alsager from his father's house might have been
made a subject of ill-natured and wondering comment; but the
particular county to which Knockholt and its master belonged was
rather remarkable for obtuseness, and there was a certain something
about the old baronet which rendered it impossible to say unpleasant
things in his presence, and difficult even to say them in his absence;
and so Laurence Alsager escaped almost scot-free. Helen Manningtree
felt some indignant wonder occasionally at the only son's prolonged
absence from his father--indignant, be it observed, on Sir Peregrine's
account, not on her own. Helen was very sensible, and as little vain
as it was possible for a nice-looking and attractive girl to be,
without attaining a painful height of perfection; and so she did not
wonder that Laurence Alsager had not been induced by curiosity to see
her--of whom Sir Peregrine had doubtless frequently spoken to him--to
visit his old home. Her life had been too simple and well regulated to
enable her to comprehend an estrangement between father and son
arising from diversity of sentiment alone; but it had also been so
devoid of strong affections, of vivid emotions, that she was not
likely to regard Laurence Alsager's conduct from a particularly
elevated point of view. It was wrong, she thought, and odd; but if
Laurence had gone to Knockholt at stated periods, and had conformed
outwardly to filial conventionalities, Helen would have been the last
person in the world to perceive that anything was wanting to the
strength and sweetness of the relationship between Sir Peregrine and
his only son.
Mrs. Chisholm-a woman who had known love and bereavement, struggle and
rest, but who was childless, and in whom, therefore, that subtlest
instinct which gives comprehension to the dullest had never been
awakened--felt about it all much as Helen did; but she expressed less,
and the little she permitted herself to say was cold and vague,
Coldness and vagueness characterized Mrs. Chisholm, because sorrow had
early chilled her heart, and no one whom she loved had ever addressed
himself to the awakening of her intellect. The curate had not had
time, poor fellow; he had had too much to do in persuading people to
go to church who would not be persuaded; and his Sophy had been so
pretty in the brief old time, so cheerful, so notable, so lovable and
beloved, that it had never occurred to him that her mind might have
been a little larger and a little stronger with advantage. The time
was brief, and the curate died in the simple old faith, leaving
his pretty Sophy to outlive him, his love, and her prettiness, but
never to outlive his memory, or to cease to glory in that
unutterably-precious recollection, that her husband had never found
fault with her in his life. On the whole, then, Laurence Alsager was
gently judged and mildly handled by the worthy people who had the best
right to criticise his conduct; and perhaps the knowledge that this
was the case added keenness to the pang of self-reproach, which made
his self-inflicted punishment, with which he read the brief but
terrible news flashed to his conscious heart along the marvellous
electric wire.
Evening had fallen over stream and meadow, over upland and forest, at
Knockholt. It had come with the restless and depressing influence
which contrasts so strangely with the calm and peace it brings to the
fulness of life and health, into the lofty and spacious chamber where
Sir Peregrine lay, prostrate under the victorious hand of paralysis.
The mysterious influence of serious illness, the shadow of the wings
of the Angel of Death, rested heavily upon the whole of that
decorously-ordered house; and the watchers in the chamber of
helplessness, it may be of pain,--who can tell? who can interpret
the enforced stillness, the inexorable dumbness of that dread
disease?--succumbed to its gloom. Mrs. Chisholm and Helen were there,
not, indeed, close by the bed, not watching eagerly the motionless
form, but gazing alternately at each other and at the doctor, who kept
a vigilant watch over the patient. This watch had, if possible,
increased in intensity since sunset, at which time Dr. Galton had
perceived a change, visible at first to the eye of science alone. The
dreadful immobility had certainly relaxed; the rigidity of the
features, blended with an indescribable but wofully-perceptible
distortion of the habitual expression, had softened; the plum-like
blueness of the lips had faded to a hue less startlingly contrasted
with that of the shrunken and ashy features.
"He will recover from this attack, I hope--I think," said the doctor
in answer to a mute question which he read in Helen's eyes, as he
stood upright after a long and close investigation of the patient.
"Yes, he will outlive this. I wish Colonel Alsager were here."
"We may expect him very soon," Mrs. Chisholm said; "he would start
immediately of course, and we know the telegraph-message would reach
him in time for him to catch the up-train."
As she spoke, wheels were heard on the distant carriage-drive. Sir
Peregrine's room was on the north side, that farthest from the
approach; and immediately afterwards a servant gently opened the
door--ah, with what needless caution!--and told Mrs. Chisholm that the
Colonel had arrived, and desired to see her. There was more
awkwardness than agitation in Mrs. Chisholm's manner as she hurriedly
rose to comply with this request, but was interrupted by Dr. Galton,
who said:
"No, no, my dear madam,--I had better see him myself; I can make him
understand the necessary care and caution better than you can."
Mrs. Chisholm returned to her seat in silent acquiescence; and for the
ensuing half-hour she and Helen sat sadly looking at the helpless form
upon the bed, and occasionally whispering to one another their several
impressions of how Laurence Alsager "would bear it."
What Laurence Alsager had to bear, and how he bore it, was not for any
one to see. He held himself aloof even from the gentle scrutiny he had
so little reason to dread. In half-an-hour Dr. Galton reentered Sir
Peregrine's room, looking very grave, and requested Mrs. Chisholm and
Helen to withdraw.
"I am going to let Colonel Alsager see his father," he said; "and I
think there should be no one else by. We can never know exactly how
much or how little the patient feels, or knows, or is affected in
eases like these; but one at a time is an admirable rule."
"He will find us in the long drawing-room when he wishes to see us,"
said Mrs. Chisholm; and then she and Helen left the room, and went in
silence along the wide corridor, and down the broad flat staircase of
fine white stone, with its narrow strip of velvet-pile carpeting and
its heavy, carved balustrade, terminated by a fierce figure in armour
holding a glittering spear, with a mimic banderol blazoned with the
device of the Alsagers. The wide stone hall, at the opposite extremity
of which the door of the long drawing-room stood open, the heavy
velvet _portière_ withdrawn, was hung with trophies of the chase and
of war. Tiger-skins, buffalo-horns, the _dépouilles_ of the greater
and the lesser animals which man so loves to destroy, adorned its
walls, diversified by several handsome specimens of Indian arms, and a
French helmet, pistol, and sabretache. Four splendid wood-carvings,
representing such scenes as Snyders has painted, were conspicuous
among the orthodox ornaments of the hall. They were great favourites
with Sir Peregrine, who had bought them in one of the old Belgian
cities on the one only occasion when he had visited foreign parts--an
awful experience, to which he had been wont to allude with mingled
pride and repugnance. Helen glanced at them sadly as she crossed the
hall; then turned her head carelessly in the direction of the great
door, which stood open, and before which a huge black Newfoundland lay
at full length upon the marble steps. At the same moment the dog,
whose name was Faust, rose, wagged his tail, twitched his ears, and
cantered down the steps, and across the terrace in an oblique
direction.
"Who is that, Helen?" asked Mrs. Chisholm, as she caught sight of
Faust's swift-vanishing form. "Some one is coming whom the dog knows."
"It is only Mr. Farleigh," answered Helen; but her reply must have
been made quite at random, for she had not advanced another step in
the direction of the door, and could not possibly have seen, from her
position in the hall, who was approaching the house at that moment.
Mrs. Chisholm had a natural and spontaneous inclination towards
curates. She respected--indeed, she admired all the ranks of the
hierarchy and all their members, and she never could be induced to
regard them as in any way divided in spirit or opinions. They were all
sacred creatures in her eves, from the most sucking of curates to the
most soapy of bishops; but the curates had the preëminence in the
order of this remarkably unworldly woman's estimation. Her Augustine
had been a curate; he might, indeed, have become a bishop in the
fulness of time, and supposing the order of merit to have been
attended to by the prime minister _in posse_; but fate had otherwise
decreed, and his apotheosis had occurred at the curate-stage of his
career. For this perfectly laudable and appreciable reason Mrs.
Chisholm liked the Reverend Cuthbert Farleigh, and would have liked
him had he been the silliest, most commonplace, most priggish young
parson in existence--had he had weak eyes and a weak mind, Low-Church
opinions, and a talent for playing the flute. But the Reverend
Cuthbert had none of these things. On the contrary, he was a handsome
manly young fellow, who looked as if he possessed an intellect and a
conscience, and was in the habit of using both; who had a tall
well-built figure, fine expressive dark eyes, and an independent,
sensible, cheerful manner, which few people could have resisted. Helen
Manningtree had never made any attempt at resisting it. She had known
Cuthbert Farleigh for eighteen months, and she had been in love with
him just twelve out of the number. She was not aware of the
circumstance at first, for she had had no experience of similar
feelings; she had had none of the preliminary feints and make-believes
which often precede the great passion of such persons as are
calculated to feel a great passion, and the tepid sincerity of such as
are not. Helen had never experienced a sensation of preference for any
one of the limited and not very varied number of young country
gentlemen whom she had met since she "came out" (the term had a
restricted significance in her case); and when she did experience and
avow to herself such a sentiment in the instance of the Reverend
Cuthbert Farleigh, she readily accounted for it to herself by
impressing on her own memory that, however young he might look and be,
he was her spiritual pastor and master--and, of course, that occult
influence affected her very deeply--and by making up her mind that he
preached beautifully. And Cuthbert? What was the young lady with the
brown eyes, and the brown curls, and the fresh healthful complexion;
the young lady who was not indeed strictly beautiful, nor, perhaps,
exactly pretty, but who was so charming, so graceful, so thoroughly
well-bred; such an innate lady in thought, word, and deed, in accent,
in gesture, in manner;--what was she to him? He had asked himself that
same question many a time; he asked it now, as he came up to the open
door--rarely shut at Knockholt Park, save in the rigorous depths of
winter--and he came to the conclusion, as he thought of the manifest
luxury and elegance in whose enjoyment Helen had been reared, and of
the probable fortune which she would possess, that he had better
postpone answering it until he should have become a bishop.
Helen, who did not try to analyze her own perturbations, and was
wholly unconscious of Cuthbert's, received him with her accustomed
gentle sweetness, but with a sedate and mournful gravity adapted to
the circumstances. When the ladies had brought their lengthy and
minute narrative to a close--a narrative which embraced only the
history of twenty-four hours, for Cuthbert was a regular and attentive
visitor--he inquired about Colonel Alsager. Had he been informed? had
he been sent for? had he come?
"Yes, to all your questions, Mr. Farleigh. Colonel Alsager is now in
the house, in Sir Peregrine's room; but as yet we have not seen him."
The sensitive and expressive face of the curate was clouded by a look
of pain and regret. He and Colonel Alsager had never met; but the
young clergyman knew Sir Peregrine better, perhaps, than any other
person knew him, and respected him deeply. He could not regard
Laurence's conduct so lightly, he could not acquit him as easily, as
others did. He blamed him heavily, as he sat and listened to the
women's talk; and with the blame keen compassion mingled; for he knew,
with the mysterious insight of a sympathetic nature, all that he must
suffer in realizing that regret must be in vain, must be wasted now,
must be _too late_.
The occasion was too solemn to admit of so trivial a feeling as
curiosity; but had it not been so, that feminine sentiment would
undoubtedly have predominated among the emotions with which Mrs.
Chisholm and Helen Manningtree received Colonel Alsager, when, after a
lengthened interval, he made his appearance in the long drawing-room.
As it was, their mutual greetings were kindly but subdued. The
presence of illness and danger in the house superseded all minor
considerations, and Colonel Alsager might have been a guest as
familiar as he was in reality strange, for all the emotion his
presence excited. Mrs. Chisholm introduced Cuthbert Farleigh, and
added to the usual formula a few words to the effect that he was a
favoured guest with Sir Peregrine, which led Alsager to receive the
introduction warmly, and to prosecute the acquaintance with zeal. The
curate thawed under the influence of the Colonel's genial manner,--so
warm and attractive, with all its solemn impress of regret, fear, and
uncertainty. After a little while the women went away again to resume
their dreary watch; and Dr. Galton came down to make his report, and
to join Alsager at his late and much-needed dinner. A telegraphic
message had been sent to London to seek further medical assistance;
but the great man, who could do so little, could not reach Knockholt
before the morning. In the mean time there was little change in the
state of the patient; but Dr. Galton adhered to the hopeful opinion he
had formed at sunset. Cuthbert Farleigh went away from the Park, and
sat down to the preparation of his Sunday's sermon with a troubled
mind. "What a capital good fellow Alsager is," he thought, "with all
his faults! What a number of questions he asked about _her!_ He takes
a great interest in her. Well, _it_ would be a very natural and a very
nice thing." It is granted, is it not, on all hands, that the
abandonment of proper names and the substitution of pronouns--which,
whether personal or impersonal, are at all events demonstrative--is a
very suspicious circumstance in certain cases?
Sir Peregrine Alsager did not die, as Laurence had thought, and
dreaded that he was to die, with the silence between them unbroken,
the estrangement unremoved. Nothing could undo the past, indeed; but
the present was given to the father and son; and its preciousness was
valued duly by them both. In a few days after Laurence's arrival the
paralysis loosened its grasp of his father's faculties; and though he
still lay in his bed shrunk, shrivelled, and helpless, he could see,
and hear, and speak. Sometimes his words were a little confused, and a
slight but distressing lapse of memory caused him to pause and try
painfully first to recall the word he wanted, and next to accomplish
its utterance; but gradually this difficulty wore away, and the old
man spoke freely, though little. He was greatly changed by his
illness--was most pathetically patient; and his face, a little
distorted by the shock, and never more to wear the healthy hue of his
vigorous age, assumed an expression of tranquil waiting. The supremacy
of his will was gone with the practical abolition of his authority. He
let it slip unnoticed. He cared little for anything now but the
presence of his son and the progress of the mornings and the evenings
which were making the week-days of his life, and wearing towards the
dawn of the eternal Sabbath. He loved to have Helen with him, and
would regard her with unwonted interest and tenderness,--keenest when
she and Laurence met beside his couch, and talked together, as they
came gradually to do, very often at first for his sake, and
afterwards, as he hoped, as he never doubted, for their own. Yes, the
keen anxiety, the foresight, the intensifying of former mental
attributes which characterize some kinds of physical decay in persons
of a certain intellectual and moral constitution and calibre, showed
themselves strongly in Sir Peregrine Alsager, and centred themselves
in his son. He had asked nothing, and had heard little of his
wandering and purposeless life; but that little had made the old
man--held back now, on the brink of the eternal verity, by no scruples
of coldness, of pride, of pique, or of scrupulosity--very anxious that
his son should marry, and settle down to live at Knockholt Park at
least a fair proportion of the year. With that considerate, but
perhaps, after all, beautiful, simplicity which restores to age the
faith of youth, and builds her shrines for all the long-shattered
idols, Sir Peregrine reasoned of his own life and his own experience,
and applied his deductions to his son's far different case. He was,
however, too wise to put his wishes into words, or even to make them
evident without words, to their objects. But there were two persons in
the small group who tenanted Knockholt Park who knew that the dearest
wish of Sir Peregrine's heart, that desire which overpassed the
present and projected itself into the inscrutable future, when its
fruition might perchance never be known to him, was that Laurence
Alsager, his son, should marry Helen Manningtree, his ward. The two
who had penetrated the inmost feelings of the old man were Cuthbert
Farleigh and Mrs. Chisholm.
How sped the days with Colonel Alsager in the old home? Heavily, to
say the least of it. He had undergone strong excitement of various
kinds; and now reaction had set in, with the unspeakable relief of his
father's reprieve from immediate death. During his journey from
Redmoor to Knockholt he had been an unresisting prey to bitter and
confused regrets; so bitter, they seemed almost like remorse; so
unavailing, they touched the confines of despair. The scenes in which
he had lately played a part, the problems he had been endeavouring to
solve, rushed from his view, and retired to the recesses of his
memory,--to come out again, and occupy him more closely, more
anxiously than ever, when the cruel grasp of suspense and terror was
removed from his heart; when the monotony of the quiet house, and the
life regulated by the exigencies of that of an invalid, had fairly
settled down upon him; when all the past seemed distant, and all the
future had more than the ordinary uncertainty of human existence.
There was no estrangement between Laurence and his father now; but the
son knew that there was no more similarity than before. Their relative
positions had altered, and with the change old things had passed away.
The pale and shrunken old man who lay patiently on his couch beside
the large window of the library at Knockholt, at which the peacocks
had now learned to tap and the dogs to sniff, was not the silent
though urbane, the hale and _arriéré_ country gentleman to whom his
Guardsman's life had been an unattractive mystery, and all his ways
distasteful. That Guardsman's life, those London ways, the shibboleth
of his set, even the distinctive peculiarities of his own
individuality, had all been laid aside, almost obliterated, by the
dread reality which had drawn so near, and still, as they both knew,
was unobtrusively ever nigh at hand. Father and son were much together
at certain regulated times; and Laurence was unfailing in his
scrupulous observance of all the wishes, his intuitive perception of
all the fancies, of the invalid. Still there were many hours of
solitude to be got through in every day; and Laurence Alsager held
stricter and truer commune with his own heart, while they passed over
the dial, than he had ever been used to hold. The quiet of the house;
the seclusion of the park in which he walked and rode; the formal
beauty of the garden, where he strolled with Helen Manningtree, and
listened to her enthusiastic expectations of what its appearance would
be when the time of flowers should have fully arrived; the regularity
of the household; the few and trivial interruptions from without;--all
these things had a strong influence on the sensitive temperament of
Laurence Alsager, and gradually isolated him within himself. There was
nothing to disturb the retrospective and introspective current of his
thoughts; and in those quiet weeks of waiting he learned much of
himself, of life, and of truth--knowledge which otherwise might never
have come to him. It was not very long before his mind recurred
painfully to Redmoor and its mistress, whom he had left in a position
of difficulty and danger. He remembered the counsel he had given her,
and he wondered whether it might avail. He pondered on all the
eventualities which the _triste sagesse_ of a man of the world taught
him to anticipate, and longed for power to avert them or to alter
their character. He learned some wholesome lessons in these vain
aspirations, and looked deeper into the stream of life than he had
ever looked before.
He looked at Lady Mitford's position from every point of view; he
weighed and measured her trials, and then he began to speculate upon
her temptations. All at once it struck him that he had ceased to fear
Lord Dollamore; that that distinguished personage had somehow dropped
out of his calculations; that he was occupying himself rather with her
sentimental griefs than with the serious danger which he had believed,
a little while ago, menaced her reputation and her position. He feared
Laura Hammond, and he ardently desired to penetrate the full meaning
of Miss Gillespie's warning. He perfectly understood the difficulty of
conveying to a mind so innocent as that of Lady Mitford the full force
and meaning of the counsel he had given her, the hopelessness of
inducing her to arm herself with a woman's legitimate weapon--the
strong desire to please,--and getting her to use it against her
husband. She did not lack intelligence, but she did not possess tact;
and her nature was too refined and straightforward to give her any
chance in so unequal a contest as that into which her husband's
worthlessness had forced her.
And now another truth came steadily up from the abyss into which
Alsager was always gazing, and confronted him. That truth was the
motive which animated his thoughts and inspired his perceptions; which
gave him so clear an insight into Lady Mitford's position, and enabled
him to read her heart with more distinctness than she herself could
have interpreted it. One day Laurence Alsager knew, and acknowledged
to himself, what this motive was, whence came this intuition. He loved
Georgie Mitford. Yes; the idle speculation, the indignation of a true
gentleman at beholding the innocent wronged and the trusting deceived;
the loyal instinct of protection; the contemptuous anger which had led
him to detest Laura Hammond and to desire her discomfiture; the tender
and true sympathy of a world-worn man with a pure and simple woman, to
whom the world and its ways are all unknown and unsuspected; the
shrinking from beholding the suffering which experience must
inflict,--all these had been evident--they had existed in utter
integrity and vitality. Alsager had not deceived himself then, neither
did he deceive himself now; and though they still existed, they had
receded from their prominence,--they did but supplement another, a
more powerful, a more vital reality. He loved her--he never doubted
the fact, never questioned it more. He loved with a love as much
superior to, as much stronger, holier, truer, and more vital than,
any love which he had ever before felt or fancied--as his present
self-commune was more candid, searching, and complete than any counsel
ever previously held in the secret chambers of his brain and heart. He
had settled this point with himself, and was moodily pondering on the
possible consequences of the fact, and on the alteration in his own
position towards Lady Mitford which it implied, when he received a
letter from Georgie. It was not the first,--several notes had passed
between them in the easy intimacy of their acquaintance; but it was
the first since that acquaintance had strengthened into friendship.
And now, for him, friendship too had passed away, and in its place
stood love--dangerous, delicious, entrancing, bewildering love. So
Georgie's letter had altogether a different value and significance for
him now. This was the letter:
"Redmoor, -- March 18--.
"Dear Colonel Alsager,--Sir Charles received your kind note, but has
been too busy to write; so he has asked me to do so, and I comply with
very great pleasure. I need hardly say how truly glad we were to hear
of the improvement in Sir Peregrine's state, and how earnestly we hope
he may completely rally. All things are going on here much as usual.
Poor Mr. Hammond is very ill,--failing rapidly, I am sure; this week
he is suffering fearfully from bronchitis. They talked of going away,
but that is of course impossible. I am a good deal with him, and I
think he likes me. Lord Dollamore has come back from town, and is
staying here,--doing nothing but lounge about and watch everybody. Is
there any chance that we shall have the pleasure of seeing you again
if we are detained here much longer? I hoped Charley would have taken
me to see my father, who has been ailing this cold spring weather; but
I fear the long delay here will prevent that,--he will be impatient to
get to town as soon as possible. Pray let us hear from you how Sir
Peregrine is. Charley is out, but I know I may add his kindest regards
to my own.--Yours, dear Colonel Alsager, always sincerely,
"Georgina Mitford.
"P.S. I have not forgotten your advice for a minute, nor ceased to act
upon it, and to thank you for it from my heart. But--it is so
difficult to write upon this subject--difficult to me to write on any,
for, as you know, I am not clever, unfortunately for me. Could you not
come?"
Laurence read and re-read this simple letter with unspeakable pain and
keen irrepressible delight. She trusted him; she thought of him; she
wished for his presence! Could he not come? she asked. No; he could
not. But supposing he could--ought he? Well, he was a brave man and a
true, and he faced that question also. How he answered it remains to
be seen.
The days passed at Knockholt Park, and resembled each other very
closely. Laurence saw a good deal of Cuthbert Farleigh, and liked him
much. He wondered a little, after the manner of men, at the content
yielded by a life so unlike his own, or any that his fancy had ever
painted; but if he and the curate did not sympathize, they coalesced.
Laurence wrote again to, and heard again from, Lady Mitford.
There was not much in her letter apart from her kind and sympathizing
comments upon his; but he gathered a good deal from the tone which
unconsciously pervaded it. He learned that she had not succeeded in
breaking up the party at Redmoor; that Sir Charles had invited a fresh
relay of county guests; that Mr. Hammond's health was very precarious;
and that Georgie had not been gratified in her wish to see her father.
The letter made him more uneasy, more sad, by its reticence than by
its revelations. If he could but have returned to Redmoor!--but it was
impossible. If he could have left his father, how was he to have
accounted for an uninvited return to Sir Charles Mitford's house? He
did not choose, for many reasons, to assume or cultivate such
relations with the worthy Baronet as going there in an informal manner
would imply.
So March and April slipped away, and Laurence Alsager was still at
Knockholt, in close attendance upon his father. One day in the last
week of April, Laurence was returning from a solitary ramble in the
park, intending to read to his father for a while, if he should find
that Sir Peregrine (sensibly feebler, and much inclined to slumber
through the brightest hours of sunshine) could bear the exertion of
listening. As he emerged from the shade of a thick plantation on the
north side of the house and approached the terrace, he observed with
alarm that several servants were assembled on the steps, and that two
came running towards him, with evident signs of agitation and
distress. He advanced quickly to meet them, and exclaimed, "Is
anything wrong? Is my father worse?"
"I am sorry to tell you, Sir Laurence--" began the foremost of the two
servants. And so Laurence Alsager learned that his father had gone to
his rest, and that he had come to his kingdom.