SIR LAURENCE'S LETTER.
Helen Manningtree and Mrs. Chisholm pursued their customary mode of
life at Knockholt Park after, as before, the departure of Sir
Laurence. Helen missed the grave and courteous gentleman whom she had
learned to like so much, and her at first distant association with
whom had grown into intimacy and confidence. Sir Laurence was a most
agreeable companion; well-informed; and entirely without any sort of
pretension. He had seen a great deal of the world--in the geographical
sense of the term, as well as in every other; and his anecdotes of
travel and descriptions of foreign lands had unflagging interest for
Helen, whose experience had indeed been narrow, but whose reading had
been various and extensive. In the thoughtful mood into which Alsager
had fallen--in the serious frame of mind which had become almost
habitual with him now--he would probably have been voted a bore by
"society," supposing that he had placed himself within reach of its
suffrages; but Helen knew nothing of the tastes and fashions of the
great world, and to her Laurence was all that was most companionable
and pleasant. He was not indeed so gifted, so cultivated a creature as
Cuthbert Farleigh; but then,--who was? who could be expected to be?
And Helen, whose circle of acquaintance included a dozen unmarried men
at the most, believed with perfect good faith that she had exercised
the soundest judgment and discretion in her selection of the Reverend
Cuthbert, from "all the world," as the individual to whom alone she
could render unqualified respect and intrust the happiness of her
future life. That resolution, before mentioned, by which the curate
had bound himself, to himself, to wait until he should be a bishop, or
for the occurrence of any other equally improbable event, was rather
in the way of Helen's happiness, either present or future; but she was
not much disquieted by the delay. Cuthbert had seen no symptoms of an
alarming nature to indicate any "intentions" on Colonel Alsager's part
prior to Sir Peregrine's death, and he was ignorant of the existence
of the old Baronet's letter, in which he had urged a marriage with
Helen upon Sir Laurence. He had begun to think, within a very few days
of Colonel Alsager's arrival at Knockholt, that he had been foolishly
apprehensive in the first instance. Was it at all likely that, at
Colonel Alsager's age, and in his position, with his opportunities of
seeing, and recommending himself to, the fairest and most fascinating
women in the world, he should be entirely heart-free and ready to fix
his affections upon his father's ward? Of course Cuthbert was quite
aware that Laurence Alsager could never by any possibility have met
any one half so worthy of admiration and of love as Helen Manningtree;
but he was a young man of candid mind, and ready to acknowledge that a
man might be preoccupied to the extent of being unable to recognize
the unapproachable excellence of Helen without being guilty of
absolute stupidity or unpardonable bad taste. So, on the whole, these
young people were tolerably comfortable in their minds, and felt an
equable though unexpressed confidence in their mutual affection and in
the future. The circumstance of Sir Peregrine Alsager's will making no
mention of Helen--in fact, having been made before she became his
ward, and during Lady Alsager's lifetime--had taken them both by
surprise, and affected them differently. Helen had always known that
her own very moderate income--which Sir Peregrine had always
supplemented by a liberal allowance--was all that she actually
possessed, or had any positive right to expect. But she had never
entertained any doubt that her guardian intended to leave her a
handsome provision, and she experienced a considerable shock when she
learned that he had not done so. She could not understand it, and she
was still more puzzled and surprised when Sir Laurence told her that
he found himself a very much richer man than he had ever expected to
be. Helen had too much good sense, and even in her secluded, life had
learned to estimate facts and to eschew sentimental fallacies; so she
did not affect to be indifferent on the subject, or to think that it
was quite as well to be poor as to be rich, to be dependent as to be
independent; but she did think and feel with very consoling sincerity
that Cuthbert would have no more scruples about asking her to share
his lot when her own had ceased to be of a nature to contrast with it.
So she accepted her altered position cheerfully, and asked Sir
Laurence what he would advise her to do, with a true-hearted freedom
from anger or jealousy which elevated her to a great height in the
mind of the new Baronet. Sir Laurence made her an evasive answer, and
begged her to defer any decision on the subject until his return to
Knockholt. He was going away, first to town, and then abroad, he told
her, most probably; and she and Mrs. Chisholm must remain and take
charge there for him. He would keep up the establishment just as it
had been, with the exception of the stable department. Helen
acquiesced with great readiness. She was too completely a lady to feel
any awkwardness in such an arrangement, and she knew well that
Laurence's interests would be best served by her accepting his offer.
"I will stay here then," she said, "and go on just as usual. I don't
know whether you are aware that I was Sir Peregrine's almoner. Am I to
be yours? The farm-bailiffs, the keepers, and all the rest of your
people, are my excellent good friends. I shall get on capitally with
them, and go my old rounds in the village, and so forth. But I want to
know what I am to do about the charities, the schools, and the
promiscuous applications to the 'great house.'"
"I would give you unlimited credit with Todd, Helen, for all your
requirements in that way, but that I fear you would be too
conscientious to make sufficient use of it. But stay; the best plan
will be to arrange it with Farleigh. Yes; I'll speak to him, and tell
Todd he is to give him anything he asks for. I daresay he won't mind a
little additional trouble in the cause of his poor people; and you can
do the visiting and all that as usual, and report to him."
Sir Laurence looked at Helen as he made this remarkably convenient
proposition for rendering the intercourse between the Park and the
Rectory (for Cuthbert lived at the rector's house; that is to say, in
a corner of it) more frequent than it was at present. Helen grew
extremely red, and then turned the conversation.
"So, I suppose," said she to Mrs. Chisholm, after Sir Laurence had
taken his leave, and the two women were talking over his visit and all
the late events,--"so I suppose we shall live here until Sir Laurence
is married; and then, when he brings a handsome, dashing, fashionable
Lady Alsager down here, you and I, dear old woman, will go and live in
the village; perhaps that pretty little house with the roses and the
little white fountain, just big enough for the two ducks that are
always swimming in it, may be vacant then; and I daresay Laurence
would give it to us rent-free, and we should be very snug there; but
we would not have ducks, except for dinner; and Lady Alsager would
have us up to tea, I daresay, when there were no fine people at the
Park. What do you say to all this, Mrs. Chisholm? doesn't it sound
pleasant? What a cosy little place it is! don't you think so?"
"My dear Helen, how you do run on?" said the calmer Mrs. Chisholm;
"you are quite in spirits to-day."
She was; for in her sketch of the rural abode with the roses there had
been an unmentioned element. Helen thought the house would be quite
the thing for a curate. Helen was always thinking about a curate; and
in that respect there was considerable sympathy between her and her
companion, for Mrs. Chisholm was almost always thinking of a curate
too. Helen's curate was living; Mrs. Chisholm's was dead. The girl's
heart was in a dream of the future; the woman's, in the memory of the
sacred past.
Cuthbert Farleigh had received the intelligence of Sir Peregrine
Alsager's unaccountable conduct towards Helen Manningtree with mingled
feelings. He was by no means a commonplace young man, though not the
light of learning and the mirror of chivalry which Helen believed him.
Her over-estimate of him did him no harm, for he entertained a
tolerably correct opinion of himself; and if the future were destined
to unite them, it would probably not militate against her own
happiness either. The mistake she made was in degree, not in kind,--a
distinction which makes all possible difference. A sensible and
dutiful woman may find out that her husband is not possessed of the
qualities with which she has believed her lover to be endowed, to the
extent with which she accredited him, and her love and esteem may not
suffer by the discovery. She would probably recognize that if she had
over-rated him (and what a dreadful woman she would be if she had
not!) on some points, she had also failed to discover his merits on
others, until the intimacy of domestic life had restored the balance
of judgment. The mistake, which lays a woman's life waste in its
rectification, is that which endows a man with qualities which he does
not possess at all,--the mistake which leads to the conviction that
the man she has married is not the man she loved, and burdens her with
an actual duty and a lost ideal. If Helen Manningtree were ever to
marry Cuthbert Farleigh, she would incur no such danger; she would
have to pay no such price for the indulgence of undisciplined
imagination. He was a good and a clever man, and was as highly and
wholly disinterested as it is possible for a human being to be, to
whom the consideration of meat, drink, clothing, and house-rent is one
of rational importance.
He regarded his position with respect to Helen as very much improved
by the fact that Sir Peregrine Alsager had not left her the fortune,
which the gossips of the neighbourhood had taken for granted, and even
announced "on authority." On the other hand, he grieved that she
should be deprived of the luxurious home and the opulent manner of
life to which she had been so long habituated; and as he was not at
all a conceited man,--albeit flattered and exalted by all the ladies
in the parish, which is ordinarily the bane of curates,--it did occur
to him that perhaps Helen might have been better and happier if Sir
Peregrine had left her the fortune, and he had adhered to his
resolution of leaving her to its enjoyment, unwooed by him. Such a
supposition was not likely to last long; its cold chill would pass off
in the sunshine of free and acknowledged love. Free and acknowledged
love? Yes, the curate was going to tell Helen, as soon as he should
have learned the particulars of her position, that she had not erred
in believing that he loved her, aid to ask her to take all the risks
and all the cares of a life which could never have any brilliancy or
any luxury to offer her, for the sole consideration of sharing them
with him. He had not the smallest doubt of his success. Helen's nature
was too true, and too well known to him, to render a misgiving
possible; still the near approach of the assurance of his hope made
him grave and solemn. The orphan-girl loved and trusted him; without
him she was alone--alone in a world which is not very easily gotten
through with the best of help and companionship. The sense of a great
responsibility rested upon him, and his heart was lifted up in no
merely conventional or professional prayer. So Cuthbert made up his
mind, and felt very quiet and solemn about it. That mood would pass
away; it would be succeeded by the dazzling delight, the splendid
triumph, the fertile fancy, and superhuman hope and exultation of
love, as it ought to be; but it is a good omen for any woman whose
lover addresses himself to his wooing in such a temper.
Thus it fell out that Helen and Cuthbert, standing together by a
window which opened on the broad stone terrace, and watching poor Sir
Peregrine's peacocks, as they marched up and down outside, talked of a
future which was to be common to them both, and was to date from the
expiration of the year of mourning for Sir Peregrine Alsager. Helen
had told Cuthbert how she had sketched such a charming picture for
Mrs. Chisholm, of the house with the roses; and they had talked a good
deal of the nonsense incidental to their position, and which is so
much pleasanter than sense,--about whether she had thought of him; and
if she had, why she had?--for there is a subtle resemblance to Jack
Bunsby's monologue in the dialogues of lovers;--and then the
conversation drifted away to Sir Laurence Alsager.
"We must tell him, my own Helen," said the curate; "he has been very
kind to you, and I daresay will be very much disgusted at your making
so poor a marriage."
The girl looked reproachfully at him, but smiled in a moment, and
said, "Go on, Cuthbert; you are not worth contradicting, you know."
"No, but--" said Cuthbert, remonstrating, "you must let me set the
world's view before you. No doubt Sir Laurence will think you very
foolish; but he will always be our friend,--I feel sure of
that,--though I know he is so different, and lives in so different a
world, under so different a system. Sometimes, Helen, I have had an
idea that he found out my secret; though I never could see an inch
farther into his life and his heart than it was his good pleasure I
should look. Yes, my darling, he must know all about us, and soon; for
you must remember that it may make a difference in all his plans and
arrangements, if he finds you are not to remain here after next
spring."
"I hardly think it will do that," said Helen; "I fancy he will
establish Mrs. Chisholm here _en permanence_; that is to say, until he
marries."
"Is he likely to marry? Have you heard anything of that sort?"
"O no! he has never talked of any girls to me. He has never said
anything the least like intending to marry. The only woman he ever
speaks of--and he does talk of her, and sometimes hears from her--is
Lady Mitford; you remember, you told me about her marriage,--the
daughter of Mr. Stanfield, your old tutor, you know."
"Of course, I remember. How strangely things come about! it really
seems as if there were only two sets of people in the world; for one
never meets any one with whom one has not some link of communication!
And Georgie Stanfield is Laurence Alsager's female crony and
correspondent! How and where is she?"
"In town, I believe; but I don't know much about her. He used to speak
of her vaguely, in talking to me of the great world and its
hollowness, as of one whom he greatly liked and esteemed, and who was
unfortunately circumstanced. He said he would have asked Lady Mitford
down here in the autumn, if he could have asked her without her
husband; but that, of course, was impossible, and he could not invite
Sir Charles Mitford. I believe they are very unhappy. Think of that,
Cuthbert,--a husband and wife unhappy! a splendid home, with rank and
wealth, and misery!" The girl lifted solemn eyes full of wonder and
compassion to her lover's face. "Sir Laurence wished that I could know
her, for her sake, he kindly said."
"I wish you could, Helen; you would comfort her and do her good: and
yet I would not have you saddened, my child, and made wise in the
possibilities of life, as you must be if you had the confidence of an
unhappy wife. You are better without it, darling--far better without
it."
Then the curate remembered the alarm he had felt when Colonel Alsager
made his appearance at Knockholt Park; and he confessed it to Helen,
who laughed at him, and pretended to scold him, but who was not a
little pleased all the time.
"You stupid Cuthbert!" said the young lady, to whom the curate had
ceased to be an object of awe since their engagement; "it never came
into Laurence's head to wish to marry me; and I am certain it never
crossed any human being's imagination but your own that such a thing
could ever happen."
The Reverend Cuthbert was reluctantly obliged to break off the
conversation at this point, and go about his parish business. So he
took leave of Helen, enjoining her to write to Sir Laurence that very
day, and to make him acquainted with their engagement,--as Mrs.
Chisholm, who had just entered the room, and to whom he referred the
matter, gave it as her decided opinion that the communication should
be made by Helen.
The post was not a subject of such overwhelming importance at
Knockholt Park, its punctuality was not so earnestly discussed, nor
was there as much excitement on its arrival, as at the generality of
country-houses. Mrs. Chisholm had very few correspondents; Helen had
only two, exclusive of Sir Laurence; and no letters were "due" at this
particular time: hence it happened that the ladies often left the
breakfast-table before the arrival of the letter-bag, and that its
contents awaited their attention undisturbed through more hours of the
day than most people would believe possible. Mrs. Chisholm never read
the newspapers until the evening, and Helen never read them at all,
being content with Cuthbert's version of public affairs. On this
particular morning, however, Helen thought proper to remain in the
breakfast-room until the post should arrive. The truth was she shrank
from the task of writing to Sir Laurence, and she knew she ought to
set about it at once; so she lingered and fidgeted about the
breakfast-room long after Mrs. Chisholm had betaken herself to her
daily confabulation with the housekeeper. Thus she was alone when the
letter-bag was brought in, and she turned over its contents, expecting
to find them of the usual uninteresting nature. There were several
letters for Sir Laurence "to be forwarded," a number of circulars, a
few letters for some of the servants, the customary newspapers, and
lastly--a missive for Helen herself. It was a large letter in a blue
envelope, and directed in a lawyer-like hand Helen opened it, feeling
a little frightened, and found that the cover enclosed a packet
addressed to her, in the hand of Sir Laurence Alsager, and marked
"Private."
"What on earth can Laurence be writing to me about that requires such
precaution?" thought Helen anxiously; and then she rang the bell,
handed over the other letters to the footman for proper distribution,
and retired to her own room, where she read the following:
"Dover.
"My Dear Helen,--I am devoting the last evening which I shall pass in
England for an indefinite period, to writing to you a letter, which I
shall take the precaution of sending so that its existence may be
known to none but you, at the present time. A certain portion of its
contents must necessarily be communicated to others; but you will use
your discretion, upon which in this, and all other things, I rely
with absolute confidence.
"You must not let this preamble alarm you; there is nothing to
occasion you any trouble or sorrow in what I am about to say to you.
It will be a long story, and, I daresay, a clumsily--told one, for I
am eminently unready with my pen; but it will interest you, Helen, for
my sake and for your own. When I tell you that this story is not a new
one,-that it does not include anything that has occurred after I left
Knockholt, though I am indirectly impelled to write it to you by
circumstances which have happened since then,--you will wonder why I
did not tell it to you in person, during the period when our
companionship was so close and easy,--so delightful to me, and I am
quite sure I may add, so pleasant to you. I could not tell you then,
because I was not sufficiently sure of myself. I had an experiment to
try--an experience to undergo--before I could be certain, even in the
limited sense of human security, of my own future; and until these
were over and done with, all was vague for me. They are over and done
with now: and I am going to tell you all about yourself, and a good
deal about myself.
"You know that among the sorrows of my life there is one which must be
life-long. It is the remembrance of my conduct to my father, and of
the long tacit estrangement which preceded our last meeting, and
which, but for a providential interposition, might never have been
even so far atoned for and mitigated as it was before his death. It
would be difficult to account for this estrangement; it is impossible
to excuse it; there never was any reproach on either side,--indeed
there could not have been on mine, for the fault was all my own,--and
there never was any explanation. My father doubtless believed, as he
was justified in believing, that any wish of his would have little
weight with me;--he seldom expressed one; and I am convinced that one
thing on which he had set his heart very strongly, one paramount
desire, he cautiously abstained from expressing, that he might, by
keeping me ignorant of it during his lifetime, give it the additional
chance of realization which it might derive from the sanctity of a
posthumous appeal to the feelings of an undutiful and careless son,
when those feelings should be intensified by unavailing regret. I did
learn, dear Helen, after the barrier of eternal silence had been
placed between my father and me, that he had cherished one paramount
desire, and that he had resorted to such an expedient in order to
induce me to respect and to fulfil it.
"My amazement and discomfiture when I found that my father's will was
of so far distant a date that it made no mention of you were great. I
could not understand why he had not supplemented the will which
existed by another, in which you would be amply provided for, and his
wishes concerning your future fully explained. My long and wilful
absence from my father had prevented my having any real acquaintance
with you. To me you were merely a name, seldom heard, hardly
remembered. Had I not gone to Knockholt when I did, you would have
remained so; and there was no one else who could be supposed to take
an obligatory interest in you. How came it, I thought, that my father
had taken no precaution against such a contingency--which, in fact,
had so nearly been a reality? You will say he trusted to the honour
and the gentlemanly feeling of his son; and so I read the riddle also;
but reflection showed me that I was wrong. A more strictly just man
never lived than my father; and he must have been strictly unjust had
he allowed the future fortunes of a young girl whom he had reared and
educated--who had been to him as a daughter for years--to depend upon
the caprice or the generosity of a man to whom she was an utter
stranger, and between whom and herself the tie of blood was of the
slightest description. Nor was delicacy less characteristic of my
father than justice. (Ah, Helen, how keenly I can see all these things
now that he is gone!) He would have shrunk as sensitively as you would
from anything that would have obliged you and me to meet for the first
time in the characters of pensioned and pensioner. I knew all this;
and I was utterly confounded at the absence of any later will. I had
the most complete and diligent search made; but in vain. There was no
will, Helen, but there was a letter. In the drawer of the desk which
my father always used, there was a letter. How do you think it was
addressed? Not to 'my son'--not to 'Colonel Alsager;' but to 'Sir
Laurence Alsager, Bart.'! It was a painful letter--painful and
precious; painful because a tone of sadness, of disappointment, of
content in feeling that the writer had nearly reached his term of
life, pervaded it; precious because it was full of pardon and peace,
of the fulness of love for his only son. I cannot let you see the
letter,--it is too sacred for any eyes but those for which it was
intended; but I can tell you some of its contents, and I can make you
understand its tone. As a mother speaks to her son going forth into
the arena of life, the night before their parting, in the dark, on her
knees, by his bedside, with her head upon his pillow; as she speaks of
the time to come, when she will watch and wait for him, of the time
that is past, whose memories are so precious, which she bids him
remember and be brave and true; as she makes light of all his faults
and shortcomings,--so did my dear old father--my father who had grown
gray and old; alone, when I might have been with him, and was
not--write to me. God bless him, and God forgive me! He never
reproached me, living; what punishment he has inflicted upon me, dead!
The letter was long; and it varied, I think, through every key in
which human tenderness can be sung. But enough of this.
"A portion of the contents concerned you nearly, my dear Helen. I can
repeat them to you briefly. I knew, and you know, that your father and
my father--very distant relatives--had been playmates in boyhood, and
attached friends in manhood. We knew that your father died on his
voyage home from India, and just after he had consigned you and your
black nurse to the care of the captain of the ship, to be sent, on
landing, to Knockholt Park. I believe you have your father's letter to
my father, in which he solemnly, but fearlessly, entreats his
protection for the orphan child, whose credentials it is to form. He
had left your mother and her baby in an alien grave at Barrackpore,
and I suppose he had not the strength to live for you only, 'little
Nelly,' as they called you then. At all events, he died; and I knew in
a vague kind of way about that, and my father's care of you, and how
you grew up with him, and made his home cheerful and happy, which his
only son left carelessly, and forsook for long. The letter
recapitulated all this, and told me besides, that your mother had been
my father's first love. Perhaps she was also his only love--God knows.
He was a good husband to my mother during their brief married life, I
am sure; for I remember her well; and she was always smiling and
happy. But the girl he loved had preferred Robert Manningtree with
nothing but his commission, to Peregrine Alsager with a large estate
and a baronetcy for his fortunate future. My father, _preux chevalier_
that he was, did not forget to tell me that she never repented or had
reason to regret that preference. Thus, Helen, you were a legacy to
him, bequeathed not alone by friendship, but by love. As such he
accepted you; as such he prized you, calm and undemonstrative as he
was; as such it was the cherished purpose of his life to intrust you
to me--not that I was to be your guardian in his place, but that I was
to be your husband. He thought well of me, in spite of all, you see;
he did not despair of his ungracious son, or he never would have
dreamed of conferring so great a privilege on me, of suffering you to
incur so great a risk. He had had this darling project so strongly in
his mind, and yet had been so convinced that any betrayal of it to me
would only prevent my seeking you, that my persistent neglect of the
old home had a double bitterness for him; and at length, two years
ago, hearing a rumour that I was about to marry one of the beauties of
the season, he relinquished it, and determined to make a will,
bequeathing to you the larger portion of his unentailed property. The
rumour was true as to my intentions, but false as to my success. The
lady in question jilted me for a richer marriage, thank God! I don't
say this from pique, but from conviction; for I have seen her and her
husband, and I have seen her since her husband's death. She did not
hold her perjured state long; nor did she win the prize for which she
jilted me. I am a much richer man than her husband ever was, and he
has left her comparatively poor. In a storm of rage and disgust I left
England, without going to Knockholt--without having seen you since
your childhood--without bidding my father farewell. This grieved him
much: but I was free; I was not married. I was labouring under angry
and bitter feelings towards all womankind. I should come home again,
my father thought, still unmarried, and his hope would be fulfilled.
He did not make the will. I remained away much longer than he supposed
I should have done, and not nearly so long as in my anger and
mortification I had determined to remain. You know the rest, dear
Helen--you know that I lingered and dallied with time and duty, and
did not go to Knockholt until it was all but too late. A little while
before he met with the accident, my father had written a letter
somewhat similar in purport; but he had not seen me then, and I
suppose it was not warmly affectionate enough for the old man's
liking, and he wrote that which I now mention at many, and, I fear,
painful, intervals of his brief convalescence. It was finished just a
week before he died.
"You will have read all this with emotion, Helen; and I daresay at
this point your feelings will be very painful. Mine are little less
so, and the task of fully explaining them to you is delicate and
difficult. The truthfulness, the candour of your nature will come to
my assistance when you read, as their remembrance aids me while I
write. My first impulse on reading my father's letter was to exult in
the thought that there was anything possible to me by which his wishes
could be respected. My second--and it came speedily--was to feel that
the marriage he desired between us never could take place. Are you
reassured, Helen? Have you been frightened at the image your fancy has
created, of a debt of gratitude to be discharged to Sir Peregrine at
the cost of your own happiness, or disavowed at the cost of seeming
cold, ungrateful, and undutiful? Have you had a vision of me in the
character of an importunate suitor, half imploring a concession, half
pressing a right, and wholly distasteful to you? If you have, dismiss
it, for it is only a vision, and never will be realized to distress
you. Why do I say this? Because I know that not only do you not love
me, but that you do love Cuthbert Farleigh. Forgive the plainness and
directness with which I allude to a fact yet perhaps unavowed to him,
but perfectly well known by and acknowledged to yourself. No betrothal
could make you more truly his than you have been by the tacit promise
of your own heart--I know not for how long, but before I came to
Knockholt Park, I am sure. If I had not seen the man, I should equally
have discerned the fact, for I am observant; and though I have, I
hope, outlived the first exuberance of masculine conceit, I did not
err in imputing the tranquil, ladylike indifference with which you
received me to a preoccupied mind, rather than to an absence of
interest or curiosity about the almost unknown son of your guardian.
Life at Knockholt Park has little variety or excitement to offer; and
the advent of a Guardsman, a demi-semi-cousin, and an heir-apparent,
would have made a little more impression, would it not, had not the
Church secured its proper precedence of the Army? I perceived the
state of things with satisfaction; for I liked you very much from the
first, and I thought Cuthbert a very good fellow; just the man to hold
your respect all his life long and to make you happy. In my
reflections on your share, then, in the impossibility of the
fulfilment of my father's request, I experienced little pain. My own
was not so easily disposed of after his death as during his life. I
was destined to frustrate his wishes. Had you and I met, as we ought
to have done, long before; had I had the good fortune to have seen you
and learned to contrast you with the meretricious and heartless of
your sex, who had frittered away my heart and soured my temper,
perhaps, Helen, I might have won you, and the old man might have been
made happy.
"We met under circumstances which made any such destiny for us
impossible, for reasons which equally affected both. My preoccupation
was of a different sort from yours; it had neither present happiness
nor future hope in it,--it had much of the elements of doubt and fear;
but it was powerful, far more powerful than I then thought, and
powerful it will always be. All this is enigmatical to you, dear
Helen, and it must remain so. I would not have said anything about it,
but that I owed it to you, to the friendship which I trust will never
know a chill, to prevent your supposing that your share in the
frustration of my father's wishes is disproportionate to mine. I
would not have you think--as without this explanation you might justly
think--that I magnanimously renounce my claims, my pretensions to your
love in favour of the actual possessor. No, Helen; for us both our
meeting was too late. We were not to love each other; I was not to be
suffered to win the heart of a true and priceless woman, such as you
are, when I had not a heart to give her in exchange. But though we
were not to love each other, we were destined to be friends--friends
in the fullest and firmest sense; and believe me, friendship between a
man and woman, with its keen sympathy, its unrestrained, confidence,
and its perfect toleration, is a tie as valuable as it is rare.
"Now I have told you almost all I have to tell about my father's
letter. I suppose we shall both feel, and continue always to feel,
that there was something hard, something almost cruel in the fate
which marked him out for disappointment, and you and me for its
ministers. But this must be; and we must leave it so, and turn to the
present and vital interests of our lives. We shall think of him and
mourn for him none the less that we will speak of this no more.
"Strong as was my father's desire for our marriage, dear Helen, and
his persuasion that it would come to pass, in his abstraction and his
want of observation he failed to take Farleigh into account; or
perhaps, like all old people, he did not realize the fact that the
child, the girl, had grown into a woman. He did not quite forget to
provide for the contingency of its non-fulfilment. 'If, for any
reason, it may not be. Lance,' he wrote--'if Florence Hillyard's child
is not to be the mistress of the home which might have been her
mother's, see that she has a dowry befitting my daughter and your
sister.' No sentence in his letter touched me more with its simple
trust than did that.
"I have seen very clearly into the state of your feelings, as I am
sure you allow, and I don't think I have blundered about that of
Farleigh's. He has not told you in formal words the fact patent to
every one's observation, that he entirely reciprocates your devotion
(don't be vexed, Helen; one may pet a curate, you know), because he's
poor, and you were likely to be rich. He believes, as every one
believes, that you are as poor as himself; a belief, by the way, which
does not say much for the general estimate of _my_ character--but that
does not matter; and in that faith he will not hesitate any longer.
Will you be discreet, and say nothing at all of my intention of
carrying out this privately-expressed wish of my father? Will you
prove your possession of the qualities I give you credit for, by
leaving Cuthbert in the belief that he will have in you a portionless
bride, save for your dowry of beauty and worth? I really almost think
you will, Helen; especially as, though you do not need any further
confirmation of Farleigh's nobility of mind than the silence he has
hitherto kept, and the alacrity with which he will now doubtless break
it, it will be well for Mrs. Chisholm and for myself, your only
friends, to know how amply he fulfils our expectations. I almost think
you will; but I intend to make assurance doubly sure by not giving you
the slightest satisfaction on the subject of my intentions. When your
marriage is near, you shall learn how I mean to fulfil my father's
last injunction, but not till then; and if you tell Farleigh anything
about it until I give you leave, I vow I won't give you a shilling.
"You see I have written myself into good spirits, dear Helen; the
thought of you cheers me almost as your kindly presence would do. What
more have I to say? Not much more of myself, or of yourself, save that
the dearest and warmest wish I entertain is for your welfare.
"I shall send from my first halting-place on the Continent full
instructions to Todd, in case my absence should be much prolonged. I
cannot speak with any certainty of its duration; it does not depend on
my own inclination.
"And now, in conclusion, I am going to ask you to do something for me,
which I shall take as the truest proof that the friendship I prize and
rely upon is really mine. I am sure you have not forgotten the friend
I mentioned to you--Lady Mitford. I have seen her in town, and found
her in much grief and perplexity. The cause of her sorrow is not one
on which I can venture to enter to you; but it is deep-seated,
incurable. I am much distressed for her, and can in no way defend or
comfort her. She was an only child, motherless, and brought up in
seclusion by her father,--an exemplary country clergyman, but a man
whose knowledge of the world was quite theoretical and elementary, and
who could not have trained her so that she would know how to encounter
such trials as hers; he probably did not know that such could exist.
As I told you at Knockholt, she has no female friend; unfortunately
she has female enemies--one in particular. My great wish is to procure
her the one, and defend her from the other. I may fail in the latter
object; but you, Helen, can aid me, if you will, to fulfil the former.
I have spoken to her about you, and have assured her that she might
trust in your kindliness, though your inexperience is far greater than
her own. I cannot bring you together now--there is no time or
opportunity; but I want you to promise me that, if at any time during
my absence from England Lady Mitford asks you to come to her, you will
go promptly, and will be to her all that is in you to be to one
unjustly oppressed, cruelly betrayed, and sorely afflicted. Will you
do this for me, Helen? and will you give me an assurance that I may
rely upon you to do it (this is the only portion of my letter which
you need reply to, if you have any feeling that you would rather not)
before next Wednesday, and addressed to me at the Hotel Meurice,
Paris?--Always affectionately yours,
"LAURENCE ALSAGER."