There is in souls a sympathy with sounds,
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
... wherever I have heard
A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its pains;
Such comprehensive views the spirit takes
That in a few short moments I retrace
The windings of my way through many years.
COWPER.
The family at Clare Abbey, were assembled at the breakfast table, on
the following morning. Lord and Lady Vere sate opposite each other;
one side of the table was empty; on the other side, Camilla St. Maur
sate, as she always chose to do, by her brother. Though there might
be some few points of similarity, nothing could be more dissimilar
than the general character, and common habits of these two, and
yet the affection subsisting between them, was of that close and
devoted kind, which is sometimes said to be peculiar to twins, but
which probably only needs some similarity of age, and the days of
childhood passed together. This affection and union was the stronger,
because in their home, they were thrown entirely upon each other for
companionship, meeting with little attention from one parent, and
finding little sympathy in the other.
Lady Vere’s character may, I hope, be tolerably well guessed, from
the few words she has already spoken. She was very beautiful, at
forty still beautiful, an utter want of thought and sensation
preserving to her all the smoothness and freshness of youth. Besides
this uncommon beauty, she had little to attract, for her only other
marked qualities, were indolence and folly. She was, however, a
patient and forbearing wife, and though an injudicious, or rather
an unthinking, yet in her way, was an affectionate mother. She was
proud of her son, and had reason to be so, and treated his opinions
with deference: to her daughter she allowed (except on a few
points, where some strict rules of her own youth, chiefly of bodily
restraint, were remembered and enforced) unlimited indulgence, and if
there was no sympathy, there was no want of harmony.
Lord Vere’s character had more expression. Lady Vere always called
him, “My love,” but he looked very unlike anybody’s love,--most
of all unlike hers. He was a tall, thin, dry-looking man, whose
features once had been, nay still were, handsome; but were disfigured
by an expression of mingled sourness and discontent, sternness
and melancholy. His character in early youth had not been without
promise; resembling, in many of its features, the proud aspiring
nature which now characterized his son; but his son’s ambition was
of a lofty and generous kind, his own had been simply selfish. It
might possibly have been turned to good; success, that salutary
medicine to many minds, might have enlarged and purified it; but it
was disappointed, and it shrank into the recesses of his spirit, and
turned to sourness.
Many trials await the pride of those who at once court and despise
their fellows. Lord Vere suffered much, but struggled on till a
blow was struck which raised his pride and withered his ambition.
He came into Parliament; and if his heart could ever have been said
to glow, at that time it glowed,--not with the noblest passion, the
desire of being an instrument of good, yet with a not ignoble one,
the desire of fame. He determined to make a figure, to earn a name:
a question arose on which he felt some interest; he took advantage
of it; he devoted himself to the study of the subject, made himself
master of it; at length rose to speak: spoke,--and _failed_. His
manner was hard and dry, his arguments, though plausible, false,--and
words and manner both alike were tinged, and more than tinged,
with the only youthful fault which produces harsh and malicious
criticism,--arrogance. His speech, his argument, nay he himself, was
turned into ridicule, not only by his opponents in the heat of the
moment, but by many of the leading papers of the day. Stung to the
quick, too proud to retort, too scornful to explain, he withdrew
into himself, and abjured friends, foes, and political life for ever.
His father’s death shortly afterwards changing his condition, he
retired into the country and lived on his own property the life of a
recluse. So ended his dream of ambition; ever afterwards all generous
sentiments, all lofty aspirations, if expressed in his presence, were
crushed with a cold sneer of scorn.
His second dream was of love; and from love his second disappointment
came. It might have been said, his friends had often said, that love
was a passion which could find no place in his heart; but human
nature is strangely inconsistent, for ever escaping from the rules
with which we endeavour to trammel it; and so Lord Vere, inconsistent
as it was with his previous habits and openly expressed opinions,
was betrayed, not only into a romantic passion, but into a foolish
and romantic marriage. He was some years more than thirty, when he
was ordered to Buxton for his health; he there saw, admired, and
voluntarily made acquaintance with a young lady of no fortune and
no family, but whose beauty was of a remarkable and dazzling kind.
Perhaps the extreme languor and softness of her voice and manner
were soothing to the hardened nature of the man, who fancied himself
injured by his kind: however this might be, he married her after
a short acquaintance; and so extreme was his love and devotion,
that it was many months before he became aware that the lips of
his beautiful wife were incapable of uttering anything but the
most intolerable folly--and that she was still more incapable of
comprehending the fervour of that affection, which, overcoming all
barriers from within and from without, had prevailed to make her his
wife. Such a discovery once made, is made for ever,--the illusion
which casts a spell over folly, once dispersed, returns no more. For
the second time Lord Vere withdrew into himself, and the spark of
unselfish feeling which might yet have kindled the dormant energies
of his nature, appeared to be extinguished. Henceforward he lived
to himself only,--and the life with his own dry self was dreary and
uninspiring indeed. In vain the beauty, the infantile charms, the
youthful grace of his daughter--in vain the talents and promise of
his son--he took no heed of them; and if it was with an effort that
pride and affection were sometimes restrained, it was not apparently
so. He was not an unkind father; though cold and repulsive in manner,
in action he was rather indulgent than otherwise. Except on such
points as interfered with his determined plan of seclusion, he never
thwarted their wishes, or their will; but a wish thwarted with an
expression of interest is worth, a thousand times over, a careless
acquiescence in our desires,--and so his children felt.
“You have got a letter, Reginald,” exclaimed Camilla, laying her hand
on one which her brother put down beside him; “where does it come
from? May I read it--pray let me read it?”
In some houses letters are even too plentiful; but a letter was a
rare sight at Clare Abbey.
“It will not interest you, my dear Camilla.”
“Oh! yes it will; everything interests me that interests you; and
besides, I like to hear of things that happen in some other world
than this. Now, let me read it--_pray_ do,” and she put her hand on
his arm.
He gave her the letter.
“What is it all about?” she cried, looking up with a puzzled look; “I
can’t understand it! What have you been doing,--and what has made a
sensation, as the man says?”
“I told you, Camilla, it would not interest you,” Reginald said,
smiling, and he held out his hand.
“But it does interest me, and I will understand it. Now take your
hand away, for I mean to make it out. Now I begin to see; you
have been making a speech, and your friend says that it has been
so much admired, that Somebody Somebody--I wish he wrote a little
better--calls you Demosthenes. Oh! Reginald, when did you speak; and
why didn’t you tell me?”
“My dear Camilla,” he said, with a look of annoyance, “I wish you
would not make such a fuss. We occasionally meet to speak, to
practice speaking at Oxford; and one night, there was some rather
good speaking, that was all.”
“I thought people only made speeches in Parliament,” remarked Lady
Vere.
“Oh, mamma, don’t you remember Colonel Ashby’s speech at Salisbury,
last week, which they said lasted two hours?”
“Yes, to be sure; I wonder what it was all about. What did you speak
about, Reginald?”
“It was a mere question for the purpose of debate, mother; it was of
no importance.”
“What was the subject?” asked Lord Vere, shortly and
suddenly,--looking up from the newspaper.
Reginald coloured, but replied in the respectful tone in which he
always addressed both his parents,
“The question that was proposed was on the subject of ambition;
whether greatness was or was not desirable simply for itself?”
“And what might your sage opinion be?”
“I said that to rise was in itself an object for ambition”; and his
eyes flashed as he spoke.
His father turned to the newspaper with a slight scoffing laugh; but
Camilla exclaimed,
“Right, Reginald, right; who were the dull, stupid people who could
think otherwise?”
“They were not dull or stupid,” he said, gravely; “and though for
some reasons my speech was the most applauded, _I_ know that there
was no comparison between mine and that of the person who answered
me. He did not convince me,” he added, with a slight sigh; “but I
felt that his words were better, and wiser too.”
“Applauded! Reginald!” exclaimed his sister, eagerly; “were you
cheered?--oh! if I had but been there.”
“Talking of speaking,” said Lady Vere, in her languid voice, “Mitford
tells me that we shall have a new preacher to-day. Shall you go to
church, my love?”
“My love” took no notice of the question. She turned to her son, and
repeated it.
“Yes, mother, certainly.”
“I think I shall go, because Mitford has trimmed my new bonnet,--a
sort of white fancy straw, with blue marabout feathers; it’s
exceedingly pretty. What shall you wear, Camilla?”
“The same as usual, mamma,” she replied, carelessly; “I didn’t know
that we need dress for Mr. De Grey.”
Reginald glanced at her: her disrespectful manner to her mother was
the subject of his constant but unavailing remonstrance.
“Now, my dear Reginald,” she said, always distressed by his
displeasure, though rarely amended by it, “can you say that there is
any necessity for a new bonnet because a new clergyman happens to
come to our dull church?”
He shook his head with a slight grave smile, but said nothing.
“Do you know, Reginald,” she added, suddenly, “from what Mitford was
telling mamma last night, I think our very civil friend must have
been Mr. De Grey.”
“Do you think it was?” he asked, with interest in his manner.
“I am sure it must have been; because Mitford says when she went
down to buy some ribbon she saw him arrive, and when she came back,
about half an hour afterwards, she saw the same person walking in our
direction. I hope it was; I liked his looks, didn’t you, Reginald?”
“I really hardly observed him, Camilla,--I was thinking of you;” and
he looked at her with one of the sweet fond smiles which brightened
and softened his proud beauty.
“_I_ thought you were very short to him,” she said, laughing; “I
liked his looks, not the least like a clergyman; how different to
that poor, wretched Mr. Hervey. I don’t know if mamma was not right,
and that he would have been worth a new bonnet after all;” and she
looked mischievously up in her brother’s grave face as she spoke.
He shook his head again, but indulgently, as at a pretty naughty
child whose wilful ways are too winning for anger, and left the
breakfast-table.
Untamed and unrestrained, Camilla St. Maur had grown to be a woman;
a few strict rules laid upon her body, forming the only yoke of her
education. Unless when emancipated by her brother’s presence, her
body was a slave to the precincts of the Abbey; for Lady Vere had
strict ideas as to what a young lady should, and should not do: but
no such restraint was imposed on her mind. She had had one or two
foolish governesses; but folly exerts no authority, or if it exerts,
fails to obtain it; and so her mind had grown in unfettered freedom,
with few principles to guide her, and those few caught from her
brother’s example, or springing up naturally in a mind as fruitful in
flowers as in weeds. She spent what she chose; did what she chose;
read what she chose; learned what she chose, or wasted her time as
she chose,--and so at sixteen and a half, she was nothing but as Mrs.
Hervey said, “a wild, sweet, heedless thing,” surpassingly lovely,
quick in apprehension, vivid in imagination; yet all these good
things wasting their sweetness from want of culture.
* * * * *
Strange, unspeakably strange, were the feelings of Ernest De Grey
as he stood in the pulpit of the village church, and prepared to
address his parishioners for the first time. The voices of the
school-children were singing the hundredth psalm, the favourite of
his childish fancy; and as the sounds fell upon his ear (the same
discordant tones from the old grinding organ, the same unsoftened,
unmusical notes from the children), memory transported him from the
spot on which he now stood, and once more placed him a child by his
mother’s side, and once more he gazed upon the old organ as the
wonder of the world, and the twang of the children fell pleasantly
upon his ear. A sudden failure in the organ, such as he remembered in
the olden time, aroused him from this first backward flight of his
fancy; and there came a remembrance of the hour in his boyish life,
when the idea first dawned upon his mind that the music in Cranleigh
church was not such a concord of sweet sounds as he had childishly
imagined; and then, connected with this discovery, he almost smiled
as he recalled the day when, in the independence of enlightened
boyhood, he had left his mother’s side, and had chosen for himself
a prominent and luxurious position in the large curtained roomy
pew, which of all the deformities of Cranleigh church was the most
unsightly and the most indefensible. Led away by this recollection,
he involuntarily turned his eyes upon the interior of the pew, until
this moment hidden from his sight, and there, in his boyhood’s
chosen seat, stood Camilla St. Maur, the vision of the preceding
evening. A bright slanting gleam of sunshine was falling upon her,
encircling her fairy figure, her airy dress, making her laughing eyes
to sparkle, and her hair to shine like threads of gold. It was too
lovely a vision for such a time, and almost
“The preacher in his parting prayer
Shut his dark eyes, and warn’d men to beware
Of beauty.”
These trains of thought are long in description, but they passed
through the mind swifter than the arrow from the bow. The last
verse of the psalm was singing, when Ernest stood up in the pulpit
and looked around him; the verse concluded, and calm, grave, and
composed, he began the words of the opening prayer, driving back with
one strong resolute effort the feverish dreams of the past and the
future into the recesses of his mind.
The discourse of the new rector of Cranleigh was not heard unmoved by
his congregation. Many tears were shed by the poor, who have those
outward signs of emotion ready at every call of sorrow and of joy;
and even in the less excitable hearts of the rich there were feelings
unexpressed, inexpressible, whose only outward sign could have been
tears. And this not because Ernest was a fine preacher--far from it.
His sermon was short, his language simple and concise; his manner
serious, and no more. There was no kindling of the eloquence which,
whatever may be its ultimate effect, for the moment few can resist;
there was no fervour of religious feeling, no ardour of youthful
zeal; there was but that which goes straight and direct to the hearts
of all men, young and old, rich and poor--_Truth_,--the plain and
simple expression of natural feeling. He spoke of its being the first
time on which he was called to address them--quietly, with a kind
of restrained feeling, far more touching than its full expression;
he spoke of his former connection with them, and of the additional
interest which that connection must give to his duties amongst
them, and to his wishes for their welfare. He spoke of the awful
responsibility that was laid upon his shoulders, and touchingly, as
if he felt it in his heart, of his own weakness and unworthiness to
bear it; concluding with a short and earnest appeal to his flock,
imploring them to make that burden less by their own attention to
their duty, and by assisting him with their endeavours and their
prayers.
If to such words be added the influence of a voice low and melodious,
and of an appearance singularly prepossessing, few perhaps will
be disposed to wonder at the good resolutions made that day by
many a youthful heart,--resolutions frail and fleeting as youth
itself,--that neither look, nor word, nor deed of theirs should ever
grieve the heart of him who had looked down upon them “as tenderly,”
a young girl said, “as if he had been the father of them all.”
Reginald St. Maur sat during the sermon with his hand over his eyes.
Once Camilla looked at him, and smiled--smiled as the young, ashamed
of being touched are apt to do; but he did not heed her. The interest
with which he had early thought of Ernest De Grey had strengthened
with his advancing years; and that interest his present position
amongst them, and his appearance and language that day, were further
calculated to increase. There was that about him, in his manner and
in his words--speaking of feeling and the conquest of feeling--a kind
of “brave tenderness,” as it has been happily expressed, which went
to Reginald’s heart; and as he gazed on the youthful preacher, and
hung upon his words, he felt his spirit stirred with undefinable
emotion.
At the conclusion of the service, when he had assisted to place his
mother comfortably in the barouche, he drew back, saying he would
walk home.
“Now, Reginald,” exclaimed Camilla, leaning out, and looking at him
reproachfully, “what are you going to do? Why didn’t you tell me? I
would a thousand times rather walk.”
He smiled, but made no answer, and desired the coachman to drive on.
He stood in the churchyard, while the throng of villagers passed by,
raising his hat to every bow, even to the curtsey of every little
child, with the grave and distant courtesy which distinguished
him,--speaking to none, familiar with none, but courteous to all.
When all had departed, and he was left alone, he turned into the
path which led from the porch of the church, and there waited till
Ernest and Mr. Hervey appeared. He then went forward to meet them,
and begging Mr. Hervey to introduce him, he held out his hand to
Ernest. His manner was not _cordial_, for the word cordiality implies
a heartiness of welcome which was foreign to Reginald’s nature; but
there was in it a deep and respectful interest, far removed from the
condescension usually characterizing the unbending of stateliness.
“I did not know you last night, Mr. De Grey, or I should have done
more than thank you for your kindness to my sister.”
“Neither did I know you,” replied Ernest, smiling; “though, perhaps,
I guessed who you might be.”
They stood for a few moments in silence, a little awkwardness and
constraint on both sides; but Reginald seemed determined to overcome
it.
“If you are going home, Mr. De Grey,” he began again, “perhaps you
will let us go together as far as your house.”
And together they set off: but little advance was made in
acquaintance; for Mr. Hervey, feeling for once somewhat important,
could not refrain from making an exhibition to Ernest of his intimacy
with “the proud young Lord,” as Reginald was commonly called. It was
a momentary ebullition of vanity, for usually he was humble enough;
and, in fact, his pride in Reginald’s notice was prompted by a better
feeling than mere servile vanity: it was far rather the unconscious
homage paid to a character above the common level of humanity; and
Mr. Hervey was but one among many by whom this homage was paid.
“I hope Lady Vere and Miss St. Maur are quite well,” he began, as
they walked along.
“Quite well, thank you,” Reginald replied, with cold civility.
“I suppose they came to church in the barouche, as usual?”
“Yes. My mother is not a great walker.”
“What do you take to be the distance from here to Clare Abbey?”
“I don’t know,” Reginald said, coldly. He was annoyed at the mention
of the name. Those whose minds are fixed on one particular event in
the life of others, are apt to fancy a power to wound in allusions
which the most interested do not even remark.
“I suppose it is rather more than a mile by the road,” Ernest said,
indifferently.
“Mr. De Grey is better acquainted with the country than either you or
I,” was Mr. Hervey’s next opportune remark.
Reginald coloured, and they walked on in silence till they came in
sight of the parsonage.
He then stopped; and after shaking hands with distant civility
with Mr. Hervey, turned to Ernest, and, colouring again, said,
hesitatingly:
“I hope to see you again soon, Mr. De Grey, and my mother and sister
also wish to make your acquaintance. May we expect, if it is not
disagreeable to you, to see you at ... at home?”
“May I call at _Clare Abbey_ to-morrow?” Ernest said, with a slight
smile and a slight emphasis on the words.
Reginald smiled also, and held out his hand. Each understood
perfectly the feelings and the meaning of the other. All awkwardness
vanished between them; the awkwardness on Ernest’s side, of fearing
to remind of what he once had been; on Reginald’s side, of seeming
to patronize him who had once stood in his position. It was such an
understanding as could never have been given by the comparatively
shackled language of the tongue.
“I don’t know how it is, mother,” said Mr. Hervey, throwing himself
with some vexation, though without a spark of resentment, into a
chair, in the little drawing-room of their cottage; “I don’t know how
it is, but that young St. Maur seems to take more to Mr. De Grey in
this one day, than he has to me in the whole three years that we have
been acquainted with him?”
“It is but natural, Edward,” said Mrs. Hervey, consolingly;
continuing, with some observation, “you know, as one may say, there
is something between them that binds them together. One stands in
the other’s place; just so, I remember, when your sister, Mary, and
Anne Morrisson, poor girl, were both in love with Alfred, and didn’t
know for the life of them which he liked best. They were always
clinging together, as if, though they said nothing about it, there
was something that joined them; and so it is with these young men.
And what did you think of Mr. De Grey’s sermon, my dear?”
“It was very good, mother. What do you suppose the length of it to
have been?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It made me feel all up and down, and I didn’t
think of the length. I am sure, though, that it was not long, for I
could have listened for another hour with pleasure. And how sweetly
pretty Miss St. Maur looked to-day. I don’t know what young men are
made of now-a-days; they’re not a bit what I remember. In my young
days we should have had them falling down and worshipping such a
sweet, sprightly blossom as that; and now you are all taken up with
Mr. St. Maur, and not a word of that young flower. However, no doubt,
it’s as well as it is,” she added, with a nod of her head and a look
of recollection.