Before nine o'clock Lady Ellinor arrived, and went straight into Miss
Trevanion's room; I took refuge in my uncle's. Roland was awake and
calm, but so feeble that he made no effort to rise; and it was his calm,
indeed, that alarmed me the most,--it was like the calm of nature
thoroughly exhausted. He obeyed me mechanically, as a patient takes
from your hand the draught, of which he is almost unconscious, when I
pressed him to take food. He smiled on me faintly when I spoke to him,
but made me a sign that seemed to implore silence. Then he turned his
face from me and buried it in the pillow; and I thought that he slept
again, when, raising himself a little, and feeling for my hand, he said,
in a scarcely audible voice,--
"Where is he?"
"Would you see him, sir?"
"No, no; that would kill me,--and then what would become of him?"
"He has promised me an interview, and in that interview I feel assured
he will obey your wishes, whatever they are." Roland made no answer.
"Lord Castleton has arranged all, so that his name and madness (thus let
us call it) will never be known."
"Pride, pride, pride still!" murmured the old soldier. "The name, the
name,--well, that is much; but the living soul!--I wish Austin were
here."
"I have sent for him, sir."
Roland pressed my hand, and was again silent. Then he began to mutter,
as I thought, incoherently about the Peninsula and obeying orders; and
how some officer woke Lord Wellington at night and said that something
or other (I could not catch what,--the phrase was technical and
military) was impossible; and how Lord Wellington asked, "Where's the
order-book?" and looking into the order-book, said, "Not at all
impossible, for it is in the order-book;" and so Lord Wellington turned
round and went to sleep again. Then suddenly Roland half rose, and
said, in a voice clear and firm, "But Lord Wellington, though a great
captain, was a fallible man, sir, and the order-book was his own mortal
handiwork. Get me the Bible!"
Oh, Roland, Roland! and I had feared that thy mind was wandering!
So I went down and borrowed a Bible in large characters, and placed it
on the bed before him, opening the shutters and letting in God's day
upon God's word.
I had just done this when there was a slight knock at the door. I
opened it, and Lord Castleton stood without. He asked me, in a whisper,
if he might see my uncle. I drew him in gently, and pointed to the
soldier of life "learning what was not impossible" from the unerring
Order-Book.
Lord Castleton gazed with a changing countenance, and without disturbing
my uncle, stole back. I followed him, and gently closed the door.
"You must save his son," he said in a faltering voice,--"you must; and
tell me how to help you. That sight,--no sermon ever touched me more!
Now come down and receive Lady Ellinor's thanks. We are going. She
wants me to tell my own tale to my old friend Mrs. Grundy; so I go with
them. Come!"
On entering the sitting-room, Lady Ellinor came up and fairly embraced
me. I need not repeat her thanks, still less the praises, which fell
cold and hollow on my ear. My gaze rested on Fanny where she stood
apart,--her eyes, heavy with fresh tears, bent on the ground. And the
sense of all her charms; the memory of the tender, exquisite kindness
she had shown to the stricken father; the generous pardon she had
extended to the criminal son; the looks she had bent upon me on that
memorable night (looks that had spoken such trust in my presence), the
moment in which she had clung to me for protection, and her breath been
warm upon my cheek,--all these rushed over me, and I felt that the
struggle of months was undone, that I had never loved her as I loved her
then, when I saw her but to lose her evermore! And then there came for
the first, and, I now rejoice to think, for the only time, a bitter,
ungrateful accusation against the cruelty of fortune and the disparities
of life. What was it that set our two hearts eternally apart and made
hope impossible? Not nature, but the fortune that gives a second nature
to the world. Ah, could I then think that it is in that second nature
that the soul is ordained to seek its trials, and that the elements of
human virtue find their harmonious place? What I answered I know not.
Neither know I how long I stood there listening to sounds which seemed
to have no meaning, till there came other sounds which indeed woke my
sense and made my blood run cold to hear,--the tramp of the horses, the
grating of the wheels, the voice at the door that said all was ready.
Then Fanny lifted her eyes, and they met mine; and then involuntarily
and hastily she moved a few steps towards me, and I clasped my right
hand to my heart, as if to still its beating, and remained still. Lord
Castleton had watched us both. I felt that watch upon us, though I had
till then shunned his looks; now, as I turned my eyes from Fanny's, that
look came full upon me,--soft, compassionate, benignant. Suddenly, and
with an unutterable expression of nobleness, the marquis turned to Lady
Ellinor and said: "Pardon me for telling you an old story. A friend of
mine--a man of my own years--had the temerity to hope that he might one
day or other win the affections of a lady young enough to be his
daughter, and whom circumstances and his own heart led him to prefer
from all her sex. My friend had many rivals; and you will not wonder,
for you have seen the lady. Among them was a young gentleman who for
months had been an inmate of the same house (hush, Lady Ellinor! you
will hear me out; the interest of my story is to come), who respected
the sanctity of the house he had entered, and had left it when he felt
he loved, for he was poor, and the lady rich. Some time after, this
gentleman saved the lady from a great danger, and was then on the eve of
leaving England (hush! again, hush!). My friend was present when these
two young persons met, before the probable absence of many years, and so
was the mother of the lady to whose hand he still hoped one day to
aspire. He saw that his young rival wished to say, 'Farewell!' and
without a witness; that farewell was all that his honor and his reason
could suffer him to say. My friend saw that the lady felt the natural
gratitude for a great service, and the natural pity for a generous and
unfortunate affection; for so, Lady Ellinor, he only interpreted the sob
that reached his ear! What think you my friend did? Your high mind at
once conjectures. He said to himself: 'If I am ever to be blest with
the heart which, in spite of disparity of years, I yet hope to win, let
me show how entire is the trust that I place in its integrity and
innocence; let the romance of first youth be closed, the farewell of
pure hearts be spoken, unembittered by the idle jealousies of one mean
suspicion.' With that thought, which you, Lady Ellinor, will never
stoop to blame, he placed his hand on that of the noble mother, drew her
gently towards the door, and calmly confident of the result, left these
two young natures to the unwitnessed impulse of maiden honor and manly
duty."
All this was said and done with a grace and earnestness that thrilled
the listeners; word and action suited to each with so inimitable a
harmony that the spell was not broken till the voice ceased and the door
closed.
That mournful bliss for which I had so pined was vouchsafed: I was alone
with her to whom, indeed, honor and reason forbade me to say more than
the last farewell.
It was some time before we recovered, before we felt that we were alone.
O ye moments that I can now recall with so little sadness in the mellow
and sweet remembrance, rest ever holy and undisclosed in the solemn
recesses of the heart! Yes, whatever confession of weakness was
interchanged, we were not unworthy of the trust that permitted the
mournful consolation of the parting. No trite love-tale, with vows not
to be fulfilled, and hopes that the future must belie, mocked the
realities of the life that lay before us. Yet on the confines of the
dream we saw the day rising cold upon the world; and if--children as we
well-nigh were--we shrank somewhat from the light, we did not blaspheme
the sun and cry, "There is darkness in the dawn!"
All that we attempted was to comfort and strengthen each other for that
which must be; not seeking to conceal the grief we felt, but promising,
with simple faith, to struggle against the grief. If vow were pledged
between us,--that was the vow: each for the other's sake would strive to
enjoy the blessings Heaven left us still. Well may I say that we were
children! I know not, in the broken words that passed between us, in
the sorrowful hearts which those words revealed, I know not if there
were that which they who own in human passion but the storm and the
whirlwind would call the love of maturer years,--the love that gives
fire to the song, and tragedy to the stage; but I know that there was
neither a word nor a thought which made the sorrow of the children a
rebellion to the Heavenly Father.
And again the door unclosed, and Fanny walked with a firm step to her
mother's side, and pausing there, extended her hand to me and said, as I
bent over it, "Heaven Will be with you!"
A word from Lady Ellinor, a frank smile from him, the rival, one last,
last glance from the soft eyes of Fanny, and then Solitude rushed upon
me,--rushed as something visible, palpable, overpowering. I felt it in
the glare of the sunbeam, I heard it in the breath of the air; like a
ghost it rose there,--where she had filled the space with her presence
but a moment before! A something seemed gone from the universe forever;
a change like that of death passed through my being; and when I woke, to
feel that my being lived again, I knew that it was my youth and its
poet-land that were no more, and that I had passed, with an unconscious
step, which never could retrace its way, into the hard world of
laborious man!