Take back the foul reproach, unmanner’d railer!
Nor urge my rage too far, lest thou should’st find
I have as daring spirit in my blood
As thou or any of thy race e’er boasted;
And though no gaudy titles grac’d my birth,
Yet Heaven that made me honest, made me more
Than ever king did when he made a lord.
Insolent villain!
Rowe.
The passionate embrace which had followed Flora Wilton’s adjuration
to Harry Vivian not to leave England was but the prelude to fervent
acknowledgments of mutual love.
Hal had quickly come to a sense of what constituted his predilection for
Flora. He admired her beauty, her sweetness of manner and amiability of
disposition. These emotions concentrated produced within him a species
of devotional reverence.
Flora, on the contrary, loved him without being conscious of more than
this. She was fully sensible of his handsome personal qualifications. She
was attached to him by ties of gratitude of the strongest nature; for
had he not saved her life? She was instinctively pleased flattered;
gratified; by his subdued, and almost reverential manner towards her--by
the unfailing homage of his clear, beaming eyes--in truth, by all those
small silent attentions, and that gentle deference which are so grateful
to the heart of woman.
It has been said that a woman cannot even to herself explain why
she loves the being to whom she yields her heart. It is not alone by
qualities of person or of mind she is won, but there is a charm that
fascinates and enthralls her, which silently defies description, and
will not submit to analysis.
This charm Flora discovered in Harry Vivian without knowing truly what
was its real effects upon her; it elevated him into the first place in
her estimation so gradually and naturally, that she did not detect the
truth, although she found herself almost constantly thinking of him,
dreaming of him, wishing that he would come again to see her even as
soon as he had departed.
But when she met him in the glen in Harleydale Park, saw his saddened
countenance, listened to his confession of love and heard his expressed
determination of parting with her for ever, then she awakened to a sense
of the state of her heart--then she saw that he was essential to her
happiness--and that if he went abroad to return no more to her, her
future life would be one of blank hopeless desolation.
She found now that she loved him fondly and dearly; and, as she clung
to him, she revealed, with words broken by sobs, the truth to him, and
extorted from him a promise that he would change his resolve, now that
he knew her heart was irrevocably his.
Some hours passed in fond communings. Up to this moment, their relation
to each other had, while essentially friendly, not been of a confiding
character--it was so now. The time, however, came when they must part,
and they did so with mutual expressions of tenderness, but with the
understanding that for the present their attachment should be kept as a
secret between them, and remain such until a favourable moment presented
itself for an avowal.
It was also arranged that no mention should be made by either of their
present meeting, but that Hal should return to the inn at which he had
put up, and that he should pay his visit to the Manor House as though
he had arrived from London on a visit, having taken advantage of the
general invitation he had received from her father, to come to his house
when he would, with the certainty of always receiving a warm welcome.
They separated. Flora, with a light step, and a strange buoyancy of
spirit, hastened towards the house, and, after allowing her, as he
believed, time to regain it, Hal left the sequestered glen, for evermore
a dear spot in his memory, and struck off by a bye-path through the wood
to the inn at which he had stopped on his arrival.
During the morning’s shooting, Lester Vane and Colonel Mires
accidentally became separated. The former was an ardent sportsman, and
in the excitement of excellent sport, he followed up his game with more
celerity and eagerness than the Colonel, whose long residence in
India had grafted upon him habits of indolence which he felt little
disposition to change.
When the latter found that he was left alone--for he had seated himself
beneath the branches of an oak, to rest for a short time---it abruptly
occurred to him that Lester Vane had a motive in being so violently
active, and that he purposed distancing him with the object of having
somewhere a _tête-à-tête_ with Flora. The fact was that his mind, always
dwelling upon her, and being apprehensively jealous of the power of
others to win her favour to his disadvantage, he construed circumstances
in many instances falsely and absurdly, so as to square with his
prevailing impression.
Determined, therefore, not to be jockeyed by Vane, he wended his steps
in the direction of the Manor House, taking a somewhat circuitous route,
not heeding the occasional, though distant reports of Lester Vane’s gun
in the opposite direction, because, eaten up by his jealous suspicions,
he regarded the continued discharges as a mere blind, and believed
them to be kept up by the gamekeeper, under the instructions of Vane,
purposely to deceive him.
Sick, restless with inflamed thoughts, he pursued his course until he
found himself emerge into the open park. As he did so, he perceived
Flora emerge by a narrow path between two hills, forming a small natural
gorge from the glen where she had met Hal.
He watched her proceed to the Manor House, which was in view; he noted
the elastic step with which she hastened on, and he felt a painful,
burning emotion of wonder as to why her bearing should have, in so brief
a period, undergone a change at once evident and to him remarkable.
He had not long to wait in wonder.
Her form was scarcely lost among the shrubs and trees with which the
gardens were profusely adorned, when his eyes suddenly lighted upon the
form of young Vivian emerging from the same gorge which Flora had so
recently left. Hal made unconsciously direct to the spot where the
Colonel was standing, but desirous of not being observed by him the
latter instantly retreated, and concealed himself in a small brake until
the object of his curiosity and wonder passed.
The distance which divided them prevented his recognising at first the
person of the stranger, who, he felt convinced, had just terminated an
interview with Flora, alone and in a solitary spot.
He trembled with rage and agony; his lips became parched, his hands and
forehead burned, as he concluded it must be Vane, and he resolved, upon
his arrival near where he lay concealed, to advance and tax him, at
any risk of consequences, with the ungentlemanly duplicity of which he
believed he had been guilty.
What, however, was his astonishment and fury when he found that Harry
Vivian was the hero of the interview, the stranger who had infused into
Flora’s manner that apparent happiness, in which, of late especially, it
had been so deficient.
His first impulse was to rush from his covert, fasten upon him, and
strangle him; but the physical proportions of Hal were such as to
compel him to reflect, in spite of his intense vindictiveness, upon the
prospect of success in such a step. To be himself overpowered and fail,
would be destruction to his hopes; and he paused to rack his brain for
the best course for him to adopt.
But Harry Vivian was light of heart and of step, too, and he was abreast
of Mires, and had disappeared in the recesses of the wood before the
latter had decided upon what step he should take. Nothing was left for
him but to retrace his steps, with the endeavour of meeting Lester Vane
as he returned from his sport. He threw his gun over his shoulder and
moved away with a shadow of gloom settled upon his features.
“Fool,” he muttered, “not to have thought of my gun. A stiff charge in
both barrels would have more than sufficed to have dealt him his fate,
and who would have suspected me?”
He cast his eyes rapidly in the direction Hal had taken, but no sign of
him was visible, not even his receding footstep could be heard in the
solemn stillness. He failed to meet Lester Vane in the wood, and when
they encountered at dinner he saw that the latter treated him coldly,
and with suspicious distrust.
As usual, old Wilton engaged him in conversation, leaving Lester the
opportunity of paying undivided attention to Flora. With glaring eyes he
watched every movement of both. He perceived that his rival was actuated
by no common motive to gain the favourable opinion of Flora, and he
observed that she seemed abstracted and inattentive, though her cheek
was blooming like a rose, and her eye shining like a star.
But for the circumstance he had witnessed that morning, he would have
believed that the low, earnest words, and the deep fervent gaze of
Lester Vane had occasioned her heightened colour and the brilliancy
of her eye; now he was convinced that her secret interview with young
Vivian was the cause, and he cursed him bitterly in his heart.
Flora, pleading a headache, retired early, and Colonel Mires, feeling
that conversation after she had gone would be insupportable, alleged
fatigue as an excuse to seek his room, leaving Lester Vane and old
Wilton alone.
The Colonel was too excited to remain in his room, and he walked
upon the terrace, gazing up at the lighted windows of the sleeping
apartments, imagining that in which Flora would repose, and groaning
in spirit, as he thought that he would not be the chosen object of her
thoughts and prayers ere she sank into the fairy land of dreams.
Once or twice he fancied that a shadow flitted past him, although at
some little distance, and suddenly remembering the incident in Regent’s
Park, it occurred to him that the same watcher at Flora’s window there
might be here upon the same errand.
He darted into the deep shadow of a buttress upon the terrace, and,
crouching, glided, like a panther stealing after his prey, up to the
spot where he had seen the phantom-like object disappear.
He always carried a brace of small pocket pistols with him. It had been
his custom in India, when stationed among the hill tribes, and he did
so in England. He had never hesitated to shoot one of the natives,
even upon a trifling pretext: he would not have hesitated much to do a
similar thing in England, but that the law is inconveniently sensitive
upon that point.
Now he seemed to feel himself justified in using the deadly weapon,
because it would be discharged at some prowler seeking plunder. Such,
at least, was the reason he should offer for his murderous act. That
he arranged with himself. He drew from his breast pocket a pistol, and,
upon observing a man, wrapped in a loose cloak, silently approach from
the precincts of a turreted wing of the mansion, he felt convinced,
though it was too dark to see his features, that he knew the stranger.
He raised his pistol and took a careful aim.
But himself and purpose were detected, and the stranger sprang hastily
forward towards him.
Mires pulled the trigger. A flash of light, and a report followed. At
the same instant he felt a heavy blow strike him upon the temple, which
hurled him over the balustrade that edged the terrace, and he fell among
the flowers beneath, on to the soft earth, and lay there stunned.
When he recovered, the servants were closing up the house. With a brain
racking and splitting, he rose up. His hand yet grasped the pistol; his
finger still curled round the trigger. Had he slain the man at whom
he had fired? He gazed around him, and listened. There was no trace
of excitement either within or without the building; no sign that the
discharge of the pistol had been heard, or the short violent struggle
between himself and the stranger witnessed.
He shook himself, and hastily brushed the evidences of his fall from his
attire. He slowly ascended the steps of the terrace, feeling cold and
shivering, while his limbs ached as though he had been beaten all over.
He threw a glance at the spot where he had fired at the stranger, but
failed to perceive a prostrate human body, although he could not believe
that he had missed his aim.
He entered the house, and then retired to his room, to pass the night
in profitless speculation and mystified wonder. That he had encountered
young Vivian, he felt convinced; but, so far as he knew, only to his own
discomfiture: beyond, all was a chaos of doubt, presumption, and ardent
but malicious wishes.
In the morning he met at breakfast, Wilton, Flora, and Lester Vane, but
not a word transpired in allusion to the event of the preceding night.
Flora seemed cheerful and expectant. She frequently gazed out of the
window into the park; with what object, Mires very shrewdly guessed,
and it was evident both to him and to Vane, that the animation she had
displayed on the preceding evening was maintained.
Lester Vane was cold to Mires, but more than ever devoted in his manner
to Flora, who appeared to take no notice of his profound attention, her
thoughts being engrossed by a subject far more pleasing to her.
While the Colonel, with a heart gnawed by emotions of envy and jealousy,
was regarding the only too tender politeness of Vane, a servant entered
with a letter addressed to Mr. Wilton. The old gentleman opened it and
after running his eye hastily over its contents, he handed it to Flora.
“It is from young Vivian,” he said; “he is in the neighbourhood, and
will be here this morning, on a short visit. He shall be welcome, very
welcome; I shall be most glad to see him, for, irrespective of the great
obligation I owe to him, I like the youth himself. To his manly spirit
is allied considerable genius and ability; he possesses rare skill
in his art, and is modest withal--a true sign that he is no mere
pretender.”
Both Mires and Vane bent their eyes upon Flora, to watch the effect this
announcement would have upon her, and to observe the expression of her
beautiful features as she perused the note placed in her hands. Their
scrutiny was the reverse of “satisfactory”: they saw a roseate glow
spring into her cheeks, and mount to her fair white brow; they observed,
with disturbed feelings, the glitter of her eye; and the soft smile that
gently curled her short upper lip. Mires, with wrathful vindictiveness,
interpreted the play of her features; and Lester Vane did so too, but in
vexed wonder.
“Who is this person?” the latter mentally asked himself. “He possesses
evidently a high place in Miss Wilton’s good opinion! In what relation
does he stand to her? What are his claims upon her favour?”
He at once, with considerable artifice, addressed himself to the task
of ascertaining, and soon learned from Wilton’s lips, and from Flora’s
expressive countenance, all and more than he desired to know.
“A rival,” he thought, and smiled contemptuously. “I scarcely imagine
he excels me in personal qualifications,” he mused; “and on all
other points I have him at an enormous advantage: I will crush his
pretensions, if he have any, at once.”
Harry Vivian was not long behind his note. He was greeted in a warm,
friendly manner by old Wilton; and by Flora, with a quiet earnestness,
which could not fail to impress--as it was intended--those who witnessed
it with a sense of the estimation in which she held him, and it did its
work.
With surprise and anger, she observed that Colonel Mires, on Wilton
presenting his new guest to him, threw up his head in a manner
purposely and offensively insolent, and that Lester Vane drew himself up
haughtily, and scarcely moved at the introduction.
She saw the quick flash of Hal’s eyes, and the scarlet flush which
spread itself like a band across his forehead. Impulsively she moved
towards him, to remove as far as possible by her own marked attention,
the wound her father’s guests had inflicted upon him, by their
contemptuous mode of receiving him, but her father, who did not appear
to have noticed the behaviour of either of her guests, caught her by the
hand.
“Flo’, my darling,” he said, “I will avail myself of your arm, to assist
me to my library this morning; I have a word to say to you; and as our
friends know each other now, they will excuse our short absence, and
find amusement in the pleasure of their own society until our return.”
With the air of a patrician he waved his hand to his guests, and turned
to leave the room.
On reaching the threshold of the door, Flora looked back to Hal, for she
felt grieved, after what she had witnessed, to leave him in a position
which must, necessarily be embarrassing to him. His eyes were bent upon
her, and it seemed to her with a saddened expression in them.
She gently disengaged her arm from her father’s grip, and said--
“One moment, dear father, I will follow you.”
She returned to the room, and he proceeded towards the library.
She hastened towards Hal with a smiling countenance. She laid her white
hand upon his arm, and whispered in his ear. He smiled, and pressed her
hands in evident gratefulness, and she quitted the room, looking back
upon him to the last.
Not a glance or motion did she vouchsafe to Vane or to Mires, for she,
with swelling bosom, seemed to feel that the insult directed at Harry
Vivian was levelled at her also, and she resented it accordingly. Of
course this was not so construed by either of the suitors, nor did they
seem to read her interpretation of their conduct in her bearing towards
themselves; they only saw in it a confirmation of their fears, that she
had by far too strong a predilection for the youth whose society they
had somewhat unexpectedly been called upon to enjoy.
She was gone, and Hal was left alone with the pair. Colonel Mires cast
a hurried glance at him; there was no sign of the last night’s encounter
upon his person, or in his manner; he doubted, therefore, if he could
have been the man he had seen and fired at, but, if not, who could it
have been? That was a question to be settled hereafter.
He caught Hal’s bright eye fixed upon him, and he tried with, gloomy,
knitted brows, to frown it down, but, as it never wavered in its settled
gaze, he deliberately turned his back upon him, and with a formal salute
to Lester Vane he strode out of the room.
The latter was thus left alone with Harry Vivian. He looked steadfastly
and scrutinisingly at him from head to foot; he could not deny to
himself that Hal was eminently handsome, and that he was dressed
fashionably--nay, elegantly, and with unexceptionable taste. But he was
a parvenu!--a creature in trade, only just out of his apprenticeship.
What a rival! Vane’s lip curled as the thought passed through his mind;
he even laughed, and aloud.
It was a mocking laugh, and grated on Hal’s ear most harshly. His
impetuous blood surged boilingly through his veins, and he trembled in
his effort to appear collected and calm. But such an outward aspect
he felt in his present position to be imperative to preserve, and by a
strong effort he kept his inward indignation from revealing itself.
After his sneering laugh, Vane, with a direct and insolent stare, again
scanned Vivian from top to toe. As he smiled, he twirled the points of
his moustache between his fingers and thumb, and then turning his back
deliberately upon Harry Vivian, walked up to a pier-glass, and arranged
his collar. Harry saw now that he was the object of deliberate and
studied insult, but he felt that it would not be advisable to create a
scene in Mr. Wilton’s house by any impetuous or violent conduct. For the
behaviour of Colonel Mires towards him he could make allowance, but
this man had no such excuse. In vindication of his position as a young
honourable man, he resolved not to submit to the indignity, or to suffer
Vane to part from him in the belief that he would endure contumelious
rudeness without resenting it. .
He advanced towards him, and said, in a low, but clear, firm voice--
“Mr. Vane!”
Lester Vane turned slowly round and stared at him. A most rude,
offensive stare it was; as though his groom had suddenly addressed him
on easy and familiar terms.
It failed to add anything to the resentment which Hal felt at the
treatment he had already experienced, because it could not exceed in
offence the previous contumely directed at him. But he proceeded to say,
with the air of one who would be neither put down nor put aside--
“Mr. Lester Vane, we meet here upon an equal footing--that is, as guests
of Mr. Wilton. I have the honour of being received by him and Miss
Wilton as a friend; let us therefore understand each other. While I am
thus received by them, I claim to stand in the same position as any of
their guests, and to be regarded by those guests as holding beneath this
roof no meaner station. Here, sir, I am your equal, and I request you
to distinctly understand that I will not calmly endure unprovoked insult
from you or any individual breathing.”
Lester Vane regarded him with a glance of scornful contempt, and replied
in a haughty, supercilious tone--“My good man, you forget yourself and
presume. Let me give you distinctly to understand that I differ with you
in your view of the laws and regulations which govern the position of
visitors in this or any house. Mr. Wilton is undoubtedly master in his
house and of his own actions, but I am no less the master of mine. Mr.
Wilton, in his eccentricity, may choose to invite here some pin-maker’s
son or apprentice, it is immaterial which, but I am not bound to
entertain violent feelings of friendship for him, or even to associate
with him. What is more, I do not choose to do so.”
He was about to leave the room but Hal caught him by the wrist.
“No,” he said, “pardon me: you cannot go this moment.”
Vane tried to fling him off, but Hal held him as if he were in a vice,
and said--
“It will be unadvisable to struggle or to raise your voice, because I
shall then consider you desire to make the household a witness to our
brief discussion, and I shall deem you coward as well as poltroon. Now,
sir, mark me, I repeat it--in this house I stand your equal; out of it,
your superior--ay, sir, your superior. You may be, as the son of a
poor lord, an empty-pocketed Honorable, without deserving even that
appellative, for honour is independent of condition. You may possess a
town-house, at which the sheriff’s officer is the most frequent visitor;
you may drive a carriage obtained upon promise of payment, attended by
a groom in arrears of a wages; you may move in fashionable circles,
attired in clothes not paid for, or display at times money wrung by hard
pleading from usurers at exorbitant interest; you may do worse even than
all this, for in your ‘view’ to be honourable is not to be honest, but
no item of that foul list entitles you to treat me with scorn, or to
reflect upon my birth or position. Nor shall it. I will not permit your
very brassy nobility to be flashed in my eyes, and sounded in my ears as
pure gold. I know the ring of the true metal too well for that. If I am
a pin-maker, I scorn to do a dishonourable action, and, therefore, I may
justly, which you cannot, lay a claim to the title of ‘Honorable.’ And
now let me warn you, that as I hold myself to be, in all particulars
upon which manhood may pride itself, infinitely your superior, any
further insult, tacit or direct, will be resented by me in such manner
as your courage or your cowardice may determine. Now go.”
He flung him from him; then, turning his back, he walked slowly to the
window, which was open, and stepped upon the terrace, strolling with a
calm and seemingly imperturbed manner along the tesselated pavement.
Lester Vane was livid with passion. He was obliged to wipe the froth
from his mouth. Yet, by no outward extravagance of manner did he betray
the emotions seething within his breast. His first impulse was to
follow, and commit some act of violence upon his aggressor; his
second, to act as though he had come in collision with some low, vulgar
personage.
As soon, therefore, as he was released, he shook his wrist, apparently
to remove from it visible marks of a dirty hand; he smoothed the
wrinkled evidences of the tight grip which had held him, and walked to
the pier-glass, to arrange his attire, should it have been disarranged
in the little passage which had just taken place.
He was acting. He believed the eye of the “pin-maker” to be upon him; it
was not. The performance was therefore, in this instance, thrown away.
The glass told him that his lips were parched, and as white as his face.
He bit them sharply to redden them.
“It would not be difficult to incite that fellow to go out with me,”
he muttered. “I could put a bullet in his heart at fourteen paces, to a
dead certainty.”
He paused for a moment, reflectively; then added--“Pshaw! it would not
do to go out with him; I should raise him--insulting vagabond--to my
level. No; I’ll ruin him here, and that promptly. The girl is mine!
thank the stars! that is settled. It is very clear that Mires bears
towards him a mortal hatred. Together we will get up a little plot
to blast him in the favour of Wilton; and my skill in exercising an
influence over a woman is mean indeed, if I cannot make the simple,
single-minded, pretty Flora despise him. Hum! let me see. I will
seek out Mires at once, and with his aid fling the scoundrel a harder
back-fall than ever he has sustained in his life. When he is disposed
of, I must turn my attention to my friend Mires. I don’t like that
fellow’s visage. I don’t like his scowl. I must be careful how I handle
him; but as for my friend, the pin-maker,’” he concluded with gnashing
teeth, “he shall be tossed into a horse-pond before he leaves this, with
the pretty Flora as a spectator, looking on and enjoying the sport.”
He cast a glance towards the terrace, but did not observe the object of
his spite and envy; he then quitted the room, and proceeded to that of
Colonel Mires, where a servant had informed him that he would find him.
He tapped lightly at the door, and entered the chamber. He beheld
Colonel Mires leaning forward upon the edge of his chamber-window;
yet in such a mariner as to avoid observation, and that he was gazing
eagerly down upon the terrace beneath.
His curiosity being aroused, he moved with a noiseless step to Mires’s
shoulder, and peered over it. The Colonel’s attention was so riveted
upon some object, that he did not perceive his unexpected visitor,
and the latter beheld on the terrace young Vivian, who appeared to be
somewhat closely examining a particular spot. Presently he stooped down,
picked up something, and put it in his pocket. Colonel Mires uttered an
oath, as he witnessed the act, and the next moment, stepping back, he
came in contact with Vane.
He gazed upon him fiercely, and said--
“How, sir? What is the meaning of this strange intrusion upon my
privacy?”
“Your pardon, Colonel!” exclaimed Lester Vane with a quiet smile and a
shrug of the shoulders. “I wish to have a few words in private with you,
and sought you with that purpose. I knocked at your door, and imagined
that I heard your voice bidding me enter. I came, in fact, to confer
with you respecting the individual who has this morning obtruded
himself in this house. I observed that you did not welcome him with any
indication of delight; and as I regard his advent as an infliction and
a nuisance, it struck me that together we might rid ourselves and the
house of a common enemy by some little arrangement concerted for that
purpose.”
Mires listened coldly. He by no means jumped at the proposition, but he
motioned Vane to be seated, and they sat down to confer.