All that day Harley L’Estrange had been more than usually mournful and
dejected. Indeed the return to scenes associated with Nora’s presence
increased the gloom that had settled on his mind since he had lost sight
and trace of her. Audley, in the remorseful tenderness he felt for his
injured friend, had induced L’Estrange towards evening to leave the
Park, and go into a district some miles off, on pretence that he
required Harley’s aid there to canvass certain important outvoters: the
change of scene might rouse him from his reveries. Harley himself was
glad to escape from the guests at Lansmere. He readily consented to go.
He would not return that night. The outvoters lay remote and
scattered—he might be absent for a day or two. When Harley was gone,
Egerton himself sank into deep thought. There was rumour of some
unexpected opposition. His partisans were alarmed and anxious. It was
clear that the Lansmere interest, if attacked, was weaker than the Earl
would believe; Egerton might lose his election. If so, what would become
of him? How support his wife, whose return to him he always counted on,
and whom it would then become him at all hazards to acknowledge? It was
that day that he had spoken to William Hazeldean as to the family
living. “Peace, at least,” thought the ambitious man—“I shall have
peace!” And the Squire had promised him the rectory if needed; not
without a secret pang, for his Carry was already using her conjugal
influence in favour of her old school friend’s husband, Mr Dale; and the
Squire thought Audley would be but a poor country parson, and Dale—if he
would only grow a little plumper than his curacy could permit him to
be—would be a parson in ten thousand. But while Audley thus prepared for
the worst, he still brought his energies to bear on the more brilliant
option; and sate with his committee, looking into canvass-books, and
discussing the characters, politics, and local interests of every
elector, until the night was wellnigh gone. When he gained his room, the
shutters were unclosed, and he stood a few moments at the window gazing
on the moon. At that sight, the thought of Nora, lost and afar, stole
over him. The man, as we know, had in his nature little of romance and
sentiment. Seldom was it his wont to gaze upon moon or stars. But
whenever some whisper of romance did soften his hard, strong mind, or
whenever moon or stars did charm his gaze from earth, Nora’s bright
muse-like face—Nora’s sweet loving eyes, were seen in moon and star
beam—Nora’s low tender voice, heard in the whisper of that which we call
romance, and which is but the sound of the mysterious poetry that is
ever in the air, could we but deign to hear it! He turned with a sigh,
undressed, threw himself on his bed, and extinguished his light. But the
light of the moon _would_ fill the room. It kept him awake for a little
time; he turned his face from the calm, heavenly beam, resolutely
towards the dull blind wall, and fell asleep. And, in the sleep, he was
with Nora;—again in the humble bridal-home. Never in his dreams had she
seemed to him so distinct and life-like—her eyes upturned to his—her
hands clasped together, and resting on his shoulder, as had been her
graceful wont—her voice murmuring meekly, “Has it, then, been my fault
that we parted?—forgive, forgive me!”
And the sleeper imagined that he answered, “Never part from me
again—never, never!” and that he bent down to kiss the chaste lips that
so tenderly sought his own. And suddenly he heard a knocking sound, as
of a hammer—regular, but soft, low, subdued. Did you ever, O reader,
hear the sound of the hammer on the lid of a coffin in a house of
woe,—when the undertaker’s decorous hireling fears that the living may
hear how he parts them from the dead? Such seemed the sound to
Audley—the dream vanished abruptly. He woke, and again heard the knock;
it was at his door. He sate up wistfully—the moon was gone—it was
morning. “Who is there?” he cried peevishly.
A low voice from without answered, “Hush, it is I; dress quick; let me
see you.”
Egerton recognised Lady Lansmere’s voice. Alarmed and surprised, he
rose, dressed in haste, and went to the door. Lady Lansmere was standing
without, extremely pale. She put her finger to her lip and beckoned him
to follow her. He obeyed mechanically. They entered her dressing-room, a
few doors from his own chamber, and the Countess closed the door.
Then laying her slight firm hand on his shoulder, she said in suppressed
and passionate excitement—
“Oh, Mr Egerton, you must serve me, and at once—Harley—Harley—save my
Harley—go to him—prevent his coming back here—stay with him—give up the
election—it is but a year or two lost in your life—you will have other
opportunities—make that sacrifice to your friend.”
“Speak—what is the matter? I can make no sacrifice too great for
Harley!”
“Thanks—I was sure of it. Go then, I say, at once to Harley; keep him
away from Lansmere on any excuse you can invent, until you can break the
sad news to him—gently, gently. Oh, how will he bear it—how recover the
shock? My boy, my boy!”
“Calm yourself! Explain! Break what news?—recover what shock?”
“True—you do not know—you have not heard. Nora Avenel lies yonder, in
her father’s house—dead—dead!”
Audley staggered back, clapping his hand to his heart, and then dropping
on his knee as if bowed down by the stroke of heaven.
“My bride, my wife!” he muttered. “Dead—it cannot be!”
Lady Lansmere was so startled at this exclamation, so stunned by a
confession wholly unexpected, that she remained unable to soothe—to
explain, and utterly unprepared for the fierce agony that burst from the
man she had ever seen so dignified and cold—when he sprang to his feet,
and all the sense of his eternal loss rushed upon his heart.
At length he crushed back his emotions, and listened in apparent calm,
and in a silence broken but by quick gasps for breath, to Lady
Lansmere’s account.
One of the guests in the house, a female relation of Lady Lansmere’s,
had been taken suddenly ill about an hour or two before;—the house had
been disturbed, the Countess herself aroused, and Mr Morgan summoned as
the family medical practitioner. From him she had learned that Nora
Avenel had returned to her father’s house late on the previous evening;
had been seized with brain fever, and died in a few hours.
Audley listened, and turned to the door, still in silence.
Lady Lansmere caught him by the arm—“Where are you going? Ah, can I now
ask you to save my son from the awful news, you yourself the sufferer?
And yet—yet—you know his haste, his vehemence, if he learn that you were
his rival—her husband; you whom he so trusted! What, what would be the
result?—I tremble!”
“Tremble not—I do not tremble! Let me go—I will be back soon—and
then—(his lips writhed)—_then_ we will talk of Harley.”
Egerton went forth, stunned and dizzy. Mechanically he took his way
across the park to John Avenel’s house. He had been forced to enter that
house, formally, a day or two before, in the course of his canvass; and
his worldly pride had received a shock when the home, the birth, and the
manners of his bride’s parents had been brought before him. He had even
said to himself, “And is it the child of these persons that I, Audley
Egerton, must announce to the world as wife!” Now, if she had been the
child of a beggar—nay, of a felon—_now_, if he could but recall her to
life, how small and mean would all that dreaded world have seemed to
him! Too late—too late! The dews were glistening in the sun—the birds
were singing over head—life waking all around him—and his own heart felt
like a charnel-house. Nothing but death and the dead there—nothing! He
arrived at the door; it was open: he called; no one answered: he walked
up the narrow stairs, undisturbed, unseen; he came into the chamber of
death. At the opposite side of the bed was seated John Avenel; but he
seemed in a heavy sleep. In fact, paralysis had smitten him; but he knew
it not; neither did any one. Who could heed the strong hearty man in
such a moment? Not even the poor anxious wife! He had been left there to
guard the house, and watch the dead—an unconscious man; numbed, himself,
by the invisible icy hand! Audley stole to the bedside; he lifted the
coverlid thrown over the pale still face. What passed within him, during
the minute he staid there, who shall say? But when he left the room, and
slowly descended the stairs, he left behind him love and youth, all the
sweet hopes and joys of the household human life—for ever and ever!
He returned to Lady Lansmere, who awaited his coming with the most
nervous anxiety.
“Now,” said he drily, “I will go to Harley, and I will prevent his
returning hither.”
“You have seen the parents. Good heavens! do they know of your
marriage?”
“No; to Harley I must own it first. Meanwhile, silence!”
“Silence!” echoed Lady Lansmere; and her burning hand rested in
Audley’s, and Audley’s hand was as ice.
In another hour Egerton had left the house, and before noon he was with
Harley.
It is necessary now to explain the absence of all the Avenel family,
except the poor stricken father.
Nora had died in giving birth to a child—died delirious. In her delirium
she had spoken of shame—of disgrace; there was no holy nuptial ring on
her finger! Through all her grief, the first thought of Mrs Avenel was
to save the good name of her lost daughter—the unblemished honour of all
the living Avenels. No matron, long descended from knights or kings, had
keener pride in name and character than the poor, punctilious
Calvinistic trader’s wife. “Sorrow later, honour now!” With hard dry
eyes she mused and mused, and made out her plan. Jane Fairfield should
take away the infant at once, before the day dawned, and nurse it with
her own. Mark should go with her, for Mrs Avenel dreaded the
indiscretion of his wild grief. She would go with them herself part of
the way, in order to command or reason them into guarded silence. But
they could not go back to Hazeldean with another infant; Jane must go
where none knew her; the two infants might pass as twins. And Mrs
Avenel, though naturally a humane, kindly woman, and with a mother’s
heart to infants, looked with almost a glad sternness at Jane’s puny
babe, and thought to herself, “All difficulty will be over if there be
only _one_! Nora’s child could thus pass throughout life for Jane’s!”
Fortunately for the preservation of the secret, the Avenels kept no
servant—only an occasional drudge, who came a few hours in the day, and
went home to sleep. Mrs Avenel could count on Mr Morgan’s silence as to
the true cause of Nora’s death. And, Mr Dale, why should he reveal the
dishonour of a family? That very day, or the next at farthest, she could
induce her husband to absent himself lest he should blab out the tale
while his sorrow was greater than his pride. She alone would then stay
in the house of death until she could feel assured that all else were
hushed into prudence. Ay, she felt, that with due precautions, the
_name_ was still safe. And so she awed and hurried Mark and his wife
away, and went with them in the covered cart—that hid the faces of all
three—leaving for an hour or two the house and the dead to her husband’s
charge, with many an admonition, to which he nodded his head, and which
he did not hear! Do you think this woman was unfeeling and inhuman? Had
Nora looked from heaven into her mother’s heart, Nora would not have
thought so. A good name, when the burial stone closes over dust, is
still a possession upon the earth; on earth it is indeed our only one!
Better for our friends to guard for us that treasure than to sit down
and weep over perishable clay. And weep—Oh! stern mother, long years
were left to thee for weeping! No tears shed for Nora made such deep
furrows on the cheeks as thine did! Yet who ever saw them flow?
Harley was in great surprise to see Egerton; more surprised when Egerton
told him that he found he was to be opposed—that he had no chance of
success at Lansmere, and had, therefore, resolved to retire from the
contest. He wrote to the Earl to that effect; but the Countess knew the
true cause, and hinted it to the Earl; so that, as we saw at the
commencement of this history, Egerton’s cause did not suffer when
Captain Dashmore appeared in the borough; and, thanks to Mr Hazeldean’s
exertions and oratory, Audley came in by two votes—the votes of John
Avenel and Mark Fairfield. For though the former had been removed a
little way from the town, and by medical advice—and though, on other
matters, the disease that had smitten him left him docile as a child—yet
he still would hear how the Blues went on, and would get out of bed to
keep his word; and even his wife said, “He is right; better die of it
than break his promise!” The crowd gave way as the broken man they had
seen a few days before so jovial and healthful was brought up on a chair
to the poll, and said with his tremulous quavering voice, “I’m a true
Blue—Blue for ever!”
Elections are wondrous things! No one who has not seen, can guess how
the zeal in them triumphs over sickness, sorrow, the ordinary private
life of us!
There was forwarded to Audley, from Lansmere Park, Nora’s last letter.
The postman had left it there an hour or two after he himself had gone.
The wedding-ring fell on the ground, and rolled under his feet. And
those burning passionate reproaches—all that anger of the wounded
dove—they explained to him the mystery of her return—her unjust
suspicions—the cause of her sudden death, which he still ascribed to
brain fever, brought on by excitement and fatigue. For Nora did not
speak of the child about to be born; she had not remembered it when she
wrote, or she would not have written. On the receipt of this letter,
Egerton could not remain in the dull village district—alone, too, with
Harley. He said, abruptly, that he must go to London—prevailed on
L’Estrange to accompany him; and there, when he heard from Lady Lansmere
that the funeral was over, he broke to Harley, with lips as white as the
dead, and his hand pressed to his heart, on which his hereditary disease
was fastening quick and fierce, the dread truth that Nora was no more.
The effect upon the boy’s health and spirits was even more crushing than
Audley could anticipate. He only woke from grief to feel remorse. “For,”
said the noble Harley, “had it not been for my mad passion—my rash
pursuit—would she ever have left her safe asylum—ever even have left her
native town? And then—and then—the struggle between her sense of duty
and her love to me! I see it all—all! But for me, she were living
still!”
“Oh, no!” cried Egerton—his confession now rushing to his lips. “Believe
me, she never loved you as you think. Nay—nay—hear me! Rather suppose
that she loved another—fled with him—was perhaps married to him, and—”
“Hold!” exclaimed Harley, with a terrible burst of passion—“you kill her
twice to me, if you say that! I can still feel that she lives—lives
here, in my heart—while I dream that she loved me—or, at least, that no
other lip ever knew the kiss that was denied to mine! But if you tell me
to doubt _that_;—you—you”——The boy’s anguish was too great for his
frame; he fell suddenly back into Audley’s arms; he had broken a
blood-vessel. For several days he was in great danger, but his eyes were
constantly fixed on Audley’s, with wistful, intense gaze. “Tell me,” he
muttered, at the risk of reopening the ruptured veins, and of the
instant loss of life—“tell me—you did not mean _that_! Tell me you have
no cause to think she loved another—_was_ another’s!”
“Hush, hush—no cause—none—none. I meant but to comfort you, as I
thought—fool that I was—that is all!” cried the miserable friend. And
from that hour Audley gave up the idea of righting himself in his own
eyes, and submitted still to be the living lie—he, the haughty
gentleman!
Now, while Harley was still very weak and suffering, Mr Dale came to
London, and called on Egerton. The curate, in promising secresy to Mr
Avenel, had made one condition, that it should not be to the positive
injury of Nora’s living son. What if she were married, after all? And
would it not be right, at least, to learn the name of the child’s
father? Some day he might need a father. Mrs Avenel was obliged to
content herself with these reservations. However, she implored Mr Dale
not to make inquiries. What good could they do? If Nora were married,
her husband would naturally, of his own accord, declare himself; if
seduced and forsaken, it would but disgrace her memory (now saved from
stain) to discover the father to a child of whose very existence the
world as yet knew nothing. These arguments perplexed the good curate.
But Jane Fairfield had a sanguine belief in her sister’s innocence; and
all her suspicions naturally pointed to Lord L’Estrange. So, indeed,
perhaps, did Mrs Avenel’s, though she never owned them. Of the
correctness of these suspicions Mr Dale was fully convinced;—the young
lord’s admiration, Lady Lansmere’s fears, had been too evident to one
who had often visited at the Park—Harley’s abrupt departure just before
Nora’s return home—Egerton’s sudden resignation of the borough before
even opposition was declared, in order to rejoin his friend, the very
day of Nora’s death—all confirmed his ideas that Harley was the betrayer
or the husband. Perhaps there might have been a secret marriage—possibly
abroad—since Harley wanted some years of his majority. He would, at
least, try to see and to sound Lord L’Estrange. Prevented this interview
by Harley’s illness, the curate resolved to ascertain how far he could
penetrate into the mystery by a conversation with Egerton. There was
much in the grave repute which the latter had acquired, and the singular
and pre-eminent character for truth and honour with which it was
accompanied, that made the curate resolve upon this step. Accordingly,
he saw Egerton, meaning only diplomatically to extract from the new
member for Lansmere what might benefit the family of the voters who had
given him his majority of two.
He began by mentioning, as a touching fact, how poor John Avenel, bowed
down by the loss of his child, and the malady which had crippled his
limbs and enfeebled his mind, had still risen from his bed to keep his
word. And Audley’s emotions seemed to him so earnest and genuine, to
show so good a heart, that out by little and little came more; first,
his suspicions that poor Nora had been betrayed; then his hopes that
there might have been private marriage; and as Audley, with his iron
self-command, showed just the proper degree of interest, and no more, he
went on, till Audley knew that he had a child!
“Inquire no further!” said the man of the world. “Respect Mrs Avenel’s
feelings and wishes, I entreat you; they are the right ones. Leave the
rest to me. In my position—I mean as a resident of London—I can quietly
and easily ascertain more than you could, and provoke no scandal! If I
could right this—this—poor—poor—(his voice trembled)—right the lost
mother, or the living child—sooner or later you will hear from me; if
not, bury this secret where it now rests, in a grave which slander has
not reached. But the child—give me the address where it is to be
found—in case I succeed in finding the father, and touching his heart.”
“Oh, Mr Egerton, may I not say where you may find him—who he is?”
“Sir!”
“Do not be angry; and, after all, I cannot ask you to betray any
confidence which a friend may have placed in you. I know what you men of
high honour are to each other—even in sin. No, no—I beg pardon; I leave
all in your hands. I shall hear from you, then?”
“Or, if not—why, then, believe that all search is hopeless. My friend!
if you mean Lord L’Estrange, he is innocent. I—I—I—(the voice
faltered)—am convinced of it.”
The curate sighed, but made no answer. “Oh, ye men of the world!”
thought he. He gave the address which the member for Lansmere had asked
for, and went his way, and never heard again from Audley Egerton. He was
convinced that the man who had showed such deep feeling had failed in
his appeal to Harley’s conscience, or had judged it best to leave Nora’s
name in peace, and her child to her own relations and the care of
heaven.
Harley L’Estrange, scarcely yet recovered, hastened to join our armies
on the Continent, and seek the Death which, like its half-brother,
rarely comes when we call it.
As soon as Harley was gone, Egerton went to the village to which Mr Dale
had directed him, to seek for Nora’s child. But here he was led into a
mistake which materially affected the tenor of his own life, and
Leonard’s future destinies. Mrs Fairfield had been naturally ordered by
her mother to take another name in the village to which she had gone
with the two infants, so that her connexion with the Avenel family might
not be traced, to the provocation of inquiry and gossip. The grief and
excitement through which she had gone dried the source of nutriment in
her breast. She put Nora’s child out to nurse at the house of a small
farmer, at a little distance from the village, and moved from her first
lodging to be nearer to the infant. Her own child was so sickly and
ailing, that she could not bear to intrust it to the care of another.
She tried to bring it up by hand; and the poor child soon pined away and
died. She and Mark could not endure the sight of their baby’s grave;
they hastened to return to Hazeldean, and took Leonard with them. From
that time Leonard passed for the son they had lost.
When Egerton arrived at the village, and inquired for the person whose
address had been given to him, he was referred to the cottage in which
she had last lodged, and was told that she had been gone some days—the
day after her child was buried. Her child buried! Egerton staid to
inquire no more; thus he heard nothing of the infant that had been put
out to nurse. He walked slowly into the churchyard, and stood for some
minutes gazing on the small new mound; then, pressing his hand on the
heart to which all emotion had been forbidden, he re-entered his chaise
and returned to London. The sole reason for acknowledging his marriage
seemed to him now removed. Nora’s name had escaped reproach. Even had
his painful position with regard to Harley not constrained him to
preserve his secret, there was every motive to the World’s wise and
haughty son not to acknowledge a derogatory and foolish marriage, now
that none lived whom concealment could wrong.
Audley mechanically resumed his former life,—sought to resettle his
thoughts on the grand objects of ambitious men. His poverty still
pressed on him; his pecuniary debt to Harley stung and galled his
peculiar sense of honour. He saw no way to clear his estates, to repay
his friend, but by some rich alliance. Dead to love, he faced this
prospect first with repugnance, then with apathetic indifference. Levy,
of whose treachery towards himself and Nora he was unaware, still held
over him the power that the money-lender never loses over the man that
has owed, owes, or may owe again. Levy was ever urging him to propose to
the rich Miss Leslie;—Lady Lansmere, willing to atone, as she thought,
for his domestic loss, urged the same;—Harley, influenced by his mother,
wrote from the Continent to the same effect.
“Manage it as you will,” at last said Egerton to Levy, “so that I am not
a wife’s pensioner.”
“Propose for me if you will,” he said to Lady Lansmere—“I cannot woo—I
cannot talk of love.”
Somehow or other the marriage, with all its rich advantages to the
ruined gentleman, was thus made up. And Egerton, as we have seen, was
the polite and dignified husband before the world—married to a woman who
adored him. It is the common fate of men like him to be loved too well!
On her deathbed his heart was touched by his wife’s melancholy
reproach—“Nothing I could do has ever made you love me!” “It is true,”
answered Audley, with tears in his voice and eyes—“Nature gave me but a
small fund of what women like you call ‘love,’ and I lavished it all
away.” And he then told her, though with reserve, some portion of his
former history;—and that soothed her; for when she saw that he _had_
loved, and _could_ grieve, she caught a glimpse of the human heart she
had not seen before. She died, forgiving him, and blessing.
Audley’s spirits were much affected by this new loss. He inly resolved
never to marry again. He had a vague thought at first of retrenching his
expenditure, and making young Randal Leslie his heir. But when he first
saw the clever Eton boy, his feelings did not warm to him, though his
intellect appreciated Randal’s quick keen talents. He contented himself
with resolving to push the boy;—to do what was merely just to the
distant kinsman of his late wife. Always careless and lavish in money
matters, generous and princely, not from the delight of serving others,
but from a _grand Seigneur’s_ sentiment of what was due to himself and
his station, Audley had a mournful excuse for the lordly waste of the
large fortune at his control. The morbid functions of the heart had
become organic disease. True, he might live many years, and die at last
of some other complaint in the course of nature; but the progress of the
disease would quicken with all emotional excitement; he might die
suddenly—any day—in the very prime, and, seemingly, in the full vigour,
of his life. And the only physician in whom he confided what he wished
to keep concealed from the world, (for ambitious men would fain be
thought immortal,) told him frankly that it was improbable that, with
the wear and tear of political strife and action, he could advance far
into middle age. Therefore, no son of his succeeding—his nearest
relations all wealthy—Egerton resigned himself to his constitutional
disdain of money; he could look into no affairs, provided the balance in
his banker’s hands were such as became the munificent commoner. All else
he left to his steward and to Levy. Levy grew rapidly rich—very, very
rich—and the steward thrived.
The usurer continued to possess a determined hold over the imperious
great man. He knew Audley’s secret; he could reveal that secret to
Harley. And the one soft and tender side of the statesman’s nature—the
sole part of him not dipped in the ninefold Styx of practical prosaic
life, which so renders man invulnerable to affection—was his remorseful
love for the school friend whom he still deceived.
Here then you have the key to the locked chambers of Audley Egerton’s
character, the fortified castle of his mind. The envied minister—the
joyless man—the oracle on the economics of an empire—the prodigal in a
usurer’s hands—the august, high-crested gentleman, to whom princes would
refer for the casuistry of honour—the culprit trembling lest the friend
he best loved on earth should detect his lie! Wrap thyself in the decent
veil that the Arts or the Graces weave for thee, O Human Nature! It is
only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold without
shame and offence!