Oh, Helen, fair Helen,--type of the quiet, serene, unnoticed, deep-felt
excellence of woman! Woman, less as the ideal that a poet conjures from
the air, than as the companion of a poet on the earth! Woman, who, with
her clear sunny vision of things actual, and the exquisite fibre of her
delicate sense, supplies the deficiencies of him whose foot stumbles on
the soil, because his eye is too intent upon the stars! Woman, the
provident, the comforting, angel whose pinions are folded round the
heart, guarding there a divine spring unmarred by the winter of the
world! Helen, soft Helen, is it indeed in thee that the wild and
brilliant "lord of wantonness and ease" is to find the regeneration of
his life, the rebaptism of his soul? Of what avail thy meek prudent
household virtues to one whom Fortune screens from rough trial; whose
sorrows lie remote from thy ken; whose spirit, erratic and perturbed, now
rising, now falling, needs a vision more subtle than thine to pursue, and
a strength that can sustain the reason, when it droops, on the wings of
enthusiasm and passion?
And thou, thyself, O nature, shrinking and humble, that needest to be
courted forth from the shelter, and developed under the calm and genial
atmosphere of holy, happy love--can such affection as Harley L'Estrange
may proffer suffice to thee? Will not the blossoms, yet folded in the
petal, wither away beneath the shade that may protect them from the
storm, and yet shut them from the sun? Thou who, where thou givest love,
seekest, though meekly, for love in return; to be the soul's sweet
necessity, the life's household partner to him who receives all thy faith
and devotion,--canst thou influence the sources of joy and of sorrow in
the heart that does not heave at thy name? Hast thou the charm and the
force of the moon, that the tides of that wayward sea shall ebb and flow
at thy will? Yet who shall say, who conjecture how near two hearts can
become, when no guilt lies between them, and time brings the ties all its
own? Rarest of all things on earth is the union in which both, by their
contrasts, make harmonious their blending; each supplying the defects of
the helpmate, and completing, by fusion, one strong human soul!
Happiness enough, where even Peace does but seldom preside, when each can
bring to the altar, if not the flame, still the incense. Where man's
thoughts are all noble and generous, woman's feelings all gentle and
pure, love may follow if it does not precede; and if not, if the roses be
missed from the garland, one may sigh for the rose, but one is safe from
the thorn.
The morning was mild, yet somewhat overcast by the mist which announces
coming winter in London, and Helen walked musingly beneath the trees that
surrounded the garden of Lord Lansmere's house. Many leaves were yet
left on the boughs; but they were sere and withered. And the birds
chirped at times; but their note was mournful and complaining. All
within this house, until Harley's arrival, had been strange and saddening
to Helen's timid and subdued spirits. Lady Lansmere had received her
kindly, but with a certain restraint; and the loftiness of manner, common
to the countess with all but Harley, had awed and chilled the diffident
orphan. Lady Lansmere's very interest in Harley's choice, her attempts
to draw Helen out of her reserve, her watchful eyes whenever Helen shyly
spoke or shyly moved, frightened the poor child, and made her unjust to
herself.
The very servants, though staid, grave, and respectful, as suited a
dignified, old-fashioned household, painfully contrasted the bright
welcoming smiles and free talk of Italian domestics. Her recollections
of the happy, warm Continental manner, which so sets the bashful at their
ease, made the stately and cold precision of all around her doubly awful
and dispiriting. Lord Lansmere himself, who did not as yet know the
views of Harley, and little dreamed that he was to anticipate a daughter-
in-law in the ward, whom he understood Harley, in a freak of generous
roinance, had adopted, was familiar and courteous, as became a host; but
he looked upon Helen as a mere child, and naturally left her to the
countess. The dim sense of her equivocal position, of her comparative
humbleness of birth and fortunes, oppressed and pained her; and even her
gratitude to Harley was made burdensome by a sentiment of helplessness.
The grateful long to requite. And what could she ever do for him?
Thus musing, she wandered alone through the curving walks; and this sort
of mock-country landscape--London loud, and even visible, beyond the high
gloomy walls, and no escape from the windows of the square formal house--
seemed a type of the prison bounds of Rank to one whose soul yearns for
simple loving Nature.
Helen's revery was interrupted by Nero's joyous bark. He had caught
sight of her, and came bounding up, and thrust his large head into her
hand. As she stooped to caress the dog, happy at his honest greeting,
and tears that had been long gathering at the lids fell silently on his
face (for I know nothing that more moves us to tears than the hearty
kindness of a dog, when something in human beings has pained or chilled
us), she heard behind the musical voice of Harley. Hastily she dried or
repressed her tears, as her guardian came up, and drew her arm within his
own.
"I had so little of your conversation last evening, my dear ward, that I
may well monopolize you now, even to the privation of Nero. And so you
are once more in your native land?"
Helen sighed softly.
"May I not hope that you return under fairer auspices than those which
your childhood knew?"
Helen turned her eyes with ingenuous thankfulness to her guardian, and
the memory of all she owed to him rushed upon her heart.
Harley renewed, and with earnest, though melancholy sweetness, "Helen,
your eyes thank me; but hear me before your words do. I deserve no
thanks. I am about to make to you a strange confession of egotism and
selfishness."
"You!--oh, impossible!"
"Judge yourself, and then decide which of us shall have cause to be
grateful. Helen, when I was scarcely your age--a boy in years, but more,
methinks, a man at heart, with man's strong energies and sublime
aspirings, than I have ever since been--I loved, and deeply--"
He paused a moment, in evident struggle. Helen listened in mute
surprise, but his emotion awakened her own; her tender woman's heart
yearned to console. Unconsciously her arm rested on his less lightly.
"Deeply, and for sorrow. It is a long tale, that may be told hereafter.
The worldly would call my love a madness. I did not reason on it then,
I cannot reason on it now. Enough: death smote suddenly, terribly, and
to me, mysteriously, her whom I loved. The love lived on. Fortunately,
perhaps, for me, I had quick distraction, not to grief, but to its inert
indulgence. I was a soldier; I joined our armies. Men called me brave.
Flattery! I was a coward before the thought of life. I sought death:
like sleep, it does not come at our call. Peace ensued. As when the
winds fall the sails droop, so when excitement ceased, all seemed to me
flat and objectless. Heavy, heavy was my heart. Perhaps grief had been
less obstinate, but that I feared I had causes for self-reproach. Since
then I have been a wanderer, a self-made exile. My boyhood had been
ambitious,--all ambition ceased. Flames, when they reach the core of the
heart, spread, and leave all in ashes. Let me be brief: I did not mean
thus weakly to complain,--I to whom Heaven has given so many blessings!
I felt, as it were, separated from the common objects and joys of men.
I grew startled to see how, year by year, wayward humours possessed me.
I resolved again to attach myself to some living heart--it was my sole
chance to rekindle my own. But the one I had loved remained as my type
of woman, and she was different from all I saw. Therefore I said to
myself, 'I will rear from childhood some young fresh life, to grow up
into my ideal.' As this thought began to haunt me, I chanced to discover
you. Struck with the romance of your early life, touched by your
courage, charmed by your affectionate nature, I said to myself, 'Here is
what I seek.' Helen, in assuming the guardianship of your 'Life, in all
the culture which I have sought to bestow on your docile childhood, I
repeat, that I have been but the egotist. And now, when you have reached
that age when it becomes me to speak, and you to listen; now, when you
are under the sacred roof of my own mother; now I ask you, can you accept
this heart, such as wasted years, and griefs too fondly nursed, have left
it? Can you be, at least, my comforter? Can you aid me to regard life
as a duty, and recover those aspirations which once soared from the
paltry and miserable confines of our frivolous daily being? Helen, here
I ask you, can you be all this, and under the name of--Wife?"
It would be in vain to describe the rapid, varying, indefinable emotions
that passed through the inexperienced heart of the youthful listener as
Harley thus spoke. He so moved all the springs of amaze, compassion,
tender respect, sympathy, child-like gratitude, that when he paused and
gently took her hand, she remained bewildered, speechless, overpowered.
Harley smiled as he gazed upon her blushing, downcast, expressive face.
He conjectured at once that the idea of such proposals had never crossed
her mind; that she had never contemplated him in the character of wooer;
never even sounded her heart as to the nature of such feelings as his
image had aroused.
"My Helen," he resumed, with a calm pathos of voice, "there is some
disparity of years between us, and perhaps I may not hope henceforth for
that love which youth gives to the young. Permit me simply to ask, what
you will frankly answer, Can you have seen in our quiet life abroad, or
under the roof of your Italian friends, any one you prefer to me?"
"No, indeed, no!" murmured Helen. "How could I; who is like you?" Then,
with a, sudden effort--for her innate truthfulness took alarm, and her
very affection for Harley, childlike and reverent, made her tremble lest
she should deceive him--she drew a little aside, and spoke thus,
"Oh, my dear guardian, noblest of all human beings, at least in my eyes,
forgive, forgive me, if I seem ungrateful, hesitating; but I cannot,
cannot think of myself as worthy of you. I never so lifted my eyes.
Your rank, your position--"
"Why should they be eternally my curse? Forget them, and go on."
"It is not only they," said Helen, almost sobbing, "though they are much;
but I your type, your ideal!--I?--impossible! Oh, how can I ever be
anything even of use, of aid, of comfort to one like you!"
"You can, Helen--you can," cried Harley, charmed by such ingenuous
modesty. "May I not keep this hand?" And Helen left her hand in
Harley's, and turned away her face, fairly weeping.
A stately step passed under the wintry trees.
"My mother," said Harley L'Estrange, looking up, "I present to you my
future wife."