IN LIFE, AS IN ART, THE BEAUTIFUL MOVES IN CURVES.
They have dined.--George Morley takes the oars, and the boat cuts
through the dance of waves flushed by the golden sunset. Beautiful
river! which might furnish the English tale-teller with legends wild
as those culled on shores licked by Hydaspes, and sweet as those which
Cephisus ever blended with the songs of nightingales and the breath of
violets! But what true English poet ever names thee, O Father Thames,
without a melodious tribute? And what child ever whiled away summer
noons along thy grassy banks, nor hallowed thy remembrance among the
fairy days of life?
Silently Lionel bent over the side of the gliding boat; his mind carried
back to the same soft stream five years ago. How vast a space in his
short existence those five years seemed to fill! And how distant from
the young man, rich in the attributes of wealth, armed with each
weapon of distinction, seemed the hour when the boy had groaned aloud,
“‘Fortune is so far, Fame so impossible!’” Farther and farther yet than
his present worldly station from his past seemed the image that had
first called forth in his breast the dreamy sentiment, which the
sternest of us in after life never, utterly forget. Passions rage and
vanish, and when all their storms are gone, yea, it may be, at the verge
of the very grave, we look back and see like a star the female face,
even though it be a child’s, that first set us vaguely wondering at the
charm in a human presence, at the void in a smile withdrawn! How many of
us could recall a Beatrice through the gaps of ruined hope, seen, as by
the Florentine, on the earth a guileless infant, in the heavens a spirit
glorified! Yes--Laura was an affectation--Beatrice a reality!
George’s voice broke somewhat distastefully on Lionel’s reverie. “We
near our destination, and you have not asked me even the name of the
lady to whom you are to render homage. It is Lady Montfort, widow to the
last Marquess. You have no doubt heard Mr. Darrell speak of her?”
“Never Mr. Darrell--Colonel Morley often. And in the world I have heard
her cited as perhaps the handsomest, and certainly the haughtiest, woman
in England.”
“Never heard Mr. Darrell mention her! that is strange indeed,” said
George Morley, catching at Lionel’s first words, and unnoticing his
after comment. “She was much in his house as a child, shared in his
daughter’s education.”
“Perhaps for that very reason he shuns her name. Never but once did
I hear him allude to his daughter; nor can I wonder at that, if it be
true, as I have been told by people who seem to know very little of the
particulars, that, while yet scarcely out of the nursery, she fled from
his house with some low adventurer--a Mr. Hammond--died abroad the first
year of that unhappy marriage.”
“Yes, that is the correct outline of the story; and, as you guess, it
explains why Mr. Darrell avoids mention of one, whom he associates
with his daughter’s name; though, if you desire a theme dear to Lady
Montfort, you can select none that more interests her grateful heart
than praise of the man who saved her mother from penury, and secured to
herself the accomplishments and instruction which have been her chief
solace.”
“Chief solace! Was she not happy with Lord Montfort? What sort of man
was he?”
“I owe to Lord Montfort the living I hold, and I can remember the good
qualities alone of a benefactor. If Lady Montfort was not happy with
him, it is just to both to say that she never complained. But there is
much in Lady Montfort’s character which the Marquess apparently failed
to appreciate; at all events, they had little in common, and what was
called Lady Montfort’s haughtiness was perhaps but the dignity with
which a woman of grand nature checks the pity that would debase her--the
admiration that would sully--guards her own beauty, and protects her
husband’s name. Here we are. Will you stay for a few minutes in the
boat, while I go to prepare Lady Montfort for your visit?”
George leapt ashore, and Lionel remained under the covert of mighty
willows that dipped their leaves into the wave. Looking through the
green interstices of the foliage, he saw at the far end of the lawn,
on a curving bank by which the glittering tide shot oblique, a simple
arbour--an arbour like that from which he had looked upon summer stars
five years ago--not so densely covered with the honeysuckle; still the
honeysuckle, recently trained there, was fast creeping up the sides;
and through the trellis of the woodwork and the leaves of the flowering
shrub, he just caught a glimpse of some form within--the white robe of
a female form in a slow gentle movement-tending perhaps the flowers that
wreathed the arbour. Now it was still, now it stirred again; now it was
suddenly lost to view. Had the inmate left the arbour? Was the inmate
Lady Montfort? George Morley’s step had not passed in that direction.