She is seated on a garden bench, looking across the lake towards the

gloomy old Manor-house and the tall spectre palace beside it. Mrs.

Morley is also on the bench, hard at work on her sketch; Fairthorn

prowls through the thickets behind, wandering restless, and wretched,

and wrathful beyond all words to describe. He hears that voice Singing;

he stops short, perfectly rabid with indignation. “Singing,” he

muttered, “singing in triumph, and glowering at the very House she

dooms to destruction. Worse than Nero striking his lyre amidst the

conflagration of Rome!” By-and-by Sophy, who somehow or other cannot

sit long in any place, and tires that day of any companion, wanders

away from the lake and comes right upon Fairthorn. Hailing, in her

unutterable secret bliss, the musician who had so often joined her

rambles in the days of unuttered secret sadness, she sprang towards him,

with welcome and mirth in a face that would have lured Diogenes out of

his tub. Fairthorn recoiled sidelong, growling forth, “Don’t--you had

better not!”--grinned the most savage grin, showing all his teeth like a

wolf; and as she stood, mute with wonder, perhaps with fright, he slunk

edgeways off, as if aware of his own murderous inclinations, turning

his head more than once, and shaking it at her; then, with the wonted

mystery which enveloped his exits, he was gone! vanished behind a crag,

or amidst a bush, or into a hole--Heaven knows; but, like the lady in

the Siege of Corinth, who warned the renegade Alp of his approaching

end, he was “gone.”

Twice again that day Sophy encountered the enraged musician; each time

the same menacing aspect and weird disappearance.

“Is Mr. Fairthorn ever a little-odd?” asked Sophy timidly of George

Morley.

“Always,” answered George, dryly.

Sophy felt relieved at that reply. Whatever is habitual in a man’s

manner, however unpleasant, is seldom formidable. Still Sophy could not

help saying: “I wish poor Sir Isaac were here!”

“Do you?” said a soft voice behind her; “and pray, who is Sir Isaac?”

The speaker was Darrell, who had come forth with the resolute intent to

see more of Sophy, and make himself as amiably social as he could. Guy

Darrell could never be kind by halves.

“Sir Isaac is the wonderful dog you have heard me describe,” replied

George.

“Would he hurt my doe if he came here?” asked Darrell.

“Oh, no!” cried Sophy; “he never hurts anything. He once found a wounded

hare, and he brought it in his mouth to us so tenderly, and seemed so

anxious that we should cure it, which grandfather did, and the hare

would sometimes hurt him, but he never hurt the hare.”

Said George sonorously:

“Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.”

Darrell drew Sophy’s arm into his own. “Will you walk back to the lake

with me,” said he, “and help me to feed the swans? George, send your

servant express for Sir Isaac. I am impatient to make his acquaintance.”

Sophy’s hand involuntarily pressed Darrell’s arm. She looked up into his

face with innocent, joyous gratitude; feeling at once, and as by magic,

that her awe of him was gone.

Darrell and Sophy rambled thus together for more than an hour. He sought

to draw out her mind, unaware to herself; he succeeded. He was struck

with a certain simple poetry of thought which pervaded her ideas--not

artificial sentimentality, but a natural tendency to detect in all life

a something of delicate or beautiful which lies hid from the ordinary

sense. He found, thanks to Lady Montfort, that, though far from learned,

she was more acquainted with literature than he had supposed. And

sometimes he changed colour, or breathed his short quick sigh, when he

recognised her familiarity with passages in his favourite authors which

he himself had commended, or read aloud, to the Caroline of old.

The next day Waife, who seemed now recovered as by enchantment, walked

forth with George, Darrell again with Sophy. Sir Isaac arrived--Immense

joy; the doe butts Sir Isaac, who retreating, stands on his hind legs,

and, having possessed himself of Waife’s crutch, presents fire; the doe

in her turn retreats;--half an hour afterwards doe and dog are friends.

Waife is induced, without much persuasion, to join the rest of the party

at dinner. In the evening, all (Fairthorn excepted) draw round the fire.

Waife is entreated by George to read a scene or two out of Shakespeare.

He selects the latter portion of “King Lear.” Darrell, who never was a

playgoer, and who, to his shame be it said, had looked very little into

Shakespeare since he left college, was wonderstruck. He himself read

beautifully--all great orators, I suppose, do; but his talent was not

mimetic--not imitative; he could never have been an actor--never thrown

himself into existences wholly alien or repugnant to his own. Grave or

gay, stern or kind, Guy Darrell, though often varying, was always Guy

Darrell.

But when Waife was once in that magical world of art, Waife was

gone--nothing left of him;--the part lived as if there were no actor to

it;--it was the Fool--it was Lear.

For the first time Darrell felt what a grand creature a grand actor

really is--what a luminous, unconscious critic bringing out beauties of

which no commentator ever dreamed! When the reading was over, talk

still flowed; the gloomy old hearth knew the charm of a home circle. All

started incredulous when the clock struck one. Just as Sophy was passing

to the door, out from behind the window curtain glared a vindictive,

spiteful eye. Fairthorn made a move at her, which ‘tis a pity Waife did

not see--it would have been a study for Caliban. She uttered a little

scream.

“What’s the matter?” cried the host.

“Nothing,” said she quickly--far too generous to betray the hostile

oddities of the musician. “Sir Isaac was in my way--that was all.”

“Another evening we must have Fairthorn’s flute,” said Darrell. “What a

pity he was not here to-night!--he would have enjoyed such reading--no

one more.”

Said Mrs. Morley, “He was here once or twice during the evening; but he

vanished!”

“Vanishing seems his forte,” said George.

Darrell looked annoyed. It was his peculiarity to resent any jest,

however slight, against an absent friend; and at that moment his heart

was perhaps more warmed towards Dick Fairthorn than to any man living.

If he had not determined to be as amiable and mild towards his guests

as his nature would permit, probably George might have had the flip of

a sarcasm which would have tingled for a month. But as it was, Darrell

contented himself with saying gravely:

“No, George; Fairthorn’s foible is vanishing; his forte is fidelity. If

my fortune were to vanish, Fairthorn would never disappear; and that’s

more than I would say if I were a King, and Fairthorn--a Bishop!”

After that extraordinary figure of speech, “Good-nights” were somewhat

hastily exchanged; and Fairthorn was left; behind the curtain with

feelings towards all his master’s guests as little, it is to be hoped,

like those of a Christian Bishop towards his fellow-creatures, as they

possibly could be.

CHAPTER VII.

“Domus et placens Uxor.”

FAIRTHORN FINDS NOTHING _PLACENS_ IN THE _UXOR_, TO WHOM _DOMUS_ IS

INDEBTED FOR ITS DESTRUCTION.

Another day! Lionel is expected to arrive an hour or two after noon.

Darrell is in his room--his will once more before him. He has drawn up a

rough copy of the codicil by which Fawley is to pass away, and the name

of Darrell be consigned to the care of grateful Learning, linked with

prizes and fellowships;--a public property--lost for ever to private

representatives of its sepulchred bearers. Preparations for departure

from the doomed dwelling-house have begun. There are large boxes on the

floor; and favourite volumes--chiefly in science or classics--lie piled

beside them for selection.

What is really at the bottom of Guy Darrell’s heart? Does he feel

reconciled to his decision? Is the virtue of his new self-sacrifice

in itself a consoling reward? Is that cordial urbanity, that cheerful

kindness, by which he has been yet more endearing himself to his guests,

sincere or assumed? As he throws aside his pen, and leans his cheek

on his hand, the expression of his countenance may perhaps best answer

those questions. It has more unmingled melancholy than was habitual to

it before, even when in his gloomiest moods; but it is a melancholy much

more soft and subdued; it is the melancholy of resignation--that of a

man who has ceased a long struggle--paid his offering to the appeased

Nemesis, in casting into the sea the thing that had been to him the

dearest.

But in resignation, when complete, there is always a strange relief.

Despite that melancholy, Darrell is less unhappy than he has been for

years. He feels as if a suspense has passed--a load been lifted from

his breast. After all, he has secured, to the best of his judgment, the

happiness of the living, and, in relinquishing the object to which his

own life has been vainly devoted, and immolating the pride attached to

it, he has yet, to use his own words, paid his “dues to the dead.” No

descendant from a Jasper Losely and a Gabrielle Desmarets will sit as

mistress of the house in which Loyalty and Honour had garnered, with

the wrecks of fortune, the memories of knightly fame--nor perpetuate the

name of Darrell through children whose blood has a source in the sink of

infamy and fraud. Nor was this consolation that of a culpable pride; it

was bought by the abdication of a pride that had opposed its prejudices

to living worth--to living happiness. Sophy would not be punished for

sins not her own--Lionel not barred from a prize that earth never

might replace. What mattered to them a mouldering, old, desolate

manor-house--a few hundreds of pitiful acres? Their children would not

be less blooming if their holiday summer-noons were not shaded by those

darksome trees--nor less lively of wit if their school themes were

signed in the name, not of Darrell, but Haughton.

A slight nervous knock at the door. Darrell has summoned Fairthorn;

Fairthorn enters. Darrell takes up a paper; it contains minute

instructions as to the demolition of the two buildings. The materials

of the new pile may be disposed of, sold, carted away--anyhow, anywhere.

Those of the old house are sacred--not a brick to be carried from the

precincts around it. No; from foundation to roof, all to be piously

removed--to receive formal interment deep in the still bosom of the

little lake, and the lake to be filled up and turfed over. The pictures

and antiquities selected for the Darrell Museum are, of course, to be

carefully transported to London--warehoused safely till the gift from

owner to nation be legally ratified. The pictures and articles of less

value will be sent to an auction. But when it came to the old family

portraits in the Manorhouse, the old homely furniture, familiarised

to sight and use and love from infancy, Darrell was at a loss; his

invention failed. That question was reserved for further consideration.

“And why,” says Fairthorn, bluntly and coarsely, urging at least

reprieve; “why, if it must be, not wait till you are no more? Why must

the old house be buried before you are?”

“Because,” answered Darrell, “such an order, left by will, would seem

a reproach to my heirs; it would wound Lionel to the quick. Done in my

lifetime, and just after I have given my blessing on his marriage, I can

suggest a thousand reasons for an old man’s whim; and my manner alone

will dispel all idea of a covert affront to his charming innocent

bride.”

“I wish she were hanged, with all my heart,” muttered Fairthorn, “coming

here to do such astonishing mischief! But, sir, I can’t obey you;

‘tis no use talking. You must get some one else. Parson Morley will do

it--with pleasure too, no doubt; or that hobbling old man whom I suspect

to be a conjurer. Who knows but what he may get knocked on the head as

he is looking on with his wicked one eye; and then there will be an end

of him, too, which would be a great satisfaction!”

“Pshaw, my dear Dick; there is no one else I can ask but you. The Parson

would argue; I’ve had enough of his arguings; and the old man is the

last whom my own arguings could deceive. Fiat justitia.”

“Don’t, sir, don’t; you are breaking my heart--‘tis a shame, sir,”

sobbed the poor faithful rebel.

“Well, Dick, then I must see it done myself; and you shall go on first

to Sorrento, and hire some villa to suit us. I don’t see why Lionel

should not be married next week; then the house will be clear.

And--yes--it was cowardly in me to shrink. Mine be the task. Shame on me

to yield it to another. Go back to thy flute, Dick.

‘Neque tibias

Euterpe cohibet, nec Polyhymnia

Lesboum refugit tendere barbiton!’”

At that last remorseless shaft from the Horatian quiver, “Venenatis

gravida sagittis,” Fairthorn could stand ground no longer; there was a

shamble--a plunge--and once more the man was vanished.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FLUTE-PLAYER SHOWS HOW LITTLE MUSIC HATH POWER TO SOOTHE THE

SAVAGE BREAST--OF A MUSICIAN.

Fairthorn found himself on the very spot in which, more than five years

ago, Lionel, stung by Fairthorn’s own incontinent prickles, had been

discovered by Darrell. There he threw himself on the ground, as the boy

had done; there, like the boy, he brooded moodily, bitterly--sore with

the world and himself. To that letter, written on the day that Darrell

had so shocked him, and on which letter he had counted as a last

forlorn--hope, no answer had been given. In an hour or so, Lionel would

arrive; those hateful nuptials, dooming Fawley as the nuptials of Paris

and Helen had doomed Troy, would be finally arranged. In another week

the work of demolition would commence. He never meant to leave Darrell

to superintend that work. No; grumble and refuse as he might till the

last moment, he knew well enough that, when it came to the point, he,

Richard Fairthorn, must endure any torture that could save Guy Darrell

from a pang. A voice comes singing low through the grove--the patter

of feet on the crisp leaves. He looks up; Sir Isaac is scrutinising him

gravely--behind Sir Isaac, Darrell’s own doe, led patiently by Sophy,

yes, lending its faithless neck to that female criminal’s destroying

hand. He could not bear that sight, which added insult to injury. He

scrambled up--darted a kick at Sir Isaac--snatched the doe from the

girl’s hand, and looked her in the face (her--not Sophy, but the doe)

with a reproach that, if the brute had not been lost to all sense of

shame, would have cut her to the heart; then, turning to Sophy, he said:

“No, Miss! I reared this creature--fed it with my own hands, Miss. I

gave it up to Guy Darrell, Miss; and you shan’t steal this from him,

whatever else you may do, Miss.”

SOPHY.--“Indeed, Mr. Fairthorn, it was for Mr. Darrell’s sake that I

wished to make friends with the doe--as you would with poor Sir Isaac,

if you would but try and like me--a little, only a very little, Mr.

Fairthorn.”

FAIRTHORN.--“Don’t!”

SOPHY.--“Don’t what? I am so sorry to see I have annoyed you somehow.

You have not been the same person to me the last two or three days. Tell

me what I have done wrong; scold me, but make it up.”

FAIRTHORN.--“Don’t holdout your hand to me! Don’t be smiling in my face!

I don’t choose it! Get out of my sight! You are standing between me and

the old house--robbing me even of my last looks at the home which you--”

SOPHY.--“Which I--what?”

FAIRTHORN.--“Don’t, I say, don’t--don’t tempt me. You had better not ask

questions--that’s all. I shall tell you the truth; I know I shall; my

tongue is itching to tell it. Please to walk on.”

Despite the grotesque manner and astounding rudeness of the

flute-player, his distress of mind was so evident--there was something

so genuine and earnest at the bottom of his ludicrous anger--that Sopby

began to feel a vague presentiment of evil. That she was the mysterious

cause of some great suffering to this strange enemy, whom she had

unconsciously provoked, was clear; and she said, therefore, with more

gravity than she had before evinced:

“Mr. Fairthorn, tell me how I have incurred your displeasure, I entreat

you to do so; no matter how painful the truth may be, it is due to us

both not to conceal it.”

A ray of hope darted through Fairthorn’s enraged and bewildered mind. He

looked to the right--he looked to the left; no one near. Releasing his

hold on the doe, he made a sidelong dart towards Sophy, and said: “Hush;

do you really care what becomes of Mr. Darrell?”

“To be sure I do.”

“You would not wish him to die broken-hearted in a foreign land--that

old house levelled to the ground and buried in the lake? Eh, Miss--eh?”

“How can you ask me such questions?” said Sophy, faintly. “Do speak

plainly, and at once.”

“Well, I will, Miss. I believe you are a good young lady, after all--and

don’t wish really to bring disgrace upon all who want to keep you in the

dark, and--”

“Disgrace!” interrupted Sopby; and her pure spirit rose, and the soft

blue eye flashed a ray like a shooting-star.

“No, I am sure you would not like it; and some time or other you could

not help knowing, and you would be very sorry for it. And that boy

Lionel, who was as proud as Guy Darrell himself when I saw him last

(prouder indeed)--that he should be so ungrateful to his benefactor!

And, indeed, the day may come when he may turn round on you, or on the

lame old gentleman, and say he has been disgraced. Should not wonder at

all! Young folks when they are sweet-hearting only talk about roses and

angels, and such-like; but when husbands and wives fall out, as they

always do sooner or later, they don’t mince their words then, and they

just take the sharpest thing that they can find at their tongue’s end.

So you may depend on it, my dear Miss, that some day or other that young

Haughton will say, ‘that you lost him the old Manor-house and the old

Darrell name,’ and have been his disgrace; that’s the very word, Miss; I

have heard husbands and wives say it to each other over and over again.”

SOPHY.--“Oh, Mr. Fairthorn! Mr. Fairthorn! these horrid words cannot be

meant for me. I will go to Mr. Darrell--I will ask him how I can be a

dis--” Her lips could not force out the word.

FAIRTHORN.--“Ay; go to Mr. Darrell, if you please. He will deny it all;

he will never speak to me again. I don’t care--I am reckless. But it is

not the less true that you make him an exile because you may make me a

beggar.”

SOPHY (wringing her hands).--“Have you no mercy, Mr. Fairthorn? Will you

not explain?”

FAIRTHORN.--“Yes, if you will promise to keep it secret at least for the

next six months--anything for breathing-time.”

SOPHY (impatiently).--“I promise, I promise; speak, speak.”

And then Fairthorn did speak! He did speak of Jasper Losely--his

character--his debasement--even of his midnight visit to her host’s

chamber. He did speak of the child fraudulently sought to be thrust

on Darrell--of Darrell’s just indignation and loathing. The man was

merciless; though he had not an idea of the anguish he was inflicting,

he was venting his own anguish. All the mystery of her past life became

clear at once to the unhappy girl--all that had been kept from her

by protecting love. All her vague conjectures now became a dreadful

certainty;--explained now why Lionel had fled her--why he had written

that letter, over the contents of which she had pondered, with her

finger on her lip, as if to hush her own sighs--all, all! She marry

Lionel now! impossible! She bring disgrace upon him in return for

such generous, magnanimous affection! She drive his benefactor, her

grandsire’s vindicator, from his own hearth! She--she--that Sophy who,

as a mere infant, had recoiled from the thought of playful subterfuge

and tamperings with plain honest truth! She rose before Fairthorn had

done; indeed, the tormentor, left to himself, would not have ceased till

nightfall.

“Fear not, Mr. Fairthorn,” she said, resolutely; “Mr. Darrell will be

no exile! his house will not be destroyed. Lionel Haughton shall not wed

the child of disgrace! Fear not, sir; all is safe!”

She shed not a tear; nor was there writ on her countenance that CHANGE,

speaking of blighted hope, which had passed over it at her young lover’s

melancholy farewell. No, now she was supported--now there was a virtue

by the side of a sorrow--now love was to shelter and save the beloved

from disgrace--from disgrace! At that thought, disgrace fell harmless

from herself, as the rain from the plumes of a bird. She passed on, her

cheek glowing, her form erect.

By the porch-door she met Waife and the Morleys. With a kind of wild

impetuosity she seized the old man’s arm, and drew it fondly, clingingly

within her own. Henceforth they two were to be, as in years gone by, all

in all to each other. George Morley eyed her countenance in thoughtful

surprise. Mrs. Morley, bent as usual on saying something seasonably

kind, burst into an eulogium on her brilliant colour. So they passed on

towards the garden side of the house. Wheels--the tramp of hoofs,

full gallop; and George Morley, looking up, exclaimed: “Ha! here comes

Lionel! and see, Darrell is hastening out to welcome him!”

CHAPTER IX.

THE LETTER ON WHICH RICHARD FAIRTHORN RELIED FOR THE DEFEAT OF THE

CONSPIRACY AGAINST FAWLEY MANOR-HOUSE. BAD ASPECTS FOR HOUSES. THE

HOUSE OF VIPONT IS THREATENED. A PHYSICIAN ATTEMPTS TO MEDICINE TO

A MIND DISEASED. A STRANGE COMMUNICATION, WHICH HURRIES THE READER

ONTO THE NEXT CHAPTER.

It has been said that Fairthorn had committed to a certain letter

his last desperate hope that something might yet save Fawley from

demolition, and himself and his master from an exile’s home in that

smiling nook of earth to which Horace invited Septimius, as uniting

the advantages of a mild climate, excellent mutton, capital wine; and

affording to Septimius the prospective privilege of sprinkling a tear

over the cinder of his poetical friend while the cinder was yet warm;

inducements which had no charm at all to Fairthorn, who was quite

satisfied with the Fawley southdowns--held in just horror all

wishy-washy light wines--and had no desire to see Darrell reduced to a

cinder for the pleasure of sprinkling that cinder with a tear.

The letter in question was addressed to Lady Montfort. Unscrupulously

violating the sacred confidence of his master, the treacherous wretch,

after accusing her, in language little more consistent with the respect

due to the fair sex than that which he had addressed to Sophy, of all

the desolation that the perfidious nuptials of Caroline Lyndsay had

brought upon Guy Darrell, declared that the least Lady Montfort could do

to repair the wrongs inflicted by Caroline Lyndsay, was--not to pity his

master!--that her pity was killing him. He repeated, with some grotesque

comments of his own, but on the whole not inaccurately, what Darrell

had said to him on the subject of her pity. He then informed her of

Darrell’s consent to Lionel’s marriage with Sophy; in which criminal

espousals it was clear, from Darrell’s words, that Lady Montfort had had

some nefarious share. In the most lugubrious colours he brought before

her the consequences of that marriage--the extinguished name, the

demolished dwelling-place, the renunciation of native soil itself. He

called upon her, by all that was sacred, to contrive some means to undo

the terrible mischief she had originally occasioned, and had recently

helped to complete. His epistle ended by an attempt to conciliate and

coax. He revived the image of that wild Caroline Lyndsay, to whom HE

had never refused a favour; whose earliest sums he had assisted to cast

up--to whose young idea he had communicated the elementary principles

of the musical gamut--to whom he had played on his flute, winter eve

and summer noon, by the hour together; that Caroline Lyndsay, who when

a mere child, had led Guy Darrell where she willed, as by a thread of

silk. Ah, how Fairthorn had leapt for joy when, eighteen years ago, he

had thought that Caroline Lyndsay was to be the sunshine and delight of

the house to which she had lived to bring the cloud and the grief! And

by all these memories, Fairthorn conjured her either to break off the

marriage she had evidently helped to bring about, or, failing that, to

convince Guy Darrell that he was not the object of her remorseful and

affectionate compassion.

Caroline was almost beside herself at the receipt of this letter. The

picture of Guy Darrell effacing his very life from his native land,

and destroying the last memorials of his birthright and his home--the

conviction of the influence she still retained over his bleak and

solitary existence--the experience she had already acquired that the

influence failed where she had so fondly hoped it might begin to repair

and to bless, all overpowered her with emotions of yearning tenderness

and unmitigated despair. What could she do? She could not offer herself,

again to be rejected. She could not write again, to force her penitence

upon the man who, while acknowledging his love to be unconquered, had

so resolutely refused to see, in the woman who had once deceived his

trust--the Caroline of old! Alas, if he were but under the delusion that

her pity was the substitute and not the companion of love, how could she

undeceive him? How say--how write--“Accept me, for I love you.” Caroline

Montfort had no pride of rank, but she had pride of sex; that pride had

been called forth, encouraged, strengthened, throughout all the years

of her wedded life. For Guy Darrell’s sake, and to him alone, that pride

she had cast away--trampled upon; such humility was due to him. But when

the humility had been once in vain, could it be repeated--would it

not be debasement? In the first experiment she had but to bow to his

reproach--in a second experiment she might have but to endure his

contempt. Yet how, with her sweet, earnest, affectionate nature--how she

longed for one more interview--one more explanation! If chance could but

bring it about; if she had but a pretext--a fair reason, apart from any

interest of her own, to be in his presence once more! But in a few days

he would have left England forever--his heart yet more hardened in its

resolves by the last sacrifice to what it had so sternly recognised to

be a due to others. Never to see him more--never to know how much

in that sacrifice he was suffering now--would perhaps suffer more

hereafter, in the reaction that follows all strain upon purpose--and yet

not a word of comfort from her--her who felt born to be his comforter.

But this marriage, that cost him so much, must that be? Could she dare,

even for his sake, to stand between two such fair young lives as those

of Lionel and Sophy--confide to them what Fairthorn had declared--appeal

to their generosity? She shrunk from inflicting such intolerable sorrow.

Could it be her duty? In her inability to solve this last problem,

she bethought herself of Alban Morley; here, at least, he might give

advice--offer suggestion. She sent to his house entreating him to call.

Her messenger was some hours before he found the Colonel, and then

brought back but a few hasty lines--“impossible to call that day. The

CRISIS had come at last! The Country, the House of Vipont, the British

Empire, were trembling in the balance. The Colonel was engaged every

moment for the next twelve hours. He had the Earl of Montfort, who was

intractable and stupid beyond conception, to see and talk over; Carr

Vipont was hard at work on the materials for the new Cabinet--Alban

was helping Carr Vipont. If the House of Vipont failed England at this

moment, it would not be a CRISIS, but a CRASH! The Colonel hoped to

arrange an interview with Lady Montfort for a minute or two the next

day. But perhaps she would excuse him from a journey to Twickenham, and

drive into town to see him; if not at home, he would leave word where he

was to be found.”

By the beard of Jupiter Capitolinus, there are often revolutions in the

heart of woman, during which she is callous to a Crisis, and has not

even a fear for a CRASH!

The next day came George’s letter to Caroline, with the gentle message

from Darrell; and when Dr. F------, whose apprehensions for the state

of her health Colonel Morley had by no means exaggerated, called in the

afternoon to see the effect of his last prescription, he found her in

such utter prostration of nerves and spirits, that he resolved to

hazard a dose not much known to great ladies--viz. three grains of

plain-speaking, with a minim of frightening.

“My dear lady,” said he, “yours is a case in which physicians can be of

very little use. There is something on the mind which my prescriptions

fail to reach; worry of some sort--decidedly worry. And unless you

yourself can either cure that, or will make head against it, worry,

my dear Lady Montfort, will end not in consumption--you are too finely

formed to let worry eat holes in the lungs--no; but in a confirmed

aneurism of the heart, and the first sudden shock might then be

immediately fatal. The heart is a noble organ--bears a great deal--but

still its endurance has limits. Heart-complaints are more common than

they were;--over-education and over-civilisation, I suspect. Very young

people are not so subject to them; they have flurry, not worry--a very

different thing. A good chronic silent grief of some years standing,

that gets worried into acute inflammation at the age when feeling is no

longer fancy, throws out a heart-disease which sometimes kills without

warning, or sometimes, if the grief be removed, will rather prolong than

shorten life, by inducing a prudent avoidance of worry in future. There

is that worthy old gentleman who was taken so ill at Fawley, and about

whom you were so anxious: in his case there had certainly been chronic

grief; then came acute worry, and the heart could not get through its

duties. Fifty years ago doctors would have cried ‘apoplexy!’--nowadays

we know that the heart saves the head. Well, he was more easy in his

mind the last time I saw him, and thanks to his temperance, and his

constitutional dislike to self-indulgence in worry, he may jog on to

eighty, in spite of the stethoscope! Excess in the moral emotions gives

heart-disease; abuse of the physical powers, paralysis; both more common

than they were--the first for your gentle sex, the second for our rough

one. Both, too, lie in wait for their victims at the entrance in middle

life. I have a very fine case of paralysis now; a man built up by nature

to live to a hundred--never saw such a splendid formation--such bone and

such muscle. I would have given Van Amburgh the two best of his lions,

and my man would have done for all three in five minutes. All the worse

for him, my dear lady--all the worse for him. His strength leads him on

to abuse the main fountains of life, and out jumps avenging Paralysis

and fells him to earth with a blow. ‘Tis your Hercules that Paralysis

loves; she despises the weak invalid, who prudently shims all excess.

And so, my dear lady, that assassin called Aneurism lies in wait for the

hearts that abuse their own force of emotion; sparing hearts that, less

vital, are thrifty in waste and supply. But you are not listening to

one! And yet my patient may not be quite unknown to your ladyship; for

in happening to mention the other day, to the lady who attends to and

nurses him, that I could not call this morning, as I had a visit to pay

to Lady Montfort at Twickenham, she became very anxious about you, and

wrote this note, which she begged me to give you. She seems very much

attached to my patient--not his wife nor his sister. She interests

me;--capital nurse-cleverish woman too. Oh! here is the note.”

Caroline, who had given but little heed to this recital, listlessly

received the note--scarcely looked at the address--and was about to put

it aside, when the good doctor, who was intent upon rousing her by any

means, said: “No, my dear lady, I promised that I would see you read the

note; besides, I am the most curious of men, and dying to know a little

more who and what is the writer.”

Caroline broke the seal and read as follows: “If Lady Montfort remembers

Arabella Fossett, and will call at Clare Cottage, Vale of Health,

Hampstead, at her ladyship’s earliest leisure, and ask for Mrs. Crane,

some information, not perhaps important to Lady Montfort, but very

important to Mr. Darrell, will be given.”

Lady Montfort startled the doctor by the alertness with which she sprang

to her feet and rang the bell.

“What is it?” asked he.

“The carriage immediately,” cried Lady Montfort as the servant entered.

“Ah! you are going to see the poor lady, Mrs. Crane, eh? Well, it is a

charming drive, and just what I should have recommended. Any exertion

will do you good. Allow me; why, your pulse is already fifty per cent.

better. Pray what relation is Mrs. Crane to my patient?”

“I really don’t know; pray excuse me, my dear Dr. F-------.”

“Certainly; go while the day is fine. Wrap up;--a close carriage,

mind;--and I will look in to-morrow.”

CHAPTER X.

WHEREIN IS INSINUATED THE HIGHEST COMPLIMENT TO WOMAN EVER PAID TO

HER SEX BY THE AUTHOR OF THIS WORK.

Lady Montfort has arrived at Clare Cottage. She is shown by Bridget

Greggs into a small room upon the first floor; folding-doors to some

other room closely shut--evidences of sickness in the house;--phials on

the chimneypiece--a tray with a broth-basin on the table--a saucepan on

the hob--the sofa one of those that serve as a bed, which Sleep little

visits, for one who may watch through the night over some helpless

sufferer--a woman’s shawl thrown carelessly over its hard narrow

bolster;--all, in short, betraying that pathetic untidiness and

discomfort which says that a despot is in the house to whose will order

and form are subordinate;--the imperious Tyranny of Disease establishing

itself in a life that, within those four walls, has a value not to be

measured by its worth to the world beyond. The more feeble and helpless

the sufferer, the more sovereign the despotism--the more submissive the

servitude.

In a minute or two one of the folding-doors silently opened and as

silently closed, admitting into Lady Montfort’s presence a grim woman in

iron grey.

Caroline could not, at the first glance, recognise that Arabella

Fossett, of whose handsome, if somewhat too strongly defined and sombre

countenance, she had retained a faithful reminiscence. But Arabella had

still the same imposing manner which had often repressed the gay spirits

of her young pupil; and as she now motioned the great lady to a seat,

and placed herself beside, an awed recollection of the schoolroom bowed

Caroline’s lovely head in mute respect.

MRS. CRANE.--“You too are changed since I saw you last,--that was more

than five years ago, but you are not less beautiful. You can still be

loved;--you would not scare away the man whom you might desire to save.

Sorrow has its partialities. Do you know that I have a cause to be

grateful to you, without any merit of your own. In a very dark moment

of my life--only vindictive and evil passions crowding on me--your face

came across my sight. Goodness seemed there so beautiful--and, in

this face, Evil looked so haggard! Do not interrupt me. I have but

few minutes to spare you. Yes; at the sight of that face, gentle

recollections rose up. You had ever been kind to me; and truthful,

Caroline Lyndsay--truthful. Other thoughts came at the beam of that

face, as other thoughts come when a strain of unexpected music reminds

us of former days. I cannot tell how, but from that moment a something

more like womanhood, than I had known for years, entered into my heart.

Within that same hour I was sorely tried galled to the quick of my soul.

Had I not seen you before, I might have dreamed of nothing but a stern

and dire revenge. And a purpose of revenge I did form. But it was not to

destroy-it was to save! I resolved that the man who laughed to scorn the

idea of vows due to me--vows to bind life to life--should yet sooner or

later be as firmly mine as if he had kept his troth; that my troth at

least should be kept to him, as if it had been uttered at the altar.

“Hush, did you hear a moan?--No! He lies yonder, Caroline Lyndsay--mine,

indeed, till the grave us do part. These hands have closed over him, and

he rests in their clasp, helpless as an infant.” Involuntarily Caroline

recoiled. But looking into that careworn face, there was in it so wild a

mixture of melancholy tenderness, with a resolved and fierce expression

of triumph, that, more impressed by the tenderness than by the triumph,

the woman sympathised with the woman; and Caroline again drew near,

nearer than before, and in her deep soft eyes pity alone was seen. Into

those eyes Arabella looked, as if spellbound, and the darker and sterner

expression in her own face gradually relaxed and fled, and only the

melancholy tenderness was left behind. She resumed:

“I said to Guy Darrell that I would learn, if possible, whether the poor

child whom I ill-used in my most wicked days, and whom you, it seems,

have so benignly sheltered, was the daughter of Matilda--or, as he

believed, of a yet more hateful mother. Long ago I had conceived a

suspicion that there was some ground to doubt poor Jasper’s assertion,

for I had chanced to see two letters addressed to him--one from

that Gabrielle Desinarets whose influence over his life had been so

baleful--in which she spoke of some guilty plunder with which she was

coming to London, and invited him again to join his fortunes with her

own. Oh, but the cold, bloodless villany of the tone!--the ease with

which crimes for a gibbet were treated as topics for wit!” Arabella

stopped--the same shudder came over her as when she had concluded the

epistles abstracted from the dainty pocketbook. “But in the letter were

also allusions to Sophy, to another attempt on Darrell to be made

by Gabrielle herself. Nothing very clear; but a doubt did suggest

itself--‘Is she writing to him about his own child?’ The other letter

was from the French nurse with whom Sophy had been placed as an infant.

It related to inquiries in person, and a visit to her own house, which

Mr. Darrell had recently made; that letter also seemed to imply some

deception, though but by a few dubious words. At that time the chief

effect of the suspicion these letters caused was but to make me more

bent on repairing to Sophy my cruelties to her childhood. What if I had

been cruel to an infant who, after all, was not the daughter of that

false, false Matilda Darrell! I kept in my memory the French nurse’s

address. I thought that when in France I might seek and question her.

But I lived only for one absorbing end. Sophy was not then in danger;

and even my suspicions as to her birth died away. Pass on:--Guy Darrell!

Ah, Lady Montfort! his life has been embittered like mine; but he was

man, and could bear it better. He has known, himself, the misery of

broken faith, of betrayed affection, which he could pity so little when

its blight fell on me; but you have excuse for desertion--you yourself

were deceived; and I pardon him, for he pardoned Jasper, and we are

fellow-sufferers. You weep! Pardon my rudeness. I did not mean to pain

you. Try and listen calmly--I must hurry on. On leaving Mr. Darrell I

crossed to France. I saw the nurse; I have ascertained the truth; here

are the proofs in this packet. I came back--I saw Jasper Losely. He was

on the eve of seeking you, whom he had already so wronged--of claiming

the child, or rather of extorting money for the renunciation of a claim

to one whom you had adopted. I told him how vainly he had hitherto

sought to fly from me. One by one I recited the guilty schemes in which

I had baffled his purpose--all the dangers from which I had rescued his

life. I commanded him to forbear the project he had then commenced.

I told him I would frustrate that project as I had frustrated others.

Alas, alas! why is this tongue so harsh?--why does this face so belie

the idea of human kindness? I did but enrage and madden him; he felt but

the reckless impulse to destroy the life that then stood between himself

and the objects to which he had pledged his own self-destruction. I

thought I should die by his hand. I did not quail. Ah! the ghastly

change that came over his face--the one glance of amaze and

superstitious horror; his arm obeyed him not; his strength, his limbs,

forsook him; he fell at my feet--one side of him stricken dead! Hist!

that is his voice--pardon me!” and Arabella flitted from the room,

leaving the door ajar.

A feeble Voice, like the treble of an infirm old man, came painfully to

Caroline’s ear.

“I want to turn; help me. Why am I left alone? It is cruel to leave me

so--cruel!”

In the softest tones to which that harsh voice could be tuned, the grim

woman apologised and soothed.

“You gave me leave, Jasper dear. You said it would be a relief to you to

have her pardon as well as theirs.”

“Whose pardon?” asked the voice querulously.

“Caroline Lyndsay’s--Lady Montfort’s.”

“Nonsense! What did I ever do against her? Oh--ah! I remember now. Don’t

let me have it over again. Yes--she pardons me, I suppose! Get me my

broth, and don’t be long!”

Arabella came back, closing the door; and while she busied herself with

that precious saucepan on the hob--to which the Marchioness of Montfort

had become a very secondary object--she said, looking towards Caroline

from under her iron-grey ringlets:

“You heard--he misses me! He can’t bear me out of his sight now--me, me!

You heard!”

Meekly Lady Montfort advanced, bringing in her hand the tray with the

broth-basin.

“Yes, I heard! I must not keep you; but let me help while I stay.”

So the broth was poured forth and prepared, and with it Arabella

disappeared. She returned in a few minutes, beckoned to Caroline, and

said in a low voice:

“Come in--say you forgive him! Oh, you need not fear him; a babe could

not fear him now!”

Caroline followed Arabella into the sick-room. No untidiness there; all

so carefully, thoughtfully arranged. A pleasant room, too--with windows

looking full on the sunniest side of the Vale of Health; the hearth

so cheerily clear, swept so clean--the very ashes out of sight;

flowers--costly exotics--on the table, on the mantelpiece; the

couch drawn towards the window; and on that couch, in the gay rich

dressing-gown of former days, warm coverlets heaped on the feet,

snow-white pillows propping the head, lay what at first seemed a vague,

undistinguishable mass--lay what, as the step advanced, and the eye

became more accurately searching, grew into Jasper Losely.

Yes, there, too weak indeed for a babe to fear, lay all that was left

of the Strong Man! No enemy but himself had brought him thus

low-spendthrift, and swindler, and robber of his own priceless

treasures--Health and Strength--those grand rent-rolls of joy which

Nature had made his inheritance. As a tree that is crumbling to dust

under the gnarls of its bark seems, the moment ere it falls, proof

against time and the tempest, so, within all decayed, stood that image

of strength-so, air scarcely stirring, it fell. “And the pitcher was

broken at the fountain; and the wheel was broken at the cistern; vanity

of vanities, saith the Preacher.”

Jasper turned his dull eye towards Caroline, as she came softly to

his side, and looked at her with a piteous gaze. The stroke that had

shattered the form had spared the face; and illness and compulsory

abstinence from habitual stimulants had taken from the aspect much

of the coarseness--whether of shape or colour--that of late years had

disfigured its outline--and supplied the delicacy which ends with youth

by the delicacy that comes with the approach of death. So that, in no

small degree, the beauty which had been to him so fatal a gift, was once

more visible--the features growing again distinct, as wanness succeeded

to the hues of intemperance, and emaciation to the bloated cheeks and

swollen muscle. The goddess whose boons adorn the outward shell of the

human spirit came back to her favourite’s death-couch as she had come to

the cradle--not now as the Venus Erycina, goddess of Smile and Jest, but

as the warning Venus Libitina, the goddess of Doom and the Funeral.

“I’m a very poor creature,” said Jasper, after a pause. “I can’t rise--I

can’t move without help. Very strange supernatural! She always said that

if I raised my hand against her, it would fall palsied!” He turned his

eye towards Arabella with a glare of angry terror. “She is a witch!”

he said, and buried his face in the pillow. Tears rolled down the grim

woman’s cheeks.

LADY MONTFORT.--“She is rather your good ministering spirit. Do not be

unkind to her. Over her you have more power now than you had when you

were well and strong. She lives but to serve you; command her gently.”

Jasper was not proof against that sweet voice. With difficulty he

wrenched himself round, and again looked long at Caroline Montfort, as

if the sight did him good; then he made a sign to Arabella, who flew to

his side and raised him.

“I have been a sad dog,” he said, with a mournful attempt at the old

rollicking tone--“a very sad dog-in short, a villain! But all ladies are

indulgent to villains in fact, prefer them! Never knew a lady who could

endure ‘a good young man’--never! So I am sure you will forgive me,

miss--ma’am. Who is this lady? When it comes to forgiveness, there are

so many of them! Oh, I remember now--your ladyship will forgive me--‘tis

all down in black and white what I’ve done-Belles has it. You see this

hand--I can write with this hand--this is not paralysed.

“This is not the hand I tried to raise against her. But _basta, basta!_

where was I? My poor head! I know what it is to have a head now!--ache,

ache!--boom, boom-weight, weight-heavy as a church bell-hollow as

a church bell--noisy as a church bell! Brandy! give me brandy, you

witch!--I mean Bella, good Bella, give me brandy!”

“Not yet, Jasper dear. You are to have it every third hour; it is not

time yet, dearest; you must attend to the doctor, and try to get

well and recover your strength. You remember I told you how kind Lady

Montfort had been to your father, and you wished to see and thank her.”

“My father--my poor, poor father! You’ve been kind to him! Bless you,

bless you! And you will see him? I want his pardon before I die. Don’t

forget, and--and--”

“Poor Sophy!” said Mrs. Crane.

“Ah yes! But she’s well off now, you tell me. I can’t think I have

injured her. And really girls and women are intended to be a little

useful to one. _Basta, basta_.”’

“Mr. Darrell--”

“Yes, yes, yes! I forgive him, or he forgives me; settle it as you like.

But my father’s pardon, Lady Montfort, you will get me that!”

“I will, I will.”

He looked at her again, and smiled. Arabella gently let his head fall

back upon the pillow.

“Throw a handkerchief over my face,” he said feebly, “and leave me;

but be in call; I feel sleepy.” His eyes closed; he seemed asleep even

before they stole from the room.

“You will bring his father to him?” said Arabella, when she and Lady

Montfort were again alone. “In this packet is Jasper’s confession of

the robbery for which that poor old man suffered. I never knew of that

before. But you see how mild he is now!--how his heart is changed; it

is indeed changed more than he shows; only you have seen him at the

worst--his mind wanders a little to-day; it does sometimes. I have a

favour to ask of you. I once heard a preacher, not many months ago;

he affected me as no preacher ever did before. I was told that he was

Colonel Morley’s nephew. Will you ask Colonel Morley to persuade him to

come to Jasper?”

“My cousin, George Morley! He shall come, I promise you; so shall your

poor patient’s forgiving father. Is there more I can do?”

“No. Explain to Mr. Darrell the reason why I have so long delayed

sending to him the communication which he will find in the packet I

have given to you, and which you will first open, reading the contents

yourself--a part of them, at least, in Jasper’s attestation of his

stratagem to break off your marriage with Mr. Darrell, may yet be

of some value to you--you had better also show the papers to Colonel

Morley--he may complete the task. I had meant, on returning to England,

or before seeing Mr. Darrell, to make the inquiries which you will see

are still necessary. But then came this terrible affliction! I have been

able to think of nothing else but Jasper;--terrible to quit the house

which contains him for an hour; only, when Dr. F. told me that he was

attending you, that you were ill and suffering, I resolved to add to

this packet Jasper’s own confession. Ah, and he gave it so readily, and

went yesterday through the fatigue of writing with such good heart. I

tell you that there is a change within him--there is there is. Well,

well--I resolved to give you the packet to transmit to Mr. Darrell,

for somehow or other I connected your illness with your visit to him at

Fawley!”

“My visit to Mr. Darrell!”

“Jasper saw you as your carriage drove from the park gate, not very many

days since. Ah, you change colour! You have wronged that man; repair the

wrong; you have the power!”

“Alas! no,” murmured Caroline, “I have not the power.”

“Pooh!--he loves you still. You are not one of those whom men forget.”

Caroline was silent, but involuntarily she lowered her veil. In an

instant the acute sense of the grim woman detected the truth.

“Ah! Pride--pride in both,” she said. “I understand--I dare not blame

him here. But you--you were the injurer; you have no right to pride; you

will see him again.”

“No--never--never!” faltered Caroline, with accents scarcely audible

under her veil.

Arabella was silent for a moment, and Lady Montfort rose hastily to

depart.

“You will see him again, I tell you;” and Arabella then following her to

the door:

“Stay; do you think HE will die?”

“Good heavens! Mr. Darrell?”

“No, no--Jasper Losely!”

“I hope not. What does Dr. F. say?”

“He will not tell me. But it is not the paralysis alone; he might

recover from that--so young still. There are other symptoms; that

dreadful habit of stimulants! He sinks if he has them not--they hasten

death if he has. But--but--but--HE IS MINE, AND MINE ONLY, TO THE

GRAVE--NOW!”

CHAPTER XI.

THE CRISIS--PUBLIC AND PRIVATE.

Lady Montfort’s carriage stopped at Colonel Morley’s door just as Carr

Vipont was coming out. Carr, catching sight of her, bustled up to the

carriage window.

“My dear Lady Montfort!--not seen you for an age! What times we live

in! How suddenly THE CRISIS has come upon us! Sad loss in poor dear

Montfort; no wonder you mourn for him! Had his failings, true--who is

not mortal?--but always voted right; always to be relied on in times

of CRISIS! But this crotchety fellow, who has so unluckily, for all but

himself, walked into that property, is the loosest fish! And what is

a House divided against itself? Never was the Constitution in such

peril!--I say it deliberately!--and here is the Head of the Viponts

humming and haaing, and asking whether Guy Darrell will join the

Cabinet. And if Guy Darrell will not, we have no more chance of the

Montfort interest than if we were Peep-o’-day Boys. But excuse me; I

must be off; every moment is precious in times of CRISIS. Think, if we

can’t form a Cabinet by to-morrow night--only think what may happen; the

other fellows will come in, and then--THE DELUGE!”

Carr is gone to find mops and Dame Partingtons to stave off the deluge.

Colonel Morley has obeyed Lady Montfort’s summons, and has entered the

carriage. Before she can speak, however, he has rushed into the subject

of which he himself is full. “Only think--I knew it would be so when the

moment came; all depends upon Guy Darrell; Montfort, who seems always

in a fright lest a newspaper should fall on his head and crush him, says

that if Darrell, whom he chooses to favour just because the newspapers

do, declines to join, the newspapers will say the CRISIS is a job!

Fancy!--a job--the CRISIS! Lord Mowbray de l’Arco and Sir Josiah Snodge,

who are both necessary to a united government, but who unluckily detest

each other, refuse to sit in the same Cabinet, unless Darrell sit

between--to save them, I suppose, from the fate of the cats of Kilkenny.

Sir John Cautly, our crack county member, declares that if Darrell does

not come in, ‘tis because the CRISIS is going too far! Harry Bold, our

most popular speaker, says, if Darrell stay out, ‘tis a sign that the

CRISIS is a retrograde movement! In short, without Darrell the

CRISIS will be a failure, and the House of Vipont smashed--Lady

Montfort--smashed! I sent a telegram (oh, that I should live to see such

a word introduced into the English language!--but, as Carr says, what

times these are!) to Fawley this morning, entreating Guy to come up to

town at once. He answers by a line from Horace, which means, ‘that he

will see me shot first.’ I must go down to him; only waiting to know

the result of certain negotiations as to measures. I have but one hope.

There is a measure which Darrell always privately advocated--which

he thoroughly understands--which, placed in his hands, would be

triumphantly carried; one of those measures, Lady Montfort, which, if

defective, shipwreck a government; if framed as Guy Darrell could frame

it, immortalise the minister who concocts and carries them. This is all

that Darrell needs to complete his fame and career. This is at length an

occasion to secure a durable name in the history of his country; let

him reject it, and I shall tell him frankly that his life has been but

a brilliant failure. Since he has not a seat in Parliament, and usage

requires the actual possession of that qualification for a seat in the

Cabinet, we must lose his voice in the Commons. But we can arrange that;

for if Darrell will but join the government, and go--to the Lords,

Sir Josiah Snodge, who has a great deal of voice and a great deal of

jealousy, will join too--head the Vipont interest in the Commons--and

speak to the country--speak every night--and all night, too, if

required. Yes; Darrell must take the peerage--devote himself for a year

or two to this great measure--to the consolidation of his fame--to the

redemption of the House of Vipont--and to the Salvation of the Empire;

and then, if he please, ‘solve senescentem’--that is, he may retire from

harness, and browse upon laurels for the rest of his days!”

Colonel Morley delivered himself of this long address without

interruption from a listener interested in every word that related to

Guy Darrell, and in every hope that could reunite him to the healthful

activities of life.

It was now Lady Montfort’s turn to speak; though, after subjects so

momentous as the Crisis and its speculative consequences, private

affairs, relating to a poor little girl like Sophy--nay, the mere

private affairs of Darrell himself, seemed a pitiful bathos. Lady

Montfort, however, after a few words of womanly comment upon the only

part of the Colonel’s discourse which touched her heart, hastened on to

describe her interview with Arabella, and the melaneboly condition of

Darrell’s once formidable son-in-law. For that last, the Colonel evinced

no more compassionate feeling than any true Englishman, at the time I am

writing, would demonstrate for a murderous Sepoy tied to the mouth of a

cannon.

“A very good riddance,” said the Colonel, dryly. “Great relief to

Darrell, and to every one else whom that monster tormented and preyed

on; and with his life will vanish the only remaining obstacle in

righting poor Willy’s good name. I hope to live to collect, from all

parts of the country, Willy’s old friends and give them a supper, at

which I suppose I must not get drunk; though I should rather like it,

than not! But I interrupt you! go on.”

Lady Montfort proceeded to state the substance of the papers she had

perused in reference to the mystery which had been the cause of so much

disquietude and bitterness.

The Colonel stretched out his hand eagerly for the documents--thus

quoted. He hurried his eye rapidly over the contents of the first paper

he lit on, and then said, pulling out his watch: “Well, I have half an

hour yet to spare in discussing these matters with you--may I order your

coachman to drive round the Regent’s Park?--better than keeping it thus

at my door, with four old maids for opposite neighbours.” The order was

given, and the Colonel again returned to the papers. Suddenly he looked

up--looked full into Lady Montfort’s face, with a thoughtful, searching

gaze, which made her drop her own eyes! and she saw that he had been

reading Jasper’s confession, relating to his device for breaking off

her engagement to Darrell, which in her hurry and excitement she had

neglected to abstract from the other documents. “Oh, not that paper--you

are not to read that,” she cried, quickly covering the writing with her

hand.

“Too late, my dear cousin. I have read it. All is now clear. Lionel was

right; and I was right too, in my convictions, though Darrell put so

coolly aside my questions when I was last at Fawley. I am justified

now in all the pains I took to secure Lionel’s marriage--in the cunning

cruelty of my letter to George! Know, Lady Montfort, that if Lionel

had sacrificed his happiness to respect for Guy’s ancestor-worship, Guy

Darrell would have held himself bound in honour never to marry again. He

told me so--told me he should be a cheat if he took any step to rob one

from whom he had exacted such an offering-of the name, and the heritage,

for which the offering had been made. And I then resolved that County

Guy should not thus irrevocably shut the door on his own happiness! Lady

Montfort, you know that this man loves you--as, verily, I believe, never

other man in our cold century loved woman;--through desertion--through

change--amidst grief--amidst resentment--despite pride;--dead to all

other love--shrinking from all other ties--on, constant on-carrying in

the depth of his soul to the verge of age, secret and locked up, the

hopeless passion of his manhood. Do you not see that it is through you,

and you alone, that Guy Darrell has for seventeen years been lost to the

country he was intended to serve and to adorn? Do you not feel that

if he now reject this last opportunity to redeem years so wasted, and

achieve a fame that may indeed link his Ancestral Name to the honours of

Posterity, you, and you alone, are the cause?”

“Alas--alas--but what can I do?”

“Do!--ay, true. The poor fellow is old now; you cannot care for

him!--you still young, and so unluckily beautiful!--you, for whom young

princes might vie. True; you can have no feeling for Guy Darrell, except

pity!”

“Pity! I hate the word!” cried Lady Montfort, with as much petulance as

if she had still been the wayward lively Caroline of old.

Again the Man of the World directed toward her face his shrewd eyes, and

dropped out, “See him!”

“But I have seen him. You remember I went to plead for Lionel and

Sophy--in vain!”

“Not in vain. George writes me word that he has informed you of

Darrell’s consent to their marriage. And I am much mistaken if his

greatest consolation in the pang that consent must have cost him be not

the thought that it relieves you from the sorrow and remorse his refusal

had occasioned to you. Ah! there is but one person who can restore

Darrell to the world-and that is yourself!”

Lady Montfort shook her head drearily.

“If I had but an excuse--with dignity--with self-respect--to--to--!’

“An excuse! You have an absolute necessity to communicate with Darrell.

You have to give him these documents--to explain how you came by them.

Sophy is with him; you are bound to see her on a subject of such vital

importance to herself. Scruples of prudery! You, Caroline Lyndsay,

the friend of his daughter--you whose childhood was reared in his very

house--you whose mother owed to him such obligations--you to scruple

in being the first to acquaint him with information affecting him so

nearly! And why, forsooth? Because, ages ago, your hand was, it seems,

engaged to him, and you were deceived by false appearances, like a silly

young girl as you were.”

Again Lady Montfort shook her head drearily--drearily. “Well,” said the

Colonel, changing his tone, “I will grant that those former ties can’t

be renewed now. The man now is as old as the hills, and you had no right

to expect that he would have suffered so much at being very naturally

jilted for a handsome young Marquess.”

“Cease, sir, cease,” cried Caroline, angrily. The Colonel coolly

persisted.

“I see now that such nuptials are out of the question. But has the world

come to such a pass that one can never at any age have a friend in a

lady unless she marry him? Scruple to accompany me--me your cousin--me

your nearest surviving relation--in order to take back the young lady

you have virtually adopted!--scruple to trust yourself for half an hour

to that tumbledown old Fawley! Are you afraid that the gossips will

say you, the Marchioness of Montfort, are running after a gloomy old

widower, and scheming to be mistress of a mansion more like a ghosttrap

than a residence for civilised beings? Or are you afraid that Guy

Darrell will be fool and fop enough to think you are come to force on

him your hand? Pooh, pooh! Such scruples would be in place if you were a

portionless forward girl, or if he were a conceited young puppy, or

even a suspicious old roue. But Guy Darrell--a man of his station, his

character, his years! And you, cousin Caroline, what are you? Surely,

lifted above all such pitiful crotchets by a rank amongst the loftiest

gentlewomen of England; ample fortune, a beauty that in itself is

rank and wealth; and, above all, a character that has passed with such

venerated purity through an ordeal in which every eye seeks a spot,

every ear invites a scandal. But as you will. All I say is, that

Darrell’s future may be in your hands; that after to-morrow, the

occasion to give at least noble occupation and lasting renown to a mind

that is devouring itself and stifling its genius, may be irrevocably

lost; and that I do believe, if you said to-morrow to Guy Daxrell, ‘You

refused to hear me when I pleaded for what you thought a disgrace

to your name, and yet even that you at last conceded to the voice of

affection as if of duty--now hear me when I plead by the side of

your oldest friend on behalf of your honour, and in the name of your

forefathers,’--if You say THAT, he is won to his country. You will have

repaired a wrong; and, pray, will you have compromised your dignity?”

Caroline had recoiled into the corner of the carriage, her mantle close

down round her breast, her veil lowered; but no sheltering garb or veil

could conceal her agitation.

The Colonel pulled the check-string. “Nothing so natural; you are the

widow of the Head of the House of Vipont. You are, or ought to be,

deeply interested in its fate. An awful CRISIS, long expected, has

occurred. The House trembles. A connection of that House can render it

an invaluable service; that connection is the man at whose hearth your

childhood was reared; and you go with me--me, who am known to be moving

heaven and earth for every vote that the House can secure, to canvass

this wavering connection for his support and assistance. Nothing, I say,

so natural; and yet you scruple to serve the House of Vipont--to

save your country! You may well be agitated. I leave you to your own

reflections. My time runs short; I will get out here. Trust me with

these documents. I will see to the rest of this long painful subject. I

will send a special report to you this evening, and you will reply by a

single line to the prayer I have ventured to address to you.”

CHAPTER XII. AND LAST.

IN WHICH THE AUTHOR ENDEAVOURS, TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY, TO GIVE

A FINAL REPLY TO THE QUESTION, “WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?”

SCENE--The banks of the lake at Fawley. George is lending his arm to

Waife; Mrs. Morley, seated on her camp-stool at the opposite side of the

water, is putting the last touch to her sketch of the Manor-house; Sir

Isaac, reclined, is gravely contemplating the swans; the doe, bending

over him, occasionally nibbles his ear; Fairthorn has uncomfortably

edged himself into an angle of the building, between two buttresses, and

is watching, with malignant eye, two young forms, at a distance, as they

moved slowly yonder, side by side, yet apart, now lost, now emerging,

through the gaps between melancholy leafless trees. Darrell, having

just quitted Waife and George, to whose slow pace he can ill time his

impatient steps, wonders why Lionel, whom, on arriving, he had, with

brief cordial words, referred to Sophy for his fate, has taken more than

an hour to ask a simple question, to which the reply may be pretty well

known beforehand. He advances towards those melancholy trees. Suddenly

one young form leaves the other--comes with rapid stride through the

withered fern. Pale as death, Lionel seizes Guy Darrell’s hand with

convulsive grasp, and says: “I must leave you, sir; God bless you! All

is over. I was the blindest fool--she refuses me.”

“Refuses you!--impossible! For what reason?”

“She cannot love me well enough to marry,” answered Lionel with a

quivering lip, and an attempt at that irony in which all extreme

anguish, at least in our haughty sex, delights to seek refuge or

disguise. “Likes me as a friend, a brother, and so forth, but--nothing

more. All a mistake, sir--all, except your marvellous kindness to me--to

her--for which Heaven ever bless you.”

“Yes, all a mistake of your own, foolish boy,” said Darrell, tenderly;

and, turning sharp, he saw Sophy hastening by, quickly and firmly, with

her eyes looking straightward--on into space. He threw himself in her

path.

“Tell this dull kinsman of mine that ‘faint heart never won fair lady.’

You do not mean seriously, deliberately to reject a heart that will

never be faint with a meaner fear than that of losing you?”

Poor Sophy! She kept her blue eyes still on the cold grey space, and

answered by some scarce audible words--words which in every age girls

intending to say No seem to learn as birds learn their song; no one

knows who taught them, but they are ever to the same tune. “Sensible of

the honour”--“Grateful”--“Some one more worthy,” &c., &c.

Darrell checked this embarrassed jargon. “My question, young lady, is

solemn; it involves the destiny of two lives. Do you mean to say that

you do not love Lionel Haughton well enough to give him your hand, and

return the true faith which is pledged with his own?”

“Yes,” said Lionel, who had gained the side of his kinsman, “yes, that

is it. O Sophy--Ay or No?”

“No!” fell from her pale, firm lips--and in a moment more she was

at Waife’s side, and had drawn him away from George. “Grandfather,

grandfather!--home, home; let us go home at once, or I shall die!”

Darrell has kept his keen sight upon her movements--upon her

countenance. He sees her gesture--her look--as she now clings to her

grandfather. The blue eyes are not now coldly fixed on level air, but

raised upward as for strength from above. The young face is sublime with

its woe, and with its resolve.

“Noble child,” muttered Darrell, “I think I see into her heart. If so,

poor Lionel, indeed! My pride has yielded, hers never will!”

Lionel, meanwhile, kept beating his foot on the ground, and checking

indignantly the tears that sought to gather to his eyes. Darrell threw

his arm round the young man’s shoulder, and led him gently, slowly away,

by the barbed thorn-tree-on by the moss-grown crags.

Waife, meanwhile, is bending his ear to Sophy’s lip. The detestable

Fairthorn emerges from between the buttresses, and shambles up to

George, thirsting to hear his hopes confirmed, and turning his face back

to smile congratulation, on the gloomy old house that he thinks he has

saved from the lake.

Sophy has at last convinced Waife that his senses do not deceive him,

nor hers wander. She has said, “O grandfather, let us ever henceforth

be all in all to each other. You are not ashamed of me--I am so proud

of you. But there are others akin to me, grandfather, whom we will not

mention; and you would be ashamed of me if I brought disgrace on one who

would confide to me his name, his honour; and should I be as proud of

you, if you asked me to do it?”

At these word, Waife understands all, and he has not an argument in

reply; and he suffers Sophy to lead him towards the house. Yes, they

will go hence--yes, there shall be no schemes of marriage! They had

nearly reached the door, when the door itself opened violently, and a

man rushing forth caught Sophy in his arms, and kissed her forehead,

her cheek, with a heartiness that it is well Lionel did not witness!

Speechless and breathless with resentment, Sophy struggled, and in vain,

when Waife, seizing the man by the collar, swung him away with a “How

dare you, sir,” that was echoed back from the hillocks--summoned

Sir Isaac at full gallop from the lake--scared Fairthorn back to his

buttresses--roused Mrs. Morley from her sketch, and, smiting the ears of

Lionel and Darrell, hurried them, mechanically as it were, to the very

spot from which that thunder-roll had pealed.

“How dare I?” said the man, resettling the flow of his disordered

coat--“How dare I kiss my own niece?--my own sister’s orphan child?

Venerable Bandit, I have a much better right than you have. Oh, my dear

injured Sophy, to think that I was ashamed of your poor cotton print--to

think that to your pretty face I have been owing fame and fortune--and

you, you wandering over the world--child of the sister of whose beauty

I was so proud--of her for whom, alas, in vain! I painted Watteaus and

Greuzes upon screens and fans!” Again he clasped her to his breast; and

Waife this time stood mute, and Sophy passive--for the man’s tears were

raining upon her face, and washed away every blush of shame as to the

kiss they hallowed.

“But where is my old friend William Losely?--where is Willy?” said

another voice, as a tall, thin personage stepped out from the hall, and

looked poor Waife unconsciously in the face.

“Alban Morley!” faltered Waife, “you are but little changed!”

The Colonel looked again, and in the elderly, lame, one-eyed,

sober-looking man, recognised the wild jovial Willy, who had tamed the

most unruly fillies, taken the most frantic leaps, carolled forth the

blithest song--madcap, good-fellow, frolicsome, childlike darling of gay

and grave, young and old!

“‘Eheu, fugaces, Postume, Postume,

Labuntur anni,’”

said the Colonel, insensibly imbibing one of those Horatian particles

that were ever floating in that classic atmosphere--to Darrell

medicinal, to Fairthorn morbific. “Years slide away, Willy, mutely as

birds skim through air; but when friend meets with friend after absence,

each sees the print of their crows’ feet on the face of the other. But

we are not too old yet, Willy, for many a meet at the fireside! Nothing

else in our studs, we can still mount our hobbies; and thoroughbred

hobbies contrive to be in at the death.

“But you are waiting to learn by what title and name this stranger lays

claim to so peerless a niece. Know then Ah, here comes Darrell. Guy

Darrell, in this young lady you will welcome the grandchild of Sidney

Branthwaite, our old Eton school friend, a gentleman of as good blood as

any in the land!”

“None better,” cried Fairthorn, who had sidled himself into the group;

“there’s a note on the Branthwaite genealogy, sir, in your father’s

great work upon ‘Monumental Brasses.’”

“Permit me to conclude, Mr. Fairthorn,” resumed the Colonel; “Monumental

Brasses are painful subjects. Yes, Darrell,--yes, Lionel; this fair

creature, whom Lady Montfort might well desire to adopt, is the daughter

of Arthur Branthwaite, by marriage with the sister of Frank Vance, whose

name I shrewdly suspect nations will prize, and whose works princes will

hoard, when many a long genealogy, all blazoned in azure and or, will

have left not a scrap for the moths.”

“Ah!” murmured Lionel, “was it not I, Sophy, who taught you to love your

father’s genius! Do you not remember how, as we bent over his volume, it

seemed to translate to us our own feelings?--to draw us nearer together?

He was speaking to us from his grave.”

Sophy made no answer; her face was hidden on the breast of the old man,

to whom she still clung closer and closer.

“Is it so? Is it certain? Is there no doubt that she is the child of

these honoured parents?” asked Waife, tremulously.

“None,” answered Alban; “we bring with us proofs that will clear up all

my story.”

The old man bowed his head over Sophy’s fair locks for a moment; then

raised it, serene and dignified: “You are mine for a moment yet, Sophy,”

said he.

“Yours as ever-more fondly, gratefully than ever,” cried Sophy.

“There is but one man to whom I can willingly yield you. Son of Charles

Haughton, take my treasure.”

“I consent to that,” cried Vance, “though I am put aside like a

Remorseless Baron. And, Lionello mio, if Frank Vance is a miser, so much

the better for his niece.”

“But,” faltered Lionel.

“Oh, falter not. Look into those eyes; read that blush now. She looks

coy, not reluctant. She bends before him--adorned as for love, by

all her native graces. Air seems brightened by her bloom. No more the

Outlaw-Child of Ignominy and Fraud, but the Starry Daughter of POETRY

AND ART! Lo, where they glide away under the leafless, melancholy trees.

Leafless and melancholy! No! Verdure and blossom and the smile of spring

are upon every bough!”

“I suppose,” said Alban, “it will not now break Lionel’s heart to learn

that not an hour before I left London, I heard from a friend at the

Horse Guards that it has been resolved to substitute the regiment for

Lionel’s; and it will be for some time yet, I suspect, that he must

submit to be in gloriously happy. Come this way, George, a word in your

ear.” And Alban, drawing his nephew aside, told him of Jasper’s state,

and of Arabella’s request. “Not a word to-day on these mournful topics,

to poor Willy. To-day let nothing add to his pain to have lost a

grandchild, or dim his consolation in the happiness and security

his Sophy gains in that loss. But to-morrow you will go and see the

stricken-down sinner, and prepare the father for the worst. I made a

point of seeing Dr. F. last night. He gives Jasper but a few weeks. He

compares him to a mountain, not merely shattered by an earthquake, but

burned out by its own inward fires.”

“A few weeks only,” sighed George. “Well, Time, that seems everything

to man, has not even an existence in the sight of God. To that old man

I owe the power of speech to argue, to exhort, and to comfort;--he was

training me to kneel by the deathbed of his son!”

“You believe,” asked the Man of the World, “in the efficacy of a

deathbed repentance, when a sinner has sinned till the power of sinning

be gone?”

“I believe,” replied the Preacher, “that in health there is nothing

so unsafe as trust in a deathbed repentance; I believe that on the

deathbed, it cannot be unsafe to repent!”

Alban looked thoughtful, and George turned to rejoin Waife, to whom

Vance was narrating the discovery of Sophy’s parentage; while Fairthorn,

as he listened, drew his flute from his pocket, and began screwing it,

impatient to vent in delicate music what he never could have set into

words for his blundering, untunable tongue. The Colonel joins Darrell,

and hastens to unfold more fully the story which Vance is reciting to

Waife.

Brief as it can, be the explanation due to the reader. Vance’s sister

had died in childbirth. The poor young poet, unfitted to cope with

penury, his sensitive nature combined with a frame that could feebly

resist the strain of exhausting emotions, disappointed in fame,

despairing of fortune, dependent for bread on his wife’s boyish brother,

and harassed by petty debts in a foreign land, had been fast pining

away, even before an affliction to which all the rest seemed as nought.

With that affliction he broke down at once, and died a few days after

his wife, leaving an infant not a week old. A French female singer, of

some repute in the theatres, and making a provincial tour, was lodging

in the same house as the young couple. She had that compassionate heart

which is more common than prudence or very strict principle with the

tribes who desert the prosaic true world for the light sparkling false

one. She had assisted the young couple, in their later days, with purse

and kind offices; had been present at the birth of the infant--the death

of the mother; and had promised Arthur Branthwaite that she would

take care of his child, until she could safely convey it to his wife’s

relations, while he wept to own that they, poor as himself, must regard

such a charge as a burthen.

The singer wrote to apprise Mrs. Vance of the death of her daughter and

son-in-law, and the birth of the infant whom she undertook shortly to

send to England. But the babe, whom meanwhile she took to herself, got

hold of her affections; with that yearning for children which makes

so remarkable and almost uniform a characteristic of French women (if

themselves childless) in the wandering Bohemian class that separates

them from the ordinary household affections, never dead in the heart

of woman till womanhood itself be dead, the singer clung to the orphan

little one to whom she was for the moment rendering the cares of a

mother. She could not bear to part with it; she resolved to adopt it as

her own. The knowledge of Mrs. Vance’s circumstances--the idea that the

orphan, to herself a blessing, would be an unwelcome encumbrance to its

own relations--removed every scruple from a mind unaccustomed to suffer

reflection to stand in the way of an impulse. She wrote word to Mrs.

Vance that the child was dead. She trusted that her letter would

suffice, without other evidence, to relations so poor, and who could

have no suspicion of any interest to deceive them. Her trust was

well founded. Mrs. Vance and the boy Frank, whose full confidence and

gratitude had been already secured to their correspondent for her kind

offices to the young parents, accepted, without a demur or a question,

the news that the infant was no more. The singer moved on to the next

town at which she was professionally engaged. The infant, hitherto

brought up by hand, became ailing. The medical adviser called in

recommended the natural food, and found, in a village close by, the

nurse to whom a little time before Jasper Losely had consigned his own

daughter. The latter died; the nurse then removed to Paris to reside

with the singer, who had obtained a lucrative appointment at one of the

metropolitan theatres. In less than two years the singer herself fell

a victim to a prevailing epidemic. She had lived without thought of the

morrow; her debts exceeded her means; her effects were sold. The nurse,

who had meanwhile become a widow, came for advice and refuge to her

sister, who was in the service of Gabrielle Desmarets. Gabrielle, being

naturally appealed to, saw the infant, heard the story, looked into

the statement which, by way of confession, the singer had drawn up, and

signed, in a notary’s presence, before she died; looked into the letters

from Mrs. Vance, and the schoolboy scrawls from Frank, both to the

singer and to the child’s parents, which the actress had carefully

preserved; convinced herself of the poverty and obscurity of the

infant’s natural guardians and next of kin; and said to Jasper, who was

just dissipating the fortune handed over to him as survivor of his wife

and child: “There is what, if well-managed, may retain your hold on a

rich father-in-law when all else has failed. You have but to say

that this infant is his grandchild; the nurse we can easily bribe,

or persuade to confirm the tale. I, whom he already knows as that

respectable baroness, your Matilda’s friend, can give to the story some

probable touches. The lone childless man must rejoice to think that

a tie is left to him. The infant is exquisitely pretty; her face will

plead for her. His heart will favour the idea too much to make him very

rigorous in his investigations. Take the infant. Doubtless in your own

country you can find some one to rear it at little or no expense, until

the time come for appeal to your father-in-law when no other claim on

his purse remains.”

Jasper assented with the insouciant docility by which he always

acknowledged Gabrielle’s astuter intellect. He saw the nurse; it was

clear that she had nothing to gain by taking the child to

English relations so poor. They might refuse to believe her, and

certainly--could not reward. To rid herself of the infant, and obtain

the means to return to her native village with a few hundred francs in

her purse, there was no promise she was not willing to make, no story

she was too honest to tell, no paper she was too timid to sign.

Jasper was going to London on some adventure of his own. He took the

infant--chanced on Arabella--the reader knows the rest. The indifference

ever manifested by Jasper to a child not his own--the hardness with

which he had contemplated and planned his father’s separation from one

whom he had imposed by false pretexts on the old man’s love, and whom

he only regarded as an alien encumbrance upon the scanty means of

her deluded protector--the fitful and desultory mode in which, when

(contrary to the reasonings which Gabrielle had based upon a very large

experience of the credulities of human nature in general, but in utter

ignorance of the nature peculiar to Darrell) his first attempt

at imposition had been so scornfully resisted by his indignant

father-in-law, he had played fast and loose with a means of extortion

which, though loth to abandon, he knew would not bear any strict

investigation;--all this is now clear to the reader. And the reader will

also comprehend why, partly from fear that his father might betray him,

partly from a compassionate unwillingness to deprive the old man of a

belief in which William Losely said he had found such solace, Jasper, in

his last interview with his father, shrank from saying, “but she is not

your grandchild!” The idea of recurring to the true relations of the

child naturally never entered into Jasper’s brain. He considered them to

be as poor as himself. They buy from him the child of parents whore they

had evidently, by their letters, taxed themselves to the utmost, and in

vain, to save from absolute want! So wild seemed the notion, that he had

long since forgotten that relations so useless existed. Fortunately the

nurse had preserved the written statement of the singer--the letters

by Mrs. Vance and Frank--the certificate of the infant’s birth and

baptism--some poor relics of Sophy’s ill-fated parents-manuscripts of

Arthur’s poems--baby-caps with initials and armorial crests, wrought,

before her confinement, by the young wife--all of which had been

consigned by the singer to the nurse, and which the nurse willingly

disposed of to Mrs. Crane, with her own formal deposition of the facts,

confirmed by her sister, Gabrielle’s old confidential-attendant, and

who, more favoured than her mistress, was living peaceably in the rural

scenes of her earlier innocence, upon the interest of the gains she had

saved in no innocent service--confirmed yet more by references to many

whose testimonials could trace, step by step, the child’s record from

its birth to its transfer to Jasper, and by the brief but distinct

avowal, in tremulous lines, writ by Jasper himself. As a skein crossed

and tangled, when the last knot is loosened, slips suddenly free, so

this long bewildering mystery now became clear as a commonplace! What

years of suffering Darrell might have been saved had he himself seen and

examined the nurse--had his inquiry been less bounded by the fears of

his pride--had the great lawyer not had himself for a client!

Darrell silently returned to Alban Morley the papers over which he had

cast his eye as they walked slowly to and fro the sloping banks of the

lake.

“It is well,” said he, glancing fondly, as Fairthorn had glanced before

him, towards the old House, now freed from doom, and permitted to last

its time. “It is well,” he repeated, looking away towards that part of

the landscape where he could just catch a glimpse of Sophy’s light form

beyond the barbed thorn-tree; “it is well,” he repeated thrice with a

sigh. “Poor human nature! Alban, can you conceive it? I, who once so

dreaded that that poor child should prove to be of my blood, now, in

knowing that she is not, feel a void, a loss! To Lionel I am so distant

a kinsman!--to his wife, to his children, what can I be? A rich old

man; the sooner he is in his grave the better. A few tears, and then

the will! But, as your nephew says, ‘This life is but a school;’ the

new-comer in the last form thinks the head-boy just leaving so old! And

to us, looking back, it seems but the same yesterday whether we were the

last comer or the head-boy.”

“I thought,” said Alban, plaintively, “that, for a short time at least,

I had done with ‘painful subjects.’ You revel in them! County Guy, you

have not left school yet; leave it with credit; win the best prize.” And

Alban plunged at once into THE CRISIS. He grew eloquent; the Party, the

Country, the Great Measure to be intrusted to Darrell, if he would

but undertake it as a member of the Cabinet; the Peerage, the House of

Vipont, and immortal glory!--eloquent as Ulysses haranguing the son of

Peleus in Troilus and Cressida.

Darrell listened coldly; only while Alban dwelt on “the Measure,”

in which, when it was yet too unripe for practical statesmen, he had

attached his faith as a thinker, the orator’s eye flashed with young

fire. A great truth is eternally clear to a great heart that has once

nourished its germ and foreseen its fruits. But when Alban quitted that

part of his theme, all the rest seemed wearisome to his listener. They

had now wound their walk to the opposite side of the lake, and paused

near the thick beech-trees, hallowed and saddened by such secret

associations to the mournful owner.

“No, my dear Alban,” said Darrell, “I cannot summon up sufficient youth

and freshness of spirit to re-enter the turbulent arena I have left. Ah!

look yonder where Lionel and Sophy move! Give me, I do not say Lionel’s

years, but Lionel’s wealth of hope, and I might still have a wish for

fame and a voice for England; but it is a subtle truth, that when a man

misses a home, a link between his country and himself is gone. Vulgar

ambition may exist--the selfish desire of power; they were never very

strong in me, and now less strong than the desire of rest; but that

beautiful, genial, glorious union of all the affections of social

citizen, which begins at the hearth and widens round the land, is not

for the hermit’s cell.”

Alban was about to give up the argument in irritable despair, when

happening to turn his eye towards the farther depth of the beech-grove,

he caught a glimpse--no matter what of; but quickening his step in the

direction to which his glance had wandered, he seated himself on

the gnarled roots of a tree that seemed the monarch of the wood,

widespreading as that under which Tityrus reclined of old; and there,

out of sight of the groups on the opposite banks of the lake--there, as

if he had sought the gloomiest and most secret spot for what he had

yet to say, he let fall, in the most distinct yet languid tones of his

thoroughbred, cultured enunciation: “I have a message to you from Lady

Montfort. Restless man, do come nearer, and stand still. I am tired to

death.” Darrell approached, and, leaning against the trunk of the giant

tree, said, with folded arms and compressed lips:

“A message from Lady Montfort!”

“Yes. I should have told you, by-the-by, that it was she who, being

a woman, of course succeeded where I, being a man, despite incredible

pains and trouble, signally failed, discovered Arabella Fossett, alias

Crane, and obtained from her the documents which free your life forever

from a haunting and torturing fear. I urged her to accompany me hither,

and place the documents herself in your hand. She refused; you were not

worth so much trouble, my dear Guy. I requested her at least to suffer

me to show to you a paper containing Jasper Losely’s confession of a

conspiracy to poison her mind against you some years ago--a conspiracy

so villianously ingenious that it would have completely exonerated any

delicate and proud young girl from the charge of fickleness in yielding

to an impulse of pique and despair. But Lady Montfort did not wish to be

exonerated; your good opinion has ceased to be of the slightest value to

her. But to come to the point. She bade me tell you that, if you persist

in sheltering yourself in a hermit’s cell from the fear of meeting

her--if she be so dangerous to your peace--you may dismiss such absurd

apprehension. She is going abroad, and between you and me, my dear

fellow, I have not a doubt that she will marry again before six months

are out. I spoke of your sufferings; she told me she had not the

smallest compassion for them.”

“Alban Morley, you presumed to talk thus of me?” cried Darrell, livid

with rage.

“Strike, but hear me. It is true you would not own, when I was last at

Fawley, that she was the cause of your secluded life, of your blighted

career; but I knew better. However, let me go on before you strangle

me. Lady Montfort’s former feelings of friendship for you are evidently

quite changed; and she charged me to add, that she really hoped that you

would exert your good sense and pride (of which Heaven knows you have

plenty) to eradicate an absurd and romantic sentiment, so displeasing to

her, and so--”

“It is false! it is false! What have I done to you, Colonel Morley, that

you should slander me thus? I send you messages of taunt and insult, Mr.

Darrell! You cannot believe it--you cannot!”

Caroline Montfort stood between the two, as if she had dropped from

heaven.

A smile, half in triumph, half in irony, curved the lip of the fine

gentleman. It faded instantly as his eye turned from the face of the

earnest woman to that of the earnest man. Alban Morley involuntarily

bowed his head, murmured some words unheard, and passed from the place

unheeded.

Not by concert nor premeditation was Caroline Montfort on that spot; she

had consented to accompany her cousin to Fawley, but before reaching the

park gates her courage failed her; she would remain within the carriage;

the Colonel, wanted in London as soon as possible, whatever the result

of his political mission to Darrell, could not stay long at Fawley; she

would return with him. Vance’s presence and impatient desire to embrace

his niece did not allow the Colonel an occasion for argument and parley.

Chafed at this fresh experience of the capricious uncertainty of woman,

he had walked on with Vance to the Manor-house. Left alone, Caroline

could not endure the stillness and inaction which increased the tumult

of her thoughts; she would at least have one more look--it might be the

last--at the scenes in which her childhood had sported--her youth known

its first happy dreams. But a few yards across those circumscribed

demesnes, on through those shadowy serried groves, and she should steal

unperceived in view of the house, the beloved lake, perhaps even once

more catch a passing glimpse of the owner. She resolved, she glided

on; she gained the beech-grove, when, by the abrupt wind of the banks,

Darrell and Alban came suddenly on the very spot. The flutter of

her robe, as she turned to retreat, caught Alban’s eye; the reader

comprehends with what wily intent, conceived on the moment, that

unscrupulous schemer shaped the words which chained her footstep, and

then stung her on to self-disclosure. Trembling and blushing, she now

stood before the startled man--He startled out of every other sentiment

and feeling than that of ineffable, exquisite delight to be once more in

her presence; she, after her first passionate outburst, hastening on, in

confused broken words, to explain that she was there but by accident--by

chance; confusion growing deeper and deeper--how explain the motive that

had charmed her steps to the spot?

Suddenly from the opposite bank came the music of the magic flute, and

her voice as suddenly stopped and failed her.

“Again--again,” said Darrell, dreamily. “The same music! the same air!

and this the same place on which we two stood together when I first

dared to say, ‘I love!’ Look! we are under the very tree! Look! there

is the date I carved on the bark when you were gone, but had left Hope

behind. Ah, Caroline, why can I not now resign myself to age? Why is

youth, while I speak, rushing back into my heart, into my soul? Why

cannot I say, ‘Gratefully I accept your tender friendship; let the past

be forgotten; through what rests to me of the future while on earth, be

to me as a child. I cannot--I cannot! Go!”

She drew nearer to him, gently, timidly. “Even that, Darrell,--even

that; something in your life--let me be something still!”

“Ah,” he said with melancholy bitterness, “you deceive me no longer now!

You own that, when here we stood last and exchanged our troth, you in

the blossom, and I in the prime, of life--you own that it was no woman’s

love, deaf to all calumny, proof to all craft that could wrong the

absent; no woman’s love, warm as the heart, undying as the soul, that

you pledged me then?”

“Darrell, it was not--though then I thought it was.”

“Ay, ay,” he continued with a smile, as if of triumph in his own pangs,

“so that truth is confessed at last! And when, once more free, you wrote

to me the letter I returned, rent in fragments, to your hand--or when,

forgiving my rude outrage and fierce reproach, you spoke to me so gently

yonder, a few weeks since, in these lonely shades, then what were your

sentiments, your motives? Were they not those of a long-suppressed and

kind remorse? of a charity akin to that which binds rich to poor, bows

happiness to suffering?--some memories of gratitude--nay, perhaps of

childlike affection?--all amiable, all generous, all steeped in that

sweetness of nature to which I unconsciously rendered justice in the

anguish I endured in losing you; but do not tell me that even then you

were under the influence of woman’s love.”

“Darrell, I was not.”

“You own it, and you suffer me to see you again! Trifler and cruel one,

is it but to enjoy the sense of your undiminished, unalterable power?”

“Alas, Darrell! alas! why am I here?--why so yearning, yet so afraid to

come? Why did my heart fail when these trees rose in sight against the

sky?--why, why--why was it drawn hither by the spell I could not resist?

Alas, Darrell, alas! I am a woman now--and--and this--”

She lowered her veil, and turned away; her lips could not utter the

word, because the word was not pity, not remorse, not remembrance,

not even affection; and the woman loved now too well to subject to the

hazard of rejection--LOVE!

“Stay, oh stay!” cried Darrell. “Oh that I could dare to ask you to

complete the sentence! I know--I know by the mysterious sympathy of my

own soul, that you could never deceive me more! Is it--is it--”

His lips falter too; but her hand is clasped in his; her head is

reclining upon his breast; the veil is withdrawn from the sweet downcast

face; and softly on her ear steal the murmured words, “Again and now,

till the grave--Oh, by this hallowing kiss, again--the Caroline of old!”

Fuller and fuller, spreading, wave after wave, throughout the air, till

it seemed interfused and commingled with the breath which the listeners

breathe, the flute’s mellow gush streams along. The sun slopes in peace

towards the west; not a cloud in those skies, clearer seen through yon

boughs stripped of leaves, and rendering more vivid the evergreen of the

arbute and laurel.

Lionel and Sophy are now seated on yon moss-grown trunk, on either side

the old grey-haired man, as if agreeing for a while even to forget each.

other, that they may make him feel how fondly he is remembered. Sophy is

resting both her hands on the old man’s shoulder, looking into his face,

and murmuring in his ear with voice like the coo of a happy dove.

Ah, fear not, Sophy; he is happy too--he who never thinks of himself.

Look--the playful smile round his arch lips; look--now he is showing

off Sir Isaac to Vance; with austere solemnity the dog goes through his

tricks; and Vance, with hand stroking his chin, is moralising on all

that might have befallen had he grudged his three pounds to that famous

INVESTMENT.

Behind that group, shadowed by the Thorn-tree, stands the PREACHER,

thoughtful and grave, foreseeing the grief that must come to the old man

with the morrow, when he will learn that a guilty son nears his end, and

will hasten to comfort Jasper’s last days with pardon. But the Preacher

looks not down to the death-couch alone; on and high over death looks

the Preacher! By what words Heavenly Mercy may lend to his lips shall he

steal away, yet in time, to the soul of the dying, and justify murmurs

of hope to the elm of a life so dark with the shades of its past? And

to him, to the Preacher, they who survive--the two mourners will come

in their freshness of sorrow! He, the old man? Nay, to him there will be

comfort. His spirit Heaven’s kindness had tempered to trials; and, alas

for that son, what could father hope more than a death free from shame,

and a chance yet vouchsafed for repentance? But she, the grim, iron-grey

woman? The Preacher’s interest, I know, will soon centre on her:--And

balm may yet drop on thy wounds, thou poor, grim, iron-grey, loving

woman.

Lo! that traitor, the Flute-player, over whom falls the deep grateful

shade from the eaves of the roof-tree reprieved; though unconscious as

yet of that happy change in the lot of the master which, ere long,

may complete (and haply for sons sprung in truth from the blood of the

Darrell) yon skeleton pile, and consummate, for ends nobler far, the

plan of a grand life imperfect;--though as yet the musician nor knows

nor conjectures the joy that his infamous treason to Sophy so little

deserves; yet, as if by those finer perceptions of sense impressed

ere they happen, by changes of pleasure and of pain, which Art so

mysteriously gives to the minds from which music is born, his airs, of

themselves, float in joy: Like a bird at the coming of spring, it is

gladness that makes him melodious.

And Alban Morley, seemingly intent upon the sketch which his amiable

niece-in-law submits to his critical taste ere she ventures to show it

to Vance, is looking from under his brows towards the grove, out from

which, towering over all its dark brethren, soars the old trysting

beech-tree, and to himself he is saying: “Ten to one that the old House

of Vipont now weather the CRISIS; and a thousand to one that I find at

last my armchair at the hearth of my schoolfriend, Guy Darrell!”

And the lake is as smooth as glass; and the swans, hearkening the music,

rest still, with white breasts against the grass of the margin; and

the doe, where she stands, her fore-feet in the water, lifts her head

wistfully, with nostrils distended, and wondering soft eyes that are

missing the master. Now full on the beech-grove shines the westering

sun; out from the gloomy beech-grove into the golden sunlight--they

come, they come--Man and the Helpmate, two lives re-betrothed--two souls

re-united. Be it evermore! Amen.