THE COMMON LOT
"And so, you see, my dear Egerton, it is out of the question. I own to a
great liking for your character. I think you behaved yesterday like a
trump. I am too old for romance, and all that, but I can understand
your feeling, my boy, and I am sorry for you. The objection I have
named would alone be sufficient. Let it never be mentioned again. Your
father was my oldest friend, and I hope you will not think it necessary
to break with us; but marriage is a serious affair, and indeed is not to
be thought of."
"No hope, Sir Harry?" I gasped out; "years hence, if I could win fame,
distinction, throw a cloak of honour over this accursed brand, give her
a name to be proud of, is there no hope?"
"None," replied Sir Harry; "these things are better settled at once. It
is far wiser not to delude yourself into the notion that, because you
are a disappointed man now, you are destined to become a great one
hereafter. Greatness grows, Vere, just like a cabbage or a cauliflower,
and must be tended and cultivated with years of labour and perseverance;
you cannot pluck it down with one spring, like an apple from a bough.
No, no, my lad; you will get over this disappointment, and be all the
better for it. I am sorry to refuse you, but I must, Vere, distinctly,
and for the last time. Besides, I tell you in confidence, I have other
views for Constance, so you see it is totally out of the question. You
may see her this afternoon, if you like. She is a good child, and will
do nothing in disobedience to her father. Farewell, Vere, I am sorry
for you, but the thing's done."
So I walked out of the Baronet's room in the unenviable character of a
disappointed suitor, and he went back to his farm book and his trainer's
accounts, as coolly as if he had just been dismissing a domestic; whilst
I--my misery was greater than I could bear--his last words seemed to
scorch me. "I should get over it--I should be the better for it." And
I felt all the time that my heart was breaking; and then, "he had other
views for Constance;" not only must she never be mine, but I must suffer
the additional pang of feeling that she belongs to another. "Would to
God," I thought, "that we had sunk together yesterday, never to rise
again!"
I went to look for her in the shrubbery: I knew where I should find her;
there was an old summer-house that we two had sat in many a time before,
and I felt sure Constance would be there. She rose as I approached it:
she must have seen by my face that it was all over. She put her hand in
mine, and, totally unmanned, I bent my head over it, and burst into a
flood of tears, like a child. I remember to this day the very pattern of
the gown she wore; even now I seem to hear the soft, gentle accents in
which she reasoned and pleaded with me, and strove to mitigate my
despair.
"I have long thought it must come to this, Vere," she said, with her
dark, melancholy eyes looking into my very soul; "I have long thought we
have both been much to blame, you to speak, and I to listen, as we have
done: now we have our punishment. Vere, I will not conceal from you I
suffer much. More for your sake than my own. I cannot bear to see you
so miserable. You to whom I owe so much, so many happy hours, and
yesterday my very life. Oh, Vere, try to bear it like a man."
"I cannot, I cannot," I sobbed out; "no hope, nothing to look forward
to, but a cheerless, weary life, and then to be forgotten. Oh that I
had died with you, Constance, my beloved one, my own!"
She laid her hand gently on my arm--
"Forgotten, Vere," she said; "that is not a kind or a generous speech.
I shall never forget you. Always, always I shall think of you, pray for
you. Papa knows best what is right. I will never disobey him: he has
not forbidden us to see each other; we may be very happy still. Vere,
you must be my brother."
"No more," I exclaimed, reproachfully, "no more?"
"No more, Vere," she answered, quite gently, but in a tone that admitted
of no further appeal. "Brother and sister, Vere, for the rest of our
lives; promise me this," and she put her soft hand in mine, and smiled
upon me; pure and sorrowful, like an angel.
I was stung to madness by her seeming coldness, so different from my own
wild, passionate misery.
"Be it so," I said; "and as brother and sister must part, so must you
and I. Anything now for freedom and repose; anything to drive your
image from my mind. I tell you that from henceforth I am a desperate
man. Nobody cares for me on earth,--no father, no mother, none for whom
to live; and the one I prized most discards me now. Constance, you
never can have loved me as I have loved. Cold, heartless, false! I
will never see you again."
She was quite bewildered by my vehemence. She looked round wildly at
me, and her pale lip quivered, and her eyes filled with tears: even then
I remained bitter and unmoved.
"Farewell," I said, "farewell, Constance, and for ever."
Her hand hung passively in mine, her "good-bye" seemed frozen on her
lips; but she turned away with more than her usual majesty, and walked
towards the house. I remarked that she dropped a white rose--fit emblem
of her own dear self--on the gravel path, as she paced slowly along,
without once turning her head. I was too proud to follow her and pick
it up, but sprang away in an opposite direction, and was soon out of her
sight.
That night, when the wild clouds were flying across the moon, and the
wind howled through the gloomy yews and the ghostly fir-trees, and all
was sad and dreary and desolate, I picked up the white rose from that
gravel path, and placed it next my heart. Faded, shrunk, and withered,
I have got it still. My home was now no place for me. I arranged my
few affairs with small difficulty, pensioned the two old servants my
poor father had committed to my charge; set my house in order, packed up
my things, and in less than a week I was many hundred miles from Alton
Grange and Constance Beverley.