"There is not a mystical creation, type, symbol, or poetical invention
for meanings abtruse, recondite, and incomprehensible which is not
represented by the female gender," said my father, having his hand quite
buried in his waistcoat. "For instance, the Sphinx and Isis, whose veil
no man had ever lifted, were both ladies, Kitty! And so was Persephone,
who must be always either in heaven or hell; and Hecate, who was one
thing by night and another by day. The Sibyls were females, and so were
the Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, the Fates, and the Teutonic
Valkyrs, Nornies, and Hela herself; in short, all representations of
ideas obscure, inscrutable, and portentous, are nouns feminine."
Heaven bless my father! Augustine Caxton was himself again! I began to
fear that the story had slipped away from him, lost in that labyrinth of
learning. But luckily, as he paused for breath, his look fell on those
limpid blue eyes of my mother, and that honest open brow of hers, which
had certainly nothing in common with Sphinxes, Fates, Furies, or
Valkyrs; and whether his heart smote him, or his reason made him own
that he had fallen into a very disingenuous and unsound train of
assertion, I know not, but his front relaxed, and with a smile he
resumed: "Ellinor was the last person in the world to deceive any one
willingly. Did she deceive me and Roland, that we both, though not
conceited men, fancied that, if we had dared to speak openly of love, we
had not so dared in vain; or do you think, Kitty, that a woman really
can love (not much, perhaps, but somewhat) two or three, or half a
dozen, at a time?"
"Impossible!" cried my mother. "And as for this Lady Ellinor, I am
shocked at her--I don't know what to call it!"
"Nor I either, my dear," said my father, slowly taking his hand from his
waistcoat, as if the effort were too much for him, and the problem were
insoluble. "But this, begging your pardon, I do think, that before a
young woman does really, truly, and cordially centre her affections on
one object, she suffers fancy, imagination, the desire of power,
curiosity, or Heaven knows what, to stimulate, even to her own mind,
pale reflections of the luminary not yet risen,--parhelia that precede
the sun. Don't judge of Roland as you see him now, Pisistratus,--grim,
and gray, and formal: imagine a nature soaring high amongst daring
thoughts, or exuberant with the nameless poetry of youthful life, with a
frame matchless for bounding elasticity, an eye bright with haughty
fire, a heart from which noble sentiments sprang like sparks from an
anvil. Lady Ellinor had an ardent, inquisitive imagination. This bold,
fiery nature must have moved her interest. On the other hand, she had
an instructed, full, and eager mind. Am I vain if I say, now after the
lapse of so many years, that in my mind her intellect felt
companionship? When a woman loves and marries and settles, why then she
becomes a one whole, a completed being. But a girl like Ellinor has in
her many women. Various herself, all varieties please her. I do
believe that if either of us had spoken the word boldly, Lady Ellinor
would have shrunk back to her own heart, examined it, tasked it, and
given a frank and generous answer; and he who had spoken first might
have had the better chance not to receive a 'No.' But neither of us
spoke. And perhaps she was rather curious to know if she had made an
impression, than anxious to create it. It was not that she willingly
deceived us, but her whole atmosphere was delusion. Mists come before
the sunrise. However this be, Roland and I were not long in detecting
each other. And hence arose, first coldness, then jealousy, then
quarrel."
"Oh, my father, your love must have been indeed powerful to have made a
breach between the hearts of two such brothers!"
"Yes," said my father, "it was amidst the old ruins of the castle, there
where I had first seen Ellinor, that, winding my arm round Roland's neck
as I found--him seated amongst the weeds and stones, his face buried in
his hands,--it was there that I said, "Brother, we both love this woman!
My nature is the calmer of the two, I shall feel the loss less.
Brother, shake hands! and God speed you, for I go!"
"Austin!" murmured my mother, sinking her head on my father's breast.
"And therewith we quarrelled. For it was Roland who insisted, while the
tears rolled down his eyes and he stamped his foot on the ground, that
he was the intruder, the interloper; that he had no hope; that he had
been a fool and a madman; and that it was for him to go! Now, while we
were disputing, and words began to run high, my father's old servant
entered the desolate place with a note from Lady Ellinor to me, asking
for the loan of some book I had praised. Roland saw the handwriting,
and while I turned the note over and over irresolutely, before I broke
the seal, he vanished.
"He did not return to my father's house. We did not know what had
become of him. But I, thinking over that impulsive, volcanic nature,
took quick alarm. And I went in search of him; came on his track at
last; and after many days found him in a miserable cottage amongst the
most dreary of the dreary wastes which form so large a part of
Cumberland. He was so altered I scarcely knew him. To be brief, we
came at last to a compromise. We would go back to Compton. This
suspense was intolerable. One of us at least should take courage and
learn his fate. But who should speak first? We drew lots, and the lot
fell on me.
"And now that I was really to pass the Rubicon, now that I was to impart
that secret hope which had animated me so long, been to me a new life,
what were my sensations? My dear boy, depend on it that that age is the
happiest when such feelings as I felt then can agitate us no more; they
are mistakes in the serene order of that majestic life which Heaven
meant for thoughtful man. Our souls should be as stars on earth, not as
meteors and tortured comets. What could I offer to Ellinor, to her
father? What but a future of patient labor? And in either answer what
alternative of misery,--my own existence shattered, or Roland's noble
heart!
"Well, we went to Compton. In our former visits we had been almost the
only guests. Lord Rainsforth did not much affect the intercourse of
country squires, less educated then than now; and in excuse for Ellinor
and for us, we were almost the only men of our own age she had seen in
that large dull house. But now the London season had broken up, the
house was filled; there was no longer that familiar and constant
approach to the mistress of the Hall which had made us like one family.
Great ladies, fine people were round her; a look, a smile, a passing
word were as much as I had a right to expect. And the talk, too, how
different! Before I could speak on books,--I was at home there! Roland
could pour forth his dreams, his chivalrous love for the past, his bold
defiance of the unknown future. And Ellinor, cultivated and fanciful,
could sympathize with both. And her father, scholar and gentleman,
could sympathize too. But now--"