During this conference between these execrable and ravening birds of
night and prey, Helen and her boy-lover were thus conversing in
the garden; while the autumn sun--for it was in the second week of
October--broke pleasantly through the yellowing leaves of the tranquil
shrubs, and the flowers, which should have died with the gone summer,
still fresh by tender care, despite the lateness of the season, smiled
gratefully as their light footsteps passed.
“Yes, Helen,” said Percival,--“yes, you will love my mother, for she is
one of those people who seem to attract love, as if it were a property
belonging to them. Even my dog Beau (you know how fond Beau is of me!)
always nestles at her feet when we are at home. I own she has pride,
but it is a pride that never offended any one. You know there are some
flowers that we call proud. The pride of the flower is not more harmless
than my mother’s. But perhaps pride is not the right word,--it is rather
the aversion to anything low or mean, the admiration for everything pure
and high. Ah, how that very pride--if pride it be--will make her love
you, my Helen!”
“You need not tell me,” said Helen, smiling seriously, “that I shall
love your mother,--I love her already; nay, from the first moment you
said you had a mother, my heart leaped to her. Your mother,--if ever
you are really jealous, it must be of her! But that she should love
me,--that is what I doubt and fear. For if you were my brother,
Percival, I should be so ambitious for you. A nymph must rise from the
stream, a sylphid from the rose, before I could allow another to steal
you from my side. And if I think I should feel this only as your sister,
what can be precious enough to satisfy a mother?”
“You, and you only,” answered Percival, with his blithesome
laugh,--“you, my sweet Helen, much better than nymph or sylphid, about
whom, between ourselves, I never cared three straws, even in a poem. How
pleased you will be with Laughton! Do you know, I was lying awake all
last night to consider what room you would like best for your own? And
at last I have decided. Come, listen,--it opens from the music-gallery
that overhangs the hall. From the window you overlook the southern side
of the park, and catch a view of the lake beyond. There are two niches
in the wall,--one for your piano, one for your favourite books. It
is just large enough to hold four persons with ease,--our mother and
myself, your aunt, whom by that time we shall have petted into good
humour; and if we can coax Ardworth there,--the best good fellow that
ever lived,--I think our party will be complete. By the way, I am uneasy
about Ardworth, it is so long since we have seen him; I have called
three times,--nay, five,--but his odd-looking clerk always swears he is
not at home. Tell me, Helen, now you know him so well,--tell me how I
can serve him? You know, I am so terribly rich (at least, I shall be
in a month or two), I can never get through my money, unless my friends
will help me. And is it not shocking that that noble fellow should be
so poor, and yet suffer me to call him ‘friend,’ as if in friendship one
man should want everything, and the other nothing? Still, I don’t know
how to venture to propose. Come, you understand me, Helen; let us lay
our wise heads together and make him well off, in spite of himself.”
It was in this loose boyish talk of Percival that he had found the way,
not only to Helen’s heart, but to her soul. For in this she (grand,
undeveloped poetess!) recognized a nobler poetry than we chain to
rhythm,--the poetry of generous deeds. She yearned to kiss the warm hand
she held, and drew nearer to his side as she answered: “And sometimes,
dear, dear Percival, you wonder why I would rather listen to you than to
all Mr. Varney’s bitter eloquence, or even to my dear cousin’s aspiring
ambition. They talk well, but it is of themselves; while you--”
Percival blushed, and checked her.
“Well,” she said,--“well, to your question. Alas! you know little of
my cousin if you think all our arts could decoy him out of his rugged
independence; and much as I love him, I could not wish it. But do not
fear for him; he is one of those who are born to succeed, and without
help.”
“How do you know that, pretty prophetess?” said Percival, with the
superior air of manhood. “I have seen more of the world than you have,
and I cannot see why Ardworth should succeed, as you call it; or, if
so, why he should succeed less if he swung his hammock in a better berth
than that hole in Gray’s Inn, and would just let me keep him a cab and
groom.”
Had Percival talked of keeping John Ardworth an elephant and a palaquin,
Helen could not have been more amused. She clapped her little hands in
a delight that provoked Percival, and laughed out loud. Then, seeing her
boy-lover’s lip pouted petulantly, and his brow was overcast, she said,
more seriously,--
“Do you not know what it is to feel convinced of something which you
cannot explain? Well, I feel this as to my cousin’s fame and fortunes.
Surely, too, you must feel it, you scarce know why, when he speaks of
that future which seems so dim and so far to me, as of something that
belonged to him.”
“Very true, Helen,” said Percival; “he lays it out like the map of his
estate. One can’t laugh when he says so carelessly: ‘At such an age I
shall lead my circuit; at such an age I shall be rich; at such an age
I shall enter parliament; and beyond that I shall look as yet--no
farther.’ And, poor fellow, then he will be forty-three! And in the mean
while to suffer such privations!”
“There are no privations to one who lives in the future,” said Helen,
with that noble intuition into lofty natures which at times flashed from
her childish simplicity, foreshadowing what, if Heaven spare her life,
her maturer intellect may develop; “for Ardworth there is no such thing
as poverty. He is as rich in his hopes as we are in--” She stopped
short, blushed, and continued, with downcast looks: “As well might you
pity me in these walks, so dreary without you. I do not live in them, I
live in my thoughts of you.”
Her voice trembled with emotion in those last words. She slid from
Percival’s arm, and timidly sat down (and he beside her) on a little
mound under the single chestnut-tree, that threw its shade over the
garden.
Both were silent for some moments,--Percival, with grateful ecstasy;
Helen, with one of those sudden fits of mysterious melancholy to which
her nature was so subjected.
He was the first to speak. “Helen,” he said gravely, “since I have known
you, I feel as if life were a more solemn thing than I ever regarded it
before. It seems to me as if a new and more arduous duty were added to
those for which I was prepared,--a duty, Helen, to become worthy of
you! Will you smile? No, you will not smile if I say I have had my
brief moments of ambition. Sometimes as a boy, with Plutarch in my hand,
stretched idly under the old cedar-trees at Laughton; sometimes as a
sailor, when, becalmed on the Atlantic, and my ears freshly filled with
tales of Collingwood and Nelson, I stole from my comrades and leaned
musingly over the boundless sea. But when this ample heritage passed to
me, when I had no more my own fortunes to make, my own rank to build up,
such dreams became less and less frequent. Is it not true that wealth
makes us contented to be obscure? Yes; I understand, while I speak, why
poverty itself befriends, not cripples, Ardworth’s energies. But since
I have known you, dearest Helen, those dreams return more vividly than
ever. He who claims you should be--must be--something nobler than the
crowd. Helen,”--and he rose by an irresistible and restless impulse,--“I
shall not be contented till you are as proud of your choice as I of
mine!”
It seemed, as Percival spoke and looked, as if boyhood were cast from
him forever. The unusual weight and gravity of his words, to which his
tone gave even eloquence; the steady flash of his dark eyes; his erect,
elastic form,--all had the dignity of man. Helen gazed on him silently,
and with a heart so full that words would not come, and tears overflowed
instead.
That sight sobered him at once; he knelt down beside her, threw his arms
around her,--it was his first embrace,--and kissed the tears away.
“How have I distressed you? Why do you weep?”
“Let me weep on, Percival, dear Percival! These tears are like
prayers,--they speak to Heaven--and of you!”
A step came noiselessly over the grass, and between the lovers and the
sunlight stood Gabriel Varney.