Where hospitality is a custom stronger than law, inns offer few comforts and fewer luxuries—the traveller is supposed to bring, not only his own provisions, but his own furniture. Our traveller arriving at Ozieri, a town with more than eight thousand inhabitants, "mine host" was astonished at the unreasonable demand of a bed. Finding how things were, Mr Tyndale stood in the court-yard, contemplating the alternative of presenting some of his letters to parties in the town, when he was attracted to a window on the other side of the court, from whence this invitation issued: "Sir, it is impossible for you to go to the Osteria; there is no accommodation fit for you. Apparently you are a stranger, and if you have no friends here, pray accept whatlittle we can do for you." He ascended the stairs to thank his hostess, who sent for her husband, holding a high government appointment in the town, who received and entertained him as if they had been his intimate friends. On another occasion, in search of the Perdas Lungas stones, antiquarian curiosities, he met a stranger, who, though going to Nuovo in a great hurry, and anxious to return for the Festa, on finding he was a foreigner, insisted on accompanying him, as he was acquainted with the way—"one of the many instances," says Mr Tyndale, "of Sarde civility and kindness." And such hospitable kindness he invariably received, whether in towns or among the poorest in the mountain villages, or more lonely places. It has been cynically observed, that hospitality is the virtue of uncivilised nations. However selfishly gratifying the exercise of it may have been to that wealthy Scotch laird, who said that his nearest neighbour, as a gentleman, was the King of Denmark, among such a people as the Sardes, it surely may be an indication of natural kindness, and, in some degree, of honesty, for our civilised roguery is a sore destroyer of open-housed hospitality.
A royal return for hospitable care is, however, not to be altogether rejected. When the King of Sardinia visited the island, a shepherd of the little island of Tavolara, the ancient Hermea, near the port of Terranova, of simple manners and notions, sent his majesty some sheep and wild goats, judging that the royal larder might not be over-richly stored. His majesty properly, in turn, requested to know if he could grant him anything. The shepherd consulted his family upon all their real and imaginary wants, and finally decided against luxuries, but "would not mind if the king gave him a pound of gunpowder." On the royal messenger, therefore, suggesting that he should ask for something else, the dilemma was greater than ever; but, after strolling about, and torturing his imagination for several minutes, he suddenly broke out—"Oh, tell the King of Terra-firma that I should like to be the king of Tavolara; and that if any people come to live in the island, that they must obey me, as the people obey him in Terra-firma." What compromise his majesty made between the regal crown and the pound of gunpowder, we are not told. Though we would by no means vouch for this shepherd's story, which is nevertheless very probable, we can vouch for one not very dissimilar.
Not very long since, a small farmer in a little village in Somersetshire, who prided himself on his cheeses, in a fit of unwonted generosity—for he was a penurious man—sent to her majesty Queen Victoria a prime cheese. A person given to practical jokes knowing this, bought an eighteen-penny gilt chain, and sent it in a letter, purporting to be from her majesty, appointing him her "well beloved" mayor of the village, in the document exalted into a corporate town, but whereof he, the said mayor, formed the sole body and whole authority. The ignorant poor man swallowed the bait, and called the village together; gave an ox to be roasted whole, and walked at the head of the invited procession, wearing his chain of office; and for several weeks exhibited the insignia of royal favour, the chain and royal autograph, at church and at markets. It is a doubt if he be yet undeceived, and lowered from his imaginary brief authority. We know not what our farmer would say to the use to which the Sardes apply their cheeses, or what may be expected from a free trade with them in this article; but we learn that so plentiful was cheese in the Donori district, in 1842, that some of it was used for manuring the ground, which practice would amount to throwing it away, for they are not given to any industrial means of agriculture. So fertile was Sardinia under the Romans, that, in the last years of the second Punic war, corn was so abundant that it was sold for the mere price of the freight. Should the reader be curious to know the result of this cheapness, he may see it in the present condition of Sardinia compared with its former, a population diminished from about two millions to about five hundred and twenty-four thousand, and full three quarters of the land uncultivated.
The "Attitu," or custom of mourning around the body of the dead, willbring to mind, to those who have witnessed such a ceremony, the Irish hovel. The "Conducti" are ever more vehement than theverè plorantibus. The word Attitu is supposed to be derived from theatatof the Romans, but it was not an original word of their language, nor may it have been so with the Greeks, from whom they took it. The Sarde Attitadores are thus described, and the description perfectly answers to exhibitions we have witnessed in some remote parts of Ireland. "They wear black stuff gowns, with a species of Capucin hood, and, maintaining a perfect silence, assume the air of total ignorance as to there having been a death in the family, till, suddenly and accidentally seeing the dead body, they simultaneously commence a weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, accompanied with groans and ejaculations,—tearing their hair, throwing themselves on the ground, raising their clenched fists maniacally to heaven, and carrying on the attitudes and expressions of real anguish." It is curious that the "ailinon" of the Greeks is traced to the Phœnicians, and, on the authority of Athenæus, "Linus was a mythological personage, who gave his name to a song of a mournful character." It is said that the Phœnician "Lin" signifies complaint.
It would be well if writers, especially travellers, would exercise a little more forbearance in speaking of the superstitions of the people amongst whom they are thrown. It is too prevalent a custom to attribute every superstition to the priesthood, whereas the mere traveller can scarcely be able to distinguish what belongs wholly and hereditarily to the people, and what the priests enjoin. We suspect in most instances the foundation is in the people, and that the priests could not, though in many cases it may be admitted they would not, put a stop to them. They would too often lose their influence in the attempt, and find themselves compelled to acquiesce in practices and ceremonies of which they do not approve. Those who treat with contempt and ridicule the superstitions of other countries do not scrutinise those of their own. It is true ours are wearing out, and before their expiration become very innocent: attempts to suppress them by authority would only tend to perpetuate them. It would be very silly, for instance, to issue a proclamation against "May day," or to remind the innocents who crown the Maypole that they are following a pagan and not very decent worship and ceremony. Superstitions are the natural tares of the mind, and spring up spontaneously, and among the wheat, too, it should be observed; and we should remember the warning not to be over eager to uproot the tares, lest we uproot the wheat also. It is the object of travel to gratify curiosity, and the nature of travel to increase the appetite for it. It is, therefore, like wholesome food, which by giving health promotes a fresh relish; but there arises from this traveller's habit a less nice distinction as to quality, and at length a practised voracity is not dismayed by quantity. The inquirer is on the look-out, and overlooks but little; and in all Roman Catholic countries there is no lack of infidels, happy to have their tongues loosened in the presence of questioning Englishmen, and to pour into their listening ears multitudes of tales, fabricated or true, as it may chance, with a feeling of hatred for the religion of their country—for the superstition of unbelief is inventive and persecuting. We are not for a moment meditating a defence of Romish superstitions, but we think they are too widespread, and too mixed up with the entire habit of thought of the general population, to render a sudden removal possible, or every attempt safe. The reformation will not commence with the unlearned. In the meanwhile, there is a demand on the traveller's candour and benevolence for the exercise of forbearance; for we doubt if a foreign traveller in our own country would not, were he bent upon the search, pick up, amongst both our rural and town population, a tolerably large collection of the "Admiranda" of superstition, and sectarian and other saints, with surprising lives and anecdotes, to rival the Romish calendar and the "Aurea Leggenda." We offer these few remarks, because we think our author in his anti-popish zeal, and abhorrence of "ignorance," is too much inclined to see all the wrong, and overlook the good in—shall we saythe superstitions he meets with, and to conclude that the clergy encourage, where, and possibly wisely, they only tolerate. It may not be amiss here to refer to a fact narrated by our author, that a Capucin convent at Ozieri is at present indebted for the severity with which its laws are enforced, to the interference of the bishop, not to establish but to put down a pretended miracle. A nun had announced that she had received the "stigmata;" pilgrims flocked, and offerings were made. The bishop suspected, perhaps more than suspected, fraud, caused a strict inquiry, and the miraculous Stigmata disappeared. But let us come to an instance where the clergy encouraged, or, to be candid, assuming the perfect truth of the narration, originated a superstitious fear. It is one that had so much reverence of a right kind in it, and so much oftruthat least in the feeling, if not in the fact, as may well pass for a kind of belief in the minds of those who propagated it.
When the King of Sardinia visited the island, he caused some excavations to be made at Terranova. Tombs were broken into, and the dead despoiled of their rings, buckles, and other ornaments; upon which, Mr Tyndale says, "a heavy gale of wind and storm, having done some damage to the town, during the progress of digging up the graves, the priests assured the people, and the people reiterated the assurance, that the calamity arose from, and was a punishment for having disturbed and dug up the tombs of the holy saints and martyrs of Terranova!"
Is the mark of admiration one of approbation or the reverse? We cannot believe it to be one of contempt, and are sure our author would not wish to see the feeling—to the credit of human nature, a common one—eradicated. When the Scythians were taunted with flying before their invaders, they simply replied, "We will stay and fight at the burial places of our fathers." They considered no possession so well worth preserving intact.
When Mr Tyndale was receiving hospitality in a shepherd's hut among the mountains, a Ronuts arrived with a box of relics. The household within doors, a mother and daughters, placed themselves on their knees before it. They embraced the box, and three times affectionately kissed it, and expressed dismay in their looks that their guest did not do likewise. He admits they looked upon him as an infidel, but they did not treat him, on that account, as Franklin's apologue feigned that Abraham treated his unbelieving aged stranger guest, but bore with him, as the warning and reproving voice told Abraham to do. The poor hostess, in her ignorance, knew not even whose relics she had reverenced, for hers was the common answer, when inquired of as to this particular—"Senza dubbio la reliquia d'una Santa del Paese, ben conosciuta da per tutto." But this poor family superstition did not harden the heart; the shepherd's wife believed at least in thesanctityof some saint, and that veneration for a life passed in holiness, by whomsoever, demanded of her goodwill to all, and kindly hospitality, and such as should overcome even the prejudice of an ignorant shepherd's wife; and therefore we must quote Mr Tyndale's confession to this virtue of her faith. "If the ignorance and superstitious credulity of my present hostess were great, her hospitality and generosity were no less. She soon recovered from her momentary horror of my heretical irreverence, and, though not the bearer of a holy relic, it was with some difficulty I could get away without having several cheeses put into my saddle-bags; and when my repeated assurances that I was not partial to them at length induced her to desist, she wanted to send her husband to bring me home a kid or a lamb. She would have considered it an insult to have been offered any payment for her gifts, had they been even accepted; and after repeated expressions of her wish to supply me from her humble store, we parted with a shower of mutual benedictions." We have brought to our remembrance patriarchal times, when kids and lambs were readily set before wayfaring strangers. There have been, and are, worse people in the world than those poor ignorant superstitious Sardes.
Not far from San Martino our traveller halted, to inquire his way at an "ovile," the shepherd's hut. Itmay not be unsatisfactory to describe the dwellings whose inhabitants are thus hospitable. The hut here spoken of was rude enough—a mass of stones in a circle of about twelve feet diameter, and eight feet high, with a conical roof made of sticks and reeds. The whole family had but one bed; a few ashes were burning in a hole in the ground; a bundle of clothes, some flat loaves of bread, and three or four pans, made up the inventory of goods. The shepherd was preparing to kill a lamb for his family, yet he offered to accompany the stranger, which he did, and went with him a distance of three miles. "After showing me the spot, and sharing a light meal, I offered him a trifle for his trouble; but he indignantly refused it, and, on leaving to return home, gave me an adieu with a fervent but courteous demeanour, which would have shamed many a mitred and coroneted head." We are not, however, to conclude that all the shepherd districts, however they may bear no reproach on the score of hospitality, are regions of innocence and virtue. We are told, on the authority of a Padre Angius, that the people of Bonorva are quarrelsome and vindictive; and a story is told of their envious character. A certain Don Pietrino Prunas was the owner of much cattle, and ninety-nine flocks of sheep; he was assassinated on the very day he had brought the number to a hundred, for no other reason than out of envy of his happiness. And here Mr Tyndale remarks, in a note, a French translator's carelessness. "Valery, in mentioning the circumstance, says that he was murdered 'le jour même où il atteignait sa centième année.'" The words professed to be translated are, "Padrone di 99 greggi di pecori, trucidato nel giorno istesso che ei doneva formarsi la centessima."
The reader will not expect to find accounts of many treasures of the fine arts in Sardinia. Convents and churches are, however, not without statues and pictures. Nor do the clergy or inmates of convents possess much knowledge on the subject. If a picture is pronounced a Michael Angelo, without doubt the possessors, with a charming simplicity, would inquire "who Michael Angelo was." We quote the following as worthy the notice of the Arundel Society, particularly as it is out of the general tourings of connoisseurs.
"The screen of the high altar (the church at Ardara) is covered with portraits of apostles, saints, and martyrs, apparently a work of the thirteenth or early part of the fourteenth century; and, notwithstanding the neglect and damp, the colours and gildings are still bright and untarnished. Many of them are exquisitely finished, with all the fineness of an Albert Durer and Holbein, and will vie with the best specimens of the early masters in the gallery of Dresden, or the Pinakothek at Munich."
"The screen of the high altar (the church at Ardara) is covered with portraits of apostles, saints, and martyrs, apparently a work of the thirteenth or early part of the fourteenth century; and, notwithstanding the neglect and damp, the colours and gildings are still bright and untarnished. Many of them are exquisitely finished, with all the fineness of an Albert Durer and Holbein, and will vie with the best specimens of the early masters in the gallery of Dresden, or the Pinakothek at Munich."
Valery, the mis-translator just mentioned, is in ecstacy in his notice of these works. He considers them worthy the perpetuity which the graver alone can give them, and considers how great their reputation would be had they found a Lanzi, a d'Agincour, or a Cicognara.
We have now travelled with our agreeable, well-informed author over much country—wild, and partially cultivated; have speculated with him upon all things that attracted attention by the way; and, though the roads have been somewhat rough, we have kept our tempers pretty well—no light accomplishment for fellow-travellers; and our disputes have been rather amusing than serious. We now enter with him the capital of Sardinia—Cagliari. We shall not follow him, however, through the modern town, though there can be no better cicerone; nor look in at the museum, fearful of long detention; not even to examine the Phœnician curiosities, or discuss the identity in character, with them, of some seals found in the bogs of Ireland; or to speculate with Sir George Staunton as to their Chinese origin, and how they unaccountably found themselves, some in an Irish bog and some in excavated earth in Sardinia, and from thence into the museum at Cagliari. We are content to visit some Roman antiquities, and read inscriptions probably of the age of the Antonines, or of an earlier period. The monuments are sepulchral: one is of a very interesting character. It is of some architectural pretensions—in honour of an exemplary wife, who, like Alcestis, is said to have died for her husband. The prose tale, were it in existence, might have told, perhaps, how Pomptilla—for that is her name—attended her husband in a sickness, caught his fever, and died, while he recovered. The inscriptions are many. Some have been made out tolerably well: they are in Latin and Greek. One, in Greek, has so much tenderness, that, deeming it quite worthy the melancholy cadence of verse, we have been tempted to substitute our own translation for that of Mr Tyndale in prose, with which we are not quite satisfied.
Pomptilla, from thy dew-embalmèd earth,Which mournful homage of our love receives,May fairest lilies rise,Pale flow'rets of a sad funereal birth—And roses opening their scarce-blushing leaves,Of tenderest dyes,And violets, that from their languid eyes,Shed perfumed shower—And blessèd amaranth that never dies.O! be thyself a flower,Th' unsullied snow-drop—being and witness trueOf thy pure self, e'en to perpetual years—As erst a flow'ret fair Narcissus grew—And Hyacinthus all bedew'd with tears.For when, now in the tremulous hour of death,Her spouse Philippus near to Lethe drewHis unresisting lips and fainting breath,A woman's duteous vow she vow'd—And gently put aside his drooping head,And her firm presence to the waters bow'd,And drank the fatal stream instead.Such perfect union did stern Death divide,Th' unwilling husband and the willing wife—Willing to die, while he, now loathing life,Through the dear love of his devoted bride—Still lives, and weeps, and prays that he may die—That his releasèd spirit to hers may fly,And mingled evermore with hers abide.
Pomptilla, from thy dew-embalmèd earth,Which mournful homage of our love receives,May fairest lilies rise,Pale flow'rets of a sad funereal birth—And roses opening their scarce-blushing leaves,Of tenderest dyes,And violets, that from their languid eyes,Shed perfumed shower—And blessèd amaranth that never dies.O! be thyself a flower,Th' unsullied snow-drop—being and witness trueOf thy pure self, e'en to perpetual years—As erst a flow'ret fair Narcissus grew—And Hyacinthus all bedew'd with tears.
For when, now in the tremulous hour of death,Her spouse Philippus near to Lethe drewHis unresisting lips and fainting breath,A woman's duteous vow she vow'd—And gently put aside his drooping head,And her firm presence to the waters bow'd,And drank the fatal stream instead.
Such perfect union did stern Death divide,Th' unwilling husband and the willing wife—Willing to die, while he, now loathing life,Through the dear love of his devoted bride—Still lives, and weeps, and prays that he may die—That his releasèd spirit to hers may fly,And mingled evermore with hers abide.
In taking leave of our author, we confidently recommend the three volumes on Sardinia to the general reader—we say general reader, for, whatever be his taste or pursuit, he will find amusement and information. The work is afullwork. If the reader be an antiquary, he will be gratified with deep research and historic lore; if an economist, he will have tabular detail and close statistics; an agriculturist, and would he emigrate from his own persecuted lands, he will learn the nature of soils, their capabilities, and how fair a field is offered for that importable and exportable commodity, his industry, so much wanted in Sardinia, and so little encouraged at home; if a sportsman, besides the use of the gun, which he knows already, he will be initiated into the mystery of tunny fishing, and, would he turn it to his profit, have license to dispose of his game. Nay, even the wide-awake shopkeeper may learn how to set up his "store" in Sassari or Cagliari, and what stock he had best take out. If he be a ne'er-do-well just returned from California, and surprised into the possession of a sackful of gold, Mr Tyndale will conduct him to the Barathra into which he may throw it, whether they be sea-fisheries or land-marshes; or into whose pockets he may deposit the wealth, whose burthen he is of course wearied in bearing, for the excitement of generosity in becoming a benefactor, or for the amusement of corrupting.
The work is indeed a "guide book," as well as much more, for it tells every one what he may do profitably or unprofitably in Sardinia—whether as traveller and private speculator, minding his own concerns; or as an enthusiastic disperser of ignorance, and renovator of the customs, manners, religion, and political condition of a people as unlike his own race and kindred as possible.
FOOTNOTES:[1]The Island of Sardinia.ByJohn Warre Tyndale. 3 vols., post 8vo.
[1]The Island of Sardinia.ByJohn Warre Tyndale. 3 vols., post 8vo.
[1]The Island of Sardinia.ByJohn Warre Tyndale. 3 vols., post 8vo.
There would have been nothing in what had chanced to justify the suspicions that tortured me, but for my impressions as to the character of Vivian.
Reader, hast thou not, in the easy, careless sociability of youth, formed acquaintance with some one, in whose more engaging or brilliant qualities thou hast—not lost that dislike to defects or vices which is natural to an age when, even while we err, we adore what is good, and glow with enthusiasm for the ennobling sentiment and the virtuous deed—no, happily, not lost dislike to what is bad, nor thy quick sense of it,—but conceived a keen interest in the struggle between the bad that revolted, and the good that attracted thee, in thy companion? Then, perhaps, thou hast lost sight of him for a time—suddenly thou hearest that he has done something out of the way of ordinary good or commonplace evil: And, in either—the good or the evil—thy mind runs rapidly back over its old reminiscences, and of either thou sayest, "How natural!—only So-and-so could have done this thing!"
Thus I felt respecting Vivian. The most remarkable qualities in his character were his keen power of calculation, and his unhesitating audacity—qualities that lead to fame or to infamy, according to the cultivation of the moral sense and the direction of the passions. Had I recognised those qualities in some agency apparently of good—and it seemed yet doubtful if Vivian were the agent—I should have cried, "It is he! and the better angel has triumphed!" With the same (alas! with a yet more impulsive) quickness, when the agency was of evil, and the agent equally dubious, I felt that the qualities revealed the man, and that the demon had prevailed.
Mile after mile, stage after stage, were passed, on the dreary, interminable, high north road. I narrated to my companion, more intelligibly than I had yet done, my causes for apprehension. The Captain at first listened eagerly, then checked me on the sudden. "There may be nothing in all this!" he cried. "Sir, we must be men here—have our heads cool, our reason clear: stop!" And, leaning back in the chaise, Roland refused further conversation, and, as the night advanced, seemed to sleep. I took pity on his fatigue, and devoured my heart in silence. At each stage we heard of the party of which we were in pursuit. At the first stage or two we were less than an hour behind; gradually, as we advanced, we lost ground, despite the most lavish liberality to the postboys. I supposed, at length, that the mere circumstance of changing, at each relay, the chaise as well as the horses, was the cause of our comparative slowness; and, on saying this to Roland, as we were changing horses, somewhere about midnight, he at once called up the master of the inn, and gave him his own price for permission to retain the chaise till the journey's end. This was so unlike Roland's ordinary thrift, whether dealing with my money or his own—so unjustified by the fortune of either—that I could not help muttering something in apology.
"Can you guess why I was a miser?" said Roland, calmly.
"A miser!—anything but that! Only prudent—military men often are so."
"I was a miser," repeated the Captain, with emphasis. "I began the habit first when my son was but a child. I thought him high-spirited, and with a taste for extravagance. 'Well,' said I to myself, 'I will save for him; boys will be boys.' Then, afterwards, when he was no more a child, (at least he began to have the vices of a man!) I said to myself, 'Patience, he may reform still; if not, I will save money that I may have power over his self-interest, since I have none over his heart. I will bribe him into honour!' And then—and then—God saw that I was very proud, and I was punished. Tell them to drive faster—faster—why, this is a snail's pace!"
All that night, all the next day, tilltowards the evening, we pursued our journey, without pause, or other food than a crust of bread and a glass of wine. But we now picked up the ground we had lost, and gained upon the carriage. The night had closed in when we arrived at the stage at which the route to Lord N——'s branched from the direct north road. And here, making our usual inquiry, my worst suspicions were confirmed. The carriage we pursued had changed horses an hour before, but had not taken the way to Lord N——'s;—continuing the direct road into Scotland. The people of the inn had not seen the lady in the carriage, for it was already dark, but the man-servant, (whose livery they described) had ordered the horses.
The last hope that, in spite of appearances, no treachery had been designed, here vanished. The Captain, at first, seemed more dismayed than myself, but he recovered more quickly. "We will continue the journey on horseback," he said; and hurried to the stables. All objections vanished at the sight of his gold. In five minutes we were in the saddle, with a postilion, also mounted, to accompany us. We did the next stage in little more than two-thirds of the time which we should have occupied in our former mode of travel—indeed, I found it hard to keep pace with Roland. We remounted; we were only twenty-five minutes behind the carriage. We felt confident that we should overtake it before it could reach the next town—the moon was up—we could see far before us—we rode at full speed. Milestone after milestone glided by, the carriage was not visible. We arrived at the post-town, or rather village; it contained but one posting-house. We were long in knocking up the ostlers—no carriage had arrived just before us; no carriage had passed the place since noon.
What mystery was this?
"Back, back, boy!" said Roland, with a soldier's quick wit, and spurring his jaded horse from the yard. "They will have taken a cross-road or by-lane. We shall track them by the hoofs of the horses or the print of the wheels."
Our postilion grumbled, and pointed to the panting sides of our horses. For answer, Roland opened his hand—full of gold. Away we went back through the dull sleeping village, back into the broad moonlit thoroughfare. We came to a cross-road to the right, but the track we pursued still led us straight on. We had measured back nearly half the way to the post-town at which we had last changed, when, lo! there emerged from a by-lane two postilions and their horses.
At that sight our companion, shouting loud, pushed on before us and hailed his fellows. A few words gave us the information we sought. A wheel had come off the carriage just by the turn of the road, and the young lady and her servants had taken refuge in a small inn not many yards down the lane. The man-servant had dismissed the postboys after they had baited their horses, saying they were to come again in the morning, and bring a blacksmith to repair the wheel.
"How came the wheel off?" asked Roland sternly.
"Why, sir, the linchpin was all rotted away, I suppose, and came out."
"Did the servant get off the dickey after you set out, and before the accident happened?"
"Why, yes. He said the wheels were catching fire, that they had not the patent axles, and he had forgot to have them oiled."
"And he looked at the wheels, and shortly afterwards the linchpin came out?—Eh?"
"Anon, sir!" said the postboy, staring; "why, and indeed so it was!"
"Come on, Pisistratus, we are in time; but pray God—pray God—that—" the Captain dashed his spur into the horse's sides, and the rest of his words was lost to me.
A few yards back from the causeway, a broad patch of green before it, stood the inn—a sullen, old-fashioned building of cold gray stone, looking livid in the moonlight, with black firs at one side, throwing over half of it a dismal shadow. So solitary! not a house, not a hut near it. If they who kept the inn were such that villany might reckon on their connivance, and innocence despair of their aid—there was no neighbourhood to alarm—norefuge at hand. The spot was well chosen.
The doors of the inn were closed; there was a light in the room below; but the outside shutters were drawn over the windows on the first floor. My uncle paused a moment, and said to the postilion—
"Do you know the back way to the premises?"
"No, sir; I doesn't often come by this way, and they be new folks that have taken the house—and I hear it don't prosper overmuch."
"Knock at the door—we will stand a little aside while you do so. If any one ask what you want—merely say you would speak to the servant—that you have found a purse;—here, hold up mine."
Roland and I had dismounted, and my uncle drew me close to the wall by the door. Observing that my impatience ill submitted to what seemed to me idle preliminaries,
"Hist!" whispered he; "if there be anything to conceal within, they will not answer the door till some one has reconnoitred: were they to see us, they would refuse to open. But seeing only the postboy, whom they will suppose at first to be one of those who brought the carriage—they will have no suspicion. Be ready to rush in the moment the door is unbarred."
My uncle's veteran experience did not deceive him. There was a long silence before any reply was made to the postboy's summons; the light passed to and fro rapidly across the window, as if persons were moving within. Roland made sign to the postboy to knock again; he did so twice—thrice—and at last, from an attic-window in the roof, a head obtruded, and a voice cried, "Who are you?—what do you want?"
"I'm the postboy at the Red Lion; I want to see the servant with the brown carriage; I have found this purse!"
"Oh, that's all—wait a bit."
The head disappeared; we crept along under the projecting eaves of the house; we heard the bar lifted from the door; the door itself cautiously opened; one spring and I stood within, and set my back to the door to admit Roland.
"Ho, help!—thieves!—help!" cried a loud voice, and I felt a hand gripe at my throat. I struck at random in the dark, and with effect, for my blow was followed by a groan and a curse.
Roland, meanwhile, had detected a ray through the chinks of a door in the hall, and, guided by it, found his way into the room at the window of which we had seen the light pass and go, while without. As he threw the door open, I bounded after him; and saw in a kind of parlour, two females—the one a stranger, no doubt the hostess, the other the treacherous Abigail. Their faces evinced their terror.
"Woman," I said, seizing the last, "where is Miss Trevanion?" Instead of replying, the woman set up a loud shriek. Another light now gleamed from the staircase, which immediately faced the door, and I heard a voice that I recognised as Peacock's, cry out, "Who's there?—what's the matter?"
I made a rush at the stairs. A burly form (that of the landlord, who had recovered from my blow) obstructed my way for a moment, to measure its length on the floor at the next. I was at the top of the stairs, Peacock recognised me, recoiled, and extinguished the light. Oaths, cries, and shrieks, now resounded through the dark. Amidst them all, I suddenly heard a voice exclaim, "Here, here!—help!" It was the voice of Fanny. I made my way to the right, whence the voice came, and received a violent blow. Fortunately, it fell on the arm which I extended, as men do who feel their way through the dark. It was not the right arm, and I seized and closed on my assailant. Roland now came up, a candle in his hand; and at that sight my antagonist, who was no other than Peacock, slipped from me, and made a rush at the stairs. But the Captain caught him with his grasp of iron. Fearing nothing for Roland in a contest with any single foe, and all my thoughts bent on the rescue of her whose voice again broke on my ear, I had already (before the light of the candle which Roland held went out in the struggle between himself and Peacock) caught sight of a door at the end of the passage, and thrown myself against it: it was locked, but it shook and groaned to my pressure.
"Hold back, whoever you are!" cried a voice from the room within, far different from that wail of distress which had guided my steps. "Hold back, at the peril of your life!"
The voice, the threat, redoubled my strength; the door flew from its fastenings. I stood in the room. I saw Fanny at my feet, clasping my hands; then, raising herself, she hung on my shoulder and murmured, "Saved!" Opposite to me, his face deformed by passion, his eyes literally blazing with savage fire, his nostrils distended, his lips apart, stood the man I have called Francis Vivian.
"Fanny—Miss Trevanion—what outrage—what villany is this? You have not met this man at your free choice,—oh speak!" Vivian sprang forward.
"Question no one but me. Unhand that lady,—she is my betrothed—shall be my wife."
"No, no, no,—don't believe him," cried Fanny; "I have been betrayed by my own servants—brought here, I know not how! I heard my father was ill; I was on my way to him: that man met me here, and dared to"—
"Miss Trevanion—yes, I dared to say I loved you."
"Protect me from him!—you will protect me from him!"
"No, madam!" said a voice behind me, in a deep tone, "it is I who claim the right to protect you from that man; it is I who now draw around you the arm of one sacred, even to him; it is I who, from this spot, launch upon his head—a father's curse. Violator of the hearth! Baffled ravisher!—go thy way to the doom which thou hast chosen for thyself. God will be merciful to me yet, and give me a grave before thy course find its close in the hulks—or at the gallows!"
A sickness came over me—a terror froze my veins—I reeled back, and leant for support against the wall. Roland had passed his arm round Fanny, and she, frail and trembling, clung to his broad heart, looking fearfully up to his face. And never in that face, ploughed by deep emotions, and dark with unutterable sorrows, had I seen an expression so grand in its wrath, so sublime in its despair. Following the direction of his eye, stern and fixed as the look of one who prophesies a destiny, and denounces a doom, I shivered as I gazed upon the son. His whole frame seemed collapsed and shrinking, as if already withered by the curse: a ghastly whiteness overspread the cheek, usually glowing with the dark bloom of Oriental youth; the knees knocked together; and, at last, with a faint exclamation of pain, like the cry of one who receives a death-blow, he bowed his face over his clasped hands, and so remained—still, but cowering.
Instinctively I advanced and placed myself between the father and the son, murmuring, "Spare him; see, his own heart crushes him down." Then stealing towards the son, I whispered, "Go, go; the crime was not committed, the curse can be recalled." But my words touched a wrong chord in that dark and rebellious nature. The young man withdrew his hands hastily from his face, and reared his front in passionate defiance.
Waving me aside, he cried, "Away! I acknowledge no authority over my actions and my fate; I allow no mediator between this lady and myself. Sir," he continued, gazing gloomily on his father—"sir, you forget our compact. Our ties were severed, your power over me annulled; I resigned the name you bear; to you I was, and am still, as the dead. I deny your right to step between me and the object dearer to me than life.
"Oh!" (and here he stretched forth his hands towards Fanny)—"oh! Miss Trevanion, do not refuse me one prayer, however you condemn me. Let me see you alone but for one moment; let me but prove to you that, guilty as I may have been, it was not from the base motives you will hear imputed to me—that it was not the heiress I sought to decoy, it was the woman I sought to win; oh! hear me"—
"No, no," murmured Fanny, clinging closer to Roland, "do not leave me. If, as it seems, he is your son, I forgive him; but let him go—I shudder at his very voice!"
"Would you have me, indeed, annihilate the very memory of the bond between us?" said Roland, in a hollowvoice; "would you have me see in you only the vile thief, the lawless felon,—deliver you up to justice, or strike you to my feet. Let the memory still save you, and begone!"
Again I caught hold of the guilty son, and again he broke from my grasp.
"It is," he said, folding his arms deliberately on his breast, "it is for me to command in this house: all who are within it must submit to my orders. You, sir, who hold reputation, name, and honour at so high a price, how can you fail to see that you would rob them from the lady whom you would protect from the insult of my affection? How would the world receive the tale of your rescue of Miss Trevanion? how believe that—Oh pardon me, madam,—Miss Trevanion—Fanny—pardon me—I am mad; only hear me—alone—alone—and then if you too say 'Begone,' I submit without a murmur; I allow no arbiter but you."
But Fanny still clung closer, and closer still, to Roland. At that moment I heard voices and the trampling of feet below, and supposing that the accomplices in this villany were mustering courage, perhaps, to mount to the assistance of their employer, I lost all the compassion that had hitherto softened my horror of the young man's crime, and all the awe with which that confession had been attended. I therefore, this time, seized the false Vivian with a gripe that he could no longer shake off, and said sternly—
"Beware how you aggravate your offence. If strife ensues, it will not be between father and son, and—"
Fanny sprang forward. "Do not provoke this bad, dangerous man. I fear him not. Sir, Iwillhear you, and alone."
"Never!" cried I and Roland simultaneously.
Vivian turned his look fiercely to me, and with a sullen bitterness to his father, and then, as if resigning his former prayer, he said—"Well then, be it so; even in the presence of those who judge me so severely, I will speak at least." He paused, and, throwing into his voice a passion that, had the repugnance at his guilt been less, would not have been without pathos, he continued to address Fanny: "I own that, when I first saw you, I might have thought of love, as the poor and ambitious think of the way to wealth and power. Those thoughts vanished, and nothing remained in my heart but love and madness. I was as a man in a delirium when I planned this snare. I knew but one object—saw but one heavenly vision. Oh, mine—mine at least in that vision—are you indeed lost to me for ever!"
There was that in this man's tone and manner which, whether arising from accomplished hypocrisy or actual if perverted feeling, would, I thought, find its way at once to the heart of a woman who, however wronged, had once loved him; and, with a cold misgiving, I fixed my eyes on Miss Trevanion. Her look, as she turned with a visible tremor, suddenly met mine, and I believe that she discerned my doubt; for after suffering her eyes to rest on my own, with something of mournful reproach, her lips curved as with the pride of her mother, and for the first time in my life I saw anger on her brow.
"It is well, sir, that you have thus spoken to me in the presence of others, for in their presence I call upon you to say, by that honour which the son of this gentleman may for a while forget, but cannot wholly forfeit,—I call upon you to say, whether by deed, word, or sign, I, Frances Trevanion, ever gave you cause to believe that I returned the feeling you say you entertained for me, or encouraged you to dare this attempt to place me in your power."
"No!" cried Vivian readily, but with a writhing lip—"no; but where I loved so deeply, periled all my fortune for one fair and free occasion to tell you so alone, I would not think that such love could meet only loathing and disdain. What!—has nature shaped me so unkindly, that where I love no love can reply? What!—has the accident of birth shut me out from the right to woo and mate with the highborn? For the last, at least, that gentleman in justice should tell you, since it has been his care to instil the haughty lesson into me, that my lineage is one that befits lofty hopes, and warrants fearless ambition. My hopes, my ambition—they were you! Oh, Miss Trevanion, itis true that to win you I would have braved the world's laws, defied every foe, save him who now rises before me. Yet, believe me, believe me, had I won what I dared to aspire to, you would not have been disgraced by your choice; and the name, for which I thank not my father, should not have been despised by the woman who pardoned my presumption,—nor by the man who now tramples on my anguish, and curses me in my desolation."
Not by a word had Roland sought to interrupt his son—nay, by a feverish excitement, which my heart understood in its secret sympathy, he had seemed eagerly to court every syllable that could extenuate the darkness of the offence, or even imply some less sordid motive for the baseness of the means. But as the son now closed with the words of unjust reproach, and the accents of fierce despair;—closed a defence that showed in its false pride, and its perverted eloquence, so utter a blindness to every principle of that honour which had been the father's idol, Roland placed his hand before the eyes that he had previously, as if spellbound, fixed on the hardened offender, and once more drawing Fanny towards him, said—
"His breath pollutes the air that innocence and honesty should breath. He says 'All in this house are at his command,'—why do we stay?—let us go." He turned towards the door, and Fanny with him.
Meanwhile the louder sounds below had been silenced for some moments, but I heard a step in the hall. Vivian started, and placed himself before us.
"No, no, you cannot leave me thus, Miss Trevanion. I resign you—be it so; I do not even ask for pardon. But to leave this house thus, without carriage, without attendants, without explanation!—the blame falls on me—it shall do so. But at least vouchsafe me the right to repair what I yet can repair of the wrong, to protect all that is left to me—your name."
As he spoke, he did not perceive (for he was facing us, and with his back to the door,) that a new actor had noiselessly entered on the scene, and, pausing by the threshold, heard his last words.
"The name of Miss Trevanion, sir—and from what?" asked the new comer, as he advanced and surveyed Vivian with a look that, but for its quiet, would have seemed disdain.
"Lord Castleton!" exclaimed Fanny, lifting up the face she had buried in her hands.
Vivian recoiled in dismay, and gnashed his teeth.
"Sir," said the marquis, "I await your reply; for not even you, in my presence, shall imply that one reproach can be attached to the name of that lady."
"Oh, moderate your tone to me, my Lord Castleton!" cried Vivian: "in you at least there is one man I am not forbidden to brave and defy. It was to save that lady from the cold ambition of her parents—it was to prevent the sacrifice of her youth and beauty, to one whose sole merits are his wealth and his titles—it was this that impelled me to the crime I have committed, this that hurried me on to risk all for one hour, when youth at least could plead its cause to youth; and this gives me now the power to say that it does rest with me to protect the name of the lady, whom your very servility to that world which you have made your idol forbids you to claim from the heartless ambition that would sacrifice the daughter to the vanity of the parents. Ha! the future Marchioness of Castleton on her way to Scotland with a penniless adventurer! Ha! if my lips are sealed, who but I can seal the lips of those below in my secret? The secret shall be kept, but on this condition—you shall not triumph where I have failed; I may lose what I adored, but I do not resign it to another. Ha! have I foiled you, my Lord Castleton?—ha, ha!"
"No, sir; and I almost forgive you the villany you havenoteffected, for informing me, for the first time, that, had I presumed to address Miss Trevanion, her parents at least would have pardoned the presumption. Trouble not yourself as to what your accomplices may say. They have already confessed their infamy and your own. Out of my path, sir!"
Then, with the benign look of a father, and the lofty grace of a prince,Lord Castleton advanced to Fanny. Looking round with a shudder, she hastily placed her hand in his, and, by so doing, perhaps prevented some violence on the part of Vivian, whose heaving breast, and eye bloodshot, and still un-quailing, showed how little even shame had subdued his fiercer passions. But he made no offer to detain them, and his tongue seemed to cleave to his lips. Now, as Fanny moved to the door, she passed Roland, who stood motionless and with vacant looks, like an image of stone; and with a beautiful tenderness, for which (even at this distant date, recalling it) I say, "God requite thee, Fanny," she laid her other hand on Roland's arm, and said, "Come too;yourarm still!"
But Roland's limbs trembled, and refused to stir; his head, relaxing, drooped on his breast, his eyes closed. Even Lord Castleton was so struck (though unable to guess the true and terrible cause of his dejection) that he forgot his desire to hasten from the spot, and cried with all his kindliness of heart, "You are ill—you faint; give him your arm, Pisistratus."
"It is nothing," said Roland feebly, as he leant heavily on my arm, while I turned back my head with all the bitterness of that reproach which filled my heart, speaking in the eyes that soughthimwhose place should have been where mine now was. And, oh!—thank heaven, thank heaven!—the look was not in vain. In the same moment the son was at the father's knees.
"Oh, pardon—pardon! Wretch, lost wretch though I be, I bow my head to the curse. Let it fall—but on me, and on me only—not on your own heart too."
Fanny burst into tears, sobbing out, "Forgive him, as I do."
Roland did not heed her.
"He thinks that the heart was not shattered before the curse could come," he said, in a voice so weak as to be scarcely audible. Then, raising his eyes to heaven, his lips moved as if he prayed inly. Pausing, he stretched his hands over his son's head, and averting his face, said, "I revoke the curse. Pray to thy God for pardon."
Perhaps not daring to trust himself further, he then made a violent effort, and hurried from the room.
We followed silently. When we gained the end of the passage, the door of the room we had left, closed with a sullen jar.
As the sound smote on my ear, with it came so terrible a sense of the solitude upon which that door had closed—so keen and quick an apprehension of some fearful impulse, suggested by passions so fierce, to a condition so forlorn—that instinctively I stopped, and then hurried back to the chamber. The lock of the door having been previously forced, there was no barrier to oppose my entrance. I advanced, and beheld a spectacle of such agony, as can only be conceived by those who have looked on the grief which takes no fortitude from reason, no consolation from conscience—the grief which tells us what would be the earth were man abandoned to his passions, and theCHANCEof the atheist reigned alone in the merciless heavens. Pride humbled to the dust; ambition shivered into fragments; love (or the passion mistaken for it) blasted into ashes; life, at the first onset, bereaved of its holiest ties, forsaken by its truest guide; shame that writhed for revenge, and remorse that knew not prayer—all, all blended, yet distinct, were in that awful spectacle of the guilty son.
And I had told but twenty years, and my heart had been mellowed in the tender sunshine of a happy home, and I had loved this boy as a stranger, and, lo—he was Roland's son! I forgot all else, looking upon that anguish; and I threw myself on the ground by the form that writhed there, and, folding my arms round the breast which in vain repelled me, I whispered, "Comfort—comfort—life is long. You shall redeem the past, you shall efface the stain, and your father shall bless you yet!"
I could not stay long with my unhappy cousin, but still I stayed long enough to make me think it probable that Lord Castleton's carriage would have left the inn: and when, as I passed the hall, I saw it standing before the open door, I was seized with fear for Roland; his emotions might have ended in some physical attack. Nor were those fears without foundation. I found Fanny kneeling beside the old soldier in the parlour where we had seen the two women, and bathing his temples, while Lord Castleton was binding his arm; and the marquis's favourite valet, who, amongst his other gifts, was something of a surgeon, was wiping the blade of the penknife that had served instead of a lancet. Lord Castleton nodded to me, "Don't be uneasy—a little fainting fit—we have bled him. He is safe now—see, he is recovering."
Roland's eyes, as they opened, turned to me with an anxious, inquiring look. I smiled upon him as I kissed his forehead, and could, with a safe conscience, whisper words which neither father nor Christian could refuse to receive as comfort.
In a few minutes more we had left the house. As Lord Castleton's carriage only held two, the marquis, having assisted Miss Trevanion and Roland to enter, quietly mounted the seat behind, and made a sign to me to come by his side, for there was room for both. (His servant had taken one of the horses that had brought thither Roland and myself, and already gone on before.) No conversation took place between us then. Lord Castleton seemed profoundly affected, and I had no words at my command.
When we reached the inn at which Lord Castleton had changed horses, about six miles distant, the marquis insisted on Fanny's taking some rest for a few hours, for indeed she was thoroughly worn out.
I attended my uncle to his room, but he only answered my assurances of his son's repentance with a pressure of the hand, and then, gliding from me, went into the furthest recess of the room, and there knelt down. When he rose, he was passive and tractable as a child. He suffered me to assist him to undress; and when he had lain down on the bed, he turned his face quietly from the light, and, after a few heavy sighs, sleep seemed mercifully to steal upon him. I listened to his breathing till it grew low and regular, and then descended to the sitting-room in which I had left Lord Castleton, for he had asked me in a whisper to seek him there.
I found the marquis seated by the fire, in a thoughtful and dejected attitude.
"I am glad you are come," said he, making room for me on the hearth, "for I assure you I have not felt so mournful for many years; we have much to explain to each other. Will you begin? they say the sound of the bell dissipates the thunder-cloud. And there is nothing like the voice of a frank, honest nature to dispel all the clouds that come upon us when we think of our own faults and the villany of others. But, I beg you a thousand pardons—that young man, your relation!—your brave uncle's son! Is it possible!"
My explanations to Lord Castleton were necessarily brief and imperfect. The separation between Roland and his son, my ignorance of its cause, my belief in the death of the latter, my chance acquaintance with the supposed Vivian; the interest I took in him; the relief it was to the fears for his fate with which he inspired me, to think he had returned to the home I ascribed to him; and the circumstances which had induced my suspicions, justified by the result—all this was soon hurried over.
"But, I beg your pardon," said the marquis, interrupting me, "did you, in your friendship for one so unlike you, even by your own partial account, never suspect that you had stumbled upon your lost cousin?"
"Such an idea never could have crossed me."
And here I must observe, that though the reader, at the first introduction of Vivian, would divine the secret,—the penetration of a reader is wholly different from that of theactor in events. That I had chanced on one of those curious coincidences in the romance of real life, which a reader looks out for and expects in following the course of narrative, was a supposition forbidden to me by a variety of causes. There was not the least family resemblance between Vivian and any of his relations; and, somehow or other, in Roland's son I had pictured to myself a form and a character wholly different from Vivian's. To me it would have seemed impossible that my cousin could have been so little curious to hear any of our joint family affairs; been so unheedful, or even weary, if I spoke of Roland—never, by a word or tone, have betrayed a sympathy with his kindred. And my other conjecture was so probable!—son of the Colonel Vivian whose name he bore. And that letter, with the postmark of 'Godalming!' and my belief, too, in my cousin's death; even now I am not surprised that the idea never occurred to me.
I paused from enumerating these excuses for my dulness, angry with myself, for I noticed that Lord Castleton's fair brow darkened;—and he exclaimed, "What deceit he must have gone through before he could become such a master in the art!"
"That is true, and I cannot deny it," said I. "But his punishment now is awful; let us hope that repentance may follow the chastisement. And, though certainly it must have been his own fault that drove him from his father's home and guidance, yet, so driven, let us make some allowance for the influence of evil companionship on one so young—for the suspicions that the knowledge of evil produces, and turns into a kind of false knowledge of the world. And in this last and worst of all his actions"—
"Ah, how justify that!"
"Justify it!—good heavens! justify it!—no. I only say this, strange as it may seem, that I believe his affection for Miss Trevanion was for herself: so he says, from the depth of an anguish in which the most insincere of men would cease to feign. But no more of this,—she is saved, thank Heaven!"
"And you believe," said Lord Castleton musingly, "that he spoke the truth, when he thought that I—." The marquis stopped, coloured slightly, and then went on. "But no; Lady Ellinor and Trevanion, whatever might have been in their thoughts, would never have so forgot their dignity as to take him, a youth—almost a stranger—nay, take any one into their confidence on such a subject."
"It was but by broken gasps, incoherent, disconnected words, that Vivian,—I mean my cousin,—gave me any explanation of this. But Lady N——, at whose house he was staying, appears to have entertained such a notion, or at least led my cousin to think so."
"Ah! that is possible," said Lord Castleton, with a look of relief. "Lady N—— and I were boy and girl together; we correspond; she has written to me suggesting that——. Ah! I see,—an indiscreet woman. Hum! this comes of lady correspondents!"
Lord Castleton had recourse to the Beaudesert mixture; and then, as if eager to change the subject, began his own explanation. On receiving my letter, he saw even more cause to suspect a snare than I had done, for he had that morning received a letter from Trevanion, not mentioning a word about his illness; and on turning to the newspaper, and seeing a paragraph headed, "Sudden and alarming illness of Mr Trevanion," the marquis had suspected some party manœuvre or unfeeling hoax, since the mail that had brought the letter would have travelled as quickly as any messenger who had given the information to the newspaper. He had, however, immediately sent down to the office of the journal to inquire on what authority the paragraph had been inserted, while he despatched another messenger to St James's Square. The reply from the office was, that the message had been brought by a servant in Mr Trevanion's livery, but was not admitted as news until it had been ascertained by inquiries at the minister's house that Lady Ellinor had received the same intelligence, and actually left town in consequence.
"I was extremely sorry for poor Lady Ellinor's uneasiness," said Lord Castleton, "and extremely puzzled, but I still thought there could be noreal ground for alarm when your letter reached me. And when you there stated your conviction that Mr Gower was mixed up in this fable, and that it concealed some snare upon Fanny, I saw the thing at a glance. The road to Lord N——'s, till within the last stage or two, would be the road to Scotland. And a hardy and unscrupulous adventurer, with the assistance of Miss Trevanion's servants, might thus entrap her to Scotland itself, and there work on her fears; or, if he had hope in her affections, win her consent to a Scotch marriage. You may be sure, therefore, that I was on the road as soon as possible. But as your messenger came all the way from the city, and not so quick perhaps as he might have come; and then as there was the carriage to see to, and the horses to send for, I found myself more than an hour and a half behind you. Fortunately, however, I made good ground, and should probably have overtaken you half-way, but that, on passing between a ditch and waggon, the carriage was upset, and that somewhat delayed me. On arriving at the town where the road branched off to Lord N——'s, I was rejoiced to learn you had taken what I was sure would prove the right direction, and finally I gained the clue to that villanous inn by the report of the postboys who had taken Miss Trevanion's carriage there, and met you on the road. On reaching the inn, I found two fellows conferring outside the door. They sprang in as we drove up, but not before my servant Summers—a quick fellow, you know, who has travelled with me from Norway to Nubia—had quitted his seat, and got into the house, into which I followed him with a step, you dog, as active as your own! Egad! I was twenty-one then! Two fellows had already knocked down poor Summers, and showed plenty of fight. Do you know," said the marquis, interrupting himself with an air of seriocomic humiliation—"do you know that I actually—no, you never will believe it—mind 'tis a secret—actually broke my cane over one fellow's shoulders?—look!" (and the marquis held up the fragment of the lamented weapon.) "And I half suspect, but I can't say positively, that I had even the necessity to demean myself by a blow with the naked hand—clenched too!—quite Eton again—upon my honour it was. Ha, ha!"
And the marquis, whose magnificent proportions, in the full vigour of man's strongest, if not his most combative, age, would have made him a formidable antagonist, even to a couple of prize-fighters, supposing he had retained a little of Eton skill in such encounters—laughed with the glee of a schoolboy, whether at the thought of his prowess, or his sense of the contrast between so rude a recourse to primitive warfare, and his own indolent habits, and almost feminine good temper. Composing himself, however, with the quick recollection how little I could share his hilarity, he resumed gravely, "It took us some time—I don't say to defeat our foes, but to bind them, which I thought a necessary precaution;—one fellow, Trevanion's servant, all the while stunning me with quotations from Shakspeare. I then gently laid hold of a gown, the bearer of which had been long trying to scratch me; but being luckily a small woman, had not succeeded in reaching to my eyes. But the gown escaped, and fluttered off to the kitchen. I followed, and there I found Miss Trevanion's Jezebel of a maid. She was terribly frightened, and affected to be extremely penitent. I own to you that I don't care what a man says in the way of slander, but a woman's tongue against another woman—especially if that tongue be in the mouth of a lady's lady—I think it always worth silencing; I therefore consented to pardon this woman on condition she would find her way here before morning. No scandal shall come from her. Thus you see some minutes elapsed before I joined you; but I minded that the less, as I heard you and the Captain were already in the room with Miss Trevanion; and not, alas! dreaming of your connexion with the culprit, I was wondering what could have delayed you so long,—afraid, I own it, to find that Miss Trevanion's heart might have been seduced by that—hem—hem!—handsome—young—hem—hem!—There's no fear of that?" added Lord Castleton, anxiously, as he bent his bright eyes upon mine.
I felt myself colour as I answeredfirmly, "It is just to Miss Trevanion to add that the unhappy man owned, in her presence and in mine, that he had never had the slightest encouragement for his attempt—never one cause to believe that she approved the affection, which I try to think blinded and maddened himself."
"I believe you; for I think"—Lord Castleton paused uneasily, again looked at me, rose, and walked about the room with evident agitation; then, as if he had come to some resolution, he returned to the hearth and stood facing me.
"My dear young friend," said he, with his irresistible kindly frankness, "this is an occasion that excuses all things between us, even my impertinence. Your conduct from first to last has been such, that I wish, from the bottom of my heart, that I had a daughter to offer you, and that you felt for her as I believe you feel for Miss Trevanion. These are not mere words; do not look down as if ashamed. All the marquisates in the world would never give me the pride I should feel, if I could see in my life one steady self-sacrifice to duty and honour, equal to that which I have witnessed in you."
"Oh, my lord! my lord!"
"Hear me out. That you love Fanny Trevanion, I know; that she may have innocently, timidly, half unconsciously, returned that affection, I think probable. But—"
"I know what you would say; spare me—I know it all."
"No! it is a thing impossible; and, if Lady Ellinor could consent, there would be such a life-long regret on her part, such a weight of obligation on yours, that—no, I repeat, it is impossible! But let us both think of this poor girl. I know her better than you can—have known her from a child; know all her virtues—they are charming; all her faults—they expose her to danger. These parents of hers—with their genius, and ambition—may do very well to rule England, and influence the world; but to guide the fate of that child—no!" Lord Castleton stopped, for he was affected. I felt my old jealousy return, but it was no longer bitter.
"I say nothing," continued the marquis, "of this position, in which, without fault of hers, Miss Trevanion is placed: Lady Ellinor's knowledge of the world, and woman's wit, will see how all that can be best put right. Still it is awkward, and demands much consideration. But, putting this aside altogether, if you do firmly believe that Miss Trevanion is lost to you, can you bear to think that she is to be flung as a mere cipher into the account of the worldly greatness of an aspiring politician—married to some minister, too busy to watch over her; or some duke, who looks to pay off his mortgages with her fortune—minister or duke only regarded as a prop to Trevanion's power against a counter cabal, or as giving his section a preponderance in the Cabinet? Be assured such is her most likely destiny, or rather the beginning of a destiny yet more mournful. Now, I tell you this, that he who marries Fanny Trevanion should have little other object, for the first few years of marriage, than to correct her failings and develop her virtues. Believe one who, alas! has too dearly bought his knowledge of women—hers is a character to be formed. Well, then, if this prize be lost to you, would it be an irreparable grief to your generous affection to think that it has fallen to the lot of one who at least knows his responsibilities, and who will redeem his own life, hitherto wasted, by the steadfast endeavour to fulfil them? Can you take this hand still, and press it, even though it be a rival's?"
"My lord! This from you to me, is an honour that—"
"You will not take my hand? Then believe me, it is not I that will give that grief to your heart."
Touched, penetrated, melted by this generosity in a man of such lofty claims, to one of my age and fortunes, I pressed that noble hand, half raising it to my lips—an action of respect that would have misbecome neither; but he gently withdrew the hand, in the instinct of his natural modesty. I had then no heart to speak further on such a subject, but, faltering out that I would go and see my uncle, I took up the light, and ascended the stairs. I crept noiselessly into Roland's room, and shading the light, saw that, though he slept, his face was very troubled.And then I thought, "What are my young griefs to his?" and—sitting beside the bed, communed with my own heart and was still!
At sunrise, I went down into the sitting-room, having resolved to write to my father to join us; for I felt how much Roland needed his comfort and his counsel, and it was no great distance from the old Tower. I was surprised to find Lord Castleton still seated by the fire; he had evidently not gone to bed.
"That's right," said he; "we must encourage each other to recruit nature," and he pointed to the breakfast things on the table.
I had scarcely tasted food for many hours, but I was only aware of my own hunger by a sensation of faintness. I eat unconsciously, and was almost ashamed to feel how much the food restored me.
"I suppose," said I, "that you will soon set off to Lord N——'s?"
"Nay, did I not tell you, that I have sent Summers express, with a note to Lady Ellinor, begging her to come here? I did not see, on reflection, how I could decorously accompany Miss Trevanion alone, without even a female servant, to a house full of gossiping guests. And even had your uncle been well enough to go with us, his presence would but have created an additional cause for wonder; so as soon as we arrived, and while you went up with the Captain, I wrote my letter and despatched my man. I expect Lady Ellinor will be here before nine o'clock. Meanwhile, I have already seen that infamous waiting-woman, and taken care to prevent any danger from her garrulity. And you will be pleased to hear that I have hit upon a mode of satisfying the curiosity of our friend Mrs Grundy—that is, 'The World'—without injury to any one. We must suppose that that footman of Trevanion's was out of his mind—it is but a charitable, and your good father would say, a philosophical supposition. All great knavery is madness! The world could not get on if truth and goodness were not the natural tendencies of sane minds. Do you understand?"
"Not quite."
"Why, the footman, being out of his mind, invented this mad story of Trevanion's illness, frightened Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion out of their wits with his own chimera, and hurried them both off, one after the other. I having heard from Trevanion, and knowing he could not have been ill when the servant left him, set off, as was natural in so old a friend of the family, saved her from the freaks of a maniac, who, getting more and more flighty, was beginning to play the Jack o' Lantern, and leading her, Heaven knows where! over the country;—and then wrote to Lady Ellinor to come to her. It is but a hearty laugh at our expense, and Mrs Grundy is content. If you don't want her to pity, or backbite, let her laugh. She is a she-Cerberus—she wants to eat you: well—stop her mouth with a cake."
"Yes," continued this better sort of Aristippus, so wise under all his seeming levities; "the cue thus given, everything favours it. If that rogue of a lackey quoted Shakspeare as much in the servant's hall as he did while I was binding him neck and heels in the kitchen, that's enough for all the household to declare he was moon-stricken; and if we find it necessary to do anything more, why, we must get him to go into Bedlam for a month or two. The disappearance of the waiting-woman is natural; either I or Lady Ellinor send her about her business for her folly in being so gulled by the lunatic. If that's unjust, why, injustice to servants is common enough—public and private. Neither minister nor lackey can be forgiven, if he help us into a scrape. One must vent one's passion on something. Witness my poor cane; though, indeed, a better illustration would be the cane that Louis XIV. broke on a footman, becausehis majesty was out of humour with a prince whose shoulders were too sacred for royal indignation.
"So you see," concluded Lord Castleton, lowering his voice, "that your uncle, amongst all his other causes of sorrow, may think at least that his name is spared in his son's. And the young man himself may find reform easier, when freed from that despair of the possibility of redemption, which Mrs Grundy inflicts upon those who—Courage, then; life is long!"
"My very words!" I cried; "and so repeated by you, Lord Castleton, they seem prophetic."
"Take my advice, and don't lose sight of your cousin, while his pride is yet humbled, and his heart perhaps softened. I don't say this only for his sake. No, it is your poor uncle I think of: noble old fellow. And now, I think it right to pay Lady Ellinor the respect of repairing, as well as I can, the havoc three sleepless nights have made on the exterior of a gentleman who is on the shady side of remorseless forty."
Lord Castleton here left me, and I wrote to my father, begging him to meet us at the next stage, (which was the nearest point from the high road to the Tower,) and I sent off the letter by a messenger on horseback. That task done, I leant my head upon my hand, and a profound sadness settled upon me, despite all my efforts to face the future, and think only of the duties of life—not its sorrows.