CHAPTER XIX.
Of the narrative just placed before the reader, it is clear that Leonard could gather only desultory fragments. He could but see that his ill-fated mother had been united to a man she had loved with surpassing tenderness; had been led to suspect that the marriage was fraudulent; had gone abroad in despair, returned repentant and hopeful; had gleaned some intelligence that her lover was about to be married to another, and there the manuscript closed with the blisters left on the page by agonising tears. The mournful end of Nora—her lonely return to die under the roof of her parents—this he had learned before from the narrative of Dr Morgan.
But even the name of her supposed husband was not revealed. Of him Leonard could form no conjecture, except that he was evidently of higher rank than Nora. Harley L’Estrange seemed clearly indicated in the early boy-lover. If so, he must know all that was left dark to Leonard, and to him Leonard resolved to confide the MS. With this resolution he left the cottage, resolving to return and attend the funeral obsequies of his departed friend. Mrs Goodyer willingly permitted him to take away the papers she had lent to him, and added to them the packet which had been addressed to Mrs Bertram from the Continent.
Musing in anxious gloom over the record he had read, Leonard entered London on foot, and bent his way towards Harley’s hotel; when, just as he had crossed into Bond Street, a gentleman in company with Baron Levy, and who seemed, by the flush on his brow and the sullen tone of his voice, to have had rather an irritating colloquy with the fashionable usurer, suddenly caught sight of Leonard, and, abruptly quitting Levy, seized the young man by the arm.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the gentleman, looking hard into Leonard’s face; “but unless these sharp eyes of mine are mistaken, which they seldom are, I see a nephew whom, perhaps, I behaved to rather too harshly, but who still has no right to forget Richard Avenel.”
“My dear uncle,” exclaimed Leonard, “this is indeed a joyful surprise; at a time, too, when I needed joy! No; I have never forgotten your kindness, and always regretted our estrangement.”
“That is well said; give us your fist again. Let me look at you—quite the gentleman I declare!—still so good-looking too. We Avenels always were. Good bye, Baron Levy. Need not wait for me; I am not going to run away. I shall see you again.”
“But,” whispered Levy, who had followed Avenel across the street, and eyed Leonard with a quick curious searching glance—“but it must be as I say with regard to the borough; or (to be plain) you must cash the bills on the day they are due.”
“Very well, sir—very well. So you think to put the screw upon me, as if I were a poor ten-pound householder. I understand—my money or my borough?”
“Exactly so,” said the Baron, with a soft smile.
“You shall hear from me—you shall hear from me. (Aside, as Levy strolled away)—D——d tarnation rascal!”
Dick Avenel then linked his arm in his nephew’s, and strove for some minutes to forget his own troubles, in the indulgence of that curiosity in the affairs of another which was natural to him, and, in this instance, increased by the real affection which he had felt for Leonard. But still his curiosity remained unsatisfied; for long before Leonard could overcome his habitual reluctance to speak of his success in letters, Dick’s mind wandered back to his rival at Screwstown, and the curse of “over-competition”—to the bills which Levy had discounted, in order to enable Dick to meet the crushing force of a capitalist larger than himself—and the “tarnation rascal” who now wished to obtain two seats at Lansmere, one for Randal Leslie, one for a rich Nabob whom Levy had just caught as a client; and Dick, though willing to aid Leslie, had a mind to the other seat for himself. Therefore Dick soon broke in upon the hesitating confessions of Leonard, with exclamations far from pertinent to the subject, and rather for the sake of venting his own griefs and resentment than with any idea that the sympathy or advice of his nephew could serve him.
“Well, well,” said Dick, “another time for your history. I see you have thrived, and that is enough for the present. Very odd; but just now I can only think of myself. I’m in a regular fix, sir. Screwstown is not the respectable Screwstown that you remember it—all demoralised and turned topsy-turvy by a demoniacal monster capitalist, with steam-engines that might bring the falls of Niagara into your back parlour, sir! And, as if that was not enough to destroy and drive into almighty shivers a decent fair-play Britisher like myself, I hear he is just in treaty for some patent infernal invention that will make his engines do twice as much work with half as many hands! That’s the way those unfeeling ruffians increase our poor-rates! But I’ll get up a riot against him—I will! Don’t talk to me of the law! What the devil is the good of the law if it don’t protect a man’s industry—aliberalman, too, like me!” Here Dick burst into a storm of vituperation against the rotten old country in general, and the monster capitalist of Screwstown in particular.
Leonard started; for Dick now named, in that monster capitalist, the very person who was in treaty for Leonard’s own mechanical improvement on the steam-engine.
“Stop, uncle—stop! Why, then, if this man were to buy the contrivance you speak of, it would injure you?”
“Injure me, sir! I should be a bankrupt—that is, if it succeeded; but I daresay it is all a humbug.”
“No, itwillsucceed—I’ll answer for that!”
“You! You have seen it?”
“Why, I invented it.”
Dick hastily withdrew his arm from Leonard’s.
“Serpent’s tooth!” he said, falteringly, “so it is you, whom I warmed at my hearth, who are to ruin Richard Avenel?”
“No—but to save him! Come into the city and look at my model. If you like it, the patent shall be yours!”
“Cab—cab—cab,” cried Dick Avenel, stopping a “Hansom;” “jump in, Leonard—jump in. I’ll buy your patent—that is, if it is worth a straw; and as for payment—”
“Payment! Don’t talk of that!”
“Well, I won’t,” said Dick, mildly; “for ’tis not the topic of conversation I should choose myself, just at present. And as for that black-whiskered alligator, the Baron, let me first get out of those rambustious unchristian filbert-shaped claws of his, and then—But jump in—jump in—and tell the man where to drive!”
A very brief inspection of Leonard’s invention sufficed to show Richard Avenel how invaluable it would be to him. Armed with a patent, of which the certain effects in the increase of power and diminution of labour were obvious to any practical man, Avenel felt that he should have no difficulty in obtaining such advances of money as he required, whether to alter his engines, meet the bills discounted by Levy, or carry on the war with the monster capitalist. It might be necessary to admit into partnership some other monster capitalist—What then? Any partner better than Levy. A bright idea struck him.
“If I can just terrify and whop that infernal intruder on my own ground, for a few months, he may offer, himself, to enter into partnership—make the two concerns a joint-stock friendly combination, and then we shall flog the world.”
His gratitude to Leonard became so lively that Dick offered to bring his nephew in for Lansmere instead of himself; and when Leonard declined the offer, exclaimed, “Well, then, any friend of yours; you have only to say the word at the last hour, for I am sure of both seats. I’m all for Reform against those high and mighty right honourable boroughmongers; and what with loans and mortgages on the small householders, and a long course of “free and easies,” with the independent Freemen, I carry the town of Lansmere in my breeches pocket.” Dick then, appointing an interview with Leonard at his lawyer’s, to settle the transfer of the invention, upon terms which he declared “should be honourable to both parties,” hurried off, to search amongst his friends in the city for some monster capitalist, who might be induced to extricate him from the jaws of Levy, and the engines of his rival at Screwstown. “Mullins is the man, if I can but catch him,” said Dick. “You have heard of Mullins?—A wonderful great man; you should see his nails; he never cuts them! Three millions, at least, he has scraped together with those nails of his, sir. And in this rotten old country, a man must have nails a yard long to fight with a devil like Levy! Good bye—goodbye—GOODbye, myDEARnephew!”
Harley L’Estrange was seated alone in his apartments. He had just put down a volume of some favourite classic author, and he was resting his hand firmly clenched upon the book. Ever since Harley’s return to England, there had been a perceptible change in the expression of his countenance, even in the very bearing and attitudes of his elastic youthful figure. But this change had been more marked since that last interview with Helen which has been recorded. There was a compressed resolute firmness in the lips—a decided character in the brow. To the indolent careless grace of his movements had succeeded a certain indescribable energy, as quiet and self-collected as that which distinguished the determined air of Audley Egerton himself. In fact, if you could have looked into his heart, you would have seen that Harley was, for the first time, making a strong effort over his passions and his humours; that the whole man was nerving himself to a sense of duty. “No,” he muttered—“no—I will think only of Helen; I will think only of real life! And what (were I not engaged to another) would that dark-eyed Italian girl be to me?—What a mere fool’s fancy is this! I love again—I who, through all the fair spring of my life, have clung with such faith to a memory and a grave! Come, come, come, Harley L’Estrange, act thy part as man amongst men, at last! Accept regard; dream no more of passion. Abandon false ideals. Thou art no poet—why deem that life itself can be a poem?”
The door opened, and the Austrian Prince, whom Harley had interested in the cause of Violante’s father, entered with the familiar step of a friend.
“Have you discovered those documents yet?” said the Prince. “I must now return to Vienna within a few days. And unless you can arm me with some tangible proof of Peschiera’s ancient treachery, or some more unanswerable excuse for his noble kinsman, I fear that there is no other hope for the exile’s recall to his country than what lies in the hateful option of giving his daughter to his perfidious foe.”
“Alas!” said Harley, “as yet, all researches have been in vain; and I know not what other steps to take, without arousing Peschiera’s vigilance, and setting his crafty brains at work to counteract us. My poor friend, then, must rest contented with exile. To give Violante to the Count were dishonour. But I shall soon be married; soon have a home, not quite unworthy of their due rank, to offer both to father and to child.”
“Would the future Lady L’Estrange feel no jealousy of a guest so fair as you tell me this young signorina is? And would you be in no danger yourself, my poor friend?”
“Pooh!” said Harley, colouring. “My fair guest would havetwofathers; that is all. Pray do not jest on a thing so grave as honour.”
Again the door opened, and Leonard appeared.
“Welcome,” cried Harley, pleased to be no longer alone under the Prince’s penetrating eye—“welcome. This is the noble friend who shares our interest for Riccabocca, and who could serve him so well, if we could but discover the document of which I have spoken to you.”
“It is here,” said Leonard simply; “may it be all that you require!”
Harley eagerly grasped at the packet, which had been sent from Italy to the supposed Mrs Bertram, and, leaning his face on his hand, rapidly hurried through the contents.
“Hurrah!” he cried at last, with his face lighted up, and a boyish toss of his right hand. “Look, look, Prince, here are Peschiera’s own letters to his kinsman’s wife; his avowal of what he calls his ‘patriotic designs;’ his entreaties to her to induce her husband to share them. Look, look, how he wields his influence over the woman he had once wooed; look how artfully he combats her objections; see how reluctant our friend was to stir, till wife and kinsman both united to urge him.”
“It is enough,—quite enough,” exclaimed the Prince, looking at the passages in Peschiera’s letters which Harley pointed out to him.
“No, it is not enough,” shouted Harley as he continued to read the letters with his rapid sparkling eyes. “More still! O villain, doubly damned! Here, after our friend’s flight, here, is his avowal of guilty passion; here he swears that he had intrigued to ruin his benefactor, in order to pollute the home that had sheltered him. Ah! see how she answers; thank Heaven her own eyes were opened at last, and she scorned him before she died. She was innocent! I said so. Violante’s mother was pure. Poor lady, this moves me! Has your Emperor the heart of a man?”
“I know enough of our Emperor,” answered the Prince warmly, “to know that, the moment these papers reach him, Peschiera is ruined, and your friend is restored to his honours. You will live to see the daughter, to whom you would have given a child’s place at your hearth, the wealthiest heiress of Italy—the bride of some noble lover, with rank only below the supremacy of kings!”
“Ah!” said Harley, in a sharp accent, and turning very pale—“ah, I shall not see her that! I shall never visit Italy again!—never see her more—never, after she has once quitted this climate of cold iron cares and formal duties—never, never!” He turned his head for a moment, and then came with quick step to Leonard. “But you, O happy poet! No ideal can ever be lost to you. You are independent of real life. Would I were a poet!” He smiled sadly.
“You would not say so, perhaps, my dear lord,” answered Leonard with equal sadness, “if you knew how little what you call ‘the ideal’ replaces to a poet the loss of one affection in the genial human world. Independent of real life! Alas! no. And I have here the confessions of a true poet-soul, which I will entreat you to read at leisure; and when you have read, answer if you would still be a poet!”
He took forth Nora’s MSS. as he spoke.
“Place them yonder, in mysecrétaire, Leonard; I will read them later.”
“Do so, and with heed; for to me there is much here that involves my own life—much that is still a mystery, and which I think you can unravel!”
“I!” exclaimed Harley; and he was moving towards thesecrétaire, in a drawer of which Leonard had carefully deposited the papers, when once more, but this time violently, the door was thrown open, and Giacomo rushed into the room, accompanied by Lady Lansmere.
“Oh, my lord, my lord!” cried Giacomo, in Italian, “the signorina! the signorina!—Violante!”
“What of her? Mother, mother! what of her? Speak, speak!”
“She has gone—left our house!”
“Left! No, no!” cried Giacomo, “She must have been deceived or forced away. The Count! the Count! Oh, my good lord, save her, as you once saved her father!”
“Hold!” cried Harley. “Give me your arm, mother. Asecondsuch blow in life is beyond the strength of man—at least of mine. So, so!—I am better now! Thank you, mother. Stand back, all of you—give me air. So the Count has triumphed, and Violante has fled with him! Explain all—I can bear it!”