* * * “The moonSaddening the solemn night, yet with that sadnessMingling the breath of undisturbed Peace.”WILSON: City of the Plague* * * “Tell me his fate.Say that he lives, or say that he is deadBut tell me—tell me!* * * * * *I see him not—some cloud envelopes him.”—Ibid.
One day (nearly a year after their first introduction) as with a party of friends Camilla and Charles Spencer were riding through those wild and romantic scenes which lie between the sunny Winandermere and the dark and sullen Wastwater, their conversation fell on topics more personal than it had hitherto done, for as yet, if they felt love, they had never spoken of it.
The narrowness of the path allowed only two to ride abreast, and the two to whom I confine my description were the last of the little band.
“How I wish Arthur were here!” said Camilla; “I am sure you would like him.”
“Are you? He lives much in the world—the world of which I know nothing. Are we then characters to suit each other?”
“He is the kindest—the best of human beings!” said Camilla, rather evasively, but with more warmth than usually dwelt in her soft and low voice.
“Is he so kind?” returned Spencer, musingly. “Well, it may be so. And who would not be kind to you? Ah! it is a beautiful connexion that of brother and sister—I never had a sister!”
“Have you then a brother?” asked Camilla, in some surprise, and turning her ingenuous eyes full on her companion.
Spencer’s colour rose—rose to his temples: his voice trembled as he answered, “No;—no brother!” then, speaking in a rapid and hurried tone, he continued, “My life has been a strange and lonely one. I am an orphan. I have mixed with few of my own age: my boyhood and youth have been spent in these scenes; my education such as Nature and books could bestow, with scarcely any guide or tutor save my guardian—the dear old man! Thus the world, the stir of cities, ambition, enterprise,—all seem to me as things belonging to a distant land to which I shall never wander. Yet I have had my dreams, Miss Beaufort; dreams of which these solitudes still form a part—but solitudes not unshared. And lately I have thought that those dreams might be prophetic. And you—do you love the world?”
“I, like you, have scarcely tried it,” said Camilla, with a sweet laugh. “but I love the country better,—oh! far better than what little I have seen of towns. But for you,” she continued with a charming hesitation, “a man is so different from us,—for you to shrink from the world—you, so young and with talents too—nay, it is true!—it seems to me strange.”
“It may be so, but I cannot tell you what feelings of dread—what vague forebodings of terror seize me if I carry my thoughts beyond these retreats. Perhaps my good guardian—”
“Your uncle?” interrupted Camilla.
“Ay, my uncle—may have contributed to engender feelings, as you say, strange at my age; but still—”
“Still what!”
“My earlier childhood,” continued Spencer, breathing hard and turning pale, “was not spent in the happy home I have now; it was passed in a premature ordeal of suffering and pain. Its recollections have left a dark shadow on my mind, and under that shadow lies every thought that points towards the troublous and labouring career of other men. But,” he resumed after a pause, and in a deep, earnest, almost solemn voice,—“but after all, is this cowardice or wisdom? I find no monotony—no tedium in this quiet life. Is there not a certain morality—a certain religion in the spirit of a secluded and country existence? In it we do not know the evil passions which ambition and strife are said to arouse. I never feel jealous or envious of other men; I never know what it is to hate; my boat, my horse, our garden, music, books, and, if I may dare to say so, the solemn gladness that comes from the hopes of another life,—these fill up every hour with thoughts and pursuits, peaceful, happy, and without a cloud, till of late, when—when—”
“When what?” said Camilla, innocently.
“When I have longed, but did not dare to ask another, if to share such a lot would content her!”
He bent, as he spoke, his soft blue eyes full upon the blushing face of her whom he addressed, and Camilla half smiled and half sighed:
“Our companions are far before us,” said she, turning away her face, “and see, the road is now smooth.” She quickened her horse’s pace as she said this; and Spencer, too new to women to interpret favourably her evasion of his words and looks, fell into a profound silence which lasted during the rest of their excursion.
As towards the decline of day he bent his solitary way home, emotions and passions to which his life had hitherto been a stranger, and which, alas! he had vainly imagined a life so tranquil would everlastingly restrain, swelled his heart.
“She does not love me,” he muttered, half aloud; “she will leave me, and what then will all the beauty of the landscape seem in my eyes? And how dare I look up to her? Even if her cold, vain mother—her father, the man, they say, of forms and scruples, were to consent, would they not question closely of my true birth and origin? And if the one blot were overlooked, is there no other? His early habits and vices, his?—a brother’s—his unknown career terminating at any day, perhaps, in shame, in crime, in exposure, in the gibbet,—will they overlook this?” As he spoke, he groaned aloud, and, as if impatient to escape himself, spurred on his horse and rested not till he reached the belt of trim and sober evergreens that surrounded his hitherto happy home.
Leaving his horse to find its way to the stables, the young man passed through rooms, which he found deserted, to the lawn on the other side, which sloped to the smooth waters of the lake.
Here, seated under the one large tree that formed the pride of the lawn, over which it cast its shadow broad and far, he perceived his guardian poring idly over an oft-read book, one of those books of which literary dreamers are apt to grow fanatically fond—books by the old English writers, full of phrases and conceits half quaint and half sublime, interspersed with praises of the country, imbued with a poetical rather than orthodox religion, and adorned with a strange mixture of monastic learning and aphorisms collected from the weary experience of actual life.
To the left, by a greenhouse, built between the house and the lake, might be seen the white dress and lean form of the eldest spinster sister, to whom the care of the flowers—for she had been early crossed in love—was consigned; at a little distance from her, the other two were seated at work, and conversing in whispers, not to disturb their studious brother, no doubt upon the nephew, who was their all in all. It was the calmest hour of eve, and the quiet of the several forms, their simple and harmless occupations—if occupations they might be called—the breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,—all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in the temper to woo CONTENT.
The young man glided to his guardian and touched his shoulder,—“Sir, may I speak to you?—Hush! they need not see us now! it is only you I would speak with.”
The elder Spencer rose; and, with his book still in his hand, moved side by side with his nephew under the shadow of the tree and towards a walk to the right, which led for a short distance along the margin of the lake, backed by the interlaced boughs of a thick copse.
“Sir!” said the young man, speaking first, and with a visible effort, “your cautions have been in vain! I love this girl—this daughter of the haughty Beauforts! I love her—better than life I love her!”
“My poor boy,” said the uncle tenderly, and with a simple fondness passing his arm over the speaker’s shoulder, “do not think I can chide you—I know what it is to love in vain!”
“In vain!—but why in vain?” exclaimed the younger Spencer, with a vehemence that had in it something of both agony and fierceness. “She may love me—she shall love me!” and almost for the first time in his life, the proud consciousness of his rare gifts of person spoke in his kindled eye and dilated stature. “Do they not say that Nature has been favourable to me?—What rival have I here?—Is she not young?—And (sinking his voice till it almost breathed like music) is not love contagious?”
“I do not doubt that she may love you—who would not?—but—but—the parents, will they ever consent?”
“Nay!” answered the lover, as with that inconsistency common to passion, he now argued stubbornly against those fears in another to which he had just before yielded in himself,—“Nay!—after all, am I not of their own blood?—Do I not come from the elder branch?—Was I not reared in equal luxury and with higher hopes?—And my mother—my poor mother—did she not to the last maintain our birthright—her own honour?—Has not accident or law unjustly stripped us of our true station?—Is it not for us to forgive spoliation?—Am I not, in fact, the person who descends, who forgets the wrongs of the dead—the heritage of the living?”
The young man had never yet assumed this tone—had never yet shown that he looked back to the history connected with his birth with the feelings of resentment and the remembrance of wrong. It was a tone contrary to his habitual calm and contentment—it struck forcibly on his listener—and the elder Spencer was silent for some moments before he replied, “If you feel thus (and it is natural), you have yet stronger reason to struggle against this unhappy affection.”
“I have been conscious of that, sir,” replied the young man, mournfully. “I have struggled!—and I say again it is in vain! I turn, then, to face the obstacles! My birth—let us suppose that the Beauforts overlook it. Did you not tell me that Mr. Beaufort wrote to inform you of the abrupt and intemperate visit of my brother—of his determination never to forgive it? I think I remember something of this years ago.”
“It is true!” said the guardian; “and the conduct of that brother is, in fact, the true cause why you never ought to reassume your proper name!—never to divulge it, even to the family with whom you connect yourself by marriage; but, above all, to the Beauforts, who for that cause, if that cause alone, would reject your suit.”
The young man groaned—placed one hand before his eyes, and with the other grasped his guardian’s arm convulsively, as if to check him from proceeding farther; but the good man, not divining his meaning, and absorbed in his subject, went on, irritating the wound he had touched.
“Reflect!—your brother in boyhood—in the dying hours of his mother, scarcely saved from the crime of a thief, flying from a friendly pursuit with a notorious reprobate; afterwards implicated in some discreditable transaction about a horse, rejecting all—every hand that could save him, clinging by choice to the lowest companions and the meanest-habits, disappearing from the country, and last seen, ten years ago—the beard not yet on his chin—with that same reprobate of whom I have spoken, in Paris; a day or so only before his companion, a coiner—a murderer—fell by the hands of the police! You remember that when, in your seventeenth year, you evinced some desire to retake your name—nay, even to re-find that guilty brother—I placed before you, as a sad and terrible duty, the newspaper that contained the particulars of the death and the former adventures of that wretched accomplice, the notorious Gawtrey. And,—telling you that Mr. Beaufort had long since written to inform me that his own son and Lord Lilburne had seen your brother in company with the miscreant just before his fate—nay, was, in all probability, the very youth described in the account as found in his chamber and escaping the pursuit—I asked you if you would now venture to leave that disguise—that shelter under which you would for ever be safe from the opprobrium of the world—from the shame that, sooner or later, your brother must bring upon your name!”
“It is true—it is true!” said the pretended nephew, in a tone of great anguish, and with trembling lips which the blood had forsaken. “Horrible to look either to his past or his future! But—but—we have heard of him no more—no one ever has learned his fate. Perhaps—perhaps” (and he seemed to breathe more freely)—“my brother is no more!”
And poor Catherine—and poor Philip—-had it come to this? Did the one brother feel a sentiment of release, of joy, in conjecturing the death—perhaps the death of violence and shame—of his fellow-orphan? Mr. Spencer shook his head doubtingly, but made no reply. The young man sighed heavily, and strode on for several paces in advance of his protector, then, turning back, he laid his hand on his shoulder.
“Sir,” he said in a low voice and with downcast eyes, “you are right: this disguise—this false name—must be for ever borne! Why need the Beauforts, then, ever know who and what I am? Why not as your nephew—nephew to one so respected and exemplary—proffer my claims and plead my cause?”
“They are proud—so it is said—and worldly;—you know my family was in trade—still—but—” and here Mr. Spencer broke off from a tone of doubt into that of despondency, “but, recollect, though Mrs. Beaufort may not remember the circumstance, both her husband and her son have seen me—have known my name. Will they not suspect, when once introduced to you, the stratagem that has been adopted?—Nay, has it not been from that very fear that you have wished me to shun the acquaintance of the family? Both Mr. Beaufort and Arthur saw you in childhood, and their suspicion once aroused, they may recognise you at once; your features are developed, but not altogether changed. Come, come!—my adopted, my dear son, shake off this fantasy betimes: let us change the scene: I will travel with you—read with you—go where—”
“Sir—sir!” exclaimed the lover, smiting his breast, “you are ever kind, compassionate, generous; but do not—do not rob me of hope. I have never—thanks to you—felt, save in a momentary dejection, the curse of my birth. Now how heavily it falls! Where shall I look for comfort?”
As he spoke, the sound of a bell broke over the translucent air and the slumbering lake: it was the bell that every eve and morn summoned that innocent and pious family to prayer. The old man’s face changed as he heard it—changed from its customary indolent, absent, listless aspect, into an expression of dignity, even of animation.
“Hark!” he said, pointing upwards; “Hark! it chides you. Who shall say, ‘Where shall I look for comfort’ while God is in the heavens?”
The young man, habituated to the faith and observance of religion, till they had pervaded his whole nature, bowed his head in rebuke; a few tears stole from his eyes.
“You are right, father—,” he said tenderly, giving emphasis to the deserved and endearing name. “I am comforted already!”
So, side by side, silently and noiselessly, the young and the old man glided back to the house. When they gained the quiet room in which the family usually assembled, the sisters and servants were already gathered round the table. They knelt as the loiterers entered. It was the wonted duty of the younger Spencer to read the prayers; and, as he now did so, his graceful countenance more hushed, his sweet voice more earnest than usual, in its accents: who that heard could have deemed the heart within convulsed by such stormy passions? Or was it not in that hour—that solemn commune—soothed from its woe? O beneficent Creator! thou who inspirest all the tribes of earth with the desire to pray, hast Thou not, in that divinest instinct, bestowed on us the happiest of Thy gifts?
“Bertram. I mean the business is not ended, as fearing to hear ofit hereafter.“1st Soldier. Do you know this Captain Dumain?”All’s Well that Ends Well.
One evening, some weeks after the date of the last chapter, Mr. Robert Beaufort sat alone in his house in Berkeley Square. He had arrived that morning from Beaufort Court, on his way to Winandermere, to which he was summoned by a letter from his wife. That year was an agitated and eventful epoch in England; and Mr. Beaufort had recently gone through the bustle of an election—not, indeed, contested; for his popularity and his property defied all rivalry in his own county.
The rich man had just dined, and was seated in lazy enjoyment by the side of the fire, which he had had lighted, less for the warmth—though it was then September—than for the companionship;—engaged in finishing his madeira, and, with half-closed eyes, munching his devilled biscuits. “I am sure,” he soliloquised while thus employed, “I don’t know exactly what to do,—my wife ought to decide matters where the girl is concerned; a son is another affair—that’s the use of a wife. Humph!”
“Sir,” said a fat servant, opening the door, “a gentleman wishes to see you upon very particular business.”
“Business at this hour! Tell him to go to Mr. Blackwell.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stay! perhaps he is a constituent, Simmons. Ask him if he belongs to the county.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“A great estate is a great plague,” muttered Mr. Beaufort; “so is a great constituency. It is pleasanter, after all, to be in the House of Lords. I suppose I could if I wished; but then one must rat—that’s a bore. I will consult Lilburne. Humph!”
The servant re-appeared. “Sir, he says he does belong to the county.”
“Show him in!—What sort of a person?”
“A sort of gentleman, sir; that is,” continued the butler, mindful of five shillings just slipped within his palm by the stranger, “quite the gentleman.”
“More wine, then—stir up the fire.”
In a few moments the visitor was ushered into the apartment. He was a man between fifty and sixty, but still aiming at the appearance of youth. His dress evinced military pretensions; consisting of a blue coat, buttoned up to the chin, a black stock, loose trousers of the fashion called Cossacks, and brass spurs. He wore a wig, of great luxuriance in curl and rich auburn in hue; with large whiskers of the same colour slightly tinged with grey at the roots. By the imperfect light of the room it was not perceptible that the clothes were somewhat threadbare, and that the boots, cracked at the side, admitted glimpses of no very white hosiery within. Mr. Beaufort, reluctantly rising from his repose and gladly sinking back to it, motioned to a chair, and put on a doleful and doubtful semi-smile of welcome. The servant placed the wine and glasses before the stranger;—the host and visitor were alone.
“So, sir,” said Mr. Beaufort, languidly, “you are from ———shire; I suppose about the canal,—may I offer you a glass of wine?”
“Most hauppy, sir—your health!” and the stranger, with evident satisfaction, tossed off a bumper to so complimentary a toast.
“About the canal?” repeated Mr. Beaufort.
“No, sir, no! You parliament gentlemen must hauve a vaust deal of trouble on your haunds—very foine property I understaund yours is, sir. Sir, allow me to drink the health of your good lady!”
“I thank you, Mr.—, Mr.—, what did you say your name was?—I beg you a thousand pardons.”
“No offaunce in the least, sir; no ceremony with me—this is perticler good madeira!”
“May I ask how I can serve you?” said Mr. Beaufort, struggling between the sense of annoyance and the fear to be uncivil. “And pray, had I the honour of your vote in the last election!”
“No, sir, no! It’s mauny years since I have been in your part of the world, though I was born there.”
“Then I don’t exactly see—” began Mr. Beaufort, and stopped with dignity.
“Why I call on you,” put in the stranger, tapping his boots with his cane; and then recognising the rents, he thrust both feet under the table.
“I don’t say that; but at this hour I am seldom at leisure—not but what I am always at the service of a constituent, that is, a voter! Mr.—, I beg your pardon, I did not catch your name.”
“Sir,” said the stranger, helping himself to a third glass of wine; “here’s a health to your young folk! And now to business.” Here the visitor, drawing his chair nearer to his host, assuming a more grave aspect, and dropping something of his stilted pronunciation, continued, “You had a brother?”
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Beaufort, with a very changed countenance.
“And that brother had a wife!”
Had a cannon gone off in the ear of Mr. Robert Beaufort, it could not have shocked or stunned him more than that simple word with which his companion closed his sentence. He fell back in his chair—his lips apart, his eyes fixed on the stranger. He sought to speak, but his tongue clove to his mouth.
“That wife had two sons, born in wedlock!”
“It is false!” cried Mr. Beaufort, finding a voice at length, and springing to his feet. “And who are you, sir? and what do you mean by—”
“Hush!” said the stranger, perfectly unconcerned, and regaining the dignity of his haw-haw enunciation, “better not let the servants hear aunything. For my pawt, I think servants hauve the longest pair of ears of auny persons, not excepting jauckasses; their ears stretch from the pauntry to the parlour. Hush, sir!—perticler good madeira, this!”
“Sir!” said Mr. Beaufort, struggling to preserve, or rather recover, his temper, “your conduct is exceedingly strange; but allow me to say that you are wholly misinformed. My brother never did marry; and if you have anything to say on behalf of those young men—his natural sons—I refer you to my solicitor, Mr. Blackwell, of Lincoln’s Inn. I wish you a good evening.”
“Sir!—the same to you—I won’t trouble you auny farther; it was only out of koindness I called—I am not used to be treated so—sir, I am in his maujesty’s service—sir, you will foind that the witness of the marriage is forthcoming; you will think of me then, and, perhaps, be sorry. But I’ve done, ‘Your most obedient humble, sir!’” And the stranger, with a flourish of his hand, turned to the door. At the sight of this determination on the part of his strange guest, a cold, uneasy, vague presentiment seized Mr. Beaufort. There, not flashed, but rather froze, across him the recollection of his brother’s emphatic but disbelieved assurances—of Catherine’s obstinate assertion of her son’s alleged rights—rights which her lawsuit, undertaken on her own behalf, had not compromised;—a fresh lawsuit might be instituted by the son, and the evidence which had been wanting in the former suit might be found at last. With this remembrance and these reflections came a horrible train of shadowy fears,—witnesses, verdict, surrender, spoliation—arrears—ruin!
The man, who had gained the door, turned back and looked at him with a complacent, half-triumphant leer upon his impudent, reckless face.
“Sir,” then said Mr. Beaufort, mildly, “I repeat that you had better see Mr. Blackwell.”
The tempter saw his triumph. “I have a secret to communicate which it is best for you to keep snug. How mauny people do you wish me to see about it? Come, sir, there is no need of a lawyer; or, if you think so, tell him yourself. Now or never, Mr. Beaufort.”
“I can have no objection to hear anything you have to say, sir,” said the rich man, yet more mildly than before; and then added, with a forced smile, “though my rights are already too confirmed to admit of a doubt.”
Without heeding the last assertion, the stranger coolly walked back, resumed his seat, and, placing both arms on the table and looking Mr. Beaufort full in the face, thus proceeded,—
“Sir, of the marriage between Philip Beaufort and Catherine Morton there were two witnesses: the one is dead, the other went abroad—the last is alive still!”
“If so,” said Mr. Beaufort, who, not naturally deficient in cunning and sense, felt every faculty now prodigiously sharpened, and was resolved to know the precise grounds for alarm,—“if so, why did not the man—it was a servant, sir, a man-servant, whom Mrs. Morton pretended to rely on—appear on the trial?”
“Because, I say, he was abroad and could not be found; or, the search after him miscaurried, from clumsy management and a lack of the rhino.”
“Hum!” said Mr. Beaufort—“one witness—one witness, observe, there is only one!—does not alarm me much. It is not what a man deposes, it is what a jury believe, sir! Moreover, what has become of the young men? They have never been heard of for years. They are probably dead; if so, I am heir-at-law!”
“I know where one of them is to be found at all events.”
“The elder?—Philip?” asked Mr. Beaufort anxiously, and with a fearful remembrance of the energetic and vehement character prematurely exhibited by his nephew.
“Pawdon me! I need not aunswer that question.”
“Sir! a lawsuit of this nature, against one in possession, is very doubtful, and,” added the rich man, drawing himself up—“and, perhaps very expensive!”
“The young man I speak of does not want friends, who will not grudge the money.”
“Sir!” said Mr. Beaufort, rising and placing his back to the fire—“sir! what is your object in this communication? Do you come, on the part of the young man, to propose a compromise? If so, be plain!”
“I come on my own pawt. It rests with you to say if the young men shall never know it!”
“And what do you want?”
“Five hundred a year as long as the secret is kept.”
“And how can you prove that there is a secret, after all?”
“By producing the witness if you wish.”
“Will he go halves in the L500. a year?” asked Mr. Beaufort artfully.
“That is moy affair, sir,” replied the stranger.
“What you say,” resumed Mr. Beaufort, “is so extraordinary—so unexpected, and still, to me, seems so improbable, that I must have time to consider. If you will call on me in a week, and produce your facts, I will give you my answer. I am not the man, sir, to wish to keep any one out of his true rights, but I will not yield, on the other hand, to imposture.”
“If you don’t want to keep them out of their rights, I’d best go and tell my young gentlemen,” said the stranger, with cool impudence.
“I tell you I must have time,” repeated Beaufort, disconcerted. “Besides, I have not myself alone to look to, sir,” he added, with dignified emphasis—“I am a father!”
“This day week I will call on you again. Good evening, Mr. Beaufort!”
And the man stretched out his hand with an air of amicable condescension. The respectable Mr. Beaufort changed colour, hesitated, and finally suffered two fingers to be enticed into the grasp of the visitor, whom he ardently wished at that bourne whence no visitor returns.
The stranger smiled, stalked to the door, laid his finger on his lip, winked knowingly, and vanished, leaving Mr. Beaufort a prey to such feelings of uneasiness, dread, and terror, as may be experienced by a man whom, on some inch or two of slippery rock, the tides have suddenly surrounded.
He remained perfectly still for some moments, and then glancing round the dim and spacious room, his eyes took in all the evidences of luxury and wealth which it betrayed. Above the huge sideboard, that on festive days groaned beneath the hoarded weight of the silver heirlooms of the Beauforts, hung, in its gilded frame, a large picture of the family seat, with the stately porticoes—the noble park—the groups of deer; and around the wall, interspersed here and there with ancestral portraits of knight and dame, long since gathered to their rest, were placed masterpieces of the Italian and Flemish art, which generation after generation had slowly accumulated, till the Beaufort Collection had become the theme of connoisseurs and the study of young genius.
The still room, the dumb pictures—even the heavy sideboard seemed to gain voice, and speak to him audibly. He thrust his hand into the folds of his waistcoat, and griped his own flesh convulsively; then, striding to and fro the apartment, he endeavoured to re-collect his thoughts.
“I dare not consult Mrs. Beaufort,” he muttered; “no—no,—she is a fool! Besides, she’s not in the way. No time to lose—I will go to Lilburne.”
Scarce had that thought crossed him than he hastened to put it into execution. He rang for his hat and gloves and sallied out on foot to Lord Lilburne’s house in Park Lane,—the distance was short, and impatience has long strides.
He knew Lord Lilburne was in town, for that personage loved London for its own sake; and even in September he would have said with the old Duke of Queensberry, when some one observed that London was very empty—“Yes; but it is fuller than the country.”
Mr. Beaufort found Lord Lilburne reclined on a sofa, by the open window of his drawing-room, beyond which the early stars shone upon the glimmering trees and silver turf of the deserted park. Unlike the simple dessert of his respectable brother-in-law, the costliest fruits, the richest wines of France, graced the small table placed beside his sofa; and as the starch man of forms and method entered the room at one door, a rustling silk, that vanished through the aperture of another, seemed to betray tokens of a tete-a-tete, probably more agreeable to Lilburne than the one with which only our narrative is concerned.
It would have been a curious study for such men as love to gaze upon the dark and wily features of human character, to have watched the contrast between the reciter and the listener, as Beaufort, with much circumlocution, much affected disdain and real anxiety, narrated the singular and ominous conversation between himself and his visitor.
The servant, in introducing Mr. Beaufort, had added to the light of the room; and the candles shone full on the face and form of Mr. Beaufort. All about that gentleman was so completely in unison with the world’s forms and seemings, that there was something moral in the very sight of him! Since his accession of fortune he had grown less pale and less thin; the angles in his figure were filled up. On his brow there was no trace of younger passion. No able vice had ever sharpened the expression—no exhausting vice ever deepened the lines. He was the beau-ideal of a county member,—so sleek, so staid, so business-like; yet so clean, so neat, so much the gentleman. And now there was a kind of pathos in his grey hairs, his nervous smile, his agitated hands, his quick and uneasy transition of posture, the tremble of his voice. He would have appeared to those who saw, but heard not, The Good Man in trouble. Cold, motionless, speechless, seemingly apathetic, but in truth observant, still reclined on the sofa, his head thrown back, but one eye fixed on his companion, his hands clasped before him, Lord Lilburne listened; and in that repose, about his face, even about his person, might be read the history of how different a life and character! What native acuteness in the stealthy eye! What hardened resolve in the full nostril and firm lips! What sardonic contempt for all things in the intricate lines about the mouth. What animal enjoyment of all things so despised in that delicate nervous system, which, combined with original vigour of constitution, yet betrayed itself in the veins on the hands and temples, the occasional quiver of the upper lip! His was the frame above all others the most alive to pleasure—deep-chested, compact, sinewy, but thin to leanness—delicate in its texture and extremities, almost to effeminacy. The indifference of the posture, the very habit of the dress—not slovenly, indeed, but easy, loose, careless—seemed to speak of the man’s manner of thought and life—his profound disdain of externals.
Not till Beaufort had concluded did Lord Lilburne change his position or open his lips; and then, turning to his brother-in-law his calm face, he said drily,—
“I always thought your brother had married that woman; he was the sort of man to do it. Besides, why should she have gone to law without a vestige of proof, unless she was convinced of her rights? Imposture never proceeds without some evidence. Innocence, like a fool as it is, fancies it has only to speak to be believed. But there is no cause for alarm.”
“No cause!—And yet you think there was a marriage.”
“It is quite clear,” continued Lilburne, without heeding this interruption; “that the man, whatever his evidence, has not got sufficient proofs. If he had, he would go to the young men rather than you: it is evident that they would promise infinitely larger rewards than he could expect from yourself. Men are always more generous with what they expect than with what they have. All rogues know this. ‘Tis the way Jews and usurers thrive upon heirs rather than possessors; ‘tis the philosophy of post-obits. I dare say the man has found out the real witness of the marriage, but ascertained, also, that the testimony of that witness would not suffice to dispossess you. He might be discredited—rich men have a way sometimes of discrediting poor witnesses. Mind, he says nothing of the lost copy of the register—whatever may be the value of that document, which I am not lawyer enough to say—of any letters of your brother avowing the marriage. Consider, the register itself is destroyed—the clergyman dead. Pooh! make yourself easy.”
“True,” said Mr. Beaufort, much comforted; “what a memory you have!”
“Naturally. Your wife is my sister—I hate poor relations—and I was therefore much interested in your accession and your lawsuit. No—you may feel—at rest on this matter, so far as a successful lawsuit is concerned. The next question is, Will you have a lawsuit at all? and is it worth while buying this fellow? That I can’t say unless I see him myself.”
“I wish to Heaven you would!”
“Very willingly: ‘tis a sort of thing I like—I’m fond of dealing with rogues—it amuses me. This day week? I’ll be at your house—your proxy; I shall do better than Blackwell. And since you say you are wanted at the Lakes, go down, and leave all to me.”
“A thousand thanks. I can’t say how grateful I am. You certainly are the kindest and cleverest person in the world.”
“You can’t think worse of the world’s cleverness and kindness than I do,” was Lilburne’s rather ambiguous answer to the compliment. “But why does my sister want to see you?”
“Oh, I forgot!—here is her letter. I was going to ask your advice in this too.”
Lord Lilburne took the letter, and glanced over it with the rapid eye of a man accustomed to seize in everything the main gist and pith.
“An offer to my pretty niece—Mr. Spencer—requires no fortune—his uncle will settle all his own—(poor silly old man!) All! Why that’s only L1000. a year. You don’t think much of this, eh? How my sister can even ask you about it puzzles me.”
“Why, you see, Lilburne,” said Mr. Beaufort, rather embarrassed, “there is no question of fortune—nothing to go out of the family; and, really, Arthur is so expensive, and, if she were to marry well, I could not give her less than fifteen or twenty thousand pounds.”
“Aha!—I see—every man to his taste: here a daughter—there a dowry. You are devilish fond of money, Beaufort. Any pleasure in avarice,—eh?”
Mr. Beaufort coloured very much at the remark and the question, and, forcing a smile, said,—
“You are severe. But you don’t know what it is to be father to a young man.”
“Then a great many young women have told me sad fibs! But you are right in your sense of the phrase. No, I never had an heir apparent, thank Heaven! No children imposed upon me by law—natural enemies, to count the years between the bells that ring for their majority, and those that will toll for my decease. It is enough for me that I have a brother and a sister—that my brother’s son will inherit my estates—and that, in the meantime, he grudges me every tick in that clock. What then? If he had been my uncle, I had done the same. Meanwhile, I see as little of him as good breeding will permit. On the face of a rich man’s heir is written the rich man’s memento mori! But revenons a nos moutons. Yes, if you give your daughter no fortune, your death will be so much the more profitable to Arthur!”
“Really, you take such a very odd view of the matter,” said Mr. Beaufort, exceedingly shocked. “But I see you don’t like the marriage; perhaps you are right.”
“Indeed, I have no choice in the matter; I never interfere between father and children. If I had children myself, I will, however, tell you, for your comfort, that they might marry exactly as they pleased—I would never thwart them. I should be too happy to get them out of my way. If they married well, one would have all the credit; if ill, one would have an excuse to disown them. As I said before, I dislike poor relations. Though if Camilla lives at the Lakes when she is married, it is but a letter now and then; and that’s your wife’s trouble, not yours. But, Spencer—what Spencer!—what family? Was there not a Mr. Spencer who lived at Winandermere—who——”
“Who went with us in search of these boys, to be sure. Very likely the same—nay, he must be so. I thought so at the first.”
“Go down to the Lakes to-morrow. You may hear something about your nephews;” at that word Mr. Beaufort winced.
“‘Tis well to be forearmed.”
“Many thanks for all your counsel,” said Beaufort, rising, and glad to escape; for though both he and his wife held the advice of Lord Lilburne in the highest reverence, they always smarted beneath the quiet and careless stings which accompanied the honey. Lord Lilburne was singular in this,—he would give to any one who asked it, but especially a relation, the best advice in his power; and none gave better, that is, more worldly advice. Thus, without the least benevolence, he was often of the greatest service; but he could not help mixing up the draught with as much aloes and bitter-apple as possible. His intellect delighted in exhibiting itself even gratuitously. His heart equally delighted in that only cruelty which polished life leaves to its tyrants towards their equals,—thrusting pins into the feelings and breaking self-love upon the wheel. But just as Mr. Beaufort had drawn on his gloves and gained the doorway, a thought seemed to strike Lord Lilburne:
“By the by,” he said, “you understand that when I promised I would try and settle the matter for you, I only meant that I would learn the exact causes you have for alarm on the one hand, or for a compromise with this fellow on the other. If the last be advisable you are aware that I cannot interfere. I might get into a scrape; and Beaufort Court is not my property.”
“I don’t quite understand you.”
“I am plain enough, too. If there is money to be given it is given in order to defeat what is called justice—to keep these nephews of yours out of their inheritance. Now, should this ever come to light, it would have an ugly appearance. They who risk the blame must be the persons who possess the estate.”
“If you think it dishonourable or dishonest—” said Beaufort, irresolutely.
“I! I never can advise as to the feelings; I can only advise as to the policy. If you don’t think there ever was a marriage, it may, still, be honest in you to prevent the bore of a lawsuit.”
“But if he can prove to me that they were married?”
“Pooh!” said Lilburne, raising his eyebrows with a slight expression of contemptuous impatience; “it rests on yourself whether or not he prove it to YOUR satisfaction! For my part, as a third person, I am persuaded the marriage did take place. But if I had Beaufort Court, my convictions would be all the other way. You understand. I am too happy to serve you. But no man can be expected to jeopardise his character, or coquet with the law, unless it be for his own individual interest. Then, of course, he must judge for himself. Adieu! I expect some friends foreigners—Carlists—to whist. You won’t join them?”
“I never play, you know. You will write to me at Winandermere: and, at all events, you will keep off the man till I return?”
“Certainly.”
Beaufort, whom the latter part of the conversation had comforted far less than the former, hesitated, and turned the door-handle three or four times; but, glancing towards his brother-in-law, he saw in that cold face so little sympathy in the struggle between interest and conscience, that he judged it best to withdraw at once.
As soon as he was gone, Lilburne summoned his valet, who had lived with him many years, and who was his confidant in all the adventurous gallantries with which he still enlivened the autumn of his life.
“Dykeman,” said he, “you have let out that lady?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I am not at home if she calls again. She is stupid; she cannot get the girl to come to her again. I shall trust you with an adventure, Dykeman—an adventure that will remind you of our young days, man. This charming creature—I tell you she is irresistible—her very oddities bewitch me. You must—well, you look uneasy. What would you say?”
“My lord, I have found out more about her—and—and——”
“Well, well.”
The valet drew near and whispered something in his master’s ear.
“They are idiots who say it, then,” answered Lilburne. “And,” faltered the man, with the shame of humanity on his face, “she is not worthy your lordship’s notice—a poor—”
“Yes, I know she is poor; and, for that reason, there can be no difficulty, if the thing is properly managed. You never, perhaps, heard of a certain Philip, king of Macedon; but I will tell you what he once said, as well as I can remember it: ‘Lead an ass with a pannier of gold; send the ass through the gates of a city, and all the sentinels will run away.’ Poor!—where there is love, there is charity also, Dykeman. Besides—”
Here Lilburne’s countenance assumed a sudden aspect of dark and angry passion,—he broke off abruptly, rose, and paced the room, muttering to himself. Suddenly he stopped, and put his hand to his hip, as an expression of pain again altered the character of his face.
“The limb pains me still! Dykeman—I was scarce twenty-one—when I became a cripple for life.” He paused, drew a long breath, smiled, rubbed his hands gently, and added: “Never fear—you shall be the ass; and thus Philip of Macedon begins to fill the pannier.” And he tossed his purse into the hands of the valet, whose face seemed to lose its anxious embarrassment at the touch of the gold. Lilburne glanced at him with a quiet sneer: “Go!—I will give you my orders when I undress.”
“Yes!” he repeated to himself, “the limb pains me still. But he died!—shot as a man would shoot a jay or a polecat!
“I have the newspaper still in that drawer. He died an outcast—a felon—a murderer! And I blasted his name—and I seduced his mistress—and I—am John Lord Lilburne!”
About ten o’clock, some half-a-dozen of those gay lovers of London, who, like Lilburne, remain faithful to its charms when more vulgar worshippers desert its sunburnt streets—mostly single men—mostly men of middle age—dropped in. And soon after came three or four high-born foreigners, who had followed into England the exile of the unfortunate Charles X. Their looks, at once proud and sad—their moustaches curled downward—their beards permitted to grow—made at first a strong contrast with the smooth gay Englishmen. But Lilburne, who was fond of French society, and who, when he pleased, could be courteous and agreeable, soon placed the exiles at their ease; and, in the excitement of high play, all differences of mood and humour speedily vanished. Morning was in the skies before they sat down to supper.
“You have been very fortunate to-night, milord,” said one of the Frenchmen, with an envious tone of congratulation.
“But, indeed,” said another, who, having been several times his host’s partner, had won largely, “you are the finest player, milord, I ever encountered.”
“Always excepting Monsieur Deschapelles and—,” replied Lilburne, indifferently. And, turning the conversation, he asked one of the guests why he had not introduced him to a French officer of merit and distinction; “With whom,” said Lord Lilburne, “I understand that you are intimate, and of whom I hear your countrymen very often speak.”
“You mean De Vaudemont. Poor fellow!” said a middle-aged Frenchman, of a graver appearance than the rest.
“But why ‘poor fellow!’ Monsieur de Liancourt?”
“He was rising so high before the revolution. There was not a braver officer in the army. But he is but a soldier of fortune, and his career is closed.”
“Till the Bourbons return,” said another Carlist, playing with his moustache.
“You will really honour me much by introducing me to him,” said Lord Lilburne. “De Vaudemont—it is a good name,—perhaps, too, he plays at whist.”
“But,” observed one of the Frenchmen, “I am by no means sure that he has the best right in the world to the name. ‘Tis a strange story.”
“May I hear it?” asked the host.
“Certainly. It is briefly this: There was an old Vicomte de Vaudemont about Paris; of good birth, but extremely poor—a mauvais sujet. He had already had two wives, and run through their fortunes. Being old and ugly, and men who survive two wives having a bad reputation among marriageable ladies at Paris, he found it difficult to get a third. Despairing of the noblesse he went among the bourgeoisie with that hope. His family were kept in perpetual fear of a ridiculous mesalliance. Among these relations was Madame de Merville, whom you may have heard of.”
“Madame de Merville! Ah, yes! Handsome, was she not?”
“It is true. Madame de Merville, whose failing was pride, was known more than once to have bought off the matrimonial inclinations of the amorous vicomte. Suddenly there appeared in her circles a very handsome young man. He was presented formally to her friends as the son of the Vicomte de Vaudemont by his second marriage with an English lady, brought up in England, and now for the first time publicly acknowledged. Some scandal was circulated—”
“Sir,” interrupted Monsieur de Liancourt, very gravely, “the scandal was such as all honourable men must stigmatise and despise—it was only to be traced to some lying lackey—a scandal that the young man was already the lover of a woman of stainless reputation the very first day that he entered Paris! I answer for the falsity of that report. But that report I own was one that decided not only Madame de Merville, who was a sensitive—too sensitive a person, but my friend young Vaudemont, to a marriage, from the pecuniary advantages of which he was too high-spirited not to shrink.”
“Well,” said Lord Lilburne, “then this young De Vaudemont married Madame de Merville?”
“No,” said Liancourt somewhat sadly, “it was not so decreed; for Vaudemont, with a feeling which belongs to a gentleman, and which I honour, while deeply and gratefully attached to Madame de Merville, desired that he might first win for himself some honourable distinction before he claimed a hand to which men of fortunes so much higher had aspired in vain. I am not ashamed,” he added, after a slight pause, “to say that I had been one of the rejected suitors, and that I still revere the memory of Eugenie de Merville. The young man, therefore, was to have entered my regiment. Before, however, he had joined it, and while yet in the full flush of a young man’s love for a woman formed to excite the strongest attachment, she—she—-” The Frenchman’s voice trembled, and he resumed with affected composure: “Madame de Merville, who had the best and kindest heart that ever beat in a human breast, learned one day that there was a poor widow in the garret of the hotel she inhabited who was dangerously ill—without medicine and without food—having lost her only friend and supporter in her husband some time before. In the impulse of the moment, Madame de Merville herself attended this widow—caught the fever that preyed upon her—was confined to her bed ten days—and died as she had lived, in serving others and forgetting self.—And so much, sir, for the scandal you spoke of!”
“A warning,” observed Lord Lilburne, “against trifling with one’s health by that vanity of parading a kind heart, which is called charity. If charity, mon cher, begins at home, it is in the drawing-room, not the garret!”
The Frenchman looked at his host in some disdain, bit his lip, and was silent.
“But still,” resumed Lord Lilburne, “still it is so probable that your old vicomte had a son; and I can so perfectly understand why he did not wish to be embarrassed with him as long as he could help it, that I do not understand why there should be any doubt of the younger De Vaudemont’s parentage.”
“Because,” said the Frenchman who had first commenced the narrative,—“because the young man refused to take the legal steps to proclaim his birth and naturalise himself a Frenchman; because, no sooner was Madame de Merville dead than he forsook the father he had so newly discovered—forsook France, and entered with some other officers, under the brave, &m——— in the service of one of the native princes of India.”
“But perhaps he was poor,” observed Lord Lilburne. “A father is a very good thing, and a country is a very good thing, but still a man must have money; and if your father does not do much for you, somehow or other, your country generally follows his example.”
“My lord,” said Liancourt, “my friend here has forgotten to say that Madame de Merville had by deed of gift; (though unknown to her lover), before her death, made over to young Vaudemont the bulk of her fortune; and that, when he was informed of this donation after her decease, and sufficiently recovered from the stupor of his grief, he summoned her relations round him, declared that her memory was too dear to him for wealth to console him for her loss, and reserving to himself but a modest and bare sufficiency for the common necessaries of a gentleman, he divided the rest amongst them, and repaired to the East; not only to conquer his sorrow by the novelty and stir of an exciting life, but to carve out with his own hand the reputation of an honourable and brave man. My friend remembered the scandal long buried—he forgot the generous action.”
“Your friend, you see, my dear Monsieur de Liancourt,” remarked Lilburne, “is more a man of the world than you are!”
“And I was just going to observe,” said the friend thus referred to, “that that very action seemed to confirm the rumour that there had been some little manoeuvring as to this unexpected addition to the name of De Vaudemont; for, if himself related to Madame de Merville, why have such scruples to receive her gift?”
“A very shrewd remark,” said Lord Lilburne, looking with some respect at the speaker; “and I own that it is a very unaccountable proceeding, and one of which I don’t think you or I would ever have been guilty. Well, and the old Vicomte?”
“Did not live long!” said the Frenchman, evidently gratified by his host’s compliment, while Liancourt threw himself back in his chair in grave displeasure. “The young man remained some years in India, and when he returned to Paris, our friend here, Monsieur de Liancourt (then in favour with Charles X.), and Madame de Merville’s relations took him up. He had already acquired a reputation in this foreign service, and he obtained a place at the court, and a commission in the king’s guards. I allow that he would certainly have made a career, had it not been for the Three Days. As it is, you see him in London, like the rest of us, an exile!”
“And I suppose, without a sous.”
“No, I believe that he had still saved, and even augmented, in India, the portion he allotted to himself from Madame de Merville’s bequest.”
“And if he don’t play whist, he ought to play it,” said Lilburne. “You have roused my curiosity; I hope you will let me make his acquaintance, Monsieur de Liancourt. I am no politician, but allow me to propose this toast, ‘Success to those who have the wit to plan, and the strength to execute.’ In other words, ‘the Right Divine!’”
Soon afterwards the guests retired.