“Volpone. A little in a mist, but not dejected;Never—but still myself.”BEN JONSON: Volpone.“Peregrine. Am I enough disguised?Mer. Ay. I warrant you.Per. Save you, fair lady.”—Ibid.
It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The ill wind that had blown gout to Lord Lilburne had blown Lord Lilburne away from the injury he had meditated against what he called “the object of his attachment.” How completely and entirely, indeed, the state of Lord Lilburne’s feelings depended on the state of his health, may be seen in the answer he gave to his valet, when, the morning after the first attack of the gout, that worthy person, by way of cheering his master, proposed to ascertain something as to the movements of one with whom Lord Lilburne professed to be so violently in love,—“Confound you, Dykeman!” exclaimed the invalid,—“why do you trouble me about women when I’m in this condition? I don’t care if they were all at the bottom of the sea! Reach me the colchicum! I must keep my mind calm.”
Whenever tolerably well, Lord Lilburne was careless of his health; the moment he was ill, Lord Lilburne paid himself the greatest possible attention. Though a man of firm nerves, in youth of remarkable daring, and still, though no longer rash, of sufficient personal courage, he was by no means fond of the thought of death—that is, of his own death. Not that he was tormented by any religious apprehensions of the Dread Unknown, but simply because the only life of which he had any experience seemed to him a peculiarly pleasant thing. He had a sort of instinctive persuasion that John Lord Lilburne would not be better off anywhere else. Always disliking solitude, he disliked it more than ever when he was ill, and he therefore welcomed the visit of his sister and the gentle hand of his pretty niece. As for Beaufort, he bored the sufferer; and when that gentleman, on his arrival, shutting out his wife and daughter, whispered to Lilburne, “Any more news of that impostor?” Lilburne answered peevishly, “I never talk about business when I have the gout! I have set Sharp to keep a lookout for him, but he has learned nothing as yet. And now go to your club. You are a worthy creature, but too solemn for my spirits just at this moment. I have a few people coming to dine with me, your wife will do the honors, and—you can come in the evening.” Though Mr. Robert Beaufort’s sense of importance swelled and chafed at this very unceremonious conge, he forced a smile, and said:—
“Well, it is no wonder you are a little fretful with the gout. I have plenty to do in town, and Mrs. Beaufort and Camilla can come back without waiting for me.”
“Why, as your cook is ill, and they can’t dine at a club, you may as well leave them here till I am a little better; not that I care, for I can hire a better nurse than either of them.”
“My dear Lilburne, don’t talk of hiring nurses; certainly, I am too happy if they can be of comfort to you.”
“No! on second thoughts, you may take back your wife, she’s always talking of her own complaints, and leave me Camilla: you can’t want her for a few days.”
“Just as you like. And you really think I have managed as well as I could about this young man,—eh?”
“Yes—yes! And so you go to Beaufort Court in a few days?”
“I propose doing so. I wish you were well enough to come.”
“Um! Chambers says that it would be a very good air for me—better than Fernside; and as to my castle in the north, I would as soon go to Siberia. Well, if I get better, I will pay you a visit, only you always have such a stupid set of respectable people about you. I shock them, and they oppress me.”
“Why, as I hope soon to see Arthur, I shall make it as agreeable to him as I can, and I shall be very much obliged to you if you would invite a few of your own friends.”
“Well, you are a good fellow, Beaufort, and I will take you at your word; and, since one good turn deserves another, I have now no scruples in telling you that I feel quite sure that you will have no further annoyance from this troublesome witness-monger.”
“In that case,” said Beaufort, “I may pick up a better match for Camilla! Good-bye, my dear Lilburne.”
“Form and Ceremony of the world!” snarled the peer, as the door closed on his brother-in-law, “ye make little men very moral, and not a bit the better for being so.”
It so happened that Vaudemont arrived before any of the other guests that day, and during the half hour which Dr. Chambers assigned to his illustrious patient, so that, when he entered, there were only Mrs. Beaufort and Camilla in the drawing-room.
Vaudemont drew back involuntarily as he recognized in the faded countenance of the elder lady, features associated with one of the dark passages in his earlier life; but Mrs. Beaufort’s gracious smile, and urbane, though languid welcome, sufficed to assure him that the recognition was not mutual. He advanced, and again stopped short, as his eye fell upon that fair and still childlike form, which had once knelt by his side and pleaded, with the orphan, for his brother. While he spoke to her, many recollections, some dark and stern—but those, at least, connected with Camilla, soft and gentle—thrilled through his heart. Occupied as her own thoughts and feelings necessarily were with Sidney, there was something in Vaudemont’s appearance—his manner, his voice—which forced upon Camilla a strange and undefined interest; and even Mrs. Beaufort was roused from her customary apathy, as she glanced at that dark and commanding face with something between admiration and fear. Vaudemont had scarcely, however, spoken ten words, when some other guests were announced, and Lord Lilburne was wheeled in upon his sofa shortly afterwards. Vaudemont continued, however, seated next to Camilla, and the embarrassment he had at first felt disappeared. He possessed, when he pleased, that kind of eloquence which belongs to men who have seen much and felt deeply, and whose talk has not been frittered down to the commonplace jargon of the world. His very phraseology was distinct and peculiar, and he had that rarest of all charms in polished life, originality both of thought and of manner. Camilla blushed, when she found at dinner that he placed himself by her side. That evening De Vaudemont excused himself from playing, but the table was easily made without him, and still he continued to converse with the daughter of the man whom he held as his worst foe. By degrees, he turned the conversation into a channel that might lead him to the knowledge he sought.
“It was my fate,” said he, “once to become acquainted with an intimate friend of the late Mr. Beaufort. Will you pardon me if I venture to fulfil a promise I made to him, and ask you to inform me what has become of a—a—that is, of Sidney Morton?”
“Sidney Morton! I don’t even remember the name. Oh, yes! I have heard it,” added Camilla, innocently, and with a candour that showed how little she knew of the secrets of the family; “he was one of two poor boys in whom my brother felt a deep interest—some relations to my uncle. Yes—yes! I remember now. I never knew Sidney, but I once did see his brother.”
“Indeed! and you remember—”
“Yes! I was very young then. I scarcely recollect what passed, it was all so confused and strange; but, I know that I made papa very angry, and I was told never to mention the name of Morton again. I believe they behaved very ill to papa.”
“And you never learned—never!—the fate of either—of Sidney?”
“Never!”
“But your father must know?”
“I think not; but tell me,”—said Camilla, with girlish and unaffected innocence, “I have always felt anxious to know,—what and who were those poor boys?”
What and who were they? So deep, then, was the stain upon their name, that the modest mother and the decorous father had never even said to that young girl, “They are your cousins—the children of the man in whose gold we revel!”
Philip bit his lip, and the spell of Camilla’s presence seemed vanished. He muttered some inaudible answer, turned away to the card-table, and Liancourt took the chair he had left vacant.
“And how does Miss Beaufort like my friend Vaudemont? I assure you that I have seldom seen him so alive to the fascination of female beauty!”
“Oh!” said Camilla, with her silver laugh, “your nation spoils us for our own countrymen. You forget how little we are accustomed to flattery.”
“Flattery! what truth could flatter on the lips of an exile? But you don’t answer my question—what think you of Vaudemont? Few are more admired. He is handsome!”
“Is he?” said Camilla, and she glanced at Vaudemont, as he stood at a little distance, thoughtful and abstracted. Every girl forms to herself some untold dream of that which she considers fairest. And Vaudemont had not the delicate and faultless beauty of Sidney. There was nothing that corresponded to her ideal in his marked features and lordly shape! But she owned, reluctantly to herself, that she had seldom seen, among the trim gallants of everyday life, a form so striking and impressive. The air, indeed, was professional—the most careless glance could detect the soldier. But it seemed the soldier of an elder age or a wilder clime. He recalled to her those heads which she had seen in the Beaufort Gallery and other Collections yet more celebrated—portraits by Titian of those warrior statesman who lived in the old Republics of Italy in a perpetual struggle with their kind—images of dark, resolute, earnest men. Even whatever was intellectual in his countenance spoke, as in those portraits, of a mind sharpened rather in active than in studious life;—intellectual, not from the pale hues, the worn exhaustion, and the sunken cheek of the bookman and dreamer, but from its collected and stern repose, the calm depth that lay beneath the fire of the eyes, and the strong will that spoke in the close full lips, and the high but not cloudless forehead.
And, as she gazed, Vaudemont turned round—her eyes fell beneath his, and she felt angry with herself that she blushed. Vaudemont saw the downcast eye, he saw the blush, and the attraction of Camilla’s presence was restored. He would have approached her, but at that moment Mr. Beaufort himself entered, and his thoughts went again into a darker channel.
“Yes,” said Liancourt, “you must allow Vaudemont looks what he is—a noble fellow and a gallant soldier. Did you never hear of his battle with the tigress? It made a noise in India. I must tell it you as I have heard it.”
And while Laincourt was narrating the adventure, whatever it was, to which he referred, the card-table was broken up, and Lord Lilburne, still reclining on his sofa, lazily introduced his brother-in-law to such of the guests as were strangers to him—Vaudemont among the rest. Mr. Beaufort had never seen Philip Morton more than three times; once at Fernside, and the other times by an imperfect light, and when his features were convulsed by passion, and his form disfigured by his dress. Certainly, therefore, had Robert Beaufort even possessed that faculty of memory which is supposed to belong peculiarly to kings and princes, and which recalls every face once seen, it might have tasked the gift to the utmost to have detected, in the bronzed and decorated foreigner to whom he was now presented, the features of the wild and long-lost boy. But still some dim and uneasy presentiment, or some struggling and painful effort of recollection, was in his mind, as he spoke to Vaudemont, and listened to the cold calm tone of his reply.
“Who do you say that Frenchman is?” he whispered to his brother-in-law, as Vaudemont turned away.
“Oh! a cleverish sort of adventurer—a gentleman; he plays.—He has seen a good deal of the world—he rather amuses me—different from other people. I think of asking him to join our circle at Beaufort Court.”
Mr. Beaufort coughed huskily, but not seeing any reasonable objection to the proposal, and afraid of rousing the sleeping hyaena of Lord Lilburne’s sarcasm, he merely said:—
“Any one you like to invite:” and looking round for some one on whom to vent his displeasure, perceived Camilla still listening to Liancourt. He stalked up to her, and as Liancourt, seeing her rise, rose also and moved away, he said peevishly, “You will never learn to conduct yourself properly; you are to be left here to nurse and comfort your uncle, and not to listen to the gibberish of every French adventurer. Well, Heaven be praised, I have a son—girls are a great plague!”
“So they are, Mr. Beaufort,” sighed his wife, who had just joined him, and who was jealous of the preference Lilburne had given to her daughter.
“And so selfish,” added Mrs. Beaufort; “they only care for their own amusements, and never mind how uncomfortable their parents are for want of them.”
“Oh! dear mamma, don’t say so—let me go home with you—I’ll speak to my uncle!”
“Nonsense, child! Come along, Mr. Beaufort;” and the affectionate parents went out arm in arm. They did not perceive that Vaudemont had been standing close behind them; but Camilla, now looking up with tears in her eyes, again caught his gaze: he had heard all.
“And they ill-treat her,” he muttered: “that divides her from them!—she will be left here—I shall see her again.” As he turned to depart, Lilburne beckoned to him.
“You do not mean to desert our table?”
“No: but I am not very well to-night—to-morrow, if you will allow me.”
“Ay, to-morrow; and if you can spare an hour in the morning it will be a charity. You see,” he added in a whisper, “I have a nurse, though I have no children. D’ye think that’s love? Bah! sir—a legacy! Good night.”
“No—no—no!” said Vaudemont to himself, as he walked through the moonlit streets. “No! though my heart burns,—poor murdered felon!—to avenge thy wrongs and thy crimes, revenge cannot come from me—he is Fanny’s grandfather and—Camilla’s uncle!”
And Camilla, when that uncle had dismissed her for the night, sat down thoughtfully in her own room. The dark eyes of Vaudemont seemed still to shine on her; his voice yet rung in her ear; the wild tales of daring and danger with which Liancourt had associated his name yet haunted her bewildered fancy—she started, frightened at her own thoughts. She took from her bosom some lines that Sidney had addressed to her, and, as she read and re-read, her spirit became calmed to its wonted and faithful melancholy. Vaudemont was forgotten, and the name of Sidney yet murmured on her lips, when sleep came to renew the image of the absent one, and paint in dreams the fairy land of a happy Future!
“Ring on, ye bells—most pleasant is your chime!”WILSON. Isle of Palms.“O fairy child! What can I wish for thee?”—Ibid.
Vaudemont remained six days in London without going to H——, and on each of those days he paid a visit to Lord Lilburne. On the seventh day, the invalid being much better, though still unable to leave his room, Camilla returned to Berkeley Square. On the same day, Vaudemont went once more to see Simon and poor Fanny.
As he approached the door, he heard from the window, partially opened, for the day was clear and fine, Fanny’s sweet voice. She was chaunting one of the simple songs she had promised to learn by heart; and Vaudemont, though but a poor judge of the art, was struck and affected by the music of the voice and the earnest depth of the feeling. He paused opposite the window and called her by her name. Fanny looked forth joyously, and ran, as usual, to open the door to him.
“Oh! you have been so long away; but I already know many of the songs: they say so much that I always wanted to say!”
Vaudemont smiled, but languidly.
“How strange it is,” said Fanny, musingly, “that there should be so much in a piece of paper! for, after all,” pointing to the open page of her book, “this is but a piece of paper—only there is life in it!”
“Ay,” said Vaudemont, gloomily, and far from seizing the subtle delicacy of Fanny’s thought—her mind dwelling upon Poetry, and his upon Law,—“ay, and do you know that upon a mere scrap of paper, if I could but find it, may depend my whole fortune, my whole happiness, all that I care for in life?”
“Upon a scrap of paper? Oh! how I wish I could find it! Ah! you look as if you thought I should never be wise enough for that!”
Vaudemont, not listening to her, uttered a deep sigh. Fanny approached him timidly.
“Do not sigh, brother,—I can’t bear to hear you sigh. You are changed. Have you, too, not been happy?”
“Happy, Fanny! yes, lately very happy—too happy!”
“Happy, have you? and I—” the girl stopped short—her tone had been that of sadness and reproach, and she stopped—why, she knew not, but she felt her heart sink within her. Fanny suffered him to pass her, and he went straight to his room. Her eyes followed him wistfully: it was not his habit to leave her thus abruptly. The family meal of the day was over; and it was an hour before Vaudemont descended to the parlour. Fanny had put aside the songs; she had no heart to recommence those gentle studies that had been so sweet,—they had drawn no pleasure, no praise from him. She was seated idly and listlessly beside the silent old man, who every day grew more and more silent still. She turned her head as Vaudemont entered, and her pretty lip pouted as that of a neglected child. But he did not heed it, and the pout vanished, and tears rushed to her eyes.
Vaudemont was changed. His countenance was thoughtful and overcast. His manner abstracted. He addressed a few words to Simon, and then, seating himself by the window, leant his cheek on his hand, and was soon lost in reverie. Fanny, finding that he did not speak, and after stealing many a long and earnest glance at his motionless attitude and gloomy brow, rose gently, and gliding to him with her light step, said, in a trembling voice,—
“Are you in pain, brother?”
“No, pretty one!”
“Then why won’t you speak to Fanny? Will you not walk with her? Perhaps my grandfather will come too.”
“Not this evening. I shall go out; but it will be alone.”
“Where? Has not Fanny been good? I have not been out since you left us. And the grave—brother!—I sent Sarah with the flowers—but—”
Vaudemont rose abruptly. The mention of the grave brought back his thoughts from the dreaming channel into which they had flowed. Fanny, whose very childishness had once so soothed him, now disturbed; he felt the want of that complete solitude which makes the atmosphere of growing passion: he muttered some scarcely audible excuse, and quitted the house. Fanny saw him no more that evening. He did not return till midnight. But Fanny did not sleep till she heard his step on the stairs, and his chamber door close: and when she did sleep, her dreams were disturbed and painful. The next morning, when they met at breakfast (for Vaudemont did not return to London), her eyes were red and heavy, and her cheek pale. And, still buried in meditation, Vaudemont’s eye, usually so kind and watchful, did not detect those signs of a grief that Fanny could not have explained. After breakfast, however, he asked her to walk out; and her face brightened as she hastened to put on her bonnet, and take her little basket full of fresh flowers which she had already sent Sarah forth to purchase.
“Fanny,” said Vaudemont, as leaving the house, he saw the basket on her arm, “to-day you may place some of those flowers on another tombstone!—Poor child, what natural goodness there is in that heart!—what pity that—”
He paused. Fanny looked delightedly in his face. “You were praising me—you! And what is a pity, brother?”
While she spoke, the sound of the joy-bells was heard near at hand.
“Hark!” said Vaudemont, forgetting her question—and almost gaily—“Hark!—I accept the omen. It is a marriage peal!”
He quickened his steps, and they reached the churchyard.
There was a crowd already assembled, and Vaudemont and Fanny paused; and, leaning over the little gate, looked on.
“Why are these people here, and why does the bell ring so merrily?”
“There is to be a wedding, Fanny.”
“I have heard of a wedding very often,” said Fanny, with a pretty look of puzzlement and doubt, “but I don’t know exactly what it means. Will you tell me?—and the bells, too!”
“Yes, Fanny, those bells toll but three times for man! The first time, when he comes into the world; the last time, when he leaves it; the time between when he takes to his side a partner in all the sorrows—in all the joys that yet remain to him; and who, even when the last bell announces his death to this earth, may yet, for ever and ever, be his partner in that world to come—that heaven, where they who are as innocent as you, Fanny, may hope to live and to love each other in a land in which there are no graves!”
“And this bell?”
“Tolls for that partnership—for the wedding!”
“I think I understand you;—and they who are to be wed are happy?”
“Happy, Fanny, if they love, and their love continue. Oh! conceive the happiness to know some one person dearer to you than your own self—some one breast into which you can pour every thought, every grief, every joy! One person, who, if all the rest of the world were to calumniate or forsake you, would never wrong you by a harsh thought or an unjust word,—who would cling to you the closer in sickness, in poverty, in care,—who would sacrifice all things to you, and for whom you would sacrifice all—from whom, except by death, night or day, you must be never divided—whose smile is ever at your hearth—who has no tears while you are well and happy, and your love the same. Fanny, such is marriage, if they who marry have hearts and souls to feel that there is no bond on earth so tender and so sublime. There is an opposite picture;—I will not draw that! And as it is, Fanny, you cannot understand me!”
He turned away:—and Fanny’s tears were falling like rain upon the grass below;—he did not see them! He entered the churchyard; for the bell now ceased. The ceremony was to begin. He followed the bridal party into the church, and Fanny, lowering her veil, crept after him, awed and trembling.
They stood, unobserved, at a little distance, and heard the service.
The betrothed were of the middle class of life, young, both comely; and their behaviour was such as suited the reverence and sanctity of the rite. Vaudemont stood looking on intently, with his arms folded on his breast. Fanny leant behind him, and apart from all, against one of the pews. And still in her hand, while the priest was solemnising Marriage, she held the flowers intended for the Grave. Even to that MORNING—hushed, calm, earliest, with her mysterious and unconjectured heart—her shape brought a thought of NIGHT!
When the ceremony was over—when the bride fell on her mother’s breast and wept; and then, when turning thence, her eyes met the bridegroom’s, and the tears were all smiled away—when, in that one rapid interchange of looks, spoke all that holy love can speak to love, and with timid frankness she placed her hand in his to whom she had just vowed her life,—a thrill went through the hearts of those present. Vaudemont sighed heavily. He heard his sigh echoed; but by one that had in its sound no breath of pain; he turned; Fanny had raised her veil; her eyes met his, moistened, but bright, soft, and her cheeks were rosy-red. Vaudemont recoiled before that gaze, and turned from the church. The persons interested retired to the vestry to sign their names in the registry; the crowd dispersed, and Vaudemont and Fanny stood alone in the burial-ground.
“Look, Fanny,” said the former, pointing to a tomb that stood far from his mother’s (for those ashes were too hallowed for such a neighbourhood). “Look yonder; it is a new tomb. Fanny, let us approach it. Can you read what is there inscribed?”
The inscription was simply this:
TO W—G—MAN SEES THE DEEDGOD THE CIRCUMSTANCE.JUDGE NOT,THAT YE BE NOT JUDGED.
“Fanny, this tomb fulfils your pious wish: it is to the memory of him whom you called your father. Whatever was his life here—whatever sentence it hath received, Heaven, at least, will not condemn your piety, if you honour one who was good to you, and place flowers, however idle, even over that grave.”
“It is his—my father’s—and you have thought of this for me!” said Fanny, taking his hand, and sobbing. “And I have been thinking that you were not so kind to me as you were!”
“Have I not been so kind to you? Nay, forgive me, I am not happy.”
“Not?—you said yesterday you had been too happy.”
“To remember happiness is not to be happy, Fanny.”
“That’s true—and—”
Fanny stopped; and, as she bent over the tomb, musing, Vaudemont, willing to leave her undisturbed, and feeling bitterly how little his conscience could vindicate, though it might find palliation for, the dark man who slept not there—retired a few paces.
At this time the new-married pair, with their witnesses, the clergyman, &c., came from the vestry, and crossed the path. Fanny, as she turned from the tomb, saw them, and stood still, looking earnestly at the bride.
“What a lovely face!” said the mother. “Is it—yes it is—the poor idiot girl.”
“Ah!” said the bridegroom, tenderly, “and she, Mary, beautiful as she is, she can never make another as happy as you have made me.”
Vaudemont heard, and his heart felt sad. “Poor Fanny!—And yet, but for that affliction—I might have loved her, ere I met the fatal face of the daughter of my foe!” And with a deep compassion, an inexpressible and holy fondness, he moved to Fanny.
“Come, my child; now let us go home.”
“Stay,” said Fanny—“you forget.” And she went to strew the flowers still left over Catherine’s grave.
“Will my mother,” thought Vaudemont, “forgive me, if I have other thoughts than hate and vengeance for that house which builds its greatness over her slandered name?” He groaned:—and that grave had lost its melancholy charm.
“Of all men, I say,That dare, for ‘tis a desperate adventure,Wear on their free necks the yoke of women,Give me a soldier.”—Knight of Malta.“So lightly doth this little boatUpon the scarce-touch’d billows float;So careless doth she seem to be,Thus left by herself on the homeless sea,To lie there with her cheerful sail,Till Heaven shall send some gracious gale.”WILSON: Isle of Palms.
Vaudemont returned that evening to London, and found at his lodgings a note from Lord Lilburne, stating that as his gout was now somewhat mitigated, his physician had recommended him to try change of air—that Beaufort Court was in one of the western counties, in a genial climate—that he was therefore going thither the next day for a short time—that he had asked some of Monsieur de Vaudemont’s countrymen, and a few other friends, to enliven the circle of a dull country-house—that Mr. and Mrs. Beaufort would be delighted to see Monsieur de Vaudemont also—and that his compliance with their invitation would be a charity to Monsieur de Vaudemont’s faithful and obliged, LILBURNE.
The first sensation of Vaudemont on reading this effusion was delight. “I shall see her,” he cried; “I shall be under the same roof!” But the glow faded at once from his cheek;—the roof!—what roof? Be the guest where he held himself the lord!—be the guest of Robert Beaufort!—Was that all? Did he not meditate the deadliest war which civilised life admits of—the War of Law—war for name, property, that very hearth, with all its household gods, against this man—could he receive his hospitality? “And what then!” he exclaimed, as he paced to and fro the room,—“because her father wronged me, and because I would claim mine own—must I therefore exclude from my thoughts, from my sight, an image so fair and gentle;—the one who knelt by my side, an infant, to that hard man?—Is hate so noble a passion that it is not to admit one glimpse of Love?—Love! what word is that? Let me beware in time!” He paused in fierce self-contest, and, throwing open the window, gasped for air. The street in which he lodged was situated in the neighbourhood of St. James’s; and, at that very moment, as if to defeat all opposition, and to close the struggle, Mrs. Beaufort’s barouche drove by, Camilla at her side. Mrs. Beaufort, glancing up; languidly bowed; and Camilla herself perceived him, and he saw her change colour as she inclined her head. He gazed after them almost breathless, till the carriage disappeared; and then reclosing the window, he sat down to collect his thoughts, and again to reason with himself. But still, as he reasoned, he saw ever before him that blush and that smile. At last he sprang up, and a noble and bright expression elevated the character of his face,—“Yes, if I enter that house, if I eat that man’s bread, and drink of his cup, I must forego, not justice—not what is due to my mother’s name—but whatever belongs to hate and vengeance. If I enter that house—and if Providence permit me the means whereby to regain my rights, why she—the innocent one—she may be the means of saving her father from ruin, and stand like an angel by that boundary where justice runs into revenge!—Besides, is it not my duty to discover Sidney? Here is the only clue I shall obtain.” With these thoughts he hesitated no more—he decided he would not reject this hospitality, since it might be in his power to pay it back ten thousandfold. “And who knows,” he murmured again, “if Heaven, in throwing this sweet being in my way, might not have designed to subdue and chasten in me the angry passions I have so long fed on? I have seen her,—can I now hate her father?”
He sent off his note accepting the invitation. When he had done so, was he satisfied? He had taken as noble and as large a view of the duties thereby imposed on him as he well could take: but something whispered at his heart, “There is weakness in thy generosity—Darest thou love the daughter of Robert Beaufort?” And his heart had no answer to this voice.
The rapidity with which love is ripened depends less upon the actual number of years that have passed over the soil in which the seed is cast, than upon the freshness of the soil itself. A young man who lives the ordinary life of the world, and who fritters away, rather than exhausts, his feelings upon a variety of quick succeeding subjects—the Cynthias of the minute—is not apt to form a real passion at the first sight. Youth is inflammable only when the heart is young!
There are certain times of life when, in either sex, the affections are prepared, as it were, to be impressed with the first fair face that attracts the fancy and delights the eye. Such times are when the heart has been long solitary, and when some interval of idleness and rest succeeds to periods of harsher and more turbulent excitement. It was precisely such a period in the life of Vaudemont. Although his ambition had been for many years his dream, and his sword his mistress, yet naturally affectionate, and susceptible of strong emotion, he had often repined at his lonely lot. By degrees the boy’s fantasy and reverence which had wound themselves round the image of Eugenie subsided into that gentle and tender melancholy which, perhaps by weakening the strength of the sterner thoughts, leaves us inclined rather to receive, than to resist, a new attachment;—and on the verge of the sweet Memory trembles the sweet Hope. The suspension of his profession, his schemes, his struggles, his career, left his passions unemployed. Vaudemont was thus unconsciously prepared to love. As we have seen, his first and earliest feelings directed themselves to Fanny. But he had so immediately detected the clanger, and so immediately recoiled from nursing those thoughts and fancies, without which love dies for want of food, for a person to whom he ascribed the affliction of an imbecility which would give to such a sentiment all the attributes either of the weakest rashness or of dishonour approaching to sacrilege—that the wings of the deity were scared away the instant their very shadow fell upon his mind. And thus, when Camilla rose upon him his heart was free to receive her image. Her graces, her accomplishments, a certain nameless charm that invested her, pleased him even more than her beauty; the recollections connected with that first time in which he had ever beheld her, were also grateful and endearing; the harshness with which her parents spoke to her moved his compassion, and addressed itself to a temper peculiarly alive to the generosity that leans towards the weak and the wronged; the engaging mixture of mildness and gaiety with which she tended her peevish and sneering uncle, convinced him of her better and more enduring qualities of disposition and womanly heart. And even—so strange and contradictory are our feelings—the very remembrance that she was connected with a family so hateful to him made her own image the more bright from the darkness that surrounded it. For was it not with the daughter of his foe that the lover of Verona fell in love at first sight? And is not that a common type of us all—as if Passion delighted in contradictions? As the Diver, in Schiller’s exquisite ballad, fastened upon the rock of coral in the midst of the gloomy sea, so we cling the more gratefully to whatever of fair thought and gentle shelter smiles out to us in the depths of Hate and Strife.
But, perhaps, Vaudemont would not so suddenly and so utterly have rendered himself to a passion that began, already, completely to master his strong spirit, if he had not, from Camilla’s embarrassment, her timidity, her blushes, intoxicated himself with the belief that his feelings were not unshared. And who knows not that such a belief, once cherished, ripens our own love to a development in which hours are as years?
It was, then, with such emotions as made him almost insensible to every thought but the luxury of breathing the same air as his cousin, which swept from his mind the Past, the Future—leaving nothing but a joyous, a breathless PRESENT on the Face of Time, that he repaired to Beaufort Court. He did not return to H—— before he went, but he wrote to Fanny a short and hurried line to explain that he might be absent for some days at least, and promised to write again, if he should be detained longer than he anticipated.
In the meanwhile, one of those successive revolutions which had marked the eras in Fanny’s moral existence took its date from that last time they had walked and conversed together.
The very evening of that day, some hours after Philip was gone, and after Simon had retired to rest, Fanny was sitting before the dying fire in the little parlour in an attitude of deep and pensive reverie. The old woman-servant, Sarah, who, very different from Mrs. Boxer, loved Fanny with her whole heart, came into the room as was her wont before going to bed, to see that the fire was duly out, and all safe: and as she approached the hearth, she started to see Fanny still up.
“Dear heart alive!” she said; “why, Miss Fanny, you will catch your death of cold,—what are you thinking about?”
“Sit down, Sarah; I want to speak to you.” Now, though Fanny was exceedingly kind, and attached to Sarah, she was seldom communicative to her, or indeed to any one. It was usually in its own silence and darkness that that lovely mind worked out its own doubts.
“Do you, my sweet young lady? I’m sure anything I can do—” and Sarah seated herself in her master’s great chair, and drew it close to Fanny. There was no light in the room but the expiring fire, and it threw upward a pale glimmer on the two faces bending over it,—the one so strangely beautiful, so smooth, so blooming, so exquisite in its youth and innocence,—the other withered, wrinkled, meagre, and astute. It was like the Fairy and the Witch together.
“Well, miss,” said the crone, observing that, after a considerable pause, Fanny was still silent,—“Well—”
“Sarah, I have seen a wedding!”
“Have you?” and the old woman laughed. “Oh! I heard it was to be to-day!—young Waldron’s wedding! Yes, they have been long sweethearts.”
“Were you ever married, Sarah?”
“Lord bless you,—yes! and a very good husband I had, poor man! But he’s dead these many years; and if you had not taken me, I must have gone to the workhus.”
“He is dead! Wasn’t it very hard to live after that, Sarah?”
“The Lord strengthens the hearts of widders!” observed Sarah, sanctimoniously.
“Did you marry your brother, Sarah?” said Fanny, playing with the corner of her apron.
“My brother!” exclaimed the old woman, aghast. “La! miss, you must not talk in that way,—it’s quite wicked and heathenish! One must not marry one’s brother!”
“No!” said Fanny, tremblingly, and turning very pale, even by that light. “No!—are you sure of that?”
“It is the wickedest thing even to talk about, my dear young mistress;—but you’re like a babby unborn!”
Fanny was silent for some moments. At length she said, unconscious that she was speaking aloud, “But he is not my brother, after all!”
“Oh, miss, fie! Are you letting your pretty head run on the handsome gentleman. You, too,—dear, dear! I see we’re all alike, we poor femel creturs! You! who’d have thought it? Oh, Miss Fanny!—you’ll break your heart if you goes for to fancy any such thing.”
“Any what thing?”
“Why, that that gentleman will marry you!—I’m sure, tho’ he’s so simple like, he’s some great gentleman! They say his hoss is worth a hundred pounds! Dear, dear! why didn’t I ever think of this before? He must be a very wicked man. I see, now, why he comes here. I’ll speak to him, that I will!—a very wicked man!”
Sarah was startled from her indignation by Fanny’s rising suddenly, and standing before her in the flickering twilight, almost like a shape transformed,—so tall did she seem, so stately, so dignified.
“Is it of him that you are speaking?” said she, in a voice of calm but deep resentment—“of him! If so, Sarah, we two can live no more in the same house.”
And these words were said with a propriety and collectedness that even, through all her terrors, showed at once to Sarah how much they now wronged Fanny who had suffered their lips to repeat the parrot-cry of the “idiot girl!”
“O! gracious me!—miss—ma’am—I am so sorry—I’d rather bite out my tongue than say a word to offend you; it was only my love for you, dear innocent creature that you are!” and the honest woman sobbed with real passion as she clasped Fanny’s hand. “There have been so many young persons, good and harmless, yes, even as you are, ruined. But you don’t understand me. Miss Fanny! hear me; I must try and say what I would say. That man, that gentleman—so proud, so well-dressed, so grand-like, will never marry you, never—never. And if ever he says he does love you, and you say you love him, and you two don’t marry, you will be ruined and wicked, and die—die of a broken heart!”
The earnestness of Sarah’s manner subdued and almost awed Fanny. She sank down again in her chair, and suffered the old woman to caress and weep over her hand for some moments in a silence that concealed the darkest and most agitated feelings Fanny’s life had hitherto known. At length she said:—
“Why may he not marry me if he loves me?—he is not my brother,—indeed he is not! I’ll never call him so again.”
“He cannot marry you,” said Sarah, resolved, with a sort of rude nobleness, to persevere in what she felt to be a duty; “I don’t say anything about money, because that does not always signify. But he cannot marry you, because—because people who are hedicated one way never marry those who are hedicated and brought up in another. A gentleman of that kind requires a wife to know—oh—to know ever so much; and you—”
“Sarah,” interrupted Fanny, rising again, but this time with a smile on her face, “don’t say anything more about it; I forgive you, if you promise never to speak unkindly of him again—never—never—never, Sarah!”
“But may I just tell him that—that—”
“That what?”
“That you are so young and innocent, and has no pertector like; and that if you were to love him it would be a shame in him—that it would!”
And then (oh, no, Fanny, there was nothing clouded now in your reason!)—and then the woman’s alarm, the modesty, the instinct, the terror came upon her:—
“Never! never! I will not love him, I do not love him, indeed, Sarah. If you speak to him, I will never look you in the face again. It is all past—all, dear Sarah!”
She kissed the old woman; and Sarah, fancying that her sagacity and counsel had prevailed, promised all she was asked; so they went up-stairs together—friends.