The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 58

I had just done this when there was a slight knock at the door. I opened it, and Lord Castleton stood without. He asked me, in a whisper, if he might see my uncle. I drew him in gently, and pointed to the soldier of life "learning what was not impossible" from the unerring Order-Book.

Lord Castleton gazed with a changing countenance, and without disturbing my uncle, stole back. I followed him, and gently closed the door.

"You must save his son," he said in a faltering voice,--"you must; and tell me how to help you. That sight,--no sermon ever touched me more!

Now come down and receive Lady Ellinor's thanks. We are going. She wants me to tell my own tale to my old friend Mrs. Grundy; so I go with them.

Come!"

On entering the sitting-room, Lady Ellinor came up and fairly embraced me. I need not repeat her thanks, still less the praises, which fell cold and hollow on my ear. My gaze rested on f.a.n.n.y where she stood apart,--her eyes, heavy with fresh tears, bent on the ground. And the sense of all her charms; the memory of the tender, exquisite kindness she had shown to the stricken father; the generous pardon she had extended to the criminal son; the looks she had bent upon me on that memorable night (looks that had spoken such trust in my presence), the moment in which she had clung to me for protection, and her breath been warm upon my cheek,--all these rushed over me, and I felt that the struggle of months was undone, that I had never loved her as I loved her then, when I saw her but to lose her evermore! And then there came for the first, and, I now rejoice to think, for the only time, a bitter, ungrateful accusation against the cruelty of fortune and the disparities of life. What was it that set our two hearts eternally apart and made hope impossible? Not nature, but the fortune that gives a second nature to the world. Ah, could I then think that it is in that second nature that the soul is ordained to seek its trials, and that the elements of human virtue find their harmonious place? What I answered I know not.

Neither know I how long I stood there listening to sounds which seemed to have no meaning, till there came other sounds which indeed woke my sense and made my blood run cold to hear,--the tramp of the horses, the grating of the wheels, the voice at the door that said all was ready.

Then f.a.n.n.y lifted her eyes, and they met mine; and then involuntarily and hastily she moved a few steps towards me, and I clasped my right hand to my heart, as if to still its beating, and remained still. Lord Castleton had watched us both. I felt that watch upon us, though I had till then shunned his looks; now, as I turned my eyes from f.a.n.n.y's, that look came full upon me,--soft, compa.s.sionate, benignant. Suddenly, and with an unutterable expression of n.o.bleness, the marquis turned to Lady Ellinor and said: "Pardon me for telling you an old story. A friend of mine--a man of my own years--had the temerity to hope that he might one day or other win the affections of a lady young enough to be his daughter, and whom circ.u.mstances and his own heart led him to prefer from all her s.e.x. My friend had many rivals; and you will not wonder, for you have seen the lady. Among them was a young gentleman who for months had been an inmate of the same house (hush, Lady Ellinor! you will hear me out; the interest of my story is to come), who respected the sanct.i.ty of the house he had entered, and had left it when he felt he loved, for he was poor, and the lady rich. Some time after, this gentleman saved the lady from a great danger, and was then on the eve of leaving England (hus.h.!.+ again, hus.h.!.+). My friend was present when these two young persons met, before the probable absence of many years, and so was the mother of the lady to whose hand he still hoped one day to aspire. He saw that his young rival wished to say, 'Farewell!' and without a witness; that farewell was all that his honor and his reason could suffer him to say. My friend saw that the lady felt the natural grat.i.tude for a great service, and the natural pity for a generous and unfortunate affection; for so, Lady Ellinor, he only interpreted the sob that reached his ear! What think you my friend did? Your high mind at once conjectures. He said to himself: 'If I am ever to be blest with the heart which, in spite of disparity of years, I yet hope to win, let me show how entire is the trust that I place in its integrity and innocence; let the romance of first youth be closed, the farewell of pure hearts be spoken, unembittered by the idle jealousies of one mean suspicion.' With that thought, which you, Lady Ellinor, will never stoop to blame, he placed his hand on that of the n.o.ble mother, drew her gently towards the door, and calmly confident of the result, left these two young natures to the unwitnessed impulse of maiden honor and manly duty."

All this was said and done with a grace and earnestness that thrilled the listeners; word and action suited to each with so inimitable a harmony that the spell was not broken till the voice ceased and the door closed.

That mournful bliss for which I had so pined was vouchsafed: I was alone with her to whom, indeed, honor and reason forbade me to say more than the last farewell.

It was some time before we recovered, before we felt that we were alone.

O ye moments that I can now recall with so little sadness in the mellow and sweet remembrance, rest ever holy and undisclosed in the solemn recesses of the heart! Yes, whatever confession of weakness was interchanged, we were not unworthy of the trust that permitted the mournful consolation of the parting. No trite love-tale, with vows not to be fulfilled, and hopes that the future must belie, mocked the realities of the life that lay before us. Yet on the confines of the dream we saw the day rising cold upon the world; and if--children as we well-nigh were--we shrank somewhat from the light, we did not blaspheme the sun and cry, "There is darkness in the dawn!"

All that we attempted was to comfort and strengthen each other for that which must be; not seeking to conceal the grief we felt, but promising, with simple faith, to struggle against the grief. If vow were pledged between us,--that was the vow: each for the other's sake would strive to enjoy the blessings Heaven left us still. Well may I say that we were children! I know not, in the broken words that pa.s.sed between us, in the sorrowful hearts which those words revealed, I know not if there were that which they who own in human pa.s.sion but the storm and the whirlwind would call the love of maturer years,--the love that gives fire to the song, and tragedy to the stage; but I know that there was neither a word nor a thought which made the sorrow of the children a rebellion to the Heavenly Father.

And again the door unclosed, and f.a.n.n.y walked with a firm step to her mother's side, and pausing there, extended her hand to me and said, as I bent over it, "Heaven Will be with you!"

A word from Lady Ellinor, a frank smile from him, the rival, one last, last glance from the soft eyes of f.a.n.n.y, and then Solitude rushed upon me,--rushed as something visible, palpable, overpowering. I felt it in the glare of the sunbeam, I heard it in the breath of the air; like a ghost it rose there,--where she had filled the s.p.a.ce with her presence but a moment before! A something seemed gone from the universe forever; a change like that of death pa.s.sed through my being; and when I woke, to feel that my being lived again, I knew that it was my youth and its poet-land that were no more, and that I had pa.s.sed, with an unconscious step, which never could retrace its way, into the hard world of laborious man!

PART XVI.

CHAPTER I.

"Please, sir, be this note for you?" asked the waiter.

"For me,--yes; it is my name."

I did not recognize the handwriting, and yet the note was from one whose writing I had often seen. But formerly the writing was cramped, stiff, perpendicular (a feigned hand, though I guessed not it was feigned); now it was hasty, irregular, impatient, scarce a letter formed, scarce a word that seemed finished, and yet strangely legible withal, as the hand writing of a bold man almost always is. I opened the note listlessly, and read,--

"I have watched for you all the morning. I saw her go. Well! I did not throw myself under the hoofs of the horses. I write this in a public-house, not far. Will you follow the bearer, and see once again the outcast whom all the rest of the world will shun?"

Though I did not recognize the hand, there could be no doubt who was the writer.

"The boy wants to know if there's an answer," said the waiter.

I nodded, took up my hat, and left the room. A ragged boy was standing in the yard, and scarcely six words pa.s.sed between us before I was following him through a narrow lane that faced the inn and terminated in a turnstile. Here the boy paused, and making me a sign to go on, went back his way whistling. I pa.s.sed the turnstile, and found myself in a green field, with a row of stunted willows hanging over a narrow rill.

I looked round, and saw Vivian (as I intend still to call him) half kneeling, and seemingly intent upon some object in the gra.s.s.

My eye followed his mechanically. A young unfledged bird that had left the nest too soon stood, all still and alone, on the bare short sward, its beak open as for food, its gaze fixed on us with a wistful stare.

Methought there was something in the forlorn bird that softened me more to the forlorner youth, of whom it seemed a type.

"Now," said Vivian, speaking half to himself, half to me, "did the bird fall from the nest, or leave the nest at its own wild whim? The parent does not protect it. Mind, I say not it is the parent's fault,--perhaps the fault is all with the wanderer. But, look you, though the parent is not here, the foe is,--yonder, see!"

And the young man pointed to a large brindled cat that, kept back from its prey by our unwelcome neighborhood, still remained watchful, a few paces off, stirring its tail gently backwards and forwards, and with that stealthy look in its round eyes, dulled by the sun,--half fierce, half frightened,--which belongs to its tribe when man comes between the devourer and the victim.

"I do see," said I; "but a pa.s.sing footstep has saved the bird!"

"Stop!" said Vivian, laying my hand on his own, and with his old bitter smile on his lip,--"stop! Do you think it mercy to save the bird? What from; and what for? From a natural enemy,--from a short pang and a quick death? Fie! is not that better than slow starvation,--or, if you take more heed of it, than the prison-bars of a cage? You cannot restore the nest, you cannot recall the parent. Be wiser in your mercy,--leave the bird to its gentlest fate."

I looked hard on Vivian: the lip had lost the bitter smile. He rose and turned away. I sought to take up the poor bird; but it did not know its friends, and ran from me, chirping piteously,--ran towards the very jaws of the grim enemy. I was only just in time to scare away the beast, which sprang up a tree and glared down through the hanging boughs. Then I followed the bird, and as I followed, I heard, not knowing at first whence the sound came, a short, quick, tremulous note. Was it near, was it far? From the earth, in the sky? Poor parent bird, like parent-love, it seemed now far and now near; now on earth, now in sky!

And at last, quick and sudden, as if born of the s.p.a.ce, lo, the little wings hovered over me!

The young bird halted, and I also.

"Come," said I, "ye have found each other at last,--settle it between you!"

I went back to the outcast.

CHAPTER II.

Pisistratus.--"How came you to know we had stayed in the town?"

Vivian.--"Do you think I could remain where you left me? I wandered out, wandered hither. Pa.s.sing at dawn through yon streets, I saw the hostlers loitering by the gates of the yard, overheard them talk, and so knew you were all at the inn,--all!" He sighed heavily.

Pisistratus.--"Your poor father is very ill. Oh, cousin, how could you fling from you so much love?"

Vivian.--"Love! his! my father's!"

Pisistratus.--"Do you really not believe, then, that your father loved you?"

Vivian.--"If I had believed it, I had never left him. All the gold of the Indies had never bribed me to leave my mother."

Pisistratus.--"This is indeed a strange misconception of yours. If we can remove it, all may be well yet. Need there now be any secrets between us? [persuasively]. Sit down, and tell me all, cousin."

After some hesitation, Vivian complied; and by the clearing of his brow and the very tone of his voice I felt sure that he was no longer seeking to disguise the truth. But as I afterwards learned the father's tale as well as now the son's, so, instead of repeating Vivian's words, which--not by design, but by the twist of a mind habitually wrong--distorted the facts, I will state what appears to me the real case, as between the parties so unhappily opposed. Reader, pardon me if the recital be tedious; and if thou thinkest that I bear not hard enough on the erring hero of the story, remember that he who recites, judges as Austin's son must judge of Roland's.

CHAPTER III.