What Will He Do with It? Part 93

"Spare yourself--I understand-if your son wished to obtain his wife's fortune, and therefore connived at the exchange of the infants, and was therefore, too, enabled always to corroborate the story of the exchange whenever it suited him to reclaim the infant, I grant this--and I grant that the conjecture is sufficiently plausible to justify you in attaching to it much weight. We will allow that it was his interest at one time to represent his child, though living, as no more; but you must allow also that he would have deemed it his interest later, to fasten upon me, as my daughter's, a child to whom she never gave birth. Here we entangle ourselves in a controversy without data, without facts. Let us close it. Believe what you please. Why should I shake convictions that render you happy? Be equally forbearing with me. I do full justice to your Sophy's charming qualities. In herself, the proudest parent might rejoice to own her; but I cannot acknowledge her to be the daughter of Matilda Darrell. And the story that a.s.sured you she was your grandchild, still more convinces me that she is not mine!"

"But be not thus inflexible, I implore you;--you can be so kind, so gentle;--she would be such a blessing to you--later--perhaps--when I am dead. I am pleading for your sake--I owe you so much! I should repay you, if I could but induce you to inquire--and if inquiry should prove that I am right."

"I have inquired sufficiently."

"'Then I'll go and find out the nurse. I'll question her. I'll--"

"Hold. Be persuaded! Hug your belief! Inquire no farther!"

"Why--why?"

Darrell was mute.

Waife pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed his hand over his brow, and then cried suddenly: "But if I could prove her not to be my grandchild, then she might be happy!--then--then-ah, sir, young Haughton tells me that if she were but the daughter of honest parents--no child of Jasper's, no grandchild of mine--then you might not be too proud to bless her at least as his bride! And, sir, the poor child loves the young man. How could she help it? And, at her age, life without hope is either very short, or very, very long! Let me inquire! I should be happy even to know that she was not my grandchild. I should not love her less; and then she would have others to love her when I am gone to Lizzy!"

Darrell was deeply moved. To him there was something in this old man--ever forgetting himself, ever so hurried on by his heart--something, I say, in this old man, before which Darrell felt his intellect subdued and his pride silenced and abashed.

"Yes, sir," said Waife, musingly, "so let it be. I am well now. I will go to France to-morrow."

Darrell nerved his courage. He had wished to spare Waife the pain which his own persuasions caused to himself. Better now to be frank. He laid his hand on Waife's shoulder, and looking him in the face, said solemnly: "I entreat you not! Do you suppose that I would not resume inquiry in person, nor pause till the truth were made amply clear, if I had not strong reason to prefer doubt to certainty?"

"What do you mean, sir?"

"There is a woman whose career is, I believe, at this moment revived into fresh notoriety as the heroine of some drama on the stage of Paris--a woman who, when years paled her fame and reft her spoils, as a courtesan renowned for the fools she had beggared, for the young hearts she had corrupted, sought plunder still by crimes, to which law is less lenient; charged with swindling, with fraud, with forgery, and at last more than suspected as a practised poisoner, she escaped by suicide the judgment of human tribunals."

"I know of whom you speak--that dreadful Gabrielle Desmarets, but for whom my sacrifice to Jasper's future might not have been in vain! It was to save Sophy from the chance of Jasper's ever placing her within reach of that woman's example that I took her away."

"Is it not, then, better to forbear asking who were your Sophy's parents, than to learn from inquiry that she is indeed your grandchild, and that her mother was Gabrielle Desmarets?"

Waife uttered a cry like a shriek, and then sate voiceless and aghast.

At last he exclaimed: "I am certain it is not so! Did you ever see that woman?"

"Never that I know of; but George tells me that he heard your son state to you that she had made acquaintance with me under another name, and if there was a design to employ her in confirmation of his tale--if he was then speaking truth to you, doubtless this was the lady of rank referred to in the nurse's confession--doubtless this was the woman once palmed upon me as Matilda's confidante. In that case I have seen her. What then?"

"Mother was not written on her face! She could never have been a mother.

Oh, you may smile, sir; but all my life I have been a reader of the human face; and there is in the aspect of some women the barrenness as of stone--no mother's throb in their bosom--no mother's kiss on their lips."

"I am a poor reader of women's faces," said Darrell; "but she must be very unlike women in general, who allows you to know her a bit better if you stood reading her face till doomsday. Besides, at the time you saw Gabrielle Desmarets, her mode of life had perhaps given to her an aspect not originally in her countenance. And I can only answer your poetic conceit by a poetic ill.u.s.tration--Niobe turned to stone; but she had a great many daughters before she petrified. Pardon me, if I would turn off by a jest a thought that I see would shock you, as myself, if gravely encouraged. Encourage it not. Let us suppose it only a chance that inquiry might confirm this conjecture; but let us shun that chance.

Meanwhile, if inquiry is to be made, one more likely than either of us to get at the truth has promised to make it, and sooner or later we may learn from her the results--I mean that ill-fated Arabella Fossett, whom you knew as Crane."

Waife was silent; but he kept turning in his hand, almost disconsolately, the doc.u.ment which a.s.soiled him from the felon's taint, and said at length, as Darrell was about to leave, "And this thing is of no use to her, then?"

Darrell came back to the old man's chair, and said softly: "Friend, do not fancy that the young have only one path to happiness. You grieve that I cannot consent to Lionel's marriage with your Sophy. Dismiss from your mind the desire for the Impossible. Gently wean from hers what is but a girl's first fancy."

"It is a girl's first love."

"And if it be," said Darrell, calmly, "no complaint more sure to yield to change of air. I have known a girl as affectionate, as pure, as full of all womanly virtues, as your Sophy (and I can give her no higher praise)--loved more deeply than Lionel can love; professing, doubtless at the time believing, that she also loved for life; betrothed too; faith solemnised by promise; yet in less than a year she was another's wife. Change of air, change of heart! I do not underrate the effect which a young man, so winning as Lionel, would naturally produce on the fancy or the feelings of a girl, who as yet, too, has seen no others; but impressions in youth are characters in the sand. Grave them ever so deeply, the tide rolls over them; and when the ebb shows the surface again, the characters are gone, for the sands are s.h.i.+fted. Courage! Lady Montfort will present to her others with forms as fair as Lionel's, and as elegantly dressed. With so much in her own favour, there are young patricians enough who will care not a rush what her birth;--young lords--Lady Montfort knows well how fascinating young lords can be!

Courage! before a year is out, you will find new characters written on the sand."

"You don't know Sophy, sir," said Waife, simply; "and I see you are resolved not to know her. But you say Arabella Crane is to inquire; and should the inquiry prove that she is no child of Gabrielle Desmarets--that she is either your own grandchild or not mine--that--"

"Let me interrupt you. If there be a thing in the world that is cruel and treacherous, it is a false hope! Crush out of every longing thought the belief that this poor girl can prove to be one whom, with my consent, my kinsman can woo to be his wife. Lionel Haughton is the sole kinsman left to whom I can bequeath this roof-tree--these acres hallowed to me because a.s.sociated with my earliest lessons in honour and with the dreams which directed my life. He must take with the heritage the name it represents. In his children, that name of Darrell can alone live still in the land. I say to you, that even were my daughter now in existence, she would not succeed me--she would not inherit nor transmit that name. Why?--not because I am incapable of a Christian's forgiveness, but because I am not capable of a gentleman's treason to his ancestors and himself;--because Matilda Darrell was false and perfidious; because she was dead to honour, and therefore her birthright to a heritage of honour was irrevocably forfeited. And since you compel me to speak rudely, while in you I revere a man above the power of law to degrade--while, could we pa.s.s a generation, and Sophy were your child by your Lizzy, I should proudly welcome an alliance that made you and me as brothers--yet I cannot contemplate--it is beyond my power--I cannot contemplate the picture of Jasper Losely's daughter, even by my own child, the Mistress in my father's home--the bearer of my father's name.

'Tis in vain to argue. Grant me the slave of a prejudice--grant these ideas to be antiquated bigotry--I am too old to change. I ask from others no sacrifice which I have not borne. And whatever be Lionel's grief at my resolve, grief will be my companion long after he has forgotten that he mourned."

CHAPTER IX.

POOR SOPHY!

The next morning Mills, in giving Sophy a letter from Lady Montfort, gave her also one for Waife, and she recognised Lionel Haughton's handwriting on the address. She went straight to Waife's sitting-room, for the old man had now resumed his early habits, and was up and dressed. She placed the letter in his hands without a word, and stood by his side while he opened it, with a certain still firmness in the expression of her face, as if she were making up her mind to some great effort. The letter was ostensibly one of congratulation. Lionel had seen Darrell the day before, after the latter had left the Home Secretary's office, and had learned that all which Justice could do to repair the wrong inflicted had been done. Here Lionel's words, though brief, were cordial, and almost joyous; but then came a few sentences steeped in gloom. There was an allusion, vague and delicate in itself, to the eventful conversation with Waife in reference to Sophy--a sombre, solemn farewell conveyed to her and to hope--a pa.s.sionate prayer for her happiness--and then an abrupt wrench, as it were, away from a subject too intolerably painful to prolong--an intimation that he had succeeded in exchanging into a regiment very shortly to be sent into active service; that he should set out the next day to join that regiment in a distant part of the country; and that he trusted, should his life be spared by war, that it would be many years before he should revisit England. The sense of the letter was the more affecting in what was concealed than in what was expressed. Evidently Lionel desired to convey to Waife, and leave it to him to inform Sophy, that she was henceforth to regard the writer as vanished out of her existence--departed, as irrevocably as depart the Dead.

While Waife was reading, he had turned himself aside from Sophy; he had risen--he had gone to the deep recess of the old mullioned window, half screening himself beside the curtain. Noiselessly, Sophy followed; and when he had closed the letter, she laid her hand on his arm, and said very quietly: "Grandfather, may I read that letter?"

Waife was startled, and replied on the instant, "No, my dear."

"It is better that I should," said she, with the same quiet firmness; and then seeing the distress in his face, she added, with her more accustomed sweet docility, yet with a forlorn droop of the head: "But as you please, grandfather."

Waife hesitated an instant. Was she not right?--would it not be better to show the letter? After all, she must confront the fact that Lionel could be nothing to her henceforth; and would not Lionel's own words wound her less than all Waife could say? So he put the letter into her hands, and sate down, watching her countenance.

At the opening sentences of congratulation, she looked up inquiringly.

Poor man, he had not spoken to her of what at another time it would have been such joy to speak; and he now, in answer to her look, said almost sadly: "Only about me, Sophy; what does that matter?" But before the girl read, a line farther, she smiled on him, and tenderly kissed his furrowed brow.

"Don't read on, Sophy," said he quickly. She shook her head and resumed.

His eye still upon her face, he marked it changing as the sense of the letter grew upon her, till, as, without a word, with scarce a visible heave of the bosom, she laid the letter on his knees, the change had become so complete, that it seemed as if ANOTHER stood in her place. In very young and sensitive persons, especially female (though I have seen it even in our hard s.e.x), a great and sudden shock or revulsion of feeling reveals itself thus in the almost preternatural alteration of the countenance. It is not a mere paleness-a skin-deep loss of colour: it is as if the whole bloom of youth had rushed away; hollows never discernible before appear in the cheek that was so round and smooth; the muscles fall as in mortal illness; a havoc, as of years, seems to have been wrought in a moment; flame itself does not so suddenly ravage--so suddenly alter--leave behind it so ineffable an air of desolation and ruin. Waife sprang forward and clasped her to his breast.

"You will bear it, Sophy! The worst is over now. Fort.i.tude, my child!--fort.i.tude! The human heart is wonderfully sustained when it is not the conscience that weighs it down-griefs, that we think at the moment must kill us, wear themselves away. I speak the truth, for I too have suffered!"

"Poor grandfather!" said Sophy, gently; and she said no more. But when he would have continued to speak comfort, or exhort to patience, she pressed his hand tightly, and laid her finger on her lip. He was hushed in an instant.

Presently she began to move about the room, busying herself, as usual, in those slight, scarce perceptible arrangements by which she loved to think that she ministered to the old man's simple comforts. She placed the armchair in his favourite nook by the window, and before it the footstool for the poor lame foot; and drew the table near the chair, and looked over the books that George had selected for his perusal from Darrell's library; and chose the volume in which she saw his mark, to place nearest to his hand, and tenderly cleared the mist from his reading-gla.s.s; and removed one or two withered or ailing snowdrops from the little winter nosegay she had gathered for him the day before--he watching her all the time, silent as herself, not daring, indeed, to speak, lest his heart should overflow.

These little tasks of love over, she came towards him a few paces, and said: "Please, dear grandfather, tell me all about what has happened to yourself, which should make us glad--that is, by-and-by; but nothing as to the rest of that letter. I will just think over it by myself; but never let us talk of it, grandy dear, never more--never more."

CHAPTER X.

TREES THAT, LIKE THE POPLAR, LIFT UPWARD ALL THEIR BOUGHS, GIVE NO SHADE AND NO SHELTER, WHATEVER THEIR HEIGHT. TREES THE MOST LOVINGLY SHELTER AND SHADE US, WHEN, LIKE THE WILLOW, THE HIGHER SOAR THEIR SUMMITS, THE LOWLIER DROOP THEIR BOUGHS.

Usually when Sophy left Waife in the morning, she would wander out into the grounds, and he could see her pa.s.s before his window; or she would look into the library, which was almost exclusively given up to the Morleys, and he could hear her tread on the old creaking stairs. But now she had stolen into her own room, which communicated with his sitting-room--a small lobby alone intervening--and there she remained so long that he grew uneasy. He crept softly to her door and listened. He had a fineness of hearing almost equal to his son's; but he could not hear a sob--not a breath. At length he softly opened the door and looked in with caution.

The girl was seated at the foot of the bed, quite still--her eyes fixed on the ground, and her finger to her lip, just as she had placed it there when imploring silence; so still, it might be even slumber. All who have grieved respect grief. Waife did not like to approach her; but he said, from his stand at the threshold: "The sun is quite bright now, Sophy; go out for a little while, darling."

She did not look round, she did not stir; but she answered with readiness, "Yes, presently."