Home as Found Part 50

Eve smiled faintly, but very sweetly, as Paul would have thought, had the obscurity permitted more than a dim view of her lovely countenance.

"Ought I to listen to such praises, Mr. Powis," she asked; "praises which only contribute to a self-esteem that is too great already?"

"No one but yourself would say this; but your question does, indeed, remind me of the indiscretion that I have fallen into, by losing that command of my feelings, in which I have so long exulted. No man should make a woman the confidant of his attachment, until he is fully prepared to accompany the declaration with an offer of his hand;--and such is not my condition."

Eve made no dramatic start, a.s.sumed no look of affected surprise, or of wounded dignity; but she turned on her lover, her serene eyes, with an expression of concern so eloquent, and of a wonder so natural, that, could he have seen it, it would probably have overcome every difficulty on the spot, and produced the usual offer, notwithstanding the difficulty that he seemed to think insurmountable.

"And yet," he continued, "I have now said so much, involuntarily as it has been, that I feel it not only due to you, but in some measure to myself, to add that the fondest wish of my heart, the end and aim of all my day-dreams, as well as of my most sober thoughts for the future, centre in the common wish to obtain you for a wife."

The eye of Eve fell, and the expression of her countenance changed, while a slight but uncontrollable tremor ran through her frame. After a short pause, she summoned all her resolution, and in a voice, the firmness of which surprised even herself, she asked--

"Powis, to what does all this tend?"

"Well may you ask that question, Miss Effingham! You have every right to put it, and the answer, at least, shall add no further cause of self-reproach. Give me, I entreat you, but a minute to collect my thoughts, and I will endeavour to acquit myself of an imperious duty, in a manner more manly and coherent, than I fear has been observed for the last ten minutes."

They walked a short distance in profound silence, Eve still under the influence of astonishment, in which an uncertain and indefinite dread of, she scarce knew what, began to mingle; and Paul, endeavouring to quiet the tumult that had been so suddenly aroused within him. The latter then spoke:

"Circ.u.mstances have always deprived me of the happiness of experiencing the tenderness and sympathy of your s.e.x, Miss Effingham, and have thrown me more exclusively among the colder and ruder spirits of my own. My mother died at the time of my birth, thus cutting me off, at once, from one of the dearest of earthly ties. I am not certain that I do not exaggerate the loss in consequence of the privations I have suffered; but, from the hour when I first learned to feel, I have had a yearning for the tender, patient, endearing, disinterested love of a mother. You, too, suffered a similar loss, at an early period, if I have been correctly informed----"

A sob--a stifled, but painful sob, escaped Eve; and, inexpressibly shocked, Paul ceased dwelling on his own sources of sorrow, to attend to those he had so unintentionally disturbed.

"I have been selfish, dearest Miss Effingham," he exclaimed--"have overtaxed your patience--have annoyed you with griefs and losses that have no interest for you, which can have no interest, with one happy and blessed as yourself."

"No, no, no, Powis--you are unjust to both. I, too, lost my mother when a mere child, and never knew her love and tenderness. Proceed; I am calmer, and earnestly intreat you to forget my weakness, and to proceed."

Paul did proceed, but this brief interruption in which they had mingled their sorrows for a common misfortune, struck a new chord of feeling, and removed a mountain of reserve and distance, that might otherwise have obstructed their growing confidence.

"Cut off in this manner, from my nearest and dearest natural friend,"

Paul continued, "I was thrown, an infant, into the care of hirelings; and, in this at least, my fortune was still more cruel than your own; for the excellent woman who has been so happy as to have had the charge of your infancy, had nearly the love of a natural mother, however she may have been wanting in the attainments of one of your own condition in life."

"But we had both of us, our fathers, Mr. Powis. To me, my excellent, high principled, affectionate--nay tender father, has been every thing. Without him, I should have been truly miserable; and with him, notwithstanding these rebellious tears, tears that I must ascribe to the infection of your own grief, I have been truly blest."

"Mr. Effingham deserves this from you, but I never knew my father, you will remember."

"I am an unworthy confidant, to have forgotten this so soon. Poor Powis, you were, indeed, unhappy!"

"He had parted from my mother before my birth and either died soon after, or has never deemed his child of sufficient worth to make him the subject of interest sufficient to excite a single inquiry into his fate."

"Then he never knew that child!" burst from Eve, with a fervour and frankness, that set all reserves, whether of womanly training, or of natural timidity, at defiance.

"Miss Effingham!--dearest Miss Effingham--Eve, my own Eve, what am I to infer from this generous warmth! Do not mislead me! I can bear my solitary misery, can brave the sufferings of an isolated existence; but I could not live under the disappointments of such a hope, a hope fairly quickened by a clear expression from your lips."

"You teach me the importance of caution, Powis, and we will now return to your history, and to that confidence of which I shall not again prove a faithless repository. For the present at least, I beg that you will forget all else."

"A command so kindly--so encouragingly given--do I offend, dearest Miss Effingham?" Eve, for the second time in her life, placed her own light arm and beautiful hand, through the arm of Paul, discovering a bewitching but modest reliance on his worth and truth, by the very manner in which she did this simple and every-day act, while she said more cheerfully--

"You forget the substance of the command, at the very moment you would have me suppose you most disposed to obey it."

"Well, then, Miss Effingham, you shall be more implicitly minded.

_Why_ my father left my mother so soon after their union, I never knew. It would seem that they lived together but a few months, though I have the proud consolation of knowing that my mother was blameless.

For years I suffered the misery of doubt on a point that is ever the most tender with man, a distrust of his own mother; but all this has been happily, blessedly, cleared up, during my late visit to England.

It is true that Lady Dunluce was my mother's sister, and as such might have been lenient to her failings; but a letter from my father, that was written only a month before my mother's death, leaves no doubt not only of her blamelessness as a wife, but bears ample testimony to the sweetness of her disposition. This letter is a precious doc.u.ment for a son to possess, Miss Effingham!"

Eve made no answer; but Paul fancied that he felt another gentle pressure of the hand, which, until then, had rested so lightly on his own arm, that he scarcely dared to move the latter, lest he might lose the precious consciousness of its presence.

"I have other letters from my father to my mother," the young man continued, "but none that are so cheering to my heart as this. From their general tone, I cannot persuade myself that he ever truly loved her. It is a cruel thing, Miss Effingham, for a man to deceive a woman on a point like that!"

"Cruel, indeed," said Eve, firmly. "Death itself were preferable to such a delusion."

"I think my father deceived himself as well as my mother; for there is a strange incoherence and a want of distinctness in some of his letters, that caused feelings, keen as mine naturally were on such a subject, to distrust his affection from the first."

"Was your mother rich?" Eve asked innocently; for, an heiress herself, her vigilance had early been directed to that great motive of deception and dishonesty.

"Not in the least. She had little besides her high lineage, and her beauty. I have her picture, which sufficiently proves the latter; had, I ought rather to say, for it was her miniature, of which I was robbed by the Arabs, as you may remember, and I have not seen it since. In the way of money, my mother had barely the competency of a gentlewoman; nothing more."

The pressure on Paul was more palpable, as spoke of the miniature; and he ventured to touch his companion's arm, in order to give it a surer hold of his own.

"Mr. Powis was not mercenary, then, and it is a great deal," said Eve, speaking as if she were scarcely conscious that she spoke at all.

"Mr. Powis!--He was every thing that was n.o.ble and disinterested. A more generous, or a less selfish man, never existed than Francis Powis."

"I thought you never knew your father personally!" exclaimed Eve in surprise.

"Nor did I. But, you are in an error, in supposing that my father's name was Powis, when it was a.s.sheton."

Paul then explained the manner in which he had been adopted while still a child, by a gentleman called Powis, whose name he had taken, on finding himself deserted by his own natural parent, and to whose fortune he had succeeded, on the death of his voluntary protector.

"I bore the name of a.s.sheton until Mr. Powis took me to France, when he advised me to a.s.sume his own, which I did the more readily, as he thought he had ascertained that my father was dead, and that he had bequeathed the whole of a very considerable estate to his nephews and nieces, making no allusion to me in his will, and seemingly anxious even to deny his marriage; at least, he pa.s.sed among his acquaintances for a bachelor to his dying day."

"There is something so unusual and inexplicable in all this, Mr.

Powis, that it strikes me you have been to blame, in not inquiring more closely into the circ.u.mstances than, by your own account I should think had been done."

"For a long time, for many bitter years, I was afraid to inquire, lest I should learn something injurious to a mother's name. Then there was the arduous and confined service of my profession, which kept me in distant seas: and the last journey and painful indisposition of my excellent benefactor, prevented even the wish to inquire after my own family. The offended pride of Mr. Powis, who was justly hurt at the cavalier manner in which my father's relatives met his advances, aided in alienating me from that portion of my relatives, and put a stop to all additional proffers of intercourse from me. They even affected to doubt the fact that my father had ever married."

"But of that you had proof?" Eve earnestly asked.

"Unanswerable. My aunt Dunluce was present at the ceremony, and I possess the certificate given to my mother by the clergyman who officiated. Is it not strange, Miss Effingham, that with all these circ.u.mstances in favour of my legitimacy, even Lady Dunluce and her family, until lately, had doubts of the fact."

"That is indeed unaccountable, your aunt having witnessed the ceremony."

"Very true; but some circ.u.mstances, a little aided perhaps by the strong desire of her husband, General Ducie, to obtain the revival of a barony that was in abeyance, and of which she would be the only heir, a.s.suming that my rights were invalid, inclined her to believe that my father was already married, when he entered into the solemn contract with my mother. But from that curse too, I have been happily relieved."

"Poor Powis!" said Eve, with a sympathy that her voice expressed more clearly even than her words; "you have, indeed, suffered cruelly, for one so young."

"I have learned to bear it, dearest Miss Effingham, and have stood so long a solitary and isolated being, one in whom none have taken any interest--"

"Nay, say not that--_we_, at least, have always felt an interest in you--have always esteemed you, and now have learned to--"

"Learned to--?"