Night and Morning Part 67

"f.a.n.n.y, 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 f.a.n.n.y, 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, f.a.n.n.y."

"That's true--and--"

f.a.n.n.y 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. f.a.n.n.y, 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 f.a.n.n.y!--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 compa.s.sion, an inexpressible and holy fondness, he moved to f.a.n.n.y.

"Come, my child; now let us go home."

"Stay," said f.a.n.n.y--"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.

CHAPTER VII.

"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 boat Upon 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 G.o.ds, 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 n.o.ble a pa.s.sion 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sions 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion at the first sight. Youth is inflammable only when the heart is young!

There are certain times of life when, in either s.e.x, 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 pa.s.sions unemployed. Vaudemont was thus unconsciously prepared to love. As we have seen, his first and earliest feelings directed themselves to f.a.n.n.y. 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 compa.s.sion, 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 Pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion that began, already, completely to master his strong spirit, if he had not, from Camilla's embarra.s.sment, 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 antic.i.p.ated.

In the meanwhile, one of those successive revolutions which had marked the eras in f.a.n.n.y'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, f.a.n.n.y was sitting before the dying fire in the little parlour in an att.i.tude of deep and pensive reverie. The old woman-servant, Sarah, who, very different from Mrs. Boxer, loved f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y still up.

"Dear heart alive!" she said; "why, Miss f.a.n.n.y, you will catch your death of cold,-what are you thinking about?"

"Sit down, Sarah; I want to speak to you." Now, though f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y.

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, f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y, playing with the corner of her ap.r.o.n.

"My brother!" exclaimed the old woman, aghast. "La! miss, you must not talk in that way,--it's quite wicked and heathenis.h.!.+ One must not marry one's brother!"

"No!" said f.a.n.n.y, 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!"

f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y!--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 f.a.n.n.y'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 f.a.n.n.y who had suffered their lips to repeat the parrot-cry of the "idiot girl!"