Mrs. Halifax stood at the dining-room window, trying vainly to regain self-control.

"If I could only love her! If only she had made me love her!" she muttered, over and over again.

I hoped, from the bottom of my soul, that Edwin had not heard her—had not seen her involuntarily recoil, as he led to his mother his handsome girl that he seemed so proud of, his happy, affianced wife. Happiness melts some natures, like spring and sunshine. Louise looked up with swimming eyes.

"Oh! be kind to me! Nobody was ever kind to me till I came here!"

The good heart gave way: Mrs. Halifax opened her arms.

"Be true to Edwin—love Edwin, and I shall love you—I am sure I shall."

Kissing her once or twice, the mother let fall a few tears; then sat down, still keeping the girl's hand, and busying herself with various little kindnesses about her.

"Are you sure you are well wrapped up? Edwin, see that she has my fur cloak in the carriage. What cold fingers! Have some wine before you start, my dear."

Miss Silver altogether melted; sobbing, she murmured something about forgiveness.

"Nay, did I say a word about forgiveness? Then, do not you. Let us be patient—we shall all be happy in time."

"And—Guy?"

"Guy will be himself soon," returned the mother, rather proudly. "We will not mention him, if you please, my dear."

At this moment, Guy must have heard the carriage-wheels and guessed Miss Silver was going, for he appeared at the parlour door. He found his mother toying with Miss Silver's hand; Edwin standing by, proud and glad, with his arm clasped round Louise.

He did not remove it. In his brother's very face—perhaps because of the expression of that face—the lover held fast his own.

Mrs. Halifax rose up, alarmed. "She is just going, Guy. Shake hands, and bid her good-bye."

The girl's hand, which was sorrowfully and kindly extended, Guy snatched and held fast.

"Let her pass," cried Edwin, angrily.

"Most certainly. I have not the least wish to detain her. Good-bye! A pleasant journey!" And, still keeping her hand, he gazed with burning eyes on the features he had so loved—as boys do love—with a wild imaginative passion, kindled by beauty alone. "I shall claim my right—just for once—may I, sister Louise?"

With a glance of defiance at Edwin, Guy caught his brother's betrothed round the waist and kissed her—once—twice—savagely.

It was done so suddenly and under such an ingenious disguise of "right," that open vengeance was impossible. But as Edwin hurried Louise away, the look that passed between the two young men was enough to blot out henceforward all friendship, all brotherhood. That insult would never be forgotten.

She was gone—the house was free of her and Edwin too. Guy was left alone with me and his mother.

Mrs. Halifax sat sewing. She seemed to take no note of his comings and goings—his restless starts—his fits of dark musing, when his face grew like the face of some stranger, some one whom he would have shrunk from—any one but our own merry Guy.

"Mother,"—the voice startled me, such irritable, intolerable bitterness marred its once pleasant tones—"when do they come back?"

"Do you mean—"

"I mean those people."

"In a week or so. Your brother returns to-night, of course."

"My BROTHER, eh? Better not say it—it's an ugly word."

Mrs. Halifax attempted no reproof; she knew that it would have been useless—worse than useless—then.

"Mother," Guy said at last, coming up and leaning against her chair, "you must let me go."

"Where, my son?"

"Anywhere—out of their sight—those two. You see, I cannot bear it. It maddens me—makes me wicked—makes me not myself. Or rather makes me truly MYSELF, which is altogether wicked."

"No, Guy—no, my own boy. Have patience—all this will pass away."

"It might, if I had anything to do. Mother," kneeling down by her with a piteous gaze—"mother, you need not look so wretched. I wouldn't harm Edwin—would not take from him his happiness; but to live in sight of it day after day, hour after hour—I can't do it! Do not ask me—let me get away."

"But where?"

"Anywhere, as I said; only let me go far away from them, where no possible news of them can reach me. In some place, oh, mother darling! where I can trouble no one and make no one miserable."

The mother feebly shook her head. As if such a spot could be found on earth, while SHE lived.

But she saw that Guy was right. To expect him to remain at home was cruelty. As he had said, he could not bear it—few could. Few even among women—of men much fewer. One great renunciation is possible, sometimes easy, as death may be; but to "die daily?" In youth, too, with all the passions vehement, the self-knowledge and self-control small? No; Nature herself, in that universal desire to escape, which comes with such a trial, hints at the unnaturalness of the ordeal; in which, soon or late, the weak become paralysed or callous; the strong—God help them!—are apt to turn wicked.

Guy's instinct of flight was, his mother felt, wisest, safest, best.

"My boy, you shall have your desire; you shall go."

I had not expected it of her—at least, not so immediately. I had thought, bound up in him as she was, accustomed to his daily sight, his daily fondness—for he was more with her, and "petted" her more than any other of the children—I had thought to have seen some reluctance, some grieved entreaty—but no! Not even when, gaining her consent, the boy looked up as if her allowing him to quit her was the greatest kindness she had ever in his life bestowed.

"And when shall I go?"

"Whenever you choose."

"To-day; perhaps I might get away to-day?"

"You can, if you wish, my dear boy."

But no sooner had she said it, than the full force and meaning of the renunciation seemed to burst upon her. Her fingers, which had been smoothing Guy's hand as it lay on her lap, tightly closed round it; with the other hand she put back his hair, gazing—gazing, as if it were impossible to part with him.

"Guy—oh, Guy, my heart is breaking! Promise that you will try to be yourself again—that you will never be anything other than my own good boy, if I agree to let you go?" What he answered, or what further passed between them, was not for me either to hear or to know. I left the room immediately.

When, some time after John's hour for returning from the mills, I also returned to the house, I found that everything was settled for Guy's immediate departure.

There was some business in Spain—something about Andalusian wool—which his father made the ostensible reason for the journey. It would occupy him and distract his mind, besides giving him constant necessity of change. And, they say, travel is the best cure for the heart-ache. We hoped it might prove so.

Perhaps the sorest point, and one that had been left undecided till both parents saw that in Guy's present mood any opposition was hurtful, even dangerous, was the lad's obstinate determination to depart alone. He refused his mother's companionship to London, even his father's across the country to the nearest point where one of those new and dangerous things called railways tempted travellers to their destruction. But Guy would go by it—the maddest and strangest way of locomotion pleased him best. So it was settled he should go, as he pleaded, this very day.

A strange day it seemed—long and yet how short! Mrs. Halifax was incessantly busy. I caught sight of her now and then, flitting from room to room, with Guy's books in her hand—Guy's linen thrown across her arm. Sometimes she stood a few minutes by the window, doing a few stitches of necessary work, which, when even nurse Watkins offered to do—Jenny, who had been a rosy lass when Guy was born—she refused abruptly, and went stitching on.

There were no regular meals that day; better not, perhaps. I saw John come up to his wife as she stood sewing, and bring her a piece of bread and a glass of wine—but she could not touch either.

"Mother, try," whispered Guy, mournfully. "What will become of me if I have made you ill?"

"Oh, no fear, no fear!" She smiled, took the wine and swallowed it—broke off a bit of the bread,—and went on with her work.

The last hour or two passed so confusedly that I do not well remember them. I can only call to mind seeing Guy and his mother everywhere side by side, doing everything together, as if grudging each instant remaining till the final instant came. I have also a vivid impression of her astonishing composure, of her calm voice when talking to Guy about indefinite trifles, or, though that was seldom, to any other of us. It never faltered—never lost its rich, round, cheerfulness of tone; as if she wished him to carry it as such, and no other—the familiar mother's voice—in his memory across the seas.

Once only it grew sharp, when Walter, who hovered about disconsolately, knelt down to fasten his brother's portmanteau.

"No! Let go! I can do everything myself."

And now the time was fast flying—her boy must depart.

All the household collected in the hall to bid Mr. Guy good-bye—Mr. Guy whom everybody was so fond of. They believed—which was all that any one, save ourselves, ever knew—that sudden business had called him away on a long and anxious journey. They lingered about him, respectfully, with eager, honest blessings, such as it was good the lad should have—good that he should bear away with him from England and from home.

Finally, Guy, his father, and his mother went into the study by themselves. Soon even his father came out and shut the door, that there should be not a single witness to the last few words between mother and son. These being over, they both came into the hall together, brave and calm—which calmness was maintained even to the last good-bye.

Thus we sent our Guy away, cheerfully and with blessings—away into the wide, dangerous world; alone, with no guard or restraint, except (and in that EXCEPT lay the whole mystery of our cheerfulness)—the fear of God, his father's counsels, and his mother's prayers.



CHAPTER XXXV

Two years rolled over Beechwood—two uneventful years. The last of the children ceased to be a child; and we prepared for that great era in all household history, the first marriage in the family. It was to be celebrated very quietly, as Edwin and Louise both desired. Time had healed over many a pang, and taught many a soothing lesson; still it could not be supposed that this marriage was without its painfulness.

Guy still remained abroad; his going had produced the happy result intended. Month after month his letters came, each more hopeful than the last, each bringing balm to the mother's heart. Then he wrote to others beside his mother: Maud and Walter replied to him in long home-histories; and began to talk without hesitation—nay, with great pride and pleasure—"of my brother who is abroad."

The family wound was closing, the family peace about to be restored; Maud even fancied Guy ought to come home to "our wedding;"—but then she had never been told the whole of past circumstances; and, besides, she was still too young to understand love matters. Yet so mercifully had time smoothed down all things, that it sometimes appeared even to us elders as if those three days of bitterness were a mere dream—as if the year we dreaded had passed as calmly as any other year. Save that in this interval Ursula's hair had begun to turn from brown to grey; and John first mentioned, so cursorily that I cannot even now remember when or where, that slight pain, almost too slight to complain of, which he said warned him in climbing Enderley Hill that he could not climb so fast as when he was young. And I returned his smile, telling him we were evidently growing old men; and must soon set our faces to descend the hill of life. Easy enough I was in saying this, thinking, as I often did, with great content, that there was not the faintest doubt which of us would reach the bottom first.

Yet I was glad to have safely passed my half century of life—glad to have seen many of John's cares laid to rest, more especially those external troubles which I have not lately referred to—for, indeed, they were absorbed and forgotten in the home-troubles that came after. He had lived down all slanders, as he said he would. Far and near travelled the story of the day when Jessop's bank was near breaking; far and near, though secretly—for we found it out chiefly by its results—poor people whispered the tale of a gentleman who had been attacked on the high roads, and whose only attempt at bringing the robbers to justice was to help the widow of one and send the others safe out of the country, at his own expense, not Government's. None of these were notable or showy deeds—scarcely one of them got, even under the disguise of asterisks, into the newspaper; the Norton Bury Mercury, for its last dying sting, still complained (and very justly) that there was not a gentleman in the county whose name so seldom headed a charity subscription as that of John Halifax, Esquire, of Beechwood. But the right made its way, as, soon or late, the right always does; he believed his good name was able to defend itself, and it did defend itself; he had faith in the only victory worth having—the universal victory of Truth; and Truth conquered at last.

To drive with him across the country—he never carried pistols now,—or to walk with him, as one day before Edwin's wedding we walked, a goodly procession, through the familiar streets of Norton Bury, was a perpetual pleasure to the rest of the family. Everybody knew him, everybody greeted him, everybody smiled as he passed—as though his presence and his recognition were good things to have and to win. His wife often laughed, and said she doubted whether even Mr. O'Connell of Derrynane, who was just now making a commotion in Ireland, lighting the fire of religious and political discord from one end to the other of County Clare;—she doubted if even Daniel O'Connell had more popularity among his own people than John Halifax had in the primitive neighbourhood where he had lived so long.

Mrs. Halifax herself was remarkably gay this morning. She had had letters from Guy; together with a lovely present, for which he said he had ransacked all the magazins des modes in Paris—a white embroidered China shawl. It had arrived this morning—Lord Ravenel being the bearer. This was not the first time by many that he had brought us news of our Guy, and thereby made himself welcome at Beechwood. More welcome than he might have been otherwise; for his manner of life was so different from ours. Not that Lord Ravenel could be accused of any likeness to his father; but blood is blood, and education and habits are not to be easily overcome. The boys laughed at him for his aristocratic, languid ways; Maud teased him for his mild cynicism and the little interest he seemed to take in anything; while the mother herself was somewhat restless about his coming, wondering what possible good his acquaintance could do to us, or ours to him, seeing we moved in totally different spheres. But John himself was invariably kind, nay, tender over him—we all guessed why. And perhaps even had not the young man had so many good points, while his faults were more negations than positive ill qualities, we likewise should have been tender over him—for Muriel's sake.

He had arrived at Beechwood this morning, and falling as usual into our family routine, had come with us to Norton Bury. He looked up with more interest than usual in his pensive eyes, as he crossed the threshold of our old house, and told Maud how he had come there many years ago with his father.

"That was the first time I ever met your father," I overheard him say to Maud—not without feeling; as if he thought he owed fate some gratitude for the meeting.

Mrs. Halifax, in the casual civil inquiry which was all the old earl ever won in our house, asked after the health of Lord Luxmore.

"He is still at Compiegne. Does not Guy mention him? Lord Luxmore takes the greatest pleasure in Guy's society."

By her start, this was evidently new and not welcome tidings to Guy's mother. No wonder. Any mother in England would have shrank from the thought that her best-beloved son—especially a young man of Guy's temperament, and under Guy's present circumstances—was thrown into the society which now surrounded the debauched dotage of the too-notorious Earl of Luxmore.

"My son did not mention it. He has been too much occupied in business matters to write home frequently, since he reached Paris. However his stay there is limited;" and this seemed to relieve her. "I doubt if he will have much time left to visit Compiegne."

She said no more than this, of course, to Lord Luxmore's son; but her disquiet was sufficiently apparent.

"It was I who brought your son to Compiegne—where he is a universal favourite, from his wit and liveliness. I know no one who is a more pleasant companion than Guy."

Guy's mother bowed—but coldly.

"I think, Mrs. Halifax, you are aware that the earl's tastes and mine differ widely—have always differed. But he is an old man, and I am his only son. He likes to see me sometimes, and I go:—though, I must confess, I take little pleasure in the circle he has around him."

"In which circle, as I understand, my son is constantly included?"

"Why not? It is a very brilliant circle. The whole court of Charles Dix can afford none more amusing. For the rest, what matters? One learns to take things as they seem, without peering below the surface. One wearies of impotent Quixotism against unconquerable evils."

"That is not our creed at Beechwood," said Mrs. Halifax, abruptly, as she ceased the conversation. But ever and anon it seemed to recur to her mind—ay, through all the mirth of the young people, all the graver pleasure which the father took in the happiness of his son Edwin; his good son, who had never given him a single care. He declared this settling of Edwin had been to him almost like the days when he himself used to come of evenings, hammer in hand, to put up shelves in the house, or nail the currant-bushes against the wall, doing everything con amore, and with the utmost care, knowing it would come under the quick observant eyes of Ursula March.

"That is, of Ursula Halifax—for I don't think I let her see a single one of my wonderful doings until she was Ursula Halifax. Do you remember, Phineas, when you came to visit us the first time, and found us gardening?"

"And she had on a white gown and a straw hat with blue ribbons. What a young thing she looked!—hardly older than Mistress Maud here."

John put his arm round his wife's waist—not so slender as it had been, but comely and graceful still, repeating—with something of the musical cadence of his boyish readings of poetry—a line or two from the sweet old English song:

"And when with envy Time transported Shall think to rob us of our joys, You'll in your girls again be courted, And I'll go wooing with my boys."

Ursula laughed, and for the time being the shadow passed from her countenance. Her husband had happily not noticed it: and apparently, she did not wish to tell him her trouble. She let him spend a happy day, even grew happy herself in response to his care to make her so, by the resolute putting away of all painful present thoughts, and calling back of sweet and soothing memories belonging to this their old married home. John seemed determined that, if possible, the marriage that was to be should be as sacred and as hopeful as their own.

So full of it were we all, that not until the day after, when Lord Ravenel had left us,—longing apparently to be asked to stay for the wedding, but John did not ask him,—I remembered what he had said about Guy's association with Lord Luxmore's set. It was recalled to me by the mother's anxious face, as she gave me a foreign letter to post.

"Post it yourself, will you, Phineas? I would not have it miscarry, or be late in its arrival, on any account."

No, for I saw it was to her son, at Paris.

"It will be the last letter I shall need to write," she added, again lingering over it, to be certain that all was correct—the address being somewhat illegible for that free, firm hand of hers. "My boy is coming home."

"Guy coming home! To the marriage?"

"No; but immediately after. He is quite himself now. He longs to come home."

"And his mother?"

His mother could not speak. Like light to her eyes, like life to her heart, was the thought of Guy's coming home. All that week she looked ten years younger. With a step buoyant as any girl's she went about the marriage preparations; together with other preparations, perhaps dearer still to the motherly heart, where, if any preference did lurk, it was for the one for whom—possibly from whom—she had suffered most, of all her children.

John, too, though the father's joy was graver and not unmixed with some anxiety—anxiety which he always put aside in his wife's presence—seemed eager to have his son at home.

"He is the eldest son," he repeated more than once, when talking to me of his hope that Guy would now settle permanently at Beechwood. "After myself, the head of the family."

After John! It was almost ridiculous to peer so far into the future as that.

Of all the happy faces I saw the day before the marriage, I think the happiest was Mrs. Halifax's, as I met her coming out of Guy's room, which ever since he left had been locked up, unoccupied. Now his mother threw open the door with a cheerful air.

"You may go in if you like, Uncle Phineas. Does it not look nice?"

It did indeed, with the fresh white curtains; the bed laid all in order; the book-shelves arranged, and even the fowling-piece and fishing-rod put in the right places.

The room looked very neat, I said, with an amused doubt as to how long it was to remain so.

"That is true, indeed. How he used to throw his things about! A sad untidy boy!" And his mother laughed; but I saw all her features were trembling with emotion.

"He will not be exactly a boy now. I wonder if we shall find him much changed."

"Very likely. Brown, with a great beard; he said so in one of his letters. I shall hardly know my boy again."—With a lighting-up of the eye that furnished a flat contradiction to the mother's statement.

"Here are some of Mrs. Tod's roses, I see."

"She made me take them. She said Master Guy always used to stop and pick a bunch as he rode past. She hopes she shall see him ride past on Sunday next. Guy must pay her one of his very first visits; the good old soul!"

I hinted that Guy would have to pay visits half over the country, to judge by the number of invitations I had heard of.

"Yes. Everybody wants to steal my boy. Everybody has a welcome for him.—How bright old Watkins has polished that gun!—Sir Herbert says, Guy must come over to the shooting next week. He used to be exceedingly fond of going to the manor-house."

I smiled to see the innocent smile of this good mother, who would have recoiled at the accusation of match-making. Yet I knew she was thinking of her great favourite, pretty Grace Oldtower; who was Grace Oldtower still, and had refused, gossip said, half the brilliant matches in the county, to the amazement and strong disapprobation of all her friends—excepting Mrs. Halifax.

"Come away, Phineas!" slightly sighing, as if her joy weighed her down, or as if conscious that she was letting fancy carry her too far into the unknown future. "His room is quite ready now, whatever time the boy arrives. Come away."

She shut and locked the door. To be opened—when?

Morning broke, and none could have desired a brighter marriage-morning. Sunshine out of doors—sunshine on all the faces within; only family faces,—for no other guests had been invited, and we had kept the day as secret as we could; there was nothing John disliked more than a show-wedding. Therefore it was with some surprise that while they were all up-stairs adorning themselves for church, Maud and I, standing at the hall-door, saw Lord Ravenel's travelling carriage drive up to it, and Lord Ravenel himself, with a quicker and more decided gesture than was natural to him, spring out.

Maud ran into the porch; startling him much, apparently; for indeed she was a sweet vision of youth, happiness, and grace, in her pretty bridesmaid's dress.

"Is this the wedding-morning? I did not know—I will come again to-morrow;" and he seemed eager to escape back to his carriage.

This action relieved me from a vague apprehension of ill tidings, and made less painful the first question which rose to my lips, "Had he seen Guy?"

"No."

"We thought for the moment it might be Guy come home," Maud cried. "We are expecting him. Have you heard of him since we saw you? Is he quite well?"

"I believe so."

I thought the answer brief; but then he was looking intently upon Guy's sister, who held his hands in her childish, affectionate way; she had not yet relinquished her privilege of being Lord Ravenel's "pet." When, hesitatingly, he proposed returning to Luxmore, unwilling to intrude upon the marriage, the little lady would not hear of it for a moment. She took the unexpected guest to the study, left him there with her father, explained to her mother all about his arrival and his having missed seeing Guy—appearing entirely delighted.

I came into the drawing-room, and sat watching the sun shining on marriage-garments and marriage-faces, all as bright as bright could be,—including the mother's. It had clouded over for a few moments when the postman's ring was heard; but she said at once that it was most unlikely Guy would write—she had told him there was no need to write. So she stood content, smoothing down the soft folds of her beautiful shawl, which Guy meant her to wear to-day. This, together with his fond remembrance of her, seemed almost as comfortable as the visible presence of her boy. Her boy, who was sure to come to-morrow.

"John, is that you? How softly you came in. And Lord Ravenel! He knows we are glad to see him. Shall we make him one of our own family for the time being, and take him with us to see Edwin married?"

Lord Ravenel bowed.

"Maud tells us you have not seen Guy. I doubt if he will be able to arrive to-day; but we fully expect him tomorrow."

Lord Ravenel bowed again. Mrs. Halifax said something about this unexpected arrival of his.

"He came on business," John answered quickly, and Ursula made no more inquiries.

She stood, talking with Lord Ravenel—as I could see her stand now, playing with the deep fringe of her shawl; the sun glancing on that rich silk dress, of her favourite silver-grey; a picture of matronly grace and calm content, as charming as even the handsome, happy bride.

I was still looking at her, when John called me aside. I followed him to the study.

"Shut the door."

By his tone and look I knew in a moment that something had happened.

"Yes. I'll tell you presently—if there's time."

While he was speaking some violent pain—physical or mental, or both—seemed to seize him. I had my hand on the door to call Ursula, but he held me fast with a kind of terror.

"Call no one. I am used to it. Water!"

He drank a glassful, which stood by, breathed once or twice heavily, and gradually recovered himself. The colour had scarcely come back into his face when he heard Maud run laughing through the hall.

"Father, where are you? We are waiting for you."

"I will come in two minutes, my child."

Having said this, in his own natural voice, he closed the door again, and spoke to me rapidly.

"Phineas, I want you to stay away from church; make some excuse, or I will for you. Write a letter for me to this address in Paris. Say—Guy Halifax's father will be there, without fail, within a week, to answer all demands."

"All demands!" I echoed, bewildered.

He repeated the sentence word for word. "Can you remember it? Literally, mind! And post it at once, before we return from church."

Here the mother's call was heard. "John, are you coming?"

"In a moment, love," for her hand was on the door outside; but her husband held the other handle fast. He then went on, breathlessly, "You understand, Phineas? And you will be careful, very careful? SHE MUST NOT KNOW—not till tonight."

"One word. Guy is alive and well?"

"Yes—yes."

"Thank God!"

But Guy's father was gone while I spoke. Heavy as the news might be—this ill news which had struck me with apprehension the moment I saw Lord Ravenel—it was still endurable. I could not conjure up any grief so bitter as the boy's dying.

Therefore, with a quietness that came naturally under the compulsion of such a necessity as the present, I rejoined the rest, made my excuses, and answered all objections. I watched the marriage-party leave the house. A simple procession—the mother first, leaning on Edwin; then Maud, Walter, and Lord Ravenel; John walked last, with Louise upon his arm. Thus I saw them move up the garden, and through the beech-wood, to the little church on the hill.

I then wrote the letter and sent it off. That done, I went back into the study. Knowing nothing—able to guess nothing—a dull patience came over me, the patience with which we often wait for unknown, inevitable misfortunes. Sometimes I almost forgot Guy in my startled remembrance of his father's look as he called me away, and sat down—or rather dropped down—into his chair. Was it illness? yet he had not complained; he hardly ever complained, and scarcely had a day's sickness from year to year. And as I watched him and Louise up the garden, I had noticed his free, firm gait, without the least sign of unsteadiness or weakness. Besides, he was not one to keep any but a necessary secret from those who loved him. He could not be seriously ill, or we should have known it.

Thus I pondered, until I heard the church bells ring out merrily. The marriage was over.

I was just in time to meet them at the front gates, which they entered—our Edwin and his wife—through a living line of smiling faces, treading upon a carpet of strewn flowers. Enderley would not be defrauded of its welcome—all the village escorted the young couple in triumph home. I have a misty recollection of how happy everybody looked, how the sun was shining, and the bells ringing, and the people cheering—a mingled phantasmagoria of sights and sounds, in which I only saw one person distinctly,—John.

He waited while the young folk passed in—stood on the hall-steps—in a few words thanked his people, and bade them to the general rejoicing. They, uproarious, answered in loud hurrahs, and one energetic voice cried out:

"One cheer more for Master Guy!"

Guy's mother turned delighted—her eyes shining with proud tears.

"John—thank them; tell them that Guy will thank them himself to-morrow."

The master thanked them, but either he did not explain—or the honest rude voices drowned all mention of the latter fact—that Guy would be home to-morrow.

All this while, and at the marriage-breakfast likewise, Mr. Halifax kept the same calm demeanour. Once only, when the rest were all gathered round the bride and bridegroom, he said to me:

"Phineas, is it done?"

"What is done?" asked Ursula, suddenly passing.

"A letter I asked him to write for me this morning."

Now I had all my life been proud of John's face—that it was a safe face to trust in—that it could not, or if it could, it would not, boast that stony calm under which some men are so proud of disguising themselves and their emotions from those nearest and dearest to them. If he were sad, we knew it; if he were happy, we knew it too. It was his principle, that nothing but the strongest motive should make a man stoop to even the smallest hypocrisy.

Therefore, hearing him thus speak to his wife, I was struck with great alarm. Mrs. Halifax herself seemed uneasy.

"A business letter, I suppose?"

"Partly on business. I will tell you all about it this evening."

She looked re-assured. "Just as you like; you know I am not curious." But passing on, she turned back. "John, if it was anything important to be done—anything that I ought to know at once, you would not keep me in ignorance?"

"No—my dearest! No!"

Then what had happened must be something in which no help availed; something altogether past and irremediable; something which he rightly wished to keep concealed, for a few hours at least, from his other children, so as not to mar the happiness of this day, of which there could be no second, this crowning day of their lives—this wedding-day of Edwin and Louise.

So, he sat at the marriage-table; he drank the marriage-health; he gave them both a marriage-blessing. Finally, he sent them away, smiling and sorrowful—as is the bounden duty of young married couples to depart—Edwin pausing even on the carriage-step to embrace his mother with especial tenderness, and whisper her to "give his love to Guy."

"It reminds one of Guy's leaving," said the mother, hastily brushing back the tears that would spring and roll down her smiling face. She had never, until this moment, reverted to that miserable day. "John, do you think it possible the boy can be at home to-night?"

John answered emphatically, but very softly, "No."

"Why not? My letter would reach him in full time. Lord Ravenel has been to Paris and back since then. But—" turning full upon the young nobleman—"I think you said you had not seen Guy?"

"No."

"Did you hear anything of him?"

"I—Mrs. Halifax—"

Exceedingly distressed, almost beyond his power of self-restraint, the young man looked appealingly to John, who replied for him:

"Lord Ravenel brought me a letter from Guy this morning."

"A letter from Guy—and you never told me. How very strange!"

Still, she seemed only to think it "strange." Some difficulty or folly perhaps—you could see by the sudden flushing of her cheek, and her quick, distrustful glance at Lord Ravenel, what she imagined it was—that the boy had confessed to his father. With an instinct of concealment—the mother's instinct—for the moment she asked no questions.

We were all still standing at the hall-door. Unresisting, she suffered her husband to take her arm in his and bring her into the study.

"Now—the letter, please! Children, go away; I want to speak to your father. The letter, John?"

Her hand, which she held out, shook much. She tried to unfold the paper—stopped, and looked up piteously.

"It is not to tell me he is not coming home? I can bear anything, you know—but he MUST come."

John only answered, "Read,"—and took firm hold of her hand while she read—as we hold the hand of one undergoing great torture,—which must be undergone, and which no human love can either prepare for, or remove, or alleviate.

The letter, which I saw afterwards, was thus:

"DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,

"I have disgraced you all. I have been drunk—in a gaming-house. A man insulted me—it was about my father—but you will hear—all the world will hear presently. I struck him—there was something in my hand, and—the man was hurt.

"He may be dead by this time. I don't know.

"I am away to America to-night. I shall never come home any more. God bless you all.

"GUY HALIFAX.

"P.S. I got my mother's letter to-day. Mother—I was not in my right senses, or I should not have done it. Mother, darling! forget me. Don't let me have broken your heart."

Alas, he had broken it!

"Never come home any more!— Never come home any more!"

She repeated this over and over again, vacantly: nothing but these five words.

Nature refused to bear it; or rather, Nature mercifully helped her to bear it. When John took his wife in his arms she was insensible; and remained so, with intervals, for hours.

This was the end of Edwin's wedding-day.



CHAPTER XXXVI

Lord Ravenel knew—as all Paris did by this time—the whole story. Though, as he truly said, he had not seen Guy. The lad was hurried off immediately, for fear of justice: but he had written from shipboard to Lord Ravenel, begging him himself to take the letter and break the news to us at Beechwood.

The man he had struck was not one of Lord Luxmore's set—though it was through some of his "noble" friends Guy had fallen into his company. He was an Englishman, lately succeeded to a baronetcy and estate; his name—how we started to hear it, though by Lord Ravenel and by us, for his sake, it was both pronounced and listened to, as if none of us had ever heard it before—Sir Gerard Vermilye.

As soon as Ursula recovered, Mr. Halifax and Lord Ravenel went to Paris together. This was necessary, not only to meet justice, but to track the boy—to whose destination we had no clue but the wide world, America. Guy's mother hurried them away—his mother, who rose from her bed, and moved about the house like a ghost—up-stairs and down-stairs—everywhere—excepting in that room, which was now once more locked, and the outer blind drawn down, as if Death himself had taken possession there.

Alas! we learned now that there may be sorrows bitterer even than death.

Mr. Halifax went away. Then followed a long season of torpid gloom—days or weeks, I hardly remember—during which we, living shut up at Beechwood, knew that our name—John's stainless, honourable name—was in everybody's mouth—parrotted abroad in every society—canvassed in every newspaper. We tried, Walter and I, to stop them at first, dreading lest the mother might read in some foul print or other scurrilous tales about her boy; or, as long remained doubtful, learn that he was proclaimed through France and England as a homicide—an assassin. But concealments were idle—she would read everything—hear everything—meet everything—even those neighbours who out of curiosity or sympathy called at Beechwood. Not many times, though; they said they could not understand Mrs. Halifax. So, after a while, they all left her alone, except good little Grace Oldtower.

"Come often," I heard her say to this girl, whom she was fond of: they had sat talking a whole morning—idly and pensively; of little things around them, never once referring to things outside. "Come often, though the house is dull. Does it not feel strange, with Mr. Halifax away?"

Ay, this was the change—stranger at first than what had befallen Guy—for that long seemed a thing we could not realise; like a story told of some other family than ours. The present tangible blank was the house with its head and master away.

Curiously enough, but from his domestic habits easily accountable, he had scarcely ever been more than a few days absent from home before. We missed him continually; in his place at the head of the table; in his chair by the fire; his quick ring at the hall bell, when he came up from the mills—his step—his voice—his laugh. The life and soul of the house seemed to have gone out of it from the hour the father went away.

I think in the wonderful workings of things—as we know all things do work together for good—this fact was good for Ursula. It taught her that, in losing Guy, she had not lost all her blessings. It showed her what in the passion of her mother-love she might have been tempted to forget—many mothers do—that beyond all maternal duty, is the duty that a woman owes to her husband: beyond all loves, is the love that was hers before any of them were born.

So, gradually, as every day John's letters came,—and she used to watch for them and seize them as if they had been love-letters; as every day she seemed to miss him more, and count more upon his return; referring all decisions, and all little pleasures planned for her, to the time "when your father comes home;"—hope and comfort began to dawn in the heart of the mourning mother.

And when at last John fixed the day of his coming back, I saw Ursula tying up the small bundle of his letters—his letters, of which in all her happy life she had had so few—his tender, comforting, comfortable letters.

"I hope I shall never need to have any more," she said, half-smiling—the faint smile which began to dawn in her poor face, as if she must accustom it to look bright again in time for her husband's coming.

And when the day arrived, she put all the house in trim order, dressed herself in her prettiest gown, sat patient while Maud brushed and curled her hair—how white it had turned of late!—and then waited, with a flush on her cheek—like that of a young girl waiting for her lover—for the sound of carriage-wheels.

All that had to be told about Guy—and it was better news than any one of us had hoped for—John had already told in his letters. When he came back, therefore, he was burthened with no trouble undisclosed—greeted with no anguish of fear or bitter remembrance. As he sprang out of the post-chaise, it was to find his wife standing at the door, and his home smiling for him its brightest welcome. No blessing on earth could be like the blessing of the father's return.

John looked pale, but not paler than might have been expected. Grave, too—but it was a soft seriousness altogether free from the restlessness of keen anxiety. The first shock of this heavy misfortune was over. He had paid all his son's debts; he had, as far as was possible, saved his good name; he had made a safe home for the lad, and heard of his safely reaching it, in the New World. Nothing more was left but to cover over the inevitable grief, and hope that time would blot out the intolerable shame. That since Guy's hand was clear of blood—and, since his recovery, Sir Gerard Vermilye had risen into a positive hero of society—men's minds would gradually lose the impression of a deed committed in heat of youth, and repented of with such bitter atonement.

So the father took his old place, and looked round on the remnant of his children, grave indeed, but not weighed down by incurable suffering. Something, deeper even than the hard time he had recently passed through, seemed to have made his home more than ever dear to him. He sat in his arm-chair, never weary of noticing everything pleasant about him, of saying how pretty Beechwood looked, and how delicious it was to be at home. And perpetually, if any chance unlinked it, his hand would return to its clasp of Ursula's; the minute she left her place by his side, his restless "Love, where are you going?" would call her back again. And once, when the children were out of the room, and I, sitting in a dark corner, was probably thought absent likewise, I saw John take his wife's face between his two hands, and look in it—the fondest, most lingering, saddest look!—then fold her tightly to his breast.

"I must never be away from her again. Mine—for as long as I live, mine—MY wife, MY Ursula!"

She took it all naturally, as she had taken every expression of his love these nine-and-twenty years. I left them, standing eye to eye, heart to heart, as if nothing in this world could ever part them.

Next morning was as gay as any of our mornings used to be, for, before breakfast, came Edwin and Louise. And after breakfast, the father and mother and I walked up and down the garden for an hour, talking over the prospects of the young couple. Then the post came—but we had no need to watch for it now. It only brought a letter from Lord Ravenel.

John read it, somewhat more seriously than he had been used to read these letters—which for the last year or so had come often enough—the boys usually quizzing, and Mistress Maud vehemently defending, the delicate small hand-writing, the exquisite paper, the coronetted seal, and the frank in the corner. John liked to have them, and his wife also—she being not indifferent to the fact, confirmed by many other facts, that if there was one man in the world whom Lord Ravenel honoured and admired, it was John Halifax of Beechwood. But this time her pleasure was apparently damped; and when Maud, claiming the letter as usual, spread abroad, delightedly, the news that "her" Lord Ravenel was coming shortly, I imagined this visit was not so welcome as usual to the parents.

Yet still, as many a time before, when Mr. Halifax closed the letter, he sighed, looked sorrowful, saying only, "Poor Lord Ravenel!"

"John," asked his wife, speaking in a whisper, for by tacit consent all public allusion to his doings at Paris was avoided in the family—"did you, by any chance, hear anything of—You know whom I mean?"

"Not one syllable."

"You inquired?" He assented. "I knew you would. She must be almost an old woman now, or perhaps she is dead. Poor Caroline!"

It was the first time for years and years that this name had been breathed in our household. Involuntarily it carried me back—perhaps others besides me—to the day at Longfield when little Guy had devoted himself to his "pretty lady;" when we first heard that other name, which by a curious conjuncture of circumstances had since become so fatally familiar, and which would henceforward be like the sound of a death-bell in our family—Gerard Vermilye.

On Lord Ravenel's re-appearance at Beechwood—and he seemed eager and glad to come—I was tempted to wish him away. He never crossed the threshold but his presence brought a shadow over the parents' looks—and no wonder. The young people were gay and friendly as ever; made him always welcome with us; and he rode over daily from desolate, long-uninhabited Luxmore, where, in all its desolation, he appeared so fond of abiding.

He wanted to take Maud and Walter over there one day, to see some magnificent firs that were being cut down in a wholesale massacre, leaving the grand old Hall as bare as a workhouse front. But the father objected; he was clearly determined that all the hospitalities between Luxmore and Beechwood should be on the Beechwood side.

Lord Ravenel apparently perceived this. "Luxmore is not Compiegne," he said to me, with his dreary smile, half-sad, half-cynical. "Mr. Halifax might indulge me with the society of his children."

And as he lay on the grass—it was full summer now—watching Maud's white dress flit about under the trees, I saw, or fancied I saw, something different to any former expression that had ever lighted up the soft languid mien of William Lord Ravenel.

"How tall that child has grown lately! She is about nineteen, I think?"

"Not seventeen till December."

"Ah, so young?—Well, it is pleasant to be young!—Dear little Maud!"

He turned on one side, hiding the sun from his eyes with those delicate ringed hands—which many a time our boys had laughed at, saying they were mere lady's hands, fit for no work at all.

Perhaps Lord Ravenel felt the cloud that had come over our intercourse with him; a cloud which, considering late events, was scarcely unnatural: for when evening came, his leave-taking, always a regret, seemed now as painful as his blase indifference to all emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, could allow. He lingered—he hesitated—he repeated many times how glad he should be to see Beechwood again; how all the world was to him "flat, stale, and unprofitable," except Beechwood.

John made no special answer; except that frank smile not without a certain kindly satire, under which the young nobleman's Byronic affectations generally melted away like mists in the morning. He kindled up into warmth and manliness.

"I thank you, Mr. Halifax—I thank you heartily for all you and your household have been to me. I trust I shall enjoy your friendship for many years. And if, in any way, I might offer mine, or any small influence in the world—"

"Your influence is not small," John returned earnestly. "I have often told you so. I know no man who has wider opportunities than you have."

"But I have let them slip—for ever."

"No, not for ever. You are young still; you have half a lifetime before you."

"Have I?" And for the moment one would hardly have recognized the sallow, spiritless face, that with all the delicacy of boyhood still, at times looked so exceedingly old. "No, no, Mr. Halifax, who ever heard of a man beginning life at seven-and-thirty?"

"Are you really seven-and-thirty?" asked Maud.

"Yes—yes, my girl. Is it so very old?"

He patted her on the shoulder, took her hand, gazed at it—the round, rosy, girlish hand—with a melancholy tenderness; then bade "Good-bye" to us all generally, and rode off.

It struck me then, though I hurried the thought away—it struck me afterwards, and does now with renewed surprise—how strange it was that the mother never noticed or took into account certain possibilities that would have occurred naturally to any worldly mother. I can only explain it by remembering the unworldliness of our lives at Beechwood, the heavy cares which now pressed upon us from without, and the notable fact—which our own family experience ought to have taught us, yet did not—that in cases like this, often those whom one would have expected to be most quick-sighted, are the most strangely, irretrievably, mournfully blind.

When, the very next day, Lord Ravenel, not on horse-back but in his rarely-used luxurious coronetted carriage, drove up to Beechwood, every one in the house except myself was inconceivably astonished to see him back again.

He said that he had delayed his journey to Paris, and gave no explanation of that delay. He joined as usual in our midday dinner; and after dinner, still as usual, took a walk with me and Maud. It happened to be through the beech-wood, almost the identical path that I remembered taking, years and years ago, with John and Ursula. I was surprised to hear Lord Ravenel allude to the fact, a well-known fact in our family; for I think all fathers and mothers like to relate, and all children to hear, the slightest incidents of the parents' courting days.

"You did not know father and mother when they were young?" said Maud, catching our conversation and flashing back her innocent, merry face upon us.

"No, scarcely likely." And he smiled. "Oh, yes—it might have been—I forget, I am not a young man now. How old were Mr. and Mrs. Halifax when they married?"

"Father was twenty-one and mother was eighteen—only a year older than I." And Maud, half ashamed of this suggestive remark, ran away. Her gay candour proved to me—perhaps to others besides me—the girl's entire free-heartedness. The frank innocence of childhood was still hers.

Lord Ravenel looked after her and sighed. "It is good to marry early; do you not think so, Mr. Fletcher?"

I told him—(I was rather sorry after I had said it, if one ought to be sorry for having, when questioned, given one's honest opinion)—I told him that I thought those happiest who found their happiness early, but that I did not see why happiness should be rejected because it was the will of Providence that it should not be found till late.

"I wonder," he said, dreamily, "I wonder whether I shall ever find it."

I asked him—it was by an impulse irresistible—why he had never married?

"Because I never found any woman either to love or to believe in. Worse," he added, bitterly, "I did not think there lived the woman who could be believed in."

We had come out of the beech-wood and were standing by the low churchyard wall; the sun glittered on the white marble head-stone on which was inscribed, "Muriel Joy Halifax."

Lord Ravenel leaned over the wall, his eyes fixed upon that little grave. After a while, he said, sighing:

"Do you know, I have thought sometimes that, had she lived, I could have loved—I might have married—that child!"

Here Maud sprang towards us. In her playful tyranny, which she loved to exercise and he to submit to, she insisted on knowing what Lord Ravenel was talking about.

"I was saying," he answered, taking both her hands and looking down into her bright, unshrinking eyes, "I was saying, how dearly I loved your sister Muriel."

"I know that," and Maud became grave at once. "I know you care for me because I am like my sister Muriel."

"If it were so, would you be sorry or glad?"

"Glad, and proud too. But you said, or you were going to say, something more. What was it?"

He hesitated long, then answered:

"I will tell you another time."

Maud went away, rather cross and dissatisfied, but evidently suspecting nothing. For me, I began to be seriously uneasy about her and Lord Ravenel.

Of all kinds of love, there is one which common sense and romance have often combined to hold obnoxious, improbable, or ridiculous, but which has always seemed to me the most real and pathetic form that the passion ever takes—I mean, love in spite of great disparity of age. Even when this is on the woman's side, I can imagine circumstances that would make it far less ludicrous and pitiful; and there are few things to me more touching, more full of sad earnest, than to see an old man in love with a young girl.

Lord Ravenel's case would hardly come under this category; yet the difference between seventeen and thirty-seven was sufficient to warrant in him a trembling uncertainty, and eager catching at the skirts of that vanishing youth whose preciousness he never seemed to have recognized till now. It was with a mournful interest that all day I watched him follow the child about, gather her posies, help her to water her flowers, and accommodate himself to those whims and fancies, of which, as the pet and the youngest, Mistress Maud had her full share.

When, at her usual hour of half-past nine, the little lady was summoned away to bed, "to keep up her roses," he looked half resentful of the mother's interference.

"Maud is not a child now; and this may be my last night—" he stopped, sensitively, at the involuntary foreboding.

"Your last night? Nonsense! you will come back soon again. You must—you shall!" said Maud, decisively.

"I hope I may—I trust in Heaven I may!"

He spoke low, holding her hand distantly and reverently, not attempting to kiss it, as in all his former farewells he had invariably done.

"Maud, remember me! However or whenever I come back, dearest child, be faithful, and remember me!"

Maud fled away with a sob of childish pain—partly anger, the mother thought—and slightly apologized to the guest for her daughter's "naughtiness."

Lord Ravenel sat silent for a long, long time.

Just when we thought he purposed leaving, he said, abruptly, "Mr. Halifax, may I have five minutes' speech with you in the study?"

The five minutes extended to half an hour. Mrs. Halifax wondered what on earth they were talking about. I held my peace. At last the father came in alone.

"John, is Lord Ravenel gone?"

"Not yet."

"What could he have wanted to say to you?"

John sat down by his wife, picked up the ball of her knitting, rolled and unrolled it. She saw at once that something had grieved and perplexed him exceedingly. Her heart shrunk back—that still sore heart!—recoiled with a not unnatural fear.

"Oh, husband, is it any new misfortune?"

"No, love," cheering her with a smile; "nothing that fathers and mothers in general would consider as such. He has asked me for our Maud."

"What for?" was the mother's first exceedingly simple question—and then she guessed its answer. "Impossible! Ridiculous—absolutely ridiculous! She is only a child."

"Nevertheless, Lord Ravenel wishes to marry our little Maud!"

"Lord Ravenel wishes to marry our Maud!"

Mrs. Halifax repeated this to herself more than once before she was able to entertain it as a reality. When she did, the first impression it made upon her mind was altogether pain.

"Oh, John! I hoped we had done with these sort of things; I thought we should have been left in peace with the rest of our children."

John smiled again; for, indeed, there was a comical side to her view of the subject; but its serious phase soon returned; doubly so, when, looking up, they both saw Lord Ravenel standing before them. Firm his attitude was, firmer than usual; and it was with something of his father's stately air, mingled with a more chivalric and sincerer grace, that he stooped forward and kissed the hand of Maud's mother.

"Mr. Halifax has told you all, I believe?"

"He has."

"May I then, with entire trust in you both, await my answer?"

He waited it, patiently enough, with little apparent doubt as to what it would be. Besides, it was only the prior question of parental consent, not the vital point of Maud's preference. And, with all his natural humility, Lord Ravenel might be forgiven if, brought up in the world, he was aware of his position therein—nor quite unconscious that it was not merely William Ravenel, but the only son and heir of the Earl of Luxmore, who came a-wooing.

Not till after a long pause, and even a whispered word or two between the husband and wife, who knew each other's minds so well that no more consultation was needed—did the suitor again, with a more formal air, ask for an answer.

"It is difficult to give. I find that my wife, like myself, had no idea of your feelings. The extreme suddenness—"

"Pardon me; my intention has not been sudden. It is the growth of many months—years, I might almost say."

"We are the more grieved."

"Grieved?"

Lord Ravenel's extreme surprise startled him from the mere suitor into the lover; he glanced from one to the other in undisguised alarm. John hesitated: the mother said something about the "great difference between them."

"In age, do you mean? I am aware of that," he answered, with some sadness. "But twenty years is not an insuperable bar in marriage."

"No," said Mrs. Halifax, thoughtfully.

"And for any other disparity—in fortune—or rank—"

"I think, Lord Ravenel,"—and the mother spoke with her "dignified" air—"you know enough of my husband's character and opinions to be assured how lightly he would hold such a disparity—if you allude to that supposed to exist between the son of the Earl of Luxmore and the daughter of John Halifax."

The young nobleman coloured, as if with ingenuous shame at what he had been implying. "I am glad of it. Let me assure you there will be no impediments on the side of my family. The earl has long wished me to marry. He knows well enough that I can marry whom I please—and shall marry for love only. Give me your leave to win your little Maud."

A dead silence.

"Again pardon me," Lord Ravenel said with some hauteur; "I cannot have clearly explained myself. Let me repeat, Mr. Halifax, that I ask your permission to win your daughter's affection, and, in due time, her hand."

"I would that you had asked of me anything that it could be less impossible to give you."

"Impossible! What do you mean?—Mrs. Halifax—" He turned instinctively to the woman—the mother.

Ursula's eyes were full of a sad kindness—the kindness any mother must feel towards one who worthily woos her daughter—but she replied distinctly—

"I feel, with my husband, that such a marriage would be impossible."

Lord Ravenel grew scarlet—sat down—rose again, and stood facing them, pale and haughty.

"If I may ask—your reasons?"

"Since you ask—certainly," John replied. "Though, believe me, I give them with the deepest pain. Lord Ravenel, do you not yourself see that our Maud—"

"Wait one moment," he interrupted. "There is not, there cannot be, any previous attachment?"

The supposition made the parents smile. "Indeed, nothing of the kind: she is a mere child."

"You think her too young for marriage, then?" was the eager answer. "Be it so. I will wait, though my youth, alas! is slipping from me; but I will wait—two years, three—any time you choose to name."

John needed not to reply. The very sorrow of his decision showed how inevitable and irrevocable it was.

Lord Ravenel's pride rose against it.

"I fear in this my novel position I am somewhat slow of comprehension. Would it be so great a misfortune to your daughter if I made her Viscountess Ravenel, and in course of time Countess of Luxmore?"

"I believe it would. Her mother and I would rather see our little Maud lying beside her sister Muriel than see her Countess of Luxmore."

These words, hard as they were, John uttered so softly and with such infinite grief and pain, that they struck the young man, not with anger, but with an indefinite awe, as if a ghost from his youth—his wasted youth—had risen up to point out that truth, and show him that what seemed insult or vengeance was only a bitter necessity.

All he did was to repeat, in a subdued manner—"Your reasons?"

"Ah, Lord Ravenel!" John answered sadly, "do you not see yourself that the distance between us and you is wide as the poles? Not in worldly things, but in things far deeper;—personal things, which strike at the root of love, home—nay, honour."

Lord Ravenel started. "Would you imply that anything in my past life, aimless and useless as it may have been, is unworthy of my honour—the honour of our house?"

Saying this he stopped—recoiled—as if suddenly made aware by the very words himself had uttered, what—contrasted with the unsullied dignity of the tradesman's life, the spotless innocence of the tradesman's daughter—what a foul tattered rag, fit to be torn down by an honest gust, was that flaunting emblazonment, the so-called "honour" of Luxmore!

"I understand you now. 'The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children,' as your Bible says—your Bible, that I had half begun to believe in. Be it so. Mr. Halifax, I will detain you no longer."

John intercepted the young man's departure.

"No, you do NOT understand me. I hold no man accountable for any errors, any shortcomings, except his own."

"I am to conclude, then, that it is to myself you refuse your daughter?"

"It is."

Lord Ravenel once more bowed, with sarcastic emphasis.

"I entreat you not to mistake me," John continued, most earnestly. "I know nothing of you that the world would condemn, much that it would even admire; but your world is not our world, nor your aims our aims. If I gave you my little Maud, it would confer on you no lasting happiness, and it would be thrusting my child, my own flesh and blood, to the brink of that whirlpool where, soon or late, every miserable life must go down."

Lord Ravenel made no answer. His new-born energy, his pride, his sarcasm, had successively vanished; dead, passive melancholy resumed its empire over him. Mr. Halifax regarded him with mournful compassion.

"Oh, that I had foreseen this! I would have placed the breadth of all England between you and my child."

"Would you?"

"Understand me. Not because you do not possess our warm interest, our friendship: both will always be yours. But these are external ties, which may exist through many differences. In marriage there must be perfect unity; one aim, one faith, one love, or the marriage is incomplete, unholy—a mere civil contract and no more."

Lord Ravenel looked up amazed at this doctrine, then sat awhile pondering drearily.

"Yes, you may be right," at last he said. "Your Maud is not for me, nor those like me. Between us and you is that 'great gulf fixed;'—what did the old fable say? I forget.—Che sara sara! I am but as others: I am but what I was born to be."

"Do you recognize what you were born to be? Not only a nobleman, but a gentleman; not only a gentleman, but a man—man, made in the image of God. How can you, how dare you, give the lie to your Creator?"

"What has He given me? What have I to thank Him for?"

"First, manhood; the manhood His Son disdained not to wear; worldly gifts, such as rank, riches, influence, things which others have to spend half an existence in earning; life in its best prime, with much of youth yet remaining—with grief endured, wisdom learnt, experience won. Would to Heaven, that by any poor word of mine I could make you feel all that you are—all that you might be!"

A gleam, bright as a boy's hope, wild as a boy's daring, flashed from those listless eyes—then faded.

"You mean, Mr. Halifax, what I might have been. Now it is too late."

"There is no such word as 'too late,' in the wide world—nay, not in the universe. What! shall we, whose atom of time is but a fragment out of an ever-present eternity—shall we, so long as we live, or even at our life's ending, dare to cry out to the Eternal One, 'It is too late!'"

As John spoke, in much more excitement than was usual to him, a sudden flush or rather spasm of colour flushed his face, then faded away, leaving him pallid to the very lips. He sat down hastily, in his frequent attitude, with the left arm passed across his breast.

"Lord Ravenel." His voice was faint, as though speech was painful to him.

The other looked up, the old look of reverent attention, which I remembered in the boy-lord who came to see us at Norton Bury; in the young "Anselmo," whose enthusiastic hero-worship had fixed itself, with an almost unreasoning trust, on Muriel's father.

"Lord Ravenel, forgive anything I have said that may have hurt you. It would grieve me inexpressibly if we did not part as friends."

"Part?"

"For a time, we must. I dare not risk further either your happiness or my child's."

"No, not hers. Guard it. I blame you not. The lovely, innocent child! God forbid she should ever have a life like mine!"

He sat silent, his clasped hands listlessly dropping, his countenance dreamy; yet, it seemed to me, less hopelessly sad: then with a sudden effort he rose.

"I must go now."

Crossing over to Mrs. Halifax, he thanked her, with much emotion, for all her kindness.

"For your husband, I owe him more than kindness, as perhaps I may prove some day. If not, try to believe the best of me you can. Good-bye."

They both said good-bye, and bade God bless him; with scarcely less tenderness than if things had ended as he desired, and, instead of this farewell, sad and indefinite beyond most farewells, they were giving the parental welcome to a newly-chosen son.

Ere finally quitting us, Lord Ravenel turned back to speak to John once more, hesitatingly and mournfully.

"If she—if the child should ask or wonder about my absence—she likes me in her innocent way you know—you will tell her—What shall you tell her?"

"Nothing. It is best not."

"Ay, it is, it is."

He shook hands with us all three, without saying anything else; then the carriage rolled away, and we saw his face—that pale, gentle, melancholy face—no more.

It was years and years before any one beyond ourselves knew what a near escape our little Maud had had of becoming Viscountess Ravenel—future Countess of Luxmore.



CHAPTER XXXVII

It was not many weeks after this departure of Lord Ravenel's—the pain of which was almost forgotten in the comfort of Guy's first long home letter, which came about this time—that John one morning, suddenly dropping his newspaper, exclaimed:

"Lord Luxmore is dead."

Yes, he had returned to his dust, this old bad man; so old, that people had begun to think he would never die. He was gone; the man who, if we owned an enemy in the world, had certainly proved himself that enemy. Something peculiar is there in a decease like this—of one whom, living, we have almost felt ourselves justified in condemning, avoiding—perhaps hating. Until Death, stepping in between, removes him to another tribunal than this petty justice of ours, and laying a solemn finger on our mouths, forbids us either to think or utter a word of hatred against that which is now—what?—a disembodied spirit—a handful of corrupting clay.

Lord Luxmore was dead. He had gone to his account; it was not ours to judge him. We never knew—I believe no one except his son ever fully knew—the history of his death-bed.

John sat in silence, the paper before him, long after we had passed the news and discussed it, not without awe, all round the breakfast-table.

Maud stole up—hesitatingly, and asked to see the announcement of the earl's decease.

"No, my child; but you shall hear it read aloud, if you choose."

I guessed the reason of his refusal; when, looking over him as he read, I saw, after the long list of titles owned by the new Earl of Luxmore, one bitter line; how it must have cut to the heart of him whom we first heard of as "poor William!"

"HAD LIKEWISE ISSUE, CAROLINE, MARRIED IN 17—, TO RICHARD BRITHWOOD, ESQUIRE, AFTERWARDS DIVORCED."

And by a curious coincidence, about twenty lines further down I read among the fashionable marriages:

"AT THE BRITISH EMBASSY, PARIS, SIR GERARD VERMILYE, BART., TO THE YOUTHFUL AND BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER OF—"

I forget who. I only saw that the name was not her name, of whom the "youthful and beautiful" bride had most likely never heard. He had not married Lady Caroline.

This morning's intelligence brought the Luxmore family so much to our thoughts, that driving out after breakfast, John and I involuntarily recurred to the subject. Nay, talking on, in the solitude of our front seat—for Mrs. Halifax, Miss Halifax, and Mrs. Edwin Halifax, in the carriage behind, were deep in some other subject—we fell upon a topic which by tacit consent had been laid aside, as in our household we held it good to lay aside any inevitable regret.

"Poor Maud! how eager she was to hear the news to-day. She little thinks how vitally it might have concerned her."

"No," John answered thoughtfully; then asked me with some abruptness, "Why did you say 'poor Maud'?"

I really could not tell; it was a mere accident, the unwitting indication of some crotchets of mine, which had often come into my mind lately. Crotchets, perhaps peculiar to one, who, never having known a certain possession, found himself rather prone to over-rate its value. But it sometimes struck me as hard, considering how little honest and sincere love there is in the world, that Maud should never have known of Lord Ravenel's.

Possibly, against my will, my answer implied something of this; for John was a long time silent. Then he began to talk of various matters; telling me of many improvements he was planning and executing, on his property, and among his people. In all his plans, and in the carrying out of them, I noticed one peculiarity, strong in him throughout his life, but latterly grown stronger than ever—namely, that whatever he found to do, he did immediately. Procrastination had never been one of his faults; now, he seemed to have a horror of putting anything off even for a single hour. Nothing that could be done did he lay aside until it was done; his business affairs were kept in perfect order, each day's work being completed with the day. And in the thousand-and-one little things that were constantly arising, from his position as magistrate and land-owner, and his general interest in the movements of the time, the same system was invariably pursued. In his relations with the world outside, as in his own little valley, he seemed determined to "work while it was day." If he could possibly avoid it, no application was ever unattended to; no duty left unfinished; no good unacknowledged; no evil unremedied, or at least unforgiven.

"John," I said, as to-day this peculiarity of his struck me more than usual, "thou art certainly one of the faithful servants whom the Master when He cometh will find watching."

"I hope so. It ought to be thus with all men—but especially with me."

I imagined from his tone that he was thinking of his responsibility as father, master, owner of large wealth. How could I know—how could I guess—beyond this!

"Do you think she looks pale, Phineas?" he asked suddenly.

"Who—your wife?"

"No—Maud. My little Maud."

It was but lately that he called her "his" little Maud; since with that extreme tenacity of attachment which was a part of his nature—refusing to put any one love in another love's place—his second daughter had never been to him like the first. Now, however, I had noticed that he took Maud nearer to his heart, made her more often his companion, watching her with a sedulous tenderness—it was easy to guess why.

"She may have looked a little paler of late, a little more thoughtful. But I am sure she is not unhappy."

"I believe not—thank God!"

"Surely," I said anxiously, "you have never repented what you did about Lord Ravenel?"

"No—not once. It cost me so much, that I know it was right to be done."

"But if things had been otherwise—if you had not been so sure of Maud's feelings—"

He started, painfully; then answered—"I think I should have done it still."

I was silent. The paramount right, the high prerogative of love, which he held as strongly as I did, seemed attacked in its liberty divine. For the moment, it was as if he too had in his middle-age gone over to the cold-blooded ranks of harsh parental prudence, despotic paternal rule; as if Ursula March's lover and Maud's father were two distinct beings. One finds it so, often enough, with men.

"John," I said, "could you have done it? could you have broken the child's heart?"

"Yes, if it was to save her peace, perhaps her soul, I could have broken my child's heart."

He spoke solemnly, with an accent of inexpressible pain, as if this were not the first time by many that he had pondered over such a possibility.

"I wish, Phineas, to make clear to you, in case of—of any future misconceptions—my mind on this matter. One right alone I hold superior to the right of love,—duty. It is a father's duty, at all risks, at all costs, to save his child from anything which he believes would peril her duty—so long as she is too young to understand fully how beyond the claim of any human being, be it father or lover, is God's claim to herself and her immortal soul. Anything which would endanger that should be cut off—though it be the right hand—the right eye. But, thank God, it was not thus with my little Maud."

"Nor with him either. He bore his disappointment well."

"Nobly. It may make a true nobleman of him yet. But, being what he is, and for as long as he remains so, he must not be trusted with my little Maud. I must take care of her while I live: afterwards—"

His smile faded, or rather was transmuted into that grave thoughtfulness which I had lately noticed in him, when, as now, he fell into one of his long silences. There was nothing sad about it; rather a serenity which reminded me of that sweet look of his boyhood, which had vanished during the manifold cares of his middle life. The expression of the mouth, as I saw it in profile—close and calm—almost inclined me to go back to the fanciful follies of our youth, and call him "David."

We drove through Norton Bury, and left Mrs. Edwin there. Then on, along the familiar road, towards the manor-house; past the white gate, within sight of little Longfield.

"It looks just the same—the tenant takes good care of it." And John's eyes turned fondly to his old home.

"Ay, just the same. Do you know your wife was saying to me this morning, that when Guy comes back, when all the young folk are married, and you retire from business and settle into the otium cum dignitate, the learned leisure you used to plan—she would like to give up Beechwood. She said, she hopes you and she will end your days together at little Longfield."

"Did she? Yes, I know that has been always her dream."

"Scarcely a dream, or one that is not unlikely to be fulfilled. I like to fancy you both two old people, sitting on either side the fire—or on the same side if you like it best; very cheerful—you will make such a merry old man, John, with all your children round you, and indefinite grandchildren about the house continually. Or else you two will sit alone together, just as in your early married days—you and your old wife—the dearest and handsomest old lady that ever was seen."

"Phineas—don't—don't." I was startled by the tone in which he answered the lightness of mine. "I mean—don't be planning out the future. It is foolish—it is almost wrong. God's will is not as our will; and He knows best."

I would have spoken; but just then we reached the manor-house gate, and plunged at once into present life, and into the hospitable circle of the Oldtowers.

They were all in the excitement of a wonderful piece of gossip; gossip so strange, sudden, and unprecedented, that it absorbed all lesser matters. It burst out before we had been in the house five minutes.

"Have you heard this extraordinary report about the Luxmore family?"

I could see Maud turn with eager attention—fixing her eyes wistfully on Lady Oldtower.

"About the earl's death. Yes, we saw it in the newspaper." And John passed on to some other point of conversation. In vain.

"This news relates to the present earl. I never heard of such a thing—never. In fact, if true, his conduct is something which in its self-denial approaches absolute insanity. Is it possible that, being so great a friend of your family, he has not informed you of the circumstances?"

These circumstances, with some patience, we extracted from the voluble Lady Oldtower. She had learnt them—I forget how: but news never wants a tongue to carry it.

It seemed that on the earl's death it was discovered, what had already been long suspected, that his liabilities, like his extravagances, were enormous. That he was obliged to live abroad to escape in some degree the clamorous haunting of the hundreds he had ruined: poor tradespeople, who knew that their only chance of payment was during the old man's life-time, for his whole property was entailed on the son.

Whether Lord Ravenel had ever been acquainted with the state of things, or whether, being in ignorance of it, his own style of living had in degree imitated his father's, rumour did not say, nor indeed was it of much consequence. The facts subsequently becoming known immediately after Lord Luxmore's death, made all former conjectures unnecessary.

Not a week before he died, the late earl and his son—chiefly it was believed on the latter's instigation—had cut off the entail, thereby making the whole property saleable, and available for the payment of creditors. Thus by his own act, and—as some one had told somebody that somebody else had heard Lord Ravenel say: "for the honour of the family," the present earl had succeeded to an empty title, and—beggary.

"Or," Lady Oldtower added, "what to a man of rank will be the same as beggary—a paltry two hundred a year or so—which he has reserved, they say, just to keep him from destitution. Ah—here comes Mr. Jessop; I thought he would. He can tell us all about it."

Old Mr. Jessop was as much excited as any one present.

"Ay—it's all true—only too true, Mr. Halifax. He was at my house last night."

"Last night!" I do not think anybody caught the child's exclamation but me; I could not help watching little Maud, noticing what strong emotion, still perfectly child-like and unguarded in its demonstration, was shaking her innocent bosom, and overflowing at her eyes. However, as she sat still in the corner, nobody observed her.

"Yes, he slept at my house—Lord Ravenel, the Earl of Luxmore, I mean. Much good will his title do him! My head clerk is better off than he. He has stripped himself of every penny, except—bless me, I forgot; Mr. Halifax, he gave me a letter for you."

John walked to the window to read it; but having read it, passed it openly round the circle; as indeed was best.

"MY DEAR FRIEND, "You will have heard that my father is no more."

("He used always to say 'the earl,'" whispered Maud, as she looked over my shoulder.)

"I write this merely to say, what I feel sure you will already have believed—that anything which you may learn concerning his affairs, I was myself unaware of, except in a very slight degree, when I last visited Beechwood.

"Will you likewise believe that in all I have done, or intend doing, your interests as my tenant—which I hope you will remain—have been, and shall be, sedulously guarded?

"My grateful remembrance to all your household. "Faithfully yours and theirs, "LUXMORE."

"Give me back the letter, Maud my child."

She had been taking possession of it, as in right of being his "pet" she generally did of all Lord Ravenel's letters. But now, without a word of objection, she surrendered it to her father.

"What does he mean, Mr. Jessop, about my interests as his tenant?"

"Bless me—I am so grieved about the matter that everything goes astray in my head. He wished me to explain to you that he has reserved one portion of the Luxmore property intact—Enderley Mills. The rent you pay will, he says, be a sufficient income for him; and then while your lease lasts no other landlord can injure you. Very thoughtful of him—very thoughtful indeed, Mr. Halifax."

John made no answer.

"I never saw a man so altered. He went over some matters with me—private charities, in which I have been his agent, you know—grave, clear-headed, business-like; my clerk himself could not have done better. Afterwards we sat and talked, and I tried—foolishly enough, when the thing was done!—to show him what a frantic act it was both towards himself and his heirs. But he could not see it. He said cutting off the entail would harm nobody—for that he did not intend ever to marry. Poor fellow!"

"Is he with you still?" John asked in a low tone.

"No; he left this morning for Paris; his father is to be buried there. Afterwards, he said, his movements were quite uncertain. He bade me good-bye—I—I didn't like it, I can assure you."

And the old man, blowing his nose with his yellow pocket-handkerchief, and twitching his features into all manner of shapes, seemed determined to put aside the melancholy subject, and dilated on the earl and his affairs no more.

Nor did any one. Something in this young nobleman's noble act—it has since been not without a parallel among our aristocracy—silenced the tongue of gossip itself. The deed was so new—so unlike anything that had been conceived possible, especially in a man like Lord Ravenel, who had always borne the character of a harmless, idle misanthropic nonentity—that society was really nonplussed concerning it. Of the many loquacious visitors who came that morning to pour upon Lady Oldtower all the curiosity of Coltham—fashionable Coltham, famous for all the scandal of haut ton—there was none who did not speak of Lord Luxmore and his affairs with an uncomfortable, wondering awe. Some suggested he was going mad—others, raking up stories current of his early youth, thought he had turned Catholic again, and was about to enter a monastery. One or two honest hearts protested that he was a noble fellow, and it was a pity he had determined to be the last of the Luxmores.

For ourselves—Mr. and Mrs. Halifax, Maud and I—we never spoke to one another on the subject all the morning. Not until after luncheon, when John and I had somehow stolen out of the way of the visitors, and were walking to and fro in the garden. The sunny fruit garden—ancient, Dutch, and square—with its barricade of a high hedge, a stone wall, and between it and the house a shining fence of great laurel trees.

Maud appeared suddenly before us from among these laurels, breathless.

"I got away after you, father. I—I wanted to find some strawberries—and—I wanted to speak to you."

"Speak on, little lady."

He linked her arm in his, and she paced between us up and down the broad walk—but without diverging to the strawberry-beds. She was grave, and paler than ordinary. Her father asked if she were tired?