There was no hope for their distress. His wife had, unknown to Glendower (for she dreaded his pride), written several times to a relation, who, though distant, was still the nearest in blood which fate had spared her, but ineffectually; the scions of a large and illegitimate family, which surrounded him, utterly prevented the success, and generally interrupted the application, of any claimant on his riches but themselves. Glendower, whose temper had ever kept him aloof from all but the commonest acquaintances, knew no human being to apply to. Utterly unable to avail himself of the mine which his knowledge and talents should have proved; sick, and despondent at heart, and debarred by the loftiness of honour, or rather principle that nothing could quell, from any unlawful means of earning bread, which to most minds would have been rendered excusable by the urgency of nature,—Glendower marked the days drag on in dull and protracted despair, and envied every corpse that he saw borne to the asylum in which all earth's hopes seemed centred and confined.



CHAPTER LVIII.

For ours was not like earthly love. And must this parting be our very last? No! I shall love thee still when death itself is past. ...... Hush'd were his Gertrude's lips! but still their bland And beautiful expression seem'd to melt With love that could not die! and still his hand She presses to the heart, no more that felt. Ah, heart! where once each fond affection dwelt. CAMPBELL.

"I wonder," said Mr. Brown to himself, as he spurred his shaggy pony to a speed very unusual to the steady habits of either party, "I wonder where I shall find him. I would not for the late Lady Waddilove's best diamond cross have any body forestall me in the news. To think of my young master dying so soon after my last visit, or rather my last visit but one; and to think of the old gentleman taking on so, and raving about his injustice to the rightful possessor, and saying that he is justly punished, and asking me so eagerly if I could discover the retreat of the late squire, and believing me so implicitly when I undertook to do it, and giving me this letter!" And here Mr. Brown wistfully examined an epistle sealed with black wax, peeping into the corners, which irritated rather than satisfied his curiosity. "I wonder what the old gentleman says in it; I suppose he will, of course, give up the estate and house. Let me see; that long picture gallery, just built, will, at all events, want furnishing. That would be a famous opportunity to get rid of the Indian jars, and the sofas, and the great Turkey carpet. How lucky that I should just have come in time to get the letter. But let me consider how I shall find out?—an advertisement in the paper? Ah! that's the plan. 'Algernon Mordaunt, Esq.: something greatly to his advantage; apply to Mr. Brown, etc.' Ah! that will do well, very well. The Turkey carpet won't be quite long enough. I wish I had discovered Mr. Mordaunt's address before, and lent him some money during the young gentleman's life: it would have seemed more generous. However, I can offer it now, before I show the letter. Bless me, it's getting dark. Come, Dobbin, ye-up!" Such were the meditations of the faithful friend of the late Lady Waddilove, as he hastened to London, charged with the task of discovering Mordaunt and with the delivery of the following epistle:—

You are now, sir, the heir to that property which, some years ago, passed from your hands into mine. My son, for whom alone wealth or I may say life was valuable to me, is no more. I only, an old, childless man, stand between you and the estates of Mordaunt. Do not wait for my death to enjoy them. I cannot live here, where everything reminds me of my great and irreparable loss. I shall remove next month into another home. Consider this, then, as once more yours. The house, I believe, you will not find disimproved by my alterations: the mortgages on the estate have been paid off; the former rental you will perhaps allow my steward to account to you for, and after my death the present one will be yours. I am informed that you are a proud man, and not likely to receive favours. Be it so, sir! it is no favour you will receive, but justice; there are circumstances connected with my treaty with your father which have of late vexed my conscience; and conscience, sir, must be satisfied at any loss. But we shall meet, perhaps, and talk over the past; at present I will not enlarge on it. If you have suffered by me, I am sufficiently punished, and my only hope is to repair your losses.

I am, etc., H. VAVASOUR MORDAUNT.

Such was the letter, so important to Mordaunt, with which our worthy friend was charged. Bowed to the dust as Vavasour was by the loss of his son, and open to conscience as affliction had made him, he had lived too long for effect, not to be susceptible to its influence, even to the last. Amidst all his grief, and it was intense, there were some whispers of self-exaltation at the thought of the eclat which his generosity and abdication would excite; and, with true worldly morality, the hoped-for plaudits of others gave a triumph rather than humiliation to his reconcilement with himself.

To say truth, there were indeed circumstances connected with his treaty with Mordaunt's father calculated to vex his conscience. He knew that he had not only taken great advantage of Mr. Mordaunt's distress, but that at his instigation a paper which could forever have prevented Mr. Mordaunt's sale of the property, had been destroyed. These circumstances, during the life of his son, he had endeavoured to forget or to palliate. But grief is rarely deaf to remorse; and at the death of that idolized son the voice at his heart grew imperious, and he lost the power in losing the motive of reasoning it away.

Mr. Brown's advertisement was unanswered; and, with the zeal and patience of the Christian proselyte's tribe and calling, the good man commenced, in person, a most elaborate and painstaking research. For a long time, his endeavours were so ineffectual that Mr. Brown, in despair, disposed of the two Indian jars for half their value, and heaved a despondent sigh, whenever he saw the great Turkey carpet rolled up in his warehouse with as much obstinacy as if it never meant to unroll itself again.

At last, however, by dint of indefatigable and minute investigation, he ascertained that the object of his search had resided in London, under a feigned name; from lodging to lodging, and corner to corner, he tracked him, till at length he made himself master of Mordaunt's present retreat. A joyful look did Mr. Brown cast at the great Turkey carpet, as he passed by it, on his way to his street door, on the morning of his intended visit to Mordaunt. "It is a fine thing to have a good heart," said he, in the true style of Sir Christopher Findlater, and he again eyed the Turkey carpet. "I really feel quite happy at the thought of the pleasure I shall give."

After a walk through as many obscure and filthy wynds and lanes and alleys and courts as ever were threaded by some humble fugitive from justice, the patient Morris came to a sort of court, situated among the miserable hovels in the vicinity of the Tower. He paused wonderingly at a dwelling in which every window was broken, and where the tiles, torn from the roof, lay scattered in forlorn confusion beside the door; where the dingy bricks looked crumbling away, from very age and rottenness, and the fabric, which was of great antiquity, seemed so rocking and infirm that the eye looked upon its distorted and overhanging position with a sensation of pain and dread; where the very rats had deserted their loathsome cells from the insecurity of their tenure, and the ragged mothers of the abject neighbourhood forbade their brawling children to wander under the threatening walls, lest they should keep the promise of their mouldering aspect, and, falling, bare to the obstructed and sickly day the secrets of their prison-house. Girt with the foul and reeking lairs of that extreme destitution which necessity urges irresistibly into guilt, and excluded, by filthy alleys and an eternal atmosphere of smoke and rank vapour, from the blessed sun and the pure air of heaven, the miserable mansion seemed set apart for every disease to couch within,—too perilous even for the hunted criminal; too dreary even for the beggar to prefer it to the bare hedge, or the inhospitable porch, beneath whose mockery of shelter the frost of winter had so often numbed him into sleep.

Thrice did the heavy and silver-headed cane of Mr. Brown resound upon the door, over which was a curious carving of a lion dormant, and a date, of which only the two numbers 15 were discernable. Roused by a note so unusual, and an apparition so unwontedly smug as the worthy Morris, a whole legion of dingy and smoke-dried brats, came trooping from the surrounding huts, and with many an elvish cry, and strange oath, and cabalistic word, which thrilled the respectable marrow of Mr. Brown, they collected in a gaping, and, to his alarmed eye, a menacing group, as near to the house as their fears and parents would permit them.

"It is very dangerous," thought Mr. Brown, looking shiveringly up at the hanging and tottering roof, "and very appalling," as he turned to the ragged crowd of infant reprobates which began with every moment to increase. At last he summoned courage, and inquired, in a tone half soothing and half dignified, if they could inform him how to obtain admittance or how to arouse the inhabitants.

An old crone, leaning out of an opposite window, with matted hair hanging over a begrimed and shrivelled countenance, made answer. "No one," she said, in her peculiar dialect, which the worthy man scarcely comprehended, "lived there or had done so for years:" but Brown knew better; and while he was asserting the fact, a girl put her head out of another hovel, and said that she had sometimes seen, at the dusk of the evening, a man leave the house, but whether any one else lived in it she could not tell. Again Mr. Brown sounded an alarm, but no answer came forth, and in great fear and trembling he applied violent hands to the door: it required but little force; it gave way; he entered; and, jealous of the entrance of the mob without, reclosed and barred, as well as he was able, the shattered door. The house was unnaturally large for the neighbourhood, and Brown was in doubt whether first to ascend a broken and perilous staircase or search the rooms below: he decided on the latter; he found no one, and with a misgiving heart, which nothing but the recollection of the great Turkey carpet could have inspired, he ascended the quaking steps. All was silent. But a door was unclosed. He entered, and saw the object of his search before him.

Over a pallet bent a form, on which, though youth seemed withered and even pride broken, the unconquerable soul left somewhat of grace and of glory, that sustained the beholder's remembrance of better days; a child in its first infancy knelt on the nearer side of the bed with clasped hands, and vacant eyes that turned towards the intruder with a listless and lacklustre gaze. But Glendower, or rather Mordaunt, as he bent over the pallet, spoke not, moved not: his eyes were riveted on one object; his heart seemed turned into stone and his veins curdled into ice. Awed and chilled by the breathing desolation of the spot, Brown approached, and spoke he scarcely knew what. "You are," he concluded his address, "the master of Mordaunt Court;" and he placed the letter in the hands of the person he thus greeted.

"Awake, hear me!" cried Algernon to Isabel, as she lay extended on the couch; and the messenger of glad tidings, for the first time seeing her countenance, shuddered, and knew that he was in the chamber of death.

"Awake, my own, own love! Happy days are in store for us yet: our misery is past; you will live, live to bless me in riches, as you have done in want."

Isabel raised her eyes to his, and a smile, sweet, comforting, and full of love, passed the lips which were about to close forever. "Thank Heaven," she murmured, "for your dear sake. It is pleasant to die now, and thus;" and she placed the hand that was clasped in her relaxing and wan fingers within the bosom which had been for anguished and hopeless years his asylum and refuge, and which now when fortune changed, as if it had only breathed in comfort to his afflictions, was for the first time and forever to be cold,—cold even to him!

"You will live, you will live," cried Mordaunt, in wild and incredulous despair, "in mercy live! You, who have been my angel of hope, do not,—O God, O God! do not desert me now!"

But that faithful and loving heart was already deaf to his voice, and the film grew darkening and rapidly over the eye which still with undying fondness sought him out through the shade and agony of death. Sense and consciousness were gone, and dim and confused images whirled round her soul, struggling a little moment before they sank into the depth and silence where the past lies buried. But still mindful of him, and grasping, as it were, at his remembrance, she clasped, closer and closer, the icy hand which she held, to her breast. "Your hand is cold, dearest, it is cold," said she, faintly, "but I will warm it here!" And so her spirit passed away, and Mordaunt felt afterwards, in a lone and surviving pilgrimage, that her last thought had been kindness to him, and that her last act had spoken forgetfulness even of death in the tenderness of love!



CHAPTER LIX

Change and time take together their flight.—Golden Violet.

One evening in autumn, about three years after the date of our last chapter, a stranger on horseback, in deep mourning, dismounted at the door of the Golden Fleece, in the memorable town of W——. He walked into the taproom, and asked for a private apartment and accommodation for the night. The landlady, grown considerably plumper than when we first made her acquaintance, just lifted up her eyes to the stranger's face, and summoning a short stout man (formerly the waiter, now the second helpmate of the comely hostess), desired him, in a tone which partook somewhat more of the authority indicative of their former relative situations than of the obedience which should have characterized their present, "to show the gentleman to the Griffin, No. 4."

The stranger smiled as the sound greeted his ears, and he followed not so much the host as the hostess's spouse into the apartment thus designated. A young lady, who some eight years ago little thought that she should still be in a state of single blessedness, and who always honoured with an attentive eye the stray travellers who, from their youth, loneliness, or that ineffable air which usually designates the unmarried man, might be in the same solitary state of life, turned to the landlady and said,—

"Mother, did you observe what a handsome gentleman that was?"

"No," replied the landlady; "I only observed that he brought no servant"

"I wonder," said the daughter, "if he is in the army? he has a military air!"

"I suppose he has dined," muttered the landlady to herself, looking towards the larder.

"Have you seen Squire Mordaunt within a short period of time?" asked, somewhat abruptly, a little thick-set man, who was enjoying his pipe and negus in a sociable way at the window-seat. The characteristics of this personage were, a spruce wig, a bottle nose, an elevated eyebrow, a snuff-coloured skin and coat, and an air of that consequential self-respect which distinguishes the philosopher who agrees with the French sage, and sees "no reason in the world why a man should not esteem himself."

"No, indeed, Mr. Bossolton," returned the landlady; "but I suppose that, as he is now in the Parliament House, he will live less retired. It is a pity that the inside of that noble old Hall of his should not be more seen; and after all the old gentleman's improvements too! They say that the estate now, since the mortgages were paid off, is above 10,000 pounds a year, clear!"

"And if I am not induced into an error," rejoined Mr. Bossolton, refilling his pipe, "old Vavasour left a great sum of ready money besides, which must have been an aid, and an assistance, and an advantage, mark me, Mistress Merrylack, to the owner of Mordaunt Hall, that has escaped the calculation of your faculty,—and the—and the—faculty of your calculation!"

"You mistake, Mr. Boss," as, in the friendliness of diminutives, Mrs. Merrylack sometimes styled the grandiloquent practitioner, "you mistake: the old gentleman left all his ready money in two bequests,—the one to the College of ——, in the University of Cambridge, and the other to an hospital in London. I remember the very words of the will; they ran thus, Mr. Boss. 'And whereas my beloved son, had he lived, would have been a member of the College of —— in the University of Cambridge, which he would have adorned by his genius, learning, youthful virtue, and the various qualities which did equal honour to his head and heart, and would have rendered him alike distinguished as the scholar and the Christian, I do devise and bequeath the sum of thirty-seven thousand pounds sterling, now in the English Funds,' etc; and then follows the manner in which he will have his charity vested and bestowed, and all about the prize which shall be forever designated and termed 'The Vavasour Prize,' and what shall be the words of the Latin speech which shall be spoken when the said prize be delivered, and a great deal more to that effect: so, then, he passes to the other legacy, of exactly the same sum, to the hospital, usually called and styled ——, in the city of London, and says, 'And whereas we are assured by the Holy Scriptures, which, in these days of blasphemy and sedition, it becomes every true Briton and member of the Established Church to support, that "charity doth cover a multitude of sins," so I do give and devise,' etc., 'to be forever termed in the deeds,' etc., 'of the said hospital, "The Vavasour Charity;" and always provided that on the anniversary of the day of my death a sermon shall be preached in the chapel attached to the said hospital by a clergyman of the Established Church, on any text appropriate to the day and deed so commemorated.' But the conclusion is most beautiful, Mr. Bossolton: 'And now having discharged my duties, to the best of my humble ability, to my God, my king, and my country, and dying in the full belief of the Protestant Church, as by law established, I do set my hand and seal,' etc."

"A very pleasing and charitable and devout and virtuous testament or will, Mistress Merrylack," said Mr. Bossolton; "and in a time when anarchy with gigantic strides does devastate and devour and harm the good old customs of our ancestors and forefathers, and tramples with its poisonous breath the Magna Charta and the glorious revolution, it is beautiful, ay, and sweet, mark you, Mrs. Merrylack, to behold a gentleman of the aristocratic classes or grades supporting the institutions of his country with such remarkable energy of sentiments and with—and with, Mistress Merrylack, with sentiments of such remarkable energy."

"Pray," said the daughter, adjusting her ringlets by a little glass which hung over the tap, "how long has Mr. Mordaunt's lady been dead?"

"Oh! she died just before the squire came to the property," quoth the mother. "Poor thing! she was so pretty! I am sure I cried for a whole hour when I heard it! I think it was three years last month when it happened. Old Mr. Vavasour died about two months afterwards."

"The afflicted husband" (said Mr. Bossolton, who was the victim of a most fiery Mrs. Boss at home) "went into foreign lands or parts, or, as it is vulgarly termed, the Continent, immediately after an event or occurrence so fatal to the cup of his prosperity and the sunshine of his enjoyment, did he not, Mrs. Merrylack?"

"He did. And you know, Mr. Boss, he only returned about six months ago."

"And of what borough or burgh or town or city is he the member and representative?" asked Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton, putting another lump of sugar into his negus. "I have heard, it is true, but my memory is short; and, in the multitude and multifariousness of my professional engagements, I am often led into a forgetfulness of matters less important in their variety, and less—less various in their importance."

"Why," answered Mrs. Merrylack, "somehow or other, I quite forget too; but it is some distant borough. The gentleman wanted him to stand for the county, but he would not hear of it; perhaps he did not like the publicity of the thing, for he is mighty reserved."

"Proud, haughty, arrogant, and assumptious!" said Mr. Bossolton, with a puff of unusual length.

"Nay, nay," said the daughter (young people are always the first to defend), "I'm sure he's not proud: he does a mort of good, and has the sweetest smile possible! I wonder if he'll marry again! He is very young yet, not above two or three and thirty." (The kind damsel would not have thought two or three and thirty very young some years ago; but we grow wonderfully indulgent to the age of other people as we grow older ourselves!)

"And what an eye he has!" said the landlady. "Well, for my part,—but, bless me. Here, John, John, John, waiter, husband I mean,—here's a carriage and four at the door. Lizzy, dear, is my cap right?"

And mother, daughter, and husband all flocked, charged with simper, courtesy, and bow, to receive their expected guests. With a disappointment which we who keep not inns can but very imperfectly conceive, the trio beheld a single personage,—a valet, descend from the box, open the carriage door, and take out—a desk! Of all things human, male or female, the said carriage was utterly empty.

The valet bustled up to the landlady: "My master's here, ma'am, I think; rode on before!"

"And who is your master?" asked Mrs. Merrylack, a thrill of alarm, and the thought of No. 4, coming across her at the same time.

"Who!" said the valet, rubbing his hands; "who!—why, Clarence Talbot Linden, Esq., of Scarsdale Park, county of York, late Secretary of Legation at the court of ——, now M.P., and one of his Majesty's Under Secretaries of State."

"Mercy upon us!" cried the astounded landlady, "and No. 4! only think of it. Run, John,—John,—run, light a fire (the night's cold, I think) in the Elephant, No. 16; beg the gentleman's pardon; say it was occupied till now; ask what he'll have for dinner,—fish, flesh, fowl, steaks, joints, chops, tarts; or, if it's too late (but it's quite early yet; you may put back the day an hour or so), ask what he'll have for supper; run, John, run: what's the oaf staying for? run, I tell you! Pray, sir, walk in (to the valet, our old friend Mr. Harrison)—you'll be hungry after your journey, I think; no ceremony, I beg."

"He's not so handsome as his master," said Miss Elizabeth, glancing at Harrison discontentedly; "but he does not look like a married man, somehow. I'll just step up stairs and change my cap: it would be but civil if the gentleman's gentleman sups with us."

Meanwhile Clarence, having been left alone in the quiet enjoyment of No. 4, had examined the little apartment with an interest not altogether unmingled with painful reflections. There are few persons, however fortunate, who can look back to eight years of their life, and not feel somewhat of disappointment in the retrospect; few persons, whose fortunes the world envy, to whom the token of past time suddenly obtruded on their remembrance does not awaken hopes destroyed and wishes deceived which that world has never known. We tell our triumphs to the crowd, but our own hearts are the sole confidants of our sorrows. "Twice," said Clarence to himself, "twice before have I been in this humble room; the first was when, at the age of eighteen, I was just launched into the world,—a vessel which had for its only hope the motto of the chivalrous Sidney,—

'Aut viam inveniam, aut—faciam;' ["I will either find my way, or—make it.]

yet, humble and nameless as I was, how well I can recall the exaggerated ambition, nay, the certainty of success, as well as its desire, which then burned within me. I smile now at the overweening vanity of those hopes,—some, indeed, realized, but how many nipped and withered forever! seeds, of which a few fell upon rich ground and prospered, but of which how far the greater number were scattered: some upon the wayside, and were devoured by immediate cares; some on stony places, and when the sun of manhood was up they were scorched, and because they had no root withered away; and some among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. I am now rich, honoured, high in the favour of courts, and not altogether unknown or unesteemed arbitrio popularis aurae: and yet I almost think I was happier when, in that flush of youth and inexperience, I looked forth into the wide world, and imagined that from every corner would spring up a triumph for my vanity or an object for my affections. The next time I stood in this little spot, I was no longer the dependant of a precarious charity, or the idle adventurer who had no stepping-stone but his ambition. I was then just declared the heir of wealth, which I could not rationally have hoped for five years before, and which was in itself sufficient to satisfy the aspirings of ordinary men. But I was corroded with anxieties for the object of my love, and regret for the friend whom I had lost: perhaps the eagerness of my heart for the one rendered me, for the moment, too little mindful of the other; but, in after years, memory took ample atonement for that temporary suspension of her duties. How often have I recalled, in this world of cold ties and false hearts, that true and generous friend, from whose lessons my mind took improvement, and from whose warnings example; who was to me, living, a father, and from whose generosity whatever worldly advantages I have enjoyed or distinctions I have gained are derived! Then I was going, with a torn yet credulous heart, to pour forth my secret and my passion to her, and, within one little week thence, how shipwrecked of all hope, object, and future happiness I was! Perhaps, at that time, I did not sufficiently consider the excusable cautions of the world: I should not have taken such umbrage at her father's letter; I should have revealed to him my birth and accession of fortune; nor bartered the truth of certain happiness for the trials and manoeuvres of romance. But it is too late to repent now. By this time my image must be wholly obliterated from her heart: she has seen me in the crowd, and passed me coldly by; her cheek is pale, but not for me; and in a little, little while, she will be another's, and lost to me forever! Yet have I never forgotten her through change or time, the hard and harsh projects of ambition, the labours of business, or the engrossing schemes of political intrigue. Never! but this is a vain and foolish subject of reflection now."

And not the less reflecting upon it for that sage and veracious recollection, Clarence turned from the window, against which he had been leaning, and drawing one of the four chairs to the solitary table, he sat down, moody and disconsolate, and leaning his face upon his hands, pursued the confused yet not disconnected thread of his meditations.

The door abruptly opened, and Mr. Merrylack appeared.

"Dear me, sir!" cried he, "a thousand pities you should have been put here, sir! Pray step upstairs, sir; the front drawing-room is just vacant, sir; what will you please to have for dinner, sir?" etc., according to the instructions of his wife. To Mr. Merrylack's great dismay, Clarence, however, resolutely refused all attempts at locomotion, and contenting himself with entrusting the dinner to the discretion of the landlady, desired to be left alone till it was prepared.

Now, when Mr. John Merrylack returned to the taproom, and communicated the stubborn adherence to No. 4 manifested by its occupier, our good hostess felt exceedingly discomposed. "You are so stupid, John," said she: "I'll go and expostulate like with him;" and she was rising for that purpose when Harrison, who was taking particularly good care of himself, drew her back; "I know my master's temper better than you do, ma'am," said he; "and when he is in the humour to be stubborn, the very devil himself could not get him out of it. I dare say he wants to be left to himself: he is very fond of being alone now and then; state affairs, you know" (added the valet, mysteriously touching his forehead), "and even I dare not disturb him for the world; so make yourself easy, and I'll go to him when he has dined, and I supped. There is time enough for No. 4 when we have taken care of number one. Miss, your health!"

The landlady, reluctantly overruled in her design, reseated herself.

"Mr. Clarence Linden, M. P., did you say, sir?" said the learned Jeremiah: "surely, I have had that name or appellation in my books, but I cannot, at this instant of time, recall to my recollection the exact date and circumstance of my professional services to the gentleman so designated, styled, or, I may say, termed."

"Can't say, I am sure, sir," said Harrison; "lived with my master many years; never had the pleasure of seeing you before, nor of travelling this road,—a very hilly road it is, sir. Miss, this negus is as bright as your eyes and as warm as my admiration."

"Oh, sir!"

"Pray," said Mr. Merrylack, who like most of his tribe was a bit of a politician; "is it the Mr. Linden who made that long speech in the House the other day?"

"Precisely, sir. He is a very eloquent gentleman, indeed: pity he speaks so little; never made but that one long speech since he has been in the House, and a capital one it was too. You saw how the prime minister complimented him upon it. 'A speech,' said his lordship, 'which had united the graces of youthful genius with the sound calculations of matured experience."'

"Did the prime minister really so speak?" said Jeremiah "what a beautiful, and noble, and sensible compliment! I will examine my books when I go home,—'the graces of youthful genius with the sound calculations of matured experience'!"

"If he is in the Parliament House," quoth the landlady, "I suppose he will know our Mr. Mordaunt, when the squire takes his seat next—what do you call it—sessions?"

"Know Mr. Mordaunt!" said the valet. "It is to see him that we have come down here. We intended to have gone there to-night, but Master thought it too late, and I saw he was in a melancholy humour: we therefore resolved to come here; and so Master took one of the horses from the groom, whom we have left behind with the other, and came on alone. I take it, he must have been in this town before, for he described the inn so well.—Capital cheese this! as mild,—as mild as your sweet smile, miss."

"Oh, sir!"

"Pray, Mistress Merrylack," said Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton, depositing his pipe on the table, and awakening from a profound revery, in which for the last five minutes his senses had been buried, "pray, Mistress Merrylack, do you not call to your mind or your reminiscence or your—your recollection, a young gentleman, equally comely in his aspect and blandiloquent (ehem!) in his address, who had the misfortune to have his arm severely contused and afflicted by a violent kick from Mr. Mordaunt's horse, even in the yard in which your stables are situated, and who remained for two or three days in your house or tavern or hotel? I do remember that you were grievously perplexed because of his name, the initials of which only he gave or entrusted or communicated to you, until you did exam—"

"I remember," interrupted Miss Elizabeth, "I remember well,—a very beautiful young gentleman, who had a letter directed to be left here, addressed to him by the letters C. L., and who was afterwards kicked, and who admired your cap, Mother, and whose name was Clarence Linden. You remember it well enough, Mother, surely?"

"I think I do, Lizzy," said the landlady, slowly; for her memory, not so much occupied as her daughter's by beautiful young gentlemen, struggled slowly amidst dim ideas of the various travellers and visitors with whom her house had been honoured, before she came, at last, to the reminiscence of Clarence Linden, "I think I do; and Squire Mordaunt was very attentive to him; and he broke one of the panes of glass in No. 8 and gave me half a guinea to pay for it. I do remember perfectly, Lizzy. So that is the Mr. Linden now here?—only think!"

"I should not have known him, certainly," said Miss Elizabeth; "he is grown so much taller, and his hair looks quite dark now, and his face is much thinner than it was; but he's very handsome still; is he not, sir?" turning to the valet.

"Ah! ah! well enough," said Mr. Harrison, stretching out his right leg, and falling away a little to the left, in the manner adopted by the renowned Gil Blas, in his address to the fair Laura, "well enough; but he's a little too tall and thin, I think."

Mr. Harrison's faults in shape were certainly not those of being too tall and thin.

"Perhaps so!" said Miss Elizabeth, who scented the vanity by a kindred instinct, and had her own reasons for pampering it, "perhaps so!"

"But he is a great favourite with the ladies all the same; however, he only loves one lady. Ah, but I must not say who, though I know. However, she is so handsome: such eyes, they would go through you like a skewer; but not like yours,—yours, miss, which I vow and protest are as bright as a service of plate."

"Oh, sir!"

And amidst these graceful compliments the time slipped away, till Clarence's dinner and his valet's supper being fairly over, Mr. Harrison presented himself to his master, a perfectly different being in attendance to what he was in companionship: flippancy, impertinence, forwardness, all merged in the steady, sober, serious demeanour which characterize the respectful and well-bred domestic.

Clarence's orders were soon given. They were limited to the appurtenances of writing; and as soon as Harrison reappeared with his master's writing-desk, he was dismissed for the night.

Very slowly did Clarence settle himself to his task, and attempt to escape the ennui of his solitude, or the restlessness of thought feeding upon itself, by inditing the following epistle:—

TO THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD.

I was very unfortunate, my dear Duke, to miss seeing you, when I called in Arlington Street the evening before last, for I had a great deal to say to you,—something upon public and a little upon private affairs. I will reserve the latter, since I only am the person concerned, for a future opportunity. With respect to the former— .........

And now, having finished the political part of my letter, let me congratulate you most sincerely upon your approaching marriage with Miss Trevanion. I do not know her myself; but I remember that she was the bosom friend of Lady Flora Ardenne, whom I have often heard speak of her in the highest and most affectionate terms, so that I imagine her brother could not better atone to you for dishonestly carrying off the fair Julia some three years ago, than by giving you his sister in honourable and orthodox exchange,—the gold amour for the brazen.

As for my lot, though I ought not, at this moment, to dim yours by dwelling upon it, you know how long, how constantly, how ardently I have loved Lady Flora Ardenne; how, for her sake, I have refused opportunities of alliance which might have gratified to the utmost that worldliness of heart which so many who saw me only in the crowd have been pleased to impute to me. You know that neither pleasure, nor change, nor the insult I received from her parents, nor the sudden indifference which I so little deserved from herself, has been able to obliterate her image. You will therefore sympathize with me, when I inform you that there is no longer any doubt of her marriage with Borodaile (or rather Lord Ulswater, since his father's death), as soon as the sixth month of his mourning expires; to this period only two months remain.

Heavens! when one thinks over the past, how incredulous one could become to the future: when I recall all the tokens of love I received from that woman, I cannot persuade myself that they are now all forgotten, or rather, all lavished upon another.

But I do not blame her: may she be happier with him than she could have been with me! and that hope shall whisper peace to regrets which I have been foolish to indulge so long, and it is perhaps well for me that they are about to be rendered forever unavailing.

I am staying at an inn, without books, companions, or anything to beguile time and thought, but this pen, ink, and paper. You will see, therefore, a reason and an excuse for my scribbling on to you, till my two sheets are filled, and the hour of ten (one can't well go to bed earlier) arrived.

You remember having often heard me speak of a very extraordinary man whom I met in Italy, and with whom I became intimate. He returned to England some months ago; and on hearing it my desire of renewing our acquaintance was so great that I wrote to invite myself to his house. He gave me what is termed a very obliging answer, and left the choice of time to myself. You see now, most noble Festus, the reason of my journey hitherwards.

His house, a fine old mansion, is situated about five or six miles from this town: and as I arrived here late in the evening, and knew that his habits were reserved and peculiar, I thought it better to take "mine ease in my inn" for this night, and defer my visit to Mordaunt Court till to-morrow morning. In truth, I was not averse to renewing an old acquaintance,—not, as you in your malice would suspect, with my hostess, but with her house. Some years ago, when I was eighteen, I first made a slight acquaintance with Mordaunt at this very inn, and now, at twenty-six, I am glad to have one evening to myself on the same spot, and retrace here all that has since happened to me.

Now do not be alarmed: I am not going to inflict upon you the unquiet retrospect with which I have just been vexing myself; no, I will rather speak to you of my acquaintance and host to be. I have said that I first met Mordaunt some years since at this inn,—an accident, for which his horse was to blame, brought us acquainted,—I spent a day at his house, and was much interested in his conversation; since then, we did not meet till about two years and a half ago, when we were in Italy together. During the intermediate interval Mordaunt had married; lost his property by a lawsuit; disappeared from the world (whither none knew) for some years; recovered the estate he had lost by the death of his kinsman's heir, and shortly afterwards by that of the kinsman himself; and had become a widower, with one only child, a beautiful little girl of about four years old. He lived in perfect seclusion, avoided all intercourse with society, and seemed so perfectly unconscious of having ever seen me before, whenever in our rides or walks we met, that I could not venture to intrude myself on a reserve so rigid and unbroken as that which characterized his habits and life.

The gloom and loneliness, however, in which Mordaunt's days were spent, were far from partaking of that selfishness so common, almost so necessarily common, to recluses. Wherever he had gone in his travels through Italy, he had left light and rejoicing behind him. In his residence at ——, while unknown to the great and gay, he was familiar with the outcast and the destitute. The prison, the hospital, the sordid cabins of want, the abodes (so frequent in Italy, that emporium of artists and poets) where genius struggled against poverty and its own improvidence,—all these were the spots to which his visits were paid, and in which "the very stones prated of his whereabout." It was a strange and striking contrast to compare the sickly enthusiasm of those who flocked to Italy to lavish their sentiments on statues, and their wealth on the modern impositions palmed upon their taste as the masterpieces of ancient art,—it was a noble contrast, I say, to compare that ludicrous and idle enthusiasm with the quiet and wholesome energy of mind and heart which led Mordaunt, not to pour forth worship and homage to the unconscious monuments of the dead but to console, to relieve, and to sustain the woes, the wants, the feebleness of the living.

Yet while he was thus employed in reducing the miseries and enlarging the happiness of others, the most settled melancholy seemed to mark himself "as her own." Clad in the deepest mourning, a stern and un broken gloom sat forever upon his countenance. I have observed, that if in his walks or rides any one, especially of the better classes, appeared to approach, he would strike into a new path. He could not bear even the scrutiny of a glance or the fellowship of a moment: and his mien, high and haughty, seemed not only to repel others, but to contradict the meekness and charity which his own actions so invariably and unequivocally displayed. It must, indeed, have been a powerful exertion of principle over feeling which induced him voluntarily to seek the abodes and intercourse of the rude beings he blessed and relieved.

We met at two or three places to which my weak and imperfect charity had led me, especially at the house of a sickly and distressed artist: for in former life I had intimately known one of that profession; and I have since attempted to transfer to his brethren that debt of kindness which an early death forbade me to discharge to himself. It was thus that I first became acquainted with Mordaunt's occupations and pursuits; for what ennobled his benevolence was the remarkable obscurity in which it was veiled. It was in disguise and in secret that his generosity flowed; and so studiously did he conceal his name, and hide even his features, during his brief visits to "the house of mourning," that only one like myself, a close and minute investigator of whatever has once become an object of interest, could have traced his hand in the various works of happiness it had aided or created.

One day, among some old ruins, I met him with his young daughter. By great good-fortune I preserved the latter, who had wandered away from her father, from a fall of loose stones, which would inevitably have crushed her. I was myself much hurt by my effort, having received upon my shoulder a fragment of the falling stones; and thus our old acquaintance was renewed, and gradually ripened into intimacy; not, I must own, without great patience and constant endeavour on my part; for his gloom and lonely habits rendered him utterly impracticable of access to any (as Lord Aspeden would say) but a diplomatist. I saw a great deal of him during the six months I remained in Italy, and—but you know already how warmly I admire his extraordinary powers and venerate his character—Lord Aspeden's recall to England separated us.

A general election ensued. I was returned for ——. I entered eagerly into domestic politics; your friendship, Lord Aspeden's kindness, my own wealth and industry, made my success almost unprecedentedly rapid. Engaged heart and hand in those minute yet engrossing labours for which the aspirant in parliamentary and state intrigue must unhappily forego the more enlarged though abstruser speculations of general philosophy, and of that morality which may be termed universal, politics, I have necessarily been employed in very different pursuits from those to which Mordaunt's contemplations are devoted, yet have I often recalled his maxims, with admiration at their depth, and obtained applause for opinions which were only imperfectly filtered from the pure springs of his own.

It is about six months since he has returned to England, and he has very lately obtained a seat in Parliament: so that we may trust soon to see his talents displayed upon a more public and enlarged theatre than they hitherto have been; and though I fear his politics will be opposed to ours, I anticipate his public debut with that interest which genius, even when adverse to one's self, always inspires. Yet I confess that I am desirous to see and converse with him once more in the familiarity and kindness of private intercourse. The rage of party, the narrowness of sectarian zeal, soon exclude from our friendship all those who differ from our opinions; and it is like sailors holding commune for the last time with each other, before their several vessels are divided by the perilous and uncertain sea, to confer in peace and retirement for a little while with those who are about to be launched with us on that same unquiet ocean where any momentary caprice of the winds may disjoin us forever, and where our very union is only a sympathy in toil and a fellowship in danger.

Adieu, my dear duke! it is fortunate for me that our public opinions are so closely allied, and that I may so reasonably calculate in private upon the happiness and honour of subscribing myself your affectionate friend, C. L.

Such was the letter to which we shall leave the explanation of much that has taken place within the last three years of our tale, and which, in its tone, will serve to show the kindness and generosity of heart and feeling that mingled (rather increased than abated by the time which brought wisdom) with the hardy activity and resolute ambition that characterized the mind of our "Disowned." We now consign him to such repose as the best bedroom in the Golden Fleece can afford, and conclude the chapter.



CHAPTER LX.

Though the wilds of enchantment all vernal and bright, In the days of delusion by fancy combined With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight, Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night, And leave but a desert behind,

Be hush'd my dark spirit, for Wisdom condemns When the faint and the feeble deplore; Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems A thousand wild waves on the shore.—CAMPBELL.

"Shall I order the carriage round, sir?" said Harrison; "it is past one."

"Yes; yet stay: the day is fine; I will ride; let the carriage come on in the evening; see that my horse is saddled; you looked to his mash last night?"

"I did, sir. He seems wonderfully fresh: would you please to have me stay here with the carriage, sir, till the groom comes on with the other horse?"

"Ay, do: I don't know yet how far strange servants may be welcome where I am going."

"Now, that's lucky!" said Harrison to himself, as he shut the door: "I shall have a good five hours' opportunity of making my court here. Miss Elizabeth is really a very pretty girl, and might not be a bad match. I don't see any brothers; who knows but she may succeed to the inn—hem! A servant may be ambitious as well as his master, I suppose."

So meditating, Harrison sauntered to the stables; saw (for he was an admirable servant, and could, at a pinch, dress a horse as well as its master) that Clarence's beautiful steed received the utmost nicety of grooming which the ostler could bestow; led it himself to the door; held the stirrup for his master, with the mingled humility and grace of his profession, and then strutted away—"pride on his brow and glory in his eye"—to be the cynosure and oracle of the taproom.

Meanwhile Linden rode slowly onwards. As he passed that turn of the town by which he had for the first time entered it, the recollection of the eccentric and would-be gypsy flashed upon him. "I wonder," thought he, "where that singular man is now, whether he still preserves his itinerant and woodland tastes,—

'Si flumina sylvasque inglorius amet,' ["If, unknown to fame, he love the streams and the woods."]

or whether, as his family increased in age or number, he has turned from his wanderings, and at length found out 'the peaceful hermitage?' How glowingly the whole scene of that night comes across me,—the wild tents, their wilder habitants, the mingled bluntness, poetry, honest good-nature, and spirit of enterprise which constituted the chief's nature; the jovial meal and mirth round the wood fire, and beneath the quiet stars, and the eagerness and zest with which I then mingled in the merriment. Alas! how ill the fastidiousness and refinement of after days repay us for the elastic, buoyant, ready zeal with which our first youth enters into whatever is joyous, without pausing to ask if its cause and nature be congenial to our habits or kindred to our tastes. After all, there really was something philosophical in the romance of the jovial gypsy, childish as it seemed; and I should like much to know if the philosophy has got the better of the romance, or the romance, growing into habit, become commonplace and lost both its philosophy and its enthusiasm. Well, after I leave Mordaunt, I will try and find out my old friend."

With this resolution Clarence's thoughts took a new channel, and he soon entered upon Mordaunt's domain. As he rode through the park where brake and tree were glowing in the yellow tints which Autumn, like Ambition, gilds ere it withers, he paused for a moment to recall the scene as he last beheld it. It was then spring—spring in its first and flushest glory—when not a blade of grass but sent a perfume to the air, the happy air,—

"Making sweet music while the young leaves danced:"

when every cluster of the brown fern, that now lay dull and motionless around him, and amidst which the melancholy deer stood afar off gazing upon the intruder, was vocal with the blithe melodies of the infant year,—the sharp, yet sweet, voices of birds,—and (heard at intervals) the chirp of the merry grasshopper or the hum of the awakened bee. He sighed, as he now looked around, and recalled the change both of time and season; and with that fondness of heart which causes man to knit his own little life to the varieties of time, the signs of heaven, or the revolutions of Nature, he recognized something kindred in the change of scene to the change of thought and feeling which years had wrought in the beholder.

Awaking from his revery, he hastened his horse's pace, and was soon within sight of the house. Vavasour, during the few years he had possessed the place, had conducted and carried through improvements and additions to the old mansion, upon a scale equally costly and judicious. The heavy and motley magnificence of the architecture in which the house had been built remained unaltered; but a wing on either side, though exactly corresponding in style to the intermediate building, gave, by the long colonnade which ran across the one and the stately windows which adorned the other, an air not only of grander extent, but more cheerful lightness to the massy and antiquated pile. It was, assuredly, in the point of view by which Clarence now approached it, a structure which possessed few superiors in point of size and effect; and harmonized so well with the nobly extent of the park, the ancient woods, and the venerable avenues, that a very slight effort of imagination might have poured from the massive portals the pageantries of old days, and the gay galliard of chivalric romance with which the scene was in such accordance, and which in a former age it had so often witnessed.

Ah, little could any one who looked upon that gorgeous pile, and the broad lands which, beyond the boundaries of the park, swelled on the hills of the distant landscape, studded at frequent intervals with the spires and villages, which adorned the wide baronies of Mordaunt,—little could he who thus gazed around have imagined that the owner of all he surveyed had passed the glory and verdure of his manhood in the bitterest struggles with gnawing want, rebellious pride, and urgent passion, without friend or aid but his own haughty and supporting virtue, sentenced to bear yet in his wasted and barren heart the sign of the storm he had resisted, and the scathed token of the lightning he had braved. None but Crauford, who had his own reasons for taciturnity, and the itinerant broker, easily bribed into silence, had ever known of the extreme poverty from which Mordaunt had passed to his rightful possessions. It was whispered, indeed, that he had been reduced to narrow and straitened circumstances; but the whisper had been only the breath of rumour, and the imagined poverty far short of the reality: for the pride of Mordaunt (the great, almost the sole, failing in his character) could not endure that all he had borne and baffled should be bared to the vulgar eye; and by a rare anomaly of mind, indifferent as he was to renown, he was morbidly susceptible of shame.

When Clarence rang at the ivy-covered porch, and made inquiry for Mordaunt, he was informed that the latter was in the park, by the river, where most of his hours during the day-time were spent.

"Shall I send to acquaint him that you are come, sir?" said the servant.

"No," answered Clarence, "I will leave my horse to one of the grooms, and stroll down to the river in search of your master."

Suiting the action to the word, he dismounted, consigned his steed to the groom, and following the direction indicated to him, bent his way to the "river."

As he descended the hill, the brook (for it did not deserve, though it received, a higher name) opened enchantingly upon his view. Amidst the fragrant reed and the wild-flower, still sweet though fading, and tufts of tedded grass, all of which, when crushed beneath the foot, sent a mingled tribute to its sparkling waves, the wild stream took its gladsome course, now contracted by gloomy firs, which, bending over the water, cast somewhat of their own sadness upon its surface; now glancing forth from the shade, as it "broke into dimples and laughed in the sun;" now washing the gnarled and spreading roots of some lonely ash, which, hanging over it still and droopingly, seemed—the hermit of the scene—to moralize on its noisy and various wanderings; now winding round the hill and losing itself at last amidst thick copses, where day did never more than wink and glimmer, and where, at night, its waters, brawling through their stony channel, seemed like a spirit's wail, and harmonized well with the scream of the gray owl wheeling from her dim retreat, or the moaning and rare sound of some solitary deer.

As Clarence's eye roved admiringly over the scene before him, it dwelt at last upon a small building situated on the wildest part of the opposite bank; it was entirely overgrown with ivy, and the outline only remained to show the Gothic antiquity of the architecture. It was a single square tower, built none knew when or wherefore, and, consequently, the spot of many vagrant guesses and wild legends among the surrounding gossips. On approaching yet nearer, he perceived, alone and seated on a little mound beside the tower, the object of his search.

Mordaunt was gazing with vacant yet earnest eye upon the waters beneath; and so intent was either his mood or look that he was unaware of Clarence's approach. Tears fast and large were rolling from those haughty eyes, which men who shrank from their indifferent glance little deemed were capable of such weak and feminine emotion. Far, far through the aching void of time were the thoughts of the reft and solitary mourner; they were dwelling, in all the vivid and keen intensity of grief which dies not, upon the day when, about that hour and on that spot, he sat with Isabel's young cheek upon his bosom, and listened to a voice now only heard in dreams. He recalled the moment when the fatal letter, charged with change and poverty, was given to him, and the pang which had rent his heart as he looked around upon a scene over which spring had just then breathed, and which he was about to leave to a fresh summer and a new lord; and then that deep, fond, half-fearful gaze with which Isabel had met his eye, and the feeling, proud even in its melancholy, with which he had drawn towards his breast all that earth had left to him, and thanked God in his heart of hearts that she was spared.

"And I am once more master," thought he, "not only of all I then held, but of all which my wealthier forefathers possessed. But she who was the sharer of my sorrows and want,—oh, where is she? Rather, ah, rather a hundredfold that her hand was still clasped in mine, her spirit supporting me through poverty and trial, and her soft voice murmuring the comfort that steals away care, than to be thus heaped with wealth and honour, and alone,—alone, where never more can come love or hope, or the yearnings of affection or the sweet fulness of a heart that seems fathomless in its tenderness, yet overflows! Had my lot, when she left me, been still the steepings of bitterness, the stings of penury, the moody silence of hope, the damp and chill of sunless and aidless years, which rust the very iron of the soul away; had my lot been thus, as it had been, I could have borne her death, I could have looked upon her grave, and wept not,—nay, I could have comforted my own struggles with the memory of her escape; but thus, at the very moment of prosperity, to leave the altered and promising earth, 'to house with darkness and with death;' no little gleam of sunshine, no brief recompense for the agonizing past, no momentary respite between tears and the tomb. Oh, Heaven! what—what avail is a wealth which comes too late, when she, who could alone have made wealth bliss, is dust; and the light that should have gilded many and happy days flings only a ghastly glare upon the tomb?"

Starting from these reflections, Mordaunt half-unconsciously rose, and dashing the tears from his eyes, was about to plunge into the neighbouring thicket, when, looking up, he beheld Clarence, now within a few paces of him. He started, and seemed for one moment irresolute whether to meet or shun his advance, but probably deeming it too late for the latter, he banished, by one of those violent efforts with which men of proud and strong minds vanquish emotion, all outward sign of the past agony; and hastening towards his guest, greeted him with a welcome which, though from ordinary hosts it might have seemed cold, appeared to Clarence, who knew his temper, more cordial than he had ventured to anticipate.



CHAPTER LXI.

Mr father urged me sair, But my mither didna speak, Though she looked into my face, Till my heart was like to break.—Auld Robin Gray.

"It is rather singular," said Lady Westborough to her daughter as they sat alone one afternoon in the music-room at Westborough Park,—"it is rather singular that Lord Ulswater should not have come yet. He said he should certainly be here before three o'clock."

"You know, Mamma, that he has some military duties to detain him at W——," answered Lady Flora, bending over a drawing in which she appeared to be earnestly engaged.

"True, my dear, and it was very kind in Lord —— to quarter the troop he commands in his native county; and very fortunate that W——, being his head-quarters, should also be so near us. But I cannot conceive that any duty can be sufficiently strong to detain him from you," added Lady Westborough, who had been accustomed all her life to a devotion unparalleled in this age. "You seem very indulgent, Flora."

"Alas! she should rather say very indifferent," thought Lady Flora: but she did not give her thought utterance; she only looked up at her mother for a moment, and smiled faintly.

Whether there was something in that smile or in the pale cheek of her daughter that touched her we know not, but Lady Westborough was touched: she threw her arms round Lady Flora's neck, kissed her fondly, and said, "You do not seem well to-day, my love, are you?"

"Oh!—very—very well," answered Lady Flora, returning her mother's caress, and hiding her eyes, to which the tears had started.

"My child," said Lady Westborough, "you know that both myself and your father are very desirous to see you married to Lord Ulswater,—of high and ancient birth, of great wealth, young, unexceptionable in person and character, and warmly attached to you, it would be impossible even for the sanguine heart of a parent to ask for you a more eligible match. But if the thought really does make you wretched,—and yet,—how can it?"

"I have consented," said Flora, gently; "all I ask is, do not speak to me more of the—the event than you can avoid."

Lady Westborough pressed her hand, sighed, and replied not.

The door opened, and the marquis, who had within the last year become a cripple, with the great man's malady, dire podagra, was wheeled in on his easy-chair; close behind him followed Lord Ulswater.

"I have brought you," said the marquis, who piqued himself on a vein of dry humour,—"I have brought you, young lady, a consolation for my ill humours. Few gouty old fathers make themselves as welcome as I do; eh, Ulswater?"

"Dare I apply to myself Lord Westborough's compliment?" said the young nobleman, advancing towards Lady Flora; and drawing his seat near her, he entered into that whispered conversation so significant of courtship. But there was little in Lady Flora's manner by which an experienced eye would have detected the bride elect: no sudden blush, no downcast, yet sidelong look, no trembling of the hand, no indistinct confusion of the voice, struggling with unanalyzed emotions. No: all was calm, cold, listless; her cheek changed not tint nor hue, and her words, clear and collected, seemed to contradict whatever the low murmurs of her betrothed might well be supposed to insinuate. But, even in his behaviour, there was something which, had Lady Westborough been less contented than she was with the externals and surface of manner, would have alarmed her for her daughter. A cloud, sullen and gloomy, sat upon his brow; and his lip alternately quivered with something like scorn, or was compressed with a kind of stifled passion. Even in the exultation that sparkled in his eye, when he alluded to their approaching marriage, there was an expression that almost might have been termed fierce, and certainly was as little like the true orthodox ardour of "gentle swain," as Lady Flora's sad and half unconscious coldness resembled the diffident passion of the "blushing maiden."

"You have considerably passed the time in which we expected you, my lord," said Lady Westborough, who, as a beauty herself, was a little jealous of the deference due to the beauty of her daughter.

"It is true.," said Lord Ulswater, glancing towards the opposite glass, and smoothing his right eyebrow with his forefinger, "it is true, but I could not help it. I had a great deal of business to do with my troop: I have put them into a new manoeuvre. Do you know, my lord [turning to the marquis], I think it very likely the soldiers may have some work on the —— of this month?"

"Where, and wherefore?" asked Lord Westborough, whom a sudden twinge forced into the laconic.

"At W——. Some idle fellows hold a meeting there on that day; and if I may judge by bills and advertisements, chalkings on the walls, and, more than all popular rumour, I have no doubt but what riot and sedition are intended: the magistrates are terribly frightened. I hope we shall have some cutting and hewing: I have no patience with the rebellious dogs."

"For shame! for shame!" cried Lady Westborough, who, though a worldly, was by no means an unfeeling, woman "the poor people are misguided; they mean no harm."

Lord Ulswater smiled scornfully. "I never dispute upon politics, but at the head of my men," said he, and turned the conversation.

Shortly afterwards Lady Flora, complaining of indisposition, rose, left the apartment, and retired to her own room. There she sat motionless and white as death for more than an hour. A day or two afterwards Miss Trevanion received the following letter from her:—

Most heartily, most truly do I congratulate you, my dearest Eleanor, upon your approaching marriage. You may reasonably hope for all that happiness can afford; and though you do affect (for I do not think that you feel) a fear lest you should not be able to fix a character, volatile and light, like your lover's; yet when I recollect his warmth of heart and high sense, and your beauty, gentleness, charms of conversation, and purely disinterested love for one whose great worldly advantages might so easily bias or adulterate affection, I own that I have no dread for your future fate, no feeling that can at all darken the brightness of anticipation. Thank you, dearest, for the delicate kindness with which you allude to my destiny: me indeed you cannot congratulate as I can you. But do not grieve for me, my generous Eleanor: if not happy, I shall, I trust, be at least contented. My poor father implored me with tears in his eyes; my mother pressed my hand, but spoke not; and I, whose affections were withered and hopes strewn, should I not have been hard-hearted indeed if they had not wrung from me a consent? And oh should I not be utterly lost, if in that consent which blessed them I did not find something of peace and consolation?

Yes, dearest, in two months, only two months, I shall be Lord Ulswater's wife; and when we meet, you shall look narrowly at me, and see if he or you have any right to complain of me.

Have you seen Mr. Linden lately? Yet do not answer the question: I ought not to cherish still that fatal clinging interest for one who has so utterly forgotten me. But I do rejoice in his prosperity; and when I hear his praises, and watch his career, I feel proud that I should once have loved him! Oh, how could he be so false, so cruel, in the very midst of his professions of undying, unswerving faith to me; at the very moment when I was ill, miserable, wasting my very heart, for anxiety on his account,—and such a woman too! And had he loved me, even though his letter was returned, would not his conscience have told him he deserved it, and would he not have sought me out in person, and endeavoured to win from my folly his forgiveness? But without attempting to see me, or speak to me, or soothe a displeasure so natural, to leave the country in silence, almost in disdain; and when we met again, to greet me with coldness and hauteur, and never betray, by word, sign, or look, that he had ever been to me more than the merest stranger! Fool! Fool! that I am, to waste another thought upon him; but I will not, and ought not to do so. In two months I shall not even have the privilege of remembrance.

I wish, Eleanor,—for I assure you that I have tried and tried,—that I could find anything to like and esteem (since love is out of the question) in this man, who seems so great, and, to me, so unaccountable a favourite with my parents. His countenance and voice are so harsh and stern; his manner at once so self-complacent and gloomy; his very sentiments so narrow, even in their notions of honour; his very courage so savage, and his pride so constant and offensive,—that I in vain endeavour to persuade myself of his virtues, and recur, at least, to the unwearying affection for me which he professes. It is true that he has been three times refused; that I have told him I cannot love him; that I have even owned former love to another: he still continues his suit, and by dint of long hope has at length succeeded. But at times I could almost think that he married me from very hate, rather than love: there is such an artificial smoothness in his stern voice, such a latent meaning in his eye; and when he thinks I have not noticed him, I have, on suddenly turning towards him, perceived so dark and lowering an expression upon his countenance that my heart has died within me for very fear.

Had my mother been the least less kind, my father the least less urgent, I think, nay, I know, I could not have gained such a victory over myself as I have done in consenting to the day. But enough of this. I did not think I should have run on so long and so foolishly; but we, dearest, have been children and girls and women together: we have loved each other with such fondness and unreserve that opening my heart to you seems only another phrase for thinking aloud.

However, in two months I shall have no right even to thoughts; perhaps I may not even love you: till then, dearest Eleanor, I am, as ever, your affectionate and faithful friend, F. A.

Had Lord Westborough, indeed, been "less urgent," or her mother "less kind," nothing could ever have wrung from Lady Flora her consent to a marriage so ungenial and ill-omened.

Thrice had Lord Ulswater (then Lord Borodaile) been refused, before finally accepted; and those who judge only from the ordinary effects of pride would be astonished that he should have still persevered. But his pride was that deep-rooted feeling which, so far from being repelled by a single blow, fights stubbornly and doggedly onward, till the battle is over and its object gained. From the moment he had resolved to address Lady Flora Ardenne he had also resolved to win her. For three years, despite of a refusal, first gently, then more peremptorily, urged, he fixed himself in her train. He gave out that he was her affianced. In all parties, in all places, he forced himself near her, unheeding alike of her frowns or indifference; and his rank, his hauteur, his fierceness of mien, and acknowledged courage kept aloof all the less arrogant and hardy pretenders to Lady Flora's favour. For this, indeed, she rather thanked than blamed him; and it was the only thing which in the least reconciled her modesty to his advances or her pride to his presumption.

He had been prudent as well as bold. The father he had served, and the mother he had won. Lord Westborough, addicted a little to politics, a good deal to show, and devotedly to gaming, was often greatly and seriously embarrassed. Lord Ulswater, even during the life of his father (who was lavishly generous to him), was provided with the means of relieving his intended father-in-law's necessities; and caring little for money in comparison to a desired object, he was willing enough, we do not say to bribe, but to influence, Lord Westborough's consent. These matters of arrangement were by no means concealed from the marchioness, who, herself ostentatious and profuse, was in no small degree benefited by them; and though they did not solely procure, yet they certainly contributed to conciliate, her favour.

Few people are designedly and systematically wicked: even the worst find good motives for bad deeds, and are as intent upon discovering glosses for conduct to deceive themselves as to delude others. What wonder, then, that poor Lady Westborough, never too rigidly addicted to self-examination, and viewing all things through a very worldly medium, saw only, in the alternate art and urgency employed against her daughter's real happiness, the various praiseworthy motives of permanently disentangling Lady Flora from an unworthy attachment, of procuring for her an establishment proportioned to her rank, and a husband whose attachment, already shown by such singular perseverance, was so likely to afford her everything which, in Lady Westborough's eyes, constituted felicity?

All our friends, perhaps, desire our happiness; but then it must invariably be in their own way. What a pity that they do not employ the same zeal in making us happy in ours!



CHAPTER LXII.

If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures: Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. —Proverbs ii. 3, 4, 5.

While Clarence was thus misjudged by one whose affections and conduct he, in turn, naturally misinterpreted; while Lady Flora was alternately struggling against and submitting to the fate which Lady Westborough saw approach with gladness, the father with indifference, and the bridegroom with a pride that partook less of rapture than revenge,—our unfortunate lover was endeavouring to glean, from Mordaunt's conversation and example, somewhat of that philosophy so rare except in the theories of the civilized and the occasional practice of the barbarian, which, though it cannot give us a charm against misfortune, bestows, at least, upon us the energy to support it.

We have said already that when the first impression produced by Mordaunt's apparent pride and coldness wore away, it required little penetration to discover the benevolence and warmth of his mind. But none ignorant of his original disposition, or the misfortunes of his life, could ever have pierced the depth of his self-sacrificing nature, or measured the height of his lofty and devoted virtue. Many men may perhaps be found who will give up to duty a cherished wish or even a darling vice; but few will ever renounce to it their rooted tastes, or the indulgence of those habits which have almost become by long use their happiness itself. Naturally melancholy and thoughtful, feeding the sensibilities of his heart upon fiction, and though addicted to the cultivation of reason rather than fancy, having perhaps more of the deeper and acuter characteristics of the poet than those calm and half-callous properties of nature supposed to belong to the metaphysician and the calculating moralist, Mordaunt was above all men fondly addicted to solitude, and inclined to contemplations less useful than profound. The untimely death of Isabel, whom he had loved with that love which is the vent of hoarded and passionate musings long nourished upon romance, and lavishing the wealth of a soul that overflows with secreted tenderness upon the first object that can bring reality to fiction,—that event had not only darkened melancholy into gloom, but had made loneliness still more dear to his habits by all the ties of memory and all the consecrations of regret. The companionless wanderings; the midnight closet; the thoughts which, as Hume said of his own, could not exist in the world, but were all busy with life in seclusion,—these were rendered sweeter than ever to a mind for which the ordinary objects of the world were now utterly loveless; and the musings of solitude had become, as it were, a rightful homage and offering to the dead. We may form, then, some idea of the extent to which, in Mordaunt's character, principle predominated over inclination, and regard for others over the love of self, when we see him tearing his spirit from its beloved retreats and abstracted contemplations, and devoting it to duties from which its fastidious and refined characteristics were particularly calculated to revolt. When we have considered his attachment to the hermitage, we can appreciate the virtue which made him among the most active citizens in the great world; when we have considered the natural selfishness of grief, the pride of philosophy, the indolence of meditation, the eloquence of wealth, which says, "Rest, and toil not," and the temptation within, which says, "Obey the voice,"—when we have considered these, we can perhaps do justice to the man who, sometimes on foot and in the coarsest attire, travelled from inn to inn and from hut to hut; who made human misery the object of his search and human happiness of his desire; who, breaking aside an aversion to rude contact, almost feminine in its extreme, voluntarily sought the meanest companions, and subjected himself to the coarsest intrusions; for whom the wail of affliction or the moan of hunger was as a summons which allowed neither hesitation nor appeal; who seemed possessed of a ubiquity for the purposes of good almost resembling that attributed to the wanderer in the magnificent fable of Melmoth for the temptations to evil; who, by a zeal and labour that brought to habit and inclination a thousand martyrdoms, made his life a very hour-glass, in which each sand was a good deed or a virtuous design.

Many plunge into public affairs, to which they have had a previous distaste, from the desire of losing the memory of a private affliction; but so far from wishing to heal the wounds of remembrance by the anodynes which society can afford, it was only in retirement that Mordaunt found the flowers from which balm could be distilled. Many are through vanity magnanimous, and benevolent from the selfishness of fame but so far from seeking applause where he bestowed favour, Mordaunt had sedulously shrouded himself in darkness and disguise. And by that increasing propensity to quiet, so often found among those addicted to lofty or abstruse contemplation, he had conquered the ambition of youth with the philosophy of a manhood that had forestalled the affections of age. Many, in short, have become great or good to the community by individual motives easily resolved into common and earthly elements of desire; but they who inquire diligently into human nature have not often the exalted happiness to record a character like Mordaunt's, actuated purely by a systematic principle of love, which covered mankind, as heaven does earth, with an atmosphere of light extending to the remotest corners and penetrating the darkest recesses.

It was one of those violent and gusty evenings which give to an English autumn something rude, rather than gentle, in its characteristics, that Mordaunt and Clarence sat together,

"And sowed the hours with various seeds of talk."

The young Isabel, the only living relic of the departed one, sat by her father's side upon the floor; and though their discourse was far beyond the comprehension of her years, yet did she seem to listen with a quiet and absorbed attention. In truth, child as she was, she so loved, and almost worshipped, her father that the very tones of his voice had in them a charm which could always vibrate, as it were, to her heart; and hush her into silence; and that melancholy and deep though somewhat low voice, when it swelled or trembled with thought,—which in Mordaunt was feeling,—made her sad, she knew not why; and when she heard it, she would creep to his side, and put her little hand on his, and look up to him with eyes in whose tender and glistening blue the spirit of her mother seemed to float. She was serious and thoughtful and loving beyond the usual capacities of childhood; perhaps her solitary condition and habits of constant intercourse with one so grave as Mordaunt, and who always, when not absent on his excursions of charity, loved her to be with him, had given to her mind a precocity of feeling, and tinctured the simplicity of infancy with what ought to have been the colours of after years. She was not inclined to the sports of her age; she loved, rather, and above all else, to sit by Mordaunt's side and silently pore over some books or feminine task, and to steal her eyes every now and then away from her employment, in order to watch his motions or provide for whatever her vigilant kindness of heart imagined he desired. And often, when he saw her fairy and lithe form hovering about him and attending on his wants, or her beautiful countenance glow with pleasure, when she fancied she supplied them, he almost believed that Isabel yet lived, though in another form, and that a love so intense and holy as hers had been, might transmigrate, but could not perish.

The young Isabel had displayed a passion for music so early that it almost seemed innate; and as, from the mild and wise education she received, her ardour had never been repelled on the one hand or overstrained on the other, so, though she had but just passed her seventh year, she had attained to a singular proficiency in the art,—an art that suited well with her lovely face and fond feelings and innocent heart; and it was almost heavenly, in the literal acceptation of the word, to hear her sweet though childish voice swell along the still pure airs of summer, and to see her angelic countenance all rapt and brilliant with the enthusiasm which her own melodies created.

Never had she borne the bitter breath of unkindness, nor writhed beneath that customary injustice which punishes in others the sins of our own temper and the varied fretfulness of caprice; and so she had none of the fears and meannesses and acted untruths which so usually pollute and debase the innocence of childhood. But the promise of her ingenuous brow (over which the silken hair flowed, parted into two streams of gold), and of the fearless but tender eyes, and of the quiet smile which sat forever upon the rosy mouth, like Joy watching Love, was kept in its fullest extent by the mind, from which all thoughts, pure, kind, and guileless, flowed like waters from a well which a spirit has made holy for its own dwelling.

On this evening we have said that she sat by her father's side and listened, though she only in part drank in its sense, to his conversation with his guest.

The room was of great extent and surrounded with books, over which at close intervals the busts of the departed Great and the immortal Wise looked down. There was the sublime beauty of Plato, the harsher and more earthly countenance of Tully, the only Roman (except Lucretius) who might have been a Greek. There the mute marble gave the broad front of Bacon (itself a world), and there the features of Locke showed how the mind wears away the links of flesh with the file of thought. And over other departments of those works which remind us that man is made little lower than the angels, the stern face of the Florentine who sung of hell contrasted with the quiet grandeur enthroned on the fair brow of the English poet,—"blind but bold,"—and there the glorious but genial countenance of him who has found in all humanity a friend, conspicuous among sages and minstrels, claimed brotherhood with all.

The fire burned clear and high, casting a rich twilight (for there was no other light in the room) over that Gothic chamber, and shining cheerily upon the varying countenance of Clarence and the more contemplative features of his host. In the latter you might see that care and thought had been harsh but not unhallowed companions. In the lines which crossed his expanse of brow, time seemed to have buried many hopes; but his mien and air, if loftier, were gentler than in younger days; and though they had gained somewhat in dignity, had lost greatly in reserve.

There was in the old chamber, with its fretted roof and ancient "garniture," the various books which surrounded it, walls that the learned built to survive themselves, and in the marble likenesses of those for whom thought had won eternity, joined to the hour, the breathing quiet, and the hearth-light, by whose solitary rays we love best in the eves of autumn to discourse on graver or subtler themes,—there was in all this a spell which seemed particularly to invite and to harmonize with that tone of conversation, some portions of which we are now about to relate.

"How loudly," said Clarence, "that last gust swept by; you remember that beautiful couplet in Tibullus,—

'Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem, Et dominam tenero detinuisse sinu.'" ["Sweet on our couch to hear the winds above, And cling with closer heart to her we love."]

"Ay," answered Mordaunt, with a scarcely audible sigh, "that is the feeling of the lover at the immites ventos, but we sages of the lamp make our mistress Wisdom, and when the winds rage without it is to her that we cling. See how, from the same object, different conclusions are drawn! The most common externals of nature, the wind and the wave, the stars and the heavens, the very earth on which we tread, never excite in different bosoms the same ideas; and it is from our own hearts, and not from an outward source, that we draw the hues which colour the web of our existence."

"It is true," answered Clarence. "You remember that in two specks of the moon the enamoured maiden perceived two unfortunate lovers, while the ambitious curate conjectured that they were the spires of a cathedral? But it is not only to our feelings, but also to our reasonings, that we give the colours which they wear. The moral, for instance, which to one man seems atrocious, to another is divine. On the tendency of the same work what three people will agree? And how shall the most sanguine moralist hope to benefit mankind when he finds that, by the multitude, his wisest endeavours to instruct are often considered but as instruments to pervert?"

"I believe," answered Mordaunt, "that it is from our ignorance that our contentions flow: we debate with strife and with wrath, with bickering and with hatred; but of the thing debated upon we remain in the profoundest darkness. Like the labourers of Babel, while we endeavour in vain to express our meaning to each other, the fabric by which, for a common end, we would have ascended to heaven from the ills of earth remains forever unadvanced and incomplete. Let us hope that knowledge is the universal language which shall reunite us. As, in their sublime allegory, the Ancients signified that only through virtue we arrive at honour, so let us believe that only through knowledge can we arrive at virtue!"

"And yet," said Clarence, "that seems a melancholy truth for the mass of the people, who have no time for the researches of wisdom."

"Not so much so as at first we might imagine," answered Mordaunt: "the few smooth all paths for the many. The precepts of knowledge it is difficult to extricate from error but, once discovered, they gradually pass into maxims; and thus what the sage's life was consumed in acquiring becomes the acquisition of a moment to posterity. Knowledge is like the atmosphere: in order to dispel the vapour and dislodge the frost, our ancestors felled the forest, drained the marsh, and cultivated the waste, and we now breathe without an effort, in the purified air and the chastened climate, the result of the labour of generations and the progress of ages! As to-day, the common mechanic may equal in science, however inferior in genius, the friar [Roger Bacon] whom his contemporaries feared as a magician, so the opinions which now startle as well as astonish may be received hereafter as acknowledged axioms, and pass into ordinary practice. We cannot even tell how far the sanguine theories of certain philosophers [See Condorcet "On the Progress of the Human Mind," written some years after the supposed date of this conversation, but in which there is a slight, but eloquent and affecting, view of the philosophy to which Mordaunt refers.] deceive them when they anticipate, for future ages, a knowledge which shall bring perfection to the mind, baffle the diseases of the body, and even protract to a date now utterly unknown the final destination of life: for Wisdom is a palace of which only the vestibule has been entered; nor can we guess what treasures are hid in those chambers of which the experience of the past can afford us neither analogy nor clew."

"It was, then," said Clarence, who wished to draw his companion into speaking of himself, "it was, then, from your addiction to studies not ordinarily made the subject of acquisition that you date (pardon me) your generosity, your devotedness, your feeling for others, and your indifference to self?"

"You flatter me," said Mordaunt, modestly (and we may be permitted to crave attention to his reply, since it unfolds the secret springs of a character so singularly good and pure), "you flatter me: but I will answer you as if you had put the question without the compliment; nor, perhaps, will it be wholly uninstructive, as it will certainly be new, to sketch, without recurrence to events or what I may call exterior facts, a brief and progressive History of One Human Mind."

"Our first era of life is under the influence of the primitive feelings: we are pleased, and we laugh; hurt, and we weep: we vent our little passions the moment they are excited: and so much of novelty have we to perceive, that we have little leisure to reflect. By and by, fear teaches us to restrain our feelings: when displeased, we seek to revenge the displeasure, and are punished; we find the excess of our joy, our sorrow, our anger, alike considered criminal, and chidden into restraint. From harshness we become acquainted with deceit: the promise made is not fulfilled, the threat not executed, the fear falsely excited, and the hope wilfully disappointed; we are surrounded by systematized delusion, and we imbibe the contagion."

"From being forced into concealing thoughts which we do conceive, we begin to affect those which we do not: so early do we learn the two main tasks of life, To Suppress and To Feign, that our memory will not carry us beyond that period of artifice to a state of nature when the twin principles of veracity and belief were so strong as to lead the philosophers of a modern school into the error of terming them innate." [Reid: On the Human Mind.]

"It was with a mind restless and confused, feelings which were alternately chilled and counterfeited (the necessary results of my first tuition), that I was driven to mix with others of my age. They did not like me, nor do I blame them. 'Les manieres que l'on neglige comme de petites choses, sont souvent ce qui fait que les hommes decident de vous en bien ou en mal. ["Those manners which one neglects as trifling are often the cause of the opinion, good or bad, formed of you by men."] Manner is acquired so imperceptibly that we have given its origin to Nature, as we do the origin of all else for which our ignorance can find no other source. Mine was unprepossessing: I was disliked, and I returned the feeling; I sought not, and I was shunned. Then I thought that all were unjust to me, and I grew bitter and sullen and morose: I cased myself in the stubbornness of pride; I pored over the books which spoke of the worthlessness of man; and I indulged the discontent of myself by brooding over the frailties of my kind."

"My passions were strong: they told me to suppress them. The precept was old, and seemed wise: I attempted to enforce it. I had already begun, in earlier infancy, the lesson: I had now only to renew it. Fortunately I was diverted from this task, or my mind in conquering its passions would have conquered its powers. I learned in after lessons that the passions are not to be suppressed; they are to be directed; and, when directed, rather to be strengthened than subdued."