What Will He Do with It? — Volume 12

CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER VIII. THE FLUTE-PLAYER SHOWS HOW LITTLE MUSIC HATH POWER TO SOOTHE THE SAVAGE BREAST—OF A MUSICIAN. Fairthorn found himself on the very spot in which, more than five years ago, Lionel, stung by Fairthorn's own incontinent prickles, had been discovered by Darrell. There he threw himself on the ground, as the boy had done; there, like the boy, he brooded moodily, bitterly—sore with the world and himself. To that letter, written on the day that Darrell had so shocked him, and on which letter he had counted as a last forlorn —hope, no answer had been given. In an hour or so, Lionel would arrive; those hateful nuptials, dooming Fawley as the nuptials of Paris and Helen had doomed Troy, would be finally arranged. In another week the work of demolition would commence. He never meant to leave Darrell to superintend that work. No; grumble and refuse as he might till the last moment, he knew well enough that, when it came to the point, he, Richard Fairthorn, must endure any torture that could save Guy Darrell from a pang. A voice comes singing low through the grove—the patter of feet on the crisp leaves. He looks up; Sir Isaac is scrutinising him gravely —behind Sir Isaac, Darrell's own doe, led patiently by Sophy, yes, lending its faithless neck to that female criminal's destroying hand. He could not bear that sight, which added insult to injury. He scrambled up—darted a kick at Sir Isaac—snatched the doe from the girl's hand, and looked her in the face (her—not Sophy, but the doe) with a reproach that, if the brute had not been lost to all sense of shame, would have cut her to the heart; then, turning to Sophy, he said: "No, Miss! I reared this creature—fed it with my own hands, Miss. I gave it up to Guy Darrell, Miss; and you shan't steal this from him, whatever else you may do, Miss." SOPHY.—"Indeed, Mr. Fairthorn, it was for Mr. Darrell's sake that I wished to make friends with the doe—as you would with poor Sir Isaac, if you would but try and like me—a little, only a very little, Mr. Fairthorn." FAIRTHORN.—"Don't!" SOPHY.—"Don't what? I am so sorry to see I have annoyed you somehow. You have not been the same person to me the last two or three days. Tell me what I have done wrong; scold me, but make it up." FAIRTHORN.—"Don't holdout your hand to me! Don't be smiling in my face! I don't choose it! Get out of my sight! You are standing between me and the old house—robbing me even of my last looks at the home which you—" SOPHY.—"Which I—what?" FAIRTHORN.—"Don't, I say, don't—don't tempt me. You had better not ask questions—that's all. I shall tell you the truth; I know I shall; my tongue is itching to tell it. Please to walk on." Despite the grotesque manner and astounding rudeness of the flute-player, his distress of mind was so evident—there was something so genuine and earnest at the bottom of his ludicrous anger—that Sopby began to feel a vague presentiment of evil. That she was the mysterious cause of some great suffering to this strange enemy, whom she had unconsciously provoked, was clear; and she said, therefore, with more gravity than she had before evinced: "Mr. Fairthorn, tell me how I have incurred your displeasure, I entreat you to do so; no matter how painful the truth may be, it is due to us both not to conceal it." A ray of hope darted through Fairthorn's enraged and bewildered mind. He looked to the right—he looked to the left; no one near. Releasing his hold on the doe, he made a sidelong dart towards Sophy, and said: "Hush; do you really care what becomes of Mr. Darrell?" "To be sure I do." "You would not wish him to die broken-hearted in a foreign land—that old house levelled to the ground and buried in the lake? Eh, Miss—eh?" "How can you ask me such questions?" said Sophy, faintly. "Do speak plainly, and at once." "Well, I will, Miss. I believe you are a good young lady, after all—and don't wish really to bring disgrace upon all who want to keep you in the dark, and—" "Disgrace!" interrupted Sopby; and her pure spirit rose, and the soft blue eye flashed a ray like a shootingstar. "No, I am sure you would not like it; and some time or other you could not help knowing, and you would be very sorry for it. And that boy Lionel, who was as proud as Guy Darrell himself when I saw him last (prouder indeed)—that he should be so ungrateful to his benefactor! And, indeed, the day may come when he may turn round on you, or on the lame old gentleman, and say he has been disgraced. Should not wonder at all! Young folks when they are sweet-hearting only talk about roses and angels, and such-like; but when husbands and wives fall out, as they always do sooner or later, they don't mince their words then, and they just take the sharpest thing that they can find at their tongue's end. So you may depend on it, my dear Miss, that some day or other that young Haughton will say, 'that you lost him the old Manor-house and the old Darrell name,' and have been his disgrace; that's the very word, Miss; I have heard husbands and wives say it to each other over and over again." SOPHY.—"Oh, Mr. Fairthorn! Mr. Fairthorn! these horrid words cannot be meant for me. I will go to Mr. Darrell—I will ask him how I can be a dis—" Her lips could not force out the word. FAIRTHORN.—"Ay; go to Mr. Darrell, if you please. He will deny it all; he will never speak to me again. I don't care—I am reckless. But it is not the less true that you make him an exile because you may make me a beggar." SOPHY (wringing her hands).—"Have you no mercy, Mr. Fairthorn? Will you not explain?" FAIRTHORN.—"Yes, if you will promise to keep it secret at least for the next six months—anything for breathing-time." SOPHY (impatiently).—"I promise, I promise; speak, speak." And then Fairthorn did speak! He did speak of Jasper Losely—his character—his debasement—even of his midnight visit to her host's chamber. He did speak of the child fraudulently sought to be thrust on Darrell—of Darrell's just indignation and loathing. The man was merciless; though he had not an idea of the anguish he was inflicting, he was venting his own anguish. All the mystery of her past life became clear at once to the unhappy girl—all that had been kept from her by protecting love. All her vague conjectures now became a dreadful certainty;—explained now why Lionel had fled her—why he had written that letter, over the contents of which she had pondered, with her finger on her lip, as if to hush her own sighs—all, all! She marry Lionel now! impossible! She bring disgrace upon him in return for such generous, magnanimous affection! She drive his benefactor, her grandsire's vindicator, from his own hearth! She—she—that Sophy who, as a mere infant, had recoiled from the thought of playful subterfuge and tamperings with plain honest truth! She rose before Fairthorn had done; indeed, the tormentor, left to himself, would not have ceased till nightfall. "Fear not, Mr. Fairthorn," she said, resolutely; "Mr. Darrell will be no exile! his house will not be destroyed. Lionel Haughton shall not wed the child of disgrace! Fear not, sir; all is safe!" She shed not a tear; nor was there writ on her countenance that CHANGE, speaking of blighted hope, which had passed over it at her young lover's melancholy farewell. No, now she was supported—now there was a virtue by the side of a sorrow—now love was to shelter and save the beloved from disgrace—from disgrace! At that thought, disgrace fell harmless from herself, as the rain from the plumes of a bird. She passed on, her cheek glowing, her form erect. By the porch-door she met Waife and the Morleys. With a kind of wild impetuosity she seized the old man's arm, and drew it fondly, clingingly within her own. Henceforth they two were to be, as in years gone by, all in all to each other. George Morley eyed her countenance in thoughtful surprise. Mrs. Morley, bent as usual on saying something seasonably kind, burst into an eulogium on her brilliant colour. So they passed on towards the garden side of the house. Wheels—the tramp of hoofs, full gallop; and George Morley, looking up, exclaimed: "Ha! here comes Lionel! and see, Darrell is hastening out to welcome him!" CHAPTER IX. THE LETTER ON WHICH RICHARD FAIRTHORN RELIED FOR THE DEFEAT OF THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST FAWLEY MANOR-HOUSE. BAD ASPECTS FOR HOUSES. THE HOUSE OF VIPONT IS THREATENED. A PHYSICIAN ATTEMPTS TO MEDICINE TO A MIND DISEASED. A STRANGE COMMUNICATION, WHICH HURRIES THE READER ONTO THE NEXT CHAPTER. It has been said that Fairthorn had committed to a certain letter his last desperate hope that something might yet save Fawley from demolition, and himself and his master from an exile's home in that smiling nook of earth to which Horace invited Septimius, as uniting the advantages of a mild climate, excellent mutton, capital wine; and affording to Septimius the prospective privilege of sprinkling a tear over the cinder of his poetical friend while the cinder was yet warm; inducements which had no charm at all to Fairthorn, who was quite satisfied with the Fawley southdowns—held in just horror all wishy-washy light wines—and had no desire to see Darrell reduced to a cinder for the pleasure of sprinkling that cinder with a tear. The letter in question was addressed to Lady Montfort. Unscrupulously violating the sacred confidence of his master, the treacherous wretch, after accusing her, in language little more consistent with the respect due to the fair sex than that which he had addressed to Sophy, of all the desolation that the perfidious nuptials of Caroline Lyndsay had brought upon Guy Darrell, declared that the least Lady Montfort could do to repair the wrongs inflicted by Caroline Lyndsay, was—not to pity his master!—that her pity was killing him. He repeated, with some grotesque comments of his own, but on the whole not inaccurately, what Darrell had said to him on the subject of her pity. He then informed her of Darrell's consent to Lionel's marriage with Sophy; in which criminal espousals it was clear, from Darrell's words, that Lady Montfort had had some nefarious share. In the most lugubrious colours he brought before her the consequences of that marriage—the extinguished name, the demolished dwelling-place, the renunciation of native soil itself. He called upon her, by all that was sacred, to contrive some means to undo the terrible mischief she had originally occasioned, and had recently helped to complete. His epistle ended by an attempt to conciliate and coax. He revived the image of that wild Caroline Lyndsay, to whom HE had never refused a favour; whose earliest sums he had assisted to cast up— to whose young idea he had communicated the elementary principles of the musical gamut—to whom he had played on his flute, winter eve and summer noon, by the hour together; that Caroline Lyndsay, who when a mere child, had led Guy Darrell where she willed, as by a thread of silk. Ah, how Fairthorn had leapt for joy when, eighteen years ago, he had thought that Caroline Lyndsay was to be the sunshine and delight of the house to which she had lived to bring the cloud and the grief! And by all these memories, Fairthorn conjured her either to break off the marriage she had evidently helped to bring about, or, failing that, to convince Guy Darrell that he was not the object of her remorseful and affectionate compassion. Caroline was almost beside herself at the receipt of this letter. The picture of Guy Darrell effacing his very life from his native land, and destroying the last memorials of his birthright and his home—the conviction of the influence she still retained over his bleak and solitary existence—the experience she had already acquired that the influence failed where she had so fondly hoped it might begin to repair and to bless, all overpowered her with emotions of yearning tenderness and unmitigated despair. What could she do? She could not offer herself, again to be rejected. She could not write again, to force her penitence upon the man who, while acknowledging his love to be unconquered, had so resolutely refused to see, in the woman who had once deceived his trust—the Caroline of old! Alas, if he were but under the delusion that her pity was the substitute and not the companion of love, how could she undeceive him? How say—how write—"Accept me, for I love you." Caroline Montfort had no pride of rank, but she had pride of sex; that pride had been called forth, encouraged, strengthened, throughout all the years of her wedded life. For Guy Darrell's sake, and to him alone, that pride she had cast away—trampled upon; such humility was due to him. But when the humility had been once in vain, could it be repeated—would it not be debasement? In the first experiment she had but to bow to his reproach—in a second experiment she might have but to endure his contempt. Yet how, with her sweet, earnest, affectionate nature—how she longed for one more interview—one more explanation! If chance could but bring it about; if she had but a pretext—a fair reason, apart from any interest of her own, to be in his presence once more! But in a few days he would have left England forever—his heart yet more hardened in its resolves by the last sacrifice to what it had so sternly recognised to be a due to others. Never to see him more—never to know how much in that sacrifice he was suffering now—would perhaps suffer more hereafter, in the reaction that follows all strain upon purpose—and yet not a word of comfort from her—her who felt born to be his comforter. But this marriage, that cost him so much, must that be? Could she dare, even for his sake, to stand between two such fair young lives as those of Lionel and Sophy—confide to them what Fairthorn had declared—appeal to their generosity? She shrunk from inflicting such intolerable sorrow. Could it be her duty? In her inability to solve this last problem, she bethought herself of Alban Morley; here, at least, he might give advice —offer suggestion. She sent to his house entreating him to call. Her messenger was some hours before he found the Colonel, and then brought back but a few hasty lines—"impossible to call that day. The CRISIS had come at last! The Country, the House of Vipont, the British Empire, were trembling in the balance. The Colonel was engaged every moment for the next twelve hours. He had the Earl of Montfort, who was intractable and stupid beyond conception, to see and talk over; Carr Vipont was hard at work on the materials for the new Cabinet—Alban was helping Carr Vipont. If the House of Vipont failed England at this moment, it would not be a CRISIS, but a CRASH! The Colonel hoped to arrange an interview with Lady Montfort for a minute or two the next day. But perhaps she would excuse him from a journey to Twickenham, and drive into town to see him; if not at home, he would leave word where he was to be found." By the beard of Jupiter Capitolinus, there are often revolutions in the heart of woman, during which she is callous to a Crisis, and has not even a fear for a CRASH! The next day came George's letter to Caroline, with the gentle message from Darrell; and when Dr. F———, whose apprehensions for the state of her health Colonel Morley had by no means exaggerated, called in the afternoon to see the effect of his last prescription, he found her in such utter prostration of nerves and spirits, that he resolved to hazard a dose not much known to great ladies—viz. three grains of plain- speaking, with a minim of frightening. "My dear lady," said he, "yours is a case in which physicians can be of very little use. There is something on the mind which my prescriptions fail to reach; worry of some sort—decidedly worry. And unless you yourself can either cure that, or will make head against it, worry, my dear Lady Montfort, will end not in consumption—you are too finely formed to let worry eat holes in the lungs—no; but in a confirmed aneurism of the heart, and the first sudden shock might then be immediately fatal. The heart is a noble organ—bears a great deal—but still its endurance has limits. Heart-complaints are more common than they were;—over-education and over-civilisation, I suspect. Very young people are not so subject to them; they have flurry, not worry—a very different thing. A good chronic silent grief of some years standing, that gets worried into acute inflammation at the age when feeling is no longer fancy, throws out a heart-disease which sometimes kills without warning, or sometimes, if the grief be removed, will rather prolong than shorten life, by inducing a prudent avoidance of worry in future. There is that worthy old gentleman who was taken so ill at Fawley, and about whom you were so anxious: in his case there had certainly been chronic grief; then came acute worry, and the heart could not get through its duties. Fifty years ago doctors would have cried 'apoplexy!'—nowadays we know that the heart saves the head. Well, he was more easy in his mind the last time I saw him, and thanks to his temperance, and his constitutional dislike to self-indulgence in worry, he may jog on to eighty, in spite of the stethoscope! Excess in the moral emotions gives heart-disease; abuse of the physical powers, paralysis; both more common than they were—the first for your gentle sex, the second for our rough one. Both, too, lie in wait for their victims at the entrance in middle life. I have a very fine case of paralysis now; a man built up by nature to live to a hundred—never saw such a splendid formation—such bone and such muscle. I would have given Van Amburgh the two best of his lions, and my man would have done for all three in five minutes. All the worse for him, my dear lady—all the worse for him. His strength leads him on to abuse the main fountains of life, and out jumps avenging Paralysis and fells him to earth with a blow. 'Tis your Hercules that Paralysis loves; she despises the weak invalid, who prudently shims all excess. And so, my dear lady, that assassin called Aneurism lies in wait for the hearts that abuse their own force of emotion; sparing hearts that, less vital, are thrifty in waste and supply. But you are not listening to one! And yet my patient may not be quite unknown to your ladyship; for in happening to mention the other day, to the lady who attends to and nurses him, that I could not call this morning, as I had a visit to pay to Lady Montfort at Twickenham, she became very anxious about you, and wrote this note, which she begged me to give you. She seems very much attached to my patient—not his wife nor his sister. She interests me;—capital nurse-cleverish woman too. Oh! here is the note." Caroline, who had given but little heed to this recital, listlessly received the note—scarcely looked at the address—and was about to put it aside, when the good doctor, who was intent upon rousing her by any means, said: "No, my dear lady, I promised that I would see you read the note; besides, I am the most curious of men, and dying to know a little more who and what is the writer." Caroline broke the seal and read as follows: "If Lady Montfort remembers Arabella Fossett, and will call at Clare Cottage, Vale of Health, Hampstead, at her ladyship's earliest leisure, and ask for Mrs. Crane, some information, not perhaps important to Lady Montfort, but very important to Mr. Darrell, will be given." Lady Montfort startled the doctor by the alertness with which she sprang to her feet and rang the bell. "What is it?" asked he. "The carriage immediately," cried Lady Montfort as the servant entered. "Ah! you are going to see the poor lady, Mrs. Crane, eh? Well, it is a charming drive, and just what I should have recommended. Any exertion will do you good. Allow me; why, your pulse is already fifty per cent. better. Pray what relation is Mrs. Crane to my patient?" "I really don't know; pray excuse me, my dear Dr. F———-." "Certainly; go while the day is fine. Wrap up;—a close carriage, mind;—and I will look in to-morrow." CHAPTER X. WHEREIN IS INSINUATED THE HIGHEST COMPLIMENT TO WOMAN EVER PAID TO HER SEX BY THE AUTHOR OF THIS WORK. Lady Montfort has arrived at Clare Cottage. She is shown by Bridget Greggs into a small room upon the first floor; folding-doors to some other room closely shut—evidences of sickness in the house;—phials on the chimneypiece—a tray with a broth-basin on the table—a saucepan on the hob—the sofa one of those that serve as a bed, which Sleep little visits, for one who may watch through the night over some helpless sufferer—a woman's shawl thrown carelessly over its hard narrow bolster;—all, in short, betraying that pathetic untidiness and discomfort which says that a despot is in the house to whose will order and form are subordinate;—the imperious Tyranny of Disease establishing itself in a life that, within those four walls, has a value not to be measured by its worth to the world beyond. The more feeble and helpless the sufferer, the more sovereign the despotism—the more submissive the servitude. In a minute or two one of the folding-doors silently opened and as silently closed, admitting into Lady Montfort's presence a grim woman in iron grey. Caroline could not, at the first glance, recognise that Arabella Fossett, of whose handsome, if somewhat too strongly defined and sombre countenance, she had retained a faithful reminiscence. But Arabella had still the same imposing manner which had often repressed the gay spirits of her young pupil; and as she now motioned the great lady to a seat, and placed herself beside, an awed recollection of the schoolroom bowed Caroline's lovely head in mute respect. MRS. CRANE.—"You too are changed since I saw you last,—that was more than five years ago, but you are not less beautiful. You can still be loved;—you would not scare away the man whom you might desire to save. Sorrow has its partialities. Do you know that I have a cause to be grateful to you, without any merit of your own. In a very dark moment of my life—only vindictive and evil passions crowding on me—your face came across my sight. Goodness seemed there so beautiful—and, in this face, Evil looked so haggard! Do not interrupt me. I have but few minutes to spare you. Yes; at the sight of that face, gentle recollections rose up. You had ever been kind to me; and truthful, Caroline Lyndsay—truthful. Other thoughts came at the beam of that face, as other thoughts come when a strain of unexpected music reminds us of former days. I cannot tell how, but from that moment a something more like womanhood, than I had known for years, entered into my heart. Within that same hour I was sorely tried galled to the quick of my soul. Had I not seen you before, I might have dreamed of nothing but a stern and dire revenge. And a purpose of revenge I did form. But it was not to destroy-it was to save! I resolved that the man who laughed to scorn the idea of vows due to me—vows to bind life to life—should yet sooner or later be as firmly mine as if he had kept his troth; that my troth at least should be kept to him, as if it had been uttered at the altar. "Hush, did you hear a moan?—No! He lies yonder, Caroline Lyndsay—mine, indeed, till the grave us do part. These hands have closed over him, and he rests in their clasp, helpless as an infant." Involuntarily Caroline recoiled. But looking into that careworn face, there was in it so wild a mixture of melancholy tenderness, with a resolved and fierce expression of triumph, that, more impressed by the tenderness than by the triumph, the woman sympathised with the woman; and Caroline again drew near, nearer than before, and in her deep soft eyes pity alone was seen. Into those eyes Arabella looked, as if spellbound, and the darker and sterner expression in her own face gradually relaxed and fled, and only the melancholy tenderness was left behind. She resumed: "I said to Guy Darrell that I would learn, if possible, whether the poor child whom I ill-used in my most wicked days, and whom you, it seems, have so benignly sheltered, was the daughter of Matilda—or, as he believed, of a yet more hateful mother. Long ago I had conceived a suspicion that there was some ground to doubt poor Jasper's assertion, for I had chanced to see two letters addressed to him—one from that Gabrielle Desinarets whose influence over his life had been so baleful —in which she spoke of some guilty plunder with which she was coming to London, and invited him again to join his fortunes with her own. Oh, but the cold, bloodless villany of the tone!—the ease with which crimes for a gibbet were treated as topics for wit!" Arabella stopped—the same shudder came over her as when she had concluded the epistles abstracted from the dainty pocketbook. "But in the letter were also allusions to Sophy, to another attempt on Darrell to be made by Gabrielle herself. Nothing very clear; but a doubt did suggest itself—'Is she writing to him about his own child?' The other letter was from the French nurse with whom Sophy had been placed as an infant. It related to inquiries in person, and a visit to her own house, which Mr. Darrell had recently made; that letter also seemed to imply some deception, though but by a few dubious words. At that time the chief effect of the suspicion these letters caused was but to make me more bent on repairing to Sophy my cruelties to her childhood. What if I had been cruel to an infant who, after all, was not the daughter of that false, false Matilda Darrell! I kept in my memory the French nurse's address. I thought that when in France I might seek and question her. But I lived only for one absorbing end. Sophy was not then in danger; and even my suspicions as to her birth died away. Pass on:—Guy Darrell! Ah, Lady Montfort! his life has been embittered like mine; but he was man, and could bear it better. He has known, himself, the misery of broken faith, of betrayed affection, which he could pity so little when its blight fell on me; but you have excuse for desertion—you yourself were deceived; and I pardon him, for he pardoned Jasper, and we are fellow-sufferers. You weep! Pardon my rudeness. I did not mean to pain you. Try and listen calmly—I must hurry on. On leaving Mr. Darrell I crossed to France. I saw the nurse; I have ascertained the truth; here are the proofs in this packet. I came back—I saw Jasper Losely. He was on the eve of seeking you, whom he had already so wronged—of claiming the child, or rather of extorting money for the renunciation of a claim to one whom you had adopted. I told him how vainly he had hitherto sought to fly from me. One by one I recited the guilty schemes in which I had baffled his purpose—all the dangers from which I had rescued his life. I commanded him to forbear the project he had then commenced. I told him I would frustrate that project as I had frustrated others. Alas, alas! why is this tongue so harsh?— why does this face so belie the idea of human kindness? I did but enrage and madden him; he felt but the reckless impulse to destroy the life that then stood between himself and the objects to which he had pledged his own self-destruction. I thought I should die by his hand. I did not quail. Ah! the ghastly change that came over his face—the one glance of amaze and superstitious horror; his arm obeyed him not; his strength, his limbs, forsook him; he fell at my feet—one side of him stricken dead! Hist! that is his voice—pardon me!" and Arabella flitted from the room, leaving the door ajar. A feeble Voice, like the treble of an infirm old man, came painfully to Caroline's ear. "I want to turn; help me. Why am I left alone? It is cruel to leave me so—cruel!" In the softest tones to which that harsh voice could be tuned, the grim woman apologised and soothed. "You gave me leave, Jasper dear. You said it would be a relief to you to have her pardon as well as theirs." "Whose pardon?" asked the voice querulously. "Caroline Lyndsay's—Lady Montfort's." "Nonsense! What did I ever do against her? Oh—ah! I remember now. Don't let me have it over again. Yes—she pardons me, I suppose! Get me my broth, and don't be long!" Arabella came back, closing the door; and while she busied herself with that precious saucepan on the hob—to which the Marchioness of Montfort had become a very secondary object—she said, looking towards Caroline from under her iron-grey ringlets: "You heard—he misses me! He can't bear me out of his sight now—me, me! You heard!" Meekly Lady Montfort advanced, bringing in her hand the tray with the broth-basin. "Yes, I heard! I must not keep you; but let me help while I stay." So the broth was poured forth and prepared, and with it Arabella disappeared. She returned in a few minutes, beckoned to Caroline, and said in a low voice: "Come in—say you forgive him! Oh, you need not fear him; a babe could not fear him now!" Caroline followed Arabella into the sick-room. No untidiness there; all so carefully, thoughtfully arranged. A pleasant room, too—with windows looking full on the sunniest side of the Vale of Health; the hearth so cheerily clear, swept so clean—the very ashes out of sight; flowers— costly exotics—on the table, on the mantelpiece; the couch drawn towards the window; and on that couch, in the gay rich dressing-gown of former days, warm coverlets heaped on the feet, snow-white pillows propping the head, lay what at first seemed a vague, undistinguishable mass—lay what, as the step advanced, and the eye became more accurately searching, grew into Jasper Losely. Yes, there, too weak indeed for a babe to fear, lay all that was left of the Strong Man! No enemy but himself had brought him thus low- spendthrift, and swindler, and robber of his own priceless treasures- Health and Strength—those grand rent-rolls of joy which Nature had made his inheritance. As a tree that is crumbling to dust under the gnarls of its bark seems, the moment ere it falls, proof against time and the tempest, so, within all decayed, stood that image of strength-so, air scarcely stirring, it fell. "And the pitcher was broken at the fountain; and the wheel was broken at the cistern; vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher." Jasper turned his dull eye towards Caroline, as she came softly to his side, and looked at her with a piteous gaze. The stroke that had shattered the form had spared the face; and illness and compulsory abstinence from habitual stimulants had taken from the aspect much of the coarseness—whether of shape or colour—that of late years had disfigured its outline—and supplied the delicacy which ends with youth by the delicacy that comes with the approach of death. So that, in no small degree, the beauty which had been to him so fatal a gift, was once more visible—the features growing again distinct, as wanness succeeded to the hues of intemperance, and emaciation to the bloated cheeks and swollen muscle. The goddess whose boons adorn the outward shell of the human spirit came back to her favourite's death-couch as she had come to the cradle—not now as the Venus Erycina, goddess of Smile and Jest, but as the warning Venus Libitina, the goddess of Doom and the Funeral. "I'm a very poor creature," said Jasper, after a pause. "I can't rise— I can't move without help. Very strange supernatural! She always said that if I raised my hand against her, it would fall palsied!" He turned his eye towards Arabella with a glare of angry terror. "She is a witch!" he said, and buried his face in the pillow. Tears rolled down the grim woman's cheeks. LADY MONTFORT.—"She is rather your good ministering spirit. Do not be unkind to her. Over her you have more power now than you had when you were well and strong. She lives but to serve you; command her gently." Jasper was not proof against that sweet voice. With difficulty he wrenched himself round, and again looked long at Caroline Montfort, as if the sight did him good; then he made a sign to Arabella, who flew to his side and raised him. "I have been a sad dog," he said, with a mournful attempt at the old rollicking tone—"a very sad dog-in short, a villain! But all ladies are indulgent to villains in fact, prefer them! Never knew a lady who could endure 'a good young man'—never! So I am sure you will forgive me, miss—ma'am. Who is this lady? When it comes to forgiveness, there are so many of them! Oh, I remember now—your ladyship will forgive me—'tis all down in black and white what I've done-Belles has it. You see this hand—I can write with this hand—this is not paralysed. "This is not the hand I tried to raise against her. But /basta, basta!/ where was I? My poor head! I know what it is to have a head now!—ache, ache!—boom, boom-weight, weight-heavy as a church bell-hollow as a church bell—noisy as a church bell! Brandy! give me brandy, you witch!—I mean Bella, good Bella, give me brandy!" "Not yet, Jasper dear. You are to have it every third hour; it is not time yet, dearest; you must attend to the doctor, and try to get well and recover your strength. You remember I told you how kind Lady Montfort had been to your father, and you wished to see and thank her." "My father—my poor, poor father! You've been kind to him! Bless you, bless you! And you will see him? I want his pardon before I die. Don't forget, and—and—" "Poor Sophy!" said Mrs. Crane. "Ah yes! But she's well off now, you tell me. I can't think I have injured her. And really girls and women are intended to be a little useful to one. /Basta, basta/."' "Mr. Darrell—" "Yes, yes, yes! I forgive him, or he forgives me; settle it as you like. But my father's pardon, Lady Montfort, you will get me that!" "I will, I will." He looked at her again, and smiled. Arabella gently let his head fall back upon the pillow. "Throw a handkerchief over my face," he said feebly, "and leave me; but be in call; I feel sleepy." His eyes closed; he seemed asleep even before they stole from the room. "You will bring his father to him?" said Arabella, when she and Lady Montfort were again alone. "In this packet is Jasper's confession of the robbery for which that poor old man suffered. I never knew of that before. But you see how mild he is now!—how his heart is changed; it is indeed changed more than he shows; only you have seen him at the worst— his mind wanders a little to-day; it does sometimes. I have a favour to ask of you. I once heard a preacher, not many months ago; he affected me as no preacher ever did before. I was told that he was Colonel Morley's nephew. Will you ask Colonel Morley to persuade him to come to Jasper?" "My cousin, George Morley! He shall come, I promise you; so shall your poor patient's forgiving father. Is there more I can do?" "No. Explain to Mr. Darrell the reason why I have so long delayed sending to him the communication which he will find in the packet I have given to you, and which you will first open, reading the contents yourself—a part of them, at least, in Jasper's attestation of his stratagem to break off your marriage with Mr. Darrell, may yet be of some value to you—you had better also show the papers to Colonel Morley—he may complete the task. I had meant, on returning to England, or before seeing Mr. Darrell, to make the inquiries which you will see are still necessary. But then came this terrible affliction! I have been able to think of nothing else but Jasper;—terrible to quit the house which contains him for an hour; only, when Dr. F. told me that he was attending you, that you were ill and suffering, I resolved to add to this packet Jasper's own confession. Ah, and he gave it so readily, and went yesterday through the fatigue of writing with such good heart. I tell you that there is a change within him—there is there is. Well, well— I resolved to give you the packet to transmit to Mr. Darrell, for somehow or other I connected your illness with your visit to him at Fawley!" "My visit to Mr. Darrell!" "Jasper saw you as your carriage drove from the park gate, not very many days since. Ah, you change colour! You have wronged that man; repair the wrong; you have the power!" "Alas! no," murmured Caroline, "I have not the power." "Pooh!—he loves you still. You are not one of those whom men forget." Caroline was silent, but involuntarily she lowered her veil. In an instant the acute sense of the grim woman detected the truth. "Ah! Pride—pride in both," she said. "I understand—I dare not blame him here. But you—you were the injurer; you have no right to pride; you will see him again." "No—never—never!" faltered Caroline, with accents scarcely audible under her veil. Arabella was silent for a moment, and Lady Montfort rose hastily to depart. "You will see him again, I tell you;" and Arabella then following her to the door: "Stay; do you think HE will die?" "Good heavens! Mr. Darrell?" "No, no—Jasper Losely!" "I hope not. What does Dr. F. say?" "He will not tell me. But it is not the paralysis alone; he might recover from that—so young still. There are other symptoms; that dreadful habit of stimulants! He sinks if he has them not—they hasten death if he has. But—but—but—HE IS MINE, AND MINE ONLY, TO THE GRAVE —NOW!" CHAPTER XI. THE CRISIS—PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. Lady Montfort's carriage stopped at Colonel Morley's door just as Carr Vipont was coming out. Carr, catching sight of her, bustled up to the carriage window. "My dear Lady Montfort!—not seen you for an age! What times we live in! How suddenly THE CRISIS has come upon us! Sad loss in poor dear Montfort; no wonder you mourn for him! Had his failings, true—who is not mortal?—but always voted right; always to be relied on in times of CRISIS! But this crotchety fellow, who has so unluckily, for all but himself, walked into that property, is the loosest fish! And what is a House divided against itself? Never was the Constitution in such peril! —I say it deliberately!—and here is the Head of the Viponts humming and haaing, and asking whether Guy Darrell will join the Cabinet. And if Guy Darrell will not, we have no more chance of the Montfort interest than if we were Peep-o'-day Boys. But excuse me; I must be off; every moment is precious in times of CRISIS. Think, if we can't form a Cabinet by to- morrow night—only think what may happen; the other fellows will come in, and then—THE DELUGE!" Carr is gone to find mops and Dame Partingtons to stave off the deluge. Colonel Morley has obeyed Lady Montfort's summons, and has entered the carriage. Before she can speak, however, he has rushed into the subject of which he himself is full. "Only think—I knew it would be so when the moment came; all depends upon Guy Darrell; Montfort, who seems always in a fright lest a newspaper should fall on his head and crush him, says that if Darrell, whom he chooses to favour just because the newspapers do, declines to join, the newspapers will say the CRISIS is a job! Fancy!—a job—the CRISIS! Lord Mowbray de l'Arco and Sir Josiah Snodge, who are both necessary to a united government, but who unluckily detest each other, refuse to sit in the same Cabinet, unless Darrell sit between—to save them, I suppose, from the fate of the cats of Kilkenny. Sir John Cautly, our crack county member, declares that if Darrell does not come in, 'tis because the CRISIS is going too far! Harry Bold, our most popular speaker, says, if Darrell stay out, 'tis a sign that the CRISIS is a retrograde movement! In short, without Darrell the CRISIS will be a failure, and the House of Vipont smashed—Lady Montfort— smashed! I sent a telegram (oh, that I should live to see such a word introduced into the English language!—but, as Carr says, what times these are!) to Fawley this morning, entreating Guy to come up to town at once. He answers by a line from Horace, which means, 'that he will see me shot first.' I must go down to him; only waiting to know the result of certain negotiations as to measures. I have but one hope. There is a measure which Darrell always privately advocated—which he thoroughly understands—which, placed in his hands, would be triumphantly carried; one of those measures, Lady Montfort, which, if defective, shipwreck a government; if framed as Guy Darrell could frame it, immortalise the minister who concocts and carries them. This is all that Darrell needs to complete his fame and career. This is at length an occasion to secure a durable name in the history of his country; let him reject it, and I shall tell him frankly that his life has been but a brilliant failure. Since he has not a seat in Parliament, and usage requires the actual possession of that qualification for a seat in the Cabinet, we must lose his voice in the Commons. But we can arrange that; for if Darrell will but join the government, and go—to the Lords, Sir Josiah Snodge, who has a great deal of voice and a great deal of jealousy, will join too—head the Vipont interest in the Commons—and speak to the country—speak every night—and all night, too, if required. Yes; Darrell must take the peerage—devote himself for a year or two to this great measure—to the consolidation of his fame—to the redemption of the House of Vipont—and to the Salvation of the Empire; and then, if he please, 'solve senescentem'—that is, he may retire from harness, and browse upon laurels for the rest of his days!" Colonel Morley delivered himself of this long address without interruption from a listener interested in every word that related to Guy Darrell, and in every hope that could reunite him to the healthful activities of life. It was now Lady Montfort's turn to speak; though, after subjects so momentous as the Crisis and its speculative consequences, private affairs, relating to a poor little girl like Sophy—nay, the mere private affairs of Darrell himself, seemed a pitiful bathos. Lady Montfort, however, after a few words of womanly comment upon the only part of the Colonel's discourse which touched her heart, hastened on to describe her interview with Arabella, and the melaneboly condition of Darrell's once formidable son-in-law. For that last, the Colonel evinced no more compassionate feeling than any true Englishman, at the time I am writing, would demonstrate for a murderous Sepoy tied to the mouth of a cannon. "A very good riddance," said the Colonel, dryly. "Great relief to Darrell, and to every one else whom that monster tormented and preyed on; and with his life will vanish the only remaining obstacle in righting poor Willy's good name. I hope to live to collect, from all parts of the country, Willy's old friends and give them a supper, at which I suppose I must not get drunk; though I should rather like it, than not! But I interrupt you! go on." Lady Montfort proceeded to state the substance of the papers she had perused in reference to the mystery which had been the cause of so much disquietude and bitterness. The Colonel stretched out his hand eagerly for the documents—thus quoted. He hurried his eye rapidly over the contents of the first paper he lit on, and then said, pulling out his watch: "Well, I have half an hour yet to spare in discussing these matters with you—may I order your coachman to drive round the Regent's Park?—better than keeping it thus at my door, with four old maids for opposite neighbours." The order was given, and the Colonel again returned to the papers. Suddenly he looked up—looked full into Lady Montfort's face, with a thoughtful, searching gaze, which made her drop her own eyes! and she saw that he had been reading Jasper's confession, relating to his device for breaking off her engagement to Darrell, which in her hurry and excitement she had neglected to abstract from the other documents. "Oh, not that paper—you are not to read that," she cried, quickly covering the writing with her hand. "Too late, my dear cousin. I have read it. All is now clear. Lionel was right; and I was right too, in my convictions, though Darrell put so coolly aside my questions when I was last at Fawley. I am justified now in all the pains I took to secure Lionel's marriage—in the cunning cruelty of my letter to George! Know, Lady Montfort, that if Lionel had sacrificed his happiness to respect for Guy's ancestor-worship, Guy Darrell would have held himself bound in honour never to marry again. He told me so—told me he should be a cheat if he took any step to rob one from whom he had exacted such an offering-of the name, and the heritage, for which the offering had been made. And I then resolved that County Guy should not thus irrevocably shut the door on his own happiness! Lady Montfort, you know that this man loves you—as, verily, I believe, never other man in our cold century loved woman;—through desertion—through change—amidst grief—amidst resentment—despite pride;—dead to all other love—shrinking from all other ties—on, constant on-carrying in the depth of his soul to the verge of age, secret and locked up, the hopeless passion of his manhood. Do you not see that it is through you, and you alone, that Guy Darrell has for seventeen years been lost to the country he was intended to serve and to adorn? Do you not feel that if he now reject this last opportunity to redeem years so wasted, and achieve a fame that may indeed link his Ancestral Name to the honours of Posterity, you, and you alone, are the cause?" "Alas—alas—but what can I do?" "Do!—ay, true. The poor fellow is old now; you cannot care for him!— you still young, and so unluckily beautiful!—you, for whom young princes might vie. True; you can have no feeling for Guy Darrell, except pity!" "Pity! I hate the word!" cried Lady Montfort, with as much petulance as if she had still been the wayward lively Caroline of old. Again the Man of the World directed toward her face his shrewd eyes, and dropped out, "See him!" "But I have seen him. You remember I went to plead for Lionel and Sophy —in vain!" "Not in vain. George writes me word that he has informed you of Darrell's consent to their marriage. And I am much mistaken if his greatest consolation in the pang that consent must have cost him be not the thought that it relieves you from the sorrow and remorse his refusal had occasioned to you. Ah! there is but one person who can restore Darrell to the world-and that is yourself!" Lady Montfort shook her head drearily. "If I had but an excuse—with dignity—with self-respect—to—to—!' "An excuse! You have an absolute necessity to communicate with Darrell. You have to give him these documents—to explain how you came by them. Sophy is with him; you are bound to see her on a subject of such vital importance to herself. Scruples of prudery! You, Caroline Lyndsay, the friend of his daughter—you whose childhood was reared in his very house —you whose mother owed to him such obligations—you to scruple in being the first to acquaint him with information affecting him so nearly! And why, forsooth? Because, ages ago, your hand was, it seems, engaged to him, and you were deceived by false appearances, like a silly young girl as you were." Again Lady Montfort shook her head drearily—drearily. "Well," said the Colonel, changing his tone, "I will grant that those former ties can't be renewed now. The man now is as old as the hills, and you had no right to expect that he would have suffered so much at being very naturally jilted for a handsome young Marquess." "Cease, sir, cease," cried Caroline, angrily. The Colonel coolly persisted. "I see now that such nuptials are out of the question. But has the world come to such a pass that one can never at any age have a friend in a lady unless she marry him? Scruple to accompany me—me your cousin—me your nearest surviving relation—in order to take back the young lady you have virtually adopted!—scruple to trust yourself for half an hour to that tumbledown old Fawley! Are you afraid that the gossips will say you, the Marchioness of Montfort, are running after a gloomy old widower, and scheming to be mistress of a mansion more like a ghosttrap than a residence for civilised beings? Or are you afraid that Guy Darrell will be fool and fop enough to think you are come to force on him your hand? Pooh, pooh! Such scruples would be in place if you were a portionless forward girl, or if he were a conceited young puppy, or even a suspicious old roue. But Guy Darrell—a man of his station, his character, his years! And you, cousin Caroline, what are you? Surely, lifted above all such pitiful crotchets by a rank amongst the loftiest gentlewomen of England; ample fortune, a beauty that in itself is rank and wealth; and, above all, a character that has passed with such venerated purity through an ordeal in which every eye seeks a spot, every ear invites a scandal. But as you will. All I say is, that Darrell's future may be in your hands; that after to-morrow, the occasion to give at least noble occupation and lasting renown to a mind that is devouring itself and stifling its genius, may be irrevocably lost; and that I do believe, if you said to-morrow to Guy Daxrell, 'You refused to hear me when I pleaded for what you thought a disgrace to your name, and yet even that you at last conceded to the voice of affection as if of duty—now hear me when I plead by the side of your oldest friend on behalf of your honour, and in the name of your forefathers,'—if You say THAT, he is won to his country. You will have repaired a wrong; and, pray, will you have compromised your dignity?" Caroline had recoiled into the corner of the carriage, her mantle close down round her breast, her veil lowered; but no sheltering garb or veil could conceal her agitation. The Colonel pulled the check-string. "Nothing so natural; you are the widow of the Head of the House of Vipont. You are, or ought to be, deeply interested in its fate. An awful CRISIS, long expected, has occurred. The House trembles. A connection of that House can render it an invaluable service; that connection is the man at whose hearth your childhood was reared; and you go with me—me, who am known to be moving heaven and earth for every vote that the House can secure, to canvass this wavering connection for his support and assistance. Nothing, I say, so natural; and yet you scruple to serve the House of Vipont—to save your country! You may well be agitated. I leave you to your own reflections. My time runs short; I will get out here. Trust me with these documents. I will see to the rest of this long painful subject. I will send a special report to you this evening, and you will reply by a single line to the prayer I have ventured to address to you." CHAPTER XII. AND LAST. IN WHICH THE AUTHOR ENDEAVOURS, TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY, TO GIVE A FINAL REPLY TO THE QUESTION, "WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?" SCENE—The banks of the lake at Fawley. George is lending his arm to Waife; Mrs. Morley, seated on her camp-stool at the opposite side of the water, is putting the last touch to her sketch of the Manor-house; Sir Isaac, reclined, is gravely contemplating the swans; the doe, bending over him, occasionally nibbles his ear; Fairthorn has uncomfortably edged himself into an angle of the building, between two buttresses, and is watching, with malignant eye, two young forms, at a distance, as they moved slowly yonder, side by side, yet apart, now lost, now emerging, through the gaps between melancholy leafless trees. Darrell, having just quitted Waife and George, to whose slow pace he can ill time his impatient steps, wonders why Lionel, whom, on arriving, he had, with brief cordial words, referred to Sophy for his fate, has taken more than an hour to ask a simple question, to which the reply may be pretty well known beforehand. He advances towards those melancholy trees. Suddenly one young form leaves the other—comes with rapid stride through the withered fern. Pale as death, Lionel seizes Guy Darrell's hand with convulsive grasp, and says: "I must leave you, sir; God bless you! All is over. I was the blindest fool—she refuses me." "Refuses you!—impossible! For what reason?" "She cannot love me well enough to marry," answered Lionel with a quivering lip, and an attempt at that irony in which all extreme anguish, at least in our haughty sex, delights to seek refuge or disguise. "Likes me as a friend, a brother, and so forth, but—nothing more. All a mistake, sir—all, except your marvellous kindness to me—to her—for which Heaven ever bless you." "Yes, all a mistake of your own, foolish boy," said Darrell, tenderly; and, turning sharp, he saw Sophy hastening by, quickly and firmly, with her eyes looking straightward—on into space. He threw himself in her path. "Tell this dull kinsman of mine that 'faint heart never won fair lady.' You do not mean seriously, deliberately to reject a heart that will never be faint with a meaner fear than that of losing you?" Poor Sophy! She kept her blue eyes still on the cold grey space, and answered by some scarce audible words—words which in every age girls intending to say No seem to learn as birds learn their song; no one knows who taught them, but they are ever to the same tune. "Sensible of the honour"—"Grateful"—"Some one more worthy," &c., &c. Darrell checked this embarrassed jargon. "My question, young lady, is solemn; it involves the destiny of two lives. Do you mean to say that you do not love Lionel Haughton well enough to give him your hand, and return the true faith which is pledged with his own?" "Yes," said Lionel, who had gained the side of his kinsman, "yes, that is it. O Sophy—Ay or No?" "No!" fell from her pale, firm lips—and in a moment more she was at Waife's side, and had drawn him away from George. "Grandfather, grandfather!—home, home; let us go home at once, or I shall die!" Darrell has kept his keen sight upon her movements—upon her countenance. He sees her gesture—her look—as she now clings to her grandfather. The blue eyes are not now coldly fixed on level air, but raised upward as for strength from above. The young face is sublime with its woe, and with its resolve. "Noble child," muttered Darrell, "I think I see into her heart. If so, poor Lionel, indeed! My pride has yielded, hers never will!" Lionel, meanwhile, kept beating his foot on the ground, and checking indignantly the tears that sought to gather to his eyes. Darrell threw his arm round the young man's shoulder, and led him gently, slowly away, by the barbed thorn-tree-on by the moss-grown crags. Waife, meanwhile, is bending his ear to Sophy's lip. The detestable Fairthorn emerges from between the buttresses, and shambles up to George, thirsting to hear his hopes confirmed, and turning his face back to smile congratulation, on the gloomy old house that he thinks he has saved from the lake. Sophy has at last convinced Waife that his senses do not deceive him, nor hers wander. She has said, "O grandfather, let us ever henceforth be all in all to each other. You are not ashamed of me—I am so proud of you. But there are others akin to me, grandfather, whom we will not mention; and you would be ashamed of me if I brought disgrace on one who would confide to me his name, his honour; and should I be as proud of you, if you asked me to do it?" At these word, Waife understands all, and he has not an argument in reply; and he suffers Sophy to lead him towards the house. Yes, they will go hence—yes, there shall be no schemes of marriage! They had nearly reached the door, when the door itself opened violently, and a man rushing forth caught Sophy in his arms, and kissed her forehead, her cheek, with a heartiness that it is well Lionel did not witness! Speechless and breathless with resentwent, Sophy struggled, and in vain, when Waife, seizing the man by the collar, swung him away with a "How dare you, sir," that was echoed back from the hillocks—summoned Sir Isaac at full gallop from the lake—scared Fairthorn back to his buttresses—roused Mrs. Morley from her sketch, and, smiting the ears of Lionel and Darrell, hurried them, mechanically as it were, to the very spot from which that thunder-roll had pealed. "How dare I?" said the man, resettling the flow of his disordered coat—" How dare I kiss my own niece?—my own sister's orphan child? Venerable Bandit, I have a much better right than you have. Oh, my dear injured Sophy, to think that I was ashamed of your poor cotton print— to think that to your pretty face I have been owing fame and fortune—and you, you wandering over the world—child of the sister of whose beauty I was so proud—of her for whom, alas, in vain! I painted Watteaus and Greuzes upon screens and fans!" Again he clasped her to his breast; and Waife this time stood mute, and Sophy passive—for the man's tears were raining upon her face, and washed away every blush of shame as to the kiss they hallowed. "But where is my old friend William Losely?—where is Willy?" said another voice, as a tall, thin personage stepped out from the hall, and looked poor Waife unconsciously in the face. "Alban Morley!" faltered Waife, "you are but little changed!" The Colonel looked again, and in the elderly, lame, oneeyed, sober- looking man, recognised the wild jovial Willy, who had tamed the most unruly fillies, taken the most frantic leaps, carolled forth the blithest song-madcap, good-fellow, frolicsome, childlike darling of gay and grave, young and old! "'Eheu, fugaces, Postume, Postume, Labuntur anni,'" said the Colonel, insensibly imbibing one of those Horatian particles that were ever floating in that classic atmosphere—to Darrell medicinal, to Fairthorn morbific. "Years slide away, Willy, mutely as birds skim through air; but when friend meets with friend after absence, each sees the print of their crows' feet on the face of the other. But we are not too old yet, Willy, for many a meet at the fireside! Nothing else in our studs, we can still mount our hobbies; and thoroughbred hobbies contrive to be in at the death. "But you are waiting to learn by what title and name this stranger lays claim to so peerless a niece. Know then Ah, here comes Darrell. Guy Darrell, in this young lady you will welcome the grandchild of Sidney Branthwaite, our old Eton school friend, a gentleman of as good blood as any in the land!" "None better," cried Fairthorn, who had sidled himself into the group; "there's a note on the Branthwaite genealogy, sir, in your father's great work upon 'Monumental Brasses.'" "Permit me to conclude, Mr. Fairthorn," resuined the Colonel; "Monumental Brasses are painful subjects. Yes, Darrell,—yes, Lionel; this fair creature, whom Lady Montfort might well desire to adopt, is the daughter of Arthur Branthwaite, by marriage with the sister of Frank Vance, whose name I shrewdly suspect nations will prize, and whose works princes will hoard, when many a long genealogy, all blazoned in azure and or, will have left not a scrap for the moths." "Ah!" murmured Lionel, "was it not I, Sophy, who taught you to love your father's genius! Do you not remember how, as we bent over his volume, it seemed to translate to us our own feelings?—to draw us nearer together? He was speaking to us from his grave." Sophy made no answer; her face was hidden on the breast of the old man, to whom she still clung closer and closer. "Is it so? Is it certain? Is there no doubt that she is the child of these honoured parents?" asked Waife, tremulously. "None," answered Alban; "we bring with us proofs that will clear up all my story." The old man bowed his head over Sophy's fair locks for a moment; then raised it, serene and dignified: "You are mine for a moment yet, Sophy," said he. "Yours as ever-more fondly, gratefully than ever," cried Sophy. "There is but one man to whom I can willingly yield you. Son of Charles Haughton, take my treasure." "I consent to that," cried Vance, "though I am put aside like a Remorseless Baron. And, Lionello mio, if Frank Vance is a miser, so much the better for his niece." "But," faltered Lionel. "Oh, falter not. Look into those eyes; read that blush now. She looks coy, not reluctant. She bends before him—adorned as for love, by all her native graces. Air seems brightened by her bloom. No more the Outlaw-Child of Ignominy and Fraud, but the Starry Daughter of POETRY AND ART! Lo, where they glide away under the leafless, melancholy trees. Leafless and melancholy! No! Verdure and blossom and the smile of spring are upon every bough!" "I suppose," said Alban, "it will not now break Lionel's heart to learn that not an hour before I left London, I heard from a friend at the Horse Guards that it has been resolved to substitute the regiment for Lionel's; and it will be for some time yet, I suspect, that he must submit to be in gloriously happy. Come this way, George, a word in your ear." And Alban, drawing his nephew aside, told him of Jasper's state, and of Arabella's request. "Not a word to-day on these mournful topics, to poor Willy. To-day let nothing add to his pain to have lost a grandchild, or dim his consolation in the happiness and security his Sophy gains in that loss. But to-morrow you will go and see the stricken-down sinner, and prepare the father for the worst. I made a point of seeing Dr. F. last night. He gives Jasper but a few weeks. He compares him to a mountain, not merely shattered by an earthquake, but burned out by its own inward fires." "A few weeks only," sighed George. "Well, Time, that seems everything to man, has not even an existence in the sight of God. To that old man I owe the power of speech to argue, to exhort, and to comfort;—he was training me to kneel by the deathbed of his son!" "You believe," asked the Man of the World, "in the efficacy of a deathbed repentance, when a sinner has sinned till the power of sinning be gone?" "I believe," replied the Preacher, "that in health there is nothing so unsafe as trust in a deathbed repentance; I believe that on the deathbed, it cannot be unsafe to repent!" Alban looked thoughtful, and George turned to rejoin Waife, to whom Vance was narrating the discovery of Sophy's parentage; while Fairthorn, as he listened, drew his flute from his pocket, and began screwing it, impatient to vent in delicate music what he never could have set into words for his blundering, untunable tongue. The Colonel joins Darrell, and hastens to unfold more fully the story which Vance is reciting to Waife. Brief as it can, be the explanation due to the reader. Vance's sister had died in childbirth. The poor young poet, unfitted to cope with penury, his sensitive nature combined with a frame that could feebly resist the strain of exhausting emotions, disappointed in fame, despairing of fortune, dependent for bread on his wife's boyish brother, and harassed by petty debts in a foreign land, had been fast pining away, even before an affliction to which all the rest seemed as nought. With that affliction he broke down at once, and died a few days after his wife, leaving an infant not a week old. A French female singer, of some repute in the theatres, and making a provincial tour, was lodging in the same house as the young couple. She had that compassionate heart which is more common than prudence or very strict principle with the tribes who desert the prosaic true world for the light sparkling false one. She had assisted the young couple, in their later days, with purse and kind offices; had been present at the birth of the infant—the death of the mother; and had promised Arthur Branthwaite that she would take care of his child, until she could safely convey it to his wife's relations, while he wept to own that they, poor as himself, must regard such a charge as a burthen. The singer wrote to apprise Mrs. Vance of the death of her daughter and son-in-law, and the birth of the infant whom she undertook shortly to send to England. But the babe, whom meanwhile she took to herself, got hold of her affections; with that yearning for children which makes so remarkable and almost uniform a characteristic of French women (if themselves childless) in the wandering Bohemian class that separates them from the ordinary household affections, never dead in the heart of woman till womanhood itself be dead, the singer clung to the orphan little one to whom she was for the moment rendering the cares of a mother. She could not bear to part with it; she resolved to adopt it as her own. The knowledge of Mrs. Vance's circumstances—the idea that the orphan, to herself a blessing, would be an unwelcome encumbrance to its own relations—removed every scruple from a mind unaccustomed to suffer reflection to stand in the way of an impulse. She wrote word to Mrs. Vance that the child was dead. She trusted that her letter would suffice, without other evidence, to relations so poor, and who could have no suspicion of any interest to deceive them. Her trust was well founded. Mrs. Vance and the boy Frank, whose full confidence and gratitude had been already secured to their correspondent for her kind offices to the young parents, accepted, without a demur or a question, the news that the infant was no more. The singer moved on to the next town at which she was professionally engaged. The infant, hitherto brought up by hand, became ailing. The medical adviser called in recommended the natural food, and found, in a village close by, the nurse to whom a little time before Jasper Losely had consigned his own daughter. The latter died; the nurse then removed to Paris to reside with the singer, who had obtained a lucrative appointment at one of the metropolitan theatres. In less than two years the singer herself fell a victim to a prevailing epidemic. She had lived without thought of the morrow; her debts exceeded her means; her effects were sold. The nurse, who had meanwhile become a widow, came for advice and refuge to her sister, who was in the service of Gabrielle Desmarets. Gabrielle, being naturally appealed to, saw the infant, heard the story, looked into the statement which, by way of confession, the singer had drawn up, and signed, in a notary's presence, before she died; looked into the letters from Mrs. Vance, and the schoolboy scrawls from Frank, both to the singer and to the child's parents, which the actress had carefully preserved; convinced herself of the poverty and obscurity of the infant's natural guardians and next of kin; and said to Jasper, who was just dissipating the fortune handed over to him as survivor of his wife and child: "There is what, if well-managed, may retain your hold on a rich father-in-law when all else has failed. You have but to say that this infant is his grandchild; the nurse we can easily bribe, or persuade to confirm the tale. I, whom he already knows as that respectable baroness, your Matilda's friend, can give to the story some probable touches. The lone childless man must rejoice to think that a tie is left to him. The infant is exquisitely pretty; her face will plead for her. His heart will favour the idea too much to make him very rigorous in his investigations. Take the infant. Doubtless in your own country you can find some one to rear it at little or no expense, until the time come for appeal to your father-in-law when no other claim on his purse remains." Jasper assented with the insouciant docility by which he always acknowledged Gabrielle's astuter intellect. He saw the nurse; it was clear that she had nothing to gain by taking the child to English relations so poor. They might refuse to believe her, and certainly— could not reward. To rid herself of the infant, and obtain the means to return to her native village with a few hundred francs in her purse, there was no promise she was not willing to make, no story she was too honest to tell, no paper she was too timid to sign. Jasper was going to London on some adventure of his own. He took the infant—chanced on Arabella—the reader knows the rest. The indifference ever manifested by Jasper to a child not his own—the hardness with which he had contemplated and planned his father's separation from one whom he had imposed by false pretexts on the old man's love, and whom he only regarded as an alien encumbrance upon the scanty means of her deluded protector—the fitful and desultory mode in which, when (contrary to the reasonings which Gabrielle had based upon a very large experience of the credulities of human nature in general, but in utter ignorance of the nature peculiar to Darrell) his first attempt at imposition had been so scornfully resisted by his indignant father-in-law, he had played fast and loose with a means of extortion which, though loth to abandon, he knew would not bear any strict investigation;—all this is now clear to the reader. And the reader will also comprehend why, partly from fear that his father might betray him, partly from a compassionate unwillingness to deprive the old man of a belief in which William Losely said he had found such solace, Jasper, in his last interview with his father, shrank from saying, "but she is not your grandchild!" The idea of recurring to the true relations of the child naturally never entered into Jasper's brain. He considered them to be as poor as himself. They buy from him the child of parents whore they had evidently, by their letters, taxed themselves to the utmost, and in vain, to save from absolute want! So wild seemed the notion, that he had long since forgotten that relations so useless existed. Fortunately the nurse had preserved the written statement of the singer—the letters by Mrs. Vance and Frank—the certificate of the infant's birth and baptism—some poor relics of Sophy's ill-fated parents-manuscripts of Arthur's poems—baby- caps with initials and armorial crests, wrought, before her confinement, by the young wife—all of which had been consigned by the singer to the nurse, and which the nurse willingly disposed of to Mrs. Crane, with her own formal deposition of the facts, confirmed by her sister, Gabrielle's old confidential-attendant, and who, more favoured than her mistress, was living peaceably in the rural scenes of her earlier innocence, upon the interest of the gains she had saved in no innocent service—confirmed yet more by references to many whose testimonials could trace, step by step, the child's record from its birth to its transfer to Jasper, and by the brief but distinct avowal, in tremulous lines, writ by Jasper himself. As a skein crossed and tangled, when the last knot is loosened, slips suddenly free, so this long bewildering mystery now became clear as a commonplace! What years of suffering Darrell might have been saved had he himself seen and examined the nurse—had his inquiry been less bounded by the fears of his pride—had the great lawyer not had himself for a client! Darrell silently returned to Alban Morley the papers over which he had cast his eye as they walked slowly to and fro the sloping banks of the lake.

Related documents

• What Will He Do with It? — Volume 11#34702
• What Will He Do with It? — Volume 07#34698
• What Will He Do with It? — Volume 08#34699
• What Will He Do with It? — Volume 02#34693
• What Will He Do with It? — Volume 10#34701