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The Caxtons: A Family Picture, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Part 15 - Chapter 4 |
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_ PART XV CHAPTER IV Before nine o'clock Lady Ellinor arrived, and went straight into Miss Trevanion's room; I took refuge in my uncle's. Roland was awake and calm, but so feeble that he made no effort to rise; and it was his calm, indeed, that alarmed me the most,--it was like the calm of nature thoroughly exhausted. He obeyed me mechanically, as a patient takes from your hand the draught, of which he is almost unconscious, when I pressed him to take food. He smiled on me faintly when I spoke to him, but made me a sign that seemed to implore silence. Then he turned his face from me and buried it in the pillow; and I thought that he slept again, when, raising himself a little, and feeling for my hand, he said, in a scarcely audible voice,-- "Where is he?" "Would you see him, sir?" "No, no; that would kill me,--and then what would become of him?" "He has promised me an interview, and in that interview I feel assured he will obey your wishes, whatever they are." Roland made no answer. "Lord Castleton has arranged all, so that his name and madness (thus let us call it) will never be known." "Pride, pride, pride still!" murmured the old soldier. "The name, the name,--well, that is much; but the living soul!--I wish Austin were here." "I have sent for him, sir." Roland pressed my hand, and was again silent. Then he began to mutter, as I thought, incoherently about the Peninsula and obeying orders; and how some officer woke Lord Wellington at night and said that something or other (I could not catch what,--the phrase was technical and military) was impossible; and how Lord Wellington asked, "Where's the order-book?" and looking into the order-book, said, "Not at all impossible, for it is in the order-book;" and so Lord Wellington turned round and went to sleep again. Then suddenly Roland half rose, and said, in a voice clear and firm, "But Lord Wellington, though a great captain, was a fallible man, sir, and the order-book was his own mortal handiwork. Get me the Bible!" Oh, Roland, Roland! and I had feared that thy mind was wandering! So I went down and borrowed a Bible in large characters, and placed it on the bed before him, opening the shutters and letting in God's day upon God's word. I had just done this when there was a slight knock at the door. I opened it, and Lord Castleton stood without. He asked me, in a whisper, if he might see my uncle. I drew him in gently, and pointed to the soldier of life "learning what was not impossible" from the unerring Order-Book. Lord Castleton gazed with a changing countenance, and without disturbing my uncle, stole back. I followed him, and gently closed the door. "You must save his son," he said in a faltering voice,--"you must; and tell me how to help you. That sight,--no sermon ever touched me more! Now come down and receive Lady Ellinor's thanks. We are going. She wants me to tell my own tale to my old friend Mrs. Grundy; so I go with them. Come!" On entering the sitting-room, Lady Ellinor came up and fairly embraced me. I need not repeat her thanks, still less the praises, which fell cold and hollow on my ear. My gaze rested on Fanny where she stood apart,--her eyes, heavy with fresh tears, bent on the ground. And the sense of all her charms; the memory of the tender, exquisite kindness she had shown to the stricken father; the generous pardon she had extended to the criminal son; the looks she had bent upon me on that memorable night (looks that had spoken such trust in my presence), the moment in which she had clung to me for protection, and her breath been warm upon my cheek,--all these rushed over me, and I felt that the struggle of months was undone, that I had never loved her as I loved her then, when I saw her but to lose her evermore! And then there came for the first, and, I now rejoice to think, for the only time, a bitter, ungrateful accusation against the cruelty of fortune and the disparities of life. What was it that set our two hearts eternally apart and made hope impossible? Not nature, but the fortune that gives a second nature to the world. Ah, could I then think that it is in that second nature that the soul is ordained to seek its trials, and that the elements of human virtue find their harmonious place? What I answered I know not. Neither know I how long I stood there listening to sounds which seemed to have no meaning, till there came other sounds which indeed woke my sense and made my blood run cold to hear,--the tramp of the horses, the grating of the wheels, the voice at the door that said all was ready. Then Fanny lifted her eyes, and they met mine; and then involuntarily and hastily she moved a few steps towards me, and I clasped my right hand to my heart, as if to still its beating, and remained still. Lord Castleton had watched us both. I felt that watch upon us, though I had till then shunned his looks; now, as I turned my eyes from Fanny's, that look came full upon me,--soft, compassionate, benignant. Suddenly, and with an unutterable expression of nobleness, the marquis turned to Lady Ellinor and said: "Pardon me for telling you an old story. A friend of mine--a man of my own years--had the temerity to hope that he might one day or other win the affections of a lady young enough to be his daughter, and whom circumstances and his own heart led him to prefer from all her sex. My friend had many rivals; and you will not wonder, for you have seen the lady. Among them was a young gentleman who for months had been an inmate of the same house (hush, Lady Ellinor! you will hear me out; the interest of my story is to come), who respected the sanctity of the house he had entered, and had left it when he felt he loved, for he was poor, and the lady rich. Some time after, this gentleman saved the lady from a great danger, and was then on the eve of leaving England (hush! again, hush!). My friend was present when these two young persons met, before the probable absence of many years, and so was the mother of the lady to whose hand he still hoped one day to aspire. He saw that his young rival wished to say, 'Farewell!' and without a witness; that farewell was all that his honor and his reason could suffer him to say. My friend saw that the lady felt the natural gratitude for a great service, and the natural pity for a generous and unfortunate affection; for so, Lady Ellinor, he only interpreted the sob that reached his ear! What think you my friend did? Your high mind at once conjectures. He said to himself: 'If I am ever to be blest with the heart which, in spite of disparity of years, I yet hope to win, let me show how entire is the trust that I place in its integrity and innocence; let the romance of first youth be closed, the farewell of pure hearts be spoken, unembittered by the idle jealousies of one mean suspicion.' With that thought, which you, Lady Ellinor, will never stoop to blame, he placed his hand on that of the noble mother, drew her gently towards the door, and calmly confident of the result, left these two young natures to the unwitnessed impulse of maiden honor and manly duty." All this was said and done with a grace and earnestness that thrilled the listeners; word and action suited to each with so inimitable a harmony that the spell was not broken till the voice ceased and the door closed. That mournful bliss for which I had so pined was vouchsafed: I was alone with her to whom, indeed, honor and reason forbade me to say more than the last farewell. It was some time before we recovered, before we felt that we were alone. O ye moments that I can now recall with so little sadness in the mellow and sweet remembrance, rest ever holy and undisclosed in the solemn recesses of the heart! Yes, whatever confession of weakness was interchanged, we were not unworthy of the trust that permitted the mournful consolation of the parting. No trite love-tale, with vows not to be fulfilled, and hopes that the future must belie, mocked the realities of the life that lay before us. Yet on the confines of the dream we saw the day rising cold upon the world; and if--children as we well-nigh were--we shrank somewhat from the light, we did not blaspheme the sun and cry, "There is darkness in the dawn!" All that we attempted was to comfort and strengthen each other for that which must be; not seeking to conceal the grief we felt, but promising, with simple faith, to struggle against the grief. If vow were pledged between us,--that was the vow: each for the other's sake would strive to enjoy the blessings Heaven left us still. Well may I say that we were children! I know not, in the broken words that passed between us, in the sorrowful hearts which those words revealed, I know not if there were that which they who own in human passion but the storm and the whirlwind would call the love of maturer years,--the love that gives fire to the song, and tragedy to the stage; but I know that there was neither a word nor a thought which made the sorrow of the children a rebellion to the Heavenly Father. And again the door unclosed, and Fanny walked with a firm step to her mother's side, and pausing there, extended her hand to me and said, as I bent over it, "Heaven Will be with you!" A word from Lady Ellinor, a frank smile from him, the rival, one last, last glance from the soft eyes of Fanny, and then Solitude rushed upon me,--rushed as something visible, palpable, overpowering. I felt it in the glare of the sunbeam, I heard it in the breath of the air; like a ghost it rose there,--where she had filled the space with her presence but a moment before! A something seemed gone from the universe forever; a change like that of death passed through my being; and when I woke, to feel that my being lived again, I knew that it was my youth and its poet-land that were no more, and that I had passed, with an unconscious step, which never could retrace its way, into the hard world of laborious man! _ |
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