When the scenes in some long diorama pass solemnly before us, there is sometimes one solitary object, contrasting, perhaps, the view of stately cities or the march of a mighty river, that halts on the eye for a moment, and then glides away, leaving on the mind a strange, comfortless, undefined impression.
Why was the object presented to us? In itself it seemed comparatively insignificant. It may have been but a broken column—a lonely pool with a star-beam on its quiet surface—yet it awes us. We remember it when phantasmal pictures of bright Damascus, or of colossal pyramids—of bazaars in Stamboul, or lengthened caravans that defile slow amidst the sands of Araby—have sated the wondering gaze. Why were we detained in the shadowy procession by a thing that would have been so commonplace had it not been so lone? Some latent interest must attach to it. Was it there that a vision of woe had lifted the wild hair of a Prophet?—there where some Hagar had stilled the wail of her child on her indignant breast? We would fain call back the pageantry procession—fain see again the solitary thing that seemed so little worth the hand of the artist—and ask, “Why art thou here, and wherefore dost thou haunt us?”
Rise up—rise up once more—by the broad great thoroughfare that stretches onward and onward to the remorseless London——Rise up—rise up—O solitary tree with the green leaves on thy bough, and the deep rents in thy heart; and the ravens, dark birds of omen and sorrow, that built their nest amidst the leaves of the bough, and drop with noiseless plumes down through the hollow rents of the heart—or are heard, it may be, in the growing shadows of twilight, calling out to their young!
Under the old pollard tree, by the side of John Avenel’s house, there cowered, breathless and listening, John Avenel’s daughter Nora. Now, when that fatal newspaper paragraph, which lied so like truth, met her eyes, she obeyed the first impulse of her passionate heart—she tore the wedding ring from her finger—she enclosed it, with the paragraph itself, in a letter to Audley—a letter that she designed to convey scorn and pride—alas! it expressed only jealousy and love. She could not rest till she had put this letter into the post with her own hand, addressed to Audley at Lord Lansmere’s. Scarce was it gone ere she repented. What had she done?—resigned the birthright of the child she was so soon to bring into the world—resigned her last hope in her lover’s honour—given up her life of life—and from belief in what?—a report in a newspaper! No, no; she would go herself to Lansmere; to her father’s home—she could contrive to see Audley before that letter reached his hand. The thought was scarcely conceived before obeyed. She found a vacant place in a coach that started from London some hours before the mail, and went within a few miles of Lansmere; those last miles she travelled on foot. Exhausted—fainting—she gained at last the sight of home, and there halted, for in the little garden in front she saw her parents seated. She heard the murmur of their voices, and suddenly she remembered her altered shape, her terrible secret. How answer the question, “Daughter, where and who is thy husband?” Her heart failed her; she crept under the old pollard tree, to gather up resolve, to watch and to listen. She saw the rigid face of the thrifty prudent mother, with the deep lines that told of the cares of an anxious life, and the chafe of excitable temper and warm affections against the restraint of decorous sanctimony and resolute pride. The dear stern face never seemed to her more dear and more stern. She saw the comely, easy, indolent, good-humoured father; not then the poor, paralytic sufferer, who could yet recognise Nora’s eyes under the lids of Leonard, but stalwart and jovial—first bat in the Cricket Club, first voice in the Glee Society, the most popular canvasser of the Lansmere Constitutional True Blue Party, and the pride and idol of the Calvinistical prim wife. Never from those pinched lips of hers had come forth even one pious rebuke to the careless social man. As he sate, one hand in his vest, his profile turned to the road, the light smoke curling playfully up from the pipe, over which lips, accustomed to bland smile and hearty laughter, closed as if reluctant to be closed at all, he was the very model of the respectable retired trader in easy circumstances, and released from the toil of making money while life could yet enjoy the delight of spending it.
“Well, old woman,” said John Avenel, “I must be off presently to see to those three shaky voters in Fish Lane; they will have done their work soon, and I shall catch ’em at home. They do say as how we may have an opposition; and I know that old Smikes has gone to Lonnon in search of a candidate. We can’t have the Lansmere Constitutional Blues beat by a Lonnoner! Ha, ha, ha!”
“But you will be home before Jane and her husband Mark come? How ever she could marry a common carpenter!”
“Yes,” said John, “he is a carpenter; but he has a vote, and that strengthens the family interest. If Dick was not gone to Amerikay, there would be three on us. But Mark is a real good Blue! A Lonnoner, indeed!—a Yellow from Lonnon beat my Lord and the Blues! Ha, ha!”
“But, John, this Mr Egerton is a Lonnoner?”
“You don’t understand things, talking such nonsense. Mr Egerton is the Blue candidate, and the Blues are the Country Party; therefore how can he be a Lonnoner? An uncommon clever, well grown, handsome young man, eh! and my young lord’s particular friend.”
Mrs Avenel sighed.
“What are you sighing and shaking your head for?”
“I was thinking of our poor, dear, dear Nora!”
“God bless her!” cried John, heartily.
There was a rustle under the boughs of the old hollow-hearted pollard tree.
“Ha! ha! Hark! I said that so loud that I have startled the ravens!”
“How he did love her!” said Mrs Avenel thoughtfully. “I am sure he did; and no wonder, for she looks every inch a lady; and why should not she be my lady, after all?”
“He? Who? Oh, that foolish fancy of yours about my young lord? A prudent woman like you!—stuff! I am glad my little beauty is gone to Lonnon, out of harm’s way.”
“John—John—John! No harm could ever come to my Nora. She’s too pure and too good, and has too proper a pride in her, to”—
“To listen to any young lords, I hope,” said John; “though,” he added, after a pause, “she might well be a lady too. My lord, the young one, took me by the hand so kindly the other day, and said, ‘Have not you heard from her—I mean Miss Avenel—lately?’ and those bright eyes of his were as full of tears as—as—as yours are now.”
“Well, John, well; go on.”
“That is all. My lady came up, and took me away to talk about the election; and just as I was going, she whispered, ‘Don’t let my wild boy talk to you about that sweet girl of yours. We must both see that she does not come to disgrace.’ ‘Disgrace!’ that word made me very angry for the moment. But my lady has such a way with her, that she soon put me right again. Yet, I do think Nora must have loved my young lord, only she was too good to show it. What do you say?” And the father’s voice was thoughtful.
“I hope she’ll never love any man till she’s married to him; it is not proper, John,” said Mrs Avenel, somewhat starchly, though very mildly.
“Ha! ha!” laughed John, chucking his prim wife under the chin, “you did not say that to me when I stole your first kiss under that very pollard tree—no house near it then!”
“Hush, John, hush!” and the prim wife blushed like a girl.
“Pooh,” continued John merrily, “I don’t see why we plain folks should pretend to be more saintly and prudish-like than our betters. There’s that handsome Miss Leslie, who is to marry Mr Egerton—easy enough to see how much she is in love with him—could not keep her eyes off from him even in church, old girl? Ha, ha! What the deuce is the matter with the ravens?”
“They’ll be a comely couple, John. And I hear tell she has a power of money. When is the marriage to be?”
“Oh, they say as soon as the election is over. A fine wedding we shall have of it! I dare say my young lord will be bridesman. We’ll send for our little Nora to see the gay doings!”
Out from the boughs of the old tree came the shriek of a lost spirit—one of those strange appalling sounds of human agony, which, once heard, are never forgotten. It is as the wail of Hope, when She, too, rushes forth from the coffer of woes, and vanishes into viewless space;—it is the dread cry of Reason parting from clay—and of Soul, that would wrench itself from life! For a moment all was still—and then a dull, dumb, heavy fall!
The parents gazed on each other, speechless: they stole close to the pales, and looked over. Under the boughs, at the gnarled roots of the oak, they saw—grey and indistinct—a prostrate form. John opened the gate, and went round; the mother crept to the roadside, and there stood still.
“Oh, wife, wife!” cried John Avenel, from under the green boughs, “it is our child Nora! Our child—our child!”
And, as he spoke, out from the green boughs started the dark ravens, wheeling round and around, and calling to their young!
And when they had laid her on the bed, Mrs Avenel whispered John to withdraw for a moment; and, with set lips but trembling hands, began to unlace the dress, under the pressure of which Nora’s heart heaved convulsively. And John went out of the room bewildered, and sate himself down on the landing-place, and wondered whether he was awake or sleeping; and a cold numbness crept over one side of him, and his head felt very heavy, with a loud booming noise in his ears. Suddenly his wife stood by his side, and said in a very low voice—
“John, run for Mr Morgan—make haste. But mind—don’t speak to any one on the way. Quick, quick!”
“Is she dying?”
“I don’t know. Why not die before?” said Mrs Avenel between her teeth. “But Mr Morgan is a discreet, friendly man.”
“A true Blue!” muttered poor John, as if his mind wandered; and rising with difficulty, he stared at his wife a moment, shook his head, and was gone.
An hour or two later, a little covered taxed-cart stopped at Mr Avenel’s cottage, out of which stepped a young man with pale face and spare form, dressed in the Sunday suit of a rustic craftsman; then a homely, but pleasant, honest face, bent down to him smilingly; and two arms, emerging from under covert of a red cloak, extended an infant, which the young man took tenderly. The baby was cross and very sickly; it began to cry. The father hushed, and rocked, and tossed it, with the air of one to whom such a charge was familiar.
“He’ll be good when we get in, Mark,” said the young woman, as she extracted from the depths of the cart a large basket containing poultry and home-made bread.
“Don’t forget the flowers that the Squire’s gardener gave us,” said Mark the Poet.
Without aid from her husband, the wife took down basket and nosegay, settled her cloak, smoothed her gown, and said, “Very odd!—they don’t seem to expect us, Mark. How still the house is! Go and knock; they can’t ha’ gone to bed yet.”
Mark knocked at the door—no answer. A light passed rapidly across the windows on the upper floor, but still no one came to his summons. Mark knocked again. A gentleman dressed in clerical costume, now coming from Lansmere Park, on the opposite side of the road, paused at the sound of Mark’s second and more impatient knock, and said civilly—
“Are you not the young folks my friend John Avenel told me this morning he expected to visit him?”
“Yes, please, Mr Dale,” said Mrs Fairfield, dropping her curtsey. “You remember me! and this is my dear good man!”
“What! Mark the poet?” said the curate of Lansmere, with a smile. “Come to write squibs for the election?”
“Squibs, sir!” cried Mark indignantly.
“Burns wrote squibs,” said the curate mildly.
Mark made no answer, but again knocked at the door.
This time, a man, whose face, even seen by the starlight, was much flushed, presented himself at the threshold.
“Mr Morgan!” exclaimed the curate, in benevolent alarm; “no illness here, I hope?”
“Cott! it is you, Mr Dale! Come in, come in; I want a word with you. But who the teuce are these people?”
“Sir,” said Mark, pushing through the doorway, “my name is Fairfield, and my wife is Mr Avenel’s daughter!”
“Oh, Jane—and her baby too! Cood—cood! Come in; but be quiet, can’t you? Still, still—still as death!”
The party entered, the door closed; the moon rose, and shone calmly on the pale silent house, on the sleeping flowers of the little garden, on the old pollard with its hollow core. The horse in the taxed-cart dozed, unheeded; the light still at times flitted across the upper windows. These were the only signs of life, except when a bat, now and then attracted by the light that passed across the windows, brushed against the panes, and then, dipping downwards, struck up against the nose of the slumbering horse, and darted merrily after the moth that fluttered round the raven’s nest in the old pollard.
All that day Harley L’Estrange had been more than usually mournful and dejected. Indeed the return to scenes associated with Nora’s presence increased the gloom that had settled on his mind since he had lost sight and trace of her. Audley, in the remorseful tenderness he felt for his injured friend, had induced L’Estrange towards evening to leave the Park, and go into a district some miles off, on pretence that he required Harley’s aid there to canvass certain important outvoters: the change of scene might rouse him from his reveries. Harley himself was glad to escape from the guests at Lansmere. He readily consented to go. He would not return that night. The outvoters lay remote and scattered—he might be absent for a day or two. When Harley was gone, Egerton himself sank into deep thought. There was rumour of some unexpected opposition. His partisans were alarmed and anxious. It was clear that the Lansmere interest, if attacked, was weaker than the Earl would believe; Egerton might lose his election. If so, what would become of him? How support his wife, whose return to him he always counted on, and whom it would then become him at all hazards to acknowledge? It was that day that he had spoken to William Hazeldean as to the family living. “Peace, at least,” thought the ambitious man—“I shall have peace!” And the Squire had promised him the rectory if needed; not without a secret pang, for his Carry was already using her conjugal influence in favour of her old school friend’s husband, Mr Dale; and the Squire thought Audley would be but a poor country parson, and Dale—if he would only grow a little plumper than his curacy could permit him to be—would be a parson in ten thousand. But while Audley thus prepared for the worst, he still brought his energies to bear on the more brilliant option; and sate with his committee, looking into canvass-books, and discussing the characters, politics, and local interests of every elector, until the night was wellnigh gone. When he gained his room, the shutters were unclosed, and he stood a few moments at the window gazing on the moon. At that sight, the thought of Nora, lost and afar, stole over him. The man, as we know, had in his nature little of romance and sentiment. Seldom was it his wont to gaze upon moon or stars. But whenever some whisper of romance did soften his hard, strong mind, or whenever moon or stars did charm his gaze from earth, Nora’s bright muse-like face—Nora’s sweet loving eyes, were seen in moon and star beam—Nora’s low tender voice, heard in the whisper of that which we call romance, and which is but the sound of the mysterious poetry that is ever in the air, could we but deign to hear it! He turned with a sigh, undressed, threw himself on his bed, and extinguished his light. But the light of the moon would fill the room. It kept him awake for a little time; he turned his face from the calm, heavenly beam, resolutely towards the dull blind wall, and fell asleep. And, in the sleep, he was with Nora;—again in the humble bridal-home. Never in his dreams had she seemed to him so distinct and life-like—her eyes upturned to his—her hands clasped together, and resting on his shoulder, as had been her graceful wont—her voice murmuring meekly, “Has it, then, been my fault that we parted?—forgive, forgive me!”
And the sleeper imagined that he answered, “Never part from me again—never, never!” and that he bent down to kiss the chaste lips that so tenderly sought his own. And suddenly he heard a knocking sound, as of a hammer—regular, but soft, low, subdued. Did you ever, O reader, hear the sound of the hammer on the lid of a coffin in a house of woe,—when the undertaker’s decorous hireling fears that the living may hear how he parts them from the dead? Such seemed the sound to Audley—the dream vanished abruptly. He woke, and again heard the knock; it was at his door. He sate up wistfully—the moon was gone—it was morning. “Who is there?” he cried peevishly.
A low voice from without answered, “Hush, it is I; dress quick; let me see you.”
Egerton recognised Lady Lansmere’s voice. Alarmed and surprised, he rose, dressed in haste, and went to the door. Lady Lansmere was standing without, extremely pale. She put her finger to her lip and beckoned him to follow her. He obeyed mechanically. They entered her dressing-room, a few doors from his own chamber, and the Countess closed the door.
Then laying her slight firm hand on his shoulder, she said in suppressed and passionate excitement—
“Oh, Mr Egerton, you must serve me, and at once—Harley—Harley—save my Harley—go to him—prevent his coming back here—stay with him—give up the election—it is but a year or two lost in your life—you will have other opportunities—make that sacrifice to your friend.”
“Speak—what is the matter? I can make no sacrifice too great for Harley!”
“Thanks—I was sure of it. Go then, I say, at once to Harley; keep him away from Lansmere on any excuse you can invent, until you can break the sad news to him—gently, gently. Oh, how will he bear it—how recover the shock? My boy, my boy!”
“Calm yourself! Explain! Break what news?—recover what shock?”
“True—you do not know—you have not heard. Nora Avenel lies yonder, in her father’s house—dead—dead!”
Audley staggered back, clapping his hand to his heart, and then dropping on his knee as if bowed down by the stroke of heaven.
“My bride, my wife!” he muttered. “Dead—it cannot be!”
Lady Lansmere was so startled at this exclamation, so stunned by a confession wholly unexpected, that she remained unable to soothe—to explain, and utterly unprepared for the fierce agony that burst from the man she had ever seen so dignified and cold—when he sprang to his feet, and all the sense of his eternal loss rushed upon his heart.
At length he crushed back his emotions, and listened in apparent calm, and in a silence broken but by quick gasps for breath, to Lady Lansmere’s account.
One of the guests in the house, a female relation of Lady Lansmere’s, had been taken suddenly ill about an hour or two before;—the house had been disturbed, the Countess herself aroused, and Mr Morgan summoned as the family medical practitioner. From him she had learned that Nora Avenel had returned to her father’s house late on the previous evening; had been seized with brain fever, and died in a few hours.
Audley listened, and turned to the door, still in silence.
Lady Lansmere caught him by the arm—“Where are you going? Ah, can I now ask you to save my son from the awful news, you yourself the sufferer? And yet—yet—you know his haste, his vehemence, if he learn that you were his rival—her husband; you whom he so trusted! What, what would be the result?—I tremble!”
“Tremble not—I do not tremble! Let me go—I will be back soon—and then—(his lips writhed)—then we will talk of Harley.”
Egerton went forth, stunned and dizzy. Mechanically he took his way across the park to John Avenel’s house. He had been forced to enter that house, formally, a day or two before, in the course of his canvass; and his worldly pride had received a shock when the home, the birth, and the manners of his bride’s parents had been brought before him. He had even said to himself, “And is it the child of these persons that I, Audley Egerton, must announce to the world as wife!” Now, if she had been the child of a beggar—nay, of a felon—now, if he could but recall her to life, how small and mean would all that dreaded world have seemed to him! Too late—too late! The dews were glistening in the sun—the birds were singing over head—life waking all around him—and his own heart felt like a charnel-house. Nothing but death and the dead there—nothing! He arrived at the door; it was open: he called; no one answered: he walked up the narrow stairs, undisturbed, unseen; he came into the chamber of death. At the opposite side of the bed was seated John Avenel; but he seemed in a heavy sleep. In fact, paralysis had smitten him; but he knew it not; neither did any one. Who could heed the strong hearty man in such a moment? Not even the poor anxious wife! He had been left there to guard the house, and watch the dead—an unconscious man; numbed, himself, by the invisible icy hand! Audley stole to the bedside; he lifted the coverlid thrown over the pale still face. What passed within him, during the minute he staid there, who shall say? But when he left the room, and slowly descended the stairs, he left behind him love and youth, all the sweet hopes and joys of the household human life—for ever and ever!
He returned to Lady Lansmere, who awaited his coming with the most nervous anxiety.
“Now,” said he drily, “I will go to Harley, and I will prevent his returning hither.”
“You have seen the parents. Good heavens! do they know of your marriage?”
“No; to Harley I must own it first. Meanwhile, silence!”
“Silence!” echoed Lady Lansmere; and her burning hand rested in Audley’s, and Audley’s hand was as ice.
In another hour Egerton had left the house, and before noon he was with Harley.
It is necessary now to explain the absence of all the Avenel family, except the poor stricken father.
Nora had died in giving birth to a child—died delirious. In her delirium she had spoken of shame—of disgrace; there was no holy nuptial ring on her finger! Through all her grief, the first thought of Mrs Avenel was to save the good name of her lost daughter—the unblemished honour of all the living Avenels. No matron, long descended from knights or kings, had keener pride in name and character than the poor, punctilious Calvinistic trader’s wife. “Sorrow later, honour now!” With hard dry eyes she mused and mused, and made out her plan. Jane Fairfield should take away the infant at once, before the day dawned, and nurse it with her own. Mark should go with her, for Mrs Avenel dreaded the indiscretion of his wild grief. She would go with them herself part of the way, in order to command or reason them into guarded silence. But they could not go back to Hazeldean with another infant; Jane must go where none knew her; the two infants might pass as twins. And Mrs Avenel, though naturally a humane, kindly woman, and with a mother’s heart to infants, looked with almost a glad sternness at Jane’s puny babe, and thought to herself, “All difficulty will be over if there be only one! Nora’s child could thus pass throughout life for Jane’s!”
Fortunately for the preservation of the secret, the Avenels kept no servant—only an occasional drudge, who came a few hours in the day, and went home to sleep. Mrs Avenel could count on Mr Morgan’s silence as to the true cause of Nora’s death. And, Mr Dale, why should he reveal the dishonour of a family? That very day, or the next at farthest, she could induce her husband to absent himself lest he should blab out the tale while his sorrow was greater than his pride. She alone would then stay in the house of death until she could feel assured that all else were hushed into prudence. Ay, she felt, that with due precautions, the name was still safe. And so she awed and hurried Mark and his wife away, and went with them in the covered cart—that hid the faces of all three—leaving for an hour or two the house and the dead to her husband’s charge, with many an admonition, to which he nodded his head, and which he did not hear! Do you think this woman was unfeeling and inhuman? Had Nora looked from heaven into her mother’s heart, Nora would not have thought so. A good name, when the burial stone closes over dust, is still a possession upon the earth; on earth it is indeed our only one! Better for our friends to guard for us that treasure than to sit down and weep over perishable clay. And weep—Oh! stern mother, long years were left to thee for weeping! No tears shed for Nora made such deep furrows on the cheeks as thine did! Yet who ever saw them flow?
Harley was in great surprise to see Egerton; more surprised when Egerton told him that he found he was to be opposed—that he had no chance of success at Lansmere, and had, therefore, resolved to retire from the contest. He wrote to the Earl to that effect; but the Countess knew the true cause, and hinted it to the Earl; so that, as we saw at the commencement of this history, Egerton’s cause did not suffer when Captain Dashmore appeared in the borough; and, thanks to Mr Hazeldean’s exertions and oratory, Audley came in by two votes—the votes of John Avenel and Mark Fairfield. For though the former had been removed a little way from the town, and by medical advice—and though, on other matters, the disease that had smitten him left him docile as a child—yet he still would hear how the Blues went on, and would get out of bed to keep his word; and even his wife said, “He is right; better die of it than break his promise!” The crowd gave way as the broken man they had seen a few days before so jovial and healthful was brought up on a chair to the poll, and said with his tremulous quavering voice, “I’m a true Blue—Blue for ever!”
Elections are wondrous things! No one who has not seen, can guess how the zeal in them triumphs over sickness, sorrow, the ordinary private life of us!
There was forwarded to Audley, from Lansmere Park, Nora’s last letter. The postman had left it there an hour or two after he himself had gone. The wedding-ring fell on the ground, and rolled under his feet. And those burning passionate reproaches—all that anger of the wounded dove—they explained to him the mystery of her return—her unjust suspicions—the cause of her sudden death, which he still ascribed to brain fever, brought on by excitement and fatigue. For Nora did not speak of the child about to be born; she had not remembered it when she wrote, or she would not have written. On the receipt of this letter, Egerton could not remain in the dull village district—alone, too, with Harley. He said, abruptly, that he must go to London—prevailed on L’Estrange to accompany him; and there, when he heard from Lady Lansmere that the funeral was over, he broke to Harley, with lips as white as the dead, and his hand pressed to his heart, on which his hereditary disease was fastening quick and fierce, the dread truth that Nora was no more. The effect upon the boy’s health and spirits was even more crushing than Audley could anticipate. He only woke from grief to feel remorse. “For,” said the noble Harley, “had it not been for my mad passion—my rash pursuit—would she ever have left her safe asylum—ever even have left her native town? And then—and then—the struggle between her sense of duty and her love to me! I see it all—all! But for me, she were living still!”
“Oh, no!” cried Egerton—his confession now rushing to his lips. “Believe me, she never loved you as you think. Nay—nay—hear me! Rather suppose that she loved another—fled with him—was perhaps married to him, and—”
“Hold!” exclaimed Harley, with a terrible burst of passion—“you kill her twice to me, if you say that! I can still feel that she lives—lives here, in my heart—while I dream that she loved me—or, at least, that no other lip ever knew the kiss that was denied to mine! But if you tell me to doubt that;—you—you”——The boy’s anguish was too great for his frame; he fell suddenly back into Audley’s arms; he had broken a blood-vessel. For several days he was in great danger, but his eyes were constantly fixed on Audley’s, with wistful, intense gaze. “Tell me,” he muttered, at the risk of reopening the ruptured veins, and of the instant loss of life—“tell me—you did not mean that! Tell me you have no cause to think she loved another—was another’s!”
“Hush, hush—no cause—none—none. I meant but to comfort you, as I thought—fool that I was—that is all!” cried the miserable friend. And from that hour Audley gave up the idea of righting himself in his own eyes, and submitted still to be the living lie—he, the haughty gentleman!
Now, while Harley was still very weak and suffering, Mr Dale came to London, and called on Egerton. The curate, in promising secresy to Mr Avenel, had made one condition, that it should not be to the positive injury of Nora’s living son. What if she were married, after all? And would it not be right, at least, to learn the name of the child’s father? Some day he might need a father. Mrs Avenel was obliged to content herself with these reservations. However, she implored Mr Dale not to make inquiries. What good could they do? If Nora were married, her husband would naturally, of his own accord, declare himself; if seduced and forsaken, it would but disgrace her memory (now saved from stain) to discover the father to a child of whose very existence the world as yet knew nothing. These arguments perplexed the good curate. But Jane Fairfield had a sanguine belief in her sister’s innocence; and all her suspicions naturally pointed to Lord L’Estrange. So, indeed, perhaps, did Mrs Avenel’s, though she never owned them. Of the correctness of these suspicions Mr Dale was fully convinced;—the young lord’s admiration, Lady Lansmere’s fears, had been too evident to one who had often visited at the Park—Harley’s abrupt departure just before Nora’s return home—Egerton’s sudden resignation of the borough before even opposition was declared, in order to rejoin his friend, the very day of Nora’s death—all confirmed his ideas that Harley was the betrayer or the husband. Perhaps there might have been a secret marriage—possibly abroad—since Harley wanted some years of his majority. He would, at least, try to see and to sound Lord L’Estrange. Prevented this interview by Harley’s illness, the curate resolved to ascertain how far he could penetrate into the mystery by a conversation with Egerton. There was much in the grave repute which the latter had acquired, and the singular and pre-eminent character for truth and honour with which it was accompanied, that made the curate resolve upon this step. Accordingly, he saw Egerton, meaning only diplomatically to extract from the new member for Lansmere what might benefit the family of the voters who had given him his majority of two.
He began by mentioning, as a touching fact, how poor John Avenel, bowed down by the loss of his child, and the malady which had crippled his limbs and enfeebled his mind, had still risen from his bed to keep his word. And Audley’s emotions seemed to him so earnest and genuine, to show so good a heart, that out by little and little came more; first, his suspicions that poor Nora had been betrayed; then his hopes that there might have been private marriage; and as Audley, with his iron self-command, showed just the proper degree of interest, and no more, he went on, till Audley knew that he had a child!
“Inquire no further!” said the man of the world. “Respect Mrs Avenel’s feelings and wishes, I entreat you; they are the right ones. Leave the rest to me. In my position—I mean as a resident of London—I can quietly and easily ascertain more than you could, and provoke no scandal! If I could right this—this—poor—poor—(his voice trembled)—right the lost mother, or the living child—sooner or later you will hear from me; if not, bury this secret where it now rests, in a grave which slander has not reached. But the child—give me the address where it is to be found—in case I succeed in finding the father, and touching his heart.”
“Oh, Mr Egerton, may I not say where you may find him—who he is?”
“Sir!”
“Do not be angry; and, after all, I cannot ask you to betray any confidence which a friend may have placed in you. I know what you men of high honour are to each other—even in sin. No, no—I beg pardon; I leave all in your hands. I shall hear from you, then?”
“Or, if not—why, then, believe that all search is hopeless. My friend! if you mean Lord L’Estrange, he is innocent. I—I—I—(the voice faltered)—am convinced of it.”
The curate sighed, but made no answer. “Oh, ye men of the world!” thought he. He gave the address which the member for Lansmere had asked for, and went his way, and never heard again from Audley Egerton. He was convinced that the man who had showed such deep feeling had failed in his appeal to Harley’s conscience, or had judged it best to leave Nora’s name in peace, and her child to her own relations and the care of heaven.
Harley L’Estrange, scarcely yet recovered, hastened to join our armies on the Continent, and seek the Death which, like its half-brother, rarely comes when we call it.
As soon as Harley was gone, Egerton went to the village to which Mr Dale had directed him, to seek for Nora’s child. But here he was led into a mistake which materially affected the tenor of his own life, and Leonard’s future destinies. Mrs Fairfield had been naturally ordered by her mother to take another name in the village to which she had gone with the two infants, so that her connexion with the Avenel family might not be traced, to the provocation of inquiry and gossip. The grief and excitement through which she had gone dried the source of nutriment in her breast. She put Nora’s child out to nurse at the house of a small farmer, at a little distance from the village, and moved from her first lodging to be nearer to the infant. Her own child was so sickly and ailing, that she could not bear to intrust it to the care of another. She tried to bring it up by hand; and the poor child soon pined away and died. She and Mark could not endure the sight of their baby’s grave; they hastened to return to Hazeldean, and took Leonard with them. From that time Leonard passed for the son they had lost.
When Egerton arrived at the village, and inquired for the person whose address had been given to him, he was referred to the cottage in which she had last lodged, and was told that she had been gone some days—the day after her child was buried. Her child buried! Egerton staid to inquire no more; thus he heard nothing of the infant that had been put out to nurse. He walked slowly into the churchyard, and stood for some minutes gazing on the small new mound; then, pressing his hand on the heart to which all emotion had been forbidden, he re-entered his chaise and returned to London. The sole reason for acknowledging his marriage seemed to him now removed. Nora’s name had escaped reproach. Even had his painful position with regard to Harley not constrained him to preserve his secret, there was every motive to the World’s wise and haughty son not to acknowledge a derogatory and foolish marriage, now that none lived whom concealment could wrong.
Audley mechanically resumed his former life,—sought to resettle his thoughts on the grand objects of ambitious men. His poverty still pressed on him; his pecuniary debt to Harley stung and galled his peculiar sense of honour. He saw no way to clear his estates, to repay his friend, but by some rich alliance. Dead to love, he faced this prospect first with repugnance, then with apathetic indifference. Levy, of whose treachery towards himself and Nora he was unaware, still held over him the power that the money-lender never loses over the man that has owed, owes, or may owe again. Levy was ever urging him to propose to the rich Miss Leslie;—Lady Lansmere, willing to atone, as she thought, for his domestic loss, urged the same;—Harley, influenced by his mother, wrote from the Continent to the same effect.
“Manage it as you will,” at last said Egerton to Levy, “so that I am not a wife’s pensioner.”
“Propose for me if you will,” he said to Lady Lansmere—“I cannot woo—I cannot talk of love.”
Somehow or other the marriage, with all its rich advantages to the ruined gentleman, was thus made up. And Egerton, as we have seen, was the polite and dignified husband before the world—married to a woman who adored him. It is the common fate of men like him to be loved too well!
On her deathbed his heart was touched by his wife’s melancholy reproach—“Nothing I could do has ever made you love me!” “It is true,” answered Audley, with tears in his voice and eyes—“Nature gave me but a small fund of what women like you call ‘love,’ and I lavished it all away.” And he then told her, though with reserve, some portion of his former history;—and that soothed her; for when she saw that he had loved, and could grieve, she caught a glimpse of the human heart she had not seen before. She died, forgiving him, and blessing.
Audley’s spirits were much affected by this new loss. He inly resolved never to marry again. He had a vague thought at first of retrenching his expenditure, and making young Randal Leslie his heir. But when he first saw the clever Eton boy, his feelings did not warm to him, though his intellect appreciated Randal’s quick keen talents. He contented himself with resolving to push the boy;—to do what was merely just to the distant kinsman of his late wife. Always careless and lavish in money matters, generous and princely, not from the delight of serving others, but from a grand Seigneur’s sentiment of what was due to himself and his station, Audley had a mournful excuse for the lordly waste of the large fortune at his control. The morbid functions of the heart had become organic disease. True, he might live many years, and die at last of some other complaint in the course of nature; but the progress of the disease would quicken with all emotional excitement; he might die suddenly—any day—in the very prime, and, seemingly, in the full vigour, of his life. And the only physician in whom he confided what he wished to keep concealed from the world, (for ambitious men would fain be thought immortal,) told him frankly that it was improbable that, with the wear and tear of political strife and action, he could advance far into middle age. Therefore, no son of his succeeding—his nearest relations all wealthy—Egerton resigned himself to his constitutional disdain of money; he could look into no affairs, provided the balance in his banker’s hands were such as became the munificent commoner. All else he left to his steward and to Levy. Levy grew rapidly rich—very, very rich—and the steward thrived.
The usurer continued to possess a determined hold over the imperious great man. He knew Audley’s secret; he could reveal that secret to Harley. And the one soft and tender side of the statesman’s nature—the sole part of him not dipped in the ninefold Styx of practical prosaic life, which so renders man invulnerable to affection—was his remorseful love for the school friend whom he still deceived.
Here then you have the key to the locked chambers of Audley Egerton’s character, the fortified castle of his mind. The envied minister—the joyless man—the oracle on the economics of an empire—the prodigal in a usurer’s hands—the august, high-crested gentleman, to whom princes would refer for the casuistry of honour—the culprit trembling lest the friend he best loved on earth should detect his lie! Wrap thyself in the decent veil that the Arts or the Graces weave for thee, O Human Nature! It is only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold without shame and offence!