My Novel Part 157

"Feel nothing here but duty!" cried Helen, drawing from his clasp both her hands, and placing them firmly on her breast.

"Miss Digby," said Leonard, after a short pause of bitter reflection, in which he wronged, while he thought to divine, her meaning, "you speak of new claims on you, your altered position--I comprehend. You may retain some tender remembrance of the past; but your duty now is to rebuke my presumption. It is as I thought and feared. This vain reputation which I have made is but a hollow sound,--it gives me no rank, a.s.sures me no fortune. I have no right to look for the Helen of old in the Helen of to-day. Be it so--forget what I have said, and forgive me."

This reproach stung to the quick the heart to which it appealed. A flash brightened the meek, tearful eyes, almost like the flash of resentment; her lips writhed in torture, and she felt as if all other pain were light compared with the anguish that Leonard could impute to her motives which to her simple nature seemed so unworthy of her, and so galling to himself.

A word rushed as by inspiration to her lip, and that word calmed and soothed her.

"Brother!" she said touchingly, "brother!"

The word had a contrary effect on Leonard. Sweet as it was, tender as the voice that spoke it, it imposed a boundary to affection, it came as a knell to hope. He recoiled, shook his head mournfully: "Too late to accept that tie,--too late even for friends.h.i.+p. Henceforth--for long years to come--henceforth, till this heart has ceased to beat at your name to thrill at your presence, we two--are strangers."

"Strangers! Well--yes, it is right--it must be so; we must not meet. Oh, Leonard Fairfield, who was it that in those days that you recall to me, who was it that found you dest.i.tute and obscure; who, not degrading you by charity, placed you in your right career; opened to you, amidst the labyrinth in which you were well-nigh lost, the broad road to knowledge, independence, fame? Answer me,--answer! Was it not the same who reared, sheltered your sister orphan? If I could forget what I have owed to him, should I not remember what he has done for you? Can I hear of your distinction, and not remember it? Can I think how proud she may be who will one day lean on your arm, and bear the name you have already raised beyond all the t.i.tles of an hour,--can I think of this, and not remember our common friend, benefactor, guardian? Would you forgive me, if I failed to do so?"

"But," faltered Leonard, fear mingling with the conjectures these words called forth--"but is it that Lord L'Estrange would not consent to our union? Or of what do you speak? You bewilder me."

Helen felt for some moments as if it were impossible to reply; and the words at length were dragged forth as if from the depth of her very soul.

"He came to me, our n.o.ble friend. I never dreamed of it. He did not tell me that he loved me. He told me that he was unhappy, alone; that in me, and only in me, he could find a comforter, a soother--He, he! And I had just arrived in England, was under his mother's roof, had not then once more seen you; and--and--what could I answer? Strengthen me, strengthen me, you whom I look up to and revere. Yes, yes, you are right. We must see each other no more. I am betrothed to another,--to him! Strengthen me!"

All the inherent n.o.bleness of the poet's nature rose at once at this appeal.

"Oh, Helen--sister--Miss Digby, forgive me. You need no strength from me; I borrow it from you. I comprehend you, I respect. Banish all thought of me. Repay our common benefactor. Be what he asks of you,--his comforter, his soother; be more,--his pride and his joy. Happiness will come to you, as it comes to those who confer happiness and forget self.

G.o.d comfort you in the pa.s.sing struggle; G.o.d bless you, in the long years to come. Sister, I accept the holy name now, and will claim it hereafter, when I too can think more of others than myself."

Helen had covered her face with her hands, sobbing; but with that soft, womanly constraint which presses woe back into the heart. A strange sense of utter solitude suddenly pervaded her whole being, and by that sense of solitude she knew that he was gone.

CHAPTER XIV.

In another room in that same house sat, solitary as Helen, a stern, gloomy, brooding man, in whom they who had best known him from his childhood could scarcely have recognized a trace of the humane, benignant, trustful, but wayward and varying Harley, Lord L'Estrange.

He had read that fragment of a memoir, in which, out of all the chasms of his barren and melancholy past, there rose two malignant truths that seemed literally to glare upon him with mocking and demon eyes. The woman whose remembrance had darkened all the suns.h.i.+ne of his life had loved another; the friend in whom he had confided his whole affectionate loyal soul had been his perfidious rival. He had read from the first word to the last, as if under a spell that held him breathless; and when he closed the ma.n.u.script, it was without a groan or sigh; but over his pale lips there pa.s.sed that withering smile, which is as sure an index of a heart overcharged with dire and fearful pa.s.sions, as the arrowy flash of the lightning is of the tempests that are gathered within the cloud.

He then thrust the papers into his bosom, and, keeping his hand over them, firmly clenched, he left the room, and walked slowly on towards his father's house. With every step by the way, his nature, in the war of its elements, seemed to change and harden into forms of granite.

Love, humanity, trust, vanished away. Hate, revenge, misanthropy, suspicion, and scorn of all that could wear the eyes of affection, or speak with the voice of honour, came fast through the gloom of his thoughts, settling down in the wilderness, grim and menacing as the harpies of ancient song--

"Uncaeque ma.n.u.s, et pallida semper Ora."

"Hands armed with fangs, and lips forever pale."

Thus the gloomy man had crossed the threshold of his father's house, and silently entered the apartments still set apart for him. He had arrived about an hour before Leonard; and as he stood by the hearth, with his arms folded on his breast, and his eyes fixed lead-like on the ground, his mother came in to welcome and embrace him. He checked her eager inquiries after Violante, he recoiled from the touch of her hand.

"Hold, madam," said he, startling her ear with the cold austerity of his tone. "I cannot heed your questions,--I am filled with the question I must put to yourself. You opposed my boyish love for Leonora Avenel. I do not blame you,--all mothers of equal rank would have done the same.

Yet, had you not frustrated all frank intercourse with her, I might have taken refusal from her own lips,--survived that grief, and now been a happy man. Years since then have rolled away,--rolled over her quiet slumbers, and my restless waking life. All this time were you aware that Audley Egerton had been the lover of Leonora Avenel?"

"Harley, Harley! do not speak to me in that cruel voice, do not look at me with those hard eyes!"

"You knew it, then,--you, my mother!" continued Harley, unmoved by her rebuke; "and why did you never say, 'Son, you are wasting the bloom and uses of your life in sorrowful fidelity to a lie! You are lavis.h.i.+ng trust and friends.h.i.+p on a perfidious hypocrite.'"

"How could I speak to you thus; how could I dare to do so, seeing you still so cherished the memory of that unhappy girl, still believed that she had returned your affection? Had I said to you what I knew (but not till after her death), as to her relations with Audley Egerton--"

"Well? You falter; go on; had you done so?"

"Would you have felt no desire for revenge? Might there not have been strife between you, danger, bloodshed? Harley, Harley! Is not such silence pardonable in a mother? And why deprive you too of the only friend you seemed to prize; who alone had some influence over you; who concurred with me in the prayer and hope, that some day you would find a living partner worthy to replace this lost delusion, arouse your faculties,--be the ornament your youth promised to your country? For you wrong Audley,--indeed you do!"

"Wrong him! Ah, let me not do that. Proceed."

"I do not excuse him his rivals.h.i.+p, nor his first concealment of it. But believe me, since then, his genuine remorse, his anxious tenderness for your welfare, his dread of losing your friends.h.i.+p--"

"Stop! It was doubtless Audley Egerton who induced you yourself to conceal what you call his 'relations' with her whom I can now so calmly name,--Leonora Avenel?"

"It was so, in truth; and from motives that--"

"Enough! let me hear no more."

"But you will not think too sternly of what is past? You are about to form new ties. You cannot be wild and wicked enough to meditate what your brow seems to threaten. You cannot dream of revenge,--risk Audley's life or your own?"

"Tut, tut, tut! What cause here for duels? Single combats are out of date; civilized men do not slay each other with sword and pistol. Tut!

revenge! Does it look like revenge, that one object which brings me hither is to request my father's permission to charge myself with the care of Audley Egerton's election? What he values most in the world is his political position; and here his political existence is at stake.

You know that I have had through life the character of a weak, easy, somewhat over-generous man. Such men are not revengeful. Hold! You lay your hand on my arm,--I know the magic of that light touch, Mother; but its power over me is gone. Countess of Lansmere, hear me! Ever from infancy (save in that frantic pa.s.sion for which I now despise myself), I have obeyed you, I trust, as a duteous son. Now, our relative positions are somewhat altered. I have the right to exact--I will not say to command--the right which wrong and injury bestow upon all men. Madam, the injured man has prerogatives that rival those of kings. I now call upon you to question me no more; not again to breathe the name of Leonora Avenel, unless I invite the subject; and not to inform Audley Egerton by a hint, by a breath, that I have discovered--what shall I call it?--his 'pardonable deceit.' Promise me this, by your affection as mother, and on your faith as gentlewoman; or I declare solemnly, that never in life will you look upon my face again."

Haughty and imperious though the countess was, her spirit quailed before Harley's brow and voice.

"Is this my son,--this my gentle Harley?" she said falteringly. "Oh, put your arms round my neck; let me feel that I have not lost my child!"

Harley looked softened, but he did not obey the pathetic prayer; nevertheless, he held out his hand, and turning away his face, said, in a milder voice, "Have I your promise?"

"You have, you have; but on condition that there pa.s.s no words between you and Audley that can end but in the strife which--"

"Strife!" interrupted Harley. "I repeat that the idea of challenge and duel between me and my friend from our school days, and on a quarrel that we could explain to no seconds, would be a burlesque upon all that is grave in the realities of life and feeling. I accept your promise and seal it thus--"

He pressed his lips to his mother's forehead, and pa.s.sively received her embrace.

"Hush," he said, withdrawing from her arms, "I hear my father's voice."

Lord Lansmere threw open the door widely, and with a certain consciousness that a door by which an Earl of Lansmere entered ought to be thrown open widely. It could not have been opened with more majesty if a huissier or officer of the Household had stood on either side. The countess pa.s.sed by her lord with a light step, and escaped.

"I was occupied with my architect in designs for the new infirmary, of which I shall make a present to our county. I have only just heard that you were here, Harley. What is all this about our fair Italian guest?

Is she not coming back to us? Your mother refers me to you for explanations."

"You shall have them later, my dear father; at present I can think only of public affairs."

"Public affairs! they are indeed alarming. I am rejoiced to hear you express yourself so worthily. An awful crisis, Harley! And, gracious Heaven! I have heard that a low man, who was born in Lansmere, but made a fortune in America, is about to contest the borough. They tell me he is one of the Avenels,--a born Blue; is it possible?"

"I have come here on that business. As a peer you cannot, of course, interfere; but I propose, with your leave, to go down myself to Lansmere, and undertake the superintendence of, the election. It would be better, perhaps, if you were not present; it would give us more liberty of action."