The Disowned Part 18

And she was gone! Never did more loving and tender heart forsake all, and cling to a more loyal and generous nature. The skies were darkened with clouds,--

"And the dim stars rushed through them rare and fast;"

and the winds wailed with a loud and ominous voice; and the moon came forth, with a faint and sickly smile, from her chamber in the mist, and then shrank back, and was seen no more; but neither omen nor fear was upon Mordaunt's breast, as it swelled beneath the dark locks of Isabel, which were pressed against it.

As Faith clings the more to the cross of life, while the wastes deepen around her steps, and the adders creep forth upon her path, so love clasps that which is its hope and comfort the closer, for the desert which encompa.s.ses and the dangers which hara.s.s its way.

They had fled to London, and Isabel had been placed with a very distant and very poor, though very high-born, relative of Algernon, till the necessary preliminaries could be pa.s.sed and the final bond knit. Yet still the generous Isabel would have refused, despite the injury to her own fame, to have ratified a union which filled her with gloomy presentiments for Mordaunt's fate; and still Mordaunt by little and little broke down her tender scruples and self-immolating resolves, and ceased not his eloquence and his suit till the day of his nuptials was set and come.

The morning was bright and clear; the autumn was drawing towards its close, and seemed willing to leave its last remembrance tinged with the warmth and softness of its parent summer, rather than with the stern gloom and severity of its chilling successor.

And they stood beside the altar, and their vows were exchanged. A slight tremor came over Algernon's frame, a slight shade darkened his countenance; for even in that bridal hour an icy and thrilling foreboding curdled to his heart; it pa.s.sed,--the ceremony was over, and Mordaunt bore his blus.h.i.+ng and weeping bride from the church. His carriage was in attendance; for, not knowing how long the home of his ancestors might be his, he was impatient to return to it. The old Countess d'Arcy, Mordaunt's relation, with whom Isabel had been staying, called them back to bless them; for, even through the coldness of old age, she was touched by the singularity of their love and affected by their n.o.bleness of heart. She laid her wan and shrivelled hand upon each, as she bade them farewell, and each shrank back involuntarily, for the cold and light touch seemed like the fingers of the dead.

Fearful, indeed, is the vicinity of death and life,--the bridal chamber and the charnel. That night the old woman died. It appeared as if Fate had set its seal upon the union it had so long forbidden, and had woven a dark thread even in the marriage-bond. At least, it tore from two hearts, over which the cloud and the blast lay couched in a "grim repose," the last shelter, which, however frail and distant, seemed left to them upon the inhospitable earth.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Live while ye may, yet happy pair; enjoy Short pleasures, for long woes are to succeed.--MILTON.

The autumn and the winter pa.s.sed away; Mordaunt's relation continued implacable. Algernon grieved for this, independent of worldly circ.u.mstances; for, though he had seldom seen that relation, yet he loved him for former kindness--rather promised, to be sure, than yet shown--with the natural warmth of an affection which has but few objects. However, the old gentleman (a very short, very fat person; very short and very fat people, when they are surly, are the devil and all; for the humours of their mind, like those of their body, have something corrupt and unpurgeable in them) wrote him one bluff, contemptuous letter, in a witty strain,--for he was a bit of a humourist,--disowned his connection, and very shortly afterwards died, and left all his fortune to the very Mr. Vavasour who was at law with Mordaunt, and for whom he had always openly expressed the strongest personal dislike: spite to one relation is a marvellous tie to another. Meanwhile the lawsuit went on less slowly than lawsuits usually do, and the final decision was very speedily to be given.

We said the autumn and the winter were gone; and it was in one of those latter days in March, when, like a hoyden girl subsiding into dawning womanhood, the rude weather mellows into a softer and tenderer month, that, by the side of a stream, overshadowed by many a brake and tree, sat two persons.

"I know not, dearest Algernon," said one, who was a female, "if this is not almost the sweetest month in the year, because it is the month of Hope."

"Ay, Isabel; and they did it wrong who called it harsh, and dedicated it to Mars. I exult even in the fresh winds which hardier frames than mine shrink from, and I love feeling their wild breath fan my cheek as I ride against it. I remember," continued Algernon, musingly, "that on this very day three years ago, I was travelling through Germany, alone and on horseback, and I paused, not far from Ens, on the banks of the Danube; the waters of the river were disturbed and fierce, and the winds came loud and angry against my face, das.h.i.+ng the spray of the waves upon me, and filling my spirit with a buoyant and glad delight; and at that time I had been indulging old dreams of poetry, and had laid my philosophy aside; and, in the inspiration of the moment, I lifted up my hand towards the quarter whence the winds came, and questioned them audibly of their birthplace and their bourne; and, as the enthusiasm increased, I compared them to our human life, which a moment is, and then is not; and, proceeding from folly to folly, I asked them, as if they were the interpreters of heaven, for a type and sign of my future lot."

"And what said they?" inquired Isabel, smiling, yet smiling timidly.

"They answered not," replied Mordaunt; "but a voice within me seemed to say, 'Look above!' and I raised my eyes,--but I did not see thee, love,--so the Book of Fate lied."

"Nay, Algernon, what did you see?" asked Isabel, more earnestly than the question deserved.

"I saw a thin cloud, alone amidst many dense and dark ones scattered around; and as I gazed it seemed to take the likeness of a funeral procession--coffin, bearers, priests, all--as clear in the cloud as I have seen them on the earth: and I shuddered as I saw; but the winds blew the vapour onwards, and it mingled with the broader ma.s.ses of cloud; and then, Isabel, the sun shone forth for a moment, and I mistook, love, when I said you were not there, for that sun was you; but suddenly the winds ceased, and the rain came on fast and heavy: so my romance cooled, and my fever slacked; I thought on the inn at Ens, and the blessings of a wood fire, which is lighted in a moment, and I spurred on my horse accordingly."

"It is very strange," said Isabel.

"What, love?" whispered Algernon, kissing her cheek.

"Nothing, dearest, nothing."

At that instant, the deer, which lay waving their lordly antlers to and fro beneath the avenue which sloped upward from the stream to the house, rose hurriedly and in confusion, and stood gazing, with watchful eyes, upon a man advancing towards the pair.

It was one of the servants with a letter. Isabel saw a faint change (which none else could have seen) in Mordaunt's countenance, as he recognized the writing and broke the seal. When he had read the letter, his eyes fell upon the ground, and then, with a slight start, he lifted them up, and gazed long and eagerly around. Wistfully did he drink, as it were, into his heart the beautiful and expanded scene which lay stretched on either side; the n.o.ble avenue which his forefathers had planted as a shelter to their sons, and which now in its majestic growth and its waving boughs seemed to say, "Lo! ye are repaid!" and the never silent and silver stream, by which his boyhood had sat for hours, lulled by its music, and inhaling the fragrance of the reed and wild flower that decoyed the bee to its glossy banks; and the deer, to whose melancholy belling be had listened so often in the gray twilight with a rapt and dreaming ear; and the green fern waving on the gentle hill, from whose shade his young feet had startled the hare and the infant fawn; and far and faintly gleaming through the thick trees, which clasped it as with a girdle, the old Hall, so a.s.sociated with vague hopes and musing dreams, and the dim legends of gone time, and the lofty prejudices of ancestral pride,--all seemed to sink within him, as he gazed, like the last looks of departing friends; and when Isabel, who had not dared to break a silence which partook so strongly of gloom, at length laid her hand upon his arm, and lifted her dark, deep, tender eyes to his, he said, as he drew her towards him, and a faint and sickly smile played upon his lips,--

"It is past, Isabel: henceforth we have no wealth but in each other. The cause has been decided--and--and--we are beggars!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

We expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of.--COWLEY.

We must suppose a lapse of four years from the date of those events which concluded the last chapter; and, to recompence the reader, who I know has a little penchant for "High Life," even in the last century, for having hitherto shown him human beings in a state of society not wholly artificial, I beg him to picture to himself a large room, brilliantly illuminated, and crowded "with the magnates of the land."

Here, some in saltatory motion, some in sedentary rest, are dispersed various groups of young ladies and attendant swains, talking upon the subject of Lord Rochester's celebrated poem,--namely, "Nothing!"--and lounging around the doors, meditating probably upon the same subject, stand those unhappy victims of dancing daughters, denominated "Papas."

The music has ceased; the dancers have broken up; and there is a general but gentle sweep towards the refreshment-room. In the crowd--having just entered--there glided a young man of an air more distinguished and somewhat more joyous than the rest.

"How do you do, Mr. Linden?" said a tall and (though somewhat pa.s.se) very handsome woman, blazing with diamonds; "are you just come?"

And, here, by the way, I cannot resist pausing to observe that a friend of mine, meditating a novel, submitted a part of the ma.n.u.script to a friendly publisher. "Sir," said the bookseller, "your book is very clever, but it wants dialogue."

"Dialogue!" cried my friend: "you mistake; it is all dialogue."

"Ay, sir, but not what we call dialogue; we want a little conversation in fas.h.i.+onable life,--a little elegant chit-chat or so: and, as you must have seen so much of the beau monde, you could do it to the life: we must have something light and witty and entertaining."

"Light, witty, and entertaining!" said our poor friend; "and how the deuce, then, is it to be like conversation in 'fas.h.i.+onable life'? When the very best conversation one can get is so insufferably dull, how do you think people will be amused by reading a copy of the very worst?"

"They are amused, sir," said the publisher; "and works of this kind sell!"

"I am convinced," said my friend; for he was a man of a placid temper: he took the hint, and his book did sell!

Now this anecdote rushed into my mind after the penning of the little address of the lady in diamonds,--"How do you do, Mr. Linden? Are you just come?"--and it received an additional weight from my utter inability to put into the mouth of Mr. Linden--notwithstanding my desire of representing him in the most brilliant colours--any more happy and eloquent answer than, "Only this instant!"

However, as this is in the true spirit of elegant dialogue, I trust my readers find it as light, witty, and entertaining as, according to the said publisher, the said dialogue is always found by the public.

While Clarence was engaged in talking with this lady, a very pretty, lively, animated girl, with laughing blue eyes, which, joined to the dazzling fairness of her complexion, gave a Hebe-like youth to her features and expression, was led up to the said lady by a tall young man, and consigned, with the ceremonious bow of the vieille tour, to her protection.

"Ah, Mr. Linden," cried the young lady, "I am very glad to see you,--such a beautiful ball!--Everybody here that I most like. Have you had any refreshments, Mamma? But I need not ask, for I am sure you have not; do come, Mr. Linden will be our cavalier."

"Well, Flora, as you please," said the elderly lady, with a proud and fond look at her beautiful daughter; and they proceeded to the refreshment-room.

No sooner were they seated at one of the tables, than they were accosted by Lord St. George, a n.o.bleman whom Clarence, before he left England, had met more than once at Mr. Talbot's.

"London," said his lords.h.i.+p to her of the diamonds, "has not seemed like the same place since Lady Westborough arrived; your presence brings out all the other luminaries: and therefore a young acquaintance of mine--G.o.d bless me, there he is, seated by Lady Flora--very justly called you the 'evening star.'"

"Was that Mr. Linden's pretty saying?" said Lady Westborough, smiling.

"It was," answered Lord St. George; "and, by the by, he is a very sensible, pleasant person, and greatly improved since he left England last."

"What!" said Lady Westborough, in a low tone (for Clarence, though in earnest conversation with Lady Flora, was within hearing), and making room for Lord St. George beside her, "what! did you know him before he went to ----? You can probably tell me, then, who--that is to say--what family he is exactly of--the Lindens of Devons.h.i.+re, or--or--"

"Why, really," said Lord St. George, a little confused, for no man likes to be acquainted with persons whose pedigree he cannot explain, "I don't know what may be his family: I met him at Talbot's four or five years ago; he was then a mere boy, but he struck me as being very clever, and Talbot since told me that he was a nephew of his own."

"Talbot," said Lady Westborough, musingly, "what Talbot?"