LODORE.



BY THE

AUTHOR OF "FRANKENSTEIN."

In the turmoil of our lives.
Men are like politic states, or troubled seas,
Tossed up and down with several storms and tempests,
Change and variety of wrecks and fortunes;
Till, labouring to the havens of our homes,
We struggle for the calm that crowns our ends.

FORD.



IN THREE VOLUMES.


VOL. I.



LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET

(SUCCESSOR TO HENRY COLBURN.)

1835.




CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII




LODORE




CHAPTER I


Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear,
A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear.

POPE.


In the flattest and least agreeable part of the county of Essex, about
five miles from the sea, is situated a village or small town, which may
be known in these pages by the name of Longfield. Longfield is distant
eight miles from any market town, but the simple inhabitants, limiting
their desires to their means of satisfying them, are scarcely aware of
the kind of desert in which they are placed. Although only fifty miles
from London, few among them have ever seen the metropolis. Some claim
that distinction from having visited cousins in Lothbury and viewed the
lions in the tower. There is a mansion belonging to a wealthy nobleman
within four miles, never inhabited, except when a parliamentary election
is going forward. No one of any pretension to consequence resided in
this secluded nook, except the honourable Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry; she
ought to have been the shining star of the place, and she was only its
better angel. Benevolent, gentle, and unassuming, this fair sprig of
nobility had lived from youth to age in the abode of her forefathers,
making a part of this busy world, only through the kindliness of her
disposition, and her constant affection for one who was far away.

The mansion of the Fitzhenry family, which looked upon the village
green, was wholly incommensurate to our humblest ideas of what belongs
to nobility; yet it stood in solitary splendour, the Great House of
Longfield. From time immemorial, its possessors had been the magnates of
the village; half of it belonged to them, and the whole voted according
to their wishes. Cut off from the rest of the world, they claimed here a
consideration and a deference, which, with the moderate income of
fifteen hundred a-year, they would have vainly sought elsewhere.

There was a family tradition, that a Fitzhenry had sat in parliament;
but the time arrived, when they were to rise to greater distinction. The
father of the lady, whose name has been already introduced, enjoyed all
the privileges attendant on being an only child. Extraordinary efforts
were made for his education. He was placed with a clergyman near
Harwich, and imbibed in that neighbourhood so passionate a love for the
sea, that, though tardily and with regret, his parents at last permitted
him to pursue a naval career. He became a brave, a clever, and a lucky
officer. In a contested election, his father was the means of insuring
the success of the government candidate, and the promotion of his son
followed. Those were the glorious days of the English navy, towards the
close of the American war; and when that war terminated, and the
admiral, now advanced considerably beyond middle life, returned to the
Sabine farm, of which he had, by course of descent, become proprietor,
he returned adorned with the rank of a peer of the realm, and with
sufficient wealth to support respectably the dignity of the baronial
title.

Yet an obscure fate pursued the house of Fitzhenry, even in its ennobled
condition. The new lord was proud of his elevation, as a merited reward;
but next to the deck of his ship, he loved the tranquil precincts of his
paternal mansion, and here he spent his latter days in peace. Midway in
life, he had married the daughter of the rector of Longfield. Various
fates had attended the offspring of this union; several died, and at the
time of his being created a peer, Lord Lodore found himself a widower, with two
children. Elizabeth, who had been born twelve years before, and Henry,
whose recent birth had cost the life of his hapless and lamented mother.

But those days were long since passed away; and the first Lord Lodore, with
most of his generation, was gathered to his ancestors. To the new-sprung
race that filled up the vacant ranks, his daughter Elizabeth appeared a
somewhat ancient but most amiable maiden, whose gentle melancholy was
not (according to innumerable precedents in the traditions regarding
unmarried ladies) attributed to an ill-fated attachment, but to the
disasters that had visited her house, and still clouded the fortunes of
her family. What these misfortunes originated from, or even in what they
consisted, was not exactly known; especially at Longfield, whose
inhabitants were no adepts in the gossip of the metropolis. It was
believed that Mrs. Elizabeth's brother still lived; that some very
strange circumstances had attended his career in life, was known; but
conjecture fell lame when it tried to proceed beyond these simple facts:
it was whispered, as a wonder and a secret, that though Lord Lodore was
far away, no one knew where, his lady (as the Morning Post testified in
its lists of fashionable arrivals and fashionable parties) was a
frequent visitor to London. Once or twice the bolder gossips, male or
female, had resolved to sound (as they called it) Mrs. Elizabeth on the
subject. But the fair spinster, though innoffensive to a proverb, and
gentle beyond the wont of her gentle sex, was yet gifted with a certain
dignity of manner, and a quiet reserve, that checked these good people
at their very outset.

Henry Fitzhenry was spoken of by a few of the last generation, as having
been a fine, bold, handsome boy--generous, proud, and daring; he was
remembered, when as a youth he departed for the continent, as riding
fearlessly the best hunter in the field, and attracting the admiration
of the village maidens at church by his tall elegant figure and dark
eyes; or, when he chanced to accost them, by a nameless fascination of
manner, joined to a voice whose thrilling silver tones stirred the
listener's heart unaware. He left them like a dream, nor appeared again
till after his father's death, when he paid his sister a brief visit.
There was then something singularly grave and abstracted about him. When
he rode, it was not among the hunters, though it was soft February
weather, but in the solitary lanes, or with lightning speed over the
moors, when the sun was setting and shadows gathered round the
landscape.

Again, some years after, he had appeared among them. He was then married,
and Lady Lodore accompanied him. They stayed but three days. There was
something of fiction in the way in which the appearance of the lady was
recorded. An angel bright with celestial hues, breathing heaven, and
spreading a halo of calm and light around, as it winged swift way amidst
the dusky children of earth: such ideas seemed to appertain to the
beautiful apparition, remembered as Lord Lodore's wife. She was so
young, that time played with her as a favourite child; so etherial in
look, that the language of flowers could alone express the delicate
fairness of her skin, or the tints that sat upon her cheek: so light in
motion, and so graceful. To talk of eye or lip, of height or form, or
even of the colour of her hair, the villagers could not, for they had
been dazzled by an assemblage of charms before undreamt of by them. Her
voice won adoration, and her smile was as the sudden withdrawing of a
curtain displaying paradise upon earth. Her lord's tall, manly figure,
was recollected but as a back-ground--a fitting one--and that was all
they would allow to him--for this resplendent image. Nor was it
remembered that any excessive attachment was exhibited between them. She
had appeared indeed but as a vision--a creature from another sphere,
hastily gazing on an unknown world, and lost before they could mark more
than that void came again, and she was gone.

Since that time, Lord Lodore had been lost to Longfield. Some few months
after Mrs. Elizabeth visited London on occasion of a christening, and then
after a long interval, it was observed, that she never mentioned her
brother, and that the name of his wife acted as a spell, to bring an
expression of pain over her sedate features. Much talk circulated, and
many blundering rumours went their course through the village, and then
faded like smoke in the clear air. Some mystery there was--Lodore was
gone--his place vacant: he lived; yet his name, like those of the dead,
haunted only the memories of men, and was allied to no act or
circumstance of present existence. He was forgotten, and the inhabitants
of Longfield, returning to their obscurity, proceeded in their daily
course, almost as happy as if they had had their lord among them, to
vary the incidents of their quiet existence with the proceedings of the
"Great House."

Yet his sister remembered him. In her heart his image was traced
indelibly--limned in the colours of life. His form visited her dreams,
and was the unseen, yet not mute, companion of her solitary musings.
Years stole on, casting their clouding shadows on her cheek, and
stealing the colour from her hair, but Henry, but Lodore, was before her in
bright youth--her brother--her pride--her hope. To muse on the
possibility of his return, to read the few letters that reached her from
him, till their brief sentences seemed to imply volumes of meaning, was
the employment that made winter nights short, summer days swift in their
progress. This dreamy kind of existence, added to the old-fashioned
habits which a recluse who lives in a state of singleness is sure to
acquire, made her singularly unlike the rest of the world--causing her
to be a child in its ways, and inexpert to detect the craftiness of
others.

Lodore, in exile and obscurity, was in her eyes, the first of human beings;
she looked forward to the hour, when he would blaze upon the world with
renewed effulgence, as to a religious promise. How well did she
remember, how in grace of person, how in expression of countenance, and
dignity of manner, he transcended all those whom she saw during her
visit to London, on occasion of the memorable christening: that from
year to year this return was deferred, did not tire her patience, nor
diminish her regrets. He never grew old to her--never lost the lustre of
early manhood; and when the boyish caprice which kept him afar was
sobered, so she framed her thoughts, by the wisdom of time, he would
return again to bless her and to adorn the world. The lapse of twelve
years did not change this notion, nor the fact that, if she had cast up
an easy sum in arithmetic, the parish register would have testified, her
brother had now reached the mature age of fifty.




CHAPTER II


Settled in some secret nest,
In calm leisure let me rest;
And far off the public stage.
Pass away my silent age.

SENECA. _Marvell's Trans._


Twelve years previous to the opening of this tale, an English gentleman,
advanced to middle age, accompanied by an infant daughter, and her
attendant, arrived at a settlement in the district of the Illinois in
North America. It was at the time when this part of the country first
began to be cleared, and a new comer, with some show of property, was
considered a welcome acquisition. Still the settlement was too young,
and the people were too busy in securing for themselves the necessaries
of life, for much attention to be paid to any thing but the "overt acts"
of the stranger--the number of acres which he bought, which were few,
the extent of his clearings, and the number of workmen that he employed,
both of which were, proportionately to his possession in land, on a far
larger scale than that of any of his fellow colonists. Like magic, a
commodious house was raised on a small height that embanked the swift
river--every vestige of forest disappeared from its immediate vicinity,
replaced by agricultural cultivation, and a garden bloomed in the
wilderness. His labourers were many, and golden harvests shone in his
fields, while the dark forest, or untilled plain, seemed yet to set at
defiance the efforts of his fellow settlers; and at the same time
comforts of so civilized a description, that the Americans termed them
luxuries, appeared in the abode and reigned in the domestic arrangements
of the Englishman, although to his eye every thing was regulated by the
strictest regard to republican plainness and simplicity.

He did not mingle much in the affairs of the colony, yet his advice was
always to be commanded, and his assistance was readily afforded. He
superintended the operations carried on on his own land; and it was
observed that they differed often both from American and English modes
of agriculture. When questioned, he detailed practices in Poland and
Hungary, and gave his reasons why he thought them applicable to the soil
in question. Many of these experiments of course failed; others were
eminently successful. He did not shun labour of any sort. He joined the
hunting parties, and made one on expeditions that went out to explore
the neighbouring wilds, and the haunts of the native Indians. He gave
money for the carrying on any necessary public work, and came forward
willingly when called upon for any useful purpose. In any time of
difficulty or sorrow--on the overflowing of the stream, or the failure
of a crop, he was earnest in his endeavours to aid and to console. But
with all this, there was an insurmountable barrier between him and the
other inhabitants of the colony. He never made one at their feasts, nor
mingled in the familiar communications of daily life; his dwelling,
situated at the distance of a full mile from the village, removed him
from out of the very hearing of their festivities and assemblies. He
might labour in common with others, but his pleasures were all solitary,
and he preserved the utmost independence as far as regarded the sacred
privacy of his abode, and the silence he kept in all concerns regarding
himself alone.

At first the settlement had to struggle with all the difficulties
attendant on colonization. It grew rapidly, however, and bid fair to
become a busy and large town, when it met with a sudden check. A new
spot was discovered, a few miles distant, possessing peculiar advantages
for commercial purposes. An active, enterprising man engaged himself in
the task of establishing a town there on a larger scale and with greater
pretensions. He succeeded, and its predecessor sunk at once into
insignificance. It was matter of conjecture among them whether Mr.
Fitzhenry (so was named the English stranger) would remove to the
vicinity of the more considerable town, but no such idea seemed to have
occurred to him. Probably he rejoiced in an accident that tended to
render his abode so entirely secluded. At first the former town rapidly
declined, and many a log hut fell to ruin; but at last, having sunk into
the appearance and name of a village, it continued to exist, bearing few
marks of that busy enterprising stir which usually characterizes a new
settlement in America. The ambitious and scheming had deserted it--it
was left to those who courted tranquillity, and desired the necessaries
of life without the hope of great future gain. It acquired an almost
old-fashioned appearance. The houses began to look weatherworn, and none
with fresh faces sprung up to shame them. Extensive clearings, suddenly
checked, gave entrance to the forests, without the appendages of a
manufacture or a farm. The sound of the axe was seldom heard, and
primeval quiet again took possession of the wild. Meanwhile Mr.
Fitzhenry continued to adorn his dwelling with imported conveniences,
the result of European art, and to spend much time and labour in making
his surrounding land assume somewhat of the appearance of
pleasure-ground.

He lived in peace and solitude, and seemed to enjoy the unchanging tenor
of his life. It had not always been so. During the first three or four
years of his arrival in America, he had evidently been unquiet in his
mind, and dissatisfied with the scene around him. He gave directions to
his workmen, but did not overlook their execution. He took great pains
to secure a horse, whose fiery spirit and beautiful form might satisfy a
fastidious connoisseur. Having with much trouble and expense got several
animals of English breed together, he was perpetually seen mounted and
forcing his way amid the forest land, or galloping over the unincumbered
country. Sadness sat on his brow, and dwelt in eyes, whose dark large
orbs were peculiarly expressive of tenderness and melancholy,


"Pietosi a riguardare, a mover parchi."


Often, when in conversation on uninteresting topics, some keen sensation
would pierce his heart, his voice faltered, and an expression of
unspeakable wretchedness was imprinted on his countenance, mastered
after a momentary struggle, yet astounding to the person he might be
addressing. Generally on such occasions he would seize an immediate
opportunity to break away and to remain alone. He had been seen,
believing himself unseen, making passionate gestures, and heard uttering
some wild exclamations. Once or twice he had wandered away into the
woods, and not returned for several days, to the exceeding terror of his
little household. He evidently sought loneliness, there to combat
unobserved with the fierce enemy that dwelt within his breast. On such
occasions, when intruded upon and disturbed, he was irritated to fury.
His resentment was expressed in terms ill-adapted to republican
equality--and no one could doubt that in his own country he had filled a
high station in society, and been educated in habits of command, so that
he involuntarily looked upon himself as of a distinct and superior race
to the human beings that each day crossed his path. In general, however,
this was only shown by a certain loftiness of demeanour and cold
abstraction, which might annoy, but could not be resented. Any
ebullition of temper he was not backward to atone for by apology, and to
compensate by gifts.

There was no tinge of misanthropy in Fitzhenry's disposition. Even while
he shrunk from familiar communication with the rude and unlettered, he
took an interest in their welfare. His benevolence was active, his
compassion readily afforded. It was quickness of feeling, and not
apathy, that made him shy and retired. Sensibility checked and crushed,
an ardent thirst for sympathy which could not be allayed in the
wildernesses of America, begot a certain appearance of coldness,
altogether deceptive. He concealed his sufferings--he abhorred that they
should be pryed into; but this reserve was not natural to him, and it
added to the misery which his state of banishment occasioned.


"Quiet to quick bosoms is a hell."


And so was it with him. His passions were
powerful, and had been ungoverned. He writhed beneath the dominion of
_sameness_; and tranquillity, allied to loneliness, possessed no charms.
He groaned beneath the chains that fettered him to the spot, where he
was withering in inaction. They caused unutterable throes and paroxysms
of despair. Ennui, the dæmon, waited at the threshold of his noiseless
refuge, and drove away the stirring hopes and enlivening expectations,
which form the better part of life. Sensibility in such a situation is a
curse: men become "cannibals of their own hearts;" remorse, regret, and
restless impatience usurp the place of more wholesome feeling: every
thing seems better than that which is; and solitude becomes a sort of
tangible enemy, the more dangerous, because it dwells within the citadel
itself. Borne down by such emotions, Fitzhenry was often about to yield
to the yearnings of his soul, and to fly from repose into action,
however accompanied by strife and wretchedness; to leave America, to
return to Europe, and to face at once all the evils which he had
journeyed so far to escape. He did not--he remained. His motives for
flight returned on him with full power after any such paroxysm, and held
him back. He despised himself for his hesitation. He had made his
choice, and would abide by it. He was not so devoid of manliness as to
be destitute of fortitude, or so dependent a wretch as not to have
resources in himself. He would cultivate these, and obtain that peace
which it had been his boast that he should experience.

It came at last. Time and custom accomplished their task, and he became
reconciled to his present mode of existence. He grew to love his home in
the wilderness. It was all his own creation, and the pains and thought
he continued to bestow upon it, rendered it doubly his. The murmur of
the neighbouring river became the voice of a friend; it welcomed him on
his return from any expedition; and he hailed the first echo of it that
struck upon his ear from afar, with a thrill of joy.

Peace descended upon his soul. He became enamoured of the independence
of solitude, and the sublime operations of surrounding nature. All
further attempts at cultivation having ceased in his neighbourhood, from
year to year nothing changed, except at the bidding of the months, in
obedience to the varying seasons;--nothing changed, except that the moss
grew thicker and greener upon the logs that supported his roof, that the
plants he cultivated increased in strength and beauty, and that the
fruit-trees yielded their sweet produce in greater abundance. The
improvements he had set on foot displayed in their progress the taste
and ingenuity of their projector; and as the landscape became more
familiar, so did a thousand associations twine themselves with its
varied appearances, till the forests and glades became as friends and
companions.

As he learnt to be contented with his lot, the inequalities of humour,
and singularities of conduct, which had at first attended him, died
away. He had grown familiar with the persons of his fellow-colonists,
and their various fortunes interested him. Though he could find no
friend, tempered like him, like him nursed in the delicacies and
fastidiousness of the societies of the old world;--though he, a china
vase, dreaded too near a collision with the brazen ones around; yet,
though he could not give his confidence, or unburthen the treasure of
his soul, he could approve of, and even feel affection for several among
them. Personal courage, honesty, and frankness, were to be found among
the men; simplicity and kindness among the women. He saw instances of
love and devotion in members of families, that made him sigh to be one
of them; and the strong sense and shrewd observations of many of the
elder settlers exercised his understanding. They opened, by their
reasonings and conversation, a new source of amusement, and presented
him with another opiate for his too busy memory.

Fitzhenry had been a patron of the fine arts; and thus he had loved
books, poetry, and the elegant philosophy of the ancients. But he had
not been a student. His mind was now in a fit state to find solace in
reading, and excitement in the pursuit of knowledge. At first he sent
for a few books, such as he wished immediately to consult, from New
York, and made slight additions to the small library of classical
literature he had originally brought with him on his emigration. But
when once the desire to instruct himself was fully aroused in his mind,
he became aware how slight and inadequate his present library was, even
for the use of one man. Now each quarter brought chests of a commodity
he began to deem the most precious upon earth. Beings with human forms
and human feelings he had around him; but, as if made of coarser,
half-kneaded clay, they wanted the divine spark of mind and the polish
of taste. He had pined for these, and now they were presented to him.
Books became his friends: they, when rightly questioned, could answer to
his thoughts. Plato could elevate, Epictetus calm, his soul. He could
revel with Ovid in the imagery presented by a graceful, though
voluptuous imagination; and hang enchanted over the majesty and elegance
of Virgil. Homer was as a dear and revered friend--Horace a pleasant
companion. English, Italian, German, and French, all yielded their
stores in turn; and the abstruse sciences were often a relaxation to a
mind, whose chief bane was its dwelling too entirely upon one idea. He
made a study, also, of the things peculiarly befitting his present
situation; and he rose in the estimation of those around, as they became
aware of his talents and his knowledge.

Study and occupation restored to his heart self-complacency, which is an
ingredient so necessary to the composition of human happiness. He felt
himself to be useful, and knew himself to be honoured. He no longer
asked himself, "Why do I live?" or looked on the dark, rapid waves, and
longed for the repose that was in their gift. The blood flowed equably
in his veins; a healthy temperance regulated his hopes and wishes. He
could again bless God for the boon of existence, and look forward to
future years, if not with eager anticipation, yet with a calm reliance
upon the power of good, wholly remote from despair.




CHAPTER III


_Miranda._--Alack! what trouble
Was I then to you!
_Prospero._--O, a cherubim
Thou wast, that did preserve me!

THE TEMPEST.


Such was the Englishman who had taken refuge in the furthest wilds of an
almost untenanted portion of the globe. Like a Corinthian column, left
single amidst the ruder forms of the forest oaks, standing in alien
beauty, a type of civilization and the arts, among the rougher, though
perhaps not less valuable, growth of Nature's own. Refined to
fastidiousness, sensitive to morbidity, the stranger was respected
without being understood, and loved though the intimate of none.

Many circumstances have been mentioned as tending to reconcile Fitzhenry
to his lot; and yet one has been omitted, chiefest of all;--the growth
and development of his child was an inexhaustible source of delight and
occupation. She was scarcely three years old when her parent first came
to the Illinois. She was then a plaything and an object of solicitude to
him, and nothing more. Much as her father loved her, he had not then
learned to discover the germ of the soul just nascent in her infant
form; nor to watch the formation, gradual to imperceptibility, of her
childish ideas. He would watch over her as she slept, and gaze on her as
she sported in the garden, with ardent and unquiet fondness; and, from
time to time, instil some portion of knowledge into her opening mind:
but this was all done by snatches, and at intervals. His affection for
her was the passion of his soul; but her society was not an occupation
for his thoughts. He would have knelt to kiss her footsteps as she
bounded across the grass, and tears glistened in his eyes as she
embraced his knees on his return from any excursion; but her prattle
often wearied him, and her very presence was sometimes the source of
intense pain.

He did not know himself how much he loved her, till she became old
enough to share his excursions and be a companion. This occurred at a
far earlier age than would have been the case had she been in England,
living in a nursery with other children. There is a peculiarity in the
education of a daughter, brought up by a father only, which tends to
develop early a thousand of those portions of mind, which are folded up,
and often destroyed, under mere feminine tuition. He made her fearless,
by making her the associate of his rides; yet his incessant care and
watchfulness, the observant tenderness of his manner, almost reverential
on many points, springing from the differences of sex, tended to soften
her mind, and make her spirit ductile and dependent. He taught her to
scorn pain, but to shrink with excessive timidity from any thing that
intrenched on the barrier of womanly reserve which he raised about her.
Nothing was dreaded, indeed, by her, except his disapprobation; and a
word or look from him made her, with all her childish vivacity and
thoughtlessness, turn as with a silken string, and bend at once to his
will.

There was an affectionateness of disposition kneaded up in the very
texture of her soul, which gave it its "very form and pressure." It
accompanied every word and action; it revealed itself in her voice, and
hung like light over the expression of her countenance.

Her earliest feeling was love of her father. She would sit to watch him,
guess at his thoughts, and creep close, or recede away, as she read
encouragement, or the contrary, in his eyes and gestures. Except him,
her only companion was her servant; and very soon she distinguished
between them, and felt proud and elate when she quitted her for her
father's side. Soon, she almost never quitted it. Her gentle and docile
disposition rendered her unobtrusive, while her inexhaustible spirits
were a source of delightful amusement. The goodness of her heart
endeared her still more; and when it was called forth by any demand made
on it by him, it was attended by such a display of excessive
sensibility, as at once caused him to tremble for her future happiness,
and love her ten thousand times more. She grew into the image on which
his eye doated, and for whose presence his heart perpetually yearned.
Was he reading, or otherwise occupied, he was restless, if yet she were
not in the room; and she would remain in silence for hours, occupied by
some little feminine work, and all the while watching him, catching his
first glance towards her, and obeying the expression of his countenance,
before he could form his wish into words. When he left her for any of
his longer excursions, her little heart would heave, and almost burst
with sorrow. On his return, she was always on the watch to see, to fly
into his arms, and to load him with infantine caresses.

There was something in her face, that at this early age gave token of
truth and affection, and asked for sympathy. Her large brown eyes, such
as are called hazel, full of tenderness and sweetness, possessed within
their depths an expression and a latent fire, which stirred the heart.
It is difficult to describe, or by words to call before another's mind,
the picture so palpable to our own. The moulding of her cheek, full just
below the eyes, and ending in a soft oval, gave a peculiar expression,
at once beseeching and tender, and yet radiant with vivacity and
gladness. Frankness and truth were reflected on her brow, like flowers
in the clearest pool; the thousand nameless lines and mouldings, which
create expression, were replete with beaming innocence and irresistible
attraction. Her small chiselled nose, her mouth so delicately curved,
gave token of taste. In the whole was harmony, and the upper part of the
countenance seemed to reign over the lower and to ennoble it, making her
usual placid expression thoughtful and earnest; so that not until she
smiled and spoke, did the gaiety of her guileless heart display itself,
and the vivacity of her disposition give change and relief to the
picture. Her figure was light and airy, tall at an early age, and
slender. Her rides and rambles gave elasticity to her limbs, and her
step was like that of the antelope, springy and true. She had no fears,
no deceit, no untold thought within her. Her matchless sweetness of
temper prevented any cloud from ever dimming her pure loveliness: her
voice cheered the heart, and her laugh rang so true and joyous on the
ear, that it gave token in itself of the sympathizing and buoyant spirit
which was her great charm. Nothing with her centred in self; she was
always ready to give her soul away: to please her father was the
unsleeping law of all her actions, while his approbation imparted a
sense of such pure but entire happiness, that every other feeling faded
into insignificance in the comparison.

In the first year of exile and despair, Fitzhenry looked forward to the
long drawn succession of future years, with an impatience of woe
difficult to be borne. He was surprised to find, as he proceeded in the
quiet path of life which he had selected, that instead of an increase of
unhappiness, a thousand pleasures smiled around him. He had looked on it
as a bitter task to forget that he had a name and country, both
abandoned for ever; now, the thought of these seldom recurred to his
memory. His forest home became all in all to him. Wherever he went, his
child was by his side, to cheer and enliven him. When he looked on her,
and reflected that within her frame dwelt spotless innocence and filial
piety, that within that lovely "bower of flesh," not one thought or
feeling resided that was not akin to heaven in its purity and sweetness,
he, as by infection, acquired a portion of the calm enjoyment, which she
in her taintless youth naturally possessed.

Even when any distant excursion forced him to absent himself, her idea
followed him to light him cheerily on his way. He knew that he should
find her on his return busied in little preparations for his welcome. In
summer time, the bower in the garden would be adorned; in the inclement
season of winter the logs would blaze on the hearth, his chair be drawn
towards the fire, the stool for Ethel at his feet, with nothing to
remind him of the past, save her dear presence, which drew its greatest
charm, not from that, but from the present. Fitzhenry forgot the
thousand delights of civilization, for which formerly his heart had
painfully yearned. He forgot ambition, and the enticements of gay
vanity; peace and security appeared the greatest blessings of life, and
he had them here.

Ethel herself was happy beyond the knowledge of her own happiness. She
regretted nothing in the old country. She grew up among the grandest
objects of nature, and they were the sweet influences to excite her to
love and to a sense of pleasure. She had come to the Illinois attended
by a black woman and her daughter, whom her father had engaged to attend
her at New York, and had been sedulously kept away from communication
with the settlers--an arrangement which it would have been difficult to
bring about elsewhere, but in this secluded and almost deserted spot the
usual characteristics of the Americans were scarcely to be found. Most
of the inhabitants were emigrants from Scotland, a peaceable,
hard-working population.

Ethel lived alone in their lonely dwelling. Had she been of a more
advanced age when taken from England, her curiosity might have been
excited by the singularity of her position; but we rarely reason about
that which has remained unchanged since infancy; taking it as a part of
the immutable order of things, we yield without a question to its
controul. Ethel did not know that she was alone. Her attendants she was
attached to, and she idolized her father; his image filled all her
little heart. Playmate she had none, save a fawn and a kid, a dog grown
old in her service, and a succession of minor favourites of the animal
species.

It was Fitzhenry's wish to educate his daughter to all the perfection of
which the feminine character is susceptible. As the first step, he cut
her off from familiar communication with the unrefined, and, watching
over her with the fondest care, kept her far aloof from the very
knowledge of what might, by its baseness or folly, contaminate the
celestial beauty of her nature. He resolved to make her all that woman
can be of generous, soft, and devoted; to purge away every alloy of
vanity and petty passion--to fill her with honour, and yet to mould her
to the sweetest gentleness: to cultivate her tastes and enlarge her
mind, yet so to controul her acquirements, as to render her ever pliant
to his will. She was to be lifted above every idea of artifice or guile,
or the caballing spirit of the worldling--she was to be single-hearted,
yet mild. A creature half poetry, half love--one whose pure lips had
never been tainted by an untruth--an enthusiastic being, who could give
her life away for the sake of another, and yet who honoured herself as a
consecrated thing reserved for one worship alone. She was taught that no
misfortune should penetrate her soul, except such as visited her
affections, or her sense of right; and that, set apart from the vulgar
uses of the world, she was connected with the mass only through
another--that other, now her father and only friend--hereafter,
whosoever her heart might select as her guide and head. Fitzhenry drew
his chief ideas from Milton's Eve, and adding to this the romance of
chivalry, he satisfied himself that his daughter would be the embodied
ideal of all that is adorable and estimable in her sex.

The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially
wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and
detect the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite,
tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what--to a supporter or a
destroyer. The careful rearer of the ductile human plant can instil his
own religion, and surround the soul by such a moral atmosphere, as shall
become to its latest day the air it breathes. Ethel, from her delicate
organization and quick parts, was sufficiently plastic in her father's
hands. When not with him, she was the playmate of nature. Her birds and
pet animals--her untaught but most kind nurse, were her associates: she
had her flowers to watch over, her music, her drawings, and her books.
Nature, wild, interminable, sublime, was around her. The ceaseless flow
of the brawling stream, the wide-spread forest, the changes of the sky,
the career of the wide-winged clouds, when the winds drove them athwart
the atmosphere, or the repose of the still, and stirless summer air, the
stormy war of the elements, and the sense of trust and security amidst
their loudest disturbances, were all circumstances to mould her even
unconsciously to an admiration of all that is grand and beautiful.

A lofty sense of independence is, in man, the best privilege of his
nature. It cannot be doubted, but that it were for the happiness of the
other sex that she were taught more to rely on and act for herself. But
in the cultivation of this feeling, the education of Fitzhenry was
lamentably deficient. Ethel was taught to know herself dependent; the
support of another was to be as necessary to her as her daily food. She
leant on her father as a prop that could not fail, and she was wholly
satisfied with her condition. Her peculiar disposition of course tinged
Fitzhenry's theories with colours not always their own, and her entire
want of experience in intercourse with her fellow-creatures, gave a more
decided tone to her sense of dependence than she could have acquired, if
the circumstances of her daily life had brought her into perpetual
collision with others. She was habitually cheerful even to gaiety; yet
her character was not devoid of petulence, which might become rashness
or self-will if left to herself. She had a clear and upright spirit, and
suspicion or unkindness roused her to indignation, or sunk her into the
depths of sorrow. Place her in danger, and tell her she must encounter
it, and she called up all her courage and became a heroine; but on less
occasions, difficulties dismayed and annoyed her, and she longed to
escape from them into that dreamy existence, for which her solitary mode
of life had given her a taste: active in person, in mind she was too
often indolent, and apt to think that while she was docile to the
injunctions of her parent, all her duties were fulfilled. She seldom
thought, and never acted, for herself.

With all this she was so caressingly affectionate, so cheerful and
obedient, that she inspired her father with more than a father's
fondness. He lived but for her and in her. Away, she was present to his
imagination, the loadstone to draw him home, and to fill that home with
pleasure. He exalted her in his fancy into angelic perfection, and
nothing occurred to blot the fair idea. He in prospect gave up his whole
life to the warding off every evil from her dear and sacred head. He
knew, or rather believed, that while we possess one real, devoted, and
perfect friend, we cannot be truly miserable. He said to himself--though
he did not love to dwell on the thought--that of course cares and
afflictions might hereafter befal her; but he was to stand the shield to
blunt the arrows of sorrow--the shelter in which she might find refuge
from every evil ministration. The worst ills of life, penury and
desertion, she could never know; and surely he, who would stand so fast
by her through all--whose nightly dream and waking thought was for her
good, would even, when led to form other connexions in life, so command
her affections as to be able to influence her happiness.

Not being able to judge by comparison, Ethel was unaware of the
peculiarity of her good fortune in possessing such a father. But she
loved him entirely; looked up to him, and saw in him the reward of every
exertion, the object of each day's employment. In early youth we have no
true notion of what the realities of life are formed, and when we look
forward it is without any correct estimate of the chances of existence.
Ethel's visionary ideas were all full of peace, seclusion, and her
father. America, or rather the little village of the Illinois which she
inhabited, was all the world to her; and she had no idea that nearly
every thing that connected her to society existed beyond the far
Atlantic, in that tiny isle which made so small a show upon her maps.
Fitzhenry never mentioned these things to his daughter. She arrived at
the age of fifteen without forming a hope that should lead her beyond
the pale which had hitherto enclosed her, or having imagined that any
train of circumstances might suddenly transplant her from the lonely
wilderness to the thronged resorts of mankind.




CHAPTER IV


Les deserts sont faits pour les amants, mais l'amour
ne se fait pas aux deserts.

LE BARBIER DE PARIS.


Twelve years had led Ethel from infancy to childhood; and from child's
estate to the blooming season of girlhood. It had brought her father
from the prime of a man's life, to the period when it began to decline.
Our feelings probably are not less strong at fifty than they were ten or
fifteen years before; but they have changed their objects, and dwell on
far different prospects. At five-and-thirty a man thinks of what his own
existence is; when the maturity of age has grown into its autumn, he is
wrapt up in that of others. The loss of wife or child then becomes more
deplorable, as being impossible to repair; for no fresh connexion can
give us back the companion of our earlier years, nor a "new sprung race"
compensate for that, whose career we hoped to see run. Fitzhenry had
been a man of violent passions; they had visited his life with hurricane
and desolation;--were these dead within him? The complacency that now
distinguished his physiognomy seemed to vouch for internal peace. But
there was an abstracted melancholy in his dark eyes--a look that went
beyond the objects immediately before him, that seemed to say that he
often anxiously questioned fate, and meditated with roused fears on the
secrets of futurity.

Educating his child, and various other employments, had occupied and
diverted him. He had been content; he asked for no change, but he
dreaded it. Often when packets arrived from England he hesitated to open
them. He could not account for his new-born anxieties. Was change
approaching? "How long will you be at peace?" Such warning voice
startled him in the solitude of the forests: he looked round, but no
human being was near, yet the voice had spoken audibly to his sense; and
when a transient air swept the dead leaves near, he shrunk as if a
spirit passed, invisible to sight, and yet felt by the subtle
atmosphere, as it gave articulation and motion to it.

"How long shall I be at peace?" A thrill ran through his veins. "Am I
then _now_ at peace? Do love, and hate, and despair, no longer wage their
accustomed war in my heart? and is it true that gently flowing as my
days have lately been, that during their course I have not felt those
mortal throes that once made life so intolerable a burthen? It is so. I
_am at peace_; strange state for suffering mortality! And this is not to
last? My daughter! there only am I vulnerable; yet have I surrounded her
with a sevenfold shield. My own sweet Ethel! how can I avert from your
dear head the dark approaching storm?

"But this is folly. These waking dreams are the curse of inaction and
solitude. Yesterday I refused to accompany the exploring party. I will
go--I am not old; fatigue, as yet, does not seem a burthen; but I shall
sink into premature age, if I allow this indolence to overpower me. I
will set out on this expedition, and thus I shall no longer be at
peace." Fitzhenry smiled as if thus he were cheating destiny.

The proposed journey was one to be made by a party of his
fellow-settlers, to trace the route between their town and a large one,
two hundred miles off, to discover the best mode of communication. There
was nothing very arduous in the undertaking. It was September, and
hunting would diversify the tediousness of their way. Fitzhenry left his
daughter under the charge of her attendants, to amuse herself with her
books, her music, her gardening, her needle, and, more than all, her new
and very favourite study of drawing and sketching. Hitherto the pencil
had scarcely been one of her occupations; but an accident gave scope to
her acquiring in it that improvement for which she found that she had
prodigious inclination, and she was assured, no inconsiderable talent.

The occasion that had given rise to this new employment was this. Three
or four months before, a traveller arrived for the purpose of settling,
who claimed a rather higher intellectual rank than those around him. He
was the son of an honest tradesman of the city of London. He displayed
early signs of talent, and parental fondness gave him opportunities of
cultivating it. The means of his family were small, but some of the
boy's drawings having attracted the attention of an artist, he entered
upon the profession of a painter, with sanguine hopes of becoming
hereafter an ornament to it.

Two obstacles were in the way of his success. He wanted that intense
love of his art--that enthusiastic perseverance in labour, which
distinguishes the man of genius from the man of talent merely. He
regarded it as a means, not an end. Probably therefore he did not feel
that capacity in himself for attaining first-rate excellence, which had
been attributed to him. He had a taste also for social pleasures and
vulgar indulgencies, incompatible with industry and with that refinement
of mind which is so necessary an adjunct to the cultivation of the
imaginative arts. Whitelock had none of all this; but he was quick,
clever, and was looked on among his associates as a spirited, agreeable
fellow. The death of his parents left him in possession of their little
wealth: depending for the future on the resources which his talent
promised him, he dissipated the two or three hundred pounds which formed
his inheritance: debt, difficulties, with consequent abstraction from
his profession, completed his ruin. He arrived at the Illinois in search
of an uncle, on whose kindness he intended to depend, with six dollars
in his purse. His uncle had long before disappeared from that part of
the country. Whitelock found himself destitute. Neither his person,
which was diminutive, nor his constitution, which was delicate, fitted
him for manual labour; nor was he acquainted with any mechanic art. What
could he do in America? He began to feel very deeply the inroads of
despair, when hearing of the superior wealth of Mr. Fitzhenry, and that
he was an Englishman, he paid him a visit, feeling secure that he could
interest him in his favour.

The emigrant's calculations were just. His distinguished countryman
exerted himself to enable the young man to obtain a subsistence. He
established him in a school, and gave him his best counsels how to
proceed. Whitelock thanked him; commenced the most odious task of
initiating the young Americans in the rudiments of knowledge, and sought
meanwhile to amuse himself to the best of his power. Fitzhenry's house
he first made his resort. He was not to be baffled by the reserved
courtesy of his host. The comfort and English appearance of the exile's
dwelling were charming to him; and while he could hear himself talk, he
fancied that every one about him must be satisfied. Fitzhenry was
excessively annoyed. There was an innate vulgarity in his visitant, and
an unlicensed familiarity that jarred painfully with the refined habits
of his sensitive nature. Still, in America he had been forced to
tolerate even worse than this, and he bore Whitelock's intrusions as
well as he could, seeking only to put such obstacles in the way of his
too frequent visits, as would best serve to curtail them. Whitelock's
chief merit was his talent; he had a real eye for the outward forms of
nature, for the tints in which she loves to robe herself, and the beauty
in which she is for ever invested. He occupied himself by sketching the
surrounding scenery, and gave life and interest to many a savage glade
and solitary nook, which, till he came, had not been discovered to be
picturesque. Ethel regarded his drawings with wonder and delight, and
easily obtained permission from her father to take lessons in the
captivating art. Fitzhenry thought that of all occupations, that of the
pencil, if pursued earnestly and with real taste, most conduced to the
student's happiness. Its scope is not personal display, as is the case
most usually with music, and yet it has a visible result which satisfies
the mind that something has been done. It does not fatigue the attention
like the study of languages, yet it suffices to call forth the powers,
and to fill the mind with pleasurable sensations. It is a most feminine
occupation, well replacing, on a more liberal and rational scale, the
tapestry of our grandmothers. Ethel had already shown a great
inclination for design, and her father was glad of so favourable an
opportunity for cultivating it. A few difficulties presented themselves.
Whitelock had brought his own materials with him, but he possessed no
superfluity--and they were not to be procured at the settlement. The
artist offered to transfer them all for Ethel's convenience to her own
abode, so that he might have free leave to occupy himself there also.
Fitzhenry saw all the annoyances consequent on this plan, and it was
finally arranged that his daughter should, three or four times a week,
visit the school-house, and in a little room, built apart for her
especial use, pursue her study.

The habit of seeing and instructing his lovely pupil awoke new ideas in
Whitelock's fruitful brain. Who was Mr. Fitzhenry? What did he in the
Illinois? Whitelock sounded him carefully, but gathered no information,
except that this gentleman showed no intention of ever quitting the
settlement. But this was much. He was evidently in easy
circumstances--Ethel was his only child. She was here a garden-rose
amidst briars, and Whitelock flattered himself that his position was not
materially different. Could he succeed in the scheme that all these
considerations suggested to him, his fortune was made, or, at least, he
should bid adieu for ever to blockhead boys and the dull labours of
instruction. As these views opened upon him, he took more pains to
ingratiate himself with Fitzhenry. He became humble; he respectfully
sought his advice--and while he contrived a thousand modes of throwing
himself in his way, he appeared less intrusive than before--and yet he
felt that he did not get on. Fitzhenry was kind to him, as a countryman
in need of assistance; he admired his talent as an artist, but he shrunk
from the smallest approach to intimacy. Whitelock hoped that he was only
shy, but he feared that he was proud; he tried to break through the
barrier of reserve opposed to him, and he became a considerable
annoyance to the recluse. He waylaid him during his walks with his
daughter--forced his company upon them, and forging a thousand obliging
excuses for entering their dwelling, he destroyed the charm of their
quiet evenings, and yet tempered his manners with such shows of humility
and gratitude as Fitzhenry could not resist.

Whitelock next tried his battery on the young lady herself. Her passion
for her new acquirement afforded scope for his enterprizing disposition.
She was really glad to see him whenever he came; questioned him about
the pictures which existed in the old world, and, with a mixture of
wonder and curiosity, began to think that there was magic in an art,
that produced the effects which he described. With all the enthusiasm of
youth, she tried to improve herself, and the alacrity with which she
welcomed her master, or hurried to his school, looked almost
like--Whitelock could not exactly tell what, but here was ground to work
upon.

When Fitzhenry went on the expedition already mentioned, Ethel gave up
all her time, with renewed ardour, to her favourite pursuit. Early in
the morning she was seen tripping down to the school-house, accompanied
by her faithful negro woman. The attendant used her distaff and spindle,
Ethel her brush, and the hours flew unheeded. Whitelock would have been
glad that her eyes had not always been so intently fixed on the paper
before her. He proposed sketching from nature. They made studies from
trees, and contemplated the changing hues of earth and sky together.
While talking of tints, and tones of colour spread over the celestial
hemisphere and the earth beneath, were it not an easy transition to
speak of those which glistened in a lady's eye, or warmed her cheek? In
the solitude of his chamber, thus our adventurer reasoned; and wondered
each night why he hesitated to begin. Whitelock was short and ill-made.
His face was not of an agreeable cast: it was impossible to see him
without being impressed with the idea that he was a man of talent; but
he was otherwise decidedly ugly. This disadvantage was counterbalanced
by an overweening vanity, which is often to be remarked in those whose
personal defects place them a step below their fellows. He knew the
value of an appearance of devotion, and the power which an
acknowledgment of entire thraldom exercises over the feminine
imagination. He had succeeded ill with the father; but, after all, the
surest way was to captivate the daughter: the affection of her parent
would induce him to ratify any step necessary to her happiness; and the
chance afforded by this parent's absence for putting his plan into
execution, might never again occur--why then delay?

It was, perhaps, strange that Fitzhenry, alive to the smallest evil that
might approach his darling child, and devoted to her sole guardianship,
should have been blind to the sort of danger which she ran during his
absence. But the paternal protection is never entirely efficient. A
father avenges an insult; but he has seldom watchfulness enough to
prevent it. In the present instance, the extreme youth of Ethel might
well serve as an excuse. She was scarcely fifteen; and, light-hearted
and blithe, none but childish ideas had found place in her unruffled
mind. Her father yet regarded her as he had done when she was wont to
climb his knee, or to gambol before him: he still looked forward to her
womanhood as to a distant event, which would necessitate an entire
change in his mode of living, but which need not for several years enter
into his calculations. Thus, when he departed, he felt glad to get rid,
for a time, of Whitelock's disagreeable society; but it never crossed
his imagination that his angelic girl could be annoyed or injured,
meanwhile, by the presumptuous advances of a man whom he despised.

Ethel knew nothing of the language of love. She had read of it in her
favourite poets; but she was yet too young and guileless to apply any of
its feelings to herself. Love had always appeared to her blended with
the highest imaginative beauty and heroism, and thus was in her eyes, at
once awful and lovely. Nothing had vulgarized it to her. The greatest
men were its slaves, and according as their choice fell on the worthy or
unworthy, they were elevated or disgraced by passion. It was the part of
a woman so to refine and educate her mind, as to be the cause of good
alone to him whose fate depended on her smile. There was something of
the Orondates' vein in her ideas; but they were too vague and general to
influence her actions. Brought up in American solitude, with all the
refinement attendant on European society, she was aristocratic, both as
regarded rank and sex; but all these were as yet undeveloped
feelings--seeds planted by the careful paternal hand, not yet called
into life or growth.

Whitelock began his operations, and was obliged to be explicit to be at
all understood. He spoke of misery and despair; he urged no plea, sought
no favour, except to be allowed to speak of his wretchedness. Ethel
listened--Eve listened to the serpent, and since then, her daughters
have been accused of an aptitude to give ear to forbidden discourse. He
spoke well, too, for he was a man of unquestioned talent. It is a
strange feeling for a girl, when first she finds the power put into her
hand of influencing the destiny of another to happiness or misery. She
is like a magician holding for the first time a fairy wand, not having
yet had experience of its potency. Ethel had read of the power of love;
but a doubt had often suggested itself, of how far she herself should
hereafter exercise the influence which is the attribute of her sex.
Whitelock dispelled that doubt. He impressed on her mind the idea that
he lived or died through her fiat.

For one instant, vanity awoke in her young heart; and she tripped back
to her home with a smile of triumph on her lips. The feeling was
short-lived. She entered her father's library; and his image appeared to
rise before her, to regulate and purify her thoughts. If he had been
there, what could she have said to him--she who never concealed a
thought?--or how would he have received the information she had to give?
What had happened, had not been the work of a day; Whitelock had for a
week or two proceeded in an occult and mysterious manner: but this day
he had withdrawn the veil; and she understood much that had appeared
strange in him before. The dark, expressive eyes of her father she
fancied to be before her, penetrating the depths of her soul,
discovering her frivolity, and censuring her lowly vanity; and, even
though alone, she felt abashed. Our faults are apt to assume giant and
exaggerated forms to our eyes in youth, and Ethel felt degraded and
humiliated; and remorse sprung up in her gentle heart, substituting
itself for the former pleasurable emotion.

The young are always in extremes. Ethel put away her drawings and
paintings. She secluded herself in her home; and arranged so well, that
notwithstanding the freedom of American manners, Whitelock contrived to
catch but a distant glimpse of her during the one other week that
intervened before her father's return. Troubled at this behaviour, he
felt his bravery ooze out. To have offended Fitzhenry, was an unwise
proceeding, at best; but when he remembered the haughty and reserved
demeanour of the man, he recoiled, trembling, from the prospect of
encountering him.

Ethel was very concise in the expressions she used, to make her father,
on his return, understand what had happened during his absence.
Fitzhenry heard her with indignation and bitter self-reproach. The
natural impetuosity of his disposition returned on him, like a stream
which had been checked in its progress, but which had gathered strength
from the delay. On a sudden, the future, with all its difficulties and
trials, presented itself to his eyes; and he was determined to go out to
meet them, rather than to await their advent in his seclusion. His
resolution formed and he put it into immediate execution: he would
instantly quit the Illinois. The world was before him; and while he
paused on the western shores of the Atlantic, he could decide upon his
future path. But he would not remain where he was another season. The
present, the calm, placid present, had fled like morning mist before the
new risen breeze: all appeared dark and turbid to his heated
imagination. Change alone could appease the sense of danger that had
risen within him. Change of place, of circumstances,--of all that for
the last twelve years had formed his life. "How long am I to remain at
peace?"--the prophetic voice heard in the silence of the forests,
recurred to his memory, and thrilled through his frame. "Peace! was I
ever at peace? Was this unquiet heart ever still, as, one by one, the
troubled thoughts which are its essence, have risen and broken against
the barriers that embank them? Peace! My own Ethel!--all I have
done--all I would do--is to gift thee with that blessing which has for
ever fled the thirsting lips of thy unhappy parent." And thus, governed
by a fevered fancy and untamed passions, Fitzhenry forgot the tranquil
lot which he had learnt to value and enjoy; and quitting the haven he
had sought, as if it had never been a place of shelter to him,
unthankful for the many happy hours which had blessed him there, he
hastened to reach the stormier seas of life, whose breakers and whose
winds were ready to visit him with shipwreck and destruction.




CHAPTER V


"The boy is father of the man."

WORDSWORTH.


Fitzhenry having formed his resolution, acted upon it immediately: and
yet, while hastening every preparation for his departure, he felt return
upon him that inquietude and intolerable sense of suffering, which of
late years had subsided in his soul. Now and then it struck him as
madness to quit his house, his garden, the trees of his planting, the
quiet abode which he had reared in the wilderness. He gave his orders,
but he was unable to command himself to attend to any of the minutiæ of
circumstance connected with his removal. As when he first arrived, again
he sought relief in exercise and the open air. He felt each ministration
of nature to be his friend, and man, in every guise, to be his enemy. He
was about to plunge among them again. What would be the result?

Yet this was no abode for the opening bloom of Ethel. For her good his
beloved and safe seclusion must be sacrificed, and that he was acting
for her benefit, and not his own, served to calm his mind. She
contemplated their migration with something akin to joy. We could almost
believe that we are destined by Providence to an unsettled position on
the globe, so invariably is a love of change implanted in the young. It
seems as if the eternal Lawgiver intended that, at a certain age, man
should leave father, mother, and the dwelling of his infancy, to seek
his fortunes over the wide world. A few natural tears Ethel shed--they
were not many. She, usually so resigned and quiet in her feelings, was
now in a state of excitement: dreamy, shadowy visions floated before her
of what would result from her journey, and curiosity and hope gave life
and a bright colouring to the prospect.

The day came at last. On the previous Sunday she had knelt for the last
time in church on the little hassock which had been her's from infancy,
and walked along the accustomed pathway towards her home for the last
time. During the afternoon, she visited the village to bid adieu to her
few acquaintances. The sensitive refinement of Fitzhenry had caused him
to guard his daughter jealously from familiar intercourse with their
fellow settlers, even as a child. But she had been accustomed to enter
the poorer cottages, to assist the distressed, and now and then to
partake of tea drinking with the minister. This personage, however, was
not stationary. At one time they had had a venerable old man whom Ethel
had begun to love; but latterly, the pastor had not been a person to
engage her liking, and this had loosened her only tie with her fellow
colonists.

The day came. The father and daughter, with three attendants, entered
their carriage, and wound along the scarcely formed road. One by one
they passed, and lost sight of objects, that for many years had been
woven in with the texture of their lives. Fitzhenry was sad. Ethel wept,
unconstrainedly, plentiful showery tears, which cost so much less to the
heart, than the few sorrowful drops which, in after life, we expend upon
our woes. Still as they proceeded the objects that met their eyes became
less familiar and less endeared. They began to converse, and when they
arrived at their lodging for the night, Ethel was cheerful, and her
father, mastering the unquiet feelings which disturbed him, exerted
himself to converse with her on such topics as would serve to introduce
her most pleasantly to the new scenes which she was about to visit.

There was one object, however, which lay nearest to the emigrant's
heart, to which he had not yet acquired courage to allude; his own
position in the world, his former fortunes, and the circumstances that
had driven him from Europe, to seek peace and obscurity in the
wilderness. It was a strange tale; replete with such incidents as could
scarcely be made intelligible to the nursling of solitude--one difficult
for a father to disclose to his daughter; involving besides a
consideration of his future conduct, to which he did not desire to make
her a party. Thus they talked of the cities they might see, and the
strange sights she would behold, and but once did her father refer to
their own position. After a long silence, on his part sombre and
abstracted--as Prospero asked the ever sweet Miranda, so did Fitzhenry
inquire of his daughter, if she had memory of aught preceding their
residence in the Illinois? And Ethel, as readily as Miranda, replied in
the affirmative.

"And what, my love, do you remember? Gold-laced liveries and spacious
apartments?"

Ethel shook her head. "It may be the memory of a dream that haunts me,"
she replied, "and not a reality; but I have frequently the image before
me, of having been kissed and caressed by a beautiful lady, very richly
dressed."

Fitzhenry actually started at this reply. "I have often conjectured,"
continued Ethel, "that that lovely vision was my dear mother; and that
when--when you lost her, you despised all the rest of the world, and
exiled yourself to America."

Ethel looked inquiringly at her father as she made this leading remark;
but he in a sharp and tremulous accent repeated the words, "Lost her!"

"Yes," said Ethel, "I mean, is she not lost--did she not die?"

Fitzhenry sighed heavily, and turning his head towards the window on his
side, became absorbed in thought, and Ethel feared to disturb him by
continuing the conversation.

It has not been difficult all along for the reader to imagine, that the
lamented brother of the honourable Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry and the
exile of the Illinois are one; and while father and daughter are
proceeding on their way towards New York, it will be necessary, for the
interpretation of the ensuing pages, to dilate somewhat on the previous
history of the father of our lovely heroine.

It may be remembered, that Henry Fitzhenry was the only son of Admiral
Lord Lodore. He was, from infancy, the pride of his father and the idol of
his sister; and the lives of both were devoted to exertions for his
happiness and well-being. The boy soon became aware of their extravagant
fondness, and could not do less in consequence than fancy himself a
person of considerable importance. The distinction that Lord Lodore's
title and residence bestowed upon Longfield made his son and heir a
demigod among the villagers. As he rode through it on his pony, every
one smiled on him and bowed to him; and the habit of regarding himself
superior to all the world, became too much an habit to afford triumph,
though any circumstances that had lessened his consequence in his own
eyes would have been matter of astonishment and indignation. His
personal beauty was the delight of the women, his agility and hardihood
the topic of the men of the village. For although essentially spoiled,
he was not pampered in luxury. His father, with all his fondness, would
have despised him heartily had he not been inured to hardship, and
rendered careless of it. Rousseau might have passed his approbation upon
his physical education, while his moral nurture was the most
perniciously indulgent. Thus, at the same time, his passions were
fostered, and he possessed none of those habits of effeminacy, which
sometimes stand in the gap, preventing our young self-indulged
aristocracy from rebelling against the restraints of society. Still
generous and brave as was his father, benevolent and pious as was his
sister, Henry Fitzhenry was naturally led to love their virtues, and to
seek their approbation by imitating them. He would not wantonly have
inflicted a pang upon a human being; yet he exerted any power he might
possess to quell the smallest resistance to his desires; and unless when
they were manifested in the most intelligible manner, he scarcely knew
that his fellow-creatures had any feelings at all, except pride and
gladness in serving him, and gratitude when he showed them kindness. Any
poor family visited by rough adversity, any unfortunate child enduring
unjust oppression, he assisted earnestly and with all his heart. He was
courageous as a lion, and, upon occasion, soft-hearted and pitiful; but
once roused to anger by opposition, his eyes darted fire, his little
form swelled, his boyish voice grew big, nor could he be pacified except
by the most entire submission on the part of his antagonist.
Unfortunately for him, submission usually followed any stand made
against his authority, for it was always a contest with an inferior, and
he was never brought into wholesome struggle with an equal.

At the age of thirteen he went to Eton, and here every thing wore an
altered and unpleasing aspect. Here were no servile menials nor humble
friends. He stood one among many--equals, superiors, inferiors, all full
of a sense of their own rights, their own powers; he desired to lead,
and he had no followers; he wished to stand aloof, and his dignity, even
his privacy, was perpetually invaded. His schoolfellows soon discovered
his weakness--it became a bye-word among them, and was the object of
such practical jokes, as seemed to the self-idolizing boy, at once
frightful and disgusting. He had no resource. Did he lay his length
under some favourite tree to dream of home and independence, his
tormentors were at hand with some new invention to rouse and molest him.
He fixed his large dark eyes on them, and he curled his lips in scorn,
trying to awe them by haughtiness and frowns, and shouts of laughter
replied to the concentrated passion of his soul. He poured forth
vehement invective, and hootings were the answer. He had one other
resource, and that in the end proved successful:--a pitched battle or
two elevated him in the eyes of his fellows, and as they began to
respect him, so he grew in better humour with them and with himself. His
good-nature procured him friends, and the sun once more shone unclouded
upon him.

Yet this was not all. He put himself foremost among a troop of wild and
uncivilized school-boys; but he was not of them. His tastes, fostered in
solitude, were at once more manly and dangerous than theirs. He could
not distinguish the nice line drawn by the customs of the place between
a pardonable resistance, or rather evasion of authority, and rebellion
against it; and above all, he could not submit to practise equivocation
and deceit. His first contests were with his school-fellows, his next
were with his masters. He would not stoop to shows of humility, nor tame
a nature accustomed to take pride in daring and independence. He
resented injustice wherever he encountered or fancied it; he equally
spurned it when practised on himself, or defended others when they were
its object--freedom was the watchword of his heart. Freedom from all
trammels, except those of which he was wholly unconscious, imposed on
him by his passions and pride. His good-nature led him to side with the
weak; and he was indignant that his mere fiat did not suffice to raise
them to his own level, or that his representations did not serve to open
the eyes of all around him to the true merits of any disputed question.

He had a friend at school. A youth whose slender frame, fair, effeminate
countenance, and gentle habits, rendered him ridiculous to his fellows,
while an unhappy incapacity to learn his allotted tasks made him in
perpetual disgrace with his masters. The boy was unlike the rest; he had
wild fancies and strange inexplicable ideas. He said he was a mystery to
himself--he was at once so wise and foolish. The mere aspect of a
grammar inspired him with horror, and a kind of delirious stupidity
seized him in the classes; and yet he could discourse with eloquence,
and pored with unceasing delight over books of the abstrusest
philosophy. He seemed incapable of feeling the motives and impulses of
other boys: when they jeered him, he would answer gravely with some
story of a ghastly spectre, and tell wild legends of weird beings, who
roamed through the dark fields by night, or sat wailing by the banks of
streams: was he struck, he smiled and turned away; he would not fag; he
never refused to learn, but could not; he was the scoff, and butt, and
victim, of the whole school.

Fitzhenry stood forward in his behalf, and the face of things was
changed. He insisted that his friend should have the same respect paid
him as himself, and the boys left off tormenting him. When they ceased
to injure, they began to like him, and he had soon a set of friends whom
he solaced with his wild stories and mysterious notions. But his
powerful advocate was unable to advance his cause with his masters, and
the cruelty exercised on him revolted Fitzhenry's generous soul. One
day, he stood forth to expostulate, and to show wherefore Derham should
not be punished for a defect, that was not his fault. He was ordered to
be silent, and he retorted the command with fierceness. As he saw the
slender, bending form of his friend seized to be led to punishment, he
sprang forward to rescue him. This open rebellion astounded every one; a
kind of consternation, which feared to show the gladness it felt,
possessed the boyish subjects of the tyro kingdom. Force conquered;
Fitzhenry was led away; and the masters deliberated what sentence to
pass on him. He saved them from coming to a conclusion by flight.

He hid himself during the day in Windsor Forest, and at night he entered
Eton, and scaling a wall, tapped at the bedroom window of his friend.
"Come," said he, "come with me. Leave these tyrants to eat their own
hearts with rage--my home shall be your home."

Derham embraced him, but would not consent. "My mother," he said, "I
have promised my mother to bear all;" and tears gushed from his large
light blue eyes; "but for her, the green grass of this spring were
growing on my grave. I dare not pain her."

"Be it so," said Fitzhenry; "nevertheless, before the end of a month,
you shall be free. I am leaving this wretched place, where men rule
because they are strong, for my father's house. I never yet asked for a
thing that I ought to have, that it was not granted me. I am a boy here,
there I am a man--and can do as men do. Representations shall be made to
your parents; you shall be taken from school; we shall be free and happy
together this summer at Longfield. Good night; I have far to walk, for
the stage coachmen would be shy of me near Eton; but I shall get to
London on foot, and sleep to-morrow in my father's house. Keep up your
heart, Derham, be a man--this shall not last long; we shall triumph
yet."




CHAPTER VI


What is youth? a dancing billow,
Winds behind, and rocks before!

WORDSWORTH.


This exploit terminated Fitzhenry's career at Eton. A private tutor was
engaged, who resided with the family, for the purpose of preparing him
for college, and at the age of seventeen he was entered at Oxford. He
still continued to cultivate the friendship of Derham. This youth was
the younger son of a rich and aristocratic family, whose hopes and cares
centred in their heir, and who cared little for the comfort of the
younger. Derham had been destined for the sea, and scarcely did his
delicate health, and timid, nervous disposition exempt him from the
common fate of a boy, whose parents did not know what to do with him.
The next idea was to place him in the church; and at last, at his
earnest entreaty, he was permitted to go abroad, to study at one of the
German universities, so to prepare himself, by a familiarity with modern
languages, for diplomacy.

It was singular how well Fitzhenry and his sensitive friend agreed;--the
one looked up with unfeigned admiration--the other felt attracted by a
mingled compassion and respect, that flattered his vanity, and yet
served as excitement and amusement. From Derham, Fitzhenry imbibed in
theory much of that contempt of the world's opinion, and carelessness of
consequences, which was inherent in the one, but was an extraneous graft
on the proud and imperious spirit of the other. Derham looked with calm
yet shy superiority on his fellow-creatures. Yet superiority is not the
word, since he did not feel himself superior to, but different
from--incapable of sympathizing or extracting sympathy, he turned away
with a smile, and pursued his lonely path, thronged with visions and
fancies--while his friend, when he met check or rebuff, would fire up,
his eyes sparkling, his bosom heaving with intolerable indignation.

After two years spent at Oxford, instead of remaining to take his
degree, Fitzhenry made an earnest request to be permitted to visit his
friend, who was then at Jena. It was but anticipating the period for his
travels, and upon his promise to pursue his studies abroad, he won a
somewhat reluctant consent from his father. Once on the continent, the
mania of travelling seized him. He visited Italy, Poland, and Russia: he
bent his wayward steps from north to south, as the whim seized him. He
became of age, and his father earnestly desired his return: but again
and again he solicited permission to remain, from autumn till spring,
and from spring till autumn, until the very flower of his youth seemed
destined to be wasted in aimless rambles, and an intercourse with
foreigners, that must tend to unnationalize him, and to render him unfit
for a career in his own country. Growing accustomed to regulate his own
actions, he changed the tone of request into that of announcing his
intentions. At length, he was summoned home to attend the death-bed of
his father. He paid the last duties to his remains, provided for the
comfortable establishment of his sister in the family mansion at
Longfield, and then informed her of his determination of returning
immediately to Vienna.

During this visit he had appeared to live rather in a dream than in the
actual world. He had mourned for his father; he paid the most
affectionate attentions to his sister; but this formed, as it were, the
surface of things; a mightier impulse ruled his inner mind. His life
seemed to depend upon certain letters which he received; and when the
day had been occupied by business, he passed the night in writing
answers. He was often agitated in the highest degree, almost always
abstracted in reverie. The outward man--the case of Lodore was in
England--his passionate and undisciplined soul was far away, evidently in
the keeping of another.

Elizabeth, sorrowing for the loss of her father, was doubly afflicted
when she heard that it was her brother's intention to quit England
immediately. She had fondly hoped that he would, adorned by his
newly-inherited title, and endowed with the gifts of fortune, step upon
the stage of the world, and shine forth the hero of his age and country.
Her affections, her future prospects, her ambition, were all centred in
him; and it was a bitter pang to feel that the glory of these was to be
eclipsed by the obscurity and distant residence which he preferred.
Accustomed to obedience, and to regard the resolutions of the men about
her, as laws with which she had no right to interfere, she did not
remonstrate, she only wept. Moved by her tears, Lord Lodore made the
immense sacrifice of one month to gratify her, which he spent in reading
and writing letters at Longfield, in pacing the rooms or avenues absorbed
in reverie, or in riding over the most solitary districts, with no object
apparently in view, except that of avoiding his fellow-creatures.
Elizabeth had the happiness of seeing the top of his head as he leant
over his desk in the library, from a little hillock in the garden, which
she sought for the purpose of beholding that blessed vision. She enjoyed
also the pleasure of hearing him pace his room during the greater part
of the night. Sometimes he conversed with her, and then how like a god
he seemed! His extensive acquaintance with men and things, the novel but
choice language in which he clothed his ideas; his vivid descriptions,
his melodious voice, and the exquisite grace of his manner, made him
rise like the planet of day upon her. Too soon her sun set. If ever she
hinted at the prolongation of his stay, he grew moody, and she
discovered with tearful anguish that his favourite ride was towards the
sea, often to the very shore: "I seem half free when I only look upon
the waves," he said; "they remind me that the period of liberty is at
hand, when I shall leave this dull land for----"

A sob from his sister checked his speech, and he repented his
ingratitude. Yet when the promised month had elapsed, he did not defer
his journey a single day: already had he engaged his passage at Harwich.
A fair wind favoured his immediate departure. Elizabeth accompanied him
on board, almost she wished to be asked to sail with him. No word but
that of a kind adieu was uttered by him. She returned to shore, and
watched his lessening sail. Wherefore did he leave his native country?
Wherefore return to reside in lands, whose language, manners, and
religion, were all at variance with his own? These questions occupied
the gentle spinster's thoughts; she had little except such meditations
to vary the hours, as years stole on unobserved, and she continued to
spend her blameless tranquil days in her native village.

The new Lord Lodore was one of those men, not unfrequently met with in the
world, whose early youth is replete with mighty promise; who, as they
advance in life, continue to excite the expectation, the curiosity, and
even the enthusiasm of all around them; but as the sun on a stormy day
now and then glimmers forth, giving us hopes of conquering brightness,
and yet slips down to its evening eclipse without redeeming the pledge;
so do these men present every appearance of one day making a conspicuous
figure, and yet to the end, as it were, they only gild the edges of the
clouds in which they hide themselves, and arrive at the term of life,
the promise of its dawn unfulfilled. Passion, and the consequent
engrossing occupations, usurped the place of laudable ambition and
useful exertion. He wasted his nobler energies upon pursuits which were
mysteries to the world, yet which formed the sum of his existence. It
was not that he was destitute of loftier aspirations. Ambition was the
darling growth of his soul--but weeds and parasites, an unregulated and
unpruned overgrowth, twisted itself around the healthier plant, and
threatened its destruction.

Sometimes he appeared among the English in the capital towns of the
continent, and was always welcomed with delight. His manners were highly
engaging, a little reserved with men, unless they were intimates,
attentive to women, and to them a subject of interest, they scarcely
knew why. A mysterious fair one was spoken of as the cynosure of his
destiny, and some desired to discover his secret, while others would
have been glad to break the spell that bound him to this hidden star.
Often for months he disappeared altogether, and was spoken of as having
secluded himself in some unattainable district of northern Germany,
Poland, or Courland. Yet all these erratic movements were certainly
governed by one law, and that was love;--love unchangeable and intense,
else wherefore was he cold to the attractions of his fair countrywomen?
And why, though he gazed with admiration and interest on the families of
lovely girls, whose successive visitations on the continent strike the
natives with such wonder, why did he not select some distinguished
beauty, with blue eyes, and auburn locks, as the object of his exclusive
admiration? He had often conversed with such with seeming delight; but
he could withdraw from the fascination unharmed and free. Sometimes a
very kind and agreeable mamma contrived half to domesticate him; but
after lounging, and turning over music-books, and teaching steps for a
week, he was gone--a farewell card probably the only token of regret.

Yet he was universally liked, and the ladies were never weary of
auguring the time to be not far off, when he would desire to break the
chains that bound him;--and then--he must marry. He was so quiet, so
domestic, so gentle, that he would make, doubtless, a kind and
affectionate husband. Among Englishmen, he had a friend or two, by
courtesy so called, who were eager for him to return to his native
country, and to enter upon public life. He lent a willing ear to these
persuasions, and appeared annoyed at some secret necessity that
prevented his yielding to them. Once or twice he had said, that his
present mode of life should not last for ever, and that he would come
among them at no distant day. And yet years stole on, and mystery and
obscurity clouded him. He grew grave, almost sombre, and then almost
discontented. Any one habituated to him might have discovered struggles
beneath the additional seriousness of his demeanour--struggles that
promised final emancipation from his long-drawn thraldom.




CHAPTER VII


Men oftentimes prepare a lot,
Which ere it finds them, is not what
Suits with their genuine station.

SHELLEY.


At the age of thirty-two, Lord Lodore returned to England. It was subject
of discussion among his friends, whether this was to be a merely temporary
visit, or whether he was about to establish himself finally in his own
country. Meanwhile, he became the lion of the day. As the reputed slave
of the fair sex, he found favour in their gentle eyes. Even blooming
fifteen saw all that was romantic and winning in his subdued and
graceful manners, and in the melancholy which dwelt in his dark eyes.
The chief fault found with him was, that he was rather taciturn, and
that, from whatever cause, woman had apparently ceased to influence his
soul to love. He avoided intimacies among them, and seemed to regard
them from afar, with observant but passionless eyes. Some spoke of a
spent volcano--others of a fertile valley ravaged by storms, and turned
into a desert; while many cherished the hope of renewing the flame, or
of replanting flowers on the arid soil.

Lord Lodore had just emancipated himself from an influence, which had
become the most grievous slavery, from the moment it had ceased to be a
voluntary servitude. He had broken the ties that had so long held him;
but this had not been done without such difficulties and struggles, as
made freedom less delightful, from the languor and regret that
accompanied victory. Lodore had formed but one resolve, which was not to
entangle himself again in unlawful pursuits, where the better energies
of his mind were to be spent in forging deceptions, and tranquillizing
the mind of a jealous and unhappy woman. He entertained a vague wish to
marry, and to marry one whom his judgment, rather than his love, should
select;--an unwise purpose, good in theory, but very defective in
practice. Besides this new idea of marrying, which he buried as a
profound secret in his own bosom, he wished to accustom himself to the
manners and customs of his own country, so as to enable him to enter
upon public life. He was fond of the country in England, and entered
with zeal upon the pleasures of the chace. He liked the life led at the
seats of the great, and endeavoured to do his part in amusing those
around him.

Yet he did not feel one of them. Above all, he did not feel within him
the charm of life, the glad spirit that looks on each returning day as a
blessing; and which, gilding every common object with its own
brightness, requires no lustre unborrowed from itself. All things palled
upon Lodore. The light laughter and gentle voices of women were vacant of
attraction; his sympathy was not excited by the discussions or pursuits
of men. After striving for a whole year to awaken in himself an interest
for some one person or thing, and finding all to be "vanity,"--towards
the close of a season in town, of extreme brilliancy and variety to
common eyes--of dulness and sameness to his morbid sense, he suddenly
withdrew himself from the haunts of men, and plunging into solitude,
tried to renovate his soul by self-communings, and an intercourse with
silent, but most eloquent, Nature.

Youth wasted; affections sown on sand, barren of return; wealth and
station flung as weeds upon the rocks; a name, whose "gold" was
"o'erdusted" by the inertness of its wearer;--such were the
retrospections that haunted his troubled mind. He envied the ploughboy,
who whistled as he went; and the laborious cottager, who each Saturday
bestowed upon his family the hard-won and scanty earnings of the week.
He pined for an aim in life--a bourne--a necessity, to give zest to his
palled appetite, and excitement to his satiated soul. It seemed to him
that he could hail poverty and care as blessings; and that the dearest
gifts of fortune--youth, health, rank, and riches--were disguised
curses. All these he possessed, and despised. Gnawing discontent;
energy, rebuked and tamed into mere disquietude, for want of a proper
object, preyed upon his soul. Where could a remedy be found? No "green
spot" of delight soothed his memory; no cheering prospect appeared in
view; all was arid, gloomy, unsunned upon.

He had wandered into Wales. He was charmed with the scenery and solitude
about Rhyaider Gowy, in Radnorshire, which lies amidst romantic
mountains, and in immediate vicinity to a cataract of the Wye. He fixed
himself for some months in a convenient mansion, which he found to let,
at a few miles from that place. Here he was secure from unwelcome
visitors, or any communication with the throng he had left. He
corresponded with no one, read no newspapers. He passed his day,
loitering beside waterfalls, clambering the steep mountains, or making
longer excursions on horseback, always directing his course away from
high roads or towns. His past life had been sufficiently interesting to
afford scope for reverie; and as he watched the sunbeams as they climbed
the hills at evening, or the shadows of the clouds as they careered
across the valleys, his heart by turns mourned or rejoiced over its
freedom, and the change that had come over it and stilled its warring
passions.

The only circumstance that in the least entrenched upon his feeling of
entire seclusion, was the mention, not unfrequently made to him, by his
servants, of the "ladies at the farm." The idea of these "ladies" at
first annoyed him; but the humble habitation which they had
chosen--humble to poverty--impressed him with the belief that, however
the "ladies" might awe-strike the Welsh peasantry, he should find in
them nothing that would impress him with the idea of station. Two or
three times, at the distant sight of a bonnet, instead of the Welsh hat,
he had altered his course to avoid the wearer. Once he had suddenly come
on one of these wonders of the mountains: she might have passed for a
very civilized kind of abigail; but, of course, she was one of the
"ladies."

As Lodore was neither a poet nor a student, he began at last to tire of
loneliness. He was a little ashamed when he remembered that he had taken
his present abode for a year: however, he satisfied his conscience by a
resolve to return to it; and began seriously to plan crossing the
country, to visit his sister in Essex. He was, during one of his rides,
deliberating on putting this resolve into execution on the very next
morning, when suddenly he was overtaken by a storm. The valley, through
which his path wound, was narrow, and the gathering clouds over head
made it dark as night; the lightning flashed with peculiar brightness;
and the thunder, loud and bellowing, was re-echoed by the hills, and
reverberated along the sky in terrific pealings. It was more like a
continental storm than any which Lodore had ever witnessed in England,
and imparted to him a sensation of thrilling pleasure; till, as the rain
came down in torrents, he began to think of seeking some shelter, at
least for his horse. Looking round for this, he all at once perceived a
vision of white muslin beneath a ledge of rock, which could but half
protect the gentle wearer: frightened she was, too, as a slight shriek
testified, when a bright flash, succeeded instantaneously by a loud peal
of thunder, bespoke the presence of something like danger. Lodore's
habitual tenderness of nature rendered it no second thought with him to
alight and offer his services; and he was fully repaid when he saw her,
who hailed with gladness a protector, though too frightened to smile, or
scarcely to speak. She was very young, and more beautiful, Lodore was at
once assured, than any thing he had ever before beheld. Her fairness,
increased by the paleness of terror, was even snowy; her hair, scarcely
dark enough for chesnut, too dark for auburn, clustered in rich curls on
her brow; her eyes were dark grey, long, and full of expression, as they
beamed from beneath their deeply-fringed lids. But such description says
little; it was not the form of eye or the brow's arch, correct and
beautiful as these were, in this lovely girl, that imparted her peculiar
attraction; beyond these, there was a radiance, a softness, an angel
look, that rendered her countenance singular in its fascination; an
expression of innocence and sweetness; a pleading gentleness that
desired protection; a glance that subdued, because it renounced all
victory; and this, now animated by fear, quickly excited, in Lodore, the
most ardent desire to re-assure and serve her. She leant, as she stood,
against the rock--now hiding her face with her hands--now turning her
eyes to her stranger companion, as if in appeal or disbelief; while he
again and again protested that there was no danger, and strove to guard
her from the rain, which still descended with violence. The thunder died
away, and the lightning soon ceased to flash, but this continued; and
while the colour revisited the young girl's cheek, and her smiles,
displaying a thousand dimples, lighted up new charms, a fresh uneasiness
sprung up in her of how she could get home. Her _chaussure_, ill-fitted
even for the mountains, could not protect her for a moment from the wet.
Lodore offered his horse, and pledged himself for its quietness, and his
care, if she could contrive to sit in the saddle. He lifted her light
form on to it; but the high-bred animal, beginning a little to prance,
she threw herself off into the arms of her new friend, in a transport of
terror, which Lodore could by no means assuage. What was to be done? He
felt, light as she was, that he could carry her the short half-mile to
her home; but this could not be offered. The rain was now over; and her
only resource was to brave the humid soil in kid slippers. With
considerable difficulty, half the journey was accomplished, when they
met the "lady" whom Lodore had before seen;--really the maid in
attendance, who had come out to seek her young mistress, and to declare
that "my lady" was beside herself with anxiety on her account.

Lodore still insisted on conducting his young charge to her home; and the
next day it was but matter of politeness to call to express his hope that
she had not suffered from her exposure to the weather. He found the lovely
girl, fresh as the morning, with looks all light and sweetness, seated
besides her mother, a lady whose appearance was not so prepossessing,
though adorned with more than the remains of beauty. She at once struck
Lodore as disagreeable and forbidding. Still she was cordial in her
welcome, grateful for his kindness, and so perfectly engrossed by the
thought of, and love for, her child, that Lodore felt his respect and
interest awakened.

An acquaintance, thus begun between the noble recluse and the "ladies of
the farm," proceeded prosperously. A month ago, would not have believed
that he should feel glad at finding two fair off-shoots of London
fashion dwelling so near his retreat; but even if solitude had not
rendered him tolerant, the loveliness of the daughter might well perform
a greater miracle. In the mother, he found good breeding, good nature,
and good sense. He soon became almost domesticated in their rustic
habitation.

Lady Santerre was of humble birth, the daughter of a solicitor of a
country town. She was handsome, and won the heart of Mr. Santerre, then
a minor, who was assisted by her father in the laudable endeavour to
obtain more money than his father allowed him. The young gentleman saw,
loved, and married. His parents were furiously angry, and tried to
illegalize the match; but he confirmed it when he came of age, and a
reconciliation with his family never took place. Mr. Santerre sold
reversions, turned expectations into money, and lived in the world. For
six years, his wife bloomed in the gay parterre of fashionable society,
when her husband's father died. Prosperity was to dawn on this event:
the new Sir John went down to attend his father's funeral; thence to
return to town, to be immersed in recoveries, settlements, and law. He
never returned. Riding across the country to a neighbour, his horse
shyed, reared, and threw him. His head struck against a fragment of
stone: a concussion of the brain ensued; and a fortnight afterwards, he
was enclosed beside his father, in the ancestral vault.

His widow was the mother of a daughter only; and her hopes and prospects
died with her husband. His brother, and heir, might have treated her
better in the sequel; but he was excessively irritated by the variety of
debts, and incumbrances, and lawsuits, he had to deal with. He chose to
consider the wife most to blame, and she and her child were treated as
aliens. He allowed them two hundred a year, and called himself generous.
This was all (for her father was not rich, and had a large family) that
poor Lady Santerre had to depend upon. She struggled on for some little
time, trying to keep up her connexions in the gay world; but poverty is
a tyrant, whose laws are more terrible than those of Draco. Lady
Santerre yielded, retired to Bath, and fixed her hopes on her daughter,
whom she resolved should hereafter make a splendid match. Her excessive
beauty promised to render this scheme feasible; and now that she was
nearly sixteen, her mother began to look forward anxiously. She had
retired to Wales this summer, that, by living with yet stricter economy,
she might be enabled, during the winter, to put her plans into execution
with greater ease.

Lord Lodore became intimate with the mother and daughter, and his
imagination speedily painted both in the most attractive colours. Here was
the very being his heart had pined for--a girl radiant in innocence and
youth, the nursling, so he fancied, of mountains, waterfalls, and solitude;
yet endowed with all the softness and refinement of civilized society. Long
forgotten emotions awoke in his heart, and he gave himself up to the
bewildering feelings that beset him. Every thing was calculated to
excite his interest. The desolate situation of the mother, devoted to
her daughter only, and that daughter fairer than imagination could
paint, young, gentle, blameless, knowing nothing beyond obedience to her
parent, and untaught in the guile of mankind. It was impossible to see
that intelligent and sweet face, and not feel that to be the first to
impress love in the heart which it mirrored, was a destiny which angles
might envy. How proud a part was his, to gift her with rank, fortune,
and all earthly blessings, and to receive in return, gratitude,
tenderness, and unquestioning submission! If love did not, as thus he
reasoned, show itself in the tyrant guise it had formerly assumed in the
heart of Lodore, it was the more welcome a guest. It spoke not of the
miseries of passion, but offered a bright view of lengthened days of
peace and contentedness. He was not a slave at the feet of his mistress,
but he could watch each gesture and catch each sound of her voice, and
say, goodness and beauty are there, and I shall be happy.

He found the lovely girl somewhat ignorant; but white paper to be
written upon at will, is a favourite metaphor among those men who have
described the ideal of a wife. That she had talent beyond what he had
usually found in women, he was delighted to remark. At first she was
reserved and shy. Little accustomed to society, she sat beside her
mother in something of a company attitude; her eyes cast down, her lips
closed. She was never to be found alone, and a _jeune personne_ in France
could scarcely be more retired and tranquil. This accorded better with
Lodore's continental experience, than the ease of English fashionable
girls, and he was pleased. He conversed little with Cornelia until he had
formed his determination, and solicited her mother's consent to their
union. Then they were allowed to walk together, and she gained on him,
as their intimacy increased. She was very lively, witty, and full of
playful fancy. Aware of her own deficiencies in education, she was the
first to laugh at herself, and to make such remarks as showed an
understanding worth all the accomplishments in the world. Lodore now
really found himself in love, and blessed the day that led him from
among the fair daughters of fashion to this child of nature. His wayward
feelings were to change no more--his destiny was fixed. At thirty-four
to marry, to settle into the father of a family, his hopes and wishes
concentrated in a home, adorned by one whose beauty was that of angels,
was a prospect that he dwelt upon each day with renewed satisfaction.
Nothing in after years could disturb his felicity, and the very security
with which he contemplated the future, imparted a calm delight, at once
new and grateful to a heart, weary of storms and struggles, and which,
in finding peace, believed that it possessed the consummation of human
happiness.




CHAPTER VIII


Hopes, what are they? beads of morning
Strung on slender blades of grass,
Or a spider's web adorning,
In a strait and treacherous pass.

WORDSWORTH.


The months of July, August, and September had passed away. Lord Lodore
enjoyed, during the two last, a singularly complacent state of mind. He had
come to Wales with worn-out spirits, a victim to that darker species of
_ennui_, which colours with gloomy tints the future as well as the
present, and is the ministering angel of evil to the rich and
prosperous. He despised himself, contemned his pursuits, and called all
vanity beneath the vivifying sun of heaven. Real misfortunes have worn
the guise of blessings to men so afflicted, but he was withdrawn from
this position, by a being who wore the outward semblance of an angel,
and from whom he felt assured nothing but good could flow.

Cornelia Santerre was lovely, vivacious, witty, and good-humoured; yet
strange to say, her new lover was not rendered happy so much by the
presence of these qualities, as by the promise which they gave for the
future. He loved her; he believed that she would be to the end of his
life a blessing and a delight; yet passion was scarcely roused in his
heart; it was "a sober certainty of waking bliss," and a reasonable
belief in the continuance of this state, that made him, while he loved
her, regard her rather as a benefactress than a mistress.

Benefactress is a strange word to use, especially as her extreme youth
was probably the cause that more intimate sympathies did not unite them,
and why passion entered so slightly into their intercourse. It is
possible, so great was the discrepancy of their age, and consequently of
their feelings and views of life, that Lodore would never have thought of
marrying Cornelia, but that Lady Santerre was at hand to direct the
machinery of the drama. She inspired him with the wish to gift her
angelic child with the worldly advantages which his wife must possess;
to play a god-like part, and to lift into prosperity and happiness, one
who seemed destined by fortune to struggle with adversity. Lady Santerre
was a worldly woman and an oily flatterer; Lodore had been accustomed to
feminine controul, and he yielded with docility to her silken fetters.

The ninth of October was Cornelia's sixteenth birthday, and on it she
became the wife of Lord Lodore. This event took place in the parish church
of Rhyaider Gowy, and it was communicated to "the world" in the newspapers.
Many discussions then arose as to who Miss Santerre could be. "The only
daughter of the late Sir John." The only late Sir John Santerre
remembered, was, in fact, the grandfather of the bride, and the hiatus
in her genealogy, caused by her father's death before he had been known
as a baronet, puzzled every fashionable gossip. The whole affair,
however, had been forgotten, when curiosity was again awakened in the
ensuing month of March, by an announcement in the Morning Post, of the
arrival of the noble pair at Mivart's. Lord Lodore had always rented a
box at the King's Theatre. It had been newly decorated at the beginning
of the season, and on the first Saturday in April all eyes turned
towards it as he entered, having the loveliest, fairest, and most
sylph-like girl, that ever trod dark earth, leaning on his arm. There
was a child-like innocence, a fascinating simplicity, joined to an
expression of vivacity and happiness, in Lady Lodore's countenance,
which impressed at first sight, as being the completion of feminine
beauty. She looked as if no time could touch, no ill stain her; artless
affection and amiable dependence spoke in each graceful gesture. Others
might be beautiful, but there was that in her, which seemed allied to
celestial loveliness.

Such was the prize Lord Lodore had won. The new-married pair took up their
residence in Berkeley-square, and here Lady Santerre joined them, and
took possession of the apartments appropriated to her use, under her
daughter's roof. All appeared bright on the outside, and each seemed
happy in each other. Yet had any one cared to remark, they had perceived
that Lodore looked even more abstracted than before his marriage. They
had seen, that, in the domestic _coterie_, mother and daughter were
familiar friends, sharing each thought and wish, but that Lodore was one
apart, banished, or exiling himself from the dearest blessings of
friendship and love. There might be no concealment, but also there was
no frankness between the pair. Neither practised disguise, but
there was no outpouring of the heart--no "touch of nature,"
which, passing like an electric shock, made their souls one.
An insurmountable barrier stood between Lodore and his happiness--between
his love and his wife's confidence; that this obstacle was a
shadow--undefined--formless--nothing--yet every thing, made it trebly
hateful, and rendered it utterly impossible that it should be removed.

The magician who had raised this ominous phantom, was Lady Santerre. She
was a clever though uneducated woman: perfectly selfish, soured with the
world, yet clinging to it. To make good her second entrance on its
stage, she believed it necessary to preserve unlimited sway over the
plastic mind of her daughter. If she had acted with integrity, her end
had been equally well secured; but unfortunately, she was by nature
framed to prefer the zig-zag to the straight line; added to which, she
was imperious, and could not bear a rival near her throne. From the
first, therefore, she exerted herself to secure her empire over
Cornelia; she spared neither flattery nor artifice; and, well acquainted
as she was with every habit and turn of her daughter's mind, her task
was comparatively easy.

The fair girl had been brought up (ah! how different from the sentiments
which Lodore had thought to find the natural inheritance of the mountain
child!) to view society as the glass by which she was to set her
feelings, and to which to adapt her conduct. She was ignorant,
accustomed to the most frivolous employments, shrinking from any mental
exercise, so that although her natural abilities were great, they lay
dormant, producing neither bud nor blossom, unless such might be called
the elegance of her appearance, and the charm of the softest and most
ingenuous manners in the world. When her husband would have educated her
mind, and withdrawn her from the dangers of dissipation, she looked on
his conduct as tyrannical and cruel. She retreated from his manly
guidance, to the pernicious guardianship of Lady Santerre, and she
sheltered herself at her side, from any effort Lodore might make for her
improvement.

Those who have never experienced a situation of this kind, cannot
understand it; the details appear trivial: there seems wanting but one
effort to push away the flimsy web, which, after all, is rather an
imaginary than real bondage. But the slightest description will bring it
home to those who have known it, and groaned beneath a despotism the more
intolerable, as it could be less defined. Lord Lodore found that he had no
home, no dear single-hearted bosom where he could find sympathy and to
which to impart pleasure. When he entered his drawing-room with gaiety
of spirit to impart some agreeable tidings, to ask his wife's advice, or
to propose some plan, Lady Santerre was ever by her side, with her hard
features and canting falsetto voice, checking at once the kindling
kindness of his soul, and he felt that all that he should say would be
turned from its right road, by some insidious remark, and the words he
was about to speak died upon his lips. When he looked forward through
the day, and would have given the world to have had his wife to himself,
and to have sought, in some drive or excursion, for the pleasant
unreserved converse he sighed for, Lady Santerre must be consulted; and
though she never opposed him, she always carried her point in opposition
to his. His wishes were made light of, and he was left to amuse himself,
and to know that his wife was imbibing the lessons of one, whom he had
learnt to despise and hate.

Lord Lodore cherished an ideal of what he thought a woman ought to be; but
he had no lofty opinion of woman as he had usually found her. He had
believed that the germ of all the excellencies which he esteemed was to
be found in Cornelia, and he found himself mistaken. He had expected to
find truth, clearness of spirit, and complying gentleness, the adorning
qualities of the unsophisticated girl, and he found her the willing
disciple of one whose selfish and artful character was in direct
contradiction to his own. Once or twice at the beginning, he had
attempted to withdraw his wife from this sinister influence, but Lady
Lodore highly resented any effort of this kind, and saw in it an
endeavour to make her neglect her first and dearest duties. Lodore,
angry that the wishes of another should be preferred to his, drew back
with disappointed pride; he disdained to enforce by authority, that
which he thought ought to be yielded to love. The bitter sense of
wounded affections was not to be appeased by knowing that, if he chose,
he could command that, which was worthless in his eyes, except as a
voluntary gift.

And here his error began; he had married one so young, that her
education, even if its foundation had been good, required finishing, and
who as it was, had every thing to learn. During the days of courtship he
had looked forward with pleasure to playing the tutor to his fair
mistress: but a tutor can do nothing without authority, either open or
concealed--a tutor must sacrifice his own pursuits and immediate
pleasures, to study and adapt himself to the disposition of his pupil.
As has been said of those who would acquire power in the state--they
must in some degree follow, if they would lead, and it is by adapting
themselves to the humour of those they would command, that they
establish the law of their own will, or of an apparent necessity. But
Lodore understood nothing of all this. He had been accustomed to be managed
by his mistress; he had been yielding, but it was because she contrived to
make his will her own; otherwise he was imperious: opposition startled
and disconcerted him, and he saw heartlessness in the want of
accommodation and compliance he met at home. He had expected from
Cornelia a girl's clinging fondness, but that was given to her mother;
nor did she feel the womanly tenderness, which sees in her husband the
safeguard from the ills of life, the shield to stand between her and the
world, to ward off its cruelties; a shelter from adversity, a refuge
when tempests were abroad. How could she feel this, who, proud in youth
and triumphant beauty, knew nothing of, and disbelieved the tales which
sages and old women tell of the perils of life? The world looked to her
a velvet strewn walk, canopied from every storm--her husband alone, who
endeavoured to reveal the reality of things to her, and to disturb her
visions, was the source of any sorrow or discomfort. She was buoyed up
by the supercilious arrogance of youth; and while inexperience rendered
her incapable of entering into the feelings of her husband, she
displayed towards him none of that deference, and yielding submission,
which might reasonably have been expected from her youth, but that her
mother was there to claim them for herself, and to inculcate, as far as
she could, that while she was her natural friend, Lodore was her natural
enemy.

He, with strong pride and crushed affections, gave himself up for a
disappointed man. He disdained to struggle with the sinister influence
of his mother-in-law; he did not endeavour to discipline and invigorate
the facile disposition of his bride. He had expected devotion,
attention, love; and he scorned to complain or to war against the
estrangement that grew up between them. If at any time he was impelled
by an overflowing heart to seek his fair wife's side, the eternal
presence of Lady Santerre chilled him at once; and to withdraw her from
this was a task difficult indeed to one who could not forgive the
competition admitted between them. At first he made one or two
endeavours to separate them; but the reception his efforts met with
galled his haughty soul; and while he cherished a deep and passionate
hatred for the cause, he grew to despise the victim of her arts. He
thought that he perceived duplicity, low-thoughted pride, and coldness
of heart, the native growth of the daughter of such a mother. He yielded
her up at once to the world and her parent, and resolved to seek, not
happiness, but occupation elsewhere. He felt the wound deeply, but he
sought no cure; and pride taught him to mask his soreness of spirit by a
studied mildness of manner, which, being joined to cold indifference,
and frequent contradiction, soon begot a considerable degree of
resentment, and even dislike on her part. Her mother's well-applied
flatteries and the adulation of her friends were contrasted with his
half-disguised contempt. The system of society tended to increase their
mutual estrangement. She embarked at once on the stream of fashion; and
her whole time was given up to the engagements and amusements that
flowed in on her on all sides; while he--one other regret added to many
previous ones--one other disappointment in addition to those which
already corroded his heart--bade adieu to every hope of domestic
felicity, and tried to create new interests for himself, seeking, in
public affairs, for food for a mind eager for excitement.




CHAPTER IX


What are fears, but voices airy
Whisp'ring harm, where harm is not?
And deluding the unwary.
Till the fatal bolt is shot?

WORDSWORTH.


Lord Lodore was disgusted at the very threshold of his new purpose. His
long residence abroad prevented his ever acquiring the habit of public
speaking; nor had he the respect for human nature, nor the enthusiasm
for a party or a cause, which is necessary for one who would make a
figure as a statesman. His sensitive disposition, his pride, which, when
excited, verged into arrogance; his uncompromising integrity, his
disdain of most of his associates, his incapacity of yielding obedience,
rendered his short political career one of struggle and mortification.
"And this is life!" he said; "abroad, to mingle with the senseless and
the vulgar; and at home, to find a--wife, who prefers the admiration of
fools, to the love of an honest heart!"

Within a year after her marriage, Lady Lodore gave birth to a daughter.
This circumstance, which naturally tends to draw the parents nearer,
unfortunately in this instance set them further apart. Lady Santerre had
been near, with so many restrictions and so much interference, which
though probably necessary, considering Cornelia's extreme youth, yet
seemed vexatious and impertinent to Lodore. All things appeared to be
permitted, except those which he proposed. A drive, a ride, even a walk
with him, was to be considered fatal; while, at the same time, Lady
Lodore was spending whole nights in heated rooms, and even dancing. Her
confinement was followed by a long illness; the child was nursed by a
stranger, secluded in a distant part of the house; and during her slow
recovery, the young mother seemed scarcely to remember that it existed.
The love for children is a passion often developed most fully in the
second stage of life. Lodore idolized his little offspring, and felt
hurt and angry when his wife, after it had been in her room a minute or
two, on the first approach it made to a squall, ordered it to be taken
away. At the time, in truth, she was reduced to the lowest ebb of
weakness; but Lodore, as men are apt to do, was slow to discern her
physical suffering, while his cheeks burnt with indignation, as she
peevishly repeated the command that his child should go.

When she grew better this was not mended. She was ordered into the
country for air, at a time when the little girl was suffering from some
infantine disorder, and could not be moved. It was left with its nurses,
but Lodore remained also, and rather suffered his wife to travel without
him, so to demonstrate openly, that he thought her treatment of her baby
unmotherly; not that he expressed this sentiment, nor did Lady Lodore
guess at it; she saw only his usual spirit of contradiction and neglect,
in his desertion of her at this period.

The mother pressed with careless lips the downy cheek of the little
cherub, and departed; while Lodore passed most of his time in the child's
apartment, or, turning his library into a nursery, it was continually
with him there. "Here," he thought, "I have something to live for,
something to love. And even though I am not loved in return, my heart's
sacrifice will not be repaid with insolence and contempt." But when the
infant began to show tokens of recognition and affection, when it smiled
and stretched out its little hands on seeing him, and crowed with
innocent pleasure; and still more, when the lisped paternal name fell
from its roseate lips--the father repeated more emphatically, "Here is
something that makes it worth while to have been born--to live!" An
illness of the child overwhelmed him with anxiety and despair. She
recovered; and he thanked God, with a lively emotion of joy, to which he
had long been a stranger.

His affection for his child augmented the annoyance which he derived
from his domestic circle. He had been hitherto sullenly yielding on any
contest; but whatever whim, or whatever plan, he formed with regard to
his daughter, he abided by unmoved, and took pleasure in manifesting his
partiality for her. Lodore was by nature a man of violent and dangerous
passions, add to which, his temper was susceptible to irritability. He
disdained to cope with the undue influence exercised by Lady Santerre
over his wife. He beheld in the latter, a frivolous, childish puppet,
endowed with the usual feminine infirmities--


"The love of pleasure, and the love of sway;"


and destitute of that tact and tenderness of nature which should teach
her where to yield and how to reign. He left her therefore to her own
devices, resolved only that he would not give up a single point relative
to his child, and consequently, according to the weakness of human
nature, ever ready to find fault with and prohibit all her wishes on the
subject.

Cornelia, accustomed to be guided by her mother's watchful artifices,
and to submit to a tyranny which assumed the guise of servitude, felt
only with the feelings implanted by her parent. She was not, like Lady
Santerre, heartless; but cherished pride, the effect of perpetual
misrepresentation, painted her as such. She looked on her husband as a
man essentially selfish--one who, worn out by passion, had married her
to beguile his hours during a visitation of _ennui_, and incapable of the
softness of love or the kindness of friendship. On occasion of his new
conduct with regard to her child, her haughty soul was in arms against
him, and something almost akin to hatred sprung up within her. She
resented his interference; she believed that his object was to deprive
her of the consolation of her daughter's love, and that his chief aim
was to annoy and insult her. She was jealous of her daughter with her
husband, of her husband with her daughter. If by some chance a word or
look passed that might have softened the mutual sentiment of distrust,
the evil genius of the scene was there to freeze again the genial
current; and any approach to kindness, by an inexplicable but certain
result, only tended to place them further apart than before.

Three winters had passed since their marriage, and the third spring was
merging into summer, while they continued in this state of warlike
neutrality. Any slight incident might have destroyed the fictitious
barriers erected by ill-will and guile between them; or, so precarious
was their state, any new event might change petty disagreements into
violent resentment, and prevent their ever entertaining towards each
other those feelings which, but for one fatal influence, would naturally
have had root between them. The third summer was come. They were
spending the commencement of it in London, when circumstances occurred,
unanticipated by either, which changed materially the course of their
domestic arrangements.

Lord Lodore returned home one evening at a little after eleven, from a
dinner-party, and found, as usual, his drawing-room deserted--Lady
Lodore had gone to a ball. He had returned in that humour to moralize,
which we so often bring from society into solitude; and he paced the
empty apartments with impatient step. "Home!--yes, this is my home! I
had hoped that gentle peace and smiling love would be its inmates, that
returning as now, from those who excite my spleen and contempt, one eye
would have lighted up to welcome me, a dear voice have thanked me for my
return. Home! a Tartar beneath his tent--a wild Indian in his hut, may
speak of home--I have none. Where shall I spend the rest of this dull,
deserted evening?"--for it may be supposed that, sharing London habits,
eleven o'clock was to him but an evening hour.

He went into his dressing-room, and casting his eyes on the table, a
revulsion came over him, a sudden shock--for there lay a vision, which
made his breath come thick, and caused the blood to recede to his
heart--a like vision has had the same effect on many, though it took but
the unobtrusive form of a little note--a note, whose fold, whose seal,
whose superscription, were all once so familiar, and now so strange.
Time sensibly rolled back; each event of the last few years was broken
off, as it were, from his life, leaving it as it had been ten years ago.
He seized the note, and then threw it from him. "It is a mere mistake,"
he said aloud, while he felt, even to the marrow of his bones, the
thrill and shudder as of an occurrence beyond the bounds of nature. Yet
still the note lay there, and half as if to undeceive himself, and to
set witchcraft at nought, he again took it up--this time in a less
agitated mood, so that when the well-known impression of a little
foreign coronet on the seal met his eye, he became aware that however
unexpected such a sight might be, it was in the moral course of things,
and he hastily tore open the epistle: it was written in French, and was
very concise. "I arrived in town last night," the writer said; "I and my
son are about to join my husband in Paris. I hear that you are married;
I hope to see you and your lady before I leave London."

After reading these few lines, Lord Lodore remained for a considerable time
lost in thought. He tried to consider what he should do, but his ideas
wandered, as they sadly traced the past, and pictured to him the
present. Never did life appear so vain, so contemptible, so odious a
thing as now, that he was reminded of the passions and sufferings of
former days, which, strewed at his feet like broken glass, might still
wound him, though their charm and their delight could never be renewed.
He did not go out that night; indeed it seemed as if but a minute had
passed, when, lo! morning was pouring her golden summer beams into his
room--when Lady Lodore's carriage drove up; and early sounds in the
streets told him that night was gone and the morrow come.

That same day Lord Lodore requested Cornelia to call with him on a Polish
lady of rank, with whom he had formerly been acquainted, to whom he was
under obligations. They went. And what Lodore felt when he stood with his
lovely wife before her, who for many by-gone years had commanded his
fate, had wound him to her will, through the force of love and woman's
wiles--who he knew could read every latent sentiment of his soul, and
yet towards whom he was resolved now, and for ever in future, to adopt
the reserved manners of a mere acquaintance--what of tremor or pain all
this brought to Lodore's bosom was veiled, at least beyond Cornelia's
penetration, who seldom truly observed him, and who was now occupied by
her new acquaintance.

The lady had passed the bloom of youth, and even mid life; she was
verging on fifty, but she had every appearance of having been
transcendently beautiful. Her dark full oriental eyes still gleamed from
beneath her finely-arched brows, and her black hair, untinged by any
grizzly change, was gathered round her head in such tresses as bespoke
an admirable profusion. Her person was tall and commanding: her manners
were singular, for she mingled so strangely, stateliness and affability,
disdain and sweetness, that she seemed like a princess dispensing the
favour of her smile, or the terror of her frown on her submissive
subjects; her sweetest smiles were for Cornelia, who yet turned from her
to another object, who attracted her more peculiar attention. It was her
son; a youth inheriting all his mother's beauty, added to the
fascination of early manhood, and a frank and ingenuous address, which
his parent could never have possessed.

The party separated, apparently well pleased with each other. Lady Lodore
offered her services, which were frankly accepted; and after an hour
spent together, they appointed to meet again the next day, when the
ladies should drive out together to shop and see sights.

They became not exactly intimate, yet upon familiar terms. There was a
dignity and even a constraint in the Countess Lyzinski's manner that was
a bar to cordiality; but they met daily, and Lady Lodore introduced her new
friend everywhere. The Countess said that motives of curiosity had
induced her to take this country in her way to Paris. Her wealth was
immense, and her rank among the first in her own country. The Russian
ambassador treated her with distinction, so that she gained facile and
agreeable entrance into the highest society. The young Count Casimir was
an universal favourite, but his dearest pleasure was to attend upon Lady
Lodore, who readily offered to school him on his entrance into the
English world. They were pretty exactly the same age; Casimir was
somewhat the junior, yet he looked the elder, while the lady, accustomed
to greater independence, took the lead in their intercourse, and acted
the monitress to her docile scholar.

Lord Lodore looked on, or took a part, in what was passing around him, with
a caprice perfectly unintelligible. With the Countess he was always gentle
and obliging, but reserved. While she treated him with a coldness
resembling disdain, yet whose chiefest demonstration was silence. Lodore
never altered towards her; it was with regard to her son that he
displayed his susceptible temper. He took pains to procure for him every
proper acquaintance; he was forward in directing him; he watched over
his mode of passing his time, he appeared to be interested in every
thing he did, and yet to hate him. His demeanour towards him was morose,
almost insulting. Lodore, usually so forbearing and courteous, would
contradict and silence him, as if he had been a child or a menial. It
required all Casimir's deference for one considerably his senior, to
prevent him from resenting openly this style of treatment; it required
all the fascination of Lady Lodore to persuade him to encounter it a
second time. Once he had complained to her, and she remonstrated with
her husband. His answer was to reprimand her for listening to the
impertinence of the stripling. She coloured angrily, but did not reply.
Cold and polite to each other, the noble pair were not in the habit of
disputing. Lady Santerre guarded against that. Any thing as familiar as
a quarrel might have produced a reconciliation, and with that a better
understanding of each other's real disposition. The disdain that rose in
Cornelia's bosom on this taunt, fostered by conscious innocence, and a
sense of injustice, displayed itself in a scornful smile, and by an
augmentation of kindness towards Casimir. He was now almost domesticated
at her house; he attended her in the morning, hovered round her during
the evening; and she, given up to the desire of pleasing, did not
regard, did not even see, the painful earnestness with which Lord Lodore
regarded them. His apparent jealousy, if she at all remarked it, was but
a new form of selfishness, to which she was not disposed to give
quarter. Yet any unconcerned spectator might have started to observe
how, from an obscure corner of the room, Lodore watched every step they
took, every change of expression of face during their conversation; and
then approaching and interrupting them, endeavoured to carry Count
Casimir away with him; and when thwarted in this, dart glances of such
indignation on the youth, and of scorn upon his wife, as might have
awoke a sense of danger, had either chanced to see the fierce,
lightning-like passions written in those moments on his countenance, as
letters of fire and menace traced upon the prophetic wall.

The Countess appeared to observe him indeed, and sometimes it seemed as
if she regarded the angry workings of his heart with malicious pleasure.
Once or twice she had drawn near, and said a few words in her native
language, on which he endeavoured to stifle each appearance of passion,
answering with a smile, in a low calm voice, and retiring, left, as it
were, the field to her. Lady Santerre also had remarked his glances of
suspicion or fury; they were interpreted into new sins against her
daughter, and made with her the subject of ridicule or bitter reproach.

Lord Lodore was entirely alone. To no one human being could he speak a word
that in the least expressed the violence of his feelings. Perhaps the
only person with whom he felt the least inclined to overflow in
confidence, was the Countess Lyzinski. But he feared her: he feared the
knowledge she possessed of his character, and the power she had once
exercised to rule him absolutely; the barrier between them must be
insuperable, or the worst results would follow: he redoubled his own
cautious reserve, and bore patiently the proud contempt which she
exhibited, resolved not to yield one inch in the war he waged with his
own heart, with regard to her. But he was alone, and the solitude of
sympathy in which he lived, gave force and keenness to all his feelings.
Had they evaporated in words, half their power to wound had been lost;
as it was, there was danger in his meditations, and each one in
collision with him had occasion to dread that any sudden overflow of
stormy rage would be the more violent for having been repressed so long.

One day the whole party, with the exception of Lady Santerre, dined at the
house of the Russian ambassador. As Lord and Lady Lodore proceeded towards
their destination, he, with pointed sarcasm of manner, requested her to
be less marked in her attentions to Count Casimir. The unfounded
suspicions of a lover may please as a proof of love, but those of a
husband, who thus claims affections which he has ceased to endeavour to
win, are never received except as an impertinence and an insult. Those
of Lord Lodore appeared to his haughty wife but a new form of
cold-hearted despotism, checking her pleasures whencesoever they might
arise. She replied by a bitter smile, and afterwards still more
insultingly, by the display of kindness and partiality towards the
object of her husband's dislike. Her complete sense of innocence, roused
to indignation, by the injury she deemed offered to it, led her thus to
sport with feelings, which, had she deigned to remark, she might have
seen working with volcano-power in the breast of Lodore.

The ladies retired after dinner. They gathered together in groups in the
drawing-room, while Lady Lodore, strange to say, sat apart from all. She
placed herself on a distant sopha, apparently occupied by examining
various specimens of bijouterie, nic-nacs of all kinds, which she took
up one after the other, from the table near her. One hand shaded her
eyes as she continued thus to amuse herself. She was not apt to be so
abstracted; as now, that intent on self-examination, or self-reproach,
or on thoughts that wandered to another, she forgot where she was, and
by whom surrounded. She did not observe the early entrance of several
gentlemen from the dining-room, nor remark a kind of embarrassment which
sat upon their features, spreading a sort of uncomfortable wonder among
the guests. The first words that roused her, were addressed to her by
her husband: "Your carriage waits, Cornelia; will you come?"

"So early?" she asked.

"I particularly wish it," he replied.

"You can go, and send them back for me--and yet it is not worth while,
we shall see most of the people here at Lady C----'s to night."

She glanced round the room, Casimir was not there; as she passed the
Countess Lyzinski, she was about to ask her whether they should meet
again that evening, when she caught the lady's eye fixed on her husband,
meeting and returning a look of his. Alarm and disdain were painted on
her face, and added to this, a trace of feeling so peculiar, so full of
mutual understanding, that Lady Lodore was filled with no agreeable emotion
of surprise. She entered the carriage, and the reiterated "Home!" of Lord
Lodore, prevented her intended directions. Both were silent during their
short drive. She sat absorbed in a variety of thoughts, not one of which
led her to enter into conversation with her companion; they were rather
fixed on her mother, on the observations she should make to, and the
conjectures she should share with, her. She became anxious to reach
home, and resolved at once to seek Lady Santerre's advice and directions
by which to regulate her conduct on this occasion.




CHAPTER X


Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns the water, or but writes in dust.

BACON.


They arrived in Berkeley-square. Lady Lodore alighted, and perceived with
something of a beating heart, that her husband followed her, as she
passed on to the inner drawing-room. Lady Santerre was not there. Taking
a letter from the table, so to give herself the appearance of an excuse
for having entered a room she was about immediately to quit, she was
going, when Lodore, who stood hesitating, evidently desirous of
addressing her, and yet uncertain how to begin, stopped her by speaking
her name, "Cornelia!"

She turned--she was annoyed; her conscience whispered what was in all
probability the subject to which her attention was to be called. Her
meditations in the drawing-room of the Russian Ambassador, convinced her
that she had, to use the phrase of the day, flirted too much with Count
Casimir, and she had inwardly resolved to do so no more. It was
particularly disagreeable therefore, that her husband should use
authority, as she feared that he was about to do, and exact from his
wife's obedience, what she was willing to concede to her own sense of
propriety. She was resolved to hear as little as she could on the
subject, and stood as if in haste to go. His faltering voice betrayed
how much he felt, and once or twice it refused to frame the words he
desired to utter: how different was their import from that expected by
his impatient auditress!

"Cornelia," said he, at length, "can you immediately, and at once--this
very night--prepare to quit England?"

"Quit England! Why?--whither?" she exclaimed.

"I scarcely know," replied Lodore, "nor is it of the slightest import. The
world is wide, a shelter, a refuge can be purchased any where--and that
is all I seek."

The gaming table, the turf, loss of fortune, were the ideas naturally
conveyed into the lady's mind by this reply. "Is all--every thing
gone--lost?" she asked.

"My honour is," he answered, with an effort, "and the rest is of little
worth."

He paused, and then continued in a low but distinct voice, as if every
word cost him a struggle, yet as if he wished each one to be fraught
with its entire meaning to his hearer; "I cannot well explain to you the
motives of my sudden determination, nor will I complain of the part you
have had in bringing on this catastrophe. It is over now. No power on
earth--no heavenly power can erase the past, nor change one iota of
what, but an hour ago, did not exist, but which now exists; altering all
things to both of us for ever; I am a dishonoured man."

"Speak without more comment," cried Lady Lodore; "for Heaven's sake
explain--I must know what you mean."

"I have insulted a gentleman," replied her husband, "and I will yield no
reparation. I have disgraced a nobleman by a blow, and I will offer no
apology, could one be accepted--and it could not; nor will I give
satisfaction."

Lady Lodore remained silent. Her thoughts speedily ran over the dire
objects which her husband's speech presented. A quarrel--she too readily
guessed with whom--a blow, a duel; her cheek blanched--yet not so; for
Lodore refused to fight. In spite of the terror with which an anticipated
rencontre had filled her, the idea of cowardice in her husband, or the
mere accusation of it, brought the colour back to her face. She felt
that her heedlessness had given rise to all this harm; but again she
felt insulted that doubts of her sentiments or conduct should be the
occasion of a scene of violence. Both remained silent. Lodore stood
leaning on the mantelpiece, his cheek flushed, agitation betraying
itself in each gesture, mixed with a resolve to command himself.
Cornelia had advanced from the door to the middle of the room; she stood
irresolute, too indignant and too fearful to ask further explanation,
yet anxious to receive it. Still he hesitated. He was desirous of
finding some form of words which might convey all the information that
it was necessary she should receive, and yet conceal all that he desired
should remain untold.

At last he spoke. "It is unnecessary to allude to the irretrievable
past. The future is not less unalterable for me. I will not fight with,
nor apologize to, the boy I have insulted I must therefore fly--fly my
country and the face of man; go where the name of Lodore will not be
synonymous with infamy--to an island in the east--to the desert wilds of
America--it matters not whither. The simple question is, whether you are
prepared on a sudden to accompany me? I would not ask this of your
generosity, but that, married as we are, our destinies are linked, far
beyond any power we possess to sunder them. Miserable as my future
fortunes will be, far other than those which I invited you but four
years ago to share, you are better off incurring the worst with me, than
you could be, struggling alone for a separate existence."

"Pardon me, Lodore," said Cornelia, somewhat subdued by the magnitude of
the crisis brought about, she believed, however involuntarily by herself,
and by the sadness that, as he spoke, filled the dark eyes of her
companion with an expression more melancholy than tears; "pardon me, if
I seek for further explanation. Your antagonist" (they neither of them
ventured to speak a name, which hung on the lips of both) "is a mere
boy. Your refusal to fight with him results of course from this
consideration; while angry, and if I must allude to so distasteful a
falsehood, while unjust suspicion prevent your making him fitting and
most due concessions. Were the occasion less terrible, I might disdain
to assert my own innocence; but as it is, I do most solemnly declare,
that Count Casimir----"

"I ask no question on that point, but simply wish
to know whether you will accompany me," interrupted Lodore, hastily;
"the rest I am sorry for--but it is over. You, my poor girl, though in
some measure the occasion, and altogether the victim, of this disaster,
can exercise no controul over it. No foreign noble would accept the most
humiliating submissions as compensation for a blow, and this urchin
shall never receive from me the shadow of any."

"Is there no other way?" asked Cornelia.

"Not any," replied Lodore, while his agitation increased, and his voice
grew tremulous; "No consideration on earth could arm me against his life.
One other mode there is. I might present myself as a mark for his
vengeance, with a design of not returning his fire, but I am shut out even
from this resource. And this," continued Lodore, losing as he spoke, all
self-command, carried away by the ungovernable passions he had hitherto
suppressed, and regardless, as he strode up and down the room, of
Cornelia, who half terrified had sunk into a chair; "this--these are the
result of my crimes--such, from their consequences, I now term, what by
courtesy I have hitherto named my follies--this is the end! Bringing
into frightful collision those who are bound by sacred ties--changing
natural love into unnatural, deep-rooted, unspeakable hate--arming blood
against kindred blood--and making the innocent a parricide. O Theodora,
what have you not to answer for!"

Lady Lodore started. The image he presented was too detestable. She
repressed her emotions, and assuming that air of disdain, which we are so
apt to adopt to colour more painful feelings, she said, "This sounds very
like a German tragedy, being at once disagreeable and inexplicable."

"It is a tragedy," he replied; "a tragedy brought now to its last dark
catastrophe. Casimir is my son. We may neither of us murder the other;
nor will I, if again brought into contact with him, do other than
chastise the insolent boy. The tiger is roused within me. You have a
part in this."

A flash of anger glanced from Cornelia's eyes. She did not reply--she
rose--she quitted the room--she passed on with apparent composure, till
reaching the door of her mother's chamber, she rushed impetuously in.
Overcome with indignation, panting, choked, she threw herself into her
arms, saying, "Save me!" A violent fit of hysterics followed.

At first Lady Lodore could only speak of the injury and insult she had
herself suffered; and Lady Santerre, who by no means wished to encourage
feelings, which might lead to violence in action, tried to soothe her
irritation. But when allusions to Lodore's intention of quitting England
and the civilized world for ever, mingled with Cornelia's exclamations,
the affair assumed a new aspect in the wary lady's eyes. The barbarity of
such an idea excited her utmost resentment. At once she saw the full
extent of the intended mischief, and the risk she incurred of losing the
reward of years of suffering and labour. When an instantaneous departure
was mentioned, an endless, desolate journey, which it was doubtful
whether she should be admitted to share, to be commenced that very
night, she perceived that her measures to prevent it must be promptly
adopted. The chariot was still waiting which was to have conveyed Lord
and Lady Lodore to their assembly; dressed as she was for this, without
preparation, she hurried her daughter into the carriage, and bade the
coachman drive to a villa they rented at Twickenham; leaving, in
explanation, these few lines addressed to her son-in-law.


"The scene of this evening has had an alarming effect upon Cornelia.
Time will soften the violence of her feelings, but some immediate step
was necessary to save, I verily believe, her life. I take her to
Twickenham, and will endeavour to calm her: until I shall have in some
measure succeeded, I think you had better not follow us; but let us hear
from you; for although my attention is so painfully engrossed by my
daughter's sufferings, I am distressed on your account also, and shall
continue very uneasy until I hear from you.

"_Friday Evening._"


Lady Santerre and her daughter reached Twickenham. Lady Lodore went to bed,
and assisted by a strong composing draught, administered by her mother, her
wrongs and her anger were soon hushed in profound sleep. Night, or
rather morning, was far spent before this occurred, so that it was late
in the afternoon of the ensuing day before she awoke, and recalled to
her memory the various conflicting sentiments which had occupied her
previous to her repose.

During the morning, Lady Santerre had despatched a servant to
Berkeley-square, to summon her daughter's peculiar attendants. He now
brought back the intelligence that Lord Lodore had departed for the
continent, about three hours after his wife had quitted his house. But to
this he added tidings of another circumstance, for which both ladies were
totally unprepared. Cornelia had entered the carriage the preceding
night, without spending one thought on the sleeping cherub in the
nursery. What was her surprise and indignation, when she heard that her
child and its attendant formed a part of his lordship's travelling
suite. The mother's first impulse was to follow her offspring; but this
was speedily exchanged for a bitter sense of wrong, aversion to her
husband, and a resolve not to yield one point, in the open warfare thus
declared by him.




CHAPTER XI


Amid two seas, on one small point of land,
Wearied, uncertain, and amazed, we stand;
On either side our thoughts incessant turn,
Forward we dread, and looking back we mourn.

PRIOR.


Accustomed to obey the more obvious laws of necessity, those whose
situation in life obliges them to earn their daily bread, are already
broken in to the yoke of fate. But the rich and great are vanquished
more slowly. Their time is their own; as fancy bids them, they can go
east, west, north, or south; they wish, and accomplish their wishes; and
cloyed by the too easy attainment of the necessaries, and even of the
pleasures of life, they fly to the tortures of passion, and to the
labour of overcoming the obstacles that stand in the way of their
forbidden desires, as resources against ennui and satiety. Reason is
lost in the appetite for excitement, and a kind of unnatural pleasure
springs from their severest pains, because thus alone are they roused to
a full sense of their faculties; thus alone is existence and its
purposes brought home to them.

In the midst of this, their thoughtless career, the eternal law which
links ill to ill, is at hand to rebuke and tame the rebel spirit; and
such a tissue of pain and evil is woven from their holiday pastime, as
checks them midcourse, and makes them feel that they are slaves. The
young are scarcely aware of this; they delight to contend with Fate, and
laugh as she clanks their chains. But there is a period--sooner or later
comes to all--when the links envelop them, the bolts are shot, the
rivets fixed, the iron enters the flesh, the soul is subdued, and they
fly to religion or proud philosophy, to seek for an alleviation, which
the crushed spirit can no longer draw from its own resources.

This hour! this fatal hour! How many can point to the shadow on the
dial, and say, "Then it was that I felt the whole weight of my humanity,
and knew myself to be the subject of an unvanquishable power!" This dark
moment had arrived for Lodore. He had spent his youth in passion, and
exhausted his better nature in a struggle for, and in the enjoyment of,
pleasure. He found disappointment, and desired change. It came at his
beck. He married. He was not satisfied; but still he felt that it was
because he did not rouse himself, that the bonds sate so heavily upon
him. He was enervated. He sickened at the idea of the struggle it would
require to cast off his fetters, and he preferred adapting his nature to
endure their weight. But he believed that it was only because he did not
raise his hand, nor determine on one true effort, that he was thus
enslaved. And now his hand was raised--the effort made; but no change
ensued; and he felt that there was no escape from the inextricable bonds
that fastened him to misery.

He had believed that he did right in introducing his wife to the
Countess Lyzinski. He felt that he could not neglect this lady; and such
was her rank, that any affectation of a separate acquaintance would
invite those observations which he deprecated. It was, after all, matter
of trivial import that he should be the person to bring them acquainted.
Moving in the same circles, they must meet--they might clash: it was
better that they should be on friendly terms. He did not foresee the
intimacy that ensued; and still less, that his own violent passions
would be called into action. That they were so, was, to the end, a
mystery even to himself. He no longer loved the Countess; and, in the
solitude of his chamber, he often felt his heart yearn towards the noble
youth, her son; but when they met--when Cornelia spent her blandest
smiles upon him, and when the exquisitely beautiful countenance of
Casimir became lighted up with gladness and gratitude, a fire of rage
was kindled in his heart, and he could no more command himself, than can
the soaring flames of a conflagration bend earthward. He felt ashamed;
but new fury sprung from this very sensation. For worlds, he would not
have his frenzy pried into by another; and yet he had no power to
controul its manifestation. His wife expostulated with him concerning
Casimir, and laughed his rebuke to scorn. But she did not read the
tumult of unutterable jealousy and hate, that slept within his breast,
like an earthquake beneath the soil, the day before a city falls.

All tended to add fuel to this unnatural flame. His own exertions to
subdue its fierceness but kindled it anew. Often he entered the same
room with the young Count, believing that he had given his suspicions to
the winds--that he could love him as a son, and rejoice with a father's
pride in the graces of his figure and the noble qualities of his mind.
For a few seconds the fiction endured: he felt a pang--it was
nothing--gone; it would not return again:--another! was he for ever to
be thus tortured? And then a word a look, an appearance of slighting him
on the part of Casimir, an indiscreet smile on Cornelia's lips, would at
once set a-light the whole devastating blaze. The Countess alone had any
power over him; but though he yielded to her influence, he was the more
enraged that she should behold his weakness; and that while he succeeded
in maintaining an elevated impassibility with regard to herself, his
heart, with all its flaws and poverty of purpose, should, through the
ill-timed interference of this boy, be placed once more naked in her
hand.

Such a state of feeling, where passion combated passion, while reason
was forgotten in the strife, was necessarily pregnant with ruin. The only
safety was in flight;--and Lodore would have flown--he would have absented
himself until the cause of his sufferings had departed--but that, more
and more, jealousy entered into his feelings--a jealousy, wound up by
the peculiarity of his situation, into a sensitiveness that bordered on
insanity, which saw guilt in a smile, and overwhelming, hopeless ruin,
in the simplest expression of kindness. Cornelia herself was disinclined
to quit London, and tenacious pride rendered him averse to proposing it,
since he could frame no plausible pretext for his change of purpose, and
it had been previously arranged that they should remain till the end of
July. The presence of the Countess Lyzinski was a tie to keep her; and
to have pleaded his feelings with regard to Casimir, could he have
brought himself so to do, would probably have roused her at once into
rebellion. There was no resource; he must bear, and also he must
forbear;--but the last was beyond his power, and his attempt at the
first brought with it destruction. In the last instance, at the Russian
Ambassador's, irritated by Cornelia's tone of defiance, and subsequent
levity, he levelled a scornful remark at the guiltless and unconscious
offender. Casimir had endured his arrogance and injustice long. He knew
of no tie, no respect due, beyond that which youth owes to maturer
years; yet the natural sweetness of his disposition inclined him to
forbearance, until now, that surrounded by his own countrymen and by
Russians, it became necessary that he should assert himself. He replied
with haughtiness; Lodore rejoined with added insult;--and when again
Casimir retorted, he struck him. The young noble's eyes flashed fire:
several gentlemen interposed between them;--and yielding to the
expediency of the moment, the Pole, with admirable temper, withdrew.

Humiliated and dismayed, but still burning with fury, Lodore saw at once
the consequences of his angry transport. With all the impetuosity of his
fiery spirit, he resolved to quit at once the scene in which he had
played his part so ill. There was no other alternative. The most
frightful crimes blocked up every other outlet: this was his sole
escape, and he must seize on it without delay. Lady Lodore had not even
deigned to answer his request that she should accompany him; and her
mother's note appeared the very refinement of insolence. They abandoned
him. They left the roof from which he was about to exile himself, even
before he had quitted it, as if in fear of contamination during his
brief delay. Thus he construed their retreat; and worked up, as he was,
almost to madness, he considered their departure as the commencement of
that universal ban, which for ever, hereafter, was to accompany his
name. It opened anew the wound his honour had sustained; and he poured
forth a vow never more to ally himself in bonds of love or amity with
one among his kind.

His purpose was settled, and he did not postpone its execution.
Post-horses were ordered, and hasty preparations made, for his
departure. Alone, abandoned, disgraced, in another hour he was to quit
his home, his wife, all that endears existence, for ever: yet the short
interval that preceded his departure hung like a long-drawn day upon him;
and time seemed to make a full stop, at a period when he would have
rejoiced had it leaped many years to come. The heart's prayer in agony
did not avail: he was still kept lingering, when a knocking at the door
announced a visitor, who, at that late hour, could come for one purpose
only. Lord Lodore ordered himself to be denied, and Count Casimir's second
departed to seek him elsewhere. Cold dew-drops stood on Lodore's brow as
he heard this gentleman parley in a foreign accent with the servant;
trying, doubtless, to make out where it was likely that he should meet
with him: the door closed at last, and he listened to the departing
steps of his visitor, who could scarcely have left the square, before
his travelling chariot drove up. And now, while final arrangements were
making, with a heart heavy from bitter self-condemnation, he visited the
couch of his sleeping daughter, once more to gaze on her sweet face, and
for the last time to bestow a father's blessing on her. The early summer
morning was abroad in the sky; and as he opened her curtains, the first
sun-beam played upon her features. He stooped to kiss her little rosy
lips:--"And I leave this spotless being to the blighting influence of
that woman!" His murmurs disturbed the child's slumbers: she woke, and
smiled to see her father; and then insisted upon rising, as he was up,
and it was day.

"But I am come to say good-bye, sweet," he said; "I am going a long
journey."

"O take me with you!" cried the little girl, springing up, and fastening
her arms round his neck. He felt her soft cheek prest to his; her hands
trying to hold fast, and to resist his endeavours to disengage them. His
heart warmed within him. "For a short distance I may indulge myself," he
said, and he thought how her prattle would solace his darker cares,
during his road to Southampton. So, causing her attendant to make speedy
preparation, he took her in the carriage with him; and her infantine
delight so occupied him, that he scarcely remembered his situation, or
what exactly he was doing, as he drove for the last time through the
lightsome and deserted streets of the metropolis.

And now he had quitted these; and the country, in all its summer beauty,
opened around him--meadows and fields with their hedge-rows, tufted
groves crowning the uplands, and "the blue sky bent over all." "From
these they cannot banish me," he thought; "in spite of dishonour and
infamy, the loveliness of nature, and the freedom of my will, still are
mine:--and is this all?"--his child had sunk to sleep, nestled close in
his arms; "Ah! what will these be to me, when I have lost this treasure,
dearest of all?--yet why lose her?" This question, when it first
presented itself to him, he put aside as one that answered itself--to
deprive a mother of her child were barbarity beyond that of
savages;--but again and again it came across him, and he began to reason
with it, and to convince himself that he should be unjust towards
himself in relinquishing this last remaining blessing. His arguments
were false, his conclusions rash and selfish; but of this he was not
aware. Our several minds, in reflecting to our judgments the occurrences
of life, are like mirrors of various shapes and hues, so that we none of
us perceive passing objects with exactly similar optics; and while all
pretend to regulate themselves by the quadrant of justice, the deceptive
medium through which the reality is viewed, causes our ideas of it to be
at once various and false. This is the case in immaterial points; how
much more so, when self-love magnifies, and passion obscures, the glass
through which we look upon others and ourselves. The chief task of the
philosopher is to purify and correct the intellectual prism;--but Lodore
was the reverse of a philosopher; and the more he gazed and considered, the
more imperfect and distorted became his perception.

To act justly by ourselves and others, is the aim of every
well-conditioned mind: for the sight of pain in our fellow-creatures,
and the sense of self-condemnation within ourselves, is fraught with a
pang from which we would willingly escape; and every heart not formed of
the coarsest materials is keenly alive to such emotions. Lodore resolved to
judge calmly, and he reviewed coolly, and weighed (he believed)
impartially, the various merits of the question. He thought of Lady
Santerre's worldliness, her vulgar ambition, her low-born contempt for
all that is noble and elevating in human nature. He thought of
Cornelia's docility to her mother's lessons, her careless disregard of
the nobler duties of life, of her frivolity and unfeeling nature:--then,
almost against his will, his own many excellencies rose before him;--his
lofty aspirations, his self-sacrifice for the good of others, the
affectionateness of his disposition, his mildness, his desire to be just
and kind to all, his willingness to devote every hour of the day, and
every thought of his mind, to the well-bringing-up of his daughter: a
person must be strangely blind who did not perceive that, as far as the
child was concerned, she would be far better off with him.

And then, in another point of view: Lady Lodore had her mother--and she had
the world. She had not only beauty, rank, and wealth; but she had a taste
for enjoying the advantages yielded by these on the common soil of daily
life. He cared for nothing in the wide world--he loved nothing but this
little child. He would willingly exchange for her the far greater
portion of his fortune, which Lady Lodore should enjoy; reserving for
himself such a pittance merely as would suffice for his own and his
daughter's support. He had neither home, nor friends, nor youth, nor
taintless reputation; nor any of all the blessings of life, of which
Cornelia possessed a superabundance. Her child was as nothing in the
midst of these. She had left her without a sigh, even without a thought;
while but to imagine the moment of parting was a dagger to her father's
heart. What a fool he had been to hesitate so long--to hesitate at all!
There she was, this angel of comfort; her little form was cradled in his
arms, he felt her soft breath upon his hand, and the regular heaving of
her bosom responded to the beatings of his own heart; her golden, glossy
hair, her crimsoned cheek, her soft, round limbs;--all this matchless
"bower of flesh," that held in the budding soul, and already expanding
affections of this earthly cherub, was with him. And had he imagined
that he could part with her? Rather would he return to Lady Lodore, to
dishonour, to scenes of hate and of the world's contempt, so that thus
he preserved her: it could not be required of him; but if Cornelia's
heart was animated by a tithe of the fondness that warmed his, she would
not hesitate in her choice; but, discarding every unworthy feeling,
follow her child into the distant and solitary abode he was about to
select.

Thus pacifying his conscience, Lodore came to the conclusion of making his
daughter the partner of his exile. Soon after mid-day, they arrived at
Southampton; a small vessel was on the point of sailing for Havre, and
on board this he hurried. Before he went he gave one hasty retrospective
view to those he was leaving behind--his wife, his sister, the filial
antagonist from whom he was flying; he could readily address himself to
the first of these, when landed on the opposite coast; but as he wished
to keep his destination a secret from the latter, and to prevent, if
possible, his being followed and defied by him, an event still to be
feared, he employed the few remaining minutes, before quitting his
country for ever, in writing a brief letter to the Countess Lyzinski,
which he gave in charge to a servant whom he dismissed, and sent back to
town. And thus he now addressed her, who, in his early life, had been as
the moon to raise the tide of passion, incapable, alas! of controlling
its waves when at the full.


"It is all over: I have fulfilled my part--the rest remains with you. To
prevent the ruin which my folly has brought down, from crushing any but
myself, I quit country, home, good name--all that is dear to man. I do
not complain, nor will I repine. But let the evil, I entreat you, stop
here. Casimir must not follow me; he must not know whither I am gone;
and while he brands his antagonist with the name of coward, he must not
guess that for his sake I endure this stain. I leave it to your prudence
and sagacity to calm or to mislead him, to prevent his suspecting the
truth, or rashly seeking my life. I sacrifice more, far more, than my
heart's blood on his account--let that satisfy even your vengeance.

"I would not write harshly. The dream of life has long been over for me;
it matters not how or where the last sands flow out. I do not blame you
even for this ill-omened journey to England, which could avail you
nothing. Once before we parted for ever, Theodora; but that separation
was as the pastime of children in comparison with the tragic scene we
now enact. A thousand dangers yawn between us, and we shall neither dare
to repass the gulf that divides us. Forget me;--be happy, and forget me!
May Casimir be a blessing to you, and while you glory in his perfections
and prosperity, cast into oblivion every thought of him, who now bids
you an eternal adieu."




CHAPTER XII


Her virtue, like our own, was built
Too much on that indignant fuss,
Hypocrite pride stirs up in us,
To bully out another's guilt.

SHELLEY.


The fifth day after Lord Lodore's departure brought Cornelia a letter from
him. She had spent the interval at Twickenham, surrendering her sorrows
and their consolation to her mother's care; and inspired by her with
deep resentment and angry disdain. The letter she received was dated
Havre: the substance of it was as follows.


"Believe me I am actuated by no selfish considerations, when I ask you
once again to reflect before the Atlantic divides us--probably for ever.
It is for your own sake, your own happiness only, that I ask you to
hesitate. I will not urge your duty to me; the dishonour that has fallen
on me I am most ready to bear alone; mine towards you, as far as present
circumstances permit, I am desirous to fulfil, and this feeling dictates
my present address.

"Consider the solitary years you will pass alone, even though in a
crowd, divided from your husband and your child--your home
desolate--calumny and ill-nature at watch around you--not one protecting
arm stretched over you. Your mother's presence, it is true, will suffice
to prevent your position from being in the least equivocal; but the time
will soon come when you will discover your mistake in her, and find how
unworthy she is of your exclusive affection. I will not urge the
temptations and dangers that will beset you; your pride will, I doubt
not, preserve you from these, yet they will be near you in their worst
shape: you will feel their approaches; you will shudder at their
menaces, you will desire my death, and the faith pledged to me at the
altar will become a chain and a torture to you.

"I can only offer such affection as your sacrifice will deserve to adorn
a lonely and obscure home; rank, society, flatterers, the luxuries of
civilization--all these blessings you must forego. Your lot will be cast
in solitude. The wide forest, the uninhabited plain, will shelter us.
Your husband, your child; in us alone you must view the sum and aim of
your life. I will not use the language of persuasion, but in inviting
you to share my privations, I renew, yet more solemnly, the vows we once
interchanged; and it shall be my care to endeavour to fulfil mine with
more satisfaction to both of us than has until now been the case.

"It is useless to attempt to veil the truth, that hitherto our hearts
have been alienated from each other. The cause is not in ourselves, and
must never again be permitted to influence either of us. If amidst the
avocations of society, the presence of a third person has been
sufficient to place division between us;--if, on the flowery path of our
prosperous life, one fatal interference has strewn thorns and burning
ashes beneath our feet, how much more keenly would this intervention be
felt in the retirement in which we are hereafter to spend our days.--In
the lonely spot to which it will be necessary to contract all our
thoughts and hopes, love must alone reign; or hell itself would be but
pastime in comparison to our ever-renewing and sleepless torments. The
spirit of worldliness, of discord, of paltry pride, must not enter the
paling which is to surround our simple dwelling. Come, attended by
affection, by open-hearted confidence;--come to me--to your child!--you
will find with us peace and mutual love, the true secret of life. All
that can make your mother happy in England, shall be provided with no
niggard hand:--but come alone, Cornelia, my wife!--come, to take
possession of the hearts that are truly yours, and to learn a new
lesson, in a new world, from him who will dedicate himself entirely to
you.

"Alas! I fear that I speak an unknown language, and one that you will
never deign to understand. Still I again implore you to reflect before
you decide. On one point I am firm--I feel that I am in the right--that
every thing depends upon it. Our daughter's guileless heart shall never
be tainted by all that I abhor and despise. For her sake, for yours,
more than for my own, I am as rock upon one question. Do not strive to
move me--it will be useless! Come alone! and ten thousand welcomes and
blessings shall hail your arrival!

"A vessel, in which I have engaged a passage, sails for New York, from
this place, in five days time. You must not delay your decision; but
hasten, if such be your gracious resolve, to join me here.

"If you decide to sacrifice yourself to one who will never repay that
sacrifice, and to the world,--that dreary, pain-haunted jungle,--at
least you shall receive from me all that can render your situation there
prosperous. You shall not complain of want of generosity on my part. I
shall, in my new course of life, require little myself; the remainder of
my fortune shall be at your disposal.

"I need not recommend secrecy to you as to the real motive of my
exile--your own sense of delicacy will dictate reserve and silence. This
letter will be delivered to you by Fenton: he will attend you back here,
or bring me your negative--the seal, I feel assured, of your future
misery. God grant that you choose wisely and well! Adieu."


The heart of Lady Lodore burnt within her bosom as she read these lines.
Haughty and proud, was she to be dictated to thus? and to follow, an
obedient slave, the master that deigned to recall her to his presence,
after he had (so she termed his abrupt departure) deserted her? Her
mother sate by, looking at her with an anxious and inquiring glance, as
she read the letter. She saw the changes of her countenance, as it
expressed anger, scorn, and bitter indignation. She finished--she was
still silent;--how could she show this insulting address to her parent?
Again she seemed to study its contents--to ponder.

Lady Santerre rose--gently she was taking the paper from Cornelia's
hand. "You must not read it," she cried;--"and yet you must;--and thus
one other wrong is heaped upon the many."

Lady Santerre read the letter; silently she perused it--folded
it--placed it on the table. Cornelia looked up at her. "I do not fear
your decision," she said; "you will not abandon a parent, who has
devoted herself to you from your cradle--who lives but for you."

The unhappy girl, unable to resist her mother's appeal, threw herself
into her arms. Even the cold Lady Santerre was moved--tears flowed from
her eyes:--"My dear child!" she exclaimed.

"My dear child!"--the words found an echo in Lady Lodore's bosom;--"I am
never to see my child more!"

"Such is his threat," said her mother, "knowing thus the power he has
over you; but do not fear that it will be accomplished. Lord Lodore's
conduct is guided by no principle--by no deference to the opinion of the
world--by no just or sober motives. He is as full of passion as a
madman, and more vacillating. This is his fancy now--to quit England for
the wilderness, and to torture you into following him. You are as lost
as he, if you yield. A little patience, and all will be right again. He
will soon grow tired of playing the tragic hero on a stage surrounded by
no spectators; he will discover the folly of his conduct; he will
return, and plead for forgiveness, and feel that he is too fortunate in
a wife, who has preserved her own conduct free from censure and remark,
while he has made himself a laughing stock to all. Do not permit
yourself, dear Cornelia, to be baffled in this war of passion with
reason; of jealousy, selfishness, and tyranny, with natural affection, a
child's duty, and the respect you owe to yourself. Even if he remain
away, he will quickly become weary of being accompanied by an infant and
its nurse, and too glad to find that you will still be willing to act
the mother towards his child. Firmness and discretion are the arms you
must use against folly and violence. Yield, and you are the victim of a
despotism without parallel, the slave of a task-master, whose first
commands are gentle, soft, and easy injunctions to desert your mother:
to exile yourself from your country, and to bury yourself alive in some
unheard-of desert, whose name even he does not deign to communicate. All
this would be only too silly and too wild, were it not too wicked and
too cruel. Believe me, my love, trust yourself to my guidance, and all
will be well; Lodore himself will thank, if such thanks be of value, the
prudence and generosity you will display."

Cornelia listened, and was persuaded. Above all, Lady Santerre tried to
impress upon her mind, that Lodore, finding her firm, would give up his
rash schemes, and remain in Europe; that even he had, probably, never
really contemplated crossing the Atlantic. At all events, that she must not
be guided by the resolves, changeable as the moon, of a man governed by no
sane purpose; but that, by showing herself determined, he would be
brought to bend to her will. In this spirit Lady Lodore replied to her
husband's letter. Fenton, Lord Lodore's valet, who had been the bearer,
had left it, and proceeded to London. He returned the day following, to
receive his lady's orders. Cornelia saw him and questioned him. She
heard that Lord Lodore was to dismiss him and all his English servants
before embarking for America, with the exception of the child's nurse,
whom he had promised to send back on his arrival at New York. He had
engaged his passage, and fitted up cabins for his convenience, so that
there could be no doubt of his having finally resolved to emigrate. This
was all he knew; Cornelia gave him her letter, and he departed on the
instant for Southampton.

In giving his wife so short an interval in which to form her
determination, Lodore conceived that her first impulse would be to join her
child, that she would act upon it, and at least come as far as Havre,
though perhaps her mother would accompany her, to claim her daughter,
even if she did not besides foster a hope of changing his resolves.
Lodore had an unacknowledged reserve in his own mind, that if she would
give up her mother, and for a time the world, he would leave the choice
of their exile to her, and relinquish the dreary scheme of emigrating to
America. With these thoughts in his mind, he anxiously awaited each day
the arrival of the packets from England. Each day he hoped to see
Cornelia disembark from one of them; and even though accompanied by Lady
Santerre, he felt that his heart would welcome her. During this
interval, his thoughts had recurred to his home; and imagination had
already begun to paint the memory of that home, in brighter colours than
the reality. Lady Lodore had not been all coldness and alienation; in
spite of dissension, she had been his; her form, graceful as a nymph's,
had met his eyes each morning; her smile, her voice, her light cheering
laugh, had animated and embellished, how many hours during the long
days, grown vacant without her. Cherishing a hope of seeing her again,
he forgot her petulance--her self-will--her love of pleasure; and
remembering only her beauty and her grace, he began, in a lover-like
fashion, to impart to this charming image, a soul in accordance to his
wishes, rather than to the reality. Each day he attended less carefully
to the preparations of his long voyage. Each day he expected her; a
chill came over his heart at each evening's still recurring
disappointment, till hope awoke on the ensuing morning. More than once
he had been on the eve of sailing to England to meet and escort her; a
thousand times he reproached himself for not having made Southampton the
place of meeting, and he was withheld from proceeding thither only by
the fear of missing her. Giving way to these sentiments, the tide of
affection, swelling into passion, rose in his breast. He doubted not
that, ere long, she would arrive, and taxed himself for modes to show
his gratitude and love.

The American vessel was on the point of sailing--it might have gone
without him, he cared not; when on the sixth day Fenton arrived, and put
into his hand Cornelia's letter. This then was the end of his
expectation, this little paper coldly closed in the destruction of his
hopes; yet might it not merely contain a request for delay? There was
something in the servant's manner, that looked not like that; but still,
as soon as the idea crossed him, he tore open the seal. The words were
few, they were conceived in all the spirit of resentment.


"You add insult to cruelty," it said, "but I scorn to complain. The very
condition you make displays the hollowness and deceit of your
proceeding. You well know that I cannot, that I will not, desert my
mother; but by calling on me for this dereliction of all duty and
virtuous affection, you contrive to throw on me the odium of refusing to
accompany you; this is a worthy design, and it is successful.

"I demand my child--restore her to me. It is cruelty beyond compare, to
separate one so young from maternal tenderness and fosterage. By what
right--through what plea, do you rob me of her? The tyranny and dark
jealousy of your vindictive nature display themselves in this act of
unprincipled violence, as well as in your insulting treatment of my
mother. You alone must reign, be feared, be thought of; all others are
to be sacrificed, living victims, at the shrine of your self-love. What
have you done to merit so much devotion? Ask your heart--if it be not
turned to stone, ask it what you have done to compare with the long
years of affection, kindness, and never-ceasing care that my beloved
parent has bestowed on me. I am your wife, Lodore; I bear your name; I will
be true to the vows I have made you, nor will I number the tears you force
me to shed; but my mother's are sacred, and not one falls in vain for
me.

"Give me my child--let the rest be yours--depart in peace! If Heaven
have blessings for the coldly egotistical, the unfeeling despot, may
these blessings be yours; but do not dare to interfere with emotions too
pure, too disinterested for you ever to understand. Give me my child,
and fear neither my interference nor resentment. I am content to be as
dead to you--quite content never to see you more."




CHAPTER XIII

And so farewell; for we will henceforth be
As we had never seen, ne'er more shall see.

HEYWOOD.


Lodore had passed many days upon the sea, on his voyage to America, before
he could in the least calm the bitter emotions to which Cornelia's violent
letter had given birth. He was on the wide Atlantic; the turbid ocean
swelled and roared around him, and heaven, the mansion of the winds,
showed on its horizon an extent of water only. He was cut off from
England, from Europe, for ever; and the vast continents he quitted
dwindled into a span; but still the images of those he left behind dwelt
in his soul, engrossing and filling it. They could no longer personally
taunt nor injure him; but the thought of them, of all that they might
say or do, haunted his mind; it was like an unreal strife of gigantic
shadows beneath dark night, which, when you approach, dwindles into thin
air, but which, contemplated at a distance, fills the hemisphere with
star-reaching heads, and steps that scale mountains. There was a
sleepless tumult in Lodore's heart; it was a waking dream of the most
painful description. Again and again Cornelia assailed him with
reproaches, and Lady Santerre poured out curses upon him; his fancy lent
them words and looks full of menace, hate, and violence. Sometimes the
sighing of the breeze in the shrouds assumed a tone that mocked their
voices; his sleep was disturbed by dreams more painful than his daylight
fancies; and the sense which they imparted of suffering and oppression,
was prolonged throughout the day.

He occasionally felt that he might become mad, and at such moments, the
presence of his child brought consolation and calm; her caresses, her
lisped expressions of affection, her playfulness, her smiles, were
spells to drive away the fantastic reveries that tortured him. He looked
upon her cherub face, and the world, late so full of wretchedness and
ill, assumed brighter hues; the storm was allayed, the dark clouds fled,
sunshine poured forth its beams; by degrees, tender and gentle
sensations crept over his heart; he forgot the angry contentions in
which, in imagination, he had been engaged, and he felt, that alone on
the sea, with this earthly angel of peace near him, he was divided from
every evil, to dwell with tranquillity and love.

To part with her had become impossible. She was all that rendered him
human--that plucked the thorn from his pillow, and poured one mitigating
drop into the bitter draught administered to him.

Cornelia, Casimir, Theodora, his mother-in-law, these were all various
names and shapes of the spirit of evil, sent upon earth to torture him:
but this heavenly sprite could set at nought their machinations and
restore him to the calm and hopes of childhood. Extreme in all things,
Lodore began more than ever to doat upon her and to bind up his life in
her. Yet sometimes his heart softened at the recollection of his wife, of
her extreme youth, and of the natural pang she must feel at being deprived
of her daughter. He figured her pining, and in tears--he remembered that
he had vowed to protect and love her for ever; and that deprived of him,
never more could the soft attentions and sweet language of love soothe
her heart or meet her ear, unattended with a sense of guilt and
degradation. He knew that hereafter she might feel this--hereafter, when
passion might be roused, and he could afford no remedy. Influenced by
such ideas, he wrote to her; many letters he wrote during his voyage,
destroying them one after another, dictated by the varying feelings that
alternately ruled him. Reason and persuasion, authority and tenderness,
reigned by turns in these epistles; they were written with all the
fervour of his ardent soul, and breathed irresistible power. Had some of
these papers met Cornelia's eye, she had assuredly been vanquished; but
fate ordained it otherwise: fate that blindly weaves our web of life,
culling her materials at will, and often wholly refusing to make use of
our own desires and intentions, as forming a part of our destiny.

Lodore arrived at New York, and found, by some chance, letters already
waiting for him there. He had concluded one to his wife full of affection
and kindness, when a letter with the superscription written by Lady
Santerre was delivered to him. It spoke of law proceedings, of eternal
separation, and announced her daughter's resolve to receive no
communication, to read no address, that was not prefaced by the
restoration of her child; it referred him to a solicitor as the medium
of future intercourse. With a bitter laugh Lodore tore to pieces the
eloquent and heart-felt appeal he had been on the point of sending; he
gave up his thoughts to business only; he wrote to his agent, he
arranged for his intended journey; in less than a month he was on his
road to the Illinois.

Thus ended all hope of reconciliation, and Lady Santerre won the day.
She had worked on the least amiable of her daughter's feelings, and
exalted anger into hatred, disapprobation into contempt and aversion.
Soon after Cornelia had dismissed the servant, she felt that she had
acted with too little reflection. Her heart died within her at the idea,
that too truly Lodore might sail away with her child, and leave her widowed
and solitary for ever. Her proud heart knew, on this account, no relenting
towards her husband, the author of these painful feelings, but she
formed the resolve not to lose all without a struggle. She announced her
intention of proceeding to Havre to obtain her daughter. Lady Santerre
could not oppose so natural a proceeding, especially as her
companionship was solicited as in the highest degree necessary. They
arrived at Southampton; the day was tempestuous, the wind contrary. Lady
Santerre was afraid of the water, and their voyage was deferred. On the
evening of the following day, Fenton arrived from Havre. Lord Lodore had
sailed, the stormy waves of the Atlantic were between him and the shores
of England; pursuit were vain; it would be an acknowledgment of defeat
to follow him to America. Cornelia returned to Twickenham, maternal
sorrow contending in her heart with mortified pride, and a keen
resentful sense of injury.

Lady Lodore was nineteen; an age when youth is most arrogant, and most
heedless of the feelings of others. Her beauty and the admiration it
acquired, sate her on the throne of the world, and, to her own imagination,
she looked down like an eastern princess, upon slaves only: her sway she
had believed to be absolute; it was happiness for others to obey. Exalted
by adulation, it was natural that all that lowered her elevation in her own
eyes, should appear impertinent and hateful. She had not learned to feel
with or for others. To act in contradiction to her wishes was a crime
beyond compare, and her soul was in arms to resent the insolence which
thus assailed her majesty of will. The act of Lodore, stepping beyond
common-place opposition into injury and wrong, found no mitigating
excuses in her heart. No gentle return of love, no compassion for the
unhappy exile--no generous desire to diminish the sufferings of one, who
was the victim of the wildest and most tormenting passions, softened her
bosom. She was injured, insulted, despised, and her swelling soul was
incapable of any second emotion to the scorn and hate with which she
visited the author of her degradation. She was to become the theme of
the world's discourse, of its ill-natured censure or mortifying pity. In
whatever light she viewed her present position, it was full of annoyance
and humiliation; her path was traced through a maze of pointed angles,
that pained her at every turn, and her reflections magnifying the
imprudence of which she accused herself, suggested no excuse for her
husband, but caused her wounds to fester and burn. Cornelia was not of a
lachrymose disposition; she was a woman who in Sparta had formed an
heroine; who in periods of war and revolution, would unflinchingly have
met calamity, sustaining and leading her own sex. But through the bad
education she had received, and her extreme youth, elevation of feeling
degenerated into mere personal pride, and heroism was turned into
obstinacy; she had been capable of the most admirable self-sacrifice,
had she been taught the right shrine at which to devote herself; but her
mind was narrowed by the mode of her bringing up, and her loftiest ideas
were centered in worldly advantages the most worthless and pitiable. To
defraud her of these, was to deprive her of all that rendered life worth
preserving.

Lady Santerre soothed, flattered, and directed her. She poured the balm
of gratified vanity upon injured pride. She bade her expect speedy
repentance from her husband, and impressed her with the idea, that if
she were firm, he must yield. His present blustering prognosticated a
speedy calm, when he would regret all that he had done, and seek, by
entire submission, to win back his wife. Any appearance of concession on
her part would spoil all. Cornelia's eyes flashed fire at the word.
Concession! and to whom? To him who had wronged and insulted her? She
readily gave into her mother's hands the management of all future
intercourse with him, reserving alone, for her own satisfaction, an
absolute resolve never to forgive.

The correspondence that ensued, carried on across the Atlantic, and soon
with many miles of continent added to the space, only produced an
interchange of letters written with cool insolence on one side, with
heart-burning and impatience on the other. Each served to widen the
breach. When Cornelia was not awakened to resent for herself, she took up
arms on her mother's account. When Lodore blamed her for being the puppet
of one incapable of any generous feeling, one dedicated to the vulgar
worship of Mammon, she repelled the taunt, and denied the servitude of
soul of which she was accused; she declared that every virtue was
enlisted on her mother's side, and that she would abide by her for ever.
In truth, she loved her the more for Lodore's hatred, and Lady Santerre
spared no pains to impress her with the belief, that she was wholly
devoted to her.

Thus years passed away. At first Lady Lodore had lived in some degree of
retirement, but persuaded again to emerge, she soon entered into the
very thickest maze of society. Her fortune was sufficient to command a
respectable station, her beauty gained her partizans, her untainted
reputation secured her position in the world. Attractive as she was, she
was so entirely and proudly correct, that even the women were not afraid
of her. All her intimate associates were people whose rank gave weight
and brilliancy to her situation, but who were conspicuous for their
domestic virtues. She was looked upon as an injured and deserted wife,
whose propriety of conduct was the more admirable from the difficulties
with which she was surrounded; she became more than ever the fashion,
and years glided on, as from season to season she shone a bright star
among many luminaries, improving in charms and grace, as knowledge of
the world and the desire of pleasing were added to her natural
attractions.

The stories at first in circulation on Lodore's departure, all sufficiently
wide from the truth, were half forgotten, and served merely as an
obscure substratum for Cornelia's bright reputation. He was gone: he
could no longer injure nor benefit any, and was therefore no longer an
object of fear or love. The most charitable construction put upon his
conduct was, that he was mad, and it was piously observed, that his
removal from this world would be a blessing. Lady Santerre triumphed.
Withering away in unhonoured age, still she appeared in the halls of the
great, and played the part of Cerberus in her daughter's drawing-room.
Lady Lodore, beautiful and admired, intoxicated with this sort of
prosperity, untouched by passion, unharmed by the temptations that
surrounded her, believed that life was spent most worthily in following
the routine observed by those about her, and securing the privilege of
being exclusive. She was the glass of fashion--the imitated by a vast
sect of imitators. The deprivation of her child was the sole cloud that
came between her and the sun. In despite of herself, she never saw a
little cherub with rosy cheeks and golden hair, but her heart was
visited by a pang; and in her dreams she often beheld, instead of the
image of the gay saloons in which she spent her evenings, a desert
wild--a solitary home--and tiny footsteps on the dewy grass, guiding her
to her baby daughter, whose soft cooings, remembered during absence,
were agonizing to her. She awoke, and vowed her soul to hatred of the
author of her sufferings--the cruel-hearted, insolent Lodore; and then
fled to pleasure as the means of banishing these sad and disturbing
emotions. She never again saw Casimir. Long before she re-appeared in
the world, he and his mother had quitted England. Taught by the slight
tinge of weakness that had mingled with her intercourse with him, she
sedulously avoided like trials in future; and placing her happiness in
universal applause, love saw her set his power at nought, and pride
become a more impenetrable shield than wisdom.




CHAPTER XIV


Time and Change together take their flight.

L. E. L.


Fitzhenry and his daughter travelled for many days in rain and sunshine,
across the vast plains of America. Conversation beguiled the way, and
Ethel, delighted by the novelty and variety of all she saw, often felt
as if springing from her seat with a new sense of excitement and
gladness. So much do the young love change, that we have often thought
it the dispensation of the Creator, to show that we are formed, at a
certain age, to quit the parental roof, like the patriarch, to seek some
new abode where to pitch our tents, and pasture our flocks. The clear
soft eyes of the fair girl glistened with pleasure at each picturesque
view, each change of earth and sky, each new aspect of civilization and
its results, as they were presented to her.

Fitzhenry--or as he approaches the old world, so long deserted by him, he
may resume his title--Lord Lodore had quitted his abode in the Illinois
upon the spur of the moment; he had left his peaceful dwelling impatiently,
and in haste, giving himself no time for second thoughts--scarcely for
recollection. As the fever of his mind subsided, he saw no cause to
repent his proceeding, and yet he began to look forward with an anxious
and foreboding mind. He had become aware that the village of the
Illinois was not the scene fitted for the development of his daughter's
first social feelings, and that he ought to take her among the educated
and refined, to give her a chance for happiness. A Gertrude or an
Haidée, brought up in the wilds, innocent and free, and bestowing the
treasure of their hearts on some accomplished stranger, brought on
purpose to realize the ideal of their dreamy existences, is a picture of
beauty, that requires a miracle to change into an actual event in life;
and that one so pure, so guileless, and so inexperienced as Ethel,
should, in sheer ignorance, give her affections away unworthily, was a
danger to be avoided beyond all others. Whitelock had performed the part
of the wandering stranger, but he was ill-fitted for it; and Lodore's
first idea was to hurry his daughter away before she should invest him,
or any other, with attributes of glory, drawn from her own imagination
and sensibility, wholly beyond his merits.

This was done. Father and daughter were on their way to New York, having
bid an eternal adieu to the savannas and forests of the west. For a time,
Lodore's thoughts were haunted by the image of the home they had left.
The murmuring of its stream was in his ears, the shape of each distant
hill, the grouping of the trees, surrounding the wide-spread prairie,
the winding pathway and trellised arbour were before his eyes, and he
thought of the changes that the seasons would operate around, and of his
future plans unfulfilled, as any home-bred farmer might, when his lease
was out, and he was forced to remove to another county.

As their steps drew near the city which was their destination, these
recollections became fainter, and, except in discourse with Ethel, when
their talk usually recurred to the prairie, and their late home, he
began to anticipate the future, and to reflect upon the results of his
present journey.

Whither was he about to go? To England? What reception should he there
meet? and under what auspices introduce his child to her native country?
There was a stain upon his reputation that no future conduct could
efface. The name of Lodore was a by-word and a mark for scorn; it was
introduced with a sneer, followed by calumny and rebuke. It could not
even be forgotten. His wife had remained to keep alive the censure or
derision attached to it. He, it is true, might have ceased to live in
the memories of any. He did not imagine that his idea ever recurred to
the thoughtless throng, whose very name and identity were changed by the
lapse of twelve years. But when it was mentioned, when he should awaken
the forgotten sound by his presence, the echo of shame linked to it
would awaken also; the love of a sensation so rife among the wealthy and
idle, must swell the sound, and Ethel would be led on the world's stage
by one who was the object of its opprobrium.

What then should he do? Solicit Lady Lodore to receive and bring out her
daughter? Deprive himself of her society; and after having guarded her
unassailed infancy, desert her side at the moment when dangers grew
thick, and her mother's example would operate most detrimentally on her?
He thought of his sister, with whom he kept up a regular though
infrequent correspondence. She was ill fitted to guide a young beauty on
a path which she had never trod. He thought of France, Italy, and
Germany, and how he might travel about with her during the two or three
succeeding years, enlarging and storing her mind, and protracting the
happy light-hearted years of youth. His own experience on the continent
would facilitate this plan; and though it presented, even on this very
account, a variety of objections, it was that to which he felt most
attracted.

There was yet another--another image and another prospect to which he
turned with a kind of gasping sensation, which was now a shrinking
aversion to--now an ardent desire for, its fulfilment. This was the
project of a reconciliation with Cornelia, and that they should
henceforth unite in their labours to render each other and their child
happy.

Twelve years had passed since their separation: twelve years, which had
led him from the prime of life to its decline--which forced Cornelia to
number, instead of nineteen, more than thirty years--bringing her from
crude youth to fullest maturity. What changes might not time have
operated in her mind! Latterly no intercourse had passed between them,
they were as dead to each other; and yet the fact of the existence of
either was a paramount law with both, ruling their actions and
preventing them from forming any new tie. Cornelia might be tired of
independence, have discovered the hollowness of her mother's system, and
desire, but that pride prevented her, a reunion with her long-exiled
husband. Her understanding was good; intercourse with the world had
probably operated to cultivate and enlarge it--maternal love might reign
in full force, causing her heart to yearn towards the blooming Ethel,
and a thousand untold sorrows might make her regard the affection of her
child's father, as the prop, the shelter, the haven, where to find
peace, if not happiness.

And yet Cornelia was still young, still beautiful, still admired: he was
on the wane--a healthy life had preserved the uprightness of his form
and the spring of his limbs; but his countenance, how changed from the
Lodore who pledged his faith to her in the rustic church at Rhyaider Gowy!
The melting softness of his dark eyes was altered to mere sadness--his
brow, from which the hair had retreated, was delved by a thousand lines;
grey sprinkled his black hair,--a wintry morning stealing drearily upon
night--each year had left its trace, and with no Praxitelean hand,
engraven lines upon the rounded cheek, and sunk and diminished the full
eye. Twelve years had scarcely operated so great a change as here
described; but thus he painted it to himself, exaggerating and deforming
the image his mirror presented--and where others had only marked the
indications of a thoughtful mind, and the traces of over-wrought
sensibility, he beheld careful furrows and age-worn wrinkles.

And was he thus to claim the beautiful, the courted--she who still
reigned supreme on Love's own throne? and to whom, so had he been told,
time had brought increased charms as its gift, strewing roses and
fragrance on her lovely head, so proving that neither grief nor passion
had disturbed the proud serenity of her heart.

Lodore had lived many years the life of a recluse, having given up
ambition, hope, almost life itself, inasmuch as that existence is scarcely
to be termed life, which does not bring us into intimate connexion with our
fellow-creatures, nor develope in its progress some plan of present
action or anticipation for the future. He was roused from his lethargy
as he approached peopled cities; a desire to mingle again in human
affairs was awakened, together with an impatience under the obscurity to
which he had condemned himself. He grew at last to despise his
supineness, which had prevented him from struggling with and vanquishing
his adverse fortunes. He resolved no longer to be weighed down by the
fear of obloquy, while he was conscious of the bravery and determination
of his soul, and with what lofty indignation he was prepared to sweep
away the stigma attached to him, and to assert the brightness of his
honour. This, for his daughter's sake, as well as for his own, he
determined to do.

He had no wish, however, to enter upon the task in America. His native
country must be the scene of his exertions, as to re-assert himself
among his countrymen was their object. He felt, also, that, from the
beginning, he must take no false step; and it behoved him fully to
understand the state of things in England as regarded him, before he
presented himself. He delayed his voyage, therefore, till he had
exchanged letters with Europe. He wrote to his sister, immediately on
arriving at New York, asking for intelligence concerning Lady Lodore; and
communicating his intention to return immediately, and, if possible, to
effect a reconciliation with his estranged wife. He besought an
immediate reply, as he did not wish to defer his voyage beyond the
spring months.

Having sent this letter, he gave himself up to the society of his
daughter. He occupied himself by endeavouring to form her for the new
scenes on which she was about to enter, and to divest her of the first
raw astonishment excited by the contrast formed by the busy, commercial
eastern, with the majestic tranquillity of the western portion of the
new world. He wished to accustom her to mingle with her fellow-creatures
with ease and dignity; and he sought to enlarge her mind, and to excite
her curiosity, by introducing her to the effects of civilization. He
would willingly have formed acquaintances for her sake, but that such a
circumstance might interfere with the incognito he meant to preserve
while away from his native country. We can never divest ourselves of our
identity and consciousness, and are apt to fancy that others are equally
alive to our peculiar individuality. It was not probable that the name
of Lodore, or of Fitzhenry, should be known in New York; but as the title
had been bestowed as a reward for victories obtained over the Americans, he
who bore it was less to be blamed for fancying that they had heard with
pleasure the story of his disgrace, and would be ready to visit his
fault with malignant severity.

An accident, however, brought him into contact with an English lady, and
he gladly availed himself of this opportunity to bring Ethel into the
society of her country people. One day he received an elegant little
note, such as are written in London by the fashionable and the fair,
which, with many apologies, contained a request. The writer had heard
that he was about to return to England with his daughter. Would he
refuse to take under his charge a young lady, who was desirous of
returning thither? The distance from their native land drew English
people together, and usually made them kindly disposed towards each
other. The circumstances under which this request was made were
peculiar; and if he would call to hear them explained, his interest
would be excited, and he would not refuse a favour which would lay the
writer under the deepest obligation.

Lodore answered this application in person. He found an English family
residing in one of the best streets of New York, and was introduced to the
lady who had addressed him. Her story, the occasion of her request, was
detailed without reserve. Her husband's family had formerly been
American royalists, refugees in England, where they had lived poor and
forgotten. A brother of his father had remained behind in the new
country, and acquired a large fortune. He had lived to extreme old age;
and dying childless, left his wealth to his English nephew, upon
condition that he settled in America. This had caused their emigration.
While in England, they had lived at Bath, and been intimate with a
clergyman, who resided near. This clergyman was a singular man--a
recluse, and a student--a man of ardent soul, held down by a timid,
nervous disposition. He was an outcast from his family, which was
wealthy and of good station, on account of having formed a mes-alliance.
How indeed he could have married his unequal partner was matter of
excessive wonder. She was illiterate and vulgar--coarse-minded, though
good-natured. This ill-matched pair had two daughters;--one, the
younger, now about fourteen years old, was the person whom it was
desired to commit to Lodore's protection.

The lady continued:--She had a large family of boys, and but one girl,
of the age of Fanny Derham;--they had been for some years companions and
friends. When about to emigrate, she believed that she should benefit
equally her daughter and her friend, if she made the latter a companion
in their emigration. With great reluctance, Mr. Derham had consented to
part with his child: he had thought it for her good, and he had let her
go. Fanny obeyed her father. She manifested no disinclination to the
plan; and it seemed as if the benevolent wishes of Mrs. Greville were
fulfilled for the benefit of all. They had been in America nearly a
year, and now Fanny was to return. She herself had borne her absence
from her father with fortitude: yet it required an exertion of fortitude
to bear it, which was destroying the natural vivacity of her
disposition. Gloom gathered over her mind; she fled society; she sought
solitude; and spent day after day in reverie. Mrs. Greville strove to
rouse her, and Fanny lent herself with good grace to any exertion
demanded of her; yet it was plain, that even when she gave herself most
up to her desire to please her hostess, her thoughts were far away, her
eye was tracing the invisible outline of objects divided from her by the
ocean; and her inmost sense was absorbed by the recollection of one far
distant; while her ear and voice were abstractedly lent to those
immediately around her. Mrs. Greville endeavoured vainly to amuse and
distract her thoughts. The only pleasure which attracted her young mind
was study--a deep and unremitted application to those profound
acquirements, to the knowledge of which her father had introduced her.

"When you know my young friend," continued Mrs. Greville, "you will
understand the force of character which renders her unlike every other
child. Fanny never was a child. Mrs. Derham and her daughter Sarah
bustled through the business of life--of the farm and the house; while
it devolved on Fanny to attend to, to wait upon, her father. She was his
pupil--he her care. The relation of parent and child subsisted between
them, on a different footing than in ordinary cases. Fanny nursed her
father, watched over his health and humours, with the tenderness and
indulgence of a mother; while he instructed her in the dead languages,
and other sorts of abstruse learning, which seldom make a part of a
girl's education. Fanny, to use her own singular language, loves
philosophy, and pants after knowledge, and indulges in a thousand
Platonic dreams, which I know nothing about; and this mysterious and
fanciful learning she has dwelt upon with tenfold fervour since her
arrival in America.

"The contrast," continued Mrs. Greville, "between this wonderful, but
strange girl, and her parent, is apparent in nothing more than the
incident that made me have recourse to your kindness. Fanny pined for
home, and her father. The very air of America was distasteful to her--we
were not congenial companions. But she never expressed discontent. As
much as she could, she shut herself up in the world of her own mind; but
outwardly, she was cheerful and uncomplaining. A week ago we had letters
from her parents, requesting her immediate return. Mr. Derham wasted
away without her; his health was seriously injured by what, in feminine
dialect, is called fretting; and both he and her mother have implored me
to send her back to them without delay."

Lord Lodore listened with breathless interest, asking now and then such
questions as drew on Mrs. Greville to further explanation. He soon
became convinced that he was called upon to do this act of kindness for
the daughter of his former school-fellow--for Francis Derham, whom he
had not known nor seen since they had exchanged the visions of boyhood
for the disappointing realities of maturer age. And this was Derham's
fate!--poor, mis-matched, destroyed by a morbid sensibility, an object
of pity to his own young child, yet adored by her as the gentlest and
wisest of men. How different--and yet how similar--the destinies of
both! It warmed the heart of Lodore to think that he should renew his
boyish intimacy. Derham would not reject him--would not participate in
the world's blind scorn: in his bosom no harsh nor unjust feeling could
have place; his simple, warm heart would yearn towards him as of yore;
and the school-fellows become again all the world to each other.

After this explanation, Mrs. Greville introduced her young friend. Her
resemblance to her father was at first sight remarkable, and awoke with
greater keenness the roused sensibility of Lodore. She was pale and fair;
her light, golden hair clustered in short ringlets over her small,
well-formed head, leaving unshaded a high forehead, clear as opening
day. Her blue eyes were remarkably light and penetrating, with defined
and straight brows. Intelligence, or rather understanding, reigned in
every feature; independence of thought, and firmness, spoke in every
gesture. She was a mere child in form and mien--even in her expressions;
but within her was discernible an embryo of power, and a grandeur of
soul, not to be mistaken. Simplicity and equability of temper were her
characteristics: these smoothed the ruggedness which the singularity of
her character might otherwise have engendered.

Lodore rejoiced in the strange accident that gave such a companion to his
daughter. Nothing could be in stronger contrast than these two
girls;--the fairy form, the romantic and yielding sweetness of Ethel,
whose clinging affections formed her whole world,--with the studious and
abstracted disciple of ancient learning. Notwithstanding this want of
similarity, they soon became mutually attached. Lodore was a link
between them. He excited Ethel to admire the concentrated and
independent spirit of her new friend; and entered into conversation with
Fanny on ancient philosophy, which was unintelligible and mysterious to
Ethel. The three became inseparable: they prolonged their excursions in
the neighbouring country; while each enjoyed peculiar pleasures in the
friendship and sympathy of their companions.

This addition to their society, and an intimacy cultivated with Mrs.
Greville, whose husband was absent at Washington, formed, as it were, a
weaning time for Lodore, from the seclusion of the Illinois. There he had
lived, cut off from the past and the future, existing in the present
only. He had been happy there; cured of the wounds which had penetrated
his heart so deeply, through the ministration of all-healing nature. He
felt the gliding of the hours as a blessing; and the occupations of each
day were replete with calm enjoyment. He thought of England, as a seaman
newly saved from a wreck would of the tempestuous ocean, with fear and
loathing, and with heart-felt gladness that he was no longer the sport
of its waves. He cultivated such a philosophic turn of mind as often
brought a smile of self-pity on his lips, at the recollection of scenes
which, during their passage, had provoked bitter and burning sensations.
What was all this strife of passion, this eager struggle for something,
he knew not what, to him now? The healthy labours of his farm, the
tranquillity of his library, the endearing caresses of his child, were
worth all the vanities of life.

Thus he had felt in the Illinois; and now again he looked back to his
undisturbed life there, wondering how he had endured its monotonous
loneliness. A desire for action, for mingling with his fellow-men, had
arisen in his heart. He felt like a strong swimmer, who longs to battle
with the waves. He desired to feel and to exert his powers, to fill a
space in the eyes of others, to re-assert himself in their esteem, or to
resent their scorn. He could no longer regard the past with
imperturbability. Again his passions were roused, as he thought of his
mother-in-law, of his wife, and of the strange scenes which had preceded
and caused his flight from England. These ideas had long occupied his
mind, without occasioning any emotion. But now again they were full of
interest; and pain and struggle again resulted from the recollection. At
such times he was glad that Ethel had a companion, that he might leave
her and wander alone. He became a prey to the same violence of passion,
the same sense of injury and stinging hurry of thought, which for twelve
years had ceased to torture him. But no tincture of cowardice entered
into his sensations. His soul was set upon victory over the evil fortune
to which he had so long submitted. When he thought of returning to
England, from which he had fled with dishonour, his cheek tingled as a
thousand images of insult and contumely passed rapidly through his mind,
as likely to visit him. His heart swelled within him--his very soul grew
faint; but instead of desiring to fly the anticipated opprobrium, he
longed to meet it and to wash out shame, if need were, with his life's
blood; and, by resolution and daring, to silence his enemies, and redeem
his name from obloquy.

One day, occupied by such thoughts, he stood watching that vast and
celebrated cataract, whose everlasting and impetuous flow mirrored the
dauntless but rash energy of his own soul. A vague desire of plunging
into the whirl of waters agitated him. His existence appeared to be a
blot in the creation; his hopes, and fears, and resolves, a worthless
web of ill-assorted ideas, best swept away at once from the creation.
Suddenly his eye caught the little figure of Fanny Derham, standing on a
rock not far distant, her meaning eyes fixed on him. The thunder of the
waters prevented speech; but as he drew near her, he saw that she had a
paper in her hand. She held it out to him; a blush mantled over her
usually pale countenance as he took it; and she sprung away up the rocky
pathway.

Lodore cast his eyes on the open letter, and his own name, half forgotten
by him, presented itself on the written page. The letter was from Fanny's
father--from Derham, his friend and school-fellow. His heart beat fast
as he read the words traced by one formerly so dear. "The beloved name
of Fitzhenry"--thus Derham had written--"awakens a strange conjecture.
Is not your kind protector, the friend and companion of my boyish days?
Is it not the long absent Lodore, who has stretched out a paternal hand
to my darling child, and who is about to add to his former generous
acts, the dearer one of restoring my Fanny to me? Ask him this
question;--extract this secret from him. Tell him how my chilled heart
warms with pleasure at the prospect of a renewal of our friendship. He
was a god-like boy; daring, generous, and brave. The remembrance of him
has been the bright spot which, except yourself, is all of cheering that
has chequered my gloomy existence. Ask him whether he remembers him
whose life he saved--whom he rescued from oppression and misery. I am an
old man now, weighed down by sorrow and infirmity. Adversity has also
visited him; but he will have withstood the shocks of fate, as gallantly
as a mighty ship stems the waves of ocean: while I, a weather-worn
skiff, am battered and wrecked by the tempest. From all you say, he must
be Lodore. Mark him, Fanny: if you see one lofty in his mien, yet
gracious in all his acts; his person adorned by the noblest attributes
of rank; full of dignity, yet devoid of pride; impatient of all that is
base and insolent, but with a heart open as a woman's to
compassion;--one whose slightest word possesses a charm to attract and
enchain the affections:--if such be your new friend, put this letter
into his hand; he will remember Francis Derham, and love you for my
sake, as well as for your own."




CHAPTER XV


It is our will
That thus enchains us to permitted ill.

SHELLEY.


This was a new inducement to bring back Lodore from the wilds of America,
to the remembrance of former days. The flattering expressions in Derham's
letter soothed his wounded pride, and inspired a desire of associating
once more with men who could appreciate his worth, and sympathize with
his feelings. His spirits became exhilarated; he talked of Europe and
his return thither, with all the animation of sanguine youth. It is one
of the necessary attributes of our nature, always to love what we have
once loved; and though new objects and change in former ones may chill
our affections for a time, we are filled with renewed fervour after
every fresh disappointment, and feel an impatient longing to return to
the cherishing warmth of our early attachments; happy if we do not find
emptiness and desolation, where we left life and hope.

Ethel had never been as happy as at the present time, and her affection
for her father gathered strength from the confidence which existed
between them. He was the passion of her soul, the engrossing attachment
of her loving heart. When she saw a cloud on his brow, she would stand
by him with silent but pleading tenderness, as if to ask whether any
exertion of hers could dissipate his inquietude. She hung upon his
discourse as a heavenly oracle, and welcomed him with gladdened looks of
love, when he returned after any short absence. Her heart was bent upon
pleasing him, she had no thought or pursuit which was not linked with
his participation.

There is perhaps in the list of human sensations, no one so pure, so
perfect, and yet so impassioned, as the affection of a child for its
parent, during that brief interval when they are leaving childhood, and
have not yet felt love. There is something so awful in a father. His
words are laws, and to obey them happiness. Reverence and a desire to
serve, are mingled with gratitude; and duty, without a flaw or question,
so second the instinct of the heart, as to render it imperative.
Afterwards we may love, in spite of the faults of the object of our
attachment; but during the interval alluded to, we have not yet learnt
to tolerate, but also, we have not learned to detect faults. All that a
parent does, appears an emanation from a diviner world; while we fear to
offend, we believe we have no right to be offended; eager to please, we
seek in return approval only, and are too humble to demand a reciprocity
of attention; it is enough that we are permitted to demonstrate our
devotion. Ethel's heart overflowed with love, reverence, worship of her
father. He had stood in the wilds of America a solitary specimen of all
that is graceful, cultivated, and wise among men; she knew of nothing
that might compare to him; and the world without him, was what the earth
might be uninformed by light: he was its sun, its ruling luminary. All
this intensity of feeling existed in her, without her being aware
scarcely of its existence, without her questioning the cause, or
reasoning on the effect. To love her father was the first law of nature,
the chief duty of a child, and she fulfilled it unconsciously, but more
completely than she could have done had she been associated with others,
who might have shared and weakened the concentrated sensibility of her
nature.

At length the packet arrived which brought letters from England. Before
his eyes lay the closed letter pregnant with fate. He was not of a
disposition to recoil from certainty; and yet for a few moments he
hesitated to break the seals--appalled by the magnitude of the crisis
which he believed to be at hand.

Latterly the idea of a reconciliation with Cornelia had been a favourite
in his thoughts. The world was a painful and hard-tasking school. She
must have suffered various disappointments, and endured much disgust,
and so be prepared to lend a willing ear to his overture. She was so
very young when they parted, and since then, had lived entirely under
the influence of Lady Santerre. But what had at one time proved
injurious, might, in course of years, have opened her eyes to the vanity of
the course which she was pursuing. Lodore felt persuaded, that there were
better things to be expected from his wife, than a love of fashion and
an adherence to the prejudices of society. He had failed to bring her
good qualities to light, but time and events might have played the tutor
better, and it merely required perhaps a seasonable interference, a
fortunate circumstance, to prove the truth of his opinion, and to show
Lady Lodore as generous, magnanimous, and devoted, as before she had
appeared proud, selfish, and cold.

How few there are possessed of any sensibility, who mingle with, and are
crushed by the jostling interests of the world, who do not ever and anon
exclaim with the Psalmist, "O for the wings of a dove, that I might flee
away and be at rest!" If such an aspiration was ever breathed by
Cornelia, how gladly, how fondly would her husband welcome the weary
flutterer, open his bosom for her refuge, and study to make her forget
all the disquietudes and follies of headstrong youth!

This was a mere dream. Lodore sighed to think that his position would not
permit him to afford her a shelter from the poisoned arrows of the
world. She must come to him prepared to suffer much. It required not
only the absence of the vulgar worldliness of Lady Santerre, but great
strength of mind to forgive the past, and strong affection to endure the
present. He could only invite her to share the lot of a dishonoured man,
to become a partner in the struggle which he was prepared to enter upon,
to regain his lost reputation. This was no cheering prospect. Pride and
generosity equally forbad his endeavouring to persuade his wife to quit
a course of life she liked, to enter upon a scene of trials and sorrows
with one for whom she did not care.

All these conjectures had long occupied him, but here was certainty--the
letter in his hand. It was sealed with black, and a tremulous shudder
ran through his frame as he tore it open. He soon satisfied
himself--Cornelia lived: he breathed freely again, and proceeded more
calmly to make himself master of the intelligence which the paper he
held contained.

Cornelia lived; but his sister announced a death which he believed would
change the colour of his life. Lady Santerre was no more!

Yes, Cornelia was alive; the bride that had stood beside him at the
altar--whose hand he had held while he pronounced his vows--with whom he
had domesticated for years--the mother of his child still lived. The
cold consuming grave did not wrap her lovely form. The idea of her
death, which the appearance of the black seal conveyed suddenly to his
imagination, had been appalling beyond words. For the last few weeks his
mind had been filled with her image; his thoughts had fed upon the hope
that they should meet once more. Had she died while he was living in
inactive seclusion in the Illinois, he might have been less moved; his
vivid fancy, his passionate heart, could not spare her now, without a
pang of agony. It passed away, and his mind reverted to the actual
situation in which they were placed by the death of his mother-in-law.
Reconciliation had become easy by the removal of that fatal barrier. He
felt assured that he could acquire Cornelia's confidence, win her love,
and administer to her happiness; he determined to leave nothing untried
to bring about so desirable a conclusion to their long and dreary
alienation. The one insuperable obstacle was gone; their daughter, that
loveliest link, that soft silken tie remained: Cornelia must welcome
with maternal delight this better portion of herself.

He glanced over his sister Elizabeth's letter, announcing the death of
Lady Santerre, and then read the one enclosed from Lady Lodore to her
sister-in-law. It was cold, but very decisive. She thanked her first for
the inquiries she had made, and then proceeded to say, that she took
this opportunity, the only one likely to present itself, of expressing
what her own feelings were on this melancholy occasion. "I am afraid,"
she said, "that your brother will look on the death of my dearest mother
as opening the door to our re-union. Some words in your letter seem
indeed to intimate this, or I should have hoped that I was entirely
forgotten. I trust that I am mistaken. My earnest desire is, that my
natural grief, and the tranquillity which I try to secure for myself,
may not be disturbed by fruitless endeavours to bring about what can
never be. My determination may be supposed to arise from pride and
implacable resentment: perhaps it does, but I feel it impossible that we
should ever be any thing but strangers to each other. I will not
complain, and I wish to avoid harsh allusions, but respect for her I
have lost, and a sense of undeserved wrong, are paramount with me. I
shall never intrude upon him. Persuade him that it will be unmanly
cruelty to force himself, even by a letter, on me."

From this violent declaration of an unforgiving heart, Lodore turned to
Elizabeth's letter. This excellent lady, to whom the names of
dissipation and the metropolis were synonymous, and who knew as much of
the world as Parson Adams, assured her brother, that Cornelia, far from
feeling deeply the blow of her mother's death, was pursuing her giddy
course with greater pertinacity than ever. Surrounded by flatterers,
given up to pleasure, she naturally shrunk from being reminded of her
exiled husband and her forgotten child. Her letter showed how ill she
deserved the tenderness and interest which Lodore had expressed. She was
a second Lady Santerre, without being gifted with that maternal
affection, which had in some degree dignified that person's character.

Elizabeth lamented that his wife's hardness of heart might prevent his
proposed visit to England. She did not like to urge it--it might seem
selfish: hitherto she had let herself and her sorrows go for nothing;
could she think of her own gratification, while her brother was
suffering so much calamity? She was growing old--indeed she was old--she
had no kin around her--early friends were dead or lost to her--she had
nothing to live on but the recollection of her brother; she should think
herself blest could she see him once more before she died.

"O my dear brother Henry," continued the kind-hearted lady, "if you
would but say the word--the sea is nothing; people older than I--and I
am not at all infirm--make the voyage. Let me come to America--let me
embrace my niece, and see you once again--let me share your dear home in
the Illinois, which I see every night in my dreams. I should grieve to
be a burthen to you, but it would be my endeavour to prove a comfort and
a help."

Lodore read both of these letters, one after the other, again and again. He
resolved on going to England immediately. Either Cornelia was entirely
callous and worthless, and so to be discarded from his heart for ever,
or after her first bitter feelings on her mother's death were over, she
would soften towards her child, or there was some dread secret feeling
that influenced her, and he must save her from calamity and
wretchedness. One of those changes of feeling to which the character of
Lodore was peculiarly subject, came over him. Lady Santerre was
dead--Cornelia was alone. A thousand dangers surrounded her. It appeared
to him that his first imperious duty was to offer himself to guard and
watch over her. He resolved to leave nothing untried to make her happy.
He would give up Ethel to her--he would gratify every wish she could
frame--pour out benefits lavishly before her--force her to see in him a
benefactor and a friend; and at last, his heart whispered, induce her to
assume again the duties of a wife.




CHAPTER XVI


What is peace? When life is over,
And love ceases to rebel,
Let the last faint sigh discover,
Which precedes the passing knell.

WORDSWORTH.


Lodore was henceforth animated by a new spirit of hope. His projects and
resolves gave him something to live for. He looked forward with
pleasure; feeling, on his expected return to his native country, as the
fabled voyager, who knew that he ought to be contented in the fair
island where chance had thrown him, and yet who hailed with rapture the
approach of the sail that was to bear him back to the miseries of social
life. He reflected that he had in all probability many years before him,
and he was earnest that the decline of his life should, by a display of
prudence and virtuous exertion, cause the errors of his earlier manhood
to be forgotten.

This inspiriting tone of mind was very congenial to Ethel. The prospects
that occupied her father had a definite horizon: all was vague and misty
to her eyes, yet beautiful and alluring. Lodore gave no outline of his
plans: he never named her mother. Uncertain himself, he was unwilling to
excite feelings in Ethel's mind, to be afterwards checked and disappointed.
He painted the future in gay colours, but left it in all the dimness most
favourable for an ardent imagination to exercise itself upon.

In a very few days they were to sail for England. Their passage was
engaged. Lodore had written to his sister to announce his return. He spoke
of Longfield, and of her kind and gentle aunt to Ethel, and she, who, like
Miranda, had known no relative or intimate except her father, warmed
with pleasure to find new ties bind her to her fellow-creatures. She
questioned her father, and he, excited by his own newly-awakened
emotions, dilated eloquently on the joys of his young days, and pleased
Fanny, as well as his own daughter, by a detail of boyish pranks and
adventures which his favourite school-fellow shared. The freedom he
enjoyed in his paternal home, the worship that waited on him there, the
large space which in early youth he appeared to fill in all men's eyes,
the buoyancy and innocence associated with those unshadowed days,
painted them to his memory cloudless and bright. It would be to renew
them to see Longfield again,--to clasp once more the hand of Francis
Derham.

A kind of holiday and festal feeling was diffused through Ethel's mind
by the vivid descriptions and frank communications of her father. She
felt as if about to enter Paradise. America grew dim and sombre in her
eyes; its forests, lakes, and wilds, were empty and silent, while
England swarmed with a thousand lovely forms of pleasure. Her father
strewed a downy velvet path for her, which she trod with light, girlish
steps, happy in the present hour, happier in the anticipated future.

A few days before the party were to sail, Lodore and his daughter dined
with Mrs. Greville. As if they held the reins, and could curb the course
of, fate, each and all were filled with hilarity. Lodore had forgotten
Theodora and her son--had cast from his recollection the long train of
misery, injury, and final ruin, which for so long had occupied his whole
thoughts. He was in his own eyes no longer the branded exile. A strange
distortion of vision blinded this unfortunate man to the truth, which
experience so perpetually teaches us, that the consequences of our
actions _never die_: that repentance and time may paint them to us in
different shapes; but though we shut our eyes, they are still beside us,
helping the inexorable destinies to spin the fatal thread, and
sharpening the implement which is to cut it asunder.

Lodore lived the morning of that day, (it was the first of May, realizing
by its brilliancy and sweets, the favourite months of the poets,) as if
many a morning throughout the changeful seasons was to be his. Some time
he spent on board the vessel in which he was to sail; seeing that all
the arrangements which he had ordered for Ethel and Fanny's comfort were
perfected; then father and daughter rode out together. Often did Ethel
try to remember every word of the conversation held during that ride. It
concerned the fair fields of England, the splendours of Italy, the
refinements and pleasures of Europe. "When we are in London,"--"When we
shall visit Naples,"--such phrases perpetually occurred. It was Lodore's
plan to induce Cornelia to travel with him, and to invite Mr. Derham and
Fanny to be their companions; a warmer climate would benefit his
friend's health. "And for worlds," he said, "I would not lose Derham. It
is the joy of my life to think that by my return to my native country I
secure to myself the society of this excellent and oppressed man."

At six o'clock Lodore and Ethel repaired to Mrs. Greville's house. It had
been intended that no other persons should be invited, but the unexpected
arrival of some friends from Washington, about to sail to England, had
obliged the lady to alter this arrangement. The new guests consisted of
an English gentleman and his wife, and one other, an American, who had
filled a diplomatic situation in London. Annoyed by the sight of
strangers, Lodore kept apart, conversing with Ethel and Fanny.

At dinner he sat opposite to the American. There was something in this
man's physiognomy peculiarly disagreeable to him. He was not a
pleasing-looking man, but that was not all. Lodore fancied that he must
have seen him before under very painful circumstances. He felt inclined to
quarrel with him--he knew not why; and was disturbed and dissatisfied
with himself and every body. The first words which the man spoke were as
an electric shock to him. Twelve long years rolled back--the past became
the present once again. This very American had sat opposite to him at
the memorable dinner at the Russian Ambassador's. At the moment when he
had been hurried away by the fury of his passion against Casimir, he
remembered to have seen a sarcastic sneer on his face, as the republican
marked the arrogance of the English noble. Lodore had been ready then to
turn the fire of his resentment on the insolent observer; but when the
occasion passed away he had entirely forgotten him, till now he rose
like a ghost to remind him of former pains and crimes.

The lapse of years had scarcely altered this person. His hair was
grizzled, but it crowned his head in the same rough abundance as
formerly. His face, which looked as if carved out of wood, strongly and
deeply lined, showed no tokens of a more advanced age. He was then
elderly-looking for a middle-aged man; he was now young-looking for an
elderly man. Nature had disdained to change an aspect which showed so
little of her divinity, and which no wrinkles nor withering could mar.
Lodore, turning from this apparition, caught the reflection of himself in
an opposite mirror. Association of ideas had made him unconsciously expect
to behold the jealous husband of Cornelia. How changed, how passion-worn
and tarnished was the countenance that met his eyes. He recovered his
self-possession as he became persuaded that this chance visitant, who
had seen him but once, would be totally unable to recognize him.

This unwelcome guest had been attached to the American embassy in
England, and had but lately returned to New York. He was full of dislike
of the English. Contempt for them, and pride in his countrymen, being
the cherished feelings of his mind; the latter he held up to admiration
from prejudiced views; a natural propensity to envy and depreciation led
him to detract from the former. He was, in short, a most disagreeable
person; and his insulting observations on his country moved Lodore's
spleen, while his mind was shaken from its balance by the sight of one who
reminded him of his past errors and ruin. He was fast advancing to a
state of irritability, when he should lose all command over himself. He
felt this, and tried to subdue the impetuous rush of bitterness which
agitated him; he remembered that he must expect many trials like this,
and that, rightly considered, this was a good school wherein he might
tutor himself to self-possession and firmness. He went to another
extreme, and addressing himself to, and arguing with, the object of his
dislike, endeavoured to gloss over to himself the rising violence of his
impassioned temper.

The ladies retired, and the gentlemen entered upon a political
discussion on some event passing in Europe. The English guest took his
departure early, and Lodore and the other continued to converse. Some
mention was made of newspapers newly arrived, and the American proposed
that they should repair to the coffee-house to see them. Lodore agreed: he
thought that this would be a good opportunity to shake off his
distasteful companion.

The coffee-room contained nearly twenty persons. They were in loud
discussion upon a question of European politics, and reviling England and
her manners in the most contemptuous terms. This was not balm for Lodore's
sore feelings. His heart swelled indignantly at the sarcasms which these
strangers levelled against his native country; he felt as if he was
acting a coward's part while he listened tamely. His companion soon
entered with vehemence into the conversation; and the noble, who was
longing to quarrel with him, now drew himself up with forced composure,
fixing his full meaning eyes upon the speaker, hoping by his quiescence
to entice him into expressions which he would insist on being retracted.
His temper by this time entirely mastered him. In a calmer moment he
would have despised himself for being influenced by such a man, to any
sentiment except contempt; but the tempest was abroad, and all sobriety
of feeling was swept away like chaff before the wind.

Mr. Hatfield,--such was the American's name,--perceiving that he was
listened to, entered with great delight on his favourite topic, a
furious and insolent philippic against England, in mass and in detail.
Lodore still listened; there was a dry sneer in the tones of the speaker's
voice, that thrilled him with hate and rage. At length, by some chance
reverting to the successful struggle America had made for her
independence, and ridiculing the resistance of the English on the
occasion, Hatfield named Lodore.

"Lodore!" cried one of the by-standers; "Fitzhenry was the name of the man
who took the Oronooko."

"Aye, Fitzhenry it was," said Hatfield, "Lodore is his nickname. King
George's bit of gilt gingerbread, which mightily pleased the sapient
mariner. An Englishman thinks himself honoured when he changes one name for
another. Admiral Fitzhenry was the scum of the earth--Lord Lodore a pillar
of state. Pity that infamy should so soon have blackened the glorious
title!"

Lodore's pale cheek suddenly flushed at these words, and then blanched
again, as with compressed lips he resolved to hear yet more, till the
insult should no longer be equivocal. The word "infamy" was echoed from
various lips. Hatfield found that he had insured a hearing, and, glad of an
audience, he went on to relate his story--it was of the dinner at the
Russian Ambassador's--of the intemperate violence of Lodore--and the
youthful Lyzinski's wrongs. "I saw the blow given," continued the
narrator, "and I would have caned the fellow on the spot, had I not
thought that a bullet would do his business better. But when it came to
that, London was regaled by an event which could not have happened here,
for we have no such cowards among us. My lord was not to be found--he
had absconded--sneaked off like a mean-spirited, pitiful scoundrel!"

The words were still on the man's lips when a blow, sudden and
unexpected, extended him on the floor. After this swiftly-executed act
of retaliation, Lodore folded his arms, and as his antagonist rose, foaming
with rage, said, "You, at least, shall have no cause to complain of not
receiving satisfaction for your injuries at my hands. I am ready to give
it, even in this room. I am Lord Lodore!"

Duels, that sad relic of feudal barbarism, were more frequent then than
now in America; at all times they are more fatal and more openly carried
on there than in this country. The nature of the quarrel in the present
instance admitted of no delay; and it was resolved, that the antagonists
should immediately repair to an open place near the city, to terminate,
by the death of one, the insults they had mutually inflicted.

Lodore saw himself surrounded by Americans, all strangers to him; nor was
he acquainted with one person in New York whom he could ask to be his
second. This was matter of slight import: the idea of vindicating his
reputation, and of avenging the bitter mortifications received from
society, filled him with unnatural gladness; and he was hastening to the
meeting, totally regardless of any arrangement for his security.

There was a gentleman, seated at a distant part of the coffee-room, who
had been occupied by reading; nor seemed at all to give ear to what was
going on, till the name of Lodore occurred: he then rose, and when the blow
was given, drew nearer the group; though he still stood aloof, while, with
raised and angry voices, they assailed Lodore, and he, replying in his
deep, subdued voice, agreed to the meeting which they tumultuously
demanded. Now, as they were hastening away, and Lodore was following
them, confessedly unbefriended, this gentleman approached, and putting
his card into the nobleman's hand, said, "I am an Englishman, and should
be very glad if you would accept my services on this painful occasion."

Lodore looked at the card, on which was simply engraved the name of "Mr.
Edward Villiers," and then at him who addressed him. He was a young
man--certainly not more than three-and-twenty. An air of London fashion,
to which Lodore had been so long unused, was combined with a most
prepossessing countenance. He was light-haired and blue-eyed;
ingenuousness and sincerity marked his physiognomy. The few words he had
spoken were enforced by a graceful cordiality of manner, and a
silver-toned voice, that won the heart. Lodore was struck by his
prepossessing exterior, and replied with warm thanks; adding, that his
services would be most acceptable on certain conditions,--which were
merely that he should put no obstacle to the immediate termination of
the quarrel, in any mode, however desperate, which his adversary might
propose. "Otherwise," Lodore added, "I must entirely decline your
interference. All this is to me matter of far higher import than mere
life and death, and I can submit to no controul."

"Then my services must be limited to securing fair play for you," said
Mr. Villiers.

During this brief parley, they were in the street, proceeding towards
the place of meeting. Day had declined, and the crescent moon was high
in the heavens: each instant its beams grew more refulgent, as twilight
yielded to night.

"We shall have no difficulty in seeing each other," said Lodore, in a
cheerful voice. He felt cheerful: a burthen was lifted from his heart. How
much must a brave man suffer under the accusation of cowardice, and how
joyous when an opportunity is granted of proving his courage! Lodore was
brave to rashness: at this crisis he felt as if about to be born again
to all the earthly blessings of which he had been deprived so long. He
did not think of the dread baptism of blood which was to occasion his
regeneration--still less of personal danger; he thought only of good
name restored--of his reputation for courage vindicated--of the
insolence of this ill-spoken fellow signally chastised.

"Have you weapons?" asked his companion.

"They will procure pistols, I suppose," replied Lodore: "we should lose
much time by going to the hotel for mine."

"We are passing that where I am," said Mr. Villiers. "If you will wait
one moment I will fetch mine;--or will you go up with me?"

They entered the house, and the apartments of Mr. Villiers. At such
moments slight causes operate changes on the human heart; and as various
impulses sweep like winds over its chords, that subtle instrument gives
forth various tones. A moment ago, Lodore seemed to raise his proud head to
the stars: he felt as if escaping from a dim, intricate cavern, into the
blessed light of day. The strong excitement permitted no second
thought--no second image. With a lighter step than Mr. Villiers, he
followed that gentleman up-stairs. For a moment, as he went into an
inner apartment for the pistols, Lodore was alone: a desk was open on
the table; and paper, unwritten on, upon the desk. Scarcely knowing what
he did, Lodore took the pen, and wrote--"Ethel, my child! my life's
dearest blessing! be virtuous, be useful, be happy!--farewell, for
ever!"--and under this he wrote Mrs. Greville's address. The first words
were written with a firm hand; but the recollection of all that might
occur, made his fingers tremble as he continued, and the direction was
nearly illegible. "If any thing happens to me," said he to Mr. Villiers,
"you will add to your kindness immeasurably by going there,"--pointing
to the address,--"and taking precaution that my daughter may hear of her
disaster in as tender a manner as possible."

"Is there any thing else?" asked his companion. "Command me freely, I
beseech you; I will obey your injunctions to the letter."

"It is too late now," replied the noble; "and we must not keep these
gentlemen waiting. The little I have to say we will talk of as we walk."

"I feel," continued Lodore, after they were again in the street, "that if
this meeting end fatally, I have no power to enforce my wishes and designs
beyond the grave. The providence which has so strangely conducted the
drama of my life, will proceed in its own way after the final
catastrophe. I commit my daughter to a higher power than mine, secure
that so much innocence and goodness must receive blessings, even in this
ill-grained state of existence. You will see Mrs. Greville: she is a
kind-hearted, humane woman, and will exert herself to console my child.
Ethel--Miss Fitzhenry, I mean--must, as soon as is practicable, return
to England. She will be received there by my sister, and remain with her
till--till her fate be otherwise decided. We were on the point of
sailing;--I have fitted up a cabin for her;--she might make the voyage
in that very vessel. You, perhaps, will consult--though what claim have
I on you?"

"A claim most paramount," interrupted Villiers eagerly,--"that of a
countryman in a foreign land--of a gentleman vindicating his honour at
the probable expense of life."

"Thank you!" replied Lodore;--"my heart thanks you--for my own sake, and
for my daughter's--if indeed you will kindly render her such services as
her sudden loss may make sadly necessary."

"Depend upon me;--though God grant she need them not!"

"For her sake, I say Amen!" said Lodore; "for my own--life is a worn-out
garment--few tears will be shed upon my grave, except by Ethel."

"There is yet another," said Villiers with visible hesitation: "pardon
me, if I appear impertinent; but at such a moment, may I not name Lady
Lodore?"

"For her, indeed," answered the peer, "the event of this evening, if
fatal to me, will prove fortunate: she will be delivered from a heavy
chain. May she be happy in another choice! Are you acquainted with her?"

"I am, slightly--that is, not very intimately."

"If you meet her on your return to England," continued the noble;--"if
you ever see Lady Lodore, tell her that I invoked a blessing on her with my
latest breath--that I forgive her, and ask her forgiveness. But we are
arrived. Remember Ethel."

"Yet one moment," cried Villiers;--"one moment of reflection, of calm!
Is there no way of preventing this encounter?"

"None!--fail me not, I intreat you, in this one thing;--interpose no
obstacle--be as eager and as firm as I myself am. Our friends have
chosen a rising ground: we shall be excellent marks for one another.
Pray do not lose time."

The American and his second stood in dark relief against the moon-lit
sky. As the rays fell upon the English noble, Hatfield observed to his
companion, that he now perfectly recognized him, and wondered at his
previous blindness. Perhaps he felt some compunction for the insult he
had offered; but he said nothing, and no attempt was made on either side
at amicable explanation. They proceeded at once, with a kind of savage
indifference, to execute the murderous designs which caused them to
disturb the still and lovely night.

It was indeed a night, that love, and hope, and all the softer emotions
of the soul, would have felt congenial to them. A balmy, western breeze
lifted the hair lightly from Lodore's brow, and played upon his cheek; the
trees were bathed in yellow moonshine; a glowworm stealing along the
grass scarce showed its light; and sweet odours were wafted from grove
and field. Lodore stood, with folded arms, gazing upon the scene in
silence, while the seconds were arranging preliminaries, and loading the
firearms. None can tell what thoughts then passed through his mind. Did
he rejoice in his honour redeemed, or grieve for the human being at
whose breast he was about to aim?--or were his last thoughts spent upon
the account he might so speedily be called on to render before his
Creator's throne? When at last he took his weapon from the hand of
Villiers, his countenance was serene, though solemn; and his voice firm
and calm. "Remember me to Ethel," he said; "and tell her to thank
you;--I cannot sufficiently; yet I do so from my heart. If I live--then
more of this."

The antagonists were placed: they were both perfectly
self-possessed--bent, with hardness and cruelty of purpose, on
fulfilling the tragic act. As they stood face to face--a few brief paces
only intervening--on the moon-lit hill--neither had ever been more
alive, more full of conscious power, of moral and physical energy, than
at that moment. Villiers saw them standing beneath the silver moonbeams,
each in the pride of life, of strength, of resolution. A ray glanced from
the barrel of Lodore's pistol, as he raised and held it out with a steady
hand--a flash--the reports--and then he staggered two steps, fell, and
lay on the earth, making no sign of life. Villiers rushed to him: the
wound was unapparent--no blood flowed, but the bullet had entered his
heart. His friend raised his head in his arms; his eyes opened; his lips
moved, but no sound issued from them;--a shadow crossed his face--the
body slipped from Villiers's support to the ground--all was over--Lodore
was dead!




CHAPTER XVII

En cor gentil, amor per mort no passa.

AUSIAS MARCH, TROUBADOUR.


We return to Longfield and to Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry. The glory of
summer invested the world with light, cheerfulness, and beauty, when the
sorrowing sister of Lodore visited London, to receive her orphan niece from
the hands of the friend of Mrs. Greville, under whose protection she had
made the voyage. The good lady folded poor Ethel in her arms, overcome
by the likeness she saw to her beloved brother Henry, in his youthful
days, before passion had worn and misfortune saddened him. Her soft,
brown, lamp-like eyes, beamed with the same sensibility. Yet when she
examined her more closely, Mrs Elizabeth lost somewhat of the likeness;
for the lower part of her face resembled her mother: her hair was
lighter and her complexion much fairer than Lodore; besides that the
expression of her countenance was peculiar to herself, and possessed
that individuality which is so sweet to behold, but impossible to
describe.

They lingered but a few days in London. Fanny Derham, who accompanied
her on her voyage, had already returned to her father, and there was
nothing to detain them from Longfield. Ethel had no adieus to make that
touched her heart. Her aunt was more to her than any other living being,
and her strongest desire now was, to visit the scenes once hallowed by
her father's presence. The future was a chaos of dark regret and
loneliness; her whole life, she thought, would be composed of one long
memory.

One memory, and one fatal image. Ethel had not only consecrated her
heart to her father, but his society was a habit with her, and, until
now, she had never even thought how she could endure existence without
the supporting influence of his affection. His conversation, so full of
a kind penetration into her thoughts, was calculated to develop and
adorn them; his manly sense and paternal solicitude, had all fostered a
filial love, the most tender and strong. Add to this, his sudden and
awful death. Already had they schemed their future life in a world new
to Ethel: he had excited her enthusiasm by descriptions of the wonders
of art in the old countries, and raised her curiosity while promising to
satisfy it; and she had eagerly looked forward to the time when she
should see the magical works of man, and mingle with a system of
society, of which, except by books, he alone presented any ensample to
her. Their voyage was fixed, and on the other side of their watery way
she had figured a very Elysium of wonders and pleasures. The late change
in their mode of life had served to endear him doubly to her. It had
been the occupation of her life to think of her father, to communicate
all her thoughts to him, and in the unreflecting confidence of youth,
she had looked forward to no termination of a state of existence, that
had began from her cradle. He propped her entire world; the foundations
must moulder and crumble away without him--and he was gone--where then
was she?

Mr. Villiers had, as soon as he was able, hurried to Mrs. Greville's
house. By some strange chance, the fatal tidings had preceded him, and he
found the daughter of the unfortunate Lodore bewildered and maddened by her
frightful calamity. Her first desire was to see all that was left of her
parent--she could not believe that he was indeed dead--she was certain
that care and skill might revive him--she insisted on being led to his
side; her friends strove to restrain her, but she rushed into the
street, she knew not whither, to ask for, to find her father. The
timidity of her temper was overborne by the wild expectation of yet
being able to recall him from among the dead. Villiers followed her,
and, yielding to her wishes, guided her towards the hotel whither the
remains of Lodore had been carried. He judged that the exertion of
walking thither, and the time that must elapse before she arrived, would
calm and subdue her. He talked to her of her father as they went
along--he endeavoured to awaken the source of tears--but she was
silent--absorbed--brooding darkly on her hopes. Pity for herself had not
yet arisen, nor the frightful certainty of bereavement. To see those
dear lineaments--to touch his hand--the very hand that had so often
caressed her, clay-cold and incapable of motion! Could it be!

She did not answer Villiers, she only hurried forward; she feared
obstruction to her wishes; her soul was set on one thought only. Had
Villiers endeavoured to deceive her, it would have been in vain. Arrived
at the hotel, as by instinct, she sprung up the stairs, and reached the
door of the room. It was darkened, in useless but decent respect for the
death within; there lay a figure covered by a sheet, and already
chilling the atmosphere around it. The imagination is slow to act upon
the feelings in comparison with the quick operation of the senses. Ethel
now knew that her father was dead. Mortal strength could support no
more--the energy of hope deserting her, she sunk lifeless on the ground.

For a long time she was passive in the hands of others. A violent
illness confined her to her bed, and physical suffering subdued the
excess of mental agony. Villiers left her among kind friends. It was
resolved that she and Fanny Derham should proceed to England, under the
protection of the friends of Mrs. Greville about to return thither; he
was himself obliged to return to England without delay.

Ethel's destiny was as yet quite uncertain. It was decided by the
opening of her father's will. This had been made twelve years before on
his first arrival at New York, and breathed the spirit of resentment, and
even revenge, against his wife. Lodore had indeed not much wealth to leave.
His income chiefly consisted in a grant from the crown, entailed on
heirs male, which in default of these, reverted back, and in a sinecure
which expired with him. His paternal estate at Longfield, and a sum
under twenty thousand pounds, the savings of twelve years, formed all
his possessions. The income arising from the former was absorbed by Lady
Lodore's jointure of a thousand a year, and five hundred a year settled
on his sister, together with permission to occupy the family mansion
during her life. The remaining sum was disposed of in a way most
singular. Without referring to the amount of what he could leave, he
bequeathed the additional sum of six hundred a year to Lady Lodore, on
the express condition, that she should not interfere with, nor even see,
her child; upon her failing in this condition, this sum was to be left
to accumulate till Ethel was of age. Ethel was ultimately to inherit
every thing; but while her mother and aunt lived, her fortune consisted
of little more than five thousand pounds; and even in this, she was
limited to the use of the interest only until she was of age; a previous
marriage would have no influence on the disposition of her property.
Mrs. Elizabeth was left her guardian.

This will was in absolute contradiction to the wishes and feelings in
which Lord Lodore died; so true had his prognostic been, that he had no
power beyond the grave. He had probably forgotten the existence of this
will, or imagined that it had been destroyed: he had determined to make a
new one on his arrival in England. Meanwhile it was safely deposited with
his solicitor in London, and Mrs. Elizabeth, with mistaken zeal,
hastened to put it into force, and showed herself eager to obey her
brother's wishes with scrupulous exactitude. The contents of it were
communicated to Lady Lodore. She made no comment--returned no answer.
She was suddenly reduced from comparative affluence (for her husband's
allowance had consisted of several thousands) to a bare sixteen hundred
a year. Whether she would be willing to diminish this her scanty income
one third, and take on herself, besides, the care of her daughter, was
not known. She remained inactive and silent, and Ethel was placed at
once under the guardianship of her aunt.

These two ladies left London in the old lumbering chariot which had
belonged to the Admiral. Now, indeed, Ethel found herself in a new
country, with new friends around her, speaking a new language, and each
change of scene made more manifest the complete revolution of her
fortunes. She looked on all with languid eyes, and a heart dead to every
pleasure. Her aunt, who bore a slight resemblance of her father, won
some degree of interest; and the sole consolation offered her, was to
trace a similarity of voice and feature, and thus to bring the lost Lodore
more vividly before her. The journey to Longfield was therefore not wholly
without a melancholy charm. Mrs. Elizabeth longed to obtain more minute
information concerning her brother, her pride and her delight, than had
been contained in his short and infrequent letters. She hazarded a few
questions. Grief loves to feed upon itself, and to surround itself with
multiplications of its own image; like a bee, it will find sweets in the
poison flower, and nestle within its own creations, although they pierce
the heart that cherishes them. Ethel felt a fascination in dwelling for
ever on the past. She asked for nothing better than to live her life
over again, while narrating its simple details, and to bring her father
back from his grave to dwell with her, by discoursing perpetually
concerning him. She was unwearied in her descriptions, her anecdotes,
her praises. The Illinois rose before the eyes of her aunt, like a
taintless paradise, inhabited by an angel. Love and good dwelt together
there in blameless union; the sky was brighter; the earth fairer,
fresher, younger, more magnificent, and more wonderful, than in the old
world. The good lady called to mind, with surprise, the melancholy and
despairing letters she had received from her brother, while inhabiting
this Eden. It was matter of mortification to his mourning daughter to
hear, as from himself, as it were, that any sorrows had visited his
heart while with her. When we love one to whom we have devoted our lives
with undivided affection, the idea that the beloved object suffered any
grief while with us, jars with our sacred sorrow. We delight to make the
difference between the possession of their society, and our subsequent
bereavement, entire in its contrasted happiness and misery; we wish to
have engrossed their whole souls, as they do ours, at the period of
regret, and it is like the most cruel theft, to know that we have been
deprived of any of the power we believed that we possessed, to influence
their entire being. But then again, forgetting her aunt's interruptions.
Ethel returned to the story of their occupations, their amusements,
their fond and unsullied intercourse, her eyes streamed with tears as
she spoke, while yet her heart felt relief in the indulgence of her woe.

When the ladies returned to Longfield, it became Mrs. Elizabeth's turn
to narrate. She had lived many years feeding silently on the memory of
by-gone time. During her brother's exile, she had seldom spoken his
name, for she felt little inclined to satisfy the inquisitiveness of the
good people of Longfield. But now her long-stored anecdotes, her sacred
relics, the spots made dear by his presence, all were a treasure poured
out bounteously before Ethel. Nothing appeared so natural to the
unfortunate girl as that another should, like herself, worship the
recollection of her adored father. To love him while he lived, to see
nothing in the world that had lost him, except his shadow cast upon its
benighted state, appeared the only existence that could follow his
extinction. Some people, when they die, leave but a foot of ground
vacant, which the eager pressing ranks of their fellow-creatures fill up
immediately, walking on their grave, as on common earth; others leave a
gap, a chasm, a fathomless gulf, beside which the survivor sits for ever
hopeless. Both Ethel and her aunt, in their several ways, in youth and
age, were similarly situated. Both were cut off from the great family of
their species; wedded to one single being, and he was gone. Both made
the dead Lodore the focus to concentrate, and the mirror to reflect, all
their sensations and experience. He visited their dreams by night, his name
was their study, their pastime, their sole untiring society.

Mrs. Elizabeth, the gentlest visionary that had ever outlived hope,
without arriving at its fruition, having reached those years when memory
is the natural food of the human mind, found this fare exceedingly well
adapted to her constitution. She had pined a little while cut off from
all heart-felt communication with her fellow-creatures, but the presence
of Ethel fulfilled her soul's desire; she found sympathy, and an
auditress, into whose ever-attentive ear she could pour those reveries
which she had so long nourished in secret. Whoso had heard the good lady
talk of endless tears and mourning for the loss of Lodore, of life not
worth having when he was gone, of the sad desolation of their position, and
looked at her face, beaming with satisfaction, with only so much
sensibility painted there as to render it expressive of all that is kind
and compassionate, good-humour in her frequent smile, and sleek content
in her plump person, might have laughed at the contrast; and yet have
pondered on the strange riddle we human beings present, and how
contradictions accord in our singular machinery. This good aunt was
incapable of affectation, and all was true and real that she said. She
lived upon the idea of her brother; he was all in all to her, but they
had been divided so long, that his death scarcely increased the
separation; and she could talk of meeting him in heaven, with as firm
and cheerful a faith, as a few months before she had anticipated his
return to England. Though sincere in her regret for his death, habit had
turned lamentation into a healthy nutriment, so that she throve upon the
tears she shed, and grew fat and cheerful upon her sighs. She would lead
the agonized girl to the vault which contained the remains of her
brother, and hover near it, as a Catholic beside the shrine of a
favourite saint--the visible image giving substance and form to her
reverie; for hitherto, her dreamy life had wanted the touch of reality,
which the presence of her niece, and the sad memorial of her lost
brother, afforded.

The home-felt sensations of the mourning orphan, were in entire contrast
to this holiday woe. While her aunt brooded over her sorrow "to keep it
warm," it wrapped Ethel's soul as with a fiery torture. Every cheerful
thought lay buried with her father, and the tears she shed near his
grave were accompanied by a wrenching of her being, and a consequent
exhaustion, that destroyed the elasticity of the spirit of youth. The
memory of Lodore, which soothed his sister, haunted his child like a sad
beckoning, yet fatal vision; she yearned to reach the shore where his
pale ghost perpetually wandered--the earth seemed a dark prison, and
liberty and light dwelt with the dead beyond the grave. Eternally
conversant with the image of death, she was brought into too near
communion with the grim enemy of life. She wasted and grew pale: nor did
any voice speak to her of the unreasonableness of her grief; her father
was not near to teach her fortitude, and there appeared a virtue and a
filial piety in the excess of her regret, which blinded her aunt to the
fatal consequences of its indulgence.

While summer lasted, and the late autumn protracted its serenity almost
into winter, Ethel wandered in the lanes and fields; and in spite of
wasting grief, the free air of heaven, which swept her cheek, preserved
its healthy hue and braced her limbs. But when dreary inclement winter
arrived, and the dull fireside of aunt Bessy became the order of the
day, without occupation to amuse, or society to distract her thoughts,
given up to grief, and growing into a monument of woe, it became evident
that the springs of life were becoming poisoned, and that health and
existence itself were giving way before the destructive influences at
work within. Appetite first, then sleep, deserted her. A slight cold
became a cough, and then changed into a preying fever. She grew so thin
that her large eyes, shining with unnatural lustre, appeared to occupy
too much of her face, and her brow was streaked with ghastly hues. Poor
Mrs. Elizabeth, when she found that neither arrow-root nor chicken-broth
restored her, grew frightened--the village practitioner exhausted his
skill without avail. Ethel herself firmly believed that she was going to
die, and fondly cherished the hope of rejoining her father. She was in
love with death, which alone could reunite her to the being, apart from
whom she believed it impossible to exist.

But limits were now placed to Mrs. Elizabeth's romance. The danger of
Ethel was a frightful reality that awoke every natural feeling. Ethel,
the representative of her brother, the last of their nearly extinct
race, the sole relation she possessed, the only creature whom she could
entirely love, was dear to her beyond expression; and the dread of
losing her gave activity to her slothful resolves. Having seldom, during
the whole course of her life, been called upon to put any plan or wish
of her's into actual execution, what another would have immediately and
easily done, was an event to call forth all her energies, and to require
all her courage; luckily she possessed sufficient to meet the present
exigency. She wrote up to London to her single correspondent there, her
brother's solicitor. A house was taken, and the first warm days of
spring found the ladies established in the metropolis. A physician had
been called in, and he pronounced the mind only to be sick. "Amuse her,"
he said, "occupy her--prevent her from dwelling on those thoughts which
have preyed upon her health; let her see new faces, new places, every
thing new--and youth, and a good constitution, will do the rest."

There seemed so much truth in this advice, that all dangerous symptoms
disappeared from the moment of Ethel's leaving Essex. Her strength
returned--her face resumed its former loveliness; and aunt Bessy,
overjoyed at the change, occupied herself earnestly in discovering
amusements for her niece in the numerous, wide-spread, and very busy
congregation of human beings, which forms the western portion of London.




CHAPTER XVIII


You are now
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow,
At once is deaf and loud.

SHELLEY.


There is no uninhabited desart so dreary as the peopled streets of
London, to those who have no ties with its inhabitants, nor any pursuits
in common with its busy crowds. A drop of water in the ocean is no
symbol of the situation of an isolated individual thrown upon the stream
of metropolitan life; that amalgamates with its kindred element; but the
solitary being finds no pole of attraction to cause a union with its
fellows, and bastilled by the laws of society, it is condemned to
incommunicative solitude.

Ethel was thrown completely upon her aunt, and her aunt was a cypher in
the world. She had not a single acquaintance in London, and was wholly
inexperienced in its ways. She dragged Ethel about to see sights, and
Ethel was amused for a time. The playhouses were a great source of
entertainment to her, and all kinds of exhibitions, panoramas, and
shows, served to fill up her day. Still the great want of all shed an
air of dulness over every thing--the absence of human intercourse, and
of the conversation and sympathy of her species. Ethel, as she drove
through the mazy streets, and mingled with the equipages in the park,
could not help thinking what pleasant people might be found among the
many she saw, and how strange it was that her aunt did not speak even to
one among them. This solitude, joined to a sense of exclusion, became
very painful. Again and again she sighed for the Illinois; that was
inhabited by human beings, humble and uncultivated as they might be. She
knew their wants, and could interest herself in their goings on. All the
moving crowd of men and women now around her seemed so many automata:
she started when she heard them address each other, and express any
feeling or intention that distinguished them from the shadows of a
phantasmagoria.

Where were the boasted delights of European intercourse which Lodore had
vaunted?--the elegancies, and the wit, or the improvement to be derived
from its society?--the men and women of talent, of refinement, and
taste, who by their conversation awaken the soul to new powers, and
exhilarate the spirits with a purer madness than wine--who with
alternate gaiety and wisdom, humour and sagacity, amuse while they
teach; accompanying their lessons with that spirit of sympathy, that
speaking to the eye and ear, as well as to the mind, which books can so
poorly imitate? "Here, doubtless, I should find all these," thought
Ethel, as she surveyed the audience at the theatres, or the daily
congregations she met in her drives; "yet I live here as if not only I
inhabited a land whose language was unknown to me, for then I might
converse by signs,--but as if I had fallen among beings of another
species, with whom I have no affinity: I should almost say that I walked
among them invisible, did they not condescend sometimes to gaze at me,
proving that at least I am seen."

Time sped on very quickly, meanwhile, in spite of these repinings; for
her days were past in the utmost monotony,--so that though the hours a
little lagged, yet she wondered where they were when they were gone: and
they had spent more than a month in town, though it seemed but a few
days. Ethel had entirely recovered her health, and more than her former
beauty. She was nearly seventeen: she was rather tall and slim; but
there was a bending elegance in her form, joined to an elastic step,
which was singularly graceful. No man could see her without a wish to
draw near to afford protection and support; and the soft expression of
her full eyes added to the charm. Her deep mourning dress, the
simplicity of her appearance, her face so prettily shaded by her bright
ringlets, often caused her to be remarked, and people asked one another
who she was. None knew; and the old-fashioned appearance of Mrs.
Elizabeth Fitzhenry, and the want of style which characterized all her
arrangements, prevented our very aristocratic gentry from paying as much
attention to her as they otherwise would.

One day, this gentle, solitary pair attended a morning concert. Ethel
had not been to the Opera, and now heard Pasta for the first time. Her
father had cultivated her taste for Italian music; for without
cultivation--without in some degree understanding and being familiar
with an art, it is rare that we admire even the most perfect specimens
of it. Ethel listened with wrapt attention; her heart beat quick, and
her eyes became suffused with tears which she could not suppress;--so
she leant forward, shading her face as much as she could with her veil,
and trying to forget the throng of strangers about her. They were in the
pit; and having come in late, sat at the end of one of the forms.
Pasta's air was concluded; and she still turned aside, being too much
agitated to wish to speak, when she heard her aunt addressing some one
as an old acquaintance. She called her friend "Captain Markham,"
expressed infinite pleasure at seeing him, and whispered her niece that
here was an old friend of her father's. Ethel turned and beheld Mr.
Villiers. His face lighted up with pleasure, and he expressed his joy at
the chance which had produced the meeting; but the poor girl was unable
to reply. All colour deserted her cheeks; marble pale and cold, her
voice failed, and her heart seemed to die within her. The room where
last she saw the lifeless remains of her father rose before her; and the
appearance of Mr. Villiers was as a vision from another world, speaking
of the dead. Mrs. Elizabeth, considerably surprised, asked her how she
came to know Captain Markham. Ethel would have said, "Let us go!" but
her voice died away, and she felt that tears would follow any attempt at
explanation. Ashamed of the very possibility of occasioning a scene, and
yet too disturbed to know well what she was about, she suddenly rose,
and though the commencement of a new air was commanding silence and
attention; she hastily quitted the room, and found herself alone,
outside the door, before her aunt was well aware that she was gone. She
claimed Captain Markham's assistance to follow the fugitive; and,
attended by him, at length discovered her chariot, to which Ethel had
been led by the servant, and in which she was sitting, weeping bitterly.
Mrs. Elizabeth felt inclined to ask her whether she was mad; but she
also was struck dumb; for her Captain Markham had said--"I am very sorry
to have distressed Miss Fitzhenry. My name is Villiers. I cannot wonder
at her agitation; but it would give me much pleasure if she would permit
me to call on her, when she can see me with more composure."

With these words, he assisted the good lady into the carriage, bowed,
and disappeared. He was not Captain Markham! How could she have been so
stupid as to imagine that he was? He looked, upon the whole, rather
younger than Captain Markham had done, when she formed acquaintance with
him, during her expedition to London on the occasion of Ethel's
christening. He was taller, too, and not quite so stout; yet he was so
like--the same frank, open countenance, the same ingenuous manner, and
the same clear blue eyes. Certainly Captain Markham was not so
handsome;--and what a fool Mr. Villiers must think her, for having
mistaken him for a person who resembled him sixteen years ago; quite
forgetting that Mr. Villiers was ignorant who her former friend was, and
when she had seen him. All these perplexing thoughts passed through Mrs.
Fitzhenry's brain, tinging her aged cheek with a blush of shame; while
Ethel, having recovered herself, was shocked to remember how foolishly
and rudely she had behaved; and longed to apologize, yet knew not how;
and fancied that it was very unlikely that she should ever see Mr.
Villiers again. Her aunt, engaged by her own distress, quite forgot the
intention he had expressed of calling, and could only exclaim and lament
over her folly. The rest of the day was spent with great discomfort to
both; for the sight of Mr. Villiers renewed all Ethel's sorrows; and
again and again she bestowed the tribute of showers of tears to her dear
father's memory.

The following day, much to Ethel's delight, and the annoyance of Mrs.
Elizabeth, who could not get over her sense of shame, Mr. Villiers
presented himself in their drawing-room. Villiers, however, was a man
speedily to overcome even any prejudice formed against him; far more
easily, therefore, could he obviate the good aunt's confusion, and put
her at her ease. His was one of those sunny countenances that spoke a
heart ready to give itself away in kindness;--a cheering voice, whose
tones echoed the frankness and cordiality of his nature. Blest with a
buoyant, and even careless spirit, as far as regarded himself, he had a
softness, a delicacy, and a gentleness, with respect to others, which
animated his manners with irresistible fascination. His heart was open
to pity--his soul the noblest and clearest ever fashioned by nature in
her happiest mood. He had been educated in the world--he lived for the
world, for he had not genius to raise himself above the habits and
pursuits of his countrymen: yet he took only the better part of their
practices; and shed a grace over them, so alien to their essence, that
any one might have been deceived, and have fancied that he proceeded on
a system and principles of his own.

He had travelled a good deal, and was somewhat inclined, when pleased
with his company, to narrate his adventures and experiences. Ethel was
naturally rather taciturn; and Mrs. Elizabeth was too much absorbed in
the pleasure of listening, to interrupt their visitor. He felt himself
peculiarly happy and satisfied between the two, and his visit was
excessively long; nor did he go away before he had appointed to call the
next day, and opened a long vista of future visits for himself, assisted
by the catalogue of all that the ladies had not seen, and all that they
desired to see, in London.

Villiers had been animated while with them, but he left the house full
of thought. The name of Fitzhenry, or rather that of Lodore, was familiar
to him; and the strange chance that had caused him to act as second to the
lamented noble who bore this title, and which brought him in contact
with his orphan and solitary daughter, appeared to him like the
enchantment of fairy land. From the presence of Ethel, he proceeded to
Lady Lodore's house, which was still shut up; yet he knocked, and
inquired of the servant whether she had returned to England. She was
still at Baden, he was told, and not expected for a month or two; and
this answer involved him in deeper thought than before.




END OF VOL. I.