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Title: Clare Abbey, volume 1 (of 2)
        or, the trials of youth

Author: Lady Emily Ponsonby


        
Release date: August 9, 2026 [eBook #79321]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Colburn and Co., 1851

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79321

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARE ABBEY, VOLUME 1 (OF 2) ***




                             CLARE ABBEY;

                               OR, THE

                           TRIALS OF YOUTH.

                           BY THE AUTHOR OF

                    “THE DISCIPLINE OF LIFE, ETC.”

              Awed and dazzled, bending I confess,
              Life may have nobler ends than happiness.
                                                KING ARTHUR.


                           IN TWO VOLUMES.
                               VOL. I.


                               LONDON:
                     COLBURN AND CO., PUBLISHERS,
                      GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
                                1851.




                                LONDON:
                   PRINTED BY WM. TYLER, BOLT-COURT.




                                LIFE.

        I made a posy while the day ran by;
        Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
              My life within this band;
        But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
        By noon most cunningly did steal away,
              And wither’d in my hand.

        My hand was next to them, and then, my heart;
        I took without more thinking in good part
              Time’s gentle admonition,
        Which did so sweetly Death’s sad taste convey,
        Making my mind to smell my fatal day,
              Yet sugaring the suspicion.

        Farewell, dear flowers! sweetly your time ye spent,
        Fit while ye lived for health and ornament,
              And after death for cures;
        I follow straight, without complaint or grief,
        Since if my scent be good, I care not if
              It be as short as yours.

                                            GEORGE HERBERT.




                             CLARE ABBEY;

                                 OR,

                         THE TRIALS OF YOUTH.




                              CHAPTER I.

                    Our feelings and our thoughts
        Tend ever on, and rest not in the present.
        As drops of rain fall into some dark well,
        And from below comes a scarce audible sound;
        So fall our thoughts into the dark hereafter,
        And their mysterious echo reaches us.
                                        THE SPANISH STUDENT.


“Mamma! are you busy?” inquired a little boy, sliding down from his
chair, and approaching his mother’s seat with a pencil in his hand.

Mrs. De Grey laid down her book. “Is that unfortunate point broken
again?” she said, with a smile.

“Oh, no! mamma, it was not that; but if you are not busy, I want to
speak to you. I have something _very_ particular to say.”

The child was only six years old, but from his appearance you would
have supposed him to be older. His dress, the open jacket and
waistcoat (although the beautifully plaited frills of his falling
collar bespoke a nurse’s fanciful care), was the dress of a boy; his
brown hair curled close round his head, and the fresh and blooming
grace of his childhood was animated by an expression so resolute,
so boyish, even so manly, that you would already have dignified his
beauty with the manly epithet of handsome.

“What a little king!” was the hourly exclamation of his old nurse,
as the child left the nursery, terrifying her by his jumps down the
stairs; or when her keen glances caught sight of his youthful limbs
perilously perched on the topmost boughs of the old fir trees that
surrounded the house; and when you heard the exclamation you were
inclined to agree with her.

Of Mrs. De Grey more will be said hereafter. Now, only let my readers
picture her as one not young in years, and having in her appearance
other marks than those of time alone.

Struck by the seriousness of his countenance, the mother drew her son
towards her.

“What have you got to say, my dear boy?”

“I want to know, mamma, what trade I am to be?” He opened his large
blue eyes, and fixed them upon her face with an expression of intense
interest.

“That is rather a difficult question to answer, Ernest,” said his
mother, smiling. “If I were to tell you what I think, I am afraid you
would not understand me.”

“Oh! yes, I should, mamma. I understand those sort of things very
well. _Do_ tell me.”

“Well, then, Ernest, I don’t think it will be necessary that you
should have any trade or profession, as it is called. You will have
something else to do.”

“I thought everybody was something,” he remarked, with a puzzled and
disappointed air.

“What is your father, Ernest?”

The little boy pondered for some minutes.

“I don’t know, mamma, now: but I suppose he _was_ something when he
was young.”

“No; never a soldier, nor a sailor, nor a lawyer, nor a clergyman. He
was rich. He never had to work for his own living; all that you see
about here--this house, and the park, and the fields, and the trees,
all belong to him,--and if you live, Ernest,” she added, seriously,
“I suppose some day they will belong to you.”

“But what _shall_ I do then, mamma, when I am a man? Shall I do
nothing?”

“I should like you to try and think what ought to be the duty of
those to whom God has given riches. There are only a few in the world
who need not work for themselves. Perhaps you, my dear boy, will be
one of those few. Now, tell me what you think those few should do?”

“I suppose, give away all they have got,” the child replied; but he
spoke listlessly, and as if the subject did not much interest him.

“Not quite that, perhaps, Ernest,” she said, smiling, “but something
of the kind. You will not be idle, I hope, though you may not need to
work for your own living. Don’t you think you should like to work for
others?”

“Yes, mamma, in some ways very much,”--but he looked puzzled.

“We will talk these matters over another time; run back to your
drawing now, my boy. I don’t think you are quite old enough yet to
understand me.”

The child obeyed, took up his pencil, and began to draw without
making any further observation. He was engaged upon a battle-scene;
and, however strange in some respects the youthful composition might
be, he certainly had contrived to give a vivid picture of the horrors
and confusion of a field of battle. He now added a few more wounded
men to his heaps of dead and dying, and mercilessly condemned them
to be trampled upon by gigantic horses, and officers, whose waving
plumes were considerably higher than themselves.

These new features of horror occupied him for about ten minutes. He
then again laid down his pencil, and gazed at his mother.

“Mamma, why do all the Leslies have trades? Harry is going to be a
sailor, and George is to be a clergyman, and Leopold, oh! mamma, do
you know, he is going to be a soldier?”

“Mr. Leslie has a great many children, my dear Ernest. He means them
all to work for their own living.”

“Then, mamma, I wish you had a great many children besides me. I wish
...” The little boy paused, for the names of many little brothers
and sisters, whom his eyes had never seen, crowded upon his memory.
He stopped, sorry and ashamed, and seizing his pencil, bent down his
head, to conceal his crimson cheeks and starting tears.

His mother called him to her side, and kissed him with her tenderest
smile.

“What have you got in your mind to-day, Ernest, that I am not to
know?”

“Oh, mamma!” exclaimed the child, as if the words were bursting from
his heart, “I do so wish to be a soldier. Do you think you ever will
let me? I wish it so much, so very much.”

A cloud came over his mother’s pale brow, and she averted her eyes
from his countenance. He was gazing up into her face, with such
flashing eyes, such an ardent glance, as she remembered to have seen
once, and but once before.

“No, Ernest,” she replied, at last, gently but firmly.

The little boy stood aghast at the decision of the reply. This
question had for months,--it would scarcely be too much to say for
years,--been agitating his childish heart with hope and fear, and had
only been withheld in dread of the fatal “No,” which now had been
spoken.

“_Never_, mamma?” he repeated, after gazing at her with open eyes and
lips apart.

“No, Ernest, _never_. I am sure you would not wish to make me
unhappy; and it would make me more unhappy than I can tell you now.
You must not set your mind on being a soldier.”

“Don’t you wish me to be great and brave?” asked the child, with
something of sadness in his voice.

“Yes, Ernest, I do indeed wish you to be brave; but there are many
ways of being brave, many ways of being a hero. It is very great and
very good to be a brave soldier; always think so, my dear boy: but do
you know, there is something quite as great, and even better still?”

“What, mamma?” and he gazed eagerly at her.

“Fighting a harder fight than against a foreign enemy,” she said,
smiling; “conquering our own wishes, our own will. Do you understand
me, Ernest?”

“I don’t know,” the little boy answered, sadly.

“I think you may be something of a hero now,” she continued, stooping
and kissing his fair open brow, “if you try to give up your first
great wish, because I ask you to do so.”

The child looked in her face for a moment without speaking; then
returned to his seat, took up his drawing, walked steadily and
resolutely to the fireplace, and tore his battle-scene into twenty
pieces.

That same evening, as his old nurse sate at work in the outer
nursery, she heard a sob from the adjoining room, where Ernest slept.
She took up a candle, and pushing open the door, which was just ajar,
stole softly to his bedside.

The little boy betrayed his wakefulness, by the violent movement with
which he drew his sheet over his head, and completely buried himself
beneath it.

“Mr. Ernest!” she called gently, again and again; but he remained
silent.

She was not one, however, to be baffled; and, excited and troubled
by the unwonted sound of weeping from Mr. Ernest, set herself very
determinedly to discover “what the matter could be.”

She put down her candle and entered into conflict with the little
vigorous fingers that pinned the sheet tightly round his head. It was
a work of some difficulty, but experience conquered at last; and,
although the child immediately concealed his face, his glowing and
tear-stained cheek was not to be hidden from her scrutinizing gaze.

“Why, Mr. Ernest, what _is_ the matter?” she cried.

“Go away, nurse,” he said, peevishly, “I don’t want you; I want to go
to sleep.”

“But, my dear, I must just settle your things, for you have got your
sheet all of a ruck, and your hand is quite hot. Are you ill, my
dear?”

“No, nurse, not a bit.”

“Well, to be sure, something must be the matter. Are you hungry, my
dear?”

“No, nurse, not a bit,” more petulantly.

“Then, are you afraid, my dear? Shall I leave the door open?”

“No, nurse, not a bit,” he cried, with vehemence and indignation.

The old woman had her own peculiar acuteness; she saw that if she
pressed upon this string, she should penetrate the mystery of his
tears.

“I’d better leave the door open, I believe; many a one finds it
lonesome to be in the dark. There, my dear, lay down your little
head, and you shall see the glimmering of my candle upon the wall, to
help you to go to sleep.”

“I don’t want your candle, nurse. I tell you I’m not afraid.”

“Then, what is it, my king?” she said, coaxingly.

“I’m not such a coward as to be afraid,” cried the little boy,
vehemently. “I was thinking.... Oh, nurse! do you know, mamma says
that I never, never am to be a soldier,” and his voice died away in a
low sob.

“Bless him!” remarked the old woman, partly in surprise, partly in
affection.

Having conquered his first shame at having been found in tears, the
little boy was ready enough to pour out his griefs. “Oh, nurse,” he
continued, “I have thought of it for such a long, long time, and now
it never can be. Mamma says it will make her unhappy, and she says
I must bear it; and I thought I could bear it, but I can’t, I can’t
indeed. Nurse, why should mamma be unhappy? wouldn’t she like me to
be a great, great soldier, like all the people she tells me about?”

“No, Mr. Ernest,” replied the old woman shaking her head; “it would
go very near to break your mamma’s heart if you was to think of such
a thing; and I will tell you a story about it to-morrow.”

“Tell me now, nurse; do tell me now.”

“Well then, my dear, you must promise to go to sleep as soon as ever
I have done, and not to cry any more.” And she sat down on a chair by
his bedside.

“I will try to go to sleep as fast as ever I can, nurse, and I don’t
think I ever shall be such a baby as to cry again; now do nurse tell
me a nice story.” And the child fixed his bright wakeful eyes upon
her face.

“Well, my dear, it is a great many years ago now; but I must tell you
first, that when your mamma was a little girl, she lived in a happy
home with her papa and mamma, just as you do now, only that perhaps
she was a bit happier, for she had a brother born the very same day
that she was born; such a beautiful merry boy as Mr. Henry was,--just
such another as you, Mr. Ernest; I often think I sees him come back
again when I looks at you, my dear; and they two was as fond of one
another as turtle doves, as I heard a lady say. And they played about
together all the day long, and at times Mr. Henry was as gentle as a
young lady, and at times Miss Gertrude was clambering about like a
little tom-boy. I was a girl then, I was the nursery-maid Mr. Ernest;
and I used to have such work with Miss Gertrude at times.” And she
made a pitying sound as if she recalled the black hands and torn
frocks of her former charge. “Well, my dear, your mamma’s papa was
a great general; they said he was the bravest man in all the king’s
army, and he had been in I don’t know how many battles, and he was
wounded ... but my dear, how red your cheeks are, and how your eyes
do sparkle! I don’t know what your mamma would say to me for telling
these tales over-night. Better....”

“Go on nurse,” said the child, raising himself on his arms. “I won’t
go to sleep all night, if you stop; tell me about these battles.”

“Well, well,” said the old woman, nothing loth, “just for this
onest.... Well, my dear, and so at last Miss Gertrude came to be a
woman.”

“But the battles, nurse, and the wounds?”

“We shall come to the battles, Mr. Ernest, if you be patient; and
so, as I was saying, Miss Gertrude came to be a young lady. Sweet
seventeen! oh! she was a rosebud--she was;--and Mr. Henry he was
seventeen too, because they was both born on the very same day,--and
Mr. Henry was like you, Mr. Ernest, and he had set his mind on being
a soldier, ever since he was a child so high,--and the general, _he_
thought there was nothing in all the world like the king’s armies,
and he was as ready to make a soldier of Mr. Henry as Mr. Henry was
himself; and his mamma too, she thought they was noble fellows them
military. Only Miss Gertrude, the tear was in her sweet eye when the
thing was settled; she could not a-bear to lose her brother; and I
was a bit sad myself; but then he comed to see us in his grand dress,
and he did look like a prince, with his fine feathers tossing in the
air, and his sword that he swung about, and his bright blue eyes
dancing like the very stars themselves, just as yours do now--lay
down, my dear, lay down.... Well, it’s no matter now; he went away
and we never see’d him again. I dare say you knows about Boney, as
we called him then; nobody thought of anything but Boney; and he was
for taking to himself all the kingdoms of the earth as they said,
and he was for making himself I don’t know what beside; but it’s no
matter now, for he’s dead and gone with all his greatness. Well, at
that time there was great work in Spain, a country you knows about I
dare say my dear; and the Dooke of Wellington, he weren’t a dooke
then, he went off to the war, and Mr. Henry he went with him, and the
general too, for all his wounds, he went off to the war. Oh! that was
a day; I thought Miss Gertrude would have broken her heart; though
young Mr. De Grey, your papa, my dear, he was coming a courting even
then; but Mr. Henry he was full of fun and spirits to the last; bless
his heart! only just at last, when he kissed Miss Gertrude, there was
a tear shining in his bright eye; I see’d it myself, but he dashed it
away and said he know’d he soon should see her again; and so he went
off to the wars.” The old woman stopped and wiped away a tear with
the corner of her apron, and the little boy said nothing but gazed
more earnestly into her face.

“Well, my dear,” she began again, “the time went by and there came a
day at last when there was a great victory; it was a bloody victory
they said; and we heard there was a victory, and we heard that many
was killed and many was wounded, and we feared and feared, and Miss
Gertrude, poor dear, she became as white as any pale white rose, and
we did not know whether _they_ was dead or alive; and then there came
the firing for the victory. Oh! how well I remember that night; how
the guns shouted in the air so triumphant like, and yet so sorrowful,
for they was firing over a thousand of the dead. Poor Miss Gertrude
sate so white and so trembling, and she held her poor mamma’s hand,
and she never shed a tear, though she knew, as she said afterwards,
that they was firing over her brother’s death; and so they was; we
heard all after a bit. The General he was wounded, but _he_ came
back to us to die; but Mr. Henry he never comed again. They said,
‘He had died as a young hero should die,’ them was the words; ‘and
he sold his life dear, they said, for his country’s sake;’ and they
said, ‘Never was a young arm so strong, or a young heart so full of
bravery,’--them was the words; and so Mr. Henry died.”

She paused, and the little boy pulled the sheet over his face; but
the next moment he threw it back, and looking up, his eyes sparkling
with tears, he said, “Oh! nurse, how I should like to die as Mr.
Henry died.”

“No, Mr. Ernest, my dear,” she said, rising from her chair and
beginning to arrange his disordered bed, “you must not die as Mr.
Henry died; your mamma has never been herself since that day. Afore
that she was as merry as a lark; bless you her voice sounded like a
bird, as she sang about the house; but I never heard her sing since
that day; and my belief is she could not abear such a grief again.
No, Mr. Ernest, you must stay at home and make her happy; won’t you,
my dear?”

The child sighed--a real heavy sigh; “One battle, nurse, if I could
have _one_.”

“Well you must think of this, my dear, you or your mamma must give up
your will--you must think which will be the best. But now, my dear,
go to sleep as you promised me you would; there’s ten o’clock I do
declare.”

“Yes, nurse,” he said, turning obediently on his side and closing
his eyes--but as she was leaving the room he started up again,
“Nurse, will you tell it me all again to-morrow?”

“Well, well, go to sleep, my dear--we will see when to-morrow comes.
What a little king it is!” she murmured, as she took her place again
before the large nursery work-basket.




                              CHAPTER II.

            Blessings in boyhood’s marvelling hour,
              Bright dreams and fancyings strange;
            Blessings where Reason’s awful power
              Gave thought a bolder range.
                                              LYRA APOSTOLICA.

            Oh! he is bright and jocund as the morn,
            And there is not on earth that wilderness
            Which he could not reclaim, and in its wastes
            Detect the springs of fruitfulness and joy.
                                               EDWIN THE FAIR.


The wishes of childhood are rarely obliterated, for they are the
expression of some strong feature in the character. I do not mean
common wishes; I do not mean such a common desire, as the fancy to be
a soldier, which is expressed by most boys, and even by many girls,
in the course of their early years; but I mean wishes of a rarer and
more determined kind; such a strong passionate wish as that which
animated the youthful heart of Ernest De Grey.

Such wishes are rarely obliterated; but they are often superseded
by a new passion, and so it was in the case before us. The peculiar
feature in his character which had prompted so intense a desire to be
a soldier, remained unchanged within him; but the desire itself with
advancing years, with the awakening of new interests, was lulled to
sleep. At sixteen his whole heart, his whole affections, his fancy
and his imagination were centered on Clare Abbey, the abode of his
forefathers, and his own future inheritance.

“Il y a des lieux,” says La Bruyère, “qu’on admire--il y en a
d’autres qui touchent, et où l’on aimeroit à vivre.” Clare Abbey was
of the latter class. It was very pretty, but in describing the great
features of its beauty, you would seem to be describing a thousand
other places which ornament the face of the country in England. There
was the broad clear stream, the verdant meadows, the luxuriant woods,
the fine spreading trees, the sloping hills, which the inhabitants
of the district dignified with the name of mountains, but which had
no claim to the name; all these beauties it had, and yet with all
these it might only have been a fine place, and, as I think is the
case with many fine places, would have had little power to “toucher
le cœur.” Clare Abbey had however its own individuality, and it was
in the small touches which gave it its distinctive character that the
attraction lay; it had many features of a fine place, but no admirer
on record had ever been known to compliment it with such an epithet.
I must endeavour to describe it, that the scenes of this tale may
have a local habitation and a name.

The Abbey stood on a flat piece of ground which formed a terrace,
beneath a wooded hill which protected it from the north, and with
about a quarter of a mile of gently sloping meadow above the river.
On one side it was approached by a long avenue of elm trees; on the
other side was a low copse wood, interspersed here and there with oak
trees and firs of larger growth; and through this wood, which formed
a kind of pleasure ground, many wandering ways had been cut, which
led with more or less directness to the pretty village of Cranleigh.
On the south front the windows opened on a broad gravel walk with a
lawn beyond; beyond the lawn was another gravel walk, and a flower
garden stood on each side; the upper part of the lawn was ornamented
with a variety of dark shrubs of low growth, and beyond the further
walk, on the verge from whence the meadow began to slope, tall
cypresses and stiff-looking pines planted at regular distances, and
forming vistas into the park, stood like sentinels, as if to guard
the precincts of the dwelling from intrusion.

The architecture of the Abbey was irregular, and perhaps, strictly
considered, was liable to many objections. A part of it was very
old,--long, low, and ecclesiastical-looking, with cloistral passages,
jutting buttresses, and chapel-like windows. Additions had been
made from time to time, both in old and modern days, and sometimes
in some defiance of the laws of architecture; yet upon the whole,
notwithstanding some strange blending of styles and periods, a
certain order and proportion in all the additions had been observed,
which delighted the eye; and you felt as you often feel with the
human countenance, that it was beautiful, although by right and rule
it had no business to be so. All in, and around, and about the house
had the same attraction. There was nothing regular: everything had a
distinctive character, not amounting to eccentricity, but possessing
a mixture of wildness and quaintness, formality and grace, which
came home to your heart, and took a place in your imagination. The
ground fell, sloped, or broke, where you least expected it, and yet
you could not but say that it was well done; the stream curved, now
gracefully, now with a sharp and angular turning, which astonished
and yet delighted you. The trees grew as trees should not grow,
losing their leaders, hanging and drooping in quaint and picturesque
attitudes; and the mazy pleasure-grounds, although they had been
laid out with art and care, appeared but to wander at their own sweet
will, and that will, however sweet, a very wayward and capricious
one. Altogether, though it was not to all minds equally attractive,
Clare Abbey had the peculiar gift of taking hold upon the fancy, and
becoming, consciously or unconsciously, the haunt of the airy castles
and fantastic creations of those who even once beheld it.

To Ernest De Grey it was at once the home and resort of his every day
fancy, and the ideal of his imaginative perfection.

At one of the drawing-room windows opening to the ground, on a soft
summer evening early in August, ten years after the date of the
last chapter, the youthful heir of this fondly-cherished abode sate
with his mother alone. The lapse of years, and of those years which
seem like eternity to youth, had made but little change in him. The
handsome child had grown into a tall and handsome youth; but in
his smile and in his eye you read that he was still a boy. In his
whole air and manner there was a fresh and boyish grace, which I
regret to think is now but seldom seen at the mature and advanced
age of sixteen. In some respects he was even more boyish at sixteen
than he had been at six; for as his added years left him more free
and unrestrained, the natural bent of his mind towards sport and
action had developed itself, the exercises of the body usurping a
greater share of his favours than the exercises of the intellect. His
character, however, will, I hope, be sufficiently gathered in all its
points and variations from the record of the following conversation;
and trusting to this hope, description shall be spared.

“You are very thoughtful to-night, Ernest,” said Mrs. De Grey,
breaking at last a long and, when Ernest was present, a rather
unusual silence.

“Yes, mother, I _was_ thinking,” he replied, raising himself in the
chair on which he was comfortably reclining.

“And may I ask the subject of these serious meditations?” she
rejoined, smiling.

“Why, yes, mother, you are to know some of my thoughts; but I was
thinking of so many things, that I hardly know what to begin upon.
Do you remember Mr. Markham, mother, how angry he used to be because
I said I could think of twenty things at once? I remember his
telling me at last, that I was very insolent to set up my opinion
against that of the wisest philosophers, who had pronounced it to
be impossible. But, notwithstanding Mr. Markham and his friends, my
opinion has remained unchanged. I don’t know what philosophers can
do; but _I_ can think of twenty things at once--twenty at least--and
so I have been doing to-night.”

“I am afraid, Ernest,” said his mother, with a smile, “these
variegated thoughts are not very wise ones.”

“They are good, I think, some of them. Some I hope, some I am sure,
will please you. They are plans, mother,--plans of things I want to
do. I plan till I am quite mad. I will tell you one, now, which I
think you will like: it is about the old church. It is so pretty, it
is a pity to leave it as it is. I want so much to repair and improve
it.”

“Really, my dear Ernest, have you thought of that?” his mother said,
with some surprise; for the sportive and pleasure-loving boy was
little given to schemes of a serious or a useful kind.

“I can’t say that it is quite my own idea, mother: it was put into
my head; but, having been put in, I get very mad about it. You know
that Lady Frances Leicester, who is so good-natured to me and the
other boys at Overton? Well, she has new done the church there: it is
quite beautiful now. And one day, while I was admiring it, she asked
me about our church; and when I described it, she laughed excessively
at the high pulpit and our great pew, and said what a shame it was,
and drew me a sketch of how it should be. It might be the prettiest
church in England, mother, that I am sure of; and I never shall
rest till it is so. I meant to have asked my father to do it when I
came home this time; but he has been looking so grave, and you too,
mother, that I thought perhaps I had better not.”

“You are right, Ernest; you had better not,” his mother replied, a
shade passing over her face, which always was a sad one. “Your father
is worried about money just now, and he could not attend to you. But,
my dear boy, your wish makes me very happy, and I hope you _will_
dream of it. Young as you are, you might already begin to think of
accomplishing it.”

“Not very soon, mother,” he said, laughing. “Lady Frances said one or
two thousand would be necessary. I should not care to do it badly.
However, we must wait for that, and many other things. Oh! mother,
don’t you wish my education was over.”

She shook her head with a smile.

“Why, mother, then I could always live here, and always be with you;
don’t you care for that?”

“I am afraid, Ernest, I think you want a little education; and,
besides, I am too old to wish away years as you do.”

“I don’t wish them away,” he said, eagerly. “I have got enough to
do for years and years to come. I only want the time to come when I
may use the years. This education takes me up entirely. I will just
count over some of the things I want to do here. There is the church,
and then there is a tennis-court....”

Mrs. De Grey again shook her head.

“You mean that is very expensive too. Well, but, mother, I thought
we were rich. However, never mind; only let me tell you my wants. I
am so very fond of tennis: Lady Frances lets us play in her court at
Overton, and sometimes I feel as if I could not live without it. Then
I wish to have a pack of hounds. My father said something about it
five years ago, and I have been watching, and waiting, and expecting
to hear more; but he has never mentioned it again to me. Does he ever
speak about it to you, mother?”

“No, Ernest, never,” she said gravely.

“I hope he will. I should like to hunt, and look after hounds....
Well, and then a very good cricket-ground; and then, mother, there
are some of _our_ plans, yours and mine, the cuttings, and the new
drives; and then, besides all that. I want to do a great deal of
good. I have no end of plans about the poor people. Lady Frances
talks to me whenever I go to Overton, and shows me _her_ plans,
because she says I have a good head for such things--and I think I
have.”

Mrs. De Grey said nothing in reply to this enumeration of his
wants; but he read in her countenance a mother’s interest in all
his plans and desires; and, to say the truth, it was no unusual
thing for Ernest to bear the principal share in their confidential
conversations.

He paused for a moment, then continued: “And now, mother, about my
plans.”

“Your plans, Ernest!” she said, laughing. “Why, have you more of
them?”

“Oh yes! I have only been telling you my vague dreams, for I dream
about Clare Abbey day and night: my plans are more formed, and are
very important. They must begin with a question. My dear mother,”--he
spoke in an anxious, and rather an insinuating voice,--“can you tell
me--am I to go back to old Crackinthorpe’s?”

“Your father has not quite made up his mind. _I_ wish you to go for
another year before you go to Oxford. What do you think yourself? I
meant to talk to you about it some day.”

“I had _much_ rather not,” he replied decidedly.

“Why, Ernest?”

“Why, mother,” he said, again raising himself eagerly in his chair,
“the fact is, I am not made for what is called a sedentary life. At
Mr. Crackinthorpe’s we read from morning till night, and I am getting
tired of it.”

“I thought you were fond of reading, Ernest. I am sorry to hear you
speak as you do.”

“I am fond of reading in a certain way; but then it must be my way,
and not Mr. Crackinthorpe’s. Percy and Lovel call me a book-worm
sometimes, because I like to read Shakspere, and Hollingshed, and
Plutarch’s Lives on a rainy day. I do like that sort of reading
very much; but I don’t care for what old Crackinthorpe likes. I
don’t like Greek and Latin; and as to mathematics, if I go on with
them, I know, mother, the end will be that you will have to visit
me in Bedlam. And, after all, as I am not to belong to any learned
profession, what _is_ the use of it? Really, mother, I had much
better do something more improving, and not bore myself with things I
hate any longer.”

“Do you think you never are to do anything you dislike, Ernest?” his
mother asked, rather gravely.

The boy coloured. “Not _never_, mother; and I don’t object to doing
what I dislike, when there is any use in it; but when there is no
particular use....”

“And are you the best person to decide what is useful or not?” she
continued seriously, though she smiled. “You must not suppose,
Ernest, that I don’t understand what you mean. When I was young, I
felt and argued just as you do. I remember when I was first made to
learn German, that I hated it; and because I hated it, I thought
it was useless to take any trouble about it. I told my governess
that, when once she was gone, I never would look at it again; but,
notwithstanding all my entreaties, she insisted upon my going on;
and I found afterwards that her reason for making such a point of
it was _because_ I hated it. I was rather a spoiled child; and she
saw that it would be good for me to overcome my own feelings, at her
desire, without regard to the usefulness of the study. And she was
right. My dislike to the language has always continued, and I have
looked at it but little since she went away. But I feel, in other
ways, that the hard study at the German I hated has been more useful
to me than almost any other part of my education. Do you see the
application to yourself, Ernest?”

“Am _I_ a spoiled child, mother?”

“Not _quite_ spoiled, I hope,” she replied fondly, as she met the
glance of his clear bright eyes; “but you are a little too much
accustomed to have your own way, and to think that all your wishes
must be gratified;--rather fond of your own will and pleasure. Is it
not so?” And she looked smilingly in his face.

“Perhaps,” he said, thoughtfully.

“Then, my dear boy, you will not, I hope, be surprised if,
notwithstanding your strong wish, I still think it better for you to
go to Mr. Crackinthorpe’s again.”

Ernest made no answer: he was meditating. When he spoke, it was with
something of timidity and anxiety.

“I am afraid, mother, you will think I am only anxious for my
_pleasure_, if I tell you my plan, my chief plan of all--the one I
have been coming to all this time. But, indeed, if I can judge about
myself at all, I don’t think I speak only for my pleasure. I don’t
wish to be idle; I really wish to improve myself--I wish to be useful
when I am a man; and, after a great deal of consideration, I think
that, under my plan, I should learn a great deal more than if I went
on in the regular way.”

He stopped, and looked at his mother. She smiled, but rather
anxiously.

“Don’t be afraid of speaking, Ernest; you know I shall not be afraid
of telling you what I think.”

“Well, mother, then the fact is, I don’t want to go to Oxford:
I want to travel instead. You see,” he continued, speaking very
fast, to prevent a remonstrance until all his arguments had been
laid before his mother, “I don’t think I learn very much from
studying. _Perhaps_ it is my fault; but I think it is the fault of
my nature. I always find that from anything I see or hear, I learn
twice as much as I do by reading. When I _see_ anything curious or
striking, it sets me thinking, and I find that I very seldom forget
what I have once seen and thought about; but with reading it is
different--nothing makes much impression. I was reading about a man
the other day, who seemed just like me. His biographer said that
he could be taught nothing, he was obliged to learn everything by
observation and experience; and so you see, mother, that if I were
to travel, and to observe and take pains while I was travelling, I
should learn a great deal more than if I went to Oxford, where I
should only see one set of things and people. Do you see what I mean,
mother?--do you like what I say?” And he bent forward to look at her
with eager sparkling eyes.

“I am afraid, Ernest,” she said, rather sadly, “that your old soldier
fancy is stirring again. You will not be satisfied without some great
excitement.”

“No, mother, no, no, no,” he repeated, vehemently, “I don’t want to
be a soldier: I should hate to be a soldier. I wish education and
all the bother of it was over, that I might come and settle here for
good; for I care for nothing but Clare Abbey in all the world. I only
wish, as this education must take place, to get over it the best way
I can, and to learn as much as I can while it is going on. So, my
dear mother....”

The conversation was interrupted by a loud ring at the door-bell.




                             CHAPTER III.

            Droop not, but nobly struggle still,
              For others look to thee;
            And they would cease to strive with ill,
              If thou shouldst conquer’d be.
                                           GEORGIANA BENNET.


Mrs. De Grey’s life had been a life of trial--trial, not so much
startling and outward, as inward and oppressive.

She had married early, and in her marriage all who loved her had
supposed her happiness to be insured. The husband of her choice had
every advantage of appearance, station, and mental qualification
which the most fastidious could desire; and the second home to which
her destiny brought her, was sufficiently attractive to win (what
is rather hard to be won) that tenderness of interest and regard,
the especial property of the home of our childhood alone. But,
though all was outwardly smiling, clouds were even in early days
hanging over the young wife’s lot. Her husband’s temper was bad--not
passionate, not jealous, but bad. He could not bear thwarting; small
trials depressed, small vexations soured him. His spirits were
restless and uncertain; he needed amusement and excitement, not
from weakness or deficiency of mind, but simply to prevent him from
brooding over petty contradictions.

Mrs. De Grey’s education had little fitted her for the duties which
such a temper required. A sunny-minded active wife might have brought
sunshine to her husband’s mind; but she had been a spoiled child, one
ever petted, ever considered,--the chosen and constant companion of a
twin-brother, whose sweet, cloudless disposition, had been unruffled
by a single care. She loved her husband; but the very strength of her
love made her sink and tremble beneath his gloom. Saddened by her
brother’s loss, her own spirits required cheering. During the early
days of courtship they _had_ been cheered by a devoted lover. She
was not prepared for the new duties required of her: she failed in
performing them. Then trials came. Mr. De Grey wished with more than
ordinary anxiety for a son. Three daughters appeared in succession;
but almost before their father had banished the frown that greeted
their birth, the mother wept over their loss. Two sons followed,
welcomed with love from both their parents, received with rejoicing,
almost with triumph; and they too pined and died one after the other,
and the house remained desolate. The father was embittered by trial,
the mother crushed. Over the married life, which had dawned so
happily, appeared to be settling a hopeless gloom.

But pure and beautiful natures, although for a time they may abandon
themselves to an excess of grief, cannot for ever close their eyes to
those duties which are laid alike upon the happy and the afflicted.
She awoke at length to the sinfulness and rebelliousness of the
despondency to which she had yielded herself; and before the birth of
Ernest, her youngest child, flinging off the weight that oppressed
her, she set herself seriously to consider the responsibilities of
her life. Unhappily, evil is hard to undo: the mind of her husband
appeared to be hopelessly embittered. The birth of Ernest, and the
interest of his young life, which brought thoughts of gratitude, and
peace, and reviving to her, were ineffectual in cheering him. He
loved his son, cared for his son, toiled even too much for the future
prosperity of his son; but, except at rare intervals, he remained, as
by the habit of years he had become, morose, and hard to please. Of
late, sadder and darker fears for his peace and welfare had oppressed
her. Bitten, in common with many of his countrymen, by the spirit
of speculation, he had thrown himself headlong, as was his nature,
into the excitement of money-getting; and a short time of restless
and excited cheerfulness had been followed by weeks of deeper gloom,
and more incurable despondency. Never again, however, after her
first awakening, did Mrs. De Grey yield herself to melancholy. The
time was past when she could summon elastic gaiety to her aid--mirth
and gaiety will not come at our call; but patience, serenity,
tranquillity, soft words and loving smiles--these, which are in our
power, by slow degrees she had made her own, and these she never
failed to give.

A few words describe the trials of years; but deep and ineffaceable
are the traces which those years, so easily described, leave as they
pass. Though not yet fifty, Mrs. De Grey looked like an old woman.
She had been very lovely in her youth: she was beautiful still, but
it was the beauty of age. Her cheek was blanched and faded, her hair
white as the purest silver, her figure slightly bent, and even in
the peace and serenity which her countenance had now attained, you
felt that it was the hush and repose which comes after, not before, a
storm. There are some beautiful words of Mackenzie’s, which present a
perfect picture of the mother of the hero of my tale.

“She kept her sorrows, like the devotions that solaced them, sacred
to herself. They threw nothing of gloom over her deportment--a
gentle shade only--like the fleckered clouds of summer, that
increase, not diminish, the benignity of the season.”

       *       *       *       *       *

A loud knock or ring is an event which even the most accustomed ears
do not hear with indifference. Even if repeated twenty times a day,
to some speculation, pleasing or unpleasing, it gives rise; and,
coming unexpectedly, it is sufficient to cause an answering vibration
in the strongest nerves, and in the most unexcitable heart.

Mr. De Grey had been absent for some days from home, and was expected
to be absent for some days longer. This notice, therefore, of an
arrival was an unexpected one; and though some people are in the
habit of coming and going without exciting much of hope or fear, or
any disturbing sensation, _he_ was not one of these. Mrs. De Grey,
whose nerves were weak, started and trembled, and her pale cheek
became paler. Ernest, little inclined to fear, or to think that
there was any cause for fear in this world, was yet swift to read
his mother’s anxious countenance. He quickly left the room, and as
quickly returned again.

“It’s my father’s carriage,” he said; “but my father is not come yet.
Foster says he got out at the top of the hill, and said he would walk
home.” After a moment he continued: “Shall I go and meet him? or will
you come too, mother? It is such a beautiful evening.”

“Perhaps we had better not,” she said, gently. “He has had some
harassing business in London; and you know he likes a quiet walk
alone. But you shall go and order some dinner to be ready, and ring
the bell for candles. We have been talking so long, that it is quite
dark.”

When the candles were brought, and Ernest sate down opposite to his
mother, he was struck by the unusual sadness and paleness of her
countenance.

“Is anything the matter, mother?” he asked. “You do look so ill. Do
you really mean that that stupid bell frightened you?”

She smiled at his inquiries; but the expression of disturbance
remained the same, or rather increased, during the long hour that
passed before her husband appeared.

He came at length; and then, if there was any secret cause for
anxiety, his countenance did not tend to set it at rest. One rapid
searching glance his wife directed to him, and withdrew her eyes; but
in that glance she fancied that his stern features were sterner, his
form more bent, his hair whiter, and his whole appearance more aged,
than when she had parted from him a short week before.

He scarcely appeared to notice their presence, returned no answer
to their affectionate greeting; but turning gloomily to the empty
fireplace, placed himself before it, and, with a muttered complaint,
exclaimed against the cold.

“Cold, father!” Ernest exclaimed in astonishment, for the day was
intensely hot; “do you really feel cold--shall I light the fire?”

“I usually mean what I say,” he replied sullenly.--“Do light it,
Ernest,” said his mother, “and shut the window.”

The fire burnt as fires perversely delight to burn on a hot summer’s
day: the wood blazed and crackled, the coals kindled, the room became
like a furnace.

“It is hot enough now,” remarked poor Ernest, his cheeks more than
rivalling the fire in their brilliant glow.

“Hot! what else should it be with such a fire as this?--there is
no bearing the room.” And Mr. De Grey, with an impatient movement,
rolled back his chair.

A warning glance, grave and entreating, withheld the answer that was
bursting from Ernest’s lips; but though he could restrain himself
where he only was concerned, he could not patiently endure the
contemptuous remarks and bitter replies with which his mother’s
anxious inquiries, and soothing endeavours, were received. Gloom,
depression, and peevishness were no unusual symptoms in his father’s
temper; but the mood of this night _was_ uncommon;--contemptuous
replies to his mother, in his presence at least, were unusual, and
he could not bear them. Finding the rising wrath of a hot though
sweet temper difficult to subdue, he suddenly left his seat, snatched
up a book, and retreated to pass the evening in his own room.

The door had scarcely closed when Mr. De Grey rose, stood before his
wife, and the volcano burst forth. Its fire was directed against
himself, not against her. The temper which he had inflicted upon her
and on his child was but the expression of the despairing misery
that filled his heart,--was but the smothered rage which inwardly
was lavished on himself. He began to speak, and now with passionate
remorse, now with bitter despair, he told her the tale of his utter,
hopeless, irretrievable ruin.

As the affairs of this night are important only so far as Ernest is
concerned, I will not dwell upon the scene, but shortly state the
particulars of the case.

Mr. De Grey had originally engaged in speculation for amusement--to
occupy his restless nature--nominally to replace a sum lost by the
failure of a banking-house in London. Then the fever of gain--that
blinding, maddening fever--had taken possession of him. He went on
and on: successfully at first,--then fortune changed, but the fever
remained. He lost and won, lost and won, and _lost_. He awoke and
found himself a ruined man; and in this ruin not himself alone,
but Ernest was involved. From circumstances connected with the
property--the estates had not been placed in settlement, and all was
lost: Clare Abbey, the possession of his forefathers, and the beloved
home of his youth, must be given up into the hands of strangers.

This was the sum and substance of the startling announcement which
fell on the ears of the loving wife and doting mother. As my readers
will have perceived, she was prepared for some blow: she had seen the
gradual growth of the new passion, the “haste to be rich,” in the
mind of her husband; and, without pain, she had seen of late that
his speculations were failing to answer his sanguine anticipations:
she was prepared to hear of a great loss,--of the necessity of a
change of life; she had even contemplated the probability of being
driven from their home and their country, of living for a time in
poverty that Ernest should never suffer; but _his_ share in the
trial had never even suggested itself to her imagination, and the
announcement came with the startling violence of a thunder clap. It
was the uprooting the treasured hopes and dreams of years.

She did not fail however--as what loving wife could fail!--to meet
the trial as it should be met. She was not naturally what is called a
strong-minded woman; but she had acquired strength in the experience
of her life, and this kind of strength, mingling as it does the
softness of feeling with the calm of self-control, is of all tempers
the one best fitted to deal with misfortune, and to heal the pangs
of remorse. Soft words turn away wrath, and many other are the
hidden powers and virtues they possess,--disarming misery of its
sting, often changing evil into good. From the soft words that night
spoken, blessings unhoped for and unexpected came; for through their
influence a tie of trust and confidence was cemented between those
whom the joys and trials of life had hitherto failed to unite.




                              CHAPTER IV.

            I pray not, dearest, thou mayst be
              For ever as I see thee now,
            Unruffled as the summer sea
              Without a care to cloud thy brow;
            I know that thou wert sent to share
              Life’s mingled cup of good and ill;
            Child of a Holy Father’s care,
              Submit thee to His Sovereign will.
                                     SEWELL’S SACRED THOUGHTS.


Ideas on education are so various, that the system pursued by Mrs. De
Grey in the education of her child would probably have been liable to
objections of opposite kinds. Some, because of the high principles,
religious and moral, which she instilled, would have called it
strict; but the larger number perhaps in the present day, seeing her
attention to his wants and wishes,--her earnest care to encircle his
young life with an atmosphere of happiness, would have pronounced it
to be over-indulgent.

There is no doubt that, provided the great principles of reverence,
obedience, and self-denial are properly instilled, the early years
of a child can hardly, for its future good, be too happy;--the
strictness that brings discomfort and unhappiness in its train is a
false and perilous strictness; nevertheless there might have been
some truth in the accusation of over-indulgence. Content with feeding
his mind with high and noble thoughts, the mother may have been less
careful to bring those thoughts into action. Satisfied with acting
steadily for his good in great points, she may in those lesser things
which far more than great ones form the character, have been too
desirous to gratify his wishes, to guard him from disappointment, to
make the earth he trod a flowery way, and the sky above his head a
cloudless one. Such at least was the reproach that conscience made
when the time drew near to speak,--to speak those words which would
blight his sunny, sanguine dreams for ever.

Mrs. De Grey had delayed the disclosure till the last moment: she
shrank from it. None knew as she did how great the trial to her
son would be; for it was she herself who had twined the thoughts
of his home with his very heartstrings. Shrinking, with something
perhaps of weakness, from his first wish, so warmly and passionately
expressed, she had woven the idea of his home into all the plans for
his education,--into all his visions of the future,--she had made
it at once the motive for exertion and its reward: Clare Abbey had
become--and it was she herself who had made it so--the idol of her
son’s heart.

Something to blame, no doubt, there was in this, but it was rather
an excess of a right principle than the enforcement of a wrong
one. In such strong early local attachments there is so much of
good,--such concentrated affections are so powerful as weapons in a
future warfare with evil,--that praise and blame might almost equally
be distributed;--we might almost say, that even in its excess the
failing leans to virtue’s side.

Again the mother and son sat alone, towards the close of an August
day. It was three weeks since the evening of the fatal announcement,
and those three weeks of glorious summer weather had been passed by
Ernest in a state of intense enjoyment. To his numerous active sports
and pleasures he had lately added a love of boating; and as day after
day he returned from his excursions on the water, with companions
gay and eager as himself, his mother had averted her eyes from his
sunburnt cheek and dazzling smile, and to the promptings of her
inward monitor had still replied, “Not to-day! let me spare him yet;
the time will come all too soon.” The time, however, at length had
come, and could no more be delayed. Mr. De Grey was gone to London to
complete his arrangements for the sale of his property, and before
his return the disclosure was to be made.

Ernest had been at home all day; his young companions, the Leslies,
younger in years, though not in nature, than himself, had returned to
school. Fulfilling, at length, of his own will, an often postponed
promise, he had been engaged for many hours of the afternoon in
making a catalogue of some curious old prints for his mother, and had
devoted himself to his task with unusual quietness and diligence.

“There, mother!” he exclaimed at last, closing a large portfolio
which lay before him, laying down his pen, and stretching out his
arms, with a slight sigh of weariness--“There, it is done at last!
and I hope, for once, you will tell me that I have really been
industrious.”

“You really have,” she replied with a smile. After a moment she
continued affectionately, but gravely--“I hardly expected you to
persevere in such a long and tiresome task, and I have been watching
you with pleasure. Patience and industry may be necessary even for
you, Ernest.”

“You always speak like that, mother,” he said, colouring slightly,
for his conscience took her praise rather in the light of a reproof:
“I know you think I care for nothing but my own pleasure, and perhaps
you are right. Ever since our conversation the other night I have
been thinking of what you said, and trying to find out if it was
true; and I am afraid it is true ... rather ... but I don’t mean it
to be true. I hate selfishness.” He sat for a moment thoughtful, then
laughed as he spoke--“Didn’t some old heathen say something about
knowing oneself being a great object? if so, I have made a great
attainment these last few weeks. I always used to think I was a hero,
something very superior indeed,--made to sacrifice myself, and to
delight in it, and now....”--he paused.

“And now ... what?” and his mother watched him with a smile, but an
anxious one.

“And now, mother, I am afraid that I should prefer doing what I
please to any sacrifice whatever.”

“You do not, I hope, look upon yourself as _incapable_ of a
sacrifice?” she asked, with a gravity that made him dwell upon the
subject.

“No,” he said, after some consideration; “I don’t think I should mind
one great sacrifice,--even if it were a very great one. I think, on
the contrary, I should rather like the excitement of it: but what I
mean that I have discovered is this,--I never thought before that I
was very fond of having my own way, and my own wishes gratified, but
after thinking of it, I am afraid I am. I am afraid I never could
bear to go through a long course of sacrifices. I am afraid, I think,
that always to do what one disliked, as some people do, would be very
hard.”

Mrs. De Grey took a book from the table, and opening it, read aloud
the following sentence:

“I have no doubt that happiness is to be found rather in renouncing
one’s own will, than in gratifying it. Looking back from the eminence
of a long life on the valley through which I have passed, I have no
hesitation in saying, that those spots which now shine the brightest,
are not those which were illuminated by enjoyment; but rather those
which were hallowed by sacrifice.”

“Well, mother, I can understand that to a degree,” Ernest said, after
listening to her with attention. “I dare say when one looks _back_
one had rather think of what one has given up, than of what one has
merely enjoyed; but looking _forward_ is quite another thing. Giving
up in _expectation_ one’s hopes and wishes is a melancholy thought;
don’t you think so, mother?”

She was bending over her work,--she did not appear to hear him.

“I am afraid, mother,” he said, looking at her with some earnestness,
“you expect me to wish to be disappointed. I can’t do that.”

“No, indeed, my dear boy; I have heard some people express a wish
for trial, and I have always considered such a wish both unwise and
presumptuous; but if trial came, dear Ernest, I hope you would not
shrink from it.”

“I hope not,” he said, thoughtfully, struck by something unusual in
his mother’s manner; but the cloud of momentary gravity, was not of
long duration. A few minutes afterwards he walked towards the window,
and leaning out of it, continued playfully, “I think that gentleman,
mother, must have been rather melancholy in his mind, for I disagree
with him about looking back. _I_ think there is something very
bright about a place where one has once been happy--merely simply
happy without doing any good to anybody. Now those bushes, mother,”
pointing to a large clump of underwood on one side of the lawn,
“you will laugh at me, I dare say, but I never go by them without a
particular feeling of happiness; and that comes from a remembrance
of the house that Harry Leslie and I built there a hundred years ago
now; and just in the same way Clare Abbey will always look bright.
I fancy that when I am a horridly old man, I shall still feel happy
while I can creep about it, and think of all I did in ... my dear
mother, in my _happy_ youth,” and he came suddenly towards her and
put his arm round her neck.

She rose up hastily from her seat, and gently repulsed his embrace;
she could not bear it at that moment.

“Will you walk with me this evening, Ernest?” she asked with a
gravity and meaning in her manner which he could not understand.

“Yes, mother; I should like it very much;” but while he spoke he was
examining her countenance.

Mrs. De Grey was quickly ready, and they set off together. Her
health, though good, was not strong, and Ernest’s arm was the common
support of her languid footsteps when she made any unusual exertion.
Now, without expressing any definite purpose, she insensibly guided
him up the ascent, to the brow of the hill, from whence the finest
view of Clare Abbey was to be obtained. In sight of all its beauty
she wished him to give it up.

They walked along in silence. There are ways and means independent
of any outward sign or expression by which those between whom there
is a strong bond of sympathy communicate their impressions to each
other. Such a power was used now by Mrs. De Grey. She said no more;
her countenance was serious, but no more: all around was calm and
quiet, as it was wont to be; and yet Ernest, as they pursued their
silent way, plunged in deep though unconscious reflection, felt as if
he stood on the brink of some extraordinary event.

They reached the brow of the hill, and there Mrs. De Grey paused
and turned to gaze. The sun was setting, and such streams of
rose-coloured light were falling from the sky and bathing the woods
and waters, that a landscape poor in natural advantages would have
been transformed into a fairy land. Its effect on the peculiar and
romantic scenery around and about the Abbey, is easier for the fancy
to imagine than the pen to picture.

Mrs. De Grey turned, however, from the landscape to gaze on the
living beauty of her son’s countenance, glowing and sparkling with
admiration and pride.

“You are very fond of Clare Abbey, Ernest?” she said, with a grave
inquiring sadness.

“My dear mother, do you doubt it?” he said, reproachfully; “why do
you look at me so strangely? You cannot misunderstand me, surely?
you cannot suppose that because I said the other day I wished to
travel, I care for travelling or anything else in the world compared
to being at home, here, at Clare Abbey with you? You must have
misunderstood me most strangely!”

“No, I did not doubt it; I know very well what you feel; but in my
weakness, Ernest, I postpone the tale of tidings heavy to your ear. I
have something to tell you, my dearest boy; you may have discovered
that I have spoken much of the necessity of sacrifice; it was to
prepare you to make one. I must ask you now, are you capable of a
great sacrifice--a sacrifice of that which is very dear to you! can
you give up all the hopes and dreams you have pictured for your
future life, and not murmur?”

He looked at her in vacant astonishment.

“I am speaking the truth, dear Ernest; you will have indeed much to
give up! Your father has lost all--nothing remains for him or for
you. This place, Clare Abbey, must be given up into the hands of
strangers.”

“But how, mother?” he asked, wonderingly, too much amazed to realize
or to feel.

“You shall know all in time, Ernest. There has been error--I do not
shrink from telling you so--error on your father’s part, and through
error this misfortune comes; but it is not for us, for you or for me
to blame: your own heart will tell you that, dear Ernest. I would
rather have you feel that though human conduct and human error may be
the cause, it is not less the hand of God that sends the trial and
asks from you submission.”

He stood by her side in silence, his eyes fixed upon the ground. His
thoughts were not of his father’s error, nor his own submission; but
flitting before him there came the past joys of his childhood, the
present joys of his youth, the pictured joys of his future days, all
centered and treasured in that one spot before him; and vaguely fell
the words that it must be given up, Ernest was right; he was _not_ a
hero.

“Will you not speak, Ernest?” his mother asked, gently; “will you not
tell me how you will bear the change?”

He gave a rapid glance around, then said hurriedly, “If you can bear
it, mother, surely I can!” But in his heart he felt as if the glory
of life was ebbing from the spot where he stood.

She said no more, neither in exhortation nor in sympathy. She saw
that even _she_ had scarcely estimated the weight of the blow that
had fallen; but there is a time for all things, and it seemed to her
then to be a time not to speak, but to keep silence. She left him to
his own thoughts.

“Shall we go home, Ernest?” she said at last; “it is getting dark.”

“So it is,” he replied, looking around him,--with a half smile
adding, “how changed it is since we came up here.”

They retraced their steps, and walked in silence till they approached
the house. As they were entering it Ernest said,

“I will talk to you to-morrow, mother. I am afraid I have
disappointed you; you expected me to speak more nobly, more bravely,
but I am not quite sure yet what I do feel. It is very easy to speak,
but I should be sorry to speak well now, and to fail afterwards. I
must think. I can only say, mother, that I hope you will never have
reason to be ashamed of me.”

And without saying or waiting to hear more, he left her; appeared at
dinner with a smiling countenance, and talked cheerfully on other
subjects during the whole evening.




                              CHAPTER V.

            He that is born is listed. Life is war.
                                          YOUNG’S NIGHT THOUGHTS.


Clare Abbey was sold, and sold well; which was a satisfaction to Mr.
De Grey’s creditors, though it was of no advantage to him. It was
bidden for and eagerly purchased by a gentleman of large property in
the county, whose house was inadequate to the size of his estates,
and who had often contemplated the antique beauty of the house,
grounds, and park of Clare Abbey (speaking as they did of an ancient
family and a far descent), with the eyes of hopeless envy. The sale
was a private one; the house was not dismantled; pictures, books,
furniture, with few exceptions, everything was sold. Mr. De Grey,
with his family and household, departed in the month of September,
and in the month of October his successor, with his family and
household, took possession of the Abbey. There was little noise or
conversation on the subject. The change was so quietly made, that
few remembered how, in that change, the hopes of a young life were
shattered, and a young man’s buoyant heart was saddened for ever.

“Oh, mamma! what a pretty, pretty place!” said a lovely little girl
of about six years old, springing up in the barouche, which was
conveying the new family to their new abode.

“So it is, Camilla;” and Lady Vere, for the first time indolently
raised her veil and looked around her. “What a fine avenue! I wonder
how many trees there are. I dare say there are fifty.”

“Fifty! my lady,” said the nurse, “there must be three hundred at the
very least.”

“Dear, you don’t say so?” and Lady Vere opened her beautiful eyes.
“What a quantity!”

“Oh, Reginald! isn’t it pretty?” said the little girl, springing up
again, as they came in sight of the house. “What a nice garden, and
what nice grass, and what nice bushes! Oh, Reginald! a’n’t you glad
that we are coming to live here?”

“You always like everything new, Camilla,” said the boy, coldly; and
there was a cloud on his brow.

“Sit still, Camilla; you rumple all my silk,” remarked her mother.

The carriage stopped. Camilla was lifted from the carriage, and the
brother followed her.

“Oh, Reginald, pigeons!” she screamed; and, seizing her brother’s
hand, she scampered off into the stables, from whence she had
observed the top of a pigeon-house. He stood by her side in silence,
neither joining in, nor noticing, the screams of delight with which
she watched and endeavoured to seize the pigeons that were picking up
the grain around her.

“Miss St. Maur! Miss St. Maur! come back directly;” called the fat
nurse, waddling towards the place where they stood. “Your mamma
never does allow the stableyard, as you know very well.”

“But I _must_ look at the pigeons, nurse. Look there! look there!”
clapping her hands, and screaming, as seven or eight flew together,
with one movement and one sound, to the top of the pigeon-house. “Oh,
nurse, what a nice place this is! how glad I am papa bought it. I
like it fifty times better than our stupid old house.”

“And in a week, Camilla, you will be wishing for a new one again,”
Reginald said, still gravely.

“And if I do,” replied the child, looking wistfully up in his face,
“what does it matter? Why shouldn’t I wish, and what is it that makes
you cross to-night, Reginald?”

“I’m not cross,” he said, with an emphasis on the word.

“Now, Mr. St. Maur, do you please to take Miss St. Maur into the
garden. Here comes the carriage, and the stablemen, and the servants,
and it isn’t at all a proper place for a young lady.”

“I’m not a young lady, nurse, and I won’t be a young lady. But I’ll
go into the garden with Reginald, if he likes it better, and if he
will play with me there. Come along,” seizing his hand; “do come
along; and goodbye you pretty pigeons till to-morrow.”

But when they reached the garden, Reginald was as indisposed for play
as he had been before. He sate down on a garden-seat, looking about
him with an air of grave contemplation, while the child flew from
bed to bed, from bush to bush, from vista to vista, in an ecstasy of
delight. She came at last,--her bonnet thrown back, her long curls
floating, her cheeks crimson,--and threw herself at her brother’s
feet.

“Oh, Reginald! what _do_ you sit here for, and what _is_ the matter,
you silly, silly boy?”

“I was thinking of the people who are gone away, Camilla.”

“What people?” and she looked up eagerly in his face.

“Didn’t you hear what Margaret was telling me last night, about the
lady and the boy who used to live here?”

“No, I didn’t. What sort of a boy? was he as big as you?”

“I don’t know. Margaret said a boy; and she said he was fonder of
this place than ever you can be, Camilla, and that it had quite
broken his heart to leave it. I know she made me wish never to come
near the place.”

“How does a heart break, Reginald? Does it crack?”

“I don’t know what it does; but I feel what she means by it. She said
he had everything in the world that he could wish for; and such a
pony, that knew him, and ate out of his hand; and all the people so
fond of him, that when he went, everybody was crying, she said, as if
they had lost a child....”

“Then, what a silly boy to go,” Camilla said, emphatically.

“But he couldn’t help it. Margaret said they were too poor to live
here any longer, and that the boy must go and learn to earn his
bread.”

“What is, to earn his bread?”

“To work, I suppose, Camilla; not to play any more.”

“Oh, poor, poor boy!” she said, pityingly.

“I should not mind the working, Camilla; but the going away and never
coming back; and leaving all his things, his dogs, and his pony,
and....”

“Oh, look, look at the pigeons!” screamed Camilla, jumping up and
running along the lawn, while the pigeons flew over her head.

“I wish we never had left Evesham,” said Reginald, gloomily, as she
rejoined him; “I never shall feel at home here. I feel as if I was
taking the boy’s things.”

“I dare say he has got a prettier place, as we have,” suggested
Camilla, consolingly.

“No, he hasn’t. He’s gone to London, to live in a dirty street.”

“Oh! I wish we could go to London, too. Mamma says they have such
pretty things--such dogs, and horses, and dolls, and tea-things. What
a happy boy to go to London!”

_Was_ Ernest De Grey happy in London? In answer to some such
question regarding one of his heroines, Walter Scott has beautifully
answered: “Reader, she _was_ happy; for, whatever may be alleged to
the contrary, by the scorner and the sceptic, to each duty performed
there is assigned a degree of mental peace, and high consciousness
of honourable exertion, corresponding to the difficulty of the
task accomplished. That rest of the body which succeeds to hard
and industrious toil, is not to be compared to the repose which
the spirit enjoys under similar circumstances.” The truth of this
passage few will be disposed to doubt; and yet I am bound to say,
that it was not perfectly exemplified in the case of Ernest de Grey.
He had behaved most nobly. To his father, to his mother,--in all the
painful tasks that were assigned him, without a word of murmur or
repining--he had shown the same generous, dutiful disposition, which
had characterized his childish years. He did not think of himself; he
spoke little of the past, cheerfully of the present, hopefully of
the future; and after the evening of the first announcement, even his
mother’s eyes failed to read how deeply the sacrifice was felt. But
when the excitement was over, and they were established in a small
house, in one of those dull, uniform streets beyond the gay-looking
world of Belgravia, his spirits and his resolution began to sink.
He was too young, perhaps, to feel in its full force the blessing
which the peace of an approving conscience brings, too restless with
regrets for the past, and dreams of the future, to feel _peace_, in
thoughts of peace of any kind. He could, as many can, heroically
submit to one great trial; but he failed, as many fail, in the
smaller trials of everyday existence.

Accustomed to the freedom of a country life, fond of all sports and
active amusements, his spirit began to rebel against the imprisonment
of London. He could have borne it, however, and borne it well, if
there had been a prospect of future release; but one word, which
once inadvertently had fallen from his father’s lips, haunted his
imagination and oppressed his spirits night and day. That one word
was _clerk_. To be tied to a desk in London for ever!--every feeling
within him revolted from such a destiny. And yet perhaps even to
this he would have taught himself to submit, if it had not been for
the sudden reawakening of an old fancy, after a slumber of many
years. Superseded by the love of his home, suppressed by the perfect
satisfaction found in that home for all the adventurous tastes and
active habits of his boyhood, his martial ardour had been lulled
to rest--but it did but sleep; springing up in the monotony of the
present, consoling for the disappointment of the past, it took
possession of his fancy with a violence that startled and mastered
him, gilding the future with visions as glittering as they were idle
and delusive. He knew that it was impossible, during his father’s
lifetime. Their only means of support was his mother’s fortune,
a sum of £13,000; and the purchase of commissions from an annual
income of barely £400 a year, even his vague imagination told him
was not a very practicable scheme; but the imagination, especially
of the young, is little bounded by the limits of possibility. Good
sense and good feeling kept him silent; neither by word nor look
did he betray the secret of his heart’s desire, but satisfied with
this exertion, he repaid himself for the sacrifice by dreaming a
never-ending dream. Instead of battling with the excitement of his
mind, he fed it by every means in his power. Wherever soldiers were
to be seen, or sounds of military music were to be heard, there his
steps were wandering. Day by day unfailingly he presented himself
at the Horse-Guards, to watch the mounting of the guard; hour after
hour he would hang about Apsley-House, for one look at the Duke
of Wellington--then would return home, to wile away the long dull
evening by the perusal of the lives of highwaymen, pirates, and other
celebrated and adventurous characters (picked up for a few pence at a
book-stall), which sent him to bed in a fever at once of excitement
and despair. So he passed the early days of his life in London;
dissatisfied with all around him, and most of all dissatisfied with
himself.

Mrs. De Grey saw her son’s failing spirits and sighed: of the cause
of his greatest depression she was not aware. She did not know that
the word “clerk” had reached his ears; for Mr. De Grey, unaccustomed
to deal openly with Ernest, had forbidden the mention of the plan,
until some hope of its success could be obtained,--and Ernest in
the dread of hearing the certainty of his doom, forbore to make an
inquiry. But she could guess from his restless deportment, the hopes
and fears, the dreams and regrets that were agitating him, and she
sighed. But though she sighed, it was _for_ him, not _over_ him.
She was not one of those who groan at the least failure in human
perfection--experience had taught her that, with rare exceptions,
it is through mental struggle and mental failure that the character
is formed and perfected; and though she sighed for him during the
process--though she could not but sigh that disappointment should so
early cloud his sunny brow and buoyant spirit--she felt no fear, no
despondency as to the ultimate result.

One night, Ernest went to bed fresh from the attractive and exciting
annals of the life of Claude Duval. Though within a day or two of
November, the night was hot and close, and Ernest could not sleep; he
tossed to and fro, restless and excited, and, turn where he would,
the word _clerk_ presented itself to his eyes. There is, I think, no
madness or wildness to be compared to the insanity of even the sanest
of mortals in the course of a restless night. Small things assume
such immense importance in the mind--the future, whether the dreams
of that future be joyful or sorrowful, swells into such extraordinary
magnitude. For “a solution of a bright hope,” it seems impossible to
wait--a trial, a coming or a fancied trial it seems impossible to
bear; we appear to have suddenly become all sensation, and with giant
feelings to be waiting, or preparing for gigantic events. In such a
mood of mind and such a state of nerves, Ernest was lying on this
restless night, when there passed before him in dreamy vision, but
in giant proportions, the life of a clerk:--he saw himself rising
in the morning to the impenetrable gloom of a yellow November fog
(it was in the month of November, that his imaginary life chose
to picture itself), he saw himself at breakfast in the small dark
dining-room of their present habitation; through the dismal misty
streets he followed himself at ten o’clock to his office--there he
passed his day in the midst of figures which it made his brain ache
even to think of. He accompanied himself back to his home, when the
scanty daylight had long since faded; and there with dizzy eyes and a
bewildered brain, endeavoured to wile away six weary hours till night
and sleep should come to his release. Again, and again, and again
the vision passed before his fancy, till at length he saw himself a
decrepid old man, feebly tottering along the streets to his hateful
and hated task. I hope my readers can imagine the horrors of a life
like this when presented through the magnifying-glass of sleepless
and feverish eyes. Poor Ernest turned from side to side, endeavouring
to find one ray of light to gild his dreary picture, but in vain;
not even a sunshiny morning would come at his call. He sprang out of
bed, looked round his tiny room, rushed to the window, and by the
faint moonlight gazed upon the rows of roofs and chimneys,--the only
prospect commanded by his room; then drawing back with a feeling of
despair, and stamping with his foot upon the ground, he pronounced
that it _could not, and it should not be_. If no other means of
escape offered themselves he would enlist as a private soldier and
win his way to distinction. He returned to bed calmed in mind, and
possessed by the beauty of the new vision. Unlike the last--colours,
bright colours, came thick and fast to add to its brightness. His
late studies, which probably suggested the idea, suggested also the
pictures in which to adorn it; he saw himself an object of interest
and admiration; his short probation was quickly over, he was received
amongst the officers, distinctions were showered upon him; he was
captain, major, colonel, in less time than it takes to write the
words, and he fell into a sweet sleep, a general officer in full
uniform, leading on his troops to victory.

These seem childish dreams, but Ernest’s mind was youthful enough to
be lulled and dazzled by dreams even more childish than these. He was
still nothing but a boy.

With the dawn of day, something of the brilliancy of his last
consolatory vision faded; nothing is more disappointing than a
morning light on a midnight picture; but still, even considered
in the sober colours of morning, it retained enough of its beauty
and promise to induce him to repeat with calm resolve the feverish
determination of his restless hours; it should be his last resource,
but a resource it should be.

In such a mood and with such a purpose, he went down to breakfast;
his night and morning meditations had made him late, and breakfast
was half over before he appeared. His father was laughing as he
entered the room; rather an unusual and as it might have seemed
a gratifying occurrence; but Ernest was in no laughing mood, and
irritated by the sound, he hurriedly kissed his mother, and sat down
without raising his eyes.

“Half-past nine, Ernest,” said Mr. De Grey looking at his watch,
“this will never do.”

Ernest finished the sentence to himself as he fancied had been
intended, “_never do for a clerk_,” and he answered his father with
some petulance.

“Are you ill, Ernest?” inquired his mother gravely. Ernest looked up
and met her anxious affectionate gaze; his irritation vanished in a
moment, and he said, colouring crimson,

“Not ill, mother; but I am afraid a little cross.”

“And why cross, my dear boy?” she asked smilingly.

He shook his head and said no more.

“Your father was laughing, Ernest, as you came in, at a strange
letter I have had; it partly concerns you--will you read it?”

As she spoke she put into his hand, with a quiet smile, a strangely
scrawled and tumbled letter.

Ernest looked over it, and as he read his colour deepened and his
heart began to beat; it was as follows:--

                                   “Berners-street, Oct. 26.

  “MY DEAR GERTRUDE,--You don’t remember me; but I remember you.
  The last time I saw you, you were in a dirty pinafore. I know
  it was a dirty pinafore; your parents didn’t bedizen you as
  the new generation are bedizened; I hate the sight of them.
  Since I saw you I have been in India, and now I am come back.
  Because I say I have been in India, don’t you suppose that
  I’m come back a Nabob. I’m not. I’ve got enough and that’s
  all. I want to see you and your son. I suppose he is a young
  man by this time. I hate young men; they’re all coxcombs;
  empty-headed coxcombs; very different to the young men in
  my day; but as he’s your son, and my old and best friend’s
  grandson, I want to see him. Come and see me if you think
  it worth while. I’ve heard of your misfortunes and I’m sorry
  for them, but I can’t help you. I tell you at once I’ve got a
  relation, and I shan’t cut him out for anybody. But I shall be
  glad to see you and your son, if you think it worth while to
  visit an old, wizened, paralytic scarecrow.

                      “Your father’s old friend,
                                       “MARK WATTS.”

“Shall we go, Ernest?” asked his mother quietly.

He looked at her in astonishment; bright visions were dancing before
his eyes.

“Yes, I think you have no doubt,” she said smiling; and the letter
was folded up, and the conversation changed.




                              CHAPTER VI.

            Moments there are in life--alas! how few
            When casting cold prudential doubts aside,
            We take a generous impulse for our guide;
            And following promptly what the heart thinks best,
            Commit to Providence the rest;
            Sure that no after reckoning will arise
            Of shame or sorrow--for the heart is wise.
                                                   OLIVER NEWMAN.


The following day, Mrs. De Grey and Ernest set off for
Berners-street. She said little as they went along, and that little
was rather intended to damp than to excite his expectations. She
herself scarcely knew what to hope or think; that he intended to do
something for Ernest she could not but suppose, but the idea that
presented itself, “India,” was a saddening one to her. Of Mr. Watts
himself she had little remembrance, though with the once familiar
name visions began to return of a little old man,--so her fancy
pictured him,--who used to kiss and pinch her cheeks somewhat too
heartily.

They reached the door, rang the bell, and were admitted by an old
servant, who shut them into a room without a fire, and with both
windows open.

Mrs. De Grey sat down; Ernest wandered restlessly about, gazed at
some stuffed birds without seeing them; stared at the clock, and
wondered what o’clock it was, without perceiving that the clock had
stopped and the hands were off.

At last the door was opened, and the little wizened, paralytic old
man was wheeled into the room. He took no notice till the door was
shut, and the servant gone, then, quietly stretching out his hand, he
said, “How d’ye do, Gertrude?”

Something of old familiarity, of former days and former friendship,
stole over Mrs. De Grey at the sight of him.

There is so strange a freshness in the remembrance of the friends
of our early years, that of them it may be truly said, “There is
no such thing as forgetting possible.” The memory may seem to be
effaced for a time, but when it does awake, it awakes perfect, as
it was: there is nothing to be done; we meet as we parted. No after
friendships have this peculiarity.

   “The friendships of our youth are often seen
    To share the freshness of those vernal years,
    And spite of hardening trials, withering cares,
    Deep in the heart to blossom ever green;
    Needing but few soft breezes sweeping o’er,
    To bid them lift their heads and bloom once more.”

“You see we have obeyed you,” she said with a smile, as she drew her
chair nearer to him.

“Ah! Gertrude,” he said, looking at her and shaking his head; “I
shouldn’t have known you. Where is the dirty pinafore and the long
fair hair?”

She smiled, and then sighed. Her thoughts were flowing strangely back
to the merry days of her childhood; and upon her ear there came the
sound of a light laughing voice, long hushed in death.

The old man contemplated her, and his thoughts seemed to follow hers.
He held out his shrivelled hand again; in the movement his head
turned, and his eyes fell on Ernest, who had withdrawn himself to the
window.

“Who’s that?” he said in a startled voice.

Mrs. De Grey roused herself, and looked up. The shrivelled hand was
pointing at Ernest, and the small grey eyes were darting from under
the pent and shaggy brows.

“That is Ernest, my son,” she said.

The head dropped, and the eyes closed, and he remarked mournfully,
“The old dotard thought it was Harry.”

“He is like--very like--” said Mrs. De Grey, almost for the first
time struck with the greatness of the likeness.

“Ah! Gertrude,” exclaimed the old man again; and he dashed his
shrivelled hand across his eyes. “But this is behaving like an old
doting fool. Come here, young man; let me look at you.”

Ernest approached, and stood before him, too much occupied in
examining the strange old being to feel awkward beneath his scrutiny.

“What is your name, young man?” he began, like the Catechism.

“Ernest.”

“That’s a fool’s name; I’m ashamed of you, Gertrude.”

“It is my husband’s name,” she said with a smile.

“The more fool he! Why isn’t he Mark, or John, or Thomas? I hate your
new-fangled names. How old are you, Mr. Ernest?”

“Sixteen.”

“It’s a bad age, now-a-days at least; all the boys think they are
men; empty-headed coxcombs, I hate the sight of them! Look there!”
he said, nodding his head out of window; “look at him! five-foot
high, and a cigar in his mouth--addling his brains with smoke--thinks
himself a king. Draw down the blinds, Mr. Ernest; I hate the sight of
him!”

Ernest obeyed, laughing.

“Sit down, young man, I want to speak to you. What did you come here
for?” and he fixed his penetrating eyes on the boy’s face.

Ernest coloured, and laughed again.

“Did you expect to get anything out of me? answer me that.”

Youth, it is said, is acute in perception. Mrs. De Grey might have
been puzzled to answer this home question; but Ernest, without
apparent thought or reflection upon what it would be _best_ to say,
answered steadily, though with a colour mounting to his temples:--

“Not _expected_, but _hoped_.”

“You did, did you,” exclaimed the old man in extreme delight. “Well,
young man, you shan’t be disappointed. I can’t do much, but I’ll do
something. I know you think I’m rich; I’m not, I tell you; I’ve just
enough, and that’s all. I hate your money making; I always did. I
might have had more, if I pleased, but I didn’t want it; and if I had
it I shouldn’t give it you. I tell you I shouldn’t! I like young men
to work. Now listen to me, Mr. Ernest. There are but two professions
in the world--so I think, at least. I hate your lawyers; they’re
all rogues. I hate your physicians; they’re all quacks. Sailors are
necessary evils; I hate their noise; I’ve had enough of them. There
are but two, the army and the church: fight for your country, or
take your countrymen to Heaven. Now, Mr. Ernest, listen to me. I
give you your choice; I’ll buy you a commission, or I’ll send you to
college, as you please; take your choice; but mind this, if I buy a
commission, it will be in a good marching regiment: I’ll have none
of your Guards, none of your swaggering puppies; you shall see the
world--work your way. Now take your choice.”

Ernest sat with downcast eyes; he would not, dared not speak, but his
heart was beating as if it would have leapt from the feeble bonds
that withheld it. The object of his existence was attained: the loss
of what he had so much loved had been then but to bring him to this,
the gratification of the first and strongest passion of his nature.

There was a silence--a short one, but it seemed an age. It was broken
by Mrs. De Grey. With her quiet smile, and soft voice, and with that
steady, serene manner which is so often a covering to deep emotion
and inward struggle, she said,

“We shall not be long in making a choice; Ernest is already in heart
a soldier.”

“I didn’t speak to you, Gertrude,” cried the old man sharply; “let
Mr. Ernest speak for himself.”

There are moments in life--single moments in duration,--yet in their
consequences so weighty, in operation so wonderful, so full of
thought, feeling, and action, that they seem to rise out of time, and
to belong rather to that state of being when time shall be no more.
Such a moment was that now passed by Ernest De Grey. In that moment
he lived whole years of life; thought as he never had thought before;
pondered upon life, and its meaning; weighed, conquered, armed
himself; caught from his mother her quiet spirit of self-conquest;
and calling into memory all her love for him, repaid it with a love
and devotion which contained within itself the sacrifice of his
existence. It was but a moment; he then looked up at the old man,
and said,

“I choose the Church.”

“Ernest!” exclaimed his mother in a tone of warning, anxious, loving
remonstrance. She saw his fading colour, his eye averted from
herself; she read the sacrifice, and for the moment refused to suffer
it to be made.

“My dear Gertrude, will you be still?” said the old man impatiently;
“Mr. Ernest is old enough to decide for himself. Don’t you speak
another word. Well, young man, is your mind made up; I ask once more,
and once only. I’ll have no shifting and shuffling afterwards. Take
your choice.”

“My mind is quite made up,” Ernest repeated. He got up, approached
his mother and kissed her; and then looking at her with his clear,
truthful eyes, said, “I know that you think I have made a great
sacrifice; but, mother, it is no sacrifice since I feel that it
pleases you.”

Mrs. De Grey raised her eyes to his face, but said nothing; not for
worlds would she have further opposed his will; not for worlds would
she have refused the offering he made to her love, not for worlds
would she have deprived him of the blessing that rests upon the
conquest of a selfish passion; and yet she felt at the moment a very
certain truth, that there is often as much heroism in submitting to
the fulfilment of our wishes as there is in conquering them.

The old man held out his hand; Ernest took it and thanked him.

“I won’t be thanked!” he cried, impatiently; “what are thanks good
for? I hate them. Do your duty, young man, and I shall be thanked
enough. But that wasn’t what I’d got to say; what I’d got to say
was this.” He paused, and taking the young, healthful, vigorous
hand between his trembling, shrivelled fingers, continued with a
slow, reverent manner, “God bless you, Mr. Ernest! may the blessing
of an old man rest upon you all your life long! It isn’t a light
thing--don’t forget that you have had it. And now go away,” he
dropped his hand; “go away both of you, and never come again. I
don’t want to see you any more. Go away, Gertrude, and mind what I
say; don’t come again. I tell you I won’t see you,” he said, raising
his voice impatiently, as a few words of earnest remonstrance fell
from Mrs. De Grey. “I know what I wish, and I will have my way. I
will have no sweet, young, loving, innocent faces to tie me and
bind me to the world I want to get free from. Go away--go away, and
never come again. I won’t see you, I tell you,--I won’t. I turn away
the first servant who lets you into the house.” He waved his hands
impatiently, till alarmed at his excitement, they both left the room.
He kept his word,--he saw them no more.




                             CHAPTER VII.

            Though, as you have said, the vernal bloom
            Of his first spirits fading, leaves him changed,
            ’Tis not to worse. His mind is as a meadow
            Of various grasses, rich and fresh beneath,
            But o’er the surface some that come to seed
            Have cast a colour of sobriety.
                                                  EDWIN THE FAIR.

            Let us go forth, and resolutely dare
            In sweat of brow to toil our little day;
            And if a tear flow on our task of care
            In memory of those spring hours past away
            Brush it not by!
            Our hearts to God, to brother men
            Aid, labour, blessing, prayer, and then
            To these, a sigh.
                                                    R. M. MILNES.


Time flies. This is sometimes a truism, trite, unmeaning, and
common-place; and sometimes a truth of very serious import. At the
present moment, the latter character may certainly be claimed for the
remark, for we have to fly rapidly over a large space of time, and
a large portion of life. Ten years have come and gone,--ten years of
youth and vigour,--ten years full of feeling, and full of event, had
we the time to dwell upon them.

It was at the end of these ten years, and again at the close of a
beautiful August evening, that Ernest De Grey stood on the brow of
the hill which overlooked his former home, on the very spot which had
witnessed the announcement of his lost hopes, and his altered destiny.

It is difficult exactly to define in what romance consists; but there
are events in life, peculiar combinations of circumstances to which
the epithet romantic is at once, and without thought, applied. These
events need not be strange or startling; they may be brought about
in the easiest and most natural manner; the steps which lead to the
combination may be each in themselves obvious and commonplace; and
yet over the whole there rests a halo--a poetic colouring, which
is felt by the most unpoetic and insensible. Something, no doubt,
there is in the character of the persons to whom such events occur;
for there are persons whose cold hands and shallow glances turn all
they touch, and all that is spread before them into dryness and
insipidity. It would, however, have required a very remarkable degree
of coldness and dryness to dissipate the romantic colouring which
rested on the circumstance (although nothing could be simpler or more
commonplace than the events which led to it), that Ernest De Grey was
appointed to the living of the parish in which his former home stood.
This appointment was, as it seemed, a mere chance. He was a curate in
an adjoining county, but there was a distance of thirty miles between
his new and his old abode. He was invited by his rector to accompany
him on a visit to the bishop of the diocese. The visit lasted but
a few hours. Ernest spoke little, and little was said to him. He
was not aware,--his rector was not aware,--that he had excited any
peculiar degree of attention; yet a few weeks afterwards the living
of the Parish of Cranleigh was offered to the young curate:

    “A chance it seem’d to be,
     But such a chance as rules our destiny.”

And once more Ernest stood and gazed upon the beauty of his lost
inheritance;--and fondly and admiringly his eye wandered round; but
the bound of the heart with which he had heard of his destiny,--but
the rapture with which he had contemplated a return to the scenes
of his youth was stilled and faded now. He stood and gazed, but his
heart was heavy, and his thoughts were joyless and sad.

We are, I think, too much disposed to look upon the clergy as an
order of men separate from ourselves; not separate in that sense in
which we _should_ so regard them, separated by a peculiar seal and
sanctity, but separate in nature: we are not, I mean, disposed to
allow for them the temptations and infirmities of a common humanity;
we are too much inclined to suppose that the vows which sever them
from their fellows, withdraw them also from the trials and failures
common to all in fighting against “the world, the flesh, and the
devil.” So at least it has always seemed to me, when the errors,
negligences, and infirmities of those who, while they are clergy,
still are men, are dwelt upon by a harsh-judging world.

Ernest De Grey was not one who would have fulfilled the perfect ideal
of what a clergyman should be. As a child, as a boy, he had been what
has been happily called “very human;” and very human he was still.
The life he led was a life opposed to every feeling and natural
impulse within him; and though he struggled manfully to submit
himself to it, there were many hours when his spirit was bowed by the
weight of unwelcome responsibility; and when his fancy revolted from
the picture of the perpetual struggle and warfare before him. He was
one of those separated by the seal of Heaven from their fellow men;
but many unmarked by that seal were less tied and bound to earth than
he, by the weight of a craving earth-loving nature.

He had never repented of the resolution so suddenly taken in the old
man’s room,--he would have repeated it again and again: but that
resolution had been taken not from any call he had felt to duties
so serious, to an office so holy, but simply from a motive of love
and duty to his mother; and that motive being but a human motive,
was not at all times sufficiently powerful to animate him amidst the
painful, and often thankless, tasks to which he was called to devote
himself. Let it not be supposed that Ernest should be blamed for
having undertaken a responsibility so solemn, from a human motive.
That motive, filial duty, is in itself so pure, is from “passion’s
dross so refined and clear,” so contains within itself the germ of
all religious feeling, that none have ever acted upon it, in any
course of duty, or condition of life, and failed to find a blessing.
It is but the statement--a fact,--it was a human motive; and though
sufficiently powerful to prevent his resolution from wavering, it
could not at all times turn his repulsive tasks into a labour of
love and delight.

There was no want of seriousness in the manner in which Ernest first
prepared for, and finally entered upon his labours. Once resolved, he
endeavoured as best he could to render himself not unworthy the holy
office he held. His mind was so true and sincere, that there was no
tampering with his conscience,--no excusing himself under the plea of
natural unfitness; so far as he saw his duties, he tried to fulfil
them. He was not perhaps very quick in discovering them: other eyes
might see them straight before him, and he might pass them by; but
once beheld, they were firmly and unshrinkingly performed. On minds
of this character a blessing must ever rest; for there is nothing to
be compared in value to truth and sincerity of heart. But improvement
is a gradual process: day by day the strife of inclination with duty
has to be renewed; and they are strong indeed who never faint and
are weary. Ernest had not this strength: he was far, still very
far, from perfection; his duties were to him but duties still, hard
oftentimes and laborious: his life was warfare still; his future, a
future still on which his eyes scarcely dared to rest.

Since last we met him he had passed from boyhood into manhood; and
the deepened expression of his countenance, and the subdued and even
serious quietness of his manners bore witness to the change. But the
change was not very deep,--in heart he was still a boy: the thirst
for happiness was still as strong, the tastes of his boyhood still
springing up as fresh and vigorous within him. It was not therefore
strange that as he stood and gazed upon the scenes of his free and
happy youth,--as he thought of the days when the name of duty had
been a light and unfelt burden, his spirits should sink and a cloud
of unusual melancholy settle about his head.

Fully, however, to understand his mood of mind, more perfectly to
pourtray his character, and to reveal him in all the weakness and
humanity of his nature, we must go back to an earlier hour of the
day, and bear him company on his first arrival at his new home.

It was about four o’clock when he dismounted from a post-chaise, and
entered the parsonage house. It was a pretty low-roofed picturesque
building with a green lawn before it, and a flower-garden on one
side. It stood at the borders of the village, thirty or forty yards
from the road, shadowed from the heat by fine spreading oaks, and
guarded from intrusive eyes by a well-covered trellised paling.
In former days he had often regarded it with admiration; of late
he had often thought of it with pleasure, but as he entered it
now he sighed. It was in all the dreary discomfort and untidiness
of a new arrival; and although such a state of things is to some
minds an incentive to exertion, and an agreeable excitement, it
was not so to him. He was not luxurious,--he had never been so:
but he liked comfort,--he liked domestic comfort, he liked to
feel at home. He walked into the lonely drawing-room, and sighed
again. He was now to live alone; and of late he had thought of
this with much pleasure--(for although naturally of a joyous and
elastic disposition, he was fastidious in his tastes; not endowed
with superhuman patience when those tastes were offended; and much
had suffered under the trite remarks and harmless, but unmeaning
pleasantries of the good dull rector, with whom he had hitherto
resided): but now as he entered the disorderly room, a sense of
desolation made his heart sink. And while still looking about him
with a gaze of blank despair, his temper was assailed, and well-nigh
overcome, by the worry of domestic cares, and the demand upon his
wandering attention for considerations of household economy. In
short, the first effect of the return to scenes which, at a distance,
he had pictured as “redolent with joy and youth,” was far from
bringing with it the fresh and joyous feeling of “a second spring.”

“Pray have these boxes carried away, it looks so uncomfortable,” he
said to the lady who had been selected from the village to preside
over his household, as he wandered round the carpetless drawing-room,
strewed as it was with hay and straw, paper, and lids of boxes.

“I can’t do it myself, sir,” replied Mrs. Cook, who was heated with
scrubbing and unpacking, and who among her many virtues did not boast
of an imperturbable temper; “and Thomas says he can’t do it, and John
is looking after the horse.”

“Well, Mrs. Cook, I shall go out for a walk; and if you can get
anybody to clear the room, I shall be much obliged to you.”

“If you please, sir, will you give me the keys of the linen-chest?
The things must be got somehow before night; and there’s more to do
than a horse could do already.”

“I haven’t got the keys.”

“Thomas bade me ask you, sir: he says you gave _him_ no keys.”

After a search, the keys were found; and Ernest took up his hat and
prepared for a retreat.

“What do you please to have for dinner, sir?” Mrs. Cook began again.

“Oh, I leave that entirely to you. I suppose you have ordered
something into the house?”

“I did, sir, make so bold, without orders, for I got no orders from
nobody. And where will you please to dine; and what time, sir, do you
please to have dinner served up? It isn’t my way, sir, to be without
orders, and it’s more than a servant can abear to have no notice
taken when she does her best.”

“I will take more notice another day,” Ernest said, good-naturedly.
“Put dinner where you please, wherever you can find an empty table;
and it had better be ready at seven o’clock.”

“There’s no end of things wanting in the kitchen, sir; there isn’t
a boiler to be seen, and the jack is in a sad ricketty state, and I
can’t find no pastry-roller nowhere; and to-morrow’s Sunday, too!”

“Never mind for the present,” he said, indifferently; “I suppose we
shall get right in time.” And he put on his hat and opened the door.

“There’s been no orders given, sir, about the rooms; there’s been no
orders given about nothing. I never heard of such a way of coming
to a place. I made so bold as to choose an apartment for myself and
my small matters; but Thomas has got no orders, and he doesn’t know
where to lay out your honour’s things; and the house will all be
topsy-turvy, if there isn’t some notice taken.”

Ernest put down his hat, and followed his conductress over the house,
agreeing to every suggestion she chose to make; till coming to a room
a few steps higher than the others, from the window of which a sight
of Clare Abbey might be caught, he said, “No, Mrs. Cook, I change my
mind: this shall be my room.”

“This, sir? Why, it’s no better than a coalhole compared to those
more spacious apartments. It will do for a young gentleman from
college, sir, or for a traveller for a night or so, but not for your
honour.”

“It must do for me,” he said, laughing, “and the travellers shall
have the more spacious rooms;” and he stood leaning against the
window, unheeding the remonstrances which were poured upon his ear.
He was choosing for himself a dangerous indulgence. How dangerous he
could not guess.

“Is Lord Vere in the country?” he inquired at last.

“Yes, sir; his lordship is always in the country.”

“Has he many children?”

“He has but the two, sir--Mr. St. Maur and the young lady.” In the
anticipation of a little gossip, Mrs. Cook drew nearer, and laying
aside her state and offended dignity, and with her dignity her more
select phraseology, she continued: “If you wants to know about the
fam’ly, sir, I can’t tell you but very little about them; for though
they lives here the whole year round, they never comes amongst the
poor as your good mamma used to do. Sometimes I sees her ladyship and
the young lady in the bairooche, as they drives through Cranleigh
now and again; and now and again I sees them at Church: but they
isn’t very regular church-goers, only when Mr. St. Maur is at home.
He is a very fine young gentleman, sir, and discreet in his ways,
I hears; but then he’s as haught and as proud as--, I forgets the
caparison, sir. Oh! they all wants a deal of good doing to them, and
a deal of preaching, sir, and that’s the truth.”

“We all do that, Mrs. Cook,” said Ernest, gravely, retreating from
the window. There was no feeling stronger in his mind than charity in
his judgments. His sense of his own weakness made him, perhaps, even
faultily tender in dealing with the temptations and infirmities of
others.

“Well, they does, sir,” she said, complacently; “but some wants it
more nor others: and I often thinks as I sees my lady prancing along
in her bairooche, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of
heaven.”

Ernest said no more; but leaving Mrs. Cook to arrange the house,
he set off on the lonely ramble to which alone his melancholy mood
of mind was suited. Few as her words of gossip had been, they had
excited another train of sad and a new train of repining feeling
within. He remembered his own youthful dreams of philanthropy, vague
indeed, but dwelt on many an hour fondly in his breast. He remembered
how he had intended to be the father of the tenantry; realizing
some perhaps never perfectly fulfilled ideal of a gentleman of the
olden time,--how his cares and attentions to their welfare were
to bring in “a golden year,” where there was to be no more want,
no more distress, no more crime. He turned his eye as he passed
along upon the Church, still disfigured by unsightly additions and
monstrous deformities, and he remembered the hopes he had once so
enthusiastically formed of restoring it to the beauty and purity of
its original proportions; and dreaming as he went, he marvelled why
the opportunities had been denied to him which would have been used
to the glory of God and for the good of man. And while he indulged in
the easy pleasure of imaginative virtue and benevolence, he scarcely
thought of the holier, if not higher, labours to which he had been
called.

He reached the brow of the hill which overlooked the valley, and
there, leaning his back against a gate, he stood with folded arms
indulging in a luxury of meditation; while unreproved, although
unbidden, these vague, regretful, distrustful thoughts chased each
other through his mind.

He was roused from his reverie by the sound of a sweet voice and a
musical laugh from the high-road. Turning hastily round, he observed
two figures on horseback approaching at a rapid pace. He felt
interested and excited, and contemplated them with much curiosity.
One was a young man, extremely handsome and _aristocratic_ in his
appearance, whose proud and stately bearing, visible even at a first
glance, suited well with the lofty style of his beauty. The other
was a young lady,--very young,--she could not be much more than
sixteen. Her likeness to her companion betrayed at once the nature of
their relationship; but it was a likeness of a peculiar kind, which
struck you strangely at first, and was almost forgotten afterwards.
Her features were the same finely-carved regular features--her head
had the same peculiar stately grace--her whole appearance the same
air of “patrician beauty.” But in her movements, in her countenance,
in her large, long-shaped hazel eyes, half mischievous, half
melancholy, there was a wildness, an airiness, a grace, which gave
to the character of her beauty an expression totally dissimilar. She
was dressed in a fashion which is, I hope, gradually displacing the
modern ungraceful riding-dress. A prettily-shaped jacket of black
velvet fell over the skirt of her habit, and the long curls of her
bright gold, or pale auburn hair, floated from beneath a low Spanish
hat, round which a lace veil was loosely streaming. She formed the
very ideal for the lady of a hawking picture of the olden time;
indeed about her and about her companion likewise there was that
ideal, poetic, colouring, which one expresses, perhaps somewhat
vaguely by the words “looking like a picture.”

In passing the place where Ernest stood, the horse of the young lady,
either from a rut or other obstruction in the road, or from some
carelessness on the part of the fair rider, stumbled, and, for a
moment, there was danger of her being thrown to the ground. With one
bound, Ernest swung himself over the gate, and laid his hand upon the
bridle; but before he could grasp it, the young lady had recovered
her seat, and laughingly patting the beautiful and penitent creature,
exclaimed, “Poor Brenda, I wonder whose fault it was!”

Looking up immediately afterwards, she was about to thank Ernest, who
had retreated to the side of the road; but she was forestalled by her
companion. With some haughtiness the young man raised his hat, and
slightly bending his head, said,

“My sister is much obliged to you for your assistance”; then,
stooping down, and stroking Brenda’s flowing mane, he continued,
“Come, Camilla, it is late;” and immediately put his own horse in
motion.

The young lady followed without speaking, but turning with a smile to
Ernest, and a flitting blush on her fair cheek, she courteously bowed
her head, her long curls sweeping over the horse’s neck as she bent,
and rode away.

Ernest looked after them with an eager, intense, inquiring gaze, till
they were out of sight; he then bounded over the gate, and rapidly
retraced his steps homewards. But he was no longer the same person
who had so languidly wandered along an hour before. He glanced over
the valley, and brighter than the noon-day sun fell the shadows
of approaching evening across his path. Where was the gloom of
despondency, where were the cheerless prospects of a life of struggle
and warfare? A ray of light had fallen across his path, a spark of
interest was kindling the future into beauty. His life, which of late
he had contemplated as “toward evening,” shone bright again with
“hues of the rich unfolding morn.” New thoughts, new hopes, new
strength, new self-devotion, new animation,

    “By some soft touch invisible
     Around his path were taught to swell.”

How or wherefore this change of temper, he could not perhaps himself
have explained; yet there was nothing strange or miraculous in it.
The mere sight of these two beings, by fancy easily named,--strangers
in their individual character, but no strangers to the haunts of his
imagination:--the sight of them in their youth and their beauty,
and gifted with that lofty high-born air, which so strongly appeals
to the fancy, this was in itself enough to lure him into a future
he sometimes shrank from contemplating, with thoughts of hope, and
interest, and companionship. But such sudden changes of mood are by
no means uncommon. Ernest’s lively and sensitive mind was peculiarly
susceptible of sudden impressions; for his was

    “That nature of humanity
     Which both ways doth rebound--rejoicing now
     With soarings of the soul, anon brought low.”

But all men--with the exception of a very few, who, as Fuller says,
“seem to be made of one entire bone, without any joints”--are as
easily acted upon as the chords of the Æolian harp. A fleeting cloud,
whose form we have scarcely time to seize, passes over our brain,
and we sink into gloom; a soft breath, coming we know not whence,
and going we know not where, plays upon the cloud, and it dissolves
into mist again. There are some verses by Hood, which quaintly, but
prettily, describe one of these sudden, insensible changes, from
darkness to light:

    “Farewell life! my senses swim,
     And the world is growing dim;
     Thronging shadows cloud the light,
     Like the advent of the night.
     Colder, colder, colder still,
     Upward starts a vapour chill;
     Strong the earthy odour grows,
     I smell the mould above the rose.

    “Welcome life! the spirit strives,
     Strength returns, and hope revives;
     Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
     Fly like shadows at the morn;
     O’er the earth there comes a bloom,
     Sunny light, for sullen gloom;
     Warm perfume for vapours cold,
     I smell the rose above the mould.”

On Ernest’s return to the parsonage, he found an invitation awaiting
him, from which he would gladly have freed himself. His young curate
stood in the doorway, expressing his regret that duty should have
compelled him to be absent during the afternoon, and requesting,
with an earnestness which would take no denial, that Ernest would
leave his uncomfortable home, and pass the evening with his mother
and himself. Mrs. Cook warmly seconded the propriety of the step,
and Ernest gave way. He had spent four hours of an unceasingly rainy
day at the house of his curate on the occasion of his induction, a
month before this time, and the remembrance of those four hours were
such as to make him shrink from a repetition, especially on this day,
when his mind was full of thoughts on the past, the present, and the
future. But he was one of those people who have an innate dislike to
a fuss; and he was too happy to escape from Mr. Hervey’s persuasions
and Mrs. Cook’s remonstrances by a hasty acquiescence.

Mr. Hervey, the curate, was an amiable young man, exemplary
in his conduct both as a son and a clergyman; but he was dull
and commonplace, and more tedious than dull people usually are,
from the insatiable desire which possessed him for information.
From dulness of a talkative narrating kind it is easy to escape,
the unfettered mind wandering pleasantly during the flow of the
discourse; but questions are a serious infliction. Mr. Hervey’s
conversation was chiefly confined to the interrogative mood. He loved
information,--not valuable information only, but all information.
He would ask in the same breath the price of a horse and its name;
he would follow up a question on an abstruse point of geology or
astronomy by an inquiry as to the relative heights of two unconnected
individuals; and the answers to every question were laid side by side
in his mind, comprehensively classed together under the head of so
much information. His mother was homely and unrefined; but she had
more sense and observation than her son, and a goodness of heart
with which it was impossible not to be pleased. For her habit of
narration also, often tedious and pointless as it was, there was this
great excuse to be made, that it had been acquired, and necessarily
fixed, during the long course of years in which she had been engaged
in bestowing information on her son. They were both, however,
considered in the light of companions, rather serious trials to a
preoccupied and wandering mind.

“Did you make a long journey to-day?” asked Mr. Hervey of Ernest, as
they sat down to dinner.

“Yes; I came from London.”

“What do you suppose to be the exact distance from here to London?”

“I don’t know. I suppose between eighty and ninety miles.”

“You came by the railroad, of course?”

“Oh yes, of course,” Ernest said, smiling.

“And I dare say you came in five or six hours. Wonderful! wonderful!”
sighed old Mrs. Hervey. “I don’t know how it may be, I hope there
is no harm in it; but I sometimes do think it never was intended
that men should fly through the air as they do now-a-days. When
first I came to this part of the country,--we came on a visit to old
Mr. Hargrave, at the Woods,--it’s fifty years ago--I was a girl of
eighteen--we were three days in coming from London. The first night
we slept at Henley-on-Thames, my father was knocked up even then; but
he was an invalid, to be sure; and the second night we slept--where
did we sleep, Edward?--how strange, that I should forget! I know
there was a waiter with a spotty face; for my mother, who was
always nervous about infection, said, ‘I wonder if he has got the
small-pox.’ But, however, that is no matter now: and the third night
we arrived at the Woods.”

Such is a specimen of the conversation with which Mr. and Mrs. Hervey
entertained their guest during dinner and the early part of the
evening. Ernest exerted himself, however, to attend, to control his
thoughts during some thrice-repeated narrations from Mrs. Hervey,
and to bear patiently his curate’s more tedious interrogatories; and
he was at length rewarded for his endeavours by the sudden raising
of a subject which possessed a strange attraction for him, and which
a distaste to prying and gossip, joined to some other mysterious
feelings, had alone prevented him from introducing.

“What do you suppose to be the prevailing style of architecture in
which Clare Abbey is built?” inquired Mr. Hervey.

It was the first time that his former home had been mentioned, Mrs.
Hervey, with more tact than her son, leaving the subject for Ernest
to introduce or not at his pleasure; but the quietness with which he
now entered upon the discussion convinced her that her abstinence (a
very painful one) had been needless; and she joyfully seized upon a
topic on which her tongue had been “itching” to expatiate.

“Are you acquainted with Lord and Lady Vere, Mr. De Grey?” she asked,
when the architecture had been discussed, and her son was satisfied.

“Not at all,” he replied.

“You are not singular in that respect,” remarked Mr. Hervey.

“Edward is quite right,” rejoined his mother. “Nobody can be said to
know them. I don’t know how it is; we have dined at Clare Abbey--how
many times, Edward?--three times, I think, in three years, and Lady
Vere has called here as many times, perhaps; but I don’t know how
it is, we don’t know them; and everybody about here says the same
thing. Lord Vere is never seen. Indeed, Mr. De Grey, you will have
hard work: if he comes to church half a dozen times a year, it is
all he does do. I hope I’m saying nothing unkind, Edward; but Mr. De
Grey will have eyes as well as we have, and the truth is the truth.
Lady Vere was not much better a year or two ago; but Mr. St. Maur,
they say, persuades her to be more regular; and we shall see her
to-morrow, as he is at home, I don’t doubt.”

“Did you ever see the young St. Maurs?” inquired Mr. Hervey.

“Not unless, as I suppose, I met them riding this afternoon.”

“If you met young people riding, Mr. De Grey, there’s no doubt that
you met the young St. Maurs. When Mr. St. Maur is at home, he and
his sister are always together riding and walking. Mr. St. Maur is at
Oxford at present (that is, not at present; you understand, Mr. De
Grey, vacation time); and he remains there a year longer, I believe.
He is remarkably clever as we hear, and they say he is to come into
Parliament in a year or so, and altogether he looks very high. It
is a sad pity that he is so haughty, for there’s no doubt but he is
a well-disposed young man; but that’s the way with genius in this
world. There’s not a soul hereabouts that he thinks fit to associate
with. Edward would be very happy to be a companion when he’s not too
busy, but if he meets him in his walks or his rides, Mr. St. Maur
bows and asks him how he does, and there’s an end of it;--and the
young lady never leaves her brother when he is at home; and when he’s
not at home nobody knows what becomes of her. She leads a sad dull
life, poor thing, and she feels it I’m sure she does; but she’s a
sweet pretty creature,--isn’t she, Mr. De Grey?”

“Very pretty,” he replied quietly; but he coloured slightly as he
spoke, for a quiet “very pretty” was _not_ what he had thought her.

“What a strange thing a family likeness is!” remarked Mr. Hervey.

“Ah! Edward, you say that because you think Miss St. Maur so like her
brother; but I don’t see it. For my part I had rather have one like
Miss St. Maur, than twenty such as that proud young gentleman. It’s
a shame for me to say so, I, Edward’s mother too, for Mr. St. Maur
is far more hopeful and religious, than his sister; but then she’s
young, Mr. De Grey, and she’s a sweet pretty creature, and that’s the
truth; and when she smiles, I could kiss her a hundred times over.
I never see her, but I think of a cousin of my own, dead and gone
these thirty years; sweet Amy Mills! She was just such another sweet
thoughtless thing; there was no seriousness in her! but she fell ill
before she was twenty, and she bore a long painful illness with the
patience of a young saint as she was; and when she died, for she
died in her early youth, she looked so lovely, that there was one
who said she was not a dead child of earth, but a sleeping angel of
heaven. And I’ve often seen it; such is the end of those wild sweet
heedless things. But you are not going, Mr. De Grey; it’s early yet.”

“What is the exact hour by your watch,” inquired Mr. Hervey.

“Nearly ten o’clock; and I have a good deal to arrange to-night.”

“Do you suppose that your time is perfectly correct by London time?”

With some difficulty, Ernest extricated himself from the offered
society of Mr. Hervey, and walked thoughtfully home alone.




                             CHAPTER VIII.

            There is in souls a sympathy with sounds,
            Some chord in unison with what we hear
            Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
            ... wherever I have heard
            A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
            And with it all its pleasures and its pains;
            Such comprehensive views the spirit takes
            That in a few short moments I retrace
            The windings of my way through many years.
                                                          COWPER.


The family at Clare Abbey, were assembled at the breakfast table, on
the following morning. Lord and Lady Vere sate opposite each other;
one side of the table was empty; on the other side, Camilla St. Maur
sate, as she always chose to do, by her brother. Though there might
be some few points of similarity, nothing could be more dissimilar
than the general character, and common habits of these two, and
yet the affection subsisting between them, was of that close and
devoted kind, which is sometimes said to be peculiar to twins, but
which probably only needs some similarity of age, and the days of
childhood passed together. This affection and union was the stronger,
because in their home, they were thrown entirely upon each other for
companionship, meeting with little attention from one parent, and
finding little sympathy in the other.

Lady Vere’s character may, I hope, be tolerably well guessed, from
the few words she has already spoken. She was very beautiful, at
forty still beautiful, an utter want of thought and sensation
preserving to her all the smoothness and freshness of youth. Besides
this uncommon beauty, she had little to attract, for her only other
marked qualities, were indolence and folly. She was, however, a
patient and forbearing wife, and though an injudicious, or rather
an unthinking, yet in her way, was an affectionate mother. She was
proud of her son, and had reason to be so, and treated his opinions
with deference: to her daughter she allowed (except on a few
points, where some strict rules of her own youth, chiefly of bodily
restraint, were remembered and enforced) unlimited indulgence, and if
there was no sympathy, there was no want of harmony.

Lord Vere’s character had more expression. Lady Vere always called
him, “My love,” but he looked very unlike anybody’s love,--most
of all unlike hers. He was a tall, thin, dry-looking man, whose
features once had been, nay still were, handsome; but were disfigured
by an expression of mingled sourness and discontent, sternness
and melancholy. His character in early youth had not been without
promise; resembling, in many of its features, the proud aspiring
nature which now characterized his son; but his son’s ambition was
of a lofty and generous kind, his own had been simply selfish. It
might possibly have been turned to good; success, that salutary
medicine to many minds, might have enlarged and purified it; but it
was disappointed, and it shrank into the recesses of his spirit, and
turned to sourness.

Many trials await the pride of those who at once court and despise
their fellows. Lord Vere suffered much, but struggled on till a
blow was struck which raised his pride and withered his ambition.
He came into Parliament; and if his heart could ever have been said
to glow, at that time it glowed,--not with the noblest passion, the
desire of being an instrument of good, yet with a not ignoble one,
the desire of fame. He determined to make a figure, to earn a name:
a question arose on which he felt some interest; he took advantage
of it; he devoted himself to the study of the subject, made himself
master of it; at length rose to speak: spoke,--and _failed_. His
manner was hard and dry, his arguments, though plausible, false,--and
words and manner both alike were tinged, and more than tinged,
with the only youthful fault which produces harsh and malicious
criticism,--arrogance. His speech, his argument, nay he himself, was
turned into ridicule, not only by his opponents in the heat of the
moment, but by many of the leading papers of the day. Stung to the
quick, too proud to retort, too scornful to explain, he withdrew
into himself, and abjured friends, foes, and political life for ever.
His father’s death shortly afterwards changing his condition, he
retired into the country and lived on his own property the life of a
recluse. So ended his dream of ambition; ever afterwards all generous
sentiments, all lofty aspirations, if expressed in his presence, were
crushed with a cold sneer of scorn.

His second dream was of love; and from love his second disappointment
came. It might have been said, his friends had often said, that love
was a passion which could find no place in his heart; but human
nature is strangely inconsistent, for ever escaping from the rules
with which we endeavour to trammel it; and so Lord Vere, inconsistent
as it was with his previous habits and openly expressed opinions,
was betrayed, not only into a romantic passion, but into a foolish
and romantic marriage. He was some years more than thirty, when he
was ordered to Buxton for his health; he there saw, admired, and
voluntarily made acquaintance with a young lady of no fortune and
no family, but whose beauty was of a remarkable and dazzling kind.
Perhaps the extreme languor and softness of her voice and manner
were soothing to the hardened nature of the man, who fancied himself
injured by his kind: however this might be, he married her after
a short acquaintance; and so extreme was his love and devotion,
that it was many months before he became aware that the lips of
his beautiful wife were incapable of uttering anything but the
most intolerable folly--and that she was still more incapable of
comprehending the fervour of that affection, which, overcoming all
barriers from within and from without, had prevailed to make her his
wife. Such a discovery once made, is made for ever,--the illusion
which casts a spell over folly, once dispersed, returns no more. For
the second time Lord Vere withdrew into himself, and the spark of
unselfish feeling which might yet have kindled the dormant energies
of his nature, appeared to be extinguished. Henceforward he lived
to himself only,--and the life with his own dry self was dreary and
uninspiring indeed. In vain the beauty, the infantile charms, the
youthful grace of his daughter--in vain the talents and promise of
his son--he took no heed of them; and if it was with an effort that
pride and affection were sometimes restrained, it was not apparently
so. He was not an unkind father; though cold and repulsive in manner,
in action he was rather indulgent than otherwise. Except on such
points as interfered with his determined plan of seclusion, he never
thwarted their wishes, or their will; but a wish thwarted with an
expression of interest is worth, a thousand times over, a careless
acquiescence in our desires,--and so his children felt.

“You have got a letter, Reginald,” exclaimed Camilla, laying her hand
on one which her brother put down beside him; “where does it come
from? May I read it--pray let me read it?”

In some houses letters are even too plentiful; but a letter was a
rare sight at Clare Abbey.

“It will not interest you, my dear Camilla.”

“Oh! yes it will; everything interests me that interests you; and
besides, I like to hear of things that happen in some other world
than this. Now, let me read it--_pray_ do,” and she put her hand on
his arm.

He gave her the letter.

“What is it all about?” she cried, looking up with a puzzled look; “I
can’t understand it! What have you been doing,--and what has made a
sensation, as the man says?”

“I told you, Camilla, it would not interest you,” Reginald said,
smiling, and he held out his hand.

“But it does interest me, and I will understand it. Now take your
hand away, for I mean to make it out. Now I begin to see; you
have been making a speech, and your friend says that it has been
so much admired, that Somebody Somebody--I wish he wrote a little
better--calls you Demosthenes. Oh! Reginald, when did you speak; and
why didn’t you tell me?”

“My dear Camilla,” he said, with a look of annoyance, “I wish you
would not make such a fuss. We occasionally meet to speak, to
practice speaking at Oxford; and one night, there was some rather
good speaking, that was all.”

“I thought people only made speeches in Parliament,” remarked Lady
Vere.

“Oh, mamma, don’t you remember Colonel Ashby’s speech at Salisbury,
last week, which they said lasted two hours?”

“Yes, to be sure; I wonder what it was all about. What did you speak
about, Reginald?”

“It was a mere question for the purpose of debate, mother; it was of
no importance.”

“What was the subject?” asked Lord Vere, shortly and
suddenly,--looking up from the newspaper.

Reginald coloured, but replied in the respectful tone in which he
always addressed both his parents,

“The question that was proposed was on the subject of ambition;
whether greatness was or was not desirable simply for itself?”

“And what might your sage opinion be?”

“I said that to rise was in itself an object for ambition”; and his
eyes flashed as he spoke.

His father turned to the newspaper with a slight scoffing laugh; but
Camilla exclaimed,

“Right, Reginald, right; who were the dull, stupid people who could
think otherwise?”

“They were not dull or stupid,” he said, gravely; “and though for
some reasons my speech was the most applauded, _I_ know that there
was no comparison between mine and that of the person who answered
me. He did not convince me,” he added, with a slight sigh; “but I
felt that his words were better, and wiser too.”

“Applauded! Reginald!” exclaimed his sister, eagerly; “were you
cheered?--oh! if I had but been there.”

“Talking of speaking,” said Lady Vere, in her languid voice, “Mitford
tells me that we shall have a new preacher to-day. Shall you go to
church, my love?”

“My love” took no notice of the question. She turned to her son, and
repeated it.

“Yes, mother, certainly.”

“I think I shall go, because Mitford has trimmed my new bonnet,--a
sort of white fancy straw, with blue marabout feathers; it’s
exceedingly pretty. What shall you wear, Camilla?”

“The same as usual, mamma,” she replied, carelessly; “I didn’t know
that we need dress for Mr. De Grey.”

Reginald glanced at her: her disrespectful manner to her mother was
the subject of his constant but unavailing remonstrance.

“Now, my dear Reginald,” she said, always distressed by his
displeasure, though rarely amended by it, “can you say that there is
any necessity for a new bonnet because a new clergyman happens to
come to our dull church?”

He shook his head with a slight grave smile, but said nothing.

“Do you know, Reginald,” she added, suddenly, “from what Mitford was
telling mamma last night, I think our very civil friend must have
been Mr. De Grey.”

“Do you think it was?” he asked, with interest in his manner.

“I am sure it must have been; because Mitford says when she went
down to buy some ribbon she saw him arrive, and when she came back,
about half an hour afterwards, she saw the same person walking in our
direction. I hope it was; I liked his looks, didn’t you, Reginald?”

“I really hardly observed him, Camilla,--I was thinking of you;” and
he looked at her with one of the sweet fond smiles which brightened
and softened his proud beauty.

“_I_ thought you were very short to him,” she said, laughing; “I
liked his looks, not the least like a clergyman; how different to
that poor, wretched Mr. Hervey. I don’t know if mamma was not right,
and that he would have been worth a new bonnet after all;” and she
looked mischievously up in her brother’s grave face as she spoke.

He shook his head again, but indulgently, as at a pretty naughty
child whose wilful ways are too winning for anger, and left the
breakfast-table.

Untamed and unrestrained, Camilla St. Maur had grown to be a woman;
a few strict rules laid upon her body, forming the only yoke of her
education. Unless when emancipated by her brother’s presence, her
body was a slave to the precincts of the Abbey; for Lady Vere had
strict ideas as to what a young lady should, and should not do: but
no such restraint was imposed on her mind. She had had one or two
foolish governesses; but folly exerts no authority, or if it exerts,
fails to obtain it; and so her mind had grown in unfettered freedom,
with few principles to guide her, and those few caught from her
brother’s example, or springing up naturally in a mind as fruitful in
flowers as in weeds. She spent what she chose; did what she chose;
read what she chose; learned what she chose, or wasted her time as
she chose,--and so at sixteen and a half, she was nothing but as Mrs.
Hervey said, “a wild, sweet, heedless thing,” surpassingly lovely,
quick in apprehension, vivid in imagination; yet all these good
things wasting their sweetness from want of culture.

       *       *       *       *       *

Strange, unspeakably strange, were the feelings of Ernest De Grey
as he stood in the pulpit of the village church, and prepared to
address his parishioners for the first time. The voices of the
school-children were singing the hundredth psalm, the favourite of
his childish fancy; and as the sounds fell upon his ear (the same
discordant tones from the old grinding organ, the same unsoftened,
unmusical notes from the children), memory transported him from the
spot on which he now stood, and once more placed him a child by his
mother’s side, and once more he gazed upon the old organ as the
wonder of the world, and the twang of the children fell pleasantly
upon his ear. A sudden failure in the organ, such as he remembered in
the olden time, aroused him from this first backward flight of his
fancy; and there came a remembrance of the hour in his boyish life,
when the idea first dawned upon his mind that the music in Cranleigh
church was not such a concord of sweet sounds as he had childishly
imagined; and then, connected with this discovery, he almost smiled
as he recalled the day when, in the independence of enlightened
boyhood, he had left his mother’s side, and had chosen for himself
a prominent and luxurious position in the large curtained roomy
pew, which of all the deformities of Cranleigh church was the most
unsightly and the most indefensible. Led away by this recollection,
he involuntarily turned his eyes upon the interior of the pew, until
this moment hidden from his sight, and there, in his boyhood’s
chosen seat, stood Camilla St. Maur, the vision of the preceding
evening. A bright slanting gleam of sunshine was falling upon her,
encircling her fairy figure, her airy dress, making her laughing eyes
to sparkle, and her hair to shine like threads of gold. It was too
lovely a vision for such a time, and almost

          “The preacher in his parting prayer
    Shut his dark eyes, and warn’d men to beware
    Of beauty.”

These trains of thought are long in description, but they passed
through the mind swifter than the arrow from the bow. The last
verse of the psalm was singing, when Ernest stood up in the pulpit
and looked around him; the verse concluded, and calm, grave, and
composed, he began the words of the opening prayer, driving back with
one strong resolute effort the feverish dreams of the past and the
future into the recesses of his mind.

The discourse of the new rector of Cranleigh was not heard unmoved by
his congregation. Many tears were shed by the poor, who have those
outward signs of emotion ready at every call of sorrow and of joy;
and even in the less excitable hearts of the rich there were feelings
unexpressed, inexpressible, whose only outward sign could have been
tears. And this not because Ernest was a fine preacher--far from it.
His sermon was short, his language simple and concise; his manner
serious, and no more. There was no kindling of the eloquence which,
whatever may be its ultimate effect, for the moment few can resist;
there was no fervour of religious feeling, no ardour of youthful
zeal; there was but that which goes straight and direct to the hearts
of all men, young and old, rich and poor--_Truth_,--the plain and
simple expression of natural feeling. He spoke of its being the first
time on which he was called to address them--quietly, with a kind
of restrained feeling, far more touching than its full expression;
he spoke of his former connection with them, and of the additional
interest which that connection must give to his duties amongst
them, and to his wishes for their welfare. He spoke of the awful
responsibility that was laid upon his shoulders, and touchingly, as
if he felt it in his heart, of his own weakness and unworthiness to
bear it; concluding with a short and earnest appeal to his flock,
imploring them to make that burden less by their own attention to
their duty, and by assisting him with their endeavours and their
prayers.

If to such words be added the influence of a voice low and melodious,
and of an appearance singularly prepossessing, few perhaps will
be disposed to wonder at the good resolutions made that day by
many a youthful heart,--resolutions frail and fleeting as youth
itself,--that neither look, nor word, nor deed of theirs should ever
grieve the heart of him who had looked down upon them “as tenderly,”
a young girl said, “as if he had been the father of them all.”

Reginald St. Maur sat during the sermon with his hand over his eyes.
Once Camilla looked at him, and smiled--smiled as the young, ashamed
of being touched are apt to do; but he did not heed her. The interest
with which he had early thought of Ernest De Grey had strengthened
with his advancing years; and that interest his present position
amongst them, and his appearance and language that day, were further
calculated to increase. There was that about him, in his manner and
in his words--speaking of feeling and the conquest of feeling--a kind
of “brave tenderness,” as it has been happily expressed, which went
to Reginald’s heart; and as he gazed on the youthful preacher, and
hung upon his words, he felt his spirit stirred with undefinable
emotion.

At the conclusion of the service, when he had assisted to place his
mother comfortably in the barouche, he drew back, saying he would
walk home.

“Now, Reginald,” exclaimed Camilla, leaning out, and looking at him
reproachfully, “what are you going to do? Why didn’t you tell me? I
would a thousand times rather walk.”

He smiled, but made no answer, and desired the coachman to drive on.
He stood in the churchyard, while the throng of villagers passed by,
raising his hat to every bow, even to the curtsey of every little
child, with the grave and distant courtesy which distinguished
him,--speaking to none, familiar with none, but courteous to all.
When all had departed, and he was left alone, he turned into the
path which led from the porch of the church, and there waited till
Ernest and Mr. Hervey appeared. He then went forward to meet them,
and begging Mr. Hervey to introduce him, he held out his hand to
Ernest. His manner was not _cordial_, for the word cordiality implies
a heartiness of welcome which was foreign to Reginald’s nature; but
there was in it a deep and respectful interest, far removed from the
condescension usually characterizing the unbending of stateliness.

“I did not know you last night, Mr. De Grey, or I should have done
more than thank you for your kindness to my sister.”

“Neither did I know you,” replied Ernest, smiling; “though, perhaps,
I guessed who you might be.”

They stood for a few moments in silence, a little awkwardness and
constraint on both sides; but Reginald seemed determined to overcome
it.

“If you are going home, Mr. De Grey,” he began again, “perhaps you
will let us go together as far as your house.”

And together they set off: but little advance was made in
acquaintance; for Mr. Hervey, feeling for once somewhat important,
could not refrain from making an exhibition to Ernest of his intimacy
with “the proud young Lord,” as Reginald was commonly called. It was
a momentary ebullition of vanity, for usually he was humble enough;
and, in fact, his pride in Reginald’s notice was prompted by a better
feeling than mere servile vanity: it was far rather the unconscious
homage paid to a character above the common level of humanity; and
Mr. Hervey was but one among many by whom this homage was paid.

“I hope Lady Vere and Miss St. Maur are quite well,” he began, as
they walked along.

“Quite well, thank you,” Reginald replied, with cold civility.

“I suppose they came to church in the barouche, as usual?”

“Yes. My mother is not a great walker.”

“What do you take to be the distance from here to Clare Abbey?”

“I don’t know,” Reginald said, coldly. He was annoyed at the mention
of the name. Those whose minds are fixed on one particular event in
the life of others, are apt to fancy a power to wound in allusions
which the most interested do not even remark.

“I suppose it is rather more than a mile by the road,” Ernest said,
indifferently.

“Mr. De Grey is better acquainted with the country than either you or
I,” was Mr. Hervey’s next opportune remark.

Reginald coloured, and they walked on in silence till they came in
sight of the parsonage.

He then stopped; and after shaking hands with distant civility
with Mr. Hervey, turned to Ernest, and, colouring again, said,
hesitatingly:

“I hope to see you again soon, Mr. De Grey, and my mother and sister
also wish to make your acquaintance. May we expect, if it is not
disagreeable to you, to see you at ... at home?”

“May I call at _Clare Abbey_ to-morrow?” Ernest said, with a slight
smile and a slight emphasis on the words.

Reginald smiled also, and held out his hand. Each understood
perfectly the feelings and the meaning of the other. All awkwardness
vanished between them; the awkwardness on Ernest’s side, of fearing
to remind of what he once had been; on Reginald’s side, of seeming
to patronize him who had once stood in his position. It was such an
understanding as could never have been given by the comparatively
shackled language of the tongue.

“I don’t know how it is, mother,” said Mr. Hervey, throwing himself
with some vexation, though without a spark of resentment, into a
chair, in the little drawing-room of their cottage; “I don’t know how
it is, but that young St. Maur seems to take more to Mr. De Grey in
this one day, than he has to me in the whole three years that we have
been acquainted with him?”

“It is but natural, Edward,” said Mrs. Hervey, consolingly;
continuing, with some observation, “you know, as one may say, there
is something between them that binds them together. One stands in
the other’s place; just so, I remember, when your sister, Mary, and
Anne Morrisson, poor girl, were both in love with Alfred, and didn’t
know for the life of them which he liked best. They were always
clinging together, as if, though they said nothing about it, there
was something that joined them; and so it is with these young men.
And what did you think of Mr. De Grey’s sermon, my dear?”

“It was very good, mother. What do you suppose the length of it to
have been?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It made me feel all up and down, and I didn’t
think of the length. I am sure, though, that it was not long, for I
could have listened for another hour with pleasure. And how sweetly
pretty Miss St. Maur looked to-day. I don’t know what young men are
made of now-a-days; they’re not a bit what I remember. In my young
days we should have had them falling down and worshipping such a
sweet, sprightly blossom as that; and now you are all taken up with
Mr. St. Maur, and not a word of that young flower. However, no doubt,
it’s as well as it is,” she added, with a nod of her head and a look
of recollection.




                              CHAPTER IX.

         Mad, natural graces, that extinguish art.
                                         KING HENRY THE SIXTH.

  Words uttered from the heart, find their way to the heart.
  Character is power.--CECIL’S REMAINS.


Ernest still felt as in a state of previous existence while passing
along the corridor, and entering the drawing-room at Clare Abbey,
in which so many happy hours had, in former days, been passed. All
was precisely as he had left it: the same pictures hung against the
walls; the same china ornamented the marble slabs; though it all
looked bright and fresh, it was the same patterned chintz, with
its well-remembered bunches, that covered the furniture; and the
furniture itself stood in precisely the same forms in which it had
been left by Mrs. De Grey. Most people have a fancy of their own
as to the arrangement of their rooms; and even if they come to the
perfection of comfort, make some little change to mark their own
individuality; but Lady Vere had no thoughts; and if she had found
her drawing-room arranged after the approved fashion of houses “to
let,” with a round table in the middle, and a sofa against the wall,
it is probable she would have been perfectly satisfied with it. To
complete the illusion, in the same place, on the same sofa to which
ill-health had for many years confined his mother, Lady Vere was
indolently reclining. One object only spoke not of the past; and
as his eyes, dreamily wandering around, rested on that one, it was
sufficient, as once before it had been, to drive him from dreams of
the past to still more dream-like thoughts of the future. That one
object was Camilla St. Maur, who was seated at the piano-forte, at
the farther end of the room.

Lady Vere half rose as Ernest approached her, bowed her beautiful
eyelids rather than her head, and, without speaking, occupied herself
for the next few moments in placing her feet on a footstool, and
arranging a cushion for her back. Camilla came hastily forward, and
with the unconscious grace and fearless self-possession which is
often the effect of a retired education, held out her hand to him,
saying, with a bright smile and a bright blush,

“_We_ are not strangers, Mr. De Grey.”

It has been said, that her beauty was very perfect and regular; but
the impression left by her beauty was not that of a perfect and
regular kind; it was rather that which is expressed by such words
as “interesting,” and “fascinating.” Its peculiar charm seemed to
consist in its rapid changes and strong contrasts; all blending
into one harmonious whole, but keeping the attention constantly
alive, forcing you to watch her countenance, that you might trace
what inward feeling it was which in one instant banished her colour
and banished her smiles; or, on the contrary, lit up its melancholy
beauty into the sparkling loveliness of a child. She was prettily
dressed this day in a light muslin gown, ornamented with sea-green
ribbons; her long curls loosely turned up, and falling from the back
of her head. Ernest, an admirer by instinct of all that was beautiful
in art or in nature, thought he never yet had seen in all the world
of beauty an object so exquisitely lovely as the young creature
before him.

She sat down, slightly moved a chair towards him, and went on.

“I told mamma of our meeting the other night, and how nearly you made
our acquaintance under very unpleasant circumstances.”

“Yes, Camilla told me she had almost had a fall,” said Lady Vere,
settling herself comfortably in a slanting posture; “it would have
been very disagreeable. I am glad you were there.”

“Not that you were of any use, Mr. De Grey,” Camilla said, shaking
her head. “I can’t allow you to think you were.”

“I assure you, I did not think so,” Ernest replied, smiling; and he
scarcely wondered at finding himself at once on a footing of perfect
intimacy with those who, as strangers, had occupied so much of his
thoughts, so careless and unconscious was the ease of the young girl.

“What a hot day it is,” remarked Lady Vere.

“The sun is hot, but there is a cold wind.”

“Did you walk all the way from Cranleigh? You must be very tired.”

Ernest smiled.

Camilla said, “You are a great walker, I am sure, Mr. De Grey.”

“Why do you think so?” he asked, smiling; “not because I have walked
from Cranleigh?”

“O no! I think nothing of that myself; but I am sure you are given to
long solitary rambles. You could not stay quietly at home on Saturday
to arrange your things, as you ought to have done, but you must set
off and walk for I don’t know how many hours on your first evening.”

“It was _my things_ which drove me out,” he said, laughing. “I could
hardly find a place even to put my hat upon. If you know the wretched
desolate look of a new, disarranged house, you will not wonder at my
escaping from it as fast as I could.”

“I don’t know anything about it; and I am sure I should like it if
I did. I am sure I should like a change, even to be uncomfortable.
We never once have moved since first we came to this _dull, stupid,
tedious_ place; and I don’t care how soon a change comes.” She spoke
the words with emphasis.

Ernest involuntarily coloured, and looked annoyed. Was it really
thus: the home over which his own heart was yearning--was it but dull
and stupid to those who were the envied possessors of it?

Camilla saw his look, reproached herself for her thoughtlessness;
and, moving her chair nearer to him, said, blushing deeply, and
bending forward, “Now, I should not have said that to _you_. I am
very sorry.”

“Pray, don’t be sorry! there is no need. Pray, don’t think that you
have annoyed me,” Ernest said, angry with himself, and feeling--but
it would be difficult to describe exactly what he did feel towards
her at that moment.

“What did you say, Camilla?” asked Lady Vere.

“Something, as usual, that I ought not to have said,” she replied.
Then jumping up, she rang the bell, saying, “I quite forgot to send
for Reginald. He told me to let him know if Mr. De Grey called.”

“Where is Reginald?”

“Reading in his room, mamma. I went and rattled at the door a little
while ago, but he would not notice me. He fastens his door to keep me
out,” she went on, turning to Ernest, “for five or six hours a day;
he says he can’t read if I am there. Isn’t it very hard?”

The thought that passed through Ernest’s mind would, if expressed,
have taken the form of a vapid compliment,--and he was no
complimenter; so he only laughed, and said nothing.

“You have no sister to worry you at your studies, have you, Mr. De
Grey?”

“No. If my studies don’t get on as well as they should, I have
nobody to blame but myself.”

“But they do get on very well, I suppose? Reginald says,--but here is
Reginald.”

“Mr. De Grey is here, my dear Reginald,” remarked Lady Vere. “Camilla
sent to tell you.”

Camilla got up, and drew a chair for her brother between herself
and Ernest. He thanked her with a smile, and sat down; but the ease
of the visit was gone. Camilla left her brother to speak; and he,
anxious as he was to make Ernest feel at home, and unrestrained, had
not the gift of easy conversation, which his sister possessed. Long
pauses ensued, and the intervals were filled up by wise observations
from Lady Vere, which seemed, in her son’s presence, to be more
utterly without point or meaning than before.

Ernest soon got up and took leave, and Reginald followed him. He took
down his hat in the corridor, and, opening a side glass-door, led him
into the garden. He then said--

“Another day, Mr. De Grey, I shall ask you to pay _me_ a visit, and
a longer one. But I know that your first visit to us must have been
painful, and if my presence annoys you, and you would rather go
through these well-known ways alone, only say so, and I shall not
misunderstand you.”

Ernest’s heart _was_ full of many thoughts and many sensations,
but they were not now thoughts of himself, or regretful mournings
over the past; they were rather strange sweet feelings of gratitude
and love for those who had shown such unbidden thoughtfulness and
consideration for him. It took a moment to overcome a perhaps
somewhat unmanly softness, which the combination of these new
feelings, with the feelings natural to the spot where he stood, was
tending to produce; and Reginald, fancying he was answered, turned
away.

“Pray, don’t think I wish to be alone!” Ernest said, recovering his
bewildered senses; “I was silent only because I could not thank
you for your kindness as I should wish to do. I will not deny,” he
continued, after a moment’s thought, “that it was painful to me to
come here to-day; I was very fond of this place, and I had not quite
made up my mind to see it in other hands; but if I say this honestly,
will you equally believe me when I say that it is painful no more.”

They walked on together. Reginald suddenly said,

“I have thought so much of you, Mr. De Grey, all my life long.”

“Have you?” Ernest said, with some surprise. “I have thought of
you,--but then that was but natural.”

“Have you thought of me as I have thought of you, _with envy_?”
Reginald asked with a slight smile.

“With envy!--of me!” Poor Ernest had never been in the habit of
contemplating his own destiny as one to be envied.

“You wonder that I should envy you,” said his companion; “but it has
always seemed to me that you were born to be great. Beginning life
with such a sacrifice, thrown entirely upon yourself, yours was a
destiny to create ambition, and to fulfil it.” The eyes of the young
man sparkled, and his colour rose as he spoke.

“And how do you think of me now?” asked Ernest, with some sadness in
his tone.

Reginald was silent.

“Not with envy now?”

“I confess,” Reginald said, after a short silence, “that when I first
heard, three years ago, of the life you had chosen, I heard it with
such wonder and regret, that I ceased to ask about you from old Mr.
Temple, ceased to think of you as I had done. I was disappointed in
you. I thought you had thrown your destiny away. But latterly, since
I heard of your returning here, although I have ceased to envy, I
have thought of you again.”

“You despise the life I have....” Ernest hesitated before he said the
word, but he did at last say it--“chosen.”

“No, not despise,” replied Reginald, gravely. “I respect, even
admire, those who devote themselves to it. But then, it is a life
open to all; it needs no peculiar talents, it leads to no greatness;
it is a good path, a holy life, but it is not a life for the ambition
of those who would rise high and do great and lofty deeds. I do not
think it was the life which _you_ should have chosen, Mr. De Grey.”

Ernest had said the same to himself a hundred times; his constant
feeling was (though prompted by motives less high than those which
animated his youthful companion), that he was “cabin’d, cribb’d,
confined;” but answers which we seek for in vain, to the questionings
of our own discontented spirits, come at our call when those
questionings fall from the lips of others. Arguments unthought of
before now rose in Ernest’s mind.

“I have often felt as you do,” he said, thoughtfully, “but I suppose
we are wrong in thinking so much of the greatness which is in
the sight of men. Your ambition would be to influence on a large
scale, to influence or lead your countrymen, to guide the destinies
of nations. But if we consider the point seriously, and remember
how nations are made up of separate individuals, the life of a
country clergyman, whose office is to lead to the highest virtue,
say but five or six hundred ignorant human beings, is, in fact, as
important,--as important in the fate even of nations,--as the more
enlarged but less certain influence of a statesman. Should not we who
are Christians think the greatest of all deeds, the highest as well
as the holiest, to preach the faith which we profess?”

“If you were speaking of the life of a missionary, I could understand
and agree with you,” Reginald replied. “To convert the multitudes
of the heathen, to be the first to plant the Cross on an idolatrous
shore--I have dreamed of such a life myself,” he added, with a smile
and a sparkling eye, “but it is, not too high, but too holy for me.”

Ernest looked up at his companion, and while he gazed with strange
feelings of admiration on his pure and lofty beauty, his heart was
stirred and saddened,--stirred with vague, aspiring, ambitious
dreams, and saddened as he thought of the vows and chains of filial
duty, which bound him to a life from which for the moment he recoiled
with something of contempt. But he never yet had expressed to a human
being, not even to his mother, the reluctance with which he had
entered upon that life, and the struggles through which its duties
were performed; and they were not expressed now. With a violent
effort, quelling the rising discontent, he said, with a grave smile:

“You must not make me discontented with my life; at any rate, for the
present, my duties lie in England, and _here_; and lowly as those
duties may be, even already I feel that they are higher than I can
perform.”

Reginald made no answer, but walked thoughtfully on. Stopping
at last, and turning suddenly round, he waved his hand over the
landscape which lay stretched, and smiling, in the luxuriance of
early autumn, before them, and said, musingly:

“How strange the destinies of this world are, Mr. De Grey! I remember
hearing, when first we came here, that it had broken your heart to
leave your home; and still I see that, however well and nobly you
have borne the loss of your inheritance, and the change of life to
which that loss has condemned you, your mind, and thoughts, and love
are centred upon it still; and yet it is taken from you, and given to
me--to whom it is _nothing_.”

“Is it really so?--Is it nothing to you?” Ernest said, sadly and
wonderingly. Reginald was right; every flower of the field, every
blade of grass that was trampled under his feet was dear to him. In
some minds, the sense of local attachment is a passion strong as the
attachments of human love; and his was one of these.

“I see and own its beauty,” Reginald replied; “I like it as my home;
and if I were allowed to choose my home from all the world, I might
probably choose this one; but still, it is nothing to me. My hopes
are not here. The duties which may one day be mine,--important ones,
I own, and which you, I feel, would so well have performed,--are
trifling and irksome to me. I long to be free and unshackled, to
follow where my destiny would lead me,--free as you were, Mr. De
Grey.”

“It _is_ strange,” said Ernest, thoughtfully. After a moment,
however, he continued, “But as we are bound to believe that the
circumstances in which we are placed are, if we use them rightly,
the best discipline for our minds, I think I can see, without much
thought, the use which we should make of ours. You must learn to
stoop, and I must learn to rise. Yours is the easiest task. A very
short experience will teach you, that events and duties are not great
and small in themselves, but in the motives that prompt, and the
consequences that follow them. My task is harder--” he paused, and
sighed; then added with a smile, though rather a melancholy one, “I
believe I have been using my office and preaching to you; but I feel
much more the need of your preaching to me.”

They parted shortly after, and each went thoughtfully on his way.

A character like Reginald’s had never crossed Ernest’s path before.
Had he met with such an one in earlier days, it is probable that
he would have been less tied and bound with the chains of human
feelings, and human infirmities than he now was; for his nature was
impressible, needing but a spark to kindle its fire and animate it
into exertion; but such characters as Reginald’s are rare,--and more
rare, I think, in men, at least at the present day, than in women.
The cold outside,--the ambition burning and consuming within,--the
indifference to all which the world calls good, and the eyes set
on dreams in which the world perceives no beauty!--such are not,
I think, met with more than once or twice in life; or if they
are, it is under circumstances which, from position, command less
attention; or from want of outward attractions, have less power to
win admiration and love. If there were many like Reginald, with pure
hearts and lofty dreams, with the prominence of position to win all
eyes, and the seraphic beauty to fix them, I do not know what this
world might not be.

There is no subject of meditation so strange or, it might be
said, so awful, as the consideration how one human being seems
to be given into the power of another to be moulded at his will.
Words at random spoken--good words and evil words--serious yet
unintentional expressions of good feeling, and light sportive words
of unintentional carelessness or irreverence--have had power to form
a character, to direct a destiny for ever. We cannot open our mouths
and be absolutely certain that our words will not sink deep into
the heart of some man, woman, or child, who may be an unobserved or
neglected bystander;--a single sentence has before now haunted a mind
for ever. Such considerations give an awful responsibility to the
power of speech; and yet how few think of this! even of the best, how
few sufficiently consider it! Happy those who use their tongues as
responsible instruments; and happy, too, those who from the truth and
purity of the inward fountain do a good work, and know it not. There
are many, I hope and believe, of the latter sort. Neither Ernest nor
Reginald were in the habit of considering their words in so solemn
a light. In their conversation this day, each had but expressed his
feelings as they rose in his mind, and yet the words which each had
said, were carried away as new principles by the hearts of each.
Ernest was animated, strengthened, and filled full of thoughts of a
higher zeal; for a few hours the hopes of earth, earthly passions,
earthly ties, seemed “like dust and dross to his eye,” and he turned
to his lowly duties with an ardent spirit, with fresh and vigorous
resolution, and with glowing pictures of successful labour in his
high calling. If this strength, and these higher hopes quickly faded,
it was not the influence that faded,--_that_ remained on his mind;
it was the stronger influence of human feeling and human weakness
which superseded without effacing them. On Reginald the effect of his
companion’s words was less felt, and less immediate; but an effect
they had.




                              CHAPTER X.

        In joyous youth, what soul has never known
        Thought, feeling, taste, harmonious to its own?
        Who hath not paused while beauty’s pensive eye
        Ask’d from his heart the homage of a sigh?
        Who hath not own’d with rapture-smitten frame,
        The power of grace, the magic of a name?
                                           THE PLEASURES OF HOPE.


“My love,” said Lady Vere, addressing her husband, who came one
afternoon into the drawing-room, to look for a book, “Reginald wishes
his new friend, Mr. De Grey, to dine here.”

“As Reginald pleases,” replied Lord Vere, coldly.

“Very well, then, my love, shall he come to-morrow?”

“As you please,” he replied again, and taking up his book, was
leaving the room. At the door, however, he turned round, and after
a moment’s thought, observed; “As you have the rector, you may as
well have the curate and his mother too; they have been due these six
months.”

“Very true, my love. Reginald shall write a note for me;” and she
sank back on the sofa, and reposed till her son appeared.

“Reginald,” she then said, “I want you to write a note for me; you
must begin, ‘Dear Mrs. Hervey,’ and end--I forget how I end--Camilla
will know. Ring the bell, if you please.”

“What am I to say, mother?” Reginald asked, sitting down at the
writing-table.

“I thought I told you; your father says they are to dine here as well
as Mr. De Grey,--‘Dear Mrs. Hervey, will you dine with us to-morrow,
and your son?’--you know about the hour;” and she closed her eyes, as
if after the exertion of explanation.

Reginald looked excessively annoyed at his mother’s communication;
but he made no remark upon it.

“Camilla,” Lady Vere began again, opening her eyes as her daughter
entered, “how do I end to Mrs. Hervey?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, mamma,” Camilla said carelessly. Meeting her
brother’s eye, she added, laughing, “I should think, ‘yours truly’
would do.”

“Yes, that was it, Reginald,” remarked Lady Vere in a satisfied tone;
‘yours truly, Florinda Vere.’”

“It would be a good deal too much for me,” Camilla observed, seating
herself by her brother; “not that I dislike that poor old woman,
either. Dining here! my dear, Reginald, are they going to dine here?
that Mr. Hervey; _you_ must talk to him--I can’t; he is quite beyond
my patience.”

“I will talk, Camilla, since he must come.”

“I really do pity the poor man,” she continued; “it must be
unpleasant to be such a bore. It is quite impossible that anybody
ever did, or ever could, like him; and that seems a hard fate.”

“His poor mother seems to like him,” observed Lady Vere.

“His mother? yes, it would be hard indeed if she didn’t like him; but
that must be all. His sisters can’t--I shouldn’t like you the least,
Reginald, if you were like Mr. Hervey. It is a thing that often
puzzles me; you now, my dear Reginald, who know everything, will
you tell me what Mr. Hervey was made for? I am sure the world could
manage to get on without him.”

“Everybody has their place,” said Reginald smiling; “and dull as you
think Mr. Hervey, I dare say there are some things which he can do
better than you.”

“Dull as _I_ think him? now, my dear Reginald, I will not have all
the blame put upon my shoulders. I am sure I say many more words to
Mr. Hervey than you do; _I_ am very civil and say a great many pretty
things about the weather when we meet him--you, just say, ‘Good
morning, Mr. Hervey,’ and bow as stately as a king.”

“I don’t want to have Mr. Hervey for a friend or companion--he does
not suit me; but I rather respect him, Camilla, than otherwise. He
does well what he has to do, and seems contented and satisfied in
what I should think a dull and tedious life.”

“I am not sure that I particularly admire contentment,” Camilla said,
laughing, “but what are you writing now, Reginald? Mr. De Grey--is he
to dine here too? oh! well, that is something better; mamma will talk
to Mrs., you to Mr. Hervey, and I will have Mr. De Grey.”

“What will you wear, Camilla?” asked her mother.

“Really, mamma, I have not thought.”

“I think I shall wear my primrose silk, with pinked flounces.”

“With _pink_ flounces!” exclaimed Reginald, with an expression of
astonishment and disgust.

“Yes,” said his mother, raising herself on the sofa, pleased at his
appearance of interest; “six pinked flounces; it came from Madame
Elise.”

Camilla, laughing, would not explain; and Reginald, after a look of
wonder, but unwilling to offend his mother by a further expression
of dissatisfaction at a dress with which she was evidently so well
pleased, sealed his letters and left the room.

The presence of Mr. Hervey, at the dinner-party at Clare Abbey, was
rather an assistance than otherwise, especially after the ladies had
left the dining-room; indeed if he had not been there, it seemed
probable that total silence would have ensued. Reginald had little
of what is called “small talk”--as minds absorbed in subjects of
little interest to those about them rarely have; Ernest, though
more conversable and with many more feelings of general sympathy,
was naturally unpresuming, required to be drawn out; and was, above
all, extremely averse (no uncommon aversion) to being snubbed.
Having therefore been three times snubbed by Lord Vere, he felt
little inclined to make a further trial of his or of Lord Vere’s
forbearance. But Mr. Hervey, either more used to Lord Vere’s manner,
or less conscious of that which he had long been in the habit of
receiving from the world in general--or all such lower feelings
being overcome by his desire for information on several points
connected with the dining-room, talked placidly on, well satisfied if
the desired information was gained. He wished to know the date of the
building of the dining-room, which was evidently a modern addition to
the house; the relative sizes of the drawing-room and dining-room,
and the names of the grim-looking De Greys, who still hung in large
oak frames against the walls of the apartment. As these subjects may
not be of universal interest, we will pass them by, and follow the
party into the drawing-room.

Lady Vere was, as usual, half-reclining, supported by cushions on the
sofa; her primrose silk with pinked flounces, was extremely becoming
to her fair fresh complexion and beautiful dark hair; and a stranger
would have gazed at the young mother of her tall handsome son, with
surprise and admiration. She was covered with lace, and her arms
and fingers were bright with jewels--altogether forming a strange
contrast to the homely Mrs. Hervey, who, in a black gown and close
white cap, sat by her side on the sofa. Lady Vere was perfectly
happy; she never wanted conversation or amusement--but when it came
to her, particularly in the form of narrative, which saved her the
trouble of answers or comments, it was agreeable to her, and she sat
listening to Mrs. Hervey’s anecdotes of persons whose very existence
was unknown to her, with a complacent smile.

At a little distance, Camilla was engaged in copying music. She
was fond of dress in her way, but her mother had never succeeded
in inspiring her with a love of finery. Nothing could be prettier
or simpler than her toilette this evening,--nothing more graceful
and interesting than her appearance, as she sat stooping over her
music-book, her long bright curls carelessly streaming over her white
shoulders, or resting on her beautifully-formed hand and arm.

She raised her head, and watched with a mingled expression of
amusement and interest the arrangement of the party. Mr. Hervey drew
near--down went her head, and with singular care and attention she
copied a few bars of her song. She had had him at dinner,--and endure
him longer, she could not, and would not; besides, she had arranged
it otherwise,--she wished to make more acquaintance with Mr. De Grey.
He passed her by, and went to Lady Vere; whose complacent smile was
more inviting. Camilla’s attention to her music then slackened; and
looking up, she observed her father take up a newspaper and seat
himself for the evening, and Reginald and Ernest place themselves
by the fire and enter into conversation. The conversation continued
for some little time--no apparent recollection of her presence; she
watched them for a few minutes, then shaking back her curls with a
slight impatient petulant movement, she devoted herself again to
her song. Though not by nature a student of the thoughts of others,
Reginald always saw, and was indulgent to the feelings of his
sister--and she had only written one or two bars before he and Ernest
stood beside her.

“Mr. De Grey is fond of music, Camilla,” he said, laying his hand
upon her shoulder; “will you play?”

She looked up with a start. “Are you in a hurry, Reginald? If not, I
would rather finish this song, which I have been trying to finish for
three days.”

“Not at all,” he said, with a smile. Then turning away, went to
relieve his mother, who was yawning under the exertion of answering
Mr. Hervey’s questions. After a moment’s consideration, Ernest sat
down on a chair which stood near them.

Camilla wrote a few words; then rested. “Are you really fond of
music, Mr. De Grey, or do you only say so?”

“I _really_ am,” he replied, laughing; “I always say what I think.
But then I only am fond of it. I don’t understand it at all, and I
very, very seldom hear it.”

“Why don’t you hear it, if you are fond of it?--that must be your
fault.”

“Perhaps it is; but it does not seem to come in my way; especially of
late years.”

“But everybody plays and sings--all _young ladies_--as I suppose you
call them, at least.”

“Do they?--I dare say they do; but my acquaintance with young ladies
is very small. I know very few people of any kind,--and among these
few, only three or four young ladies. Some of them sing and play as
you say; and perhaps they all do, but I really don’t remember.”

“Why, Mr. De Grey,” and she put down her pen and looked at him, “I
begin to think that you must be almost as stupid as myself.”

He laughed.

“I don’t know why you laugh,” she continued with a kind of sigh,
“it does not seem to me a laughing matter. It is a great evil to be
stupid; nobody should be so if they can help it; and a man _can_ help
it.”

“Do you think a man can do everything, he pleases?” Ernest inquired,
smiling.

“If not absolutely everything, _almost_ everything. He must be, at
any rate, perfectly independent, and able to go where he pleases, at
any moment he pleases. See how different to my case. If you were to
wish as I do, to go to London, or to the sea-side, or to see some
of the beautiful Scotch lakes and mountains Walter Scott describes,
you could set off to-morrow morning without any fuss, quite by
yourself,--whereas I can only wish and wish and wish, as I have done
all my life, and I dare say always shall. Oh! no, a man is a very
enviable being, and I never pity a man for anything.”

“But a man must submit to circumstances, in the same way that you are
forced to submit. Ever since I was ordained, and that is nearly three
years ago, I have been a country clergyman in a very quiet village.
If I had wished to move, I could not have moved, and if I had wished
for society, I could have had very little except the society of the
poor.”

Again she put down her pen and looked at him--this time with a look
of profound pity. “Is this really true? Well then, I am sorry for
you, though you are a man.”

“Don’t suppose that I am complaining of my life,” Ernest said with
some anxiety; “I was very far from meaning to do that--I only wished
to apologize for my stupidity.”

“But do you like your life?--do you never wish for anything else?”
She waited, determined to have an answer.

“If I wish for anything,” he replied after a moment’s thought, “it
is not for what is generally called society; I don’t much care about
that. In former days, I wished for adventures, and excitements,
battles, and shipwrecks, and desert islands; and though I hope some
of my wishes are a little wiser now, still I think something of those
old tastes remain.” She looked at him so eagerly and approvingly,
that almost involuntarily he continued--“My first wish was to be
a great general, a great conqueror, and I used to dream about it
so much, that when I was told it could not be, I made myself very
miserable. Then I used to think, that if I was not allowed to be
great in a regular way, I should be satisfied to be a pirate, or a
highwayman; and yet,” he added with a smile, “after all my dreams, I
find myself a quiet country clergyman.”

“Oh! how exactly like me,” Camilla exclaimed, laughing; “I never
expected to hear anybody express just what I feel.”

“Have you a great ambition to be a highwayman?” Ernest inquired
playfully.

“You are laughing at me, which is very unfair when you are as bad
yourself. But really I often have thought, that if I could be nothing
else great or exciting, I should be a pirate. You don’t know how dull
it is here when Reginald is away--nobody can have any idea of it;
so when I walk by myself, I amuse myself with wishing and fancying.
First, I wish to be Henry the Fifth, or Montrose, or Bonaparte,--but
that is quite useless! so then sometimes I wish to be Joan of Arc, or
Queen Elizabeth, or even our own quiet Queen! And that is almost as
useless, isn’t it?” she added, laughing.

“Camilla! Mrs. Hervey, says she would like to hear you play,” broke
in her mother’s drawling voice.

“Directly, mamma, only one or two bars more. Now, Mr. De Grey, it
is your fault that I have been so long--why did you talk of such
exciting things?”

When the song was finished, she went to the pianoforte and began to
play. She played well, with both taste and execution; but Ernest, in
common with a large part of the world, preferred singing to playing,
and was disappointed. As she finished one piece of music, and was
looking for another, he asked her if she ever sang.

“Do you like singing better than playing?” she looked up and
inquired. Seeing he hesitated. “You need not mind saying so, for I do
sing as well as play in a sort of way.”

“Well then, I do like it best.”

“I am glad, for I like it best myself, and I sing a good deal when I
am alone; but I never thought you would like singing best.”

“Why?” Ernest inquired with surprise.

“Because Reginald does not. He is really fond of music, and
understands it; and sometimes he makes me play to him for hours
together, while he sits there in the window thinking; but he never
likes me to sing to him. He says my songs disturb him--and you are
rather like Reginald, I think.”

Ernest shook his head with a faint blush of humiliation at the bare
idea. “I am afraid that is not true. I wish it was; except,” he
added more lightly, “on this one point; I am sure I should like your
singing.”

“I only sing common English things,” Camilla said; “I can’t manage
fine music at all.” She took down a few songs from a music-stand, and
as she looked them over continued, blushing slightly as she spoke, “I
must tell you the reason why, Reginald does not like my songs. If I
could find Odes to Mr. Pitt or Mr. Canning, or if I could sing fine
sacred music, I dare say he would like it very well; but my songs
are chiefly what are called love-songs, and he says they are nothing
but trash. Now perhaps you will change your mind, and object to my
singing as he does?”

“I don’t see why love-songs should necessarily be trash,” Ernest
said, glancing at one or two that lay before him. “Some are so,
certainly; but I have sometimes heard such pretty ones, that I
should very much like to hear them again.”

“Well, then, I will sing you one. I like them myself. You know it
depends a good deal on people’s feelings. Reginald thinks them
trash, in the same way as he thinks most novels are trash, because
his mind does not turn on such follies as love at all. Not that _I_
am sentimental either,” she continued, looking up with a fearless
smile, “quite the contrary; and I often wonder why it is I like them.
I don’t the least care about such things in general; but people
are inconsistent. I don’t know the reason why, but I do like these
songs; and the more melancholy they are, the better I like them. Here
is one, however, that is not melancholy: I must not begin with a
melancholy one. This is from a gentleman to a lady; and afterwards,”
she added, laughingly, “I will sing you a very melancholy one from a
poor forsaken lady to a gentleman.”

She sang a verse or two from one of the simplest and prettiest of
love-songs:

   “Oh! if thou wert my own love,
      How I would cherish thee;
    Thine image, in my heart of hearts,
      Its talisman should be.
    And joys that now ideal seem
    Should make my life one sunny dream.

   “Oh! if thou wert my own love,
      I could not fail to prove,
    From thy sweet converse day by day,
      More worthy of thy love.
    And I would live for thee alone,
    Beloved, if thou wert mine own.”

Her voice was not a powerful one; but it was sweet and bird-like,
with some pretty low tones, and her heart was in her voice.
Better--that is, more critical--judges than Ernest would have been
pleased with her singing. That he _was_ pleased might be gathered
from the kind of musing attention with which he listened; but when
she ceased he said nothing.

She waited for a few moments, playing the last bars carelessly over.
As he did not speak even then, she said, a little impatiently,

“Do you dislike the song, Mr. De Grey?”

He started from his reverie. “Dislike! I am only sorry that it is so
soon over.”

“I am glad you like it. But, now, you must like this one still
better,--at least, I like it better myself. It is one of Mrs.
Arkwright’s, and I fancy such a melancholy story in it.”

   “And will she love thee as well as I?
      Will she do for thee what I have done?
    See all the pomps of the world pass by,
      And look only to thee, beloved one.”

Her changeful countenance became sad and subdued as she sang, but not
less lovely; and when this was done, Ernest asked for another, and
still another; and, seating himself at a little distance, he seemed
to abandon himself to such thoughts and feelings as the music excited.

His enjoyment (for though he felt rather sad than otherwise,
enjoyment it was) was interrupted by Reginald.

“My dear Camilla,” he said, as he approached her, in a slight tone of
remonstrance, “what are you singing?”

“Mr. De Grey likes these songs,” she said, in explanation. Turning
to him with an appealing, animated countenance. “I did not force my
trash upon you, did I?”

He smiled his answer as he stood by the pianoforte.

“I will have you speak,” she exclaimed, “or Reginald will hardly
believe me. You _must_ tell him you like the songs.”

“I really do, very much,” he said, emphatically.

“Then, I suppose, I must not call them trash any more,” Reginald
remarked, with a glance at Ernest; “but I confess, if I do not call
them so, it will be difficult to me not to think them so.”

Mr. Hervey at this moment approached, and seized on Camilla to make
a few inquiries concerning her songs, and music in general; and,
although he was perfectly aware that she could not have done so, to
ascertain whether or not she had been fortunate enough to hear Jenny
Lind.

Ernest turned to Reginald, and said,--“These songs are the expression
of very common feelings, and very common events in life; and the
expression appears to me to be, for the most part, very simple and
very natural. Why, then, should they be called trash? Have you no
sympathy with such feelings as these?”

“I hardly know,” he said. “I have not thought much upon the subject.
But are you quite right in saying that these songs express _natural_
feeling? It appears otherwise to me. Take this one, for instance and,
turning over a song, he read the following lines:

   ‘Hopes that now beguiling leave me,
      Joys that lie in slumber cold;
    All would wake, if thou couldst give me
      One dear smile like those of old.’

“Is this natural?--Is it not forced and exaggerated?”

Ernest shook his head with a slight, thoughtful smile.

“I don’t know what you will think of me, if I say so; but I must
confess I _can_ quite conceive the state of mind under which such
words and feelings would be perfectly natural.”

“I see we are very different, Mr. De Grey,” Reginald said,
contemplating his companion with a look of some curiosity.

“Have you among your songs, Miss St. Maur, an extremely pretty song,
called ‘We may be happy yet?’ inquired Mr. Hervey; but before he
could be satisfied on the point, Lady Vere called her daughter.

“Camilla, Mrs. Hervey wants to go,” she said, making her
communication as concisely as possible.

“Pray, don’t let me disturb you, Miss St. Maur,” said Mrs. Hervey;
“but it’s past half-past ten o’clock, and our Jane will hardly be
able to keep her eyes open.”

Lord Vere had lent his coach for the accommodation of Mrs. Hervey,
and a few minutes afterwards Ernest found himself seated by her side,
and hearing, though he scarcely listened to, the remarks of his
uncongenial companions on the party they had left.

“How wonderfully well Lady Vere has worn,” said Mr. Hervey. “I should
hardly suppose her to be above six-and-twenty.”

“And she must be as near to forty as I am to seventy, Edward, and
that is but a few months. How the time runs away! It seems but a day
since I was down at Mr. Hargrave’s at the Woods.”

“Nothing can be more pleasing than Lady Vere’s manners when she
exerts herself. I am sorry, mother, that you don’t see more of her.”

“It’s as well as it is, Edward. Lady Vere is too fine for me, and I
am too homely for her. She smiles very sweetly when I speak; but,
somehow, I don’t fancy that she understands or cares for what I say.
It’s very well for once and away, and I’m sure I feel obliged to Lord
and Lady Vere for asking us; but, as to conversation, I would as soon
talk to our Jane;” and she slightly yawned as she spoke.

“I think young St. Maur improves,” continued her son. “He was
exceedingly civil to-night, and I begin to think we shall get on
better. Mr. St. Maur has many good points; don’t you think so, Mr. De
Grey?”

“He has indeed many,” Ernest said, as quietly as he could.

“There is more in him than in his sister; though, perhaps, her
manners are the most generally pleasing of the two. Young St. Maur
will, I have no doubt, make a figure in the world. What his sister
will be, I am afraid, is doubtful. We had more conversation to-day
at dinner than I ever remember to have had before, and I confess I
was a little startled at her sentiments. She appears to be rather
thoughtless on some important points. Did you find her agreeable, Mr.
De Grey?”

“Very,” he said calmly, though he felt much inclined to toss his
curate out of the carriage window.

“I inquired what she thought of your sermon on Sunday morning, and
she made me rather a singular answer. She said that she had liked
it, and had listened to it for once and away; but that she could not
say she liked sermons in general. And I am much afraid she spoke the
truth; for I have often observed her careless way at church.”

“Oh! Edward, don’t be severe,” said his mother. “To my mind, she is
as sweet a young lady as ever I saw. And how like a young bird’s
her voice is! I only know it’s well I’m not a young man like you and
Mr. De Grey; for I should be half beside myself if she smiled upon
me.” She paused, then added, with a sigh, “I don’t know how it is,
but that likeness runs strangely in my head. While she was singing
to-night, she looked the very picture of sweet Amy Mills. I mentioned
Amy Mills to you, didn’t I, Mr. De Grey? It’s a sad thing to think
that death or sorrow must blight those bright young creatures, but
so it is; and yet, perhaps, we should not grieve. Sorrow has brought
many a wandering sheep back to the fold. Well, Mr. De Grey, your
house stands first--here we are. Good night.”




                              CHAPTER XI.

        It pleases me to bear what you call pain,
        Therefore to me ’tis pleasure. Joy and grief
        Are the will’s creatures.
                                             THE SAINT’S TRAGEDY.

  Bien que le caractère de son ésprit fût l’enthousiasme, il
  ne savait se passioner que pour ce qui n’était plus; ses
  espérances mêmes n’était que des souvenirs.--LASCARIS.


Uneventful and apparently unexciting times are not always
uninteresting. It is hoped,--but it is a hope much mixed with
fear,--that they will not be so in this case; for it is necessary
to pass through many months after Ernest’s re-establishment at
Cranleigh, and yet in those months no event took place.

It was a month after the dinner at Clare Abbey, and the day before
Reginald St. Maur’s return to Oxford. Camilla stood at her brother’s
door, fastened, as usual, to prevent intrusion, and petitioned for
admittance. Her voice was a shade less gay than was common; there
was even a touch of sadness in it, and Reginald could not resist her.

He unfastened the door with a smile, but when he had closed it again,
he returned to his seat, and sat down before a large book open on his
writing-table, with an air of pre-occupation and abstraction.

There was character in Reginald’s room; all who had studied his
disposition, saw Reginald in its arrangements. It looked comfortable,
for it looked inhabited, and the windows were all open, and the
air flew in freshly and sunnily; but there was nothing of ease or
luxury,--not so much as a couch or an arm-chair to be seen. The
tables were covered with books,--not light, comfortable-looking
books, but volumes, whose grave and severe exteriors proclaimed
that as little ease was allowed to the mind as to the body. Over
the fireplace hung a long print of Mr. Pitt; and on the marble
slab beneath it stood four small busts,--Frederick, of Prussia;
William the Third, of England; Lord Strafford; and the present
Emperor of Russia. Other prints and busts ornamented different
parts of the room; characters of celebrated men of various ages,
various destinies, various dispositions. But the whole selection,
whatever their variety, were classed together by one unfailing
characteristic--_indomitable will._

Camilla approached her brother, and stood beside him.

“Are you reading Greek, my dear Reginald, all by yourself? How I pity
you! What is the book?”

“Aristotle’s ‘Ethics.’”

“Aristotle must have been a great man to have such a great pupil
as Alexander the Great; but I can’t say these ‘Ethics’ look very
attractive. What dirty pages, and what close bewildering lines! And
have you been sitting here poring over this, instead of going out
this lovely morning? My dear Reginald, I do pity you!”

“Not poring over it much, I am afraid,” he said, with a sigh; “I
should have been, but I have been thinking instead.”

“I am glad of that; for then I don’t mind interrupting you. You know,
Reginald, I wish you to be great, and so when I disturb your reading,
my conscience often troubles me; but thinking never made anybody
great, did it?”

“Not my kind of thinking, at any rate,” Reginald said, and he smiled.
“But is anything the matter, Camilla?--do you want me?”

“I only want to tell you how miserable I am,” she said, sadly, “or
rather, how miserable I shall be to-morrow when you are gone. I have
been so happy, so very happy. My dear Reginald, what _is_ to become
of me now?”

“It will only be for two months, Camilla. Two months are soon over.”

“Soon over when you are at home, I know,--too soon; but when you
are away, the months are years. No, not years, that is not half
enough,--they are centuries. I only wish I once could make you feel
what this place is when you are away! Nobody speaks to me from
morning till night; and the only change is a walk in the tedious
garden, or a drive in the more tedious barouche. I often wish I was a
child again, and had a governess and lessons.”

“It must be dull, I know,” Reginald said, kindly; “but I hope it will
not always be so. And, Camilla, why not be so much of a child again
as to try to learn? You are not so wise but that you might learn
something.”

“I would, if it was of any use; but I cannot see that a woman does
any good by making herself clever. Poor, wretched women! try as they
may, they can do nothing unless they happen to be born queens. I wish
I were a queen.”

Reginald smiled. Arguing with his sister he knew was in vain; and, to
say the truth, her opinion was in a great degree his own also.

“But to return to what I was saying,” she continued; “I am so sorry,
so very sorry, that you are going, and what makes it worse is, that
you are glad to go. Now tell me truly, Reginald; you are not sorry,
are you?”

“I am sorry to leave you, Camilla,” and he put his arm affectionately
round her waist; “you know I am. But in other ways you are right. I
am glad to move; I am glad to think that time is passing, and the
future approaching. Only one more term at Oxford ... and then....”
And a look of intense thought passed over his brow.

“And then ... what?”

“And then ...” and his colour rose, and the shadow of thought
deepened, “the time comes when I must learn whether the dreams I have
dreamed are to be dreams only.”

Camilla watched his countenance for a moment; then drawing a chair
from another part of the room, she sat down opposite to him, resting
her arms upon the table.

“What are your dreams, Reginald?” she asked, with interest in her
tone.

“I hardly know myself”; and he shook his head, with a smile.
“Sometimes they are clear and bright, and I understand them; but
sometimes they are misty and vague, and so they have been to-day.”

“There is one thing I want very much to know, though, perhaps, you
will be angry with me for asking you. But, do you think you shall
ever marry?”

“No,” he replied, rather hastily, “I don’t think I ever shall.”

“I knew very well what you would say, and I don’t think I very much
wonder at you; but I am sorry. I often dream of your wife, Reginald;
I should be so fond of her.”

“Perhaps not,” he said, with a slight smile; “I am afraid she would
be too grave for you.”

“No. If she were grave, it would be a pleasant gravity, like yours;
not severe and disagreeable. But Reginald, I wanted to speak
seriously. Do you know, I really think you ought to marry, for my
sake and yours. For mine especially. I know I am not at all what
you wish me to be; and how can I, when I never have seen a really
nice woman? I cannot wish to be like any woman I ever saw. And then,
besides,--my dull life, you really ought to take compassion upon me.
Sometimes I feel that I shall either do something very wrong, or
else go mad.”

“But, Camilla, you would not wish me to marry this moment, or this
year; and perhaps in a year or two your own position may be changed.
Would not that do as well?”

“You mean, I might marry; but no, Reginald, that would not do at all.
I should be afraid to marry at present, while I am so discontented
and changeable, because how could I tell that I should not be
discontented and changeable afterwards? and that would be horrible.
I am afraid you will be angry with me for saying so, but I want a
little freedom first. I _cannot_ be tied down to anybody just at
present;--and so we come back to your wife. You must marry a wife to
give me freedom, and to give you just that little bit more indulgence
which I think you want. Now tell me, Reginald, is there really no
chance?--have you quite made a vow not to marry?”

“No, indeed, Camilla, that would be a foolish and presumptuous thing
to do at my age. I only feel that I do not wish to marry, and I hope
that I shall never feel otherwise.”

“But have you considered the subject; have you been thinking about
it?”

“I have been thinking a great deal about my future life since Ernest
De Grey came, and the question of marriage did arise among other
questions.”

“Well?” Camilla said, eagerly.

“I have nothing to tell you, Camilla; your curiosity is quite
wasted. Ernest De Grey was speaking one day of his early days, and
his happy home, and somehow the conversation changed, and we spoke
of our future hopes and dreams of happiness; and he drew a picture
of domestic happiness, which I could not but own was bright and
beautiful; and it drove me to consider as I had never considered
before, and to ask myself, as I had never asked before, what the
_reality_ of my future life should be.”

“Well?” Camilla said again.

“Well, Camilla, and I do not think, after serious thought, that such
pictures of happiness, however beautiful, are compatible with my
old, my best, my cherished dreams. No,” he continued, and his colour
deepened, and his voice took a tone of excitement, “they may be
bright, they may be good,--but let them go, they are not for me. I
feel as if a steep path was set before me, and that such thoughts are
but temptations to draw my eyes away. They shall not do it.”

“But, Reginald,” his sister said, thoughtfully, “do you know I
sometimes think your idea of greatness is too dry. I don’t like the
greatness that despises common feelings. I never could care about
Brutus or Cato. What I like is a young hero who can get above himself
for the sake of being great, but who is not cold and dry, and, in
short, a monster. You used to like my favourites, Alexander the
Great, and Charles the Twelfth, and Henry the Fifth, but I am afraid
you scorn them now.”

He shook his head, with a smile, but there was a look of melancholy
and abstraction on his brow.

“What _are_ you thinking of, Reginald?” she said, anxiously.

“Your words make me think, Camilla, for you have spoken all the vague
thoughts that have been drawing me from my duty this morning. I used
to know what I wished; the very thought of greatness made my blood
boil; but now I find myself asking where are the deeds of those who
have left so great a name? and I cannot answer myself.”

“This comes of talking so much to Mr. De Grey,” Camilla said,
impatiently. “I knew how it would be. I dare say he will end by
making you a clergyman; or, if not that, at least as severe as he is
himself.”

“Severe!” exclaimed Reginald, his abstraction vanishing as he looked
with surprise at his sister; “do you call Ernest De Grey severe?”

“Not severe, like a cross old schoolmaster,” she said, laughing.
“I don’t mean that, but I know what I mean. He is full of severe
notions, and fancies, and ideas that I don’t like at all, and I am
very sorry to think that he should put them into your head.”

Reginald made no answer; he was meditating again, and he smoothed the
pages of his book, as if he were preparing to begin his studies.

“Oh! Reginald,” said his sister, drawing it from before him, “no
Greek to-day, pray, pray. See how fine it is! Do let us go out.”

He hesitated for a moment, then closed the book and went to the
window.

“Well, Camilla, it shall be as you please to-day. You shall not think
of me as severe when I am gone.”

“My dear Reginald, _you_ cannot be severe,--_you_ cannot be anything
that displeases me. Even if you were to become a clergyman, I suppose
I should get to like it in time. Don’t try me, though,” she added
quickly and laughingly; “you had better not.”

He looked at her for a moment, and seemed to be on the point of
asking some question of interest, but, apparently, he changed his
intention, for the only observation that was made aloud, was a
desire that she should put on her bonnet and meet, him in the garden.

“And where shall we go to, Reginald?” she inquired as she joined him.

“Shall we go and ask Ernest De Grey to ride with us this afternoon?”

“Always Ernest De Grey!” she said, playfully.

“Do you object to it, Camilla? I will not ask it if you do.”

“Object to it? Oh dear, no. I meant to have proposed it myself; but
you should have left it to me. I shall be jealous if you think of
nothing but Mr. De Grey.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“What do you suppose to be the amount of Mr. De Grey’s annual income,
mother?” This question was asked by Mr. Hervey, as he sat in the
window of his mother’s little drawing-room, an hour or two later in
the same day.

“None know better than yourself, Edward; five hundred a year, or
little more; and one hundred pounds of that he gives to you.”

“I was speaking of his private income, mother.”

“There’s not much of that, Edward, if all tales be true. I suppose
you’re wondering, like the rest of them, where his charities are to
come from? It’s a pity, to be sure, that he should encourage the
idle; but they say he has not the heart to refuse if any come in his
mother’s name; and he’ll be wiser in time. For my part, I like to see
him talking so pleasantly to the poor: what is it the poet says--‘a
heart open as day to melting charity.’”

“No, mother, I was only wondering if such a marriage would be
acceptable to Lord and Lady Vere.”

“What marriage, Edward?” and Mrs. Hervey took off her spectacles to
listen.

“Miss St. Maur and Mr. De Grey, mother. They say that must be the end
of it, before long.”

“No, no, Edward! no thought of that.”

“I don’t know, mother; young St. Maur is never satisfied unless Mr.
De Grey is with him, and Miss St. Maur is always with her brother.
It is a dangerous position, to say the least.”

“And why dangerous, Edward? If it should be so, I should say there
was a Providence in it. But I doubt it--I doubt it! there’s no love
there.”

“Come here, mother, and look at them!” exclaimed Mr. Hervey, pulling
the blind a little aside, as the three passed along the road
together. “What do you say now? see how Miss St. Maur leans across
her brother to talk to Mr. De Grey! and see how he watches her
countenance!”

Mrs. Hervey joined her son at the window, and put on her spectacles
again to examine the group. “Well, Edward,” she said, when she had
followed them till they were out of sight, “I believe you are right,
as far as Mr. De Grey is concerned. He seems to worship the very
ground she treads on; and no wonder, sweet, sprightly creature as she
is! But it’s all on his side: there’s no care or heartache in her
young face.”

“What do you take to be the exact symptoms of love, mother?”
inquired Mr. Hervey.

“Nothing so frank and free as that young lady is, Edward; no, no!
depend upon it there’s no love there. Mr. De Grey is another thing.
Poor young man!--and is he to be disappointed again? What a world it
is!” and she shook her head, and sat down again to her work.

Such was Mrs. Hervey’s judgment of the effects of the intimacy
between Camilla and Ernest De Grey.

       *       *       *       *       *

A windy night, which had disturbed some slates on the roof of
Cranleigh Church, had revived in Ernest’s mind his old project of
improvement and restoration; and when sought for on this morning by
his two young companions, he was found seated on a bank opposite the
church with drawing materials about him.

Camilla approached him with her usual careless frankness and winning
cordiality. “What a very, very long time it takes to discover
people’s merits,” she said. “We have known you now for nearly two
months, and we have never found out that you were an artist.”

“My merits lie so deep, that it takes time to discover them,” Ernest
replied, laughing; “and none lie deeper than my merits as an artist.”

“That is for us to decide. I should like to see your drawing; may I
look at it?”

“I was doing it for you to see,” he said, as he put it into her hand.
“I was trying to express upon paper some ideas I have about the
church. Don’t you think it a very pretty church?”

“Is it pretty?--yes, I suppose it is; but I never thought so before.
I don’t think I easily find out beauties in things I see every day;
but I do think your drawing pretty, very pretty! Look, Reginald, are
not these windows prettily done? I think you are much too humble, Mr.
De Grey: I call this very artist-like, and it makes me wish I could
draw.”

“I am afraid an artist would say otherwise; but I am quite satisfied
with your good opinion. Though I was doing it for you and your
brother, however, it was not for the sake of your admiration: I
wished to interest you in a plan which once, long ago, occupied much
of my thoughts. Perhaps you have not thought about it; but if you do
think, you will see how spoiled the church is, inside and out, by the
strange additions that have been made to it. And I have discovered,
since I have been here, that partly from these very additions, and
partly from increase of population, the church is much too small.
There is now neither room nor beauty; but in this way,”--and he
pointed to his drawing--“with these few alterations, the beauty might
be restored, and sufficient room would be given. Do you think you
understand my plan?”

Camilla had listened to him civilly, but indifferently, and now,
shaking her head, said, “No, nor ever should; plans always make my
head ache. But it does not matter, for I know nothing about such
things. You had much better talk to Reginald; and that you may talk
in peace, I will go on to Mrs. Pope’s, and buy a bit of ribbon
for my bonnet.” She was turning away, but suddenly stopped. “Are
you disappointed?” she said kindly, struck by a look in Ernest’s
countenance.

“A little,” he replied, with a smile.

“Then I am sure I will stay, if you like. But you know I don’t
naturally care about such things. I should only be a hypocrite if I
pretended I did.”

“But you will, will you not? If you don’t care about the beauty,
don’t you think it might be right to feel regret that so many of the
poor people are shut out?”

“Right--O yes! I dare say it is right. I only mean to say that I
don’t care naturally; and besides,” she added with a half smile and
a half sigh, “I had better say the truth,--I don’t think I very much
wish to care. Such thoughts only make people look grave, as you and
Reginald do. But never mind me now; talk to Reginald, and I will
listen, and understand if I can.” She seated herself upon the bank as
she spoke.

With an effort Ernest endeavoured to arouse his flagging interest,
and turned to Reginald with his plan; but he was doomed again to
disappointment, not this time from indifference, but from want
of harmony in opinion. Among those minds which rise above the
average mediocrity, two extremes are often to be found,--those who
find _perfection_ in the past, and those who seek _perfection_ in
the future. A perfect character is formed from the union of the
two; for however contrary their apparent tendencies may be, each
standing alone ends in narrowness and prejudice, inconsideration,
and want of sympathy. No circumstances or discussions are too small
to prevent the collision of such opposite dispositions, and a
student of character might have been amused at the growing warmth
of the argument that followed, the shudder with which Ernest heard
Reginald’s sweeping denunciations of the old edifice, and the
scorn with which Reginald turned from Ernest’s lowly and simple
propositions. _To restore_ this was Ernest’s only desire, and by
restoration to beautify. Before Reginald’s eyes, with the first
mention of the plan, a fair and noble structure began to rise, which
made the suggestions of his companion appear mean and low.

Camilla, rather amused than interested, listened with a smile; at
last she rose from her seat, and put an end to the discussion.

“It is no use for you to talk any more, you never will agree. Poor
Reginald cannot like anything that is not perfect; and as to you, Mr.
De Grey, though you talk of improvement, it seems to me that you are
unwilling to part even with the faults.”

“Have I been very obstinate?” Ernest said, colouring slightly, as
the consciousness came that he had been so. “I am afraid I have; but
I don’t think you can have any idea of what I feel about this old
church. Perhaps it is foolish; but I don’t think any degree of beauty
would repay me for the loss of its present self.”

“I dare say I am too fastidious,” Reginald said, thoughtfully; “give
me the plan, Ernest, and I will think about it; and when I have
thought, I suppose other considerations should come.” But when he
took the plan, it was evidently without interest.

“I hope you forgive me for my obstinacy?” Ernest inquired, with a
smile.

“You need not say that, Mr. De Grey; Reginald likes people to be
obstinate, in which I agree with him. I think people who have no
opinions of their own are worth just nothing. But, now, if we have
done with our grave conversations, will you come with me to buy my
ribbon? I must have it this morning, for this will be my last walk to
Cranleigh for weeks and weeks to come.”

They set off together to the little shop of the Cranleigh milliner,
passing Mrs. Hervey’s windows as they went. Camilla’s remark had cast
a shade upon Ernest’s brow.

“You are very thoughtful to-day, Mr. De Grey,” she remarked, after
they had walked a little way in silence. “I am afraid you are still
grieving over the poor old church.”

“No, indeed!” and he shook his head. “I had forgotten it. If I was
thoughtful, I was thinking of what you said; and I am afraid I was
wishing that there was no such place as Oxford in the world.”

“So do I,” she said, bending eagerly across her brother, “with all my
heart; and I am very glad to find that I am not the only person who
can indulge in foolish wishes. Now, I suppose,” laughing a little,
“that, as usual, I have said something rather uncivil; but, I assure
you, _I_ do not think the wishes foolish, and that I hope will excuse
me.”

This was the moment when Mrs. Hervey fitted the spectacles on her
nose, preparatory for her look of intense observation.

They reached the little shop, and stood before the gay window.

“Which shall I have?” Camilla said, inspecting the ribbons hanging
tastefully and temptingly before her. “I am not bent on any one in
particular; I wish somebody would choose for me. What colour do you
like best, Mr. De Grey?”

“Blue,” he said, without hesitation.

“You _are_ decided indeed; that comes, I suppose, from being so
obstinate. I wish I could make up my mind as quickly; but I only
know that I don’t like blue. What shall I have, Reginald?--what do
you advise?”

“Blue,” he said, smiling.

“I know you don’t like blue; I believe you only say it out of
compliment to Mr. De Grey; and as I don’t want to pay any compliments
to anybody, I shall not take your advice. I think I shall have that
pretty sober brown; will you wait for me? I will not be a moment.”
And she went into the shop.

“Will you ride with us this afternoon, Ernest?” Reginald inquired,
when they were left alone.

“I should like it.” Ernest paused, with a little hesitation; then
added, “But would your sister wish it this last day?”

“And is my sister only to be considered?” Reginald observed, with one
of his slight, grave, meaning smiles. “If it gives _me_ pleasure to
have you with us, may I not say so?”

“Thank you a thousand times, now and always,” Ernest said, warmly;
“but I think it is but natural to suppose that your sister would
prefer to have you all to herself to-day.”

“We will ask her. Camilla,” and he laid his hand on her arm as she
left the shop, “Ernest De Grey has scruples about accepting my
invitation, and on your account. He thinks,” and he smiled as he
spoke, “that you will wish to keep the enjoyment of my society all to
yourself.”

“Oh! Mr. De Grey,” she said, going towards him with her sweet cordial
manner, and raising her lovely face to his, “how very good-natured
you are to think of me! but I assure you, Reginald will break his
heart if you refuse, and _I_ like whatever _he_ likes; and if that
is not quite civil enough,” she continued, one of the faint, swift
blushes that were perpetually coming and going, flitting over her
cheek, “I like you to come myself.”

“Then I will say no more, except to thank you,” and his looks
thanked her very earnestly, “and hurry away now, that I may be
conscientiously at liberty afterwards.”

“You must just stay to see my ribbon,” she said, laughingly, as
he was turning away. “You see I have bought the blue, after all;
and, unless I tell you the reason why, you may perhaps take it as
a compliment when you see it on my bonnet. But the reason is, that
there was not enough of the brown, and that all the others looked too
ugly when I saw them near.”

He smiled, and shook his head to disclaim most sincerely the
expectation of a compliment, and thoughtfully hastened away to his
daily attendance at the village school; but, while his lips, eyes,
and ears were engaged with his little scholars, the spirit which
should have animated those outward organs was gazing on another
sight, and hanging on other words, and framing far other sounds.

And this was now his constant state of mind, and the danger that
assailed him was a danger greater than the danger of disappointed
affection, in so far as the fear of a failure in duty is greater than
the fear of a loss of happiness.

Ernest had arrived at Cranleigh with a very solemn sense of
responsibility, and a very sincere desire to do his utmost for the
temporal and eternal welfare of his parishioners. That _utmost_ which
he set before him was, no doubt, open to criticism,--his standard
of right was not sufficiently high, his idea of his duties not
sufficiently enlarged; but still, in all sincerity, that which he
_saw_ to be his duty he determined to perform. Before the idea of
sincerity duties are ever opening; and the sense of responsibility,
once thoroughly admitted, is a sense that cannot be satisfied. So,
had nothing intervened between him and his serious thoughts, it is
probable that his mind would have shortly opened to higher desires
and holier purposes. But almost before he had thoroughly considered
what his new duties were--before he could fully realise the
conviction that some hundreds of human beings were hanging on him, on
his words, and his example for warning, instruction, and comfort, he
fell into such a sweet, bright dream of bliss, as bore him away from
the present, and steeped his senses in Elysium.

It is not good that a new state of life should be begun in
excitement. When the habits are formed, the map of life well
laid out, a temporary excitement has its advantages, for it
tends to stir up the sluggishness, and disperse the clouds of
selfishness,--temptations too apt to intrude on regular habits and
a quiet life; but to enter on a new existence, to learn new duties,
to undertake new responsibilities, while the mind is diverted by
turmoil, and half-dissipated in excitement, is destructive not only
to the happiness of the life so begun, but often to the minds of
those who thus begin it. And thus it was that Ernest’s new life
began:--his first two months at Cranleigh were passed as one long
summer day.

The danger is, of course, greater when the temptation comes in the
form of good, when the excitement appears to be of a high and useful
kind; and this, too, added to Ernest’s peril. Had it been Camilla’s
society only which so powerfully attracted him, he would have been
on his guard. His mind was so true, his sense of duty so simple and
sincere, that no enchantment of her presence could possibly have
deceived him as to the waste of time and thought into which she
beguiled him; but the attraction of Reginald’s society was, in its
kind, as great as Camilla’s, and that there could be aught but good
in yielding to the influence of him whose lofty dreams made the cares
and simple duties of life look poor,--this was a danger which even a
mind more meditative and experienced than Ernest’s might have failed
to discover.

So he yielded himself, without thought or fear of evil, to a
new-born happiness,--to the sweet companionship which touched his
heart, and kindled his fancy, and awoke the loftiest feelings of
his nature. So happily the days went by,--thoughtlessly, yet too
full of thought,--joyful, yet with a joy so full, that it was almost
unfelt,--ennobled with visions of ideal virtue and heroism,--which
yet were but dreams.




                             CHAPTER XII.

  “I do not know what your opinion may be, Mrs. Weston,” said
  Mr. Knightly, “of this great intimacy between Emma and Harriet
  Smith; but I think it a bad thing.”--EMMA.


“I think I shall take a drive to-day, Camilla,” Lady Vere remarked
one morning to her daughter, about a fortnight after Reginald’s
departure.

Camilla was sitting listlessly in the window: a book was in her
hands; but her eyes and thoughts were idly wandering in search of
that which in vain she sought to find--amusement and excitement. The
more than usual happiness of her brother’s visit,--a happiness to
which, although without a thought of love on her side, or suspicion
of it on his, Ernest’s society had very naturally added,--had left
her more lonely and melancholy even than usual. The expression on
her countenance was one of mingled sadness and ill-humour.

She replied to her mother’s communication without much interest, or
very much respect; for, as the day never came when the drive did
_not_ take place, the announcement appeared to her a needless one.

“I shall order the carriage at half-past two,” continued Lady Vere,
“as I mean to drive to Carrington.”

“Where, mamma?”

“To Carrington, Camilla. Mitford says a rich man has bought the
place, and she says I ought to call.”

“Who is the rich man, mamma? I never heard anything about it.”

“Neither did I till last night. When Mitford was curling my hair,
she told me a great deal. She says he _was_ a merchant, but now he
is not; and his name is Vincent--Mr. and Mrs. Vincent; and she says
everybody is calling; and she says I ought to call.”

Though Lady Vere had a peculiar and rather enviable art of
communicating much in few words, this had been a long story, and she
was exhausted after it.

Camilla drew up her head a little stately, and there was a little
ill-humour still in her words.

“Six miles there and six miles back is rather a long way to go for a
merchant, I think. I can fancy Mr. and Mrs. Vincent, the merchant and
merchantess! We may be sure, at any rate, that they are dull, or they
would not have come to settle in this dull country.”

“Mitford says I should call, so I think I had better call,” was Lady
Vere’s languid reply. With more energy she went on:--“And she thinks
I had better call to-day, because of my _velour épinglé_. I have only
worn it once, so that it is almost as good as new; and she likes
me to visit in a new bonnet. Have you got anything you can wear,
Camilla?”

“Oh yes, mamma; I think I shall be able to dress myself for Mr. and
Mrs. Vincent.”

“There’s a young lady, too; and Mitford says she thinks you will
like to make her acquaintance.”

“Why does Mitford say that?” Camilla replied, petulantly. “She knows,
or else she ought to know, that I hate young ladies.”

“Do you indeed, Camilla? Dear, how strange!”

“That is to say, I _fancy_ I do,” Camilla corrected herself,
laughingly; “for, as Mr. De Grey says, my acquaintance with young
ladies is small. But I was born with a horror of the word; and I am
sure I hated the Miss Colmans, and the Miss Dennisons, and the Miss
Burtons that my governesses used to rave about. If one could meet
with Die Vernon or poor Sybil, that would be another thing.”

“Who are they?” inquired Lady Vere.

“Only in books, mamma; but people in books are _much_ nicer than
people in real life.”

“Are they, indeed? I used to know a great many young ladies at Bath,
and I liked them very much.”

“What did they talk about?” asked Camilla, with curiosity.

“Oh, they used to tell me with whom they danced, and where they got
their bonnets; and once I told them that I was going to be married,
and they were extremely surprised.”

“That is just what I thought, mamma; and the Miss Colmans talked in
just the same way. However, I don’t much mind going to see this Miss
Vincent. Perhaps I may like her, after all.”

“Mitford thinks you will, because, she says, she hears she is pretty.”

“Mitford knows nothing about it, mamma. But certainly, after the
sight of Mrs. Hervey yesterday, one may perhaps like to see something
young and pretty.” And, with a little expectation of pleasure,
Camilla prepared for the visit.

On arriving at Carrington, the expectation grew stronger. Camilla had
by no means lost her admiration of new places, and a pretty wooded
approach to the house excited her envy and admiration. Several times
she rose in the barouche to look about her, and each time, in an
agony of earnestness, Lady Vere implored her to be still, for the
sake of her dress.

“Really, mamma,” she exclaimed, as they drove to the entrance, with a
colonnade before it, “if this is to be the end of being a merchant, I
have no objection to be a merchant myself.”

Mrs. Vincent was at home, and Mr., Mrs., and Miss Vincent were all in
the drawing-room, prepared for the reception of visitors.

They may be rapidly described.

Mr. Vincent looked vulgar, and was so, and was either unconscious of
it or indifferent about it. Mrs. Vincent was rather handsome, and
looked less vulgar, but was more so; for she was conscious of it, and
endeavoured to conceal it. Miss Vincent was very handsome indeed,
with bright eyes, a brilliant complexion, and a quantity of dark
hair. Her appearance, too, was very different to that of her father
and mother. She looked what, perhaps, is most concisely expressed by
the word “fashionable,”--notwithstanding (or perhaps, having used the
word “fashionable,” the word “notwithstanding” is out of place) she
was, could her heart have been searched, more thoroughly vulgar in
its true sense than any other member of her family. It was, however,
the deeply-rooted, not the apparent vulgarity.

A great fuss was made with Lady Vere by Mr. and Mrs. Vincent, and she
was pleased with it; though the flutter of receiving thanks and the
exertion of answering questions somewhat overcame her.

She was a little puzzled also by a peculiar habit for which Mr.
Vincent was remarkable,--a habit, namely, of asking a question,
receiving an answer, and repeating the answer he received in the form
of a question, or else of narration to some invisible auditor. She
was once or twice put to the serious inconvenience of making a second
response.

“It is a long drive, I understand, from here to Clare Abbey,” said
Mr. Vincent. “I am afraid we have given your ladyship a great deal of
trouble.”

“Oh dear, no, Mr. Vincent; it was no trouble; and the drive is
exceedingly pretty.”

“Your ladyship found the drive exceedingly pretty?” he repeated,
with a slight accent of interrogation.

“Oh dear, yes, exceedingly pretty,” she returned, politely, but
languidly.

“Your ladyship is, perhaps, in the habit of taking long drives?”

“Oh yes; we drive every day.”

“Your ladyship drives every day?” in a slow, measured tone.

“Oh dear, yes; don’t we, Camilla?” endeavouring to draw her daughter
to her aid.

“This appears to be a most populous neighbourhood,” remarked Mrs.
Vincent. “I am sure we have every reason to be satisfied with our
purchase. Sophia--my daughter, Sophia--was rather afraid of the
country: she likes society, as all young people do, and her papa had
prepared her to find it rather dull, especially at first; but, I
assure you, we have only been here a week, and we have had visitors
to luncheon every day.”

“Dear, how strange!” exclaimed Lady Vere, opening her eyes. “We never
see anybody at Clare Abbey.”

“Your ladyship never sees anybody at Clare Abbey?” repeated Mr.
Vincent, with a strong mark of interrogation.

“No, indeed, we never do--do we, Camilla?” again appealing to her
daughter.

“What, mamma?” replied Camilla, breaking off her more flowing
conference with Miss Vincent.

But Lady Vere only yawned: a third repetition was beyond her powers.

Miss Vincent approached, and asked Lady Vere’s leave to show Camilla
the grounds about Carrington, as she appeared to admire them.

Lady Vere paused to reply, struck by the extreme tastefulness of
Miss Vincent’s dress. When she had surveyed her from head to foot,
she returned to recollection, and very civilly gave the desired
permission; and a few minutes afterwards they wandered out together.

“You are not at all accustomed to the country, then?” Camilla said,
in answer to some remark of Miss Vincent’s.

“No, not at all. I am a thorough cockney. Our only change from London
used to be to Brighton; and that, you know, is a little London.”

“Don’t say ‘you know’ to me, Miss Vincent; for I know nothing. I
thought Brighton was a _sea-side_ place.”

“So it is,” replied Miss Vincent, her manner losing the very slight
shade of flattery which had tinged it, and assuming in its place a
very slight shade of patronizing superiority; “but such a favourite
sea place, that houses can hardly be built fast enough. It is quite a
large town now, and a very delightful town, too.”

“Then I suppose you are accustomed to a great deal of society? Do you
go to a great many balls and plays?”

“Not much to the play--once or twice a year; but people don’t go to
the play now-a-days. There is the opera, you know: we hardly ever
miss that; and other nights there are balls, or concerts, or parties,
or dinners. We always had something to do all the year round; for
there is as much society at Brighton, in its way, as there is in
London.”

“Well, Miss Vincent, I don’t know what you think, but I think that
must have been rather too much.”

“One gets used to everything,” she replied. “I assure you, it is as
strange to me to stay at home as it is to you to go out.”

“Then what will you do here? How dreadfully dull you will be.”

“I certainly feel it a little, but I am not entirely dependent on
society; I draw pretty well, and I am very fond of reading, and music
I like passionately. Besides, we have a large circle of acquaintance,
and this neighbourhood seems a good one--when once we are settled and
found out, I shall not be much afraid. I dare say we shall have the
house always full, and I am told there is no society so agreeable as
the society of a country house.”

“That must depend a good deal on what the society is,” Camilla said,
with a slight nod of her head, “I would rather live in a desert than
have to talk all day to people I don’t care about.”

“Oh! of course, Miss St. Maur, _cela va sans dire_; but we have
a very agreeable, as well as a very numerous acquaintance. I know
several authors, and composers, and poets.”

“Do you really?” and Camilla looked at her with surprise and
interest. “What are they like? are they like other people?”

“I dare say they are not like any of the neighbours about here,” said
Miss Vincent, with a slight laugh; “but still they are men.”

“Did you ever see Sir Walter Scott? No, I beg your pardon,” she added
with a blush, “I ought not to ask that when you must be as young as I
am.”

“You may ask it, indeed, and I am very happy to tell you that I did
see him once, and that he patted my head. I was a very little girl,
but I remember it quite well; he looked so venerable.”

“No, Miss Vincent, you don’t mean to say that?” Camilla exclaimed,
looking at her companion with profound veneration. “Now, I envy you
for that more than for all your balls and parties.”

“I do feel a little proud of it, certainly.”

“Have you read all his novels?” Camilla inquired.

“Oh! yes, I had read them all before I was seventeen, and that I am
sorry to say is seven years ago.”

“So have I--but I read them over and over again because I like them
so much.”

“I like them very well,” Miss Vincent replied, “but I have not time
to read books more than once; it is difficult enough to keep pace
with the books of the day.”

“I like them better than the new novels; I don’t so much care about
stories of every day life; I like more excitement and adventures, and
even fights and battles. Have you read the ‘Last of the Barons?’ I
have just finished it, and I put that with Sir Walter Scott’s.”

“Yes, I read it when it came out. I read a good many novels, but it
is not my favourite style of reading; I like poetry better.”

“Well, I can’t quite say that, but I like some poetry very much. I
wonder whether we should agree; do you like Shakspere?”

“No,” said Miss Vincent, hesitatingly, “I am afraid I must say I
don’t. It is very fine I dare say, but it is not my style. I like
something a little more intellectual.”

“I don’t know what you mean by intellectual, Miss Vincent,” exclaimed
Camilla, kindling. “My brother, who is very clever indeed, says, he
thinks Shakspere must have had the greatest intellect of any man that
ever lived.”

“Oh! yes, pray don’t think I mean to doubt his cleverness; it is all
my own folly, I dare say. I only mean that it does not please me, I
like something that goes deeper--more knowledge of the human heart.”

“What do you like, I wonder? Do you like Sir Walter Scott’s poems?”

“Not much; I like Byron best of all.”

“I am afraid we don’t agree at all. I read some of his poems last
year, and I did not care about them. I expected to like them; I flew
to the ‘Corsair’--but I was very much disappointed. I did not care
about his gloomy characters. I liked the ‘Doge of Venice,’--that
fiery old Doge--but not many of the others.”

“I don’t care about the characters or the stories at all. What I like
are the meditations and reflections; those I do read twice, or twenty
times. Every day, almost, I read some of them.”

“There we disagree again,” Camilla said, laughing, “for I hate
reflections. I am very sorry that we disagree so much.”

“We shall soon agree, I have no doubt. Perhaps you don’t quite
understand what I mean by reflections. If you will come with me to
my room, I will show you some of the pieces I have copied from Lord
Byron, and Moore, and Tennyson, and other favourite poets. I have a
great collection, and when you have seen it, I think you will begin
to admire my style of poetry. You have seen all the prettiest part of
the garden; will you come in?”

“I should like it very much, but it must be another day. Mamma is not
very fond of long visits, and though I am sure this has not seemed
a long one, I suppose we have been out a good while. What a pretty
place this is!” she exclaimed, pausing on the steps to admire; “it is
a thousand times prettier than Clare Abbey.”

“Oh! Miss St. Maur,” Miss Vincent said, playfully, “I am afraid that
is not a true compliment. I have heard that Clare Abbey is a very
magnificent place.”

“I don’t think it is at all; but if it were, that would make no
difference; one gets tired of a thing one sees every day of one’s
life--at least I do. I am sure I often wish I lived in some of the
poor people’s cottages--they look so bright and so picturesque; and
still more in some of the farms--such a bustle seems to be going on!
I often wish I were a farmer’s daughter.”

Miss Vincent laughingly took up the idea, and having a number of
pretty things always at her fingers’ ends, did not suffer the
opportunity to pass without some slight and playful flattery.

Camilla smiled and blushed, and very amicably the new friends entered
the drawing-room.

“What pleasant people,” remarked Lady Vere yawning, as they drove
away; “but I wish they had not sent for cake, because I did not want
it.”

“You should learn to resist, mamma, as I do.”

“My dear Camilla, it is not civil.”

“Did you like Mrs. Vincent, mamma?--did you find her agreeable?”

“I thought her very pleasant. Her gown was rather short--I saw her
petticoat; and her stockings were a little coarse--but she was very
pleasant. Miss Vincent looked exceedingly neat.”

“Neat, mamma? I called her smart,--rather too smart for me.”

“I thought she looked exceedingly nice,--and her sleeves were
particularly pretty;--I shall tell Mitford about them. I hope you
liked her, Camilla?--and then she may perhaps give me her pattern
some day.”

“Yes, mamma, I think I did like her. She is _rather_ a young
lady, but not so bad. Yes, I did like her, and she seems to know
everything; I am sure she will amuse me very much.”

The visit was returned by Mrs. Vincent and her daughter, in a very
few days; and Miss Vincent in the course of the visit, criticised
so merrily and satirically some of Camilla’s favourite aversions in
the neighbourhood, that, convinced she did not fulfil her shadowy
and despised ideal of a young lady, Camilla determined to see more
of her, and invited her to spend the afternoon with her on the next
day but one. Having overcome her first prejudice against admitting a
young lady to her acquaintance, it was not strange that she caught
eagerly at any amusement offered to her in her dull and uniform life.

On this occasion, Miss Vincent having expressed a wish to visit the
Cranleigh milliner, they obtained Lady Vere’s leave, and set forth
together, and on the way the former made some inquiries of Camilla,
on subjects in which she felt an interest.

“Are you fond of dancing, Miss St. Maur?” she said, as they walked
along.

“That is one of the questions I can’t answer, for I don’t know. I
used to hate my dancing lessons, but that I suppose is not very
uncommon. My brother Reginald dislikes dancing, so I never think
about it. I fancy, however, that I should like it pretty well, but
not so much as riding; I am very fond of riding. Do you like it?”

“I think, like dancing, it depends on others. I like a riding party
very much.”

“I like riding in itself,” Camilla said, “the party would have
nothing to do with it.”

“But you do have riding parties?”

“No, indeed. I ride with my brother Reginald; and if I might ride by
myself I should like it still.”

“Now, Miss St. Maur,” said Miss Vincent, laying her hand playfully
on her arm, “you are so close and reserved, that if I wish to find
out what things interest you most deeply, I am obliged to make direct
inquiries. Can you guess what I am going to ask?”

“No, indeed, I can’t,” Camilla said, and said truly. “What _do_ you
want to know? I will tell you whatever you like.”

“Well then, I wish to ask a question of great importance. Who is the
hero of these parts?--there must be one.”

“None that I know of,” Camilla said, with some coldness, though she
blushed as she spoke.

“Don’t deceive me,” replied Miss Vincent, looking smilingly in her
face; “it would be impossible to persuade me that such a flower as
this was doomed to blush unseen.”

“I don’t quite know what you mean,” said Camilla, with some
impatience; “but if you mean what I think you mean, you are quite
wrong. Reginald and I don’t care for heroes and heroines.”

“Well, Miss St. Maur,” she replied, still playfully, “I will be as
discreet as you are, and ask no questions; but I shall make use of my
eyes, and if I make any discoveries I shall not spare you.”

“You will make none, for there are none to make;” Camilla spoke
coldly and shortly. She thought Miss Vincent extremely impertinent.

“Have you no wish to be liked and admired, Miss St. Maur?” Miss
Vincent asked, after a silence of a few seconds. “You are very unlike
girls, or, I might say, the world in general, if it is so.”

“Oh, I don’t say that,” replied Camilla, laughing. “If I might
choose, I should like to be a queen, and to have all the world
kneeling admiringly at my feet.”

“I dare say,” said her companion, laughing also; “but that was not
quite the kind of admiration I meant. I meant admiration of a more
homely kind. In plain words, have you no wish to be _loved_?”

“I suppose I should have no particular objection to it; but if you
mean to ask me whether I sit at home pining for a hero--I don’t.
I don’t much care about that sort of thing for myself. I am not
sentimental, nor more is Reginald.”

“Well, Miss St. Maur, I believe you now; for if there _was_ a hero in
these parts, I don’t think you would speak as you do. You are very
young and fresh, I see, and you don’t understand the pleasures and
excitements of ... what shall I call it? But it will come, depend
upon it. One doesn’t live very long in the world without it. I speak
from experience!”

Camilla felt a little curiosity as to the nature of Miss Vincent’s
experience, but she was afraid and ashamed to ask. Such conversation
was new to her. She was shrinkingly reserved on subjects of a like
kind, even in idea, partly by nature, partly from Reginald’s distaste.

“I don’t mean only my own experience,” Miss Vincent began again,
after a pause, “but I have seen such strange things--watched the
progress of such strangely interesting stories. I am sure _I_ can say
that ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’”

“I wish you would tell me some of your stories. I should like to hear
a real, true story, from an eye-witness, very much.”

“I will some day, if I may; but you know one must be discreet. Things
are confided to me, and I must not repeat them.”

“Oh, of course not,” Camilla said, vehemently; “I would not hear a
betrayed confidence for the world!”

“How very fresh and unsophisticated you are,” observed Miss Vincent,
looking at her with a smile; “how you would be admired in London!”

“Don’t talk nonsense, pray, Miss Vincent,” she said, blushing like a
rose at the compliment.

“Well, I won’t, for I see you are not like girls in general. But to
give you an idea of the kind of excitements I mean, and which occur
every day in the world, I will tell you a funny thing that happened
last summer. A young girl, very fresh and very pretty, came from the
country for two months, to go out with mamma. She went to a ball the
first night and made a few acquaintances, but she was tired and soon
begged to go home. The next morning early, a large bouquet was left
for her at our house. The same thing happened every morning for two
months; and by no means or inquiries could we discover whence the
bouquet came. She went out a great deal and was very much admired,
but rather in a general than a particular way. We could not fix on
anybody. You may fancy how curious we were. I really could think of
nothing else.”

“Yes,” Camilla said, with some interest, “it must have been rather
exciting. A mystery would always take my fancy; but is it a mystery
still? I hope you discovered the author of such pretty attentions at
last?”

“Yes, I discovered it at last, and in rather a funny way. One day
the bouquet was so very beautiful and _recherché_, that I examined
it with more attention than usual, and I happened to remark among
the flowers a carnation of a very peculiar kind and colour. We went
to a ball the same evening; and suddenly, while I was thinking of
other things, my eyes happened to fall on a flower in a gentleman’s
coat,--the very same rare and peculiar carnation. He was the last
person whom I should have suspected of such a thing; rather an old
person--I mean old, compared to Ellen Vivian--giving up dancing, and
that sort of thing. However, I felt there could be no doubt; and soon
after, when he came up to speak to Ellen, I joined them, and pointed
out the discovery I had made. You have no idea how foolish they both
looked.”

“Oh! Miss Vincent, I call that cruel. I couldn’t have done such a
thing.”

“It was wrong, I allow, and I repented of it at first; for they
seemed so much embarrassed. But I don’t repent of it now; for I am
sure I helped them to an understanding. I heard this morning that
they were engaged to be married.”

“Well, it is a pretty story, certainly;--but now here we are at Mrs.
Pope’s. Do you really want anything?”

“Oh yes; I always want bows and ribbons--one requires such a variety.
Pray, let us go in.”

Miss Vincent became excited in her purchases (a country shop is
certainly very taking), and Camilla stood by her side in some
amusement for a few minutes; but growing tired, and a little annoyed
at the gossiping conversation into which she entered with Mrs.
Pope, she retired to the doorway, and looked up and down the pretty
rambling street of Cranleigh.

While she stood there, Ernest De Grey came from a cottage opposite,
and, with a start of pleasure, approached her.

“Oh! Mr. De Grey,” she exclaimed, with her cordial manner, “how glad
I am to see you!”

He was so extremely glad to see _her_, that he did not dare to trust
himself to say so. He shook hands with her in silence, then said,

“It is more than ten days since I have even _seen_ you. You were not
even at church on Sunday.”

“No; and I dare say you think it was my wickedness that kept me away;
but it was not, indeed. I should have gone if I could; but mamma had
a cold; and you know, or perhaps you don’t know, that when she has a
cold she fancies that all the world must have the same. She would not
let me go.”

“I did not suspect you of wickedness, indeed,” he said. “I _thought_
you would come if you could, because it is right; but if not that, I
_knew_ you would come for your brother’s sake.”

“Right, Mr. De Grey, quite right. But, besides, since you have been
here, I really like to go to church. Though, I dare say, you don’t
see it, and though I am sure nobody else sees it, you have done me
a little good already. And where are you going now?” she inquired,
after a pause.

“I am going home directly, to an appointment. Have you been buying
any more ribbons?”

“No, not to-day. But you see I have got my blue ribbon on my bonnet.”

“Yes, I see; I think it is very pretty.”

He looked at her with a gaze of such extreme admiration, that an
unenlightened person might have supposed it was excited by some less
inanimate object than the ribbon.

“I put it on, to show Miss Vincent the wonders of Cranleigh. Miss
Vincent is a new acquaintance of mine. Do you know her?”

“No, not at all.”

“Then I will introduce you to her.”

She turned round to see if her companion was ready, and found her
standing a few steps behind her within the doorway, with a smile upon
her face. She apologised for having kept her waiting, and then, with
her usual ease and grace, begged to be allowed to introduce Mr. De
Grey.

Ernest bowed; and, after a moment’s pause, bowed again, and
retreated. He had, like Camilla, a shadowy ideal of a young lady,--a
being with whom he had nothing in common; and something in Miss
Vincent’s air and appearance proclaiming her to be one of the
species, he instinctively withdrew.

Camilla laughed, for she read the thoughts that passed through his
mind.

“Now, Miss St. Maur,” Miss Vincent said, as they re-entered the gates
of the park, “I cannot help reproaching you. I had hoped you meant to
allow me the privilege of being your friend.”

“Oh, yes!” Camilla said. She felt inclined to add, “in a degree,” for
she certainly was not quite prepared to swear an eternal friendship;
but she refrained.

“Then, why have you deceived me?”

“I have not deceived you; I never deceive. What _do_ you mean?”

“I thought you said there was no hero in these parts.”

“There is none,” she replied, impatiently, but blushing as she spoke.

Miss Vincent shook her head at her, with a playful smile. “Oh, Miss
St. Maur!”

“I wish you had not such fancies, Miss Vincent,” Camilla said,
blushing still more deeply.

“I am very sorry for my fancies, but really I cannot help them. I
think you must be very fastidious indeed, if you do not allow that
young man to be good enough for a hero.”

“A hero, Miss Vincent! Why, that was Mr. De Grey, the clergyman of
the parish.”

“So I supposed, from a part of your conversation, which I overheard.
But what of that? Do you think all clergymen are blind? _He_ is not
blind, at any rate.”

“Blind about what?” with a little impatient stamp of her foot.

“Oh! Miss St. Maur, you _are_ deceiving me now. I see you know what
I mean. No!” as Camilla shook her head; “well, I will tell you then.
I have seen a great many people in love--a very great many--but I
never, no _never_, saw any one so deeply in love as that young man
is.”

“How can you talk such nonsense?” Camilla said, angrily, turning away
her head as she spoke, to conceal her crimson cheeks; but a moment
afterwards, with a pathetic tone, which in some degree reproached
her companion, she went on:--“I wish you had not such fancies, Miss
Vincent. I dare say you did not mean to do it; but you have spoiled
all my pleasure and happiness. We have been very great friends; but
now, how am I ever to talk to him comfortably again? I never shall; I
never can!”

“My dear Miss St. Maur,” Miss Vincent said, in apology, though she
could hardly help laughing, “I am sure I am very sorry to have
annoyed you. But I had no idea that you would dislike my remarks. You
are so different to most of my acquaintance.” Seeing that Camilla’s
brow did not clear, she went on: “I am really very, very sorry--but I
cannot believe that you did not see what is as clear as day?”

“I did not, Miss Vincent,” she said, angrily; “but never mind now.
Let us talk of something else.”

Instead, however, of talking of something else, she walked in
profound silence to the house. New ideas had been put into her head.

On reaching Clare Abbey, Miss Vincent was told that her carriage was
waiting. She hurried to take leave of Lady Vere; then approached
Camilla, who was standing at one of the drawing-room windows.

“My dear Miss St. Maur,” she said, holding out her hand and retaining
Camilla’s when it was given to her, “what shall I say to make you
forgive me? I would not for worlds have spoken as I did, if I had
supposed it would annoy you. I am afraid I have a habit of foolish
and indiscreet speaking; but don’t be angry with me. I did not mean
to offend, and you must teach me to correct myself.”

Camilla relaxed. “Pray don’t say any more,” she said, smiling;
“I am not _very_ angry; only I must say, I think it very foolish
speaking--and I don’t like it at all.”

“Well, but I am forgiven--and you will not avoid me for the future.
Pray do not punish me so much!”

Camilla smiled again; and, pleased to be so much liked by Miss
Vincent, rewarded her with a degree of affection much greater than
before.

They became friends, and were often together; and Miss Vincent
(though much inferior to Camilla in natural talent), having the
advantage of her in age, shrewdness, and knowledge of the world, she
it was who influenced, and imparted her own mind to her youthful
companion.




                             CHAPTER XIII.

        Night visions may befriend;--
        Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dream’d
        Of things impossible.--(Could sleep do more?)
        Of joys perpetual, in perpetual change;
        Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave!
        Eternal sunshine in the storms of life!--
        How richly were my noontide trances hung
        With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys!
        Joy behind, joy in endless perspective.
                                          YOUNG’S NIGHT THOUGHTS.


With Reginald’s departure the summer of Ernest’s life passed away,
and autumn in more senses than one set in. He was left alone,--alone
in his home, alone in his intellect, alone in his heart,--and his
spirits sank beneath the solitude. Rousing himself from depression,
he endeavoured then to turn his whole mind to his duties, to act
upon his flitting dreams of improvement; but the fresh and ardent
spirit which he had brought to the scene of his labours,--and which
seems to have been allotted to new duties for the very purpose of
overcoming the difficulties attendant upon them--superseded by a
higher excitement, had died away; and it was but with a languid step
and joyless eyes that he devoted himself to his tasks. He had been
basking in the sun of this world’s happiness, and he was thirsting
for it still; he had been blessed with a sight of this world’s
beauty, and he pined for it still; he had been dreaming dreams of
this world’s greatness and heroism, and his own simple duties filled
him with shrinking and disgust.

But there is nothing hopeless except self-deception, and in Ernest’s
sincerity there was ever the golden thread that was to draw him
upward again. He had been beguiled into wastefulness of his time, and
if not into absolute neglect, yet into omission of duty; but now that
the time was passed, and that the voice of the charmer was still,
he _felt_ what the effects had been; and in truth and humility,
acknowledging his weakness and unworthiness, he resolved to arouse
himself to fight and to overcome.

He resolved,--and a sincere resolution is full of strength; but
almost before the resolution had passed his lips, and entered into
his heart, a change in Camilla’s manner plunged him into excitement
more fatal than before.

His love for her, though indulged, though acknowledged, had hitherto
lain as passive and hopeless within him, as if he had indulged in
devotion to a bright particular star. He did not even argue the
point,--a combination of feelings, insensibly and unquestioned,
pronouncing that hope was not for him. Good sense and good feeling
told him that, with _her_ youth and _his_ poverty, he should not
seek for it to be; natural diffidence told him that it could not be;
and that possibly which gave life and strength to all the others’
voices, Camilla’s frank and fearless manner, proclaimed aloud her
utter indifference. So contentedly he had been satisfied to love her,
contented to yield with thoughts far removed from selfish ones, the
entire and reverential devotion of an unwasted heart.

But under Miss Vincent’s influence a new era came. First, conscious
and shrinking, Camilla startled the word _hope_ into his heart,
then--she must, I fear, greatly fall in the estimation of my readers,
but it must be owned that she began to flirt with him. She was
herself unconscious of it; she was utterly indifferent to Ernest;
she neither understood the kind and depth of his love, nor, indeed,
understood in any degree that love was anything but an amusement at
all; but, hearing the subject perpetually discussed by Miss Vincent,
she began to take some interest in it,--began to be pleased with the
idea of Ernest’s devotion,--began childishly to wish for some outward
signs of her power. It was but too natural; but to poor Ernest it was
fatal.

He did not learn to believe that she loved him; for her manner was so
childish and changeable, that as fast as the idea arose it vanished
again. If a blush or a sweet smile entranced him with rapture, a
careless word plunged him the very next moment into despair. But
this uncertainty it was that destroyed him: it led him to pass

    “The night, the dawn, the noon, the dewy eve
     In the sweet serious idleness of love!”

The livelong day it laid him at Camilla’s feet, in spirit not in
reality, questioning the meaning of her sunny smiles, and the glances
of her speaking eyes. It plunged him into that excitement from which
there is no escape,--the excitement of the mind. Outward excitements
leave time for rest,--the most dissipated have their moments of
repose; but in the mental fever there is no pause. It bore him
company in his solitary home,--it made his heart beat in the silence
of night,--it entered with him into the house of God, and followed
him with syren whispers even to the couch of sickness and the bed of
death!

But such dreams do not last for ever: they must receive either a
check, or rise into more tangible being. After a fortnight’s mad
excitement Ernest awoke,--and it was his own boldness which awoke him.

He called one day at Clare Abbey while Lady Vere was driving, and was
admitted by mistake. He found Camilla alone in the drawing-room.

“Mamma is out,” she said, going forward with her winning manner to
meet him. “Did you know it; or did you expect to find her here?”

“I certainly expected to find her here,” he replied, with a smile.

“Ah,” she said, shaking her head laughingly, “I thought it was a new
thing that you should come to see _me_. But, now that you are come,
though by mistake, will you stay?”

“May I stay?” he asked, hesitatingly,--for Lady Vere was particular
on points of etiquette and propriety; not more particular than she
should have been, but more careful of the letter than the spirit of
such rules.

“I don’t know about _may_; I only ask you if you _will_ stay? I have
got a cough, and that makes me stupid; and the day is so dark, and
the wind so howling, it makes one dreary; and I am reading a novel of
Miss Vincent’s, which really is too melancholy. So I ask you, out of
charity, to stay and cheer me a little. Will you stay?”--she smiled
very sweetly as she spoke.

He sat down. He knew that he should not stay: he knew that, under his
present feelings, it was dangerous to him to be alone with her,--and
yet he stayed. As to refusing her anything when she looked as she
then did, he could not do it. He sat down in silence, conscious of
his weakness, warned that he was wrong, but with a strange feeling of
pleasure.

“I ought not to be stupid and dreary to-day,” she began, after a
moment; “for I have had a letter from Reginald this morning, full of
his plans and his hopes, and he says he shall be here in three weeks.
That is good news, is it not?--I was half afraid his degree would
keep him dawdling at Oxford.”

“Good news, indeed,” Ernest said, warmly, “for me as well as for you.”

“I thought you would be glad. Do you know, Mr. De Grey, I really
think you like Reginald as much as he deserves.”

“_Like_ him!” Ernest repeated gravely, for the thought of Reginald
brought feelings of self-condemnation; “no! that is not what _I_
ought to say--I _reverence_ him.”

“So do I,” she said, smiling; “on that one single point we agree.”

“Only on that one?”

“Only on that one, I think; at least I cannot remember any other. I
think we always disagree.”

“I should be very sorry to think so,” he said with a good deal of
earnestness.

“Why, don’t you know that the strongest disagreements make the
strongest friendships? so at least this book says,” touching the
novel that lay beside her; “and so I suppose that _we_ are to be very
great friends.”

He made no answer. She spoke so lightly, so carelessly--it was one of
the moments when the vision suddenly faded; but suddenly, swiftly,
and never so brightly, the next instant it rose again before him;
for, leaning forward on her arm, a faint blush on her lovely face,
and a faint tone of pique, or rather of reproach, in her sweet voice,
she said,--

“You don’t seem to care for that. I thought you would have been glad
to think that we should be friends.”

He almost started; and with more than earnestness--with agitation in
voice, and look, and manner, he replied, “You do not think so: you
know too well what I hope, if I could but dare to say so.”

He was leaning forward, his eyes intently resting upon her. She had
forced him so to look, and so to speak: but he never had so forgotten
himself before; and alarmed and displeased, and unconscious what he
meant, she drew back with a quick movement, and a deep and startled
blush.

And the vision suddenly and silently disappeared,--not for the moment
flitting and returning again,--but the mist dispersed, he awoke.

He also drew back, and sate, his hat in his hand, in profound
meditation. How wrongly had he judged her--so he mused; and how
wrongly he had acted. With her careless innocent charm of manner
she was but inviting him to ease and to confidence; and how had he
rewarded her?--He had put a meaning to her words they did not bear;
he had taken advantage of her thoughtless frankness,--of the intimacy
into which circumstances had thrown them. He was a wretch, unworthy
to be admitted into her society;--this was his conclusion. But he
would repair what he had done,--there, in her presence, he would bind
himself by the most solemn vow to be tempted to such a forgetfulness
of duty no more.

The silence caused by these meditations lasted for a considerable
time. It was Camilla who first recovered herself, and laughing to
conceal a little embarrassment, and, as if to invite a return to
their former easy footing, addressed him:

“Will you never speak again, Mr. De Grey? You are not very civil.”

“I beg your pardon!” he said, getting up with a grave smile;
“but I had forgotten myself. I have a good many things to take
up my thoughts; but I ought to remember that it is very rude and
ill-mannered to bring my thoughts here. I ought to have remembered
it before.”

“But I don’t think it rude; I hope you don’t think I do. You know,”
she continued with the same enchanting blush, influenced to speak by
a feeling of pity which at the moment she scarcely understood, and
did not pause to analyze; “you know, if we are to be great friends,
we must not be ready to take offence at every little trifle.”

“You are very kind to say so,” Ernest replied steadily and
composedly, still under the influence of his new resolutions; “but I
hope I shall not try you again. It is a bad day with me in every way:
I know that I have offended in more ways than one.” He held out his
hand, and disappeared before she had time to say more.

Camilla quickly forgot the impression of that one look and those
few words which had startled her; and in their occasional meetings
all went on as it had done before. She was very childish,--very
thoughtless; this was her only excuse, and she needed one.

The trials of life are various. Some have one hard fight, and coming
off victorious, are for ever at peace. The conquest is so complete,
the root of the evil so completely cut off, that they are assailed no
more. Others live in warfare all their life long,--never so yielding
as utterly to fall, never so conquering as entirely to triumph! These
are they who are

                “Pinioned with mortality
    As an entangled, hamper’d thing.”

These are they whose thirst for earthly happiness is too intense;
these are they whose strong affections make strong afflictions, and
raise for themselves trials in paths so peaceful and flowery, that
men for the most part would pass along them with a dancing step,--and
such an one was poor Ernest!

He returned with something of renewed attention to his duties.
He resisted the impression of Camilla’s manner; he resisted, or
thought he resisted, the risings of fresh hope; but he was restless
and depressed, and as he went about his unloved tasks, he was
unceasingly asking himself why object after object on which his heart
was set was denied to him,--why desire after desire was withheld!
And while thus repiningly pondering, he forgot--as many are apt in
disappointment to forget--that while a few things were withheld from
him, a shower of abundant and unmerited blessings were falling upon
his head.




                             CHAPTER XIV.

        For oft when summer leaves were bright
        And every flower was bathed in light,
          In sunshine moments past,
        My wilful heart would burst away
        From where the holy shadow lay,
          Where Heaven my lot had cast.
                                        THE CHRISTIAN YEAR.

        Think not of rest--though dreams be sweet,
        Start up and ply your heaven-ward feet;
        Is not God’s oath upon your head,
        Ne’er to sink back on slothful bed?
                                                 IBID.


Christmas came, and with Christmas Reginald arrived, and with
Christmas--came a visitor to Ernest De Grey.

Lady Vere and Camilla were returning from a long drive on a cold
afternoon the day after Christmas day; the wind was piercing, and the
air foggy and cold. At a distance of five or six miles from Cranleigh
they observed Ernest, leaning against a large tree by the side of
the high-road. At Camilla’s desire, to gratify her curiosity, they
drew up to speak to him.

“What are you doing?” she inquired as he approached the carriage;
“how can you stand there in this piercing wind?”

“Is it worse for me than for you?” he said, with a smile.

“Ah! but look at our fur cloaks; we can hardly be cold.”

“They are extremely comfortable,” observed Lady Vere; and added,
civilly, “I wish we could spare you one.”

“Thank you very much, but I am not cold. I don’t mind a fresh wind,
I rather like it; it seems to drive the clouds away from one’s
intellect,” and he half sighed as he spoke. “Besides, I have not been
standing long; I walked here to meet my mother, and was only resting:
if she does not come soon, I shall go on further.”

“Is your mother coming here?” Camilla said, in surprise.

“Yes, I expect her this afternoon,--but only for one whole day.”

“And is it for fear of losing one single minute of her visit, that
you come all this way to meet her?”

“Partly that and partly from other things. I thought,” he said with
a slight smile, “that she would feel strange coming back here alone;
and I could not go to the station to meet her, because it is St.
Stephen’s day, and I was detained by the service and other things.”

“You are a very good son, Mr. De Grey; I must say that for you,”
Camilla said approvingly. “I have often thought so before.”

“I should be so,” he replied earnestly.

She looked at him for a moment with a kind of curiosity; then looked
at her own mother’s vacant face, and sighed. Her advancing years
and deepening thought, Miss Vincent’s influence, and the style of
sentimental reading and reflection to which that influence led her,
enlarging much,--if it _could_ be so, even too much, on the necessity
and happiness of sympathy, often made her sigh over the want of such
a blessing in her home; and there was a tone of tenderness in her
voice, as leaning forward again to Ernest, she said,

“May I come to see your mother? I should like it; I am sure I should
like her so very much.”

He coloured with pleasure at her tone and her words; but endeavouring
to conceal any too great expression of his feeling, replied only
quietly, how happy her visit would make both his mother and himself.

“Then I shall come to-morrow--and mamma too. Mamma, I am sure you
would like to make acquaintance with Mrs. De Grey--shouldn’t you?”

“It would give me, I assure you, the very greatest pleasure,” Lady
Vere said, with her ever ready politeness.

“You must be very cold, I won’t stop you any more,” Ernest remarked,
and retreated from the carriage; “it is getting late, too.”

“Reginald is gone, you know; I am afraid he never will stay here
steadily again. I am very sorry his education is over.”

“He told me you were displeased with him,” Ernest said, smiling;
“but I hope you have forgiven him; he could not help it.”

“I got up to breakfast with him at six this very bad morning; don’t
you think that looks like forgiveness?”

“I think it does indeed.” And the carriage drove on, leaving Ernest
in a reverie of a very lover-like kind; the sound of a rattling
post-chaise, however, quickly aroused him, and Camilla was for a time
forgotten, in the intense pleasure with which he saw his mother again.

Mr. De Grey had determined never to visit the neighbourhood of Clare
Abbey; and so uncertain were his spirits, and so constant his desire
for attention, that his wife, unwilling to leave him even for a
day, had scarcely contemplated the possibility of seeing her son in
his new home. During the last few weeks, however, his letters had
troubled her. He said nothing of his feelings, made no complaint;
he himself fancied he wrote as usual, but there was in their tone a
melancholy and depression, so constant and so evident, that she felt
called upon by absolute necessity to inquire into the cause. At a
short notice, therefore, she came for a short visit to Cranleigh. But
the visit was little calculated to set her mind at ease. Ernest was
excited by her coming, and was besides determined to be cheerful; but
though something of the depression of his spirits he could and did
conceal, he could not (to a mind as true as his, it was impossible)
conceal the languor and heartlessness with which his duties were
performed. Something more than happiness was at stake, that Mrs. De
Grey saw plainly, and though Ernest shrank, as he never had done
before, from the least allusion to himself and his own state of mind,
it did not need Mrs. Cook’s dark hints and mysterious allusions, to
lead her to guess the cause.

“I hope, mamma, you will be very particularly civil to Mrs. De Grey,”
Camilla said, as they drove up to the door of the parsonage early in
the afternoon; “you know it is almost like going to see yourself.”

“How so, my dear Camilla?” inquired her mother, with a puzzled look.

“Why, mamma, you know if Mr. De Grey had not lost his fortune, Mrs.
De Grey would have been in your place at Clare Abbey.”

“True, Camilla,--but,” she added, with unusual acuteness, “I should
never have been at the parsonage.”

“Well, mamma, I hope, at any rate, that you will be very civil.”

“I hope I always am civil,” replied Lady Vere, with complacency.
Nevertheless, warned by Camilla, she gathered up her powers for a
more than ordinary show of politeness.

And she _was_ extremely civil, and kind as well as civil; but how
could her kindness or civility be thought of, in presence of the
winning grace and gentleness of Camilla’s manner? The tenderness
with which she and Reginald always thought of the De Greys, and
which on the present occasion could so safely and properly be shown,
gave an added charm to her usual fascinating cordiality; and nothing
prettier could have been conceived than the half tender, half smiling
face--the half playful and half serious words with which she gave
Mrs. De Grey her own welcome to the neighbourhood.

With pleased and grateful admiration Mrs. De Grey regarded her, but
she turned her eyes from her lovely face to cast them with pity
and sympathy on her son. Her attempt at sympathy was, however, in
vain. Ernest was not observing her--was not thinking of himself;
inexpressible and irrepressible feelings were in his mind as he
watched Camilla. Her manner to his mother had placed her on the
pinnacle of human perfection. He thought he never had loved her as
he ought--never done her justice before: he was lost and gone in a
trance of gratitude and admiration.

He was standing near the window, thoughtful and abstracted, when
Camilla, leaving her mother in the exhibition of her necessary
civilities to Mrs. De Grey, joined him.

“Do you know, Mr. De Grey,” she said, playfully, “I have wished so
much and so often to see your house, and though I have often hinted
my wish, you never would offer to show it. I am afraid that must have
been the cause of my great desire to come here to-day.”

“I never thought of your wishing to see it,” he said, smiling, “or I
am sure I should have been only too happy. What do you think of it,
now you do see it?” He turned a chair into a more convenient posture
as he spoke, and moved it towards her.

She sat down and looked about her. “It is not only because I always
think new rooms pretty, but really and truly I think this the
prettiest room I ever saw.”

And her admiration was justified; for it _was_ one of the prettiest
rooms of the kind that could have been imagined. The furniture was
light and suitable; the chintz, one of the prettiest of chintzes; and
the sea-green walls were ornamented by engravings (proclaiming the
owner’s active tastes) from some of Landseer’s choicest pictures. All
looked fresh and bright and habitable--a perfect picture of domestic
comfort.

“I am glad you admire it,” Ernest said, much gratified, “for I must
say I think it pretty myself.”

“If I say quite what I think--I think it a great deal too pretty for
you,” and she moved her head emphatically as she spoke. “I had no
idea that clergymen made themselves so comfortable.”

“I assure you I more than agree with you,” Ernest replied, laughing,
yet seriously also. “I never go to see Mrs. Hervey without feeling
ashamed of myself. But it is not my fault; everything you see was
given to me. My rector at Chesford gave me the furniture, and his
sisters the paper and the chintz, my father and mother gave me the
books, and two very old friends, Harry and Leopold Leslie, gave me
those pretty engravings. Whatever you may think of me, I will not be
set down as luxurious and extravagant.”

“I think Mr. De Grey,” and she looked up at him, “that you seem to
be unusually fortunate in finding friends.” There was something of
mingled softness and sadness in her voice which might have been,
which partly was, misunderstood.

“I am indeed,” he replied earnestly, and his eyes rested upon her
with a look of such deep and grateful tenderness, that his mother,
attracted by the gaze, paused in her conversation to watch its effect
upon the young face lifted to his. She gazed for a moment, then
turned away her head with a sigh. It was not that in sober judgment
she desired a return of Ernest’s affection--but reason and feeling do
not always speak the same language, and she could not read the signs
of his perfect love and her indifference unmoved.

Of the feelings that prompted Ernest’s words--of the meaning that
shone in his clear blue eyes, Camilla was apparently unconscious.
Thought, indeed, and something of sadness was on her brow, but it was
no thought for him. The subject of her meditations shortly appeared.

“You are more fortunate than I am. There is no one in the world,
except, perhaps, Reginald, who would have taken so much thought and
care for me.” She was expressing a growing feeling of melancholy and
discontent which had taken possession of her mind--it came she knew
not how or whence, but it was filling her with vague repinings and
indefinable longings.

“Why do you say so?” Ernest replied gravely, for he was endeavouring
not to say something else, and the endeavour made him restrained.
“You cannot think it, and you should not say what you do not think.”

“But I do think it,” she said, sadly; “I always say what I mean.
Perhaps you think Miss Vincent is a great friend; but I know just
how much of a friend she is, and how much she cares for me. I like
her more than she likes me; and there is no one else--no; and even
Reginald, I sometimes think, does not really care for me; at least he
despises as well as cares.”

Ernest made no answer. He would have given the world to speak; but
his own thought was not to be spoken, and he could say nothing else.

“I believe you think I deserve no better,” Camilla continued, partly
in the same tone, but a little petulantly also. “I dare say you
are right; but, though it may be right, I often wish it were not
so. I often wish that Reginald were not so taken up with his great
thoughts;--at this time especially, I have wished a good deal that he
would think more of me.”

“He was very much occupied these few days,” Ernest said, suppressing
with a violent effort any allusion to himself, though he thought
himself a brute for his coldness. “It will not be so again. Don’t
tell me that there is any shadow of discontent between your brother
and you, for it would grieve me to think so.”

“Well, there is none,” she cried, warmly, “or at least,” with a
touch of sadness again, “if there is, it is because I am unworthy
of him. Sometimes I wish I were more like him, and sometimes, a
little, I wish that he were more like me. Sometimes I feel as if our
happiest days were past--that he will grow greater, and I shall grow
less--that he will grow better, and I shall grow worse; and then he
will hate me.”

“If I were you,” Ernest said, still gravely, “I would not allow
myself to think of the possibility of such a thing. You know we
don’t grow worse quite without our own will.”

“But I am not sure that my will is quite against it. I don’t know--it
seems to me that everybody is growing very grave and severe, and
I don’t like gravity. You, too, Mr. De Grey, you are graver than
you used to be. You are as grave now as Reginald is, and much more
severe.”

“Severe!” he exclaimed hastily, startled into anxiety; “do _you_
think me severe?” But, whether consciously or unconsciously, his
mother’s eye fell upon him as he spoke, seeming to warn and to
restrain him, and with something of formal quietness the sentence was
finished. “I certainly have no right to be severe with any one except
myself.”

“But you are severe--” she was persisting, when they were interrupted.

“Mrs. De Grey says she won’t dine with us, Camilla.” Mrs. De Grey
smiled at Lady Vere’s concise communication of her refusal; but she
did not contradict it.

“Then I was right, mamma,” Camilla said, leaving her seat, and taking
another on the opposite side of the room. “I said,” she continued,
leaning towards Mrs. De Grey, “that you would not: I said that it
would be a shame if you were to spoil all Mr. De Grey’s pleasure by
dining out on this one single day. But I am sorry, very sorry, that I
am right.” And she smiled so prettily, so kindly, so engagingly, that
Ernest turned away, and stood looking out of the window during the
remainder of the visit.

The conversation continued for a few minutes between Mrs. De Grey and
Camilla--the mood of the past hour forgotten, Camilla as gay again as
a child. Then Lady Vere rose from her seat, and a repetition of her
civil speeches recommenced.

“I am so glad to have seen your pretty house,” Camilla said to
Ernest, while the ceremonial was proceeding; “for now I shall be
relieved from pitying you. I _have_ pitied you very much and very
often for living here alone; but now I am sure I need not pity you
any more.”

“Don’t pity me for living alone,” he said, with a little irritation
in his manner, “for I like it.”

“Do you really like living alone?” she inquired, with some surprise.

“Yes, I really do.” And, having put her and Lady Vere into the
carriage, he proceeded to prove the truth of his words by leaving his
mother’s society, and going for a solitary walk.

There are some good actions, which do not receive as they merit the
reward of an approving conscience, and Ernest’s self-control was of
that nature. He felt angry with himself, and angry with his mother,
because he saw her views of his duty agreed with his. Never had
Camilla been so gentle, so engaging, so lovable; never had he been so
indifferent in manner, so repulsive. And why was it to be, he asked,
and why was he to thwart his own wishes, and perhaps hers also? Or if
not now, if too childish and thoughtless now to dream of love, why
might he not teach her to love him,--win her to love him? What in
the world could make her happier than a love like his? So he walked
by himself, and talked with himself, till conflicting views and
conflicting feelings, and indulged dreams, had reduced his mind to a
state of uncontrollable irritation and excitement.

He returned to the house only when he dared, for his mother’s sake,
remain no longer absent. She was seated in the quiet room, the lamp
before her, engaged in writing to her husband. On Ernest’s entrance
she looked up, and laid down her pen; but, after a short observation
of his countenance, she resumed it again, and merely greeting him
with a smile, stooped her head over her letter, and appeared to
be lost in thought. Ernest stood for a moment by the fire; then
listlessly walking to the book-shelves, he took down a large book,
and placing it on the opposite side of the lamp, sat down before it.
He put his elbows on the book, crossed his hands, rested his forehead
upon them, and began to read.

His mother watched him at intervals. His eyes were steadily fixed
on the page, but the page was never turned. She made, however, no
remark, quietly finished her letter, sealed it, and laid it aside,
unperceived by him sought for her work, and sat down again. Then at
last, suddenly and quietly, she broke the silence.

“You asked me last night, Ernest, to recommend you a text: I have
thought of one on which I should much like you to preach, and which
would be appropriate to the end of the old and the beginning of the
new year.”

She drew a Bible towards her, and opening it, placed it before him
with her finger on the following words:--

“_No man having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit
for the kingdom of God._”

Ernest looked at it--looked at his mother, and coloured deeply; then
suddenly closing the book and speaking in a very resolute tone he
said, “No, mother; whatever I may be, I will not be dishonest--I will
not preach what I do not practise.”

“But, Ernest,” she said, seriously, “what do you mean by not
practising? Should you not preach and practise too?”

“I should, mother, but I do not. I confess it,” he continued,
passionately and excitedly, “I do look back--I would not be what
I am--I would be what I am not--I would be _anything_ which could
give me a better hope of winning, a better right to try to win _her_
heart.”

He turned rapidly over some pages; then again placing his elbows on
the book, and shading his face, began to read.

Advice, it is said, is only powerful when it puts into language the
secret oracle of our souls. There is a time to speak and a time to
keep silence; and the time for speech is not at that moment when,
through passion or excitement, the voice of the secret oracle is
unheard. Most unwise are they who force the responsibility of even
sweet and wholesome counsel on an unprepared spirit.

Mrs. De Grey was well aware of this, as of most of the secrets of the
human mind; and she suffered her son’s passionate and wayward speech
to pass uncorrected and unreproved.

Her forbearance touched him and restored him to himself, sooner than
a thousand arguments would have done, and he was the first to recur
to the subject.

As they sat together in the evening, he suddenly rose from his seat,
and withdrawing himself from the bright light of the lamp, said, with
an effort, “Mother, you must have thought me very weak, very wicked,
when I spoke this afternoon.”

“No, my dear Ernest,” she answered, tenderly, “those were not my
thoughts. It is easy to speak of the weakness of those who are deeply
tried--easy to condemn--but none but those who suffer know what their
trial is. _You_ can tell how, and how far you have failed--_I_ only
grieved for you.”

He sighed and said nothing.

His mother paused for a moment, then continued steadily, “Grieved for
you, Ernest, but I did not, I do not despair. You have indulged in
feelings that must not be indulged; but you will not utterly fail.
You will arouse yourself, and you will conquer yet.”

“_Conquer_, mother! You think then it must be so. I must conquer;
there is no other hope.”

“I do, Ernest,” she said, gently. “Consider Miss St. Maur’s youth,
and her father’s probable will, and then remember that you are _her_
guardian, as well as that of the poorest among the people. I cannot
think it is for you to attempt to gain her heart. And besides this,
Ernest,” she continued steadily, for it was not for her to shrink
from speaking the truth, however painful, “she does not love you.”

He knew it as well as she did. When the question unexcitedly was
asked, he _knew_ that if she did love him, her words and actions
would be far other than what they were; but the calm conviction of
his mother’s words fell like lead upon his soul.

He sat by the fire, playing with the ashes, drawing with the poker
mysterious signs and figures. He could not reply to her.

“What _might_ be at a future day,” she began again, after a pause,
“I do not know. That it would be _impossible_ for you to win her
heart, I am far from thinking. How could I think it, dear Ernest,
when I know you, and what the treasure of your love would be? But I
do not think she loves you now, or wishes to love you; and I do not
think it would be for her happiness or yours--for her good or for
yours, even if there were not other considerations--that it should be
so. I feel her charms, dear Ernest, almost as you can do; I see her
beauty, and I feel that her mind is as full of natural beauty as her
most lovely face; but she is still almost a child, a wild, untaught
child--and I do not think the quiet, sober, _holy_ life which your
wife should lead, could be anything to her but a temptation.” She
paused again; she wished to hear him speak, and he spoke at last, and
with excitement in his tone.

“I know you are right, mother--I feel you are right--I have felt the
same again and again. Do not fear, I will not speak; if I cannot
conquer, I will at least be silent. I have vowed it before, and I
say it again before you, _my lips shall never tell her what I feel_.
Whatever may come, I will not reproach myself with having attempted
to win her love. But, mother,” he continued after a moment, in an
altered voice, “how is life to go on?--I often ask myself. This
perpetual struggle, it makes it burdensome, it makes it even hateful
to me.”

“Do you remember,” she said, with a smile, “how you longed in your
early days to be a hero?” He shook his head; his heroism had not been
of an enduring, suffering kind. “I remember it; and I remember too,”
she added fondly, “that you have fulfilled your early wish. If to
sacrifice for others our dearest hopes can make one so, you _have_
been a hero. Why are you to dread your power now?”

“Because I am not, mother, what I once was; I do not even feel as I
used to feel: I am become mean, low, selfish, and a coward.” He spoke
with vehemence.

“These are hard words, Ernest,” and his mother smiled faintly; “but
I will not contradict you. It _is_ cowardly in you, in me, in all,
to shrink from any plain duty that lies before us. But, Ernest,” she
continued more seriously, “will you submit to be a coward? You have
higher and holier motives than you had in your youth, and you know
better where to find the strength that will arm you to overcome.” She
stopped again, then again began with something of hesitation, “There
is one motive which I am almost afraid to point out to you, lest it
should influence you more than the one high motive which ought to
be yours. But earthly motives may and should influence us in their
degree, and this is far from being a merely earthly one. I wish
you to think of her whom you so fondly love, for whose welfare and
happiness, not in this world only, you are bound to provide. If she
sees you the guardian and teacher set over her by God himself,--if
she sees _you_ tied and bound with earthly care and earthly
passion,--how will she ever learn to rise? Surely, dear Ernest, you
have motives to awake and be strong.”

He made no answer; he was sitting in profound thought, his head
leaning against the chimney-piece. Unwilling to disturb him, or to
banish his meditations, conscious, too, that _one_ word in season is
better than many words, Mrs. De Grey said no more, but laying down
her work, left the room.

On her return, a short time afterwards, she found Ernest busily
engaged in writing. He looked up with a smile that seemed to invite
her approach,--a smile, if not a bright one, yet one that fell like
returning sunshine on her heart. She looked over his shoulder and
read his text, and stroked, as in his childhood, his dark glossy
hair, but no remark was made on either side, and the subject was
recurred to no more.

Something of languor had crept of late over Ernest’s sermons. It
could not have been otherwise; for it needs a singular gift of
eloquence, or a turn of mind bordering at least on hypocrisy, to
speak forcibly and persuasively on truths that are unfelt. No such
fault could however be found with his present discourse. It was in
one strain of passionate exhortation from beginning to end; it was
an address to himself as well as to his hearers, calling upon all to
awake from the sleep of sloth, and to arise from the death of sin,
and breaking forth from the bonds of their infirmities, to redeem in
the opening year the hours of their wasted life.

It was eloquence,--not the eloquence of new thoughts clothed in
choice words, and varied phrase, but the eloquence of simple truth,
poured forth from roused feelings and a fervent heart.




                              CHAPTER XV.

        Like some fair plant set by a heavenly hand,
        He grew, he flourish’d, and he blest the land;
        In all the youth his father’s image shined,
        Bright in his person, brighter in his mind.
                                               POPE’S ODYSSEY.

            The remembrance of youth is a sigh.
                                               ARABIAN PROVERB.


“What a sermon we had this morning! Edward,” remarked Mrs. Hervey to
her son, on the following Sunday evening; “it went right through my
old bones. If I were young and strong, and a man, I don’t know what
would not be the end of it.”

“True, mother, it was a sermon calculated to make much impression. I
wonder what young St. Maur thought of it.”

By “young St. Maur” Ernest’s exhortations were more profitably and
personally applied than by old Mrs. Hervey and her son.

Reginald had returned from Oxford much changed and improved. There
are certain times and occasions in life when, from no apparent
reason, the mind makes strides, accomplishing in a few weeks that
which the laggard footsteps of years have failed to fulfil. A change
of scene, a new acquaintance, a new book, or causes even less
apparent than these, have been the trumpet-call which has awakened
whole armies of feelings, whole hosts of thought and power, in a
youthful mind. Such an effect had this intercourse with Ernest De
Grey produced on Reginald St. Maur.

He was changed and improved, because he was become practical. In
dreaminess of mind, however high and exalted the dreams may be, there
is childishness. It is action that marks the man, and Reginald had
suddenly passed the boundary that separates the strong vigour of
manhood from the imaginations of the child. Few understand their own
powers of influence, and poor Ernest, earthly and earth-bound, had
little idea how his simple quiet words affected the loftier character
of his friend. He would have felt himself unworthy to influence him,
and perhaps he was so; but, as a bridle to a noble restive horse, so
Ernest’s clear views and practical judgments tamed and subdued the
soaring, but undefined, visions of the ambitious young man.

It was a mark of the true genius of Reginald’s mind,--the true
virtue of his character,--that he was so easily affected, so ready
to receive instruction. Many kinds of talent,--many who are called
clever, are narrow-minded and arrogant: they will not learn; but the
eye of true and pure genius is like a mirror, on which whatever is
light is necessarily reflected: so it was with him. Day by day as he
increased in age and stature, and outward beauty, he increased in
wisdom and knowledge also, till the eye almost ached to follow him,
so bright and full of promise was the dawning of his day.

With a glowing cheek and a sparkling eye, and a mind more glowing
and kindling within, Reginald listened to the sermon of Ernest De
Grey. It is the character of strong and vigorous truth, that, like
the cameleon, it changes its colours and adapts itself to the eye
of every beholder. An ignorant village girl remarked to one of her
companions, “That mother must have been telling tales of _her_, or
Mr. De Grey could never have preached as he did;” and the very same
idea passed through the thoughts of the highly-educated young man.
Ernest, he thought, must have seen _his_ dangers, have studied _his_
temptations, have wished to arouse _him_ to exertion with the dawning
of that first year of freedom and of life; and, responsive to the
call, he determined to arise, and indulge fancy’s dreams no more.

In the first freshness of feeling--in his first anxiety to
prove himself and his power--his thoughts recurred to Ernest’s
strongly-expressed desire for the restoration of the Church. It had
not been forgotten, but it had been superseded in his mind by dreams
of a more expansive kind. To Ernest, it might be much to have dreamed
in his youth of restoring a church to its original beauty--of making
way for the excluded forms of poor and lowly worshippers; but to
Reginald, whose desires for improvement spread “far as the breeze can
waft the billow’s foam,” it was a descent and humiliation.

With pleasure, however, as to a work laid ready to his hand, he
recurred to it now, and a few hours’ consideration had formed a
plan for its immediate accomplishment: a plan, perhaps, involving a
needless sacrifice on his part; but which, from the very necessity of
sacrifice, was acceptable.

On the Monday morning, he knocked at his father’s door, and was
admitted.

Lord Vere sat at a large table, with books before and around him.
He was engaged in some of the abstruse, bewildering metaphysical
speculations, in which alone he delighted, and from which he was
ever unwilling to be disturbed. As he raised his head on his son’s
approach, the “Well?” with which he received him was nothing less
than surly.

Reginald’s colour rose, for he was sensitive to repulse; but he was
not abashed by it. “If you are at leisure, father, I wish to speak to
you,” he said.

There was something in Reginald’s manner of speaking, which
superficial observers would have called formal; a grave and measured
tone, apparent even when at his ease, and still more observable in
his intercourse with his father; but closer observers, those who
watched the countenance changing as he spoke, would have seen that
his measured words were but the barriers by which he restrained an
eagerness perhaps too great, and an ardour liable to transgress the
common bounds of self-control. His manner and words on this occasion
were peculiarly grave and restrained, but never had their contrast
with his speaking countenance been more strangely seen.

“Speak on, then,” was Lord Vere’s uninviting reply to his son’s
request.

“I would not trouble you, father, with my ideas or desires, if I
could act upon them without your leave. But what I have to ask
requires your leave and assistance too.” Without explaining himself
further, he laid Ernest’s drawing of the Cranleigh Church upon his
father’s book.

“What have we here?” exclaimed Lord Vere ironically, after inspecting
the sketch for some moments. “I am no saint, Reginald, and if, bitten
by these new-fangled notions, you wish to persuade me to build and
endow churches, or rather _chapels_, you may spare your pains; I have
no such intentions.”

“No, father, I have no such wishes; my request is much more simple.
This is a drawing of Cranleigh Church as I suppose it once was, and
as it ought to be. It is now some months since Ernest De Grey pointed
out to me the improvement that might be made, and the advantage
the people would derive from its restoration. I listened coldly at
the time, for I am apt to dream dreams of many and great actions,
and to neglect even the small ones that lie at my feet; but now,
father, I feel that the years are creeping on, and that the pains you
have bestowed upon me should begin to bear fruit; and I should be
willing to enter on my life with some such work as this; to mark its
beginning by an offering to God and to man.”

Lord Vere listened to his son with fixed attention. He _knew_
Reginald’s character well; but it was very rarely that, in his
presence at least, that character was expressed in words. His answer,
however, was given in his usual ironical tone.

“If I were a philanthropist like you, Reginald, I should dream of
some more profitable scheme than that of adorning a church for a
parcel of ignorant rustics, who will be none the wiser when the work
is done.”

“Not the wiser, but perhaps the better, father. It is good to look on
beauty: I have felt it myself.”

And so at the moment the father seemed to feel likewise; for as his
eyes rested on the countenance before him, pure and glowing as the
face of a young seraph--a something as by magic touched his heart,
awaking thoughts which had long slept, calling forth a father’s
tenderness, of which till now he had been unconscious, kindling a
father’s pride and a father’s ambition--casting him back upon the
long past, sending him forth into the far future.

Of these varied thoughts, however, there was little evidence in Lord
Vere’s outward manner. His reply was in a degree, but only a degree,
less cold.

“Your dreams must bide their time, Reginald--bide _your_ time, I
should say; for even if I had a fancy for such airy schemes, my hands
are shackled. These are times when even the richest are poor; and had
I the inclination, I have not the power to throw my money away.”

“You misunderstand me, father: it is I who wish to do it. I have
considered and arranged it all, if you will only consent.”

And quietly and methodically, with a definiteness unlike the plans
of a dreamer, he detailed his intention. The probable cost of the
alterations and improvements was estimated at £2,000, the beauty of
the older parts of the building making any additions necessarily
costly. He purposed that his father should borrow the sum required on
the security of the property, and deduct a yearly sum of £100 or £150
from his allowance, until the whole was repaid.

Lord Vere listened, but shook his head.

“You are a dreamer indeed, Reginald. Wait a while. £500 a year is all
I can allow you; and let me tell you £500 a year is no inexhaustible
store. You will not thank me for shackling you with this claim for a
mere visionary good, when once you are fairly launched on your world
of pleasure and ambition.”

“I know, father, what you say is true,” Reginald said, thoughtfully.
“When fresh hopes and new desires arise, I may feel regret that I am
already so much bound; but, father, if this work is good now, it will
be so then, and I ought not to feel regret.” He paused and hesitated;
then added, “And if I do feel it, I ought to rejoice. Nothing great
or good will ever be done without self-denial, and the feeling of
this claim upon me will but animate me to more.”

A thousand hopes of a bright and active future sparkled in his
radiant eye, and again, as its beauty met his father’s gaze, his hard
heart melted within him.

“You shall have your will, Reginald,” he said, gravely, but with an
unwonted tone in his voice. “In a week from this time the money shall
be at your disposal. And now leave me.”

“And I was once like this,” mused the withered, care-worn man, as
the door closed and his head rested upon his hands, “full, like
him, of the hopes of a high ambition. For me, too, the world once
shone brightly--a theatre where great deeds were to be done. And
what am I now?--and what now to me is the world or its hopes, its
welfare or its end?” He paused--then another voice, the voice of
conscience, arose. “But was I like him? Did such a light ever shine
in my eyes--such a fire ever burn in my heart? No--or here, or thus,
I should not now be. What were my hopes, what was my ambition?--self,
the pride of self! And what is its end?”

He drew his book impatiently before him, and turned to his daily
tasks; for the self-examination was too painful to be prolonged.

If any are ever tempted to wonder at the waste of man’s short
existence in the years of infancy, childhood, and early youth,
surely, without other thoughts, the freshening influence of
youth upon hardened manhood and withered age might be in itself
a sufficient answer. Where but in youth (speaking of earthly
influences) shall the heart battered by the world recruit itself,
or taste again the sweet waters of its early virtue and holiness?
It is when suddenly recalled by the sight of youthful innocence and
enthusiasm to the remembrance of our own lost glory, that we exclaim,
“Dreams of my youth, where are they?” and Echo’s mournful answer has
been the first fruits of many a late yet true repentance.

A light, unconsciously to himself, had risen in the void of Lord
Vere’s life, and with time it might bear fruit: the fountain was
unsealed from whence, dry as it now was, the springs of a healthful
stream might one day burst, and pour its waters on his heart. “What
a single word can do!”--single words and single glances also;
for in that day, strangely and suddenly, and to both at the time
unconsciously, the hearts of the father and son were knit together.

“Do you remember our conversation about the church, Ernest?” Reginald
asked, a few days after he had obtained his father’s consent to his
wishes. He and Ernest De Grey were walking together, and passed
before the old church as he spoke.

“Yes, very well,” Ernest replied, with a smile. “On that day, and
that day only, you disappointed me.”

“I know I did: I felt it, and grieved for it afterwards.”

“It was the only definite plan I ever formed in my youth,” Ernest
continued, “which had not some kind of selfish gratification for
its object; and for that reason, I suppose, I have always cherished
it, and recurred to it with satisfaction when my life and feelings
condemned me too strongly. Your cold reception humbled me; for I
thought how little to you was that which once had been my best
ambition. I think, however,” he added again, “that on this single
occasion I was right, and you were wrong. It is not perhaps, as I
once thought, a great thing to do; but when I compare the state of
this church with the beauty and order of Clare Abbey, I often think
of the words of the prophet: ‘Ye dwell in your ceiled houses, and
this house lieth waste.’”

“You are right, Ernest, very right,” Reginald said warmly, “and it
shall be done. Your wish shall be realized. You must help me with
your thoughts and your advice, and we will try,” he added smiling,
“to make our second temple overpass the first.”

“Is it to be done?--Have you undertaken it?” Ernest said, eagerly and
yet sadly. He _was_ pleased, he wished it to be done, and yet at the
moment he felt a pang at the idea that it should be done by any but
himself.

“I have undertaken it; yes, for I have the means,” Reginald replied,
his quick perception, his natural courteousness at once reading the
thought that flushed Ernest’s cheek; “but what are the means compared
to the intention?--the intention and the offering are yours.”

Ernest shook his head mournfully; conscience was suggesting that he
might have been long in Reginald’s place, and the dream, still but a
dream; pleasing his fancy, but by no self-denial fulfilled. “So it
will ever be,” he said, answering his own thoughts, not Reginald’s
words; “I can think--but you act and do.”

“And if I do, Ernest, who is it prompts me to act?” He paused; then,
with a slight smile, repeated the concluding words of Ernest’s last
discourse.

Ernest coloured deeply; for already the glow of feeling which had
prompted his animated exhortations was fading from his own heart--the
resolutions beginning to falter--the thirst for earthly happiness to
gush forth again.

“Dear Ernest,” Reginald said, laying his hand on his shoulder with
a peculiar grave tenderness which occasionally marked his composed
manner, “no single word that falls from your lips returns to you
void, so far as I am concerned; and if,” he continued, his eye
kindling, “the day should ever come, when, as I trust, I shall do
some service to God and his Church, to my country and mankind; you,
Ernest, will have been the guide that led, and the teacher that
warned me. I _must_ say this, for you are humble, and not proud, like
me.”

“I _am_ humble,” Ernest said, with something of bitterness against
himself; “humbled to the dust, to hear you say such words; say them
no more, for I cannot bear them:” and he changed the conversation.
Southey says, there is no humiliation like the consciousness of
unmerited praise; and it is true.


                       END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.




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