Jasper Lyle Part 40

Mr Daveney had summoned resolution to convey the above intelligence with perfect calmness, and as he spoke he clearly perceived the inward working of the heart he probed, despite the struggle against the display of outward suffering.

As he referred to the "private letter," Sir John Manvers re-seated himself, but forbore to take up the doc.u.ment, although his hand was impulsively stretched out to take it. At the mention of the wreck of the _Trafalgar_, the handsome face of the proud General was again deeply suffused--the flush pa.s.sed away, leaving a livid ring round the eyes and mouth, and when the Commissioner ceased to speak, the countenance before him, with its ashy lips and stony orbs, more resembled that of a corpse than a living being.

The stern man moved his head with the rigidity of a figure worked by springs--he waved his hand, indicating a wish to be left alone, but Daveney did not stir. Hat in hand, he still stood contemplating with an air of earnest sympathy the unfortunate Sir John Manvers--_the father of Jasper Lyle--the convict--the rebel--the doomed traitor_!

Several minutes elapsed, mind and body seemed equally prostrated; but Sir John's senses had not forsaken him, he had still the _capacity to suffer_. His right hand lay fixed as marble on the table beside the fatal letter, the nails were blue from the stagnant blood within, his chest heaved with stifled sighs, the stony orbs grew bloodshot, the ghastly features were convulsed.

He fought manfully, desperately, against nature, and conquered. He rose, and trembling violently, Daveney was prepared to see him fall; but although he tottered, he kept his ground.

Still he could not speak. A watch ticking on the camp-table sounded like Time pa.s.sing with a heavy tread; the din of the camp was but a murmur in the distance, but it seemed strangely distinct. So did the sentry's foot on the gra.s.s. How close he was; a canvas screen only separated the suffering General from the careless happy soldier. A chorus rose clear and joyous from the banks of the river, and laughter, shrill and boisterous, pierced the air.

All these accustomed sounds now jarred harshly on the Commissioner's ear, as before him stood the stern, cold, haughty man, suddenly a.s.sailed by trouble, his ride tottering in the dust. He, the centre of this busy crowd, had not a friend to whom he could turn for support or consolation. In the kind Daveney's breast he might have met with sympathy, but his was a nature which resented pity. Again he bade the Commissioner depart, and the latter, regretful and anxious, retired, leaving the unhappy man to the solitude of his marquee.

The sun was setting, the camp-ground was dotted with fires, the games were over, but the laughter and the song continued as the soldiers lounged over their evening meal. The herd-boys were driving the flocks and cattle over the heathy uplands, and Marion, Ormsby, and Mr Trail stood at the rude gate of the new-made garden, watching the Commissioner's approach from the lines.

He was so intent on what had pa.s.sed between the General and himself, that he forgot to ask the usual question, "How is my darling?" but he was reminded of her by Marion telling him that her sister had fallen into a deep and quiet sleep, and that the medical attendant foretold improvement from the moisture which already bedewed her tense brow and wasted hands.

At midnight Daveney looked forth upon the hushed camp-ground. The stillness was only broken by the occasional challenge between the watchful sentinels, and but one light burnt strong and clear in the vast and tented field; it was in the General's marquee.

Before daybreak the Commissioner, accompanied by Mr Trail, and followed by May, reconnoitred the location in which he had placed his dwelling.

Perfect silence reigned throughout, but still that light shone steadily.

Oh! to have lifted the canva.s.sed screen of that pavilion, and seen therein a strong man and a proud, pacing, pacing, to and fro, to and fro, with arms lightly folded across his chest, striving to stifle the emotions which rose and fell like a heavy tide, as his thoughts dragged him back, and forced him to look upon the wasted, the irredeemable past!

And the laughing sun came forth from his gorgeous eastern throne, and poured his beams alike upon the sleeping soldier and the waking General, and it mocked the light of the poor lamp even as the things of heaven mock all things of earth!

Both the public and the private despatch from Sir Adrian Fairfax to Sir John Manvers lay open on the camp-table.

The first simply contained the official information respecting Lee; the second was as follows:--

"My dear Sir John,--

"I have requested my good friend Daveney, the present Commissioner for the Gaika tribes, to prepare you for intelligence which it gives me unmitigated pain to write. My resolution not to accept the post of Governor till my work here was done was founded on the best principles; but I regret it now for your sake, since as you will have learned, before opening this, the man Lee, named in my official despatch, 10th May, 18--, is no other than Jasper Lyle. At present his ident.i.ty is known only to the Daveneys, their immediate friends, and myself, and I see no way of your avoiding personal contact or correspondence with him, unless you resolve to throw over publicly the reins of government to me.

Would to heaven, my dear friend, that this man had perished among the unfortunate pa.s.sengers of the _Trafalgar_, or that he had fallen in the encounter with the Dutch at the stony ridges! My chief desire now is to hear that he has got clear into the upper districts; but unhappily he has made enemies among the people he affects to a.s.sist, and I am told they are determined to yield him up to me. In such a case, as a soldier, you know I have no alternative.

"In a word, my dear Sir John, my mind would be greatly relieved at hearing that either you or he had quitted the colony. Pardon language that appears uncourteous; my pen fails in expressing as it ought all that I feel, all that I am ready to do in any way in which I may serve you at this lamentable crisis.

"With great regard, and a.s.suring you of my earnest regret at this unfortunate and unlooked-for result of the late action against the misguided Boers,

"I beg you to believe me most truly yours,

"Adrian Fairfax."

"To Sir John Manvers, Bart, K.C.B."

"Known only to the Daveneys, their immediate friends, and myself!" Sir John Manvers stopped from time to time in his circ.u.mscribed walk, and read and re-read these odious and degrading words frequently during the night, and as the sun poured his beams athwart the sickly lamp, he held the letter to the flame, and finally casting the blackened paper to the ground, crushed the ashes beneath his boot.

"So so--I am a gazing-stock for the Daveneys and their immediate friends,--that soft-voiced, cautious missionary, that idler Ormsby, that Frankfort, who writes such d--d laconic memoranda, that are in reality orders! I am a mark for bad men's scorn and good men's pity. _Good_ men! What const.i.tutes a good man? Is he one whom the devil has not been _permitted_ to tempt?--_permitted_ to tempt, mark that!

"That one fatal error of my life. Was it my misfortune or my crime that the citadel of my heart was weak, and that I could not drive out the Tempter, who had been permitted to besiege and enter it?

"I am utterly confounded--which way shall I turn?--There seems but one remedy."

He took up a pistol which lay, loaded only with powder, on the table.

With this he was wont to summon his valet, who occupied a tent too distant to distinguish any other call.

Had it been loaded with ball, he might have lifted it to his head. He cast it impatiently from him; the trigger caught in his watch-chain, and the weapon went off. The valet, who stood with his master's coffee at hand, entered the marquee almost immediately.

The General instinctively turned his back upon his servant; the latter, accustomed to execute his duties without observation and without, thanks, placed the little tray, with its small silver service, on the table, and stood waiting further orders.

"You may go," said the General, in his usual voice; and the valet retired.

It is indeed strange how a mind torn for hours by conflicting emotions can in a moment, when pressed by necessity, bring itself to act in the most trifling occurrences of life; reaction once produced, the brain partially recovers its tone.

The morning light, the sound of the stirring _reveille_, its bugle echoes answering each other from kloof to kloof, the rattle of accoutrements, and the roll of the martial drums, with their shrill accompaniments, the fifes, awoke the little world around.

Day is well represented as scattering roses in her path, for she brings much comfort to the wretched, whose wretchedness is not all of their own making. Amid the mult.i.tude who wake to the sunlight, some kind hand may be stretched out to those who suffer. Hope is ever moving among the crowd, but her mirror, remember, turns its bright face only to the repentant--the truly repentant--to those who lift up their hearts to an offended G.o.d, and pray that they may sin no more. Those who suffer remorse, and dread only the world's contempt, have no part in the bright promises of Hope; and all the freshness and the fragrance that life offers to the humbly sorrowful falls to dust and ashes before the breath of pride, which trembles before man, but seeks to defy the very laws divine.

Yes; Sir John Manvers repented him truly of his former sin, not because he feared G.o.d, but because he dreaded man's scorn and pity.

Reader, do we not see this day by day?

Sir John Manvers's destruction of Sir Adrian Fairfax's letter was perfectly characteristic of the man. It was a written record against him, therefore it should perish; and could he have seen all those who were initiated in his secret perish likewise, he would have gone forth to the world apparently unmoved, or with satisfaction so predominant as to smother all remorseful sentiments.

Still they did not know all.

The real secret lay dormant in a little dark nook in one of the remotest corners of Cornwall, and was inscribed in letters, now somewhat browned by time, in a huge old volume, a parish register, kept as securely as if the clergyman's whole welfare depended on the safety of its contents, in a dim oak-wainscoted Vestry-room of a dilapidated church.

In a leaf of that register might be read these words, among the Marriages solemnised in the parish of G--, county of Cornwall.

"John Lyle and Mary L--, residing at G--.

"In the presence of us, etc, etc."

By this time, dear reader, you will have given up all hopes of learning the early part of Sir John Manvers's history from himself. He was not the man to indite a record of his sin, or "folly," as he would probably have termed it, even to his friend Sir Adrian Fairfax. I shall therefore relate as succinctly as possible those events connected with his opening career which influenced him through life, and finally brought him to the strait in which he stands so miserably before you.

His first prospects were uncheering. His father held a small curacy in Devonshire, and the circ.u.mstance of this poor curate marrying the daughter of a baronet, in whose household he held the appointment of chaplain, instead of leading to prosperous results, was the means of impeding his progress in the Church. The union was cursed with the deep and undying resentment of the lady's father, and the poor curate struggled on till the grave gave him that rest which earth had denied the living.

The wife he had chosen was not worthy of him. She had married him from pique, and when he felt the world's frowns most keenly, she told him so.

But she did not often remind him of the wrong she had "done herself."

Cold, sullen, impatient of misfortune, and angry with him whose fault had been in loving her too well, she nursed her wrath in silence. But it was stamped upon her haughty brow, her dilated nostril, her curled lip. She lived upon it! She looked upon the whole world as her enemy; but the world did not think her worth quarrelling with--some called her "poor Mrs Lyle."

"Poor Mrs Lyle! Who made me so?" she would say; and then, because her Christian husband met her scorn without retort, she would utter some bitter word, indicative of contempt, and relapse again into gloom.