John Halifax, Gentleman Part 96

"Love--"

"Don't, John! don't speak to me just yet. It is so terrible to think of. Both my boys--both my two n.o.ble boys! to be made miserable for that girl's sake. Oh! that she had never darkened our doors. Oh! that she had never been born."

"Nay, you must not speak thus. Remember--Edwin loves her--she will be Edwin's wife."

"Never!" cried the mother, desperately; "I will not allow it. Guy is the eldest. His brother has acted meanly. So has she. No, John, I will NOT allow it."

"You will not allow what has already happened--what Providence has permitted to happen? Ursula, you forget--they love one another."

This one fact--this solemn upholding of the pre-eminent right and law of love,--which law John believed in, they both believed in, so sacredly and firmly--appeared to force itself upon Mrs. Halifax's mind.

Her pa.s.sion subsided.

"I cannot judge clearly. You can--always. Husband, help me!"

"Poor wife!--poor mother!" he muttered, caressing her, and in that caress himself all but giving way--"Alas! that I should have brought thee into such a sea of trouble."

Perhaps he referred to the circ.u.mstance of his bringing Miss Silver into our house; perhaps to his own blindness, or want of parental caution, in throwing the young people continually together. However, John was not one to lament over things inevitable; or by overweening blame of his own want of foresight, to imply a doubt of the foreseeing of Providence.

"Love," he said, "I fear we have been too anxious to play Deus ex machina with our children, forgetting in whose Hands are marrying and giving in marriage--life's crosses and life's crowns. Trouble has come when we looked not for it. We can but try to see the right course, and seeing it, to act upon it."

Ursula a.s.sented--with a bursting heart it seemed--but still she a.s.sented, believing, even as in her young days, that her husband's will was wisest, best.

He told her, in few words, all that Edwin had that day confessed to his father; how these two, being much together, had become attached to one another, as young folks will--couples whom no one would ever think suited each for each, except Nature, and the instinct of their own hearts. Absorbed in this love--which, Edwin solemnly declared, was never openly declared till this morning--they neither of them thought of Guy. And thus things had befallen--things which no earthly power could remove or obliterate--things in which, whatever way we looked, all seemed darkness. We could but walk blindly on, a step at a time, trusting to that Faith, of which all our lives past had borne confirmation--the firm faith that evil itself is to the simple and G.o.d-fearing but the disguised messenger of good.

Something like this John said, talking as his wife loved to hear him talk--every quiet, low word dropping like balm upon her grieved heart; not trying to deceive her into the notion that pain is not pain, but showing her how best to bear it. At length she looked up, as if with G.o.d's help--and her husband's comforting--she could bear it.

"Only one thing--Guy does not know. He need not know just yet--not till he is stronger. Surely, Edwin will not tell him?"

"No; he promised me he would not. Do not start so. Indeed, there is no fear."

But that very a.s.surance seemed to rouse it. She began straining her ears to catch the least noise in the rooms overhead--the boys' rooms.

Guy and Walter shared one; Edwin had his to himself.

"They surely will not meet. Yet Guy sometimes likes sitting over Edwin's fire. Hark!--was not that the creaking of Guy's room-door?"

"Love--" detaining her.

"I know, John. I am not thinking of going. Guy might suspect something. No, indeed I am not afraid. They were always fond of one another--my boys."

She sat down, violently forcing herself not to listen, not to fear. But the truth was too strong for her.

"Hark! I am sure they are talking. John, you said Edwin promised?"

"Faithfully promised."

"But if, by some accident, Guy found out the truth? Hark! they are talking very loud. That is a chair fallen. Oh, John--don't keep me!

My boys--my boys." And she ran up-stairs in an agony.

What a sight for a mother's eyes. Two brothers of whom it had been our boast that from babyhood they had never been known to lift a hand against each other--now struggling together like Cain and Abel. And from the fury in their faces, the quarrel might have had a similar ending.

"Guy!--Edwin!" But the mother might as well have shrieked to the winds.

The father came and parted them. "Boys, are you gone mad? fighting like brutes in this way. Shame, Guy! Edwin, I trusted you."

"I could not help it, father. He had no right to steal into my room; no right to s.n.a.t.c.h her letter from me."

"It was her letter, then?" cried Guy, furiously. "She writes to you?

You were writing back to her?"

Edwin made no answer; but held out his hand for the letter, with that look of white pa.s.sion in him so rarely seen--perhaps not thrice since his infancy. Guy took no heed.

"Give it me back, Guy; I warn you."

"Not till I have read it. I have a right."

"You have none. She is mine."

"Yours?" Guy laughed in his face.

"Yes, mine. Ask my father--ask my mother. They know."

"Mother!"--the letter fell from the poor lad's hand. "Mother, YOU would not deceive me. He only says it to vex me. I was in a pa.s.sion, I know. Mother, it isn't true?"

His piteous tone--the almost childish way in which he caught at her sleeve, as she turned from him--ah, poor Guy!

"Edwin, is it my brother Edwin? Who would have thought it?"

Half-bewildered, he looked from one to the other of us all; but no one spoke, no one contradicted him.

Edwin, his pa.s.sion quite gone, stooped in a sorrowful and humble way to pick up his betrothed's letter. Then Guy flew at him, and caught him by the collar.

"You coward!--how dared you?--No, I won't hurt him; she is fond of him.

Go away, every one of you. Oh, mother, mother, mother!"

He fell on her neck, sobbing. She gathered him in her arms, as she had used to do in his childhood; and so we left them.

"AS ONE WHOM HIS MOTHER COMFORTETH."

Ay, Prophet of Israel, thou wert wise.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

John and I sat over the study fire till long after midnight.

Many an anxious watch I had kept with him, but none sadder than this.

Because now, for the first time, our house was divided against itself.

A sorrow had entered it, not from without but from within--a sorrow which we could not meet and bear, as a family. Alas! darker and darker had the bitter truth forced itself upon us, that neither joy nor affliction would ever find us as a family again.