My Novel Part 158

"My dear Harley, shake hands; anything you please. You know how I have wished to see you come forward, and take that part in life which becomes your birth."

"Ah, you think I have sadly wasted my existence hitherto."

"To be frank with you, yes, Harley," said the earl, with a pride that was n.o.ble in its nature, and not without dignity in its expression. "The more we take from our country, the more we owe to her. From the moment you came into the world as the inheritor of lands and honours, you were charged with a trust for the benefit of others, that it degrades one of our order of gentleman not to discharge."

Harley listened with a sombre brow, and made no direct reply.

"Indeed," resumed the earl, "I would rather you were about to canva.s.s for yourself than for your friend Egerton. But I grant he is an example that it is never too late to follow. Why, who that had seen you both as youths, notwithstanding Audley had the advantage of being some years your senior--who could have thought that he was the one to become distinguished and eminent, and you to degenerate into the luxurious idler, averse to all trouble and careless of all fame? You, with such advantages, not only of higher fortunes, but, as every one said, of superior talents; you, who had then so much ambition, so keen a desire for glory, sleeping with Plutarch's Lives under your pillow, and only, my wild son, only too much energy. But you are a young man still; it is not too late to redeem the years you have thrown away."

"The years are nothing,--mere dates in an almanac; but the feelings, what can give me back those?--the hope, the enthusiasm, the--No matter!

feelings do not, help men to rise in the world. Egerton's feelings are not too lively. What I might have been, leave it to me to remember; let us talk of the example you set before me,--of Audley Egerton."

"We must get him in," said the earl, sinking his voice into a whisper.

"It is of more importance to him than I even thought for. But you know his secrets. Why did you not confide to me frankly the state of his affairs?"

"His affairs? Do you mean that they are seriously embarra.s.sed? This interests me much. Pray speak; what do you know?"

"He has discharged the greater part of his establishment. That in itself is natural on quitting office; but still it set people talking; and it has got wind that his estates are not only mortgaged for more than they are worth, but that he has been living upon the discount of bills; in short, he has been too intimate with a man whom we all know by sight,--a man who drives the finest horses in London, and they tell me (but that I cannot believe) lives in the familiar society of the young puppies he snares to perdition. What's the man's name? Levy, is it not?--yes, Levy."

"I have seen Levy with him," said Harley; and a sinister joy lighted up his falcon eyes. "Levy--Levy--it is well."

"I hear but the gossip of the clubs," resumed the earl; "but they do say that Levy makes little disguise of his power over our very distinguished friend, and rather parades it as a merit with our party (and, indeed, with all men--for Egerton has personal friends in every party) that he keeps sundry bills locked up in his desk until Egerton is once more safe in parliament. Nevertheless if, after all, our friend were to lose his election, and Levy were then to seize on his effects, and proclaim his ruin, it would seriously damage, perhaps altogether destroy, Audley's political career."

"So I conclude," said Harley. "A Charles Fox might be a gamester, and a William Pitt be a pauper. But Audley Egerton is not of their giant stature; he stands so high because he stands upon heaps of respectable gold. Audley Egerton, needy and impoverished, out of parliament, and, as the vulgar slang has it, out at elbows, skulking from duns, perhaps in the Bench--"

"No, no; our party would never allow that; we would subscribe--"

"Worse than all, living as the pensioner of the party he aspired to lead! You say truly, his political prospects would be blasted. A man whose reputation lay in his outward respectability! Why, people would say that Audley Egerton has been--a solemn lie; eh, my father?"

"How can you talk with such coolness of your friend? You need say nothing to interest me in his election--if you mean that. Once in parliament, he must soon again be in office,--and learn to live on his salary. You must get him to submit to me the schedule of his liabilities. I have a head for business, as you know. I will arrange his affairs for him. And I will yet bet five to one, though I hate wagers, that he will be prime minister in three years. He is not brilliant, it is true; but just at this crisis we want a safe, moderate, judicious, conciliatory man; and Audley has so much tact, such experience of the House, such knowledge of the world, and," added the earl, emphatically summing up his eulogies, "he is so thorough a gentleman!"

"A thorough gentleman, as you say,--the soul of honour! But, my dear father, it is your hour for riding; let me not detain you. It is settled, then; you do not come yourself to Lansmere. You put the house at my disposal, and allow me to invite Egerton, of course, and what other guests I may please; in short, you leave all to me?"

"Certainly; and if you cannot get in your friend, who can? That borough, it is an awkward, ungrateful place, and has been the plague of my life.

So much as I have spent there, too,--so much as I have done to its trade!" And the earl, with an indignant sigh, left the room.

Harley seated himself deliberately at his writing-table, leaning his face on his hand, and looking abstractedly into s.p.a.ce from under knit and lowering brows.

Harley L'Estrange was, as we have seen, a man singularly tenacious of affections and impressions. He was a man, too, whose nature was eminently bold, loyal, and candid; even the apparent whim and levity which misled the world, both as to his dispositions and his powers, might be half ascribed to that open temper which, in its over-contempt for all that seemed to savour of hypocrisy, sported with forms and ceremonials, and extracted humour, sometimes extravagant, sometimes profound, from "the solemn plausibilities of the world." The shock he had now received smote the very foundations of his mind, and, overthrowing all the airier structures which fancy and wit had built upon its surface, left it clear as a new world for the operations of the darker and more fearful pa.s.sions. When a man of a heart so loving and a nature so irregularly powerful as Harley's suddenly and abruptly discovers deceit where he had most confided, it is not (as with the calmer pupils of that harsh teacher, Experience) the mere withdrawal of esteem and affection from the one offender; it is, that trust in everything seems gone; it is, that the injured spirit looks back to the Past, and condemns all its kindlier virtues as follies that conduced to its own woe; and looks on to the Future as to a journey beset with smiling traitors, whom it must meet with an equal simulation, or crush with a superior force. The guilt of treason to men like these is incalculable,--it robs the world of all the benefits they would otherwise have lavished as they pa.s.sed; it is responsible for all the ill that springs from the corruption of natures whose very luxuriance, when the atmosphere is once tainted, does but diffuse disease,--even as the malaria settles not over thin and barren soils, not over wastes that have been from all time desolate, but over the places in which southern suns had once ripened delightful gardens, or the sites of cities, in which the pomp of palaces has pa.s.sed away.

It was not enough that the friend of his youth, the confidant of his love, had betrayed his trust,--been the secret and successful rival; not enough that the woman his boyhood had madly idolized, and all the while he had sought her traces with pining, remorseful heart-believing she but eluded his suit from the emulation of a kindred generosity, desiring rather to sacrifice her own love than to cost to his the sacrifice of all which youth rashly scorns and the world so highly estimates,--not enough that all this while her refuge had been the bosom of another.

This was not enough of injury. His whole life had been wasted on a delusion; his faculties and aims, the wholesome ambition of lofty minds, had been arrested at the very onset of fair existence; his heart corroded by a regret for which there was no cause; his conscience charged with the terror that his wild chase had urged a too tender victim to the grave, over which he had mourned. What years that might otherwise have been to himself so serene, to the world so useful, had been consumed in objectless, barren, melancholy dreams! And all this while to whom had his complaints been uttered?--to the man who knew that his remorse was an idle spectre and his faithful sorrow a mocking self-deceit. Every thought that could gall man's natural pride, every remembrance that could sting into revenge a heart that had loved too deeply not to be accessible to hate, conspired to goad those maddening Furies who come into every temple which is once desecrated by the presence of the evil pa.s.sions. In that sullen silence of the soul, vengeance took the form of justice. Changed though his feelings towards Leonora Avenel were, the story of her grief and her wrongs embittered still more his wrath against his rival. The fragments of her memoir left naturally on Harley's mind the conviction that she had been the victim of an infamous fraud, the dupe of a false marriage. His idol had not only been stolen from the altar,--it had been sullied by the sacrifice; broken with remorseless hand, and thrust into dishonoured clay; mutilated, defamed; its very memory a thing of contempt to him who had ravished it from worship. The living Harley and the dead Nora--both called aloud to their joint despoiler, "Restore what thou hast taken from us, or pay the forfeit!"

Thus, then, during the interview between Helen and Leonard, thus Harley L'Estrange sat alone! and as a rude irregular lump of steel, when wheeled round into rapid motion, a.s.sumes the form of the circle it describes, so his iron purpose, hurried on by his relentless pa.s.sion, filled the s.p.a.ce into which he gazed with optical delusions, scheme after scheme revolving and consummating the circles that clasped a foe.

CHAPTER XV.

The entrance of a servant, announcing a name which Harley, in the absorption of his gloomy revery, did not hear, was followed by that of a person on whom he lifted his eyes in the cold and haughty surprise with which a man much occupied greets and rebukes the intrusion of an unwelcome stranger.

"It is so long since your Lordship has seen me," said the visitor, with mild dignity, "that I cannot wonder you do not recognize my person, and have forgotten my name."

"Sir," answered Harley, with an impatient rudeness, ill in harmony with the urbanity for which he was usually distinguished,--"sir, your person is strange to me, and your name I did not hear; but, at all events, I am not now at leisure to attend to you. Excuse my plainness."

"Yet pardon me if I still linger. My name is Dale. I was formerly curate at Lansmere; and I would speak to your Lordship in the name and the memory of one once dear to you,--Leonora Avenel."

HARLEY (after a short pause).--"Sir, I cannot conjecture your business.

But be seated. I remember you now, though years have altered both, and I have since heard much in your favour from Leonard Fairfield. Still let me pray, that you will be brief."

MR. DALE.--"May I a.s.sume at once that you have divined the parentage of the young man you call Fairfield? When I listened to his grateful praises of your beneficence, and marked with melancholy pleasure the reverence in which he holds you, my heart swelled within me. I acknowledged the mysterious force of nature."

HARLEY.--"Force of nature! You talk in riddles."

MR. DALE (indignantly).--"Oh, my Lord, how can you so disguise your better self? Surely in Leonard Fairfield you have long since recognized the son of Nora Avenel?"

Harley pa.s.sed his hand over his face. "Ah," thought he, "she lived to bear a son then,--a son to Egerton! Leonard is that son. I should have known it by the likeness, by the fond foolish impulse that moved me to him. This is why he confided to me these fearful memoirs. He seeks his father,--he shall find him."

MR. DALE (mistaking the cause of Harley's silence).--"I honour your compunction, my Lord. Oh, let your heart and your conscience continue to speak to your worldly pride."

HARLEY.--"My compunction, heart, conscience! Mr. Dale, you insult me!"

MR. DALE (sternly).--"Not so; I am fulfilling my mission, which bids me rebuke the sinner. Leonora Avenel speaks in me, and commands the guilty father to acknowledge the innocent child!"

Harley half rose, and his eyes literally flashed fire; but he calmed his anger into irony. "Ha!" said he, with a sarcastic smile, "so you suppose that I was the perfidious seducer of Nora Avenel,--that I am the callous father of the child who came into the world without a name. Very well, sir, taking these a.s.sumptions for granted, what is it you demand from me on behalf of this young man?"

"I ask from you his happiness," replied Mr. Dale, imploringly; and yielding to the compa.s.sion with which Leonard inspired him, and persuaded that Lord L'Estrange felt a father's love for the boy whom he had saved from the whirlpool of London, and guided to safety and honourable independence, he here, with simple eloquence, narrated all Leonard's feelings for Helen,--his silent fidelity to her image, though a child's, his love when he again beheld her as a woman, the modest fears which the parson himself had combated, the recommendation that Mr.

Dale had forced upon him, to confess his affection to Helen, and plead his cause. "Anxious, as you may believe, for his success," continued the parson, "I waited without your gates till he came from Miss Digby's presence. And oh, my Lord, had you but seen his face!--such emotion and such despair! I could not learn from him what had pa.s.sed. He escaped from me and rushed away. All that I could gather was from a few broken words, and from those words I formed the conjecture (it may be erroneous) that the obstacle to his happiness was not in Helen's heart, my Lord, but seemed to me as if it were in yourself. Therefore, when he had vanished from my sight, I took courage, and came at, once to you.

If he be your son, and Helen Digby be your ward,--she herself an orphan, dependent on your bounty,--why should they be severed? Equals in years, united by early circ.u.mstance, congenial, it seems, in simple habits and refined tastes,--what should hinder their union, unless it be the want of fortune? And all men know your wealth, none ever questioned your generosity. My Lord, my Lord, your look freezes me. If I have offended, do not visit my offence on him,--on Leonard!"

"And so," said Harley, still controlling his rage, "so this boy--whom, as you say, I saved from that pitiless world which has engulfed many a n.o.bler genius--so, in return for all, he has sought to rob me of the last affection, poor and lukewarm though it was, that remained to me in life? He presume to lift his eyes to my affianced bride! He! And for aught I know, steal from me her living heart, and leave to me her icy hand!"

"Oh, my Lord, your affianced bride! I never dreamed of this. I implore your pardon. The very thought is so terrible, so unnatural! the son to woo the father's! Oh, what sin have I fallen into! The sin was mine,--I urged and persuaded him to it. He was ignorant as myself. Forgive him, forgive him!"

"Mr. Dale," said Harley, rising, and extending his hand, which the poor parson felt himself--unworthy to take,--"Mr. Dale, you are a good man,--if, indeed, this universe of liars contains some man who does not cheat our judgment when we deem him honest. Allow me only to ask why you consider Leonard Fairfield to be my son."

"Was not your youthful admiration for poor Nora evident to me? Remember I was a frequent guest at Lansmere Park; and it was so natural that you, with all your brilliant gifts, should captivate her refined fancy, her affectionate heart."

"Natural--you think so,--go on."

"Your mother, as became her, separated you. It was not unknown to me that you still cherished a pa.s.sion which your rank forbade to be lawful.

Poor girl! she left the roof of her protectress, Lady Jane. Nothing was known of her till she came to her father's house to give birth to a child, and die. And the same day that dawned on her corpse, you hurried from the place. Ah, no doubt your conscience smote you; you have never returned to Lansmere since."

Harley's breast heaved, he waved his hand; the parson resumed,

"Whom could I suspect but you? I made inquiries: they confirmed my suspicions."

"Perhaps you inquired of my friend, Mr. Egerton? He was with me when--when--as you say, I hurried from the place."