The King's Highway Part 10

While he was in this meditative mood, pondering thoughtfully over the past, and extracting little to satisfy him from a record which time, unfortunately, had effaced, he was interrupted by the coming of the young Lord Sherbrooke, who now was accustomed to enter familiarly without any announcement. On the present occasion his step was more rapid than usual, his manner more than commonly excited, and the moment he had cast himself into a chair he burst into a long loud peal of laughter. "In the name of Heaven," he exclaimed, "what piece of foolery do you think my worthy father has concocted now? On my honour, I believe that he is mad, and only fear that he has transmitted a part of his madness to me. Think of everything that is ridiculous, Wilton, that you can conceive; let your mind run free over every absurd combination that it is possible to fancy; think of all that is stupid or mad-like in times present or past, and then tell me what it is that my father intends to do."

"I really do not know, Sherbrooke," replied his friend "but nothing, I dare say, half so bad as you would have me believe. Your father is much too prudent and careful a man to do anything that is absurd."

"You don't know him--Wilton, you don't know him," replied Lord Sherbrooke; "for the sake of power or of wealth he has the courage to do anything on earth that is absurd, and for revenge he has the courage to do a great deal more. In regard to revenge, indeed, I don't mind: he is quite right there; for surely if we are bound to be grateful to a man that does good to us, we are bound to revenge ourselves upon him who does us wrong. Besides, revenge is a gentlemanlike pa.s.sion; but avarice and ambition are certainly the two most ungentlemanlike propensities in human nature."

"Not ambition, surely," exclaimed Wilton.

"The worst of all!" cried his friend--"the worst of all! Avarice is a gentleman to ambition! Avarice is merely a tinker, a dealer in old metal; but ambition is a chimney-sweep of a pa.s.sion: a mere climbing-boy, who will go through any dirty hole in all Christendom only to get out at the top of the chimney. But you have not guessed, Wilton--you have not guessed. To it; and tell me, what is the absurd thing my father proposes to do?"

Wilton shook his head, and said that he could in no way divine.

"To marry me, Wilton--to marry me to a lady rich and fair," replied the young lord: "what think you of that, Wilton?--you who know me, what think you of that?"

"Why, if I must really say the truth," replied Wilton, "I think the Earl has very naturally considered your happiness before that of the lady."

"As well gilded a sarcasm that," replied Lord Sherbrooke, "as if it had come from my father's own lips. However, what you say is very true: the poor unfortunate girl little knows what the slave merchants are devising for her. My father has dealt with hers, and her father has dealt with mine, and settled all affairs between them, it seems, without our knowledge or partic.i.p.ation in any shape. I was the first of the two parties concerned who received the word of command to march and be married, and as yet the unfortunate victim is unacquainted with the designs against her peace and happiness for life."

"Nay, nay," replied Wilton, almost sorrowfully, "speak not so lightly of it. What have you done, Sherbrooke? for Heaven's sake, what have you done? If you have consented to marry, let me hope and trust that you have determined firmly to change your conduct, and not indeed, as you say, to ruin the poor girl's peace and happiness for life."

"Oh! I have consented," replied Lord Sherbrooke, in the same gay laughing tone; "you do not suppose that I would refuse beauty, and sweetness, and twenty thousand a year. I am not as mad as my father.

Oh! I consented directly. I understand, she is the great beauty of the day. She will see very little of me, and I shall see very little of her, so we shall not weary of one another. Oh! I am a very wise man, indeed. I only wanted what our friend Launcelot calls 'a trifle of wives' to be King Solomon himself. Why you know that for the other cattle which distinguished that great monarch I am pretty well provided."

Wilton looked down upon the ground with a look of very great pain, while imagination pictured what the future life of some young and innocent girl might be, bound to one so wild, so heedless, and dissolute as Lord Sherbrooke. He remained silent, however, for he did not dare to trust himself with any farther observations; and when he looked up again, he found his friend gazing at him with an expression on his countenance in some degree sorrowful, in some degree reproachful, but with a look of playful meaning flickering through the whole.

"Now does your solemnity, and your gravity," said Lord Sherbrooke, "and your not yet understanding me, almost tempt me, Wilton, to play some wild and inconceivable trick, just for the purpose of opening your eyes, and letting you see, that your friend is not such an unfeeling rascal as the world gives out."

"I know you are not, my dear Sherbrooke--I am sure you are not,"

replied Wilton, grasping warmly the hand which Lord Sherbrooke held out to him; "I was wrong for not seeing that you were in jest, and for not discovering at once that you had not consented. But how does the Earl bear your refusal?"

"You are as wrong as ever, my dear Wilton," replied his friend, in a more serious tone--"I have consented; for if I had not, it must have made an irreparable breach between my father and myself, which you well know I should not consider desirable--I must obey him sometimes, you know, Wilton--He had pledged himself, too, that I should consent.

However, to set your mind at rest, I will tell you the loophole at which I creep out. Her father, it seems, is not near so sanguine as my father, in regard to his child's obedience, and he is, moreover, an odd old gentleman, who has got into his head a strange antiquated notion, that the inclinations of the people to be married have something to do with such transactions. He therefore bargained, that his consent should be dependent upon the young lady's approbation of me when she sees me. In fact, I am bound to court, and she to be courted. My father is bound that I shall marry her if she likes me, her father is bound to give her to me if she likes to be given. Now what I intend, Wilton, is, that she should not like me. So this very evening you must come with me to the theatre, and there we shall see her together, for I know where she is to be. To-morrow, I shall be presented to her in form, and if she likes to have me, after all I have to say to her, why it is her fault, for I will take care she shall not have ignorance to plead in regard to my worshipful character."

Wilton would fain have declined going to the theatre that night, for, to say the truth, his heart was somewhat heavy; but Lord Sherbrooke would take no denial, jokingly saying that he required some support under the emotions and agitating circ.u.mstances which he was about to endure. As soon as this was settled, Lord Sherbrooke left him, agreeing to call for him in his carriage at the early hour of a quarter before five o'clock; for such, however, were the more rational times and seasons of our ancestors, that one could enjoy the high intellectual treat of seeing a good play performed from beginning to end, without either changing one's dinner hour, or going with the certainty of indigestion and headache.

CHAPTER XIII.

Far more punctual than was usual with him. Lord Sherbrooke was at the door of Wilton Brown exactly at the hour he had appointed; and, getting into his carriage, they speedily rolled on from the neighbourhood of St. James's-street, then one of the most fashionable parts of the metropolis, to Russell-street, he however, though evidently anxious to be early at the theatre, could not resist his inclination to take a look into the Rose, and, finding several persons whom he knew there, he lingered for a considerable time, introducing Wilton to a number of the wits and celebrated men of the day.

The play had thus begun before they entered the theatre, and the house was filled so completely that it was scarcely possible to obtain a seat.

As if with a knowledge that his young companion was anxious to see the ill-fated lady destined by her friends to be the bride of a wild and reckless libertine, Lord Sherbrooke affected to pay no attention whatsoever to anything but what was pa.s.sing on the stage. During the first act Wilton was indeed as much occupied as himself with the magic of the scene: but when the brief pause between the acts took place, his eyes wandered round those boxes in which the high n.o.bility of the land usually were found, to see if he could discover the victim of the Earl of Byerdale's ambition.

There were two boxes on the opposite side of the house, towards one or the other of which almost all eyes were turned, and to the occupants of which all the distinguished young men in the house seemed anxious to pay their homage. In one of those boxes was a very lovely woman of about seven or eight and twenty, sitting with a queenly air to receive the humble adoration of the gay and fluttering admirers who crowded round her. Her brow was high and broad, but slightly contracted, so that a certain haughtiness of air in her whole figure and person was fully kept in tone by the expression of her face. For a moment or two, Wilton looked at her with a slight smile, as he said in his own heart, "if that be the lady destined for Sherbrooke, I pity her less than I expected, for she seems the very person either to rule him or care little about him."

The next moment, however, a more perfect recollection of all that Lord Sherbrooke had said, led him to conclude that she could not be the person to whom he alluded. He had spoken of her as a girl, as of one younger than himself; whereas the lady who was reigning in the stage-box was evidently older, and had more the appearance of a married than a single woman.

Wilton then turned his eyes to the other box of which we have spoken; and in it there was also to be seen a female figure seated near the front with another lady; while somewhat further back, appeared the form of an elderly gentleman with a star upon the left breast. Towards that box, as we have before said, many eyes were turned; and from the s.p.a.ce*

below, as well as from other parts of the house, the beaux of the day were gazing in evident expectation of a bow, or a smile, or a mark of recognition. Nevertheless, in neither of the ladies which that box contained was there, as far as Wilton could see, any of those little arts but too often used for the purpose of attracting attention, and which, to say the truth, were displayed in a remarkable manner by the lady in the other box we have mentioned. There was no fair hand stretched out over the cushions; no fringed glove cast negligently down; no fan waved gracefully to give emphasis to that was said; but, on the contrary, the whole figure of the lady in front remained tranquil and calm, with much grace and beauty in the att.i.tude, but none even of that flutter of consciousness which often betrays the secrets of vanity. The expression of the face, indeed, Wilton could not see, for the head was turned towards the stage; and though the lady looked round more than once during the interval between the acts to speak to those behind her in the box, the effect was only to turn her face still farther from his gaze.

[*Footnote: I have not said "the pit," because the intruders of fashion had not then been driven from the STAGE itself, especially between the acts.]

At length, the play went on, and at the end of the second act a slight movement enabled Lord Sherbrooke and Wilton to advance further towards the stage, so that the latter was now nearly opposite to the box in which one of the beauties of the day was seated. He immediately turned in that direction, as did Lord Sherbrooke at the same moment; and Wilton, with a feeling of pain that can scarcely be described, beheld in the fair girl who seemed to be the unwilling object of so much admiration, no other than the young lady whom he had aided in rescuing when attacked, as we have before described, by the gentry who in those days frequented so commonly the King's Highway.

Though now dressed with splendour, as became her rank and station, there was in her whole countenance the same simple unaffected look of tranquil modesty which Wilton had remarked there before, and in which he had fancied he read the story of a n.o.ble mind and a fine heart, rather undervaluing than otherwise the external advantages of beauty and station, but dignified and raised by the consciousness of purity, cultivation, and high thoughts. The same look was there, modest yet dignified, diffident yet self-possessed; and while he became convinced that there sat the bride selected by the Earl of Byerdale for his son, he was equally convinced that she was the person of all others whose fate would be the most miserable in such an union.

At the same moment, too, his heart was moved by sensations that may be very difficult accurately to describe. To talk of his being in love with the fair girl before him would, in those days as in the present, have been absurd; to say that he had remembered her with anything like hope, would not be true, for he had not hoped in the slightest degree, nor even dreamed of hope. But what he had done was this--he had thought of her often and long; he had recollected the few hours spent in her society with greater pleasure than any he had known in life; he had remembered her as the most beautiful person he had ever seen--and indeed to him she was so; for not only were her features, and her form, and her complexion, all beautiful according to the rules of art, but they were beautiful also according to that modification of beauty which best suited his own taste. The expression, too, of her countenance--and she had much expression of countenance when conversing with any one she liked--was beautiful and varying; and the grace of her movements and the calm quietness of her carriage were of the kind which is always most pleasing to a high and cultivated mind.

He had recollected her, then, as the most beautiful creature he had ever seen; but there was also a good deal of imaginative interest attached to the circ.u.mstances in which they had first met; and he often thought over them with pleasure, as forming a little bright spot in the midst of a somewhat dull and monotonous existence. In short, all these memories made it impossible for him to feel towards her as he did towards other women. There was admiration, and interest, and high esteem.--It wanted, surely, but a little of being love. One thing is very certain: Wilton would have heard that she was about to be married to any one with no inconsiderable degree of pain. It would have cost him a sigh; it would have made him feel a deep regret. He would not have been in the slightest degree disappointed, for hope being out of the question he expected nothing; but still he might regret.

Now, however, when he thought that she was about to be importuned to marry one for whom he might himself feel very deep and sincere regard, on account of some high and n.o.ble qualities of the heart, but whose wild and reckless libertinism could but make her miserable for ever, the pain that he experienced caused him to turn very pale. The next moment the blood rushed up again into his cheek, seeing Lord Sherbrooke glance his eyes rapidly from the box in which she sat to his countenance, and then to the box again.

At that very same moment, the Duke, who was the gentleman sitting on the opposite side of the box, bent forward and whispered a few words to his daughter: the blood suddenly rushed up into her cheek; and with a look rather of anxiety and apprehension than anything else, she turned her eyes instantly towards the spot where Wilton stood. Her look was changed in a moment; for though she became quite pale, a bright smile beamed forth from her lip; and though she put her hand to her heart, she bowed markedly and graciously towards her young acquaintance, directing instantly towards that spot the looks of all the admirers who surrounded the box.

The words which the Duke spoke to her were very simple, but led to an extraordinary mistake. He had in the morning communicated to her the proposal which had been made for her marriage with Lord Sherbrooke, and she, who had heard something of his character, had shrunk with alarm from the very idea. When her father, however, now said to her, "There is Lord Sherbrooke just opposite," and directed her attention to the precise spot, her eyes instantly fell upon Wilton.

She recollected her father's observation in regard to the name he had given at the inn being an a.s.sumed one: his fine commanding person, his n.o.ble countenance, his lordly look, and the taste and fashion of his dress, all made her for the moment believe that in him she beheld the person proposed for her future husband. At the same time she could not forget that he had rendered her an essential service. He had displayed before her several of those qualities which peculiarly draw forth the admiration of women--courage, prompt.i.tude, daring, and skill; his conversation had delighted and surprised her; and to say truth, he had created in her bosom during the short interview, such prepossessions in his favour, that to her he was the person who now solicited her hand, instead of the creature which her imagination had portrayed as Lord Sherbrooke, was no small relief to her heart. It seemed as if a load was taken off her bosom; and such was the cause of those emotions, the expression of which upon her countenance we have already told.

It was not, indeed, that she believed herself the least in love with Wilton Brown, but she felt that she COULD love him, and that feeling was quite enough. It was enough, while she fancied that he was Lord Sherbrooke, to agitate her with joy and hope; and, though the mistake lasted but a short time, the feelings that it produced were sufficient to effect a change in all her sensations towards him through life. During the brief s.p.a.ce that the mistake lasted, she looked upon him, she thought of him, as the man who was to be her husband. Had it not been for that misunderstanding, the idea of such an union between herself and him would most likely never have entered her mind; but once having looked upon him in that light, even for five minutes, she never could see him or speak to him without a recollection of the fact, without a reference, however vague, ill-defined, and repressed in her own mind, to the feelings and thoughts which she had then entertained.

Lord Sherbrooke remarked the changing colour, the look of recognition on both parts, the glad smile, and the inclination of the head.

"Why, Wilton," he said in a low voice--"Wilton! it seems you are already a great deal better acquainted with my future wife than I am myself; and glad to see you does she seem! and most gracious is her notice of you! Why, there are half of those gilded fools on the other side of the house ready to cut your throat at this moment, when it is mine they would seek to cut if they knew all; but pray come and introduce me to my lovely bride, I had no idea she was so pretty.

I'm sure I am delighted to have some other introduction than that of my father, and so unexpected a one."

All this was said in a bantering tone, but not without a shrewd examination of Wilton's countenance while it was spoken. What were the feelings of the young n.o.bleman it was impossible for Wilton to divine; but he answered quite calmly, the first emotion being by this time pa.s.sed--"My acquaintance with her is so slight, that I certainly could not venture to introduce any one, far less one who has so much better an introduction ready prepared."

"By heavens, Wilton," replied his friend, "by the look she gave you and the look you returned, one would not have judged the acquaintance to be slight; but as you will not introduce me, I will introduce you; for, I suppose, in common civility, I must go and speak to her father, as the old gentleman's eye is upon me. There! He secures his point by a bow. Dearly beloved, I come, I come!"

Thus saying, he turned to proceed to the box, making a sign to Wilton to follow, which he did, though at the time he did it, he censured his own weakness for yielding to the temptation.

"I am but going," he thought, "to augment feelings of regret at a destiny I cannot change--I only go to increase my own pain, and in no degree to avert from that sweet girl a fate but too dark and sorrowful."

As he thus thought, he felt disposed, even then, to make some excuse for not going to the Duke's box; but by the time they were half way thither, they were met by several persons coming the other way, amongst whom was a gentleman richly but not gaudily dressed, who immediately addressed Lord Sherbrooke, saying, that the Duke of Gaveston requested the honour of his company in his box, and Wilton immediately recognised his old companion of the road, Sir John Fenwick. Sir John bowed to him but distantly; and Wilton was more than ever hesitating whether he should go on or not, when some one touched him on the arm, and turning round he beheld his somewhat doubtful acquaintance, who had given himself the name of Green.

Sir John Fenwick and the stranger looked in each other's faces without the slightest sign of recognition: but to Wilton himself Green smiled pleasantly, saying, "I very much wish to speak a word with you, Mr. Wilton Brown. Will you just step aside with me to the lobby for a moment?"

The recollection of what had pa.s.sed when last they met, together with the wish of avoiding an interview with the Duke and his daughter, from which he augured nought but pain, overcame Wilton's repugnance to hold any private communication with one whom he had certainly seen in a situation at the least very equivocal; and merely saying to Lord Sherbrooke, "I must speak with this gentleman for a moment, and therefore cannot come with you," he left the young lord to follow Sir John Fenwick, and turned with the stranger into the lobby. There was no one there at the moment, for at that time the licensed abomination, of which it has since been the scene, would not have been tolerated in any country calling itself Christian. Wilton was indeed rather glad that it was vacant, for he was not anxious to be observed by many people in conversation with his present companion.

Not that anything in his appearance or manner was calculated to call up the blush of idle pride. The stranger's dress was as rich and tasteful as any in the house, his manner was easy and free, his look, though not particularly striking, distinguished and gentlemanly.

The stranger was the first to speak. "Do not alarm yourself, Mr.

Brown," he said: "Mr. Green is a safe companion here, whatever he might be in Maidenhead Thicket. But I wanted to speak a word to you yourself, and to give you a hint that may be beneficial to others. As to yourself, I told you when last we met that I could bring you into company with some of your old friends. I thought your curiosity would have carried you to the Green Dragon long ago. As, however, you do not seem to wish to see your old friends, I have now to tell you that they wish to see you, and therefore I have to beg you to meet me there to-morrow at six o'clock."

"You are mistaken entirely," replied Wilton, "in regard to my not wishing to see my old friends. I very much wish it. I wish to hear more of my early history, about which there seems to me to be some mystery."

"Is there?" said the stranger, in a careless tone. "Whether anything will be explained to you or not, I cannot say. At all events, you must meet me there; and, in the meantime tell me, have you seen Sir John Fenwick since last we met?"

"No, I have not," replied Wilton. "Why do you ask?"