Chapter XVI…

Chapter XVI

Before a table, in the apartments appropriated to him in his father’s house at Knightsbridge, sat Lord L’Estrange, sorting or destroying letters and papers,--an ordinary symptom of change of residence. There are certain trifles by which a shrewd observer may judge of a man’s disposition. Thus, ranged on the table, with some elegance, but with soldier-like precision, were sundry little relics of former days, hallowed by some sentiment of memory, or perhaps endeared solely by custom; which, whether he was in Egypt, Italy, or England, always made part of the furniture of Harley’s room. Even the small, old-fashioned, and somewhat inconvenient inkstand into which he dipped the pen as he labelled the letters he put aside, belonged to the writing-desk which had been his pride as a schoolboy. Even the books that lay scattered round were not new works, not those to which we turn to satisfy the curiosity of an hour, or to distract our graver thoughts; they were chiefly either Latin or Italian poets, with many a pencil-mark on the margin; or books which, making severe demand on thought, require slow and frequent perusal, and become companions. Somehow or other, in remarking that even in dumb, inanimate things the man was averse to change, and had the habit of attaching himself to whatever was connected with old associations, you might guess that he clung with pertinacity to affections more important, and you could better comprehend the freshness of his friendship for one so dissimilar in pursuits and character as Audley Egerton. An affection once admitted into the heart of Harley L’Estrange seemed never to be questioned or reasoned with; it became tacitly fixed, as it were, into his own nature, and little less than a revolution of his whole system could dislodge or disturb it.

Lord L’Estrange’s hand rested now upon a letter in a stiff, legible Italian character, and instead of disposing of it at once as he had done with the rest, he spread it before him, and re-read the contents. It was a letter from Riccabocca, received a few weeks since, and ran thus:--

LETTER FROM SIGNOR RICCABOCCA TO LORD L’ESTRANGE.

I thank you, my noble friend, for judging of me with faith in my honour, and respect for my reverses.

No, and thrice no, to all concessions, all overtures, all treaty with Giulio Franzini. I write the name, and my emotions choke me. I must pause, and cool back into disdain. It is over. Pass from that subject. But you have alarmed me. This sister! I have not seen her since her childhood; but she was brought up under his influence,

--she can but work as his agent. She wish to learn my residence! It can be but for some hostile and malignant purpose. I may trust in you,--I know that. You say I may trust equally in the discretion of your friend. Pardon me,--my confidence is not so elastic. A word may give the clew to my retreat. But, if discovered, what harm can ensue? An English roof protects me from Austrian despotism: true; but not the brazen tower of Danae could protect me from Italian craft. And, were there nothing worse, it would be intolerable to me to live under the eyes of a relentless spy. Truly saith our proverb, ‘He sleeps ill for whom the enemy wakes.’ Look you, my friend, I have done with my old life,--I wish to cast it from me as a snake its skin. I have denied myself all that exiles deem consolation. No pity for misfortune, no messages from sympathizing friendship, no news from a lost and bereaved country follow me to my hearth under the skies of the stranger. From all these I have voluntarily cut thyself off. I am as dead to the life I once lived as if the Styx rolled between it and me. With that sternness which is admissible only to the afflicted, I have denied myself even the consolation of your visits. I have told you fairly and simply that your presence would unsettle all my enforced and infirm philosophy, and remind me only of the past, which I seek to blot from remembrance. You have complied on the one condition, that whenever I really want your aid I will ask it; and, meanwhile, you have generously sought to obtain me justice from the cabinets of ministers and in the courts of kings. I did not refuse your heart this luxury; for I have a child--Ah! I have taught that child already to revere your name, and in her prayers it is not forgotten. But now that you are convinced that even your zeal is unavailing, I ask you to discontinue attempts which may but bring the spy upon my track, and involve me in new misfortunes. Believe me, O brilliant Englishman, that I am satisfied and contented with my lot. I am sure it would not be for my happiness to change it, ‘Chi non ha provato il male non conosce il bone.’

[“One does not know when one is well off till one has known misfortune.”]

You ask me how I live,--I answer, alla giornata,--[To the day]--not for the morrow, as I did once. I have accustomed myself to the calm existence of a village. I take interest in its details. There is my wife, good creature, sitting opposite to me, never asking what I write, or to whom, but ready to throw aside her work and talk the moment the pen is out of my hand. Talk--and what about? Heaven knows! But I would rather hear that talk, though on the affairs of a hamlet, than babble again with recreant nobles and blundering professors about commonwealths and constitutions. When I want to see how little those last influence the happiness of wise men, have I not Machiavelli and Thucydides? Then, by and by, the parson will drop in, and we argue. He never knows when he is beaten, so the argument is everlasting. On fine days I ramble out by a winding rill with my Violante, or stroll to my friend the squire’s, and see how healthful a thing is true pleasure; and on wet days I shut myself up, and mope, perhaps till, hark! a gentle tap at the door, and in comes Violante, with her dark eyes, that shine out through reproachful tears,--reproachful that I should mourn alone, while she is under my roof; so she puts her arms round me, and in five minutes all is sunshine within. What care we for your English gray clouds without?

Leave me, my dear Lord,--leave me to this quiet happy passage towards old age, serener than the youth that I wasted so wildly; and guard well the secret on which my happiness depends.

Now to yourself, before I close. Of that same yourself you speak too little, as of me too much. But I so well comprehend the profound melancholy that lies underneath the wild and fanciful humour with which you but suggest, as in sport, what you feel so in earnest. The laborious solitude of cities weighs on you. You are flying back to the dolce far niente,--to friends few, but intimate; to life monotonous, but unrestrained; and even there the sense of loneliness will again seize upon you; and you do not seek, as I do, the annihilation of memory,--your dead passions are turned to ghosts that haunt you, and unfit you for the living world. I see it all,--I see it still, in your hurried fantastic lines, as I saw it when we two sat amidst the pines and beheld the blue lake stretched below, I troubled by the shadow of the Future, you disturbed by that of the Past.

Well, but you say, half seriously, half in jest, “I will escape from this prison-house of memory; I will form new ties, like other men, and before it be too late; I will marry. Ay, but I must love,--there is the difficulty.” Difficulty,--yes, and Heaven be thanked for it! Recall all the unhappy marriages that have come to your knowledge: pray, have not eighteen out of twenty been marriages for Love? It always has been so, and it always will; because, whenever we love deeply, we exact so much and forgive so little. Be content to find some one with whom your hearth and your honour are safe. You will grow to love what never wounds your heart, you will soon grow out of love with what must always disappoint your imagination. Cospetto! I wish my Jemima had a younger sister for you. Yet it was with a deep groan that I settled myself to a--Jemima.

Now, I have written you a long letter, to prove how little I need of your compassion or your zeal. Once more let there be long silence between us. It is not easy for me to correspond with a man of your rank, and not incur the curious gossip of my still little pool of a world which the splash of a pebble can break into circles. I must take this over to a post-town some ten miles off, and drop it into the box by stealth. Adieu, dear and noble friend, gentlest heart and subtlest fancy that I have met in my walk through life. Adieu. Write me word when you have abandoned a day-dream and found a Jemima.

ALPHONSO.

P. S.--For Heaven’s sake, caution and recaution your friend the minister not to drop a word to this woman that may betray my hiding-place.

“Is he really happy?” murmured Harley, as he closed the letter; and he sank for a few moments into a revery.

“This life in a village, this wife in a lady who puts down her work to talk about villagers--what a contrast to Audley’s full existence! And I cannot envy nor comprehend either! yet my own existence--what is it?”

He rose, and moved towards the window, from which a rustic stair descended to a green lawn, studded with larger trees than are often found in the grounds of a suburban residence. There were calm and coolness in the sight, and one could scarcely have supposed that London lay so near.

The door opened softly, and a lady past middle age entered, and approaching Harley, as he still stood musing by the window, laid her hand on his shoulder. What character there is in a hand! Hers was a hand that Titian would have painted with elaborate care! Thin, white, and delicate, with the blue veins raised from the surface. Yet there was something more than mere patrician elegance in the form and texture. A true physiologist would have said at once, “There are intellect and pride in that hand, which seems to fix a hold where it rests; and lying so lightly, yet will not be as lightly shaken off.”

“Harley,” said the lady--and Harley turned--“you do not deceive me by that smile,” she continued sadly; “you were not smiling when I entered.”

“It is rarely that we smile to ourselves, my dear mother; and I have done nothing lately so foolish as to cause me to smile at myself.”

“My son,” said Lady Lansmere, somewhat abruptly, but with great earnestness, “you come from a line of illustrious ancestors; and methinks they ask from their tombs why the last of their race has no aim and no object, no interest, no home, in the land which they served, and which rewarded them with its honours.”

“Mother,” said the soldier, simply, “when the land was in danger I served it as my forefathers served,--and my answer would be the scars on my breast.”

“Is it only in danger that a country is served, only in war that duty is fulfilled? Do you think that your father, in his plain, manly life of country gentleman, does not fulfil, though perhaps too obscurely, the objects for which aristocracy is created, and wealth is bestowed?”

“Doubtless he does, ma’am,--and better than his vagrant son ever can.”

“Yet his vagrant son has received such gifts from nature, his youth was so rich in promise, his boyhood so glowed at the dream of glory!”

“Ay,” said Harley, very softly, “it is possible,--and all to be buried in a single grave!”

The countess started, and withdrew her hand from Harley’s shoulder.

Lady Lansmere’s countenance was not one that much varied in expression. She had in this, as in her cast of feature, little resemblance to her son.

Her features were slightly aquiline,--the eyebrows of that arch which gives a certain majesty to the aspect; the lines round the mouth were habitually rigid and compressed. Her face was that of one who had gone through great emotion and subdued it. There was something formal, and even ascetic, in the character of her beauty, which was still considerable, in her air and in her dress. She might have suggested to you the idea of some Gothic baroness of old, half chatelaine, half-abbess; you would see at a glance that she did not live in the light world around her, and disdained its fashion and its mode of thought; yet with all this rigidity it was still the face of the woman who has known human ties and human affections. And now, as she gazed long on Harley’s quiet, saddened brow, it was the face of a mother.

“A single grave,” she said, after a long pause. “And you were then but a boy, Harley! Can such a memory influence you even to this day? It is scarcely possible: it does not seem to me within the realities of man’s life,--though it might be of woman’s.”

“I believe,” said Harley, half soliloquizing, “that I have a great deal of the woman in me. Perhaps men who live much alone, and care not for men’s objects, do grow tenacious of impressions, as your sex does. But oh,” he cried, aloud, and with a sudden change of countenance, “oh, the hardest and the coldest man would have felt as I do, had he known HER, had he loved HER. She was like no other woman I have ever met. Bright and glorious creature of another sphere! She descended on this earth and darkened it when she passed away. It is no use striving. Mother, I have as much courage as our steel-clad fathers ever had. I have dared in battle and in deserts, against man and the wild beast, against the storm and the ocean, against the rude powers of Nature,--dangers as dread as ever pilgrim or Crusader rejoiced to brave. But courage against that one memory! no, I have none!”

“Harley, Harley, you break my heart!” cried the countess, clasping her hands.

“It is astonishing,” continued her son, so rapt in his own thoughts that he did not, perhaps, hear her outcry. “Yea, verily, it is astonishing, that considering the thousands of women I have seen and spoken with, I never see a face like hers,--never hear a voice so sweet. And all this universe of life cannot afford me one look and one tone that can restore me to man’s privilege,--love. Well, well, well, life has other things yet; Poetry and Art live still; still smiles the heaven and still wave the trees. Leave me to happiness in my own way.”

The countess was about to reply, when the door was thrown hastily open, and Lord Lansmere walked in.

The earl was some years older than the countess, but his placid face showed less wear and tear,--a benevolent, kindly face, without any evidence of commanding intellect, but with no lack of sense in its pleasant lines; his form not tall, but upright and with an air of consequence,--a little pompous, but good-humouredly so,--the pomposity of the Grand Seigneur who has lived much in provinces, whose will has been rarely disputed, and whose importance has been so felt and acknowledged as to react insensibly on himself;--an excellent man; but when you glanced towards the high brow and dark eye of the countess, you marvelled a little how the two had come together, and, according to common report, lived so happily in the union.

“Ho, ho! my dear Harley,” cried Lord Lansmere, rubbing his hands with an appearance of much satisfaction, “I have just been paying a visit to the duchess.”

“What duchess, my dear father?”

“Why, your mother’s first cousin, to be sure,--the Duchess of Knaresborough, whom, to oblige me, you condescended to call upon; and delighted I am to hear that you admire Lady Mary--”

“She is very high bred, and rather--high-nosed,” answered Harley. Then, observing that his mother looked pained, and his father disconcerted, he added seriously, “But handsome certainly.”

“Well, Harley,” said the earl, recovering himself, “the duchess, taking advantage of our connection to speak freely, has intimated to me that Lady Mary has been no less struck with yourself; and to come to the point, since you allow that it is time you should think of marrying, I do not know a more desirable alliance. What do you say, Katherine?”

“The duke is of a family that ranks in history before the Wars of the Roses,” said Lady Lansmere, with an air of deference to her husband; “and there has never been one scandal in its annals, nor one blot on its scutcheon. But I am sure my dear Lord must think that the duchess should not have made the first overture,--even to a friend and a kinsman?”

“Why, we are old-fashioned people,” said the earl, rather embarrassed, “and the duchess is a woman of the world.”

“Let us hope,” said the countess, mildly, “that her daughter is not.”

“I would not marry Lady Mary, if all the rest of the female sex were turned into apes,” said Lord L’Estrange, with deliberate fervour.

“Good heavens!” cried the earl, “what extraordinary language is this? And pray why, sir?”

HARLEY.--“I can’t say; there is no why in these cases. But, my dear father, you are not keeping faith with me.”

LORD LANSMERE.--“HOW?”

HARLEY.--“You and my Lady, here, entreat me to marry; I promise to do my best to obey you, but on one condition, that I choose for myself, and take my time about it. Agreed on both sides. Whereon, off goes your Lordship--actually before noon, at an hour when no lady, without a shudder, could think of cold blonde and damp orange flowers--off goes your Lordship, I say, and commits poor Lady Mary and your unworthy son to a mutual admiration,--which neither of us ever felt. Pardon me, my father, but this is grave. Again let me claim your promise,--full choice for myself, and no reference to the Wars of the Roses. What War of the Roses like that between Modesty and Love upon the cheek of the virgin!”

LADY LANSMERE.--“Full choice for yourself, Harley: so be it. But we, too, named a condition,--did we not, Lansmere?”

THE EARL (puzzled).--“Eh, did we? Certainly we did.”

HARLEY.--“What was it?”

LADY LANSMERE.--“The son of Lord Lansmere can only marry the daughter of a gentleman.”

THE EARL.--“Of course, of course.”

The blood rushed over Harley’s fair face, and then as suddenly left it pale.

He walked away to the window; his mother followed him, and again laid her hand on his shoulder.

“You were cruel,” said he, gently, and in a whisper, as he winced under the touch of the hand. Then turning to the earl, who was gazing at him in blank surprise,--it never occurred to Lord Lansmere that there could be a doubt of his son’s marrying beneath the rank modestly stated by the countess,--Harley stretched forth his hand, and said, in his soft winning tone, “You have ever been most gracious to me, and most forbearing; it is but just that I should sacrifice the habits of an egotist, to gratify a wish which you so warmly entertain. I agree with you, too, that our race should not close in me,--Noblesse oblige. But you know I was ever romantic; and I must love where I marry; or, if not love, I must feel that my wife is worthy of all the love I could once have bestowed. Now, as to the vague word ‘gentleman’ that my mother employs--word that means so differently on different lips--I confess that I have a prejudice against young ladies brought up in the ‘excellent foppery of the world,’ as the daughters of gentlemen of our rank mostly are. I crave, therefore, the most liberal interpretation of this word ‘gentleman.’ And so long as there be nothing mean or sordid in the birth, habits, and education of the father of this bride to be, I trust you will both agree to demand nothing more,--neither titles nor pedigree.”

“Titles, no, assuredly,” said Lady Lansmere; “they do not make gentlemen.”

“Certainly not,” said the earl; “many of our best families are untitled.”

“Titles--no,” repeated Lady Lansmere; “but ancestors yes.”

“Ah, my mother,” said Harley, with his most sad and quiet smile, “it is fated that we shall never agree. The first of our race is ever the one we are most proud of; and pray, what ancestors had he? Beauty, virtue, modesty, intellect,--if these are not nobility enough for a man, he is a slave to the dead.”

With these words Harley took up his hat and made towards the door.

“You said yourself, ‘Noblesse oblige,’” said the countess, following him to the threshold; “we have nothing more to add.”

Harley slightly shrugged his shoulders, kissed his mother’s hand; whistled to Nero, who started up from a doze by the window, and went his way.

“Does he really go abroad next week?” said the earl. “So he says.”

“I am afraid there is no chance for Lady Mary,” resumed Lord Lansmere, with a slight but melancholy smile.

“She has not intellect enough to charm him. She is not worthy of Harley,” said the proud mother.

“Between you and me,” rejoined the earl, rather timidly, “I don’t see what good his intellect does him. He could not be more unsettled and useless if he were the merest dunce in the three kingdoms. And so ambitious as he was when a boy! Katherine, I sometimes fancy that you know what changed him.”

“I! Nay, my dear Lord, it is a common change enough with the young, when of such fortunes, who find, when they enter life, that there is really little left for them to strive for. Had Harley been a poor man’s son, it might have been different.”

“I was born to the same fortunes as Harley,” said the earl, shrewdly, “and yet I flatter myself I am of some use to old England.”

The countess seized upon the occasion, complimented her Lord, and turned the subject.

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Chapter XVII

Harley spent his day in his usual desultory, lounging manner,--dined in his quiet corner at his favourite club. Nero, not admitted into the club, patiently waited for him outside the door. The dinner over, dog and man, equally indifferent to the crowd, sauntered down that thoroughfare which, to the few who can comprehend the Poetry of London, has associations of glory and of woe sublime as any that the ruins of the dead elder world can furnish,--thoroughfare that traverses what was once the courtyard of Whitehall, having to its left the site of the palace that lodged the royalty of Scotland; gains, through a narrow strait, that old isle of Thorney, in which Edward the Confessor received the ominous visit of the Conqueror; and, widening once more by the Abbey and the Hall of Westminster, then loses itself, like all memories of earthly grandeur, amidst humble passages and mean defiles.

Thus thought Harley L’Estrange--ever less amidst the actual world around him than the images invoked by his own solitary soul-as he gained the bridge, and saw the dull, lifeless craft sleeping on the “Silent Way,” once loud and glittering with the gilded barks of the antique Seignorie of England.

It was on that bridge that Audley Egerton had appointed to meet L’Estrange, at an hour when he calculated he could best steal a respite from debate. For Harley, with his fastidious dislike to all the resorts of his equals, had declined to seek his friend in the crowded regions of Bellamy’s.

Harley’s eye, as he passed along the bridge, was attracted by a still form, seated on the stones in one of the nooks, with its face covered by its hands. “If I were a sculptor,” said he to himself, “I should remember that image whenever I wished to convey the idea of Despondency!” He lifted his looks and saw, a little before him in the midst of the causeway, the firm, erect figure of Audley Egerton. The moonlight was full on the bronzed countenance of the strong public man, with its lines of thought and care, and its vigorous but cold expression of intense self-control.

“And looking yonder,” continued Harley’s soliloquy, “I should remember that form, when I wished to hew out from the granite the idea of Endurance.”

“So you are come, and punctually,” said Egerton, linking his arm in Harley’s.

HARLEY--“Punctually, of course, for I respect your time, and I will not detain you long. I presume you will speak to-night?”

EGERTON.--“I have spoken.”

HARLEY (with interest).--“And well, I hope?”

EGERTON.--“With effect, I suppose, for I have been loudly cheered, which does not always happen to me.”

HARLEY.--“And that gave you pleasure?”

EGERTON (after a moment’s thought).--“No, not the least.”

HARLEY.--“What, then, attaches you so much to this life,--constant drudgery, constant warfare, the more pleasurable faculties dormant, all the harsher ones aroused, if even its rewards (and I take the best of those to be applause) do not please you?”

EGERTON.--“What? Custom.”

HARLEY.--“Martyr.”

EGERTON.--“You say it: but turn to yourself; you have decided, then, to leave England next week?”

HARLEY (moodily).--“Yes. This life in a capital, where all are so active, myself so objectless, preys on me like a low fever. Nothing here amuses me, nothing interests, nothing comforts and consoles. But I am resolved, before it be too late, to make one great struggle out of the Past, and into the natural world of men. In a word, I have resolved to marry.”

EGERTON.--“Whom?”

HARLEY (seriously).--“Upon my life, my dear fellow, you are a great philosopher. You have hit the exact question. You see I cannot marry a dream; and where, out of dreams, shall I find this ‘whom’?”

EGERTON.--“You do not search for her.”

HARLEY. “Do we ever search for love? Does it not flash upon us when we least expect it? Is it not like the inspiration to the muse? What poet sits down and says, ‘I will write a poem’? What man looks out and says, ‘I will fall in love’? No! Happiness, as the great German tells us, ‘falls suddenly from the bosom of the gods;’ so does love.”

EGERTON.--“You remember the old line in Horace: ‘The tide flows away while the boor sits on the margin and waits for the ford.’”

HARLEV.--“An idea which incidentally dropped from you some weeks ago, and which I have before half-meditated, has since haunted me. If I could but find some child with sweet dispositions and fair intellect not yet formed, and train her up according to my ideal. I am still young enough to wait a few years. And meanwhile I shall have gained what I so sadly want,--an object in life.”

EGERTON.--“You are ever the child of romance. But what--”

Here the minister was interrupted by a messenger from the House of Commons, whom Audley had instructed to seek him on the bridge should his presence be required. “Sir, the Opposition are taking advantage of the thinness of the House to call for a division. Mr. ----- is put up to speak for time, but they won’t hear him.”

Egerton turned hastily to Lord L’Estrange. “You see, you must excuse me now. To-morrow I must go to Windsor for two days: but we shall meet on my return.”

“It does not matter,” answered Harley; “I stand out of the pale of your advice, O practical man of sense. And if,” added Harley, with affectionate and mournful sweetness,--“if I weary you with complaints which you cannot understand, it is only because of old schoolboy habits. I can have no trouble that I do not confide to you.”

Egerton’s hand trembled as it pressed his friend’s, and without a word, he hurried away abruptly. Harley remained motionless for some seconds, in deep and quiet revery; then he called to his dog, and turned back towards Westminster.

He passed the nook in which had sat the still figure of Despondency; but the figure had now risen, and was leaning against the balustrade. The dog, who preceded his master, passed by the solitary form and sniffed it suspiciously.

“Nero, sir, come here,” said Harley.

“Nero,”--that was the name by which Helen had said that her father’s friend had called his dog; and the sound startled Leonard as he leaned, sick at heart, against the stone. He lifted his head and looked wistfully, eagerly into Harley’s face. Those eyes, bright, clear, yet so strangely deep and absent, which Helen had described, met his own, and chained them. For L’Estrange halted also; the boy’s countenance was not unfamiliar to him. He returned the inquiring look fixed on his own, and recognized the student by the bookstall.

“The dog is quite harmless, sir,” said L’Estrange, with a smile.

“And you call him ‘Nero’?” said Leonard, still gazing on the stranger.

Harley mistook the drift of the question.

“Nero, sir; but he is free from the sanguinary propensities of his Roman namesake.” Harley was about to pass on, when Leonard said falteringly,

“Pardon me, but can it be possible that you are one whom I have sought in vain on behalf of the child of Captain Digby?”

Harley stopped short. “Digby!” he exclaimed, “where is he? He should have found me easily. I gave him an address.”

“Ah, Heaven be thanked!” cried Leonard. “Helen is saved--she will not die,” and he burst into tears.

A very few moments and a very few words sufficed to explain to Harley the state of his old fellow-soldier’s orphan. And Harley himself soon stood in the young sufferer’s room, supporting her burning temples on his breast, and whispering into ears that heard him as in a happy dream, “Comfort, comfort; your father yet lives in me.”

And then Helen, raising her eyes, said, “But Leonard is my brother--more than brother-and he needs a father’s care more than I do.”

“Hush, hush, Helen. I need no one, nothing now!” cried Leonard, and his tears gushed over the little hand that clasped his own.

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Chapter XVIII

Harley L’Estrange was a man whom all things that belong to the romantic and poetic side of our human life deeply impressed. When he came to learn the ties between these two Children of Nature, standing side by side, alone amidst the storms of fate, his heart was more deeply moved than it had been for many years. In those dreary attics, overshadowed by the smoke and reek of the humble suburb, the workday world in its harshest and tritest forms below and around them, he recognized that divine poem which comes out from all union between the mind and the heart. Here, on the rough deal table (the ink scarcely dry), lay the writings of the young wrestler for fame and bread; there, on the other side of the partition, on that mean pallet, lay the boy’s sole comforter, the all that warmed his heart with living mortal affection. On one side the wall, the world of imagination; on the other, this world of grief and of love. And in both, a spirit equally sublime,--unselfish devotion,--“the something afar from the sphere of our sorrow.”

He looked round the room into which he had followed Leonard, on quitting Helen’s bedside. He noted the manuscripts on the table, and pointing to them, said gently, “And these are the labours by which you supported the soldier’s orphan?--soldier yourself in a hard battle!”

“The battle was lost,--I could not support her,” replied Leonard, mournfully.

“But you did not desert her. When Pandora’s box was opened, they say Hope lingered last--”

“False, false,” said Leonard; “a heathen’s notion. There are deities that linger behind Hope,--Gratitude, Love, and Duty.”

“Yours is no common nature,” exclaimed Harley, admiringly, “but I must sound it more deeply hereafter: at present I hasten for the physician; I shall return with him. We must move that poor child from this low close air as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let me qualify your rejection of the old fable. Wherever Gratitude, Love, and Duty remain to man, believe me that Hope is there too, though she may be often invisible, hidden behind the sheltering wings of the nobler deities.”

Harley said this with that wondrous smile of his, which cast a brightness over the whole room, and went away. Leonard stole softly towards the grimy window; and looking up towards the stars that shone pale over the roof-tops, he murmured, “O Thou, the All-seeing and All-merciful! how it comforts me now to think that, though my dreams of knowledge may have sometimes obscured the heavens, I never doubted that Thou wert there! as luminous and everlasting, though behind the cloud!” So, for a few minutes, he prayed silently, then passed into Helen’s room, and sat beside her motionless, for she slept. She woke just as Harley returned with a physician; and then Leonard, returning to his own room, saw amongst his papers the letter he had written to Mr. Dale, and muttering, “I need not disgrace my calling,--I need not be the mendicant now”--held the letter to the flame of the candle. And while he said this, and as the burning tinder dropped on the floor, the sharp hunger, unfelt during his late anxious emotions, gnawed at his entrails. Still, even hunger could not reach that noble pride which had yielded to a sentiment nobler than itself, and he smiled as he repeated, “No mendicant!--the life that I was sworn to guard is saved. I can raise against Fate the front of Man once more.”

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Chapter XIX

A few days afterwards, and Helen, removed to a pure air, and under the advice of the first physicians, was out of all danger.

It was a pretty detached cottage, with its windows looking over the wild heaths of Norwood, to which Harley rode daily to watch the convalescence of his young charge: an object in life was already found. As she grew better and stronger, he coaxed her easily into talking, and listened to her with pleased surprise. The heart so infantine and the sense so womanly struck him much by its rare contrast and combination. Leonard, whom he had insisted on placing also in the cottage, had stayed there willingly till Helen’s recovery was beyond question. Then he came to Lord L’Estrange, as the latter was about one day to leave the cottage, and said quietly, “Now, my Lord, that Helen is safe, and now that she will need me no more, I can no longer be a pensioner on your bounty. I return to London.”

“You are my visitor, not my pensioner, foolish boy,” said Harley, who had already noticed the pride which spoke in that farewell; “come into the garden and let us talk.”

Harley seated himself on a bench on the little lawn; Nero crouched at his feet; Leonard stood beside him.

“So,” said Lord L’Estrange, “you would return to London? What to do?”

“Fulfil my fate.”

“And that?”

“I cannot guess. Fate is the Isis whose veil no mortal can ever raise.”

“You should be born for great things,” said Harley, abruptly. “I am sure that you write well. I have seen that you study with passion. Better than writing and better than study, you have a noble heart, and the proud desire of independence. Let me see your manuscripts, or any copies of what you have already printed. Do not hesitate,--I ask but to be a reader. I don’t pretend to be a patron: it is a word I hate.”

Leonard’s eyes sparkled through their sudden moisture. He brought out his portfolio, placed it on the bench beside Harley, and then went softly to the farther part of the garden. Nero looked after him, and then rose and followed him slowly. The boy seated himself on the turf, and Nero rested his dull head on the loud heart of the poet.

Harley took up the various papers before him, and read them through leisurely. Certainly he was no critic. He was not accustomed to analyze what pleased or displeased him; but his perceptions were quick, and his taste exquisite. As he read, his countenance, always so genuinely expressive, exhibited now doubt and now admiration. He was soon struck by the contrast, in the boy’s writings, between the pieces that sported with fancy and those that grappled with thought. In the first, the young poet seemed so unconscious of his own individuality. His imagination, afar and aloft from the scenes of his suffering, ran riot amidst a paradise of happy golden creations. But in the last, the THINKER stood out alone and mournful, questioning, in troubled sorrow, the hard world on which he gazed. All in the thought was unsettled, tumultuous; all in the fancy serene and peaceful. The genius seemed divided into twain shapes,--the one bathing its wings amidst the starry dews of heaven; the other wandering, “melancholy, slow,” amidst desolate and boundless sands. Harley gently laid down the paper and mused a little while. Then he rose and walked to Leonard, gazing on his countenance as he neared the boy, with a new and a deeper interest.

“I have read your papers,” he said, “and recognize in them two men, belonging to two worlds, essentially distinct.” Leonard started, and murmured, “True, true!”

“I apprehend,” resumed Harley, “that one of these men must either destroy the other, or that the two must become fused and harmonized into a single existence. Get your hat, mount my groom’s horse, and come with me to London; we will converse by the way. Look you, I believe you and I agree in this,--that the first object of every noble spirit is independence. It is towards this independence that I alone presume to assist you, and this is a service which the proudest man can receive without a blush.”

Leonard lifted his eyes towards Harley’s, and those eyes swam with grateful tears; but his heart was too full to answer. “I am not one of those,” said Harley, when they were on the road, “who think that because a young man writes poetry he is fit for nothing else, and that he must be a poet or a pauper. I have said that in you there seems to me to be two men,--the man of the Actual world, the man of the Ideal. To each of these men I can offer a separate career. The first is perhaps the more tempting. It is the interest of the State to draw into its service all the talent and industry it can obtain; and under his native State every citizen of a free country should be proud to take service. I have a friend who is a minister, and who is known to encourage talent,--Audley Egerton. I have but to say to him, ‘There is a young man who will repay the government whatever the government bestows on him;’ and you will rise to-morrow independent in means, and with fair occasions to attain to fortune and distinction. This is one offer,--what say you to it?”

Leonard thought bitterly of his interview with Audley Egerton, and the minister’s proffered crown-piece. He shook his head, and replied,

“Oh, my Lord, how have I deserved such kindness? Do with me what you will; but if I have the option, I would rather follow my own calling. This is not the ambition that inflames me.”

“Hear, then, the other offer. I have a friend with whom I am less intimate than Egerton, and who has nothing in his gift to bestow. I speak of a man of letters,--Henry Norreys,--of whom you have doubtless heard, who, I should say, conceived an interest in you when he observed you reading at the bookstall. I have often heard him say that literature as a profession is misunderstood, and that rightly followed, with the same pains and the same prudence which are brought to bear on other professions, a competence at least can be always ultimately obtained. But the way may be long and tedious, and it leads to no power but over thought; it rarely attains to wealth; and though reputation may be certain, fame, such as poets dream of, is the lot of few. What say you to this course?”

“My Lord, I decide,” said Leonard, firmly; and then, his young face lighting up with enthusiasm, he exclaimed, “Yes, if, as you say, there be two men within me, I feel that were I condemned wholly to the mechanical and practical world, one would indeed destroy the other. And the conqueror would be the ruder and the coarser. Let me pursue those ideas that, though they have but flitted across me, vague and formless, have ever soared towards the sunlight. No matter whether or not they lead to fortune or to fame,--at least they will lead me upward! Knowledge for itself I desire; what care I if it be not power!”

“Enough,” said Harley, with a pleased smile at his young companion’s outburst. “As you decide so shall it be settled. And now permit me, if not impertinent, to ask you a few questions. Your name is Leonard Fairfield?”

The boy blushed deeply, and bowed his head as if in assent.

“Helen says you are self-taught; for the rest she refers me to you,--thinking, perhaps, that I should esteem you less--rather than yet more highly--if she said you were, as I presume to conjecture, of humble birth.”

“My birth,” said Leonard, slowly, “is very--very--humble.”

“The name of Fairfield is not unknown to me. There was one of that name who married into a family in Lansmere, married an Avenel,” continued Harley, and his voice quivered. “You change countenance. Oh, could your mother’s name have been Avenel?”

“Yes,” said Leonard, between his set teeth. Harley laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Then, indeed, I have a claim on you; then, indeed, we are friends. I have a right to serve any of that family.”

Leonard looked at him in surprise--“For,” continued Harley, recovering himself, “they always served my family; and my recollections of Lansmere, though boyish, are indelible.” He spurred on his horse as the words closed, and again there was a long pause; but from that time Harley always spoke to Leonard in a soft voice, and often gazed on him with earnest and kindly eyes.

They reached a house in a central, though not fashionable street. A man-servant of a singularly grave and awful aspect opened the door,--a man who had lived all his life with authors. Poor fellow, he was indeed prematurely old! The care on his lip and the pomp on his brow--no mortal’s pen can describe!

“Is Mr. Norreys at home?” asked Harley.

“He is at home--to his friends, my Lord,” answered the man, majestically; and he stalked across the hall with the step of a Dangeau ushering some Montmorenci into the presence of Louis le Grand.

“Stay; show this gentleman into another room. I will go first into the library; wait for me, Leonard.” The man nodded, and conducted Leonard into the dining-room. Then pausing before the door of the library, and listening an instant, as if fearful to disturb some mood of inspiration, opened it very softly. To his ineffable disgust, Harley pushed before, and entered abruptly. It was a large room, lined with books from the floor to the ceiling. Books were on all the tables, books were on all the chairs. Harley seated himself on a folio of Raleigh’s “History of the World,” and cried, “I have brought you a treasure!”

“What is it?” said Norreys, good-humouredly, looking up from his desk.

“A mind!”

“A mind!” echoed Norreys, vaguely.

“Your own?”

“Pooh! I have none,--I have only a heart and a fancy. Listen. You remember the boy we saw reading at the book stall. I have caught him for you, and you shall train him into a man. I have the warmest interest in his future, for I know some of his family, and one of that family was very dear to me. As for money, he has not a shilling, and not a shilling would he accept gratis from you or me either. But he comes with bold heart to work,--and work you must find him.” Harley then rapidly told his friend of the two offers he had made to Leonard, and Leonard’s choice.

“This promises very well; for letters a man must have a strong vocation, as he should have for law. I will do all that you wish.”

Harley rose with alertness, shook Norreys cordially by the hand, hurried out of the room, and returned with Leonard.

Mr. Norreys eyed the young man with attention. He was naturally rather severe than cordial in his manner to strangers,--contrasting in this, as in most things, the poor vagabond Burley; but he was a good judge of the human countenance, and he liked Leonard’s. After a pause he held out his hand.

“Sir,” said he, “Lord L’Estrange tells me that you wish to enter literature as a calling, and no doubt to study it as an art. I may help you in this, and you meanwhile can help me. I want an amanuensis,--I offer you that place. The salary will be proportioned to the services you will render me. I have a room in my house at your disposal. When I first came up to London, I made the same choice that I hear you have done. I have no cause, even in a worldly point of view, to repent my choice. It gave me an income larger than my wants. I trace my success to these maxims, which are applicable to all professions: 1st, Never to trust to genius for what can be obtained by labour; 2dly, Never to profess to teach what we have not studied to understand; 3dly, Never to engage our word to what we do not our best to execute.

“With these rules, literature--provided a man does not mistake his vocation for it, and will, under good advice, go through the preliminary discipline of natural powers, which all vocations require--is as good a calling as any other. Without them, a shoeblack’s is infinitely better.”

“Possibly enough,” muttered Harley; “but there have been great writers who observed none of your maxims.”

“Great writers, probably, but very unenviable men. My Lord, my Lord, don’t corrupt the pupil you bring to me.” Harley smiled, and took his departure, and left Genius at school with Common-Sense and Experience.

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Chapter XX

While Leonard Fairfield had been obscurely wrestling against poverty, neglect, hunger, and dread temptation, bright had been the opening day and smooth the upward path of Randal Leslie. Certainly no young man, able and ambitious, could enter life under fairer auspices; the connection and avowed favourite of a popular and energetic statesman, the brilliant writer of a political work that had lifted him at once into a station of his own, received and courted in those highest circles, to which neither rank nor fortune alone suffices for a familiar passport,--the circles above fashion itself the circles of POWER,--with every facility of augmenting information, and learning the world betimes through the talk of its acknowledged masters,--Randal had but to move straight onward, and success was sure. But his tortuous spirit delighted in scheme and intrigue for their own sake. In scheme and intrigue he saw shorter paths to fortune, if not to fame.

His besetting sin was also his besetting weakness. He did not aspire,--he coveted. Though in a far higher social position than Frank Hazeldean, despite the worldly prospects of his old schoolfellow, he coveted the very things that kept Frank Hazeldean below him,--coveted his idle gayeties, his careless pleasures, his very waste of youth. Thus, also, Randal less aspired to Audley Egerton’s repute than he coveted Audley Egerton’s wealth and pomp, his princely expenditure, and his Castle Rackrent in Grosvenor Square. It was the misfortune of his birth to be so near to both these fortunes,--near to that of Leslie, as the future head of that fallen House; near even to that of Hazeldean, since, as we have seen before, if the squire had had no son, Randal’s descent from the Hazeldeans suggested himself as the one on whom these broad lands should devolve. Most young men brought into intimate contact with Audley Egerton would have felt for that personage a certain loyal and admiring, if not very affectionate, respect. For there was something grand in Egerton,--something that commands and fascinates the young. His determined courage, his energetic will, his almost regal liberality, contrasting a simplicity in personal tastes and habits that was almost austere, his rare and seemingly unconscious power of charming even the women most wearied of homage, and persuading even the men most obdurate to counsel,--all served to invest the practical man with those spells which are usually confined to the ideal one. But, indeed, Audley Egerton was an Ideal,--the ideal of the Practical. Not the mere vulgar, plodding, red-tape machine of petty business, but the man of strong sense, inspired by inflexible energy and guided to definite earthly objects. In a dissolute and corrupt form of government, under a decrepit monarchy or a vitiated republic, Audley Egerton might have been a most dangerous citizen: for his ambition was so resolute, and his sight to its ends was so clear. But there is something in public life in England which compels the really ambitious man to honour, unless his eyes are jaundiced and oblique, like Randal Leslie’s. It is so necessary in England to be a gentleman. And thus Egerton was emphatically considered a gentleman. Without the least pride in other matters, with little apparent sensitiveness, touch him on the point of gentleman, and no one so sensitive and so proud. As Randal saw more of him, and watched his moods with the lynx-eyes of the household spy, he could perceive that this hard mechanical man was subject to fits of melancholy, even of gloom; and though they did not last long, there was even in his habitual coldness an evidence of something compressed, latent, painful, lying deep within his memory. This would have interested the kindly feelings of a grateful heart; but Randal detected and watched it only as a clew to some secret it might profit him to gain. For Randal Leslie hated Egerton; and hated him the more because, with all his book-knowledge and his conceit in his own talents, he could not despise his patron; because he had not yet succeeded in making his patron the mere tool or stepping-stone; because he thought that Egerton’s keen eye saw through his wily heart, even while, as if in profound disdain, the minister helped the protege. But this last suspicion was unsound. Egerton had not detected Leslie’s corrupt and treacherous nature. He might have other reasons for keeping him at a certain distance, but he inquired too little into Randal’s feelings towards himself to question the attachment, or doubt the sincerity, of one who owed to him so much. But that which more than all embittered Randal’s feelings towards Egerton was the careful and deliberate frankness with which the latter had, more than once, repeated and enforced the odious announcement, that Randal had nothing to expect from the minister’s WILL, nothing to expect from that wealth which glared in the hungry eyes of the pauper heir to the Leslies of Rood. To whom, then, could Egerton mean to devise his fortune? To whom but Frank Hazeldean? Yet Audley took so little notice of his nephew, seemed so indifferent to him, that that supposition, however natural, was exposed to doubt. The astuteness of Randal was perplexed. Meanwhile, however, the less he himself could rely upon Egerton for fortune, the more he revolved the possible chances of ousting Frank from the inheritance of Hazeldean,--in part, at least, if not wholly. To one less scheming, crafty, and remorseless than Randal Leslie, such a project would have seemed the wildest delusion. But there was something fearful in the manner in which this young man sought to turn knowledge into power, and make the study of all weakness in others subservient to his own ends. He wormed himself thoroughly into Frank’s confidence. He learned, through Frank, all the squire’s peculiarities of thought and temper, and pondered over each word in the father’s letters, which the son gradually got into the habit of showing to the perfidious eyes of his friend. Randal saw that the squire had two characteristics, which are very common amongst proprietors, and which might be invoked as antagonists to his warm fatherly love. First, the squire was as fond of his estate as if it were a living thing, and part of his own flesh and blood; and in his lectures to Frank upon the sin of extravagance, the squire always let out this foible,--“What was to become of the estate if it fell into the hands of a spendthrift? No man should make ducks and drakes of Hazeldean; let Frank beware of that,” etc. Secondly, the squire was not only fond of his lands, but he was jealous of them,--that jealousy which even the tenderest fathers sometimes entertain towards their natural heirs. He could not bear the notion that Frank should count on his death; and he seldom closed an admonitory letter without repeating the information that Hazeldean was not entailed; that it was his to do with as he pleased through life and in death. Indirect menace of this nature rather wounded and galled than intimidated Frank; for the young man was extremely generous and high-spirited by nature, and was always more disposed to some indiscretion after such warnings to his self-interest, as if to show that those were the last kinds of appeal likely to influence him. By the help of such insights into the character of father and son, Randal thought he saw gleams of daylight illumining his own chance to the lands of Hazeldean. Meanwhile, it appeared to him obvious that, come what might of it, his own interests could not lose, and might most probably gain, by whatever could alienate the squire from his natural heir. Accordingly, though with consummate tact, he instigated Frank towards the very excesses most calculated to irritate the squire, all the while appearing rather to give the counter advice, and never sharing in any of the follies to which he conducted his thoughtless friend. In this he worked chiefly through others, introducing Frank to every acquaintance most dangerous to youth, either from the wit that laughs at prudence, or the spurious magnificence that subsists so handsomely upon bills endorsed by friends of “great expectations.”

The minister and his protege were seated at breakfast, the first reading the newspaper, the last glancing over his letters; for Randal had arrived to the dignity of receiving many letters,--ay, and notes, too, three-cornered and fantastically embossed. Egerton uttered an exclamation, and laid down the newspaper. Randal looked up from his correspondence. The minister had sunk into one of his absent reveries.

After a long silence, observing that Egerton did not return to the newspaper, Randal said, “Ahem, sir, I have a note from Frank Hazeldean, who wants much to see me; his father has arrived in town unexpectedly.”

“What brings him here?” asked Egerton, still abstractedly. “Why, it seems that he has heard some vague reports of poor Frank’s extravagance, and Frank is rather afraid or ashamed to meet him.”

“Ay, a very great fault, extravagance in the young!--destroys independence; ruins or enslaves the future. Great fault,--very! And what does youth want that it should be extravagant? Has it not everything in itself, merely because it is? Youth is youth--what needs it more?”

Egerton rose as he said this, and retired to his writing-table, and in his turn opened his correspondence. Randal took up the newspaper, and endeavoured, but in vain, to conjecture what had excited the minister’s exclamations and the revery that succeeded it.

Egerton suddenly and sharply turned round in his chair--“If you have done with the ‘Times,’ have the goodness to place it here.”

Randal had just obeyed, when a knock at the street-door was heard, and presently Lord L’Estrange came into the room, with somewhat a quicker step and somewhat a gayer mien than usual.

Audley’s hand, as if mechanically, fell upon the newspaper,--fell upon that part of the columns devoted to births, deaths, and marriages. Randal stood by, and noted; then, bowing to L’Estrange, left the room.

“Audley,” said L’Estrange, “I have had an adventure since I saw you,--an adventure that reopened the Past, and may influence my future.”

“How?”

“In the first place, I have met with a relation of--of--the Avenels.”

“Indeed! Whom,--Richard Avenel?”

“Richard--Richard--who is he? Oh, I remember, the wild lad who went off to America; but that was when I was a mere child.”

“That Richard Avenel is now a rich, thriving trader, and his marriage is in this newspaper,--married to an Honourable Mrs. M’Catchley. Well, in this country who should plume himself on birth?”

“You did not say so always, Egerton,” replied Harley, with a tone of mournful reproach.

“And I say so now pertinently to a Mrs. M’Catchley, not to the heir of the L’Estranges. But no more of these--these Avenels.”

“Yes, more of them. I tell you I have met a relation of theirs--a nephew of--of--”

“Of Richard Avenel’s?” interrupted Egerton; and then added in the slow, deliberate, argumentative tone in which he was wont to speak in public, “Richard Avenel the trader! I saw him once,--a presuming and intolerable man!”

“The nephew has not those sins. He is full of promise, of modesty, yet of pride. And his countenance--oh, Egerton, he has her eyes.”

Egerton made no answer, and Harley resumed,

“I had thought of placing him under your care. I knew you would provide for him.”

“I will. Bring him hither,” cried Egerton, eagerly. “All that I can do to prove my--regard for a wish of yours.” Harley pressed his friend’s hand warmly.

“I thank you from my heart; the Audley of my boyhood speaks now. But the young man has decided otherwise; and I do not blame him. Nay, I rejoice that he chooses a career in which, if he find hardship, he may escape dependence.”

“And that career is--”

“Letters.”

“Letters! Literature!” exclaimed the statesman. “Beggary! No, no, Harley, this is your absurd romance.”

“It will not be beggary, and it is not my romance: it is the boy’s. Leave him alone, he is my care and my charge henceforth. He is of her blood, and I said that he had HER eyes.”

“But you are going abroad; let me know where he is; I will watch over him.”

“And unsettle a right ambition for a wrong one? No, you shall know nothing of him till he can proclaim himself. I think that day will come.”

Audley mused a moment, and then said, “Well, perhaps you are right. After all, as you say, independence is a great blessing, and my ambition has not rendered myself the better or the happier.”

“Yet, my poor Audley, you ask me to be ambitious.”

“I only wish you to be consoled,” cried Egerton, with passion.

“I will try to be so; and by the help of a milder remedy than yours. I said that my adventure might influence my future; it brought me acquainted not only with the young man I speak of, but the most winning, affectionate child,--a girl.”

“Is this child an Avenel too?”

“No, she is of gentle blood,--a soldier’s daughter; the daughter of that Captain Digby on whose behalf I was a petitioner to your patronage. He is dead, and in dying, my name was on his lips. He meant me, doubtless, to be the guardian to his orphan. I shall be so. I have at last an object in life.”

“But can you seriously mean to take this child with you abroad?”

“Seriously, I do.”

“And lodge her in your own house?”

“For a year or so, while she is yet a child. Then, as she approaches youth, I shall place her elsewhere.”

“You may grow to love her. Is it clear that she will love you,--not mistake gratitude for love? It is a very hazardous experiment.”

“So was William the Norman’s,--still he was William the Conqueror. Thou biddest me move on from the Past, and be consoled, yet thou wouldst make me as inapt to progress as the mule in Slawkenbergius’s tale, with thy cursed interlocutions, ‘Stumbling, by Saint Nicholas, every step. Why, at this rate, we shall be all night in getting into’--HAPPINESS! Listen,” continued Harley, setting off, full pelt, into one of his wild whimsical humours. “One of the sons of the prophets in Israel felling wood near the river Jordan, his hatchet forsook the helve, and fell to the bottom of the river; so he prayed to have it again (it was but a small request, mark you); and having a strong faith, he did not throw the hatchet after the helve, but the helve after the hatchet. Presently two great miracles were seen. Up springs the hatchet from the bottom of the water, and fixes itself to its old acquaintance, the helve. Now, had he wished to coach it up to heaven in a fiery chariot like Elias, be as rich as Job, strong as Samson, and beautiful as Absalom, would he have obtained the wish, do you think? In truth, my friend, I question it very much.”

“I can’t comprehend what you mean. Sad stuff you are talking.”

“I cannot help that; ‘Rabelais is to be blamed for it. I am quoting him, and it is to be found in his Prologue to the Chapters on the ‘Moderation of Wishes.’ And a propos of ‘moderate wishes in point of hatchet,’ I want you to understand that I ask but little from Heaven. I fling but the helve after the hatchet that has sunk into the silent stream. I want the other half of the weapon that is buried fathom deep, and for want of which the thick woods darken round me by the Sacred River, and I can catch not a glimpse of the stars.”

“In plain English,” said Audley Egerton, “you want--” he stopped short, puzzled.

“I want my purpose and my will, and my old character, and the nature God gave me. I want the half of my soul which has fallen from me. I want such love as may replace to me the vanished affections. Reason not,--I throw the helve after the hatchet.”

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Chapter XXI

Randal Leslie, on leaving Audley, repaired to Frank’s lodgings, and after being closeted with the young Guardsman an hour or so, took his way to Limmer’s hotel, and asked for Mr. Hazeldean. He was shown into the coffee-room, while the waiter went up-stairs with his card, to see if the squire was within, and disengaged. The “Times” newspaper lay sprawling on one of the tables, and Randal, leaning over it, looked with attention into the column containing births, deaths, and marriages. But in that long and miscellaneous list he could not conjecture the name which had so excited Mr. Egerton’s interest.

“Vexatious!” he muttered; “there is no knowledge which has power more useful than that of the secrets of men.”

He turned as the waiter entered and said that Mr. Hazeldean would be glad to see him.

As Randal entered the drawing-room, the squire, shaking hands with him, looked towards the door as if expecting some one else; and his honest face assumed a blank expression of disappointment, when the door closed, and he found that Randal was unaccompanied.

“Well,” said he, bluntly, “I thought your old schoolfellow, Frank, might have been with you.”

“Have you not seen him yet, sir?”

“No, I came to town this morning; travelled outside the mail; sent to his barracks, but the young gentleman does not sleep there, has an apartment of his own; he never told me that. We are a plain family, the Hazeldeans, young sir; and I hate being kept in the dark,--by my own son, too.”

Randal made no answer, but looked sorrowful. The squire, who had never before seen his kinsman, had a vague idea that it was not polite to entertain a stranger, though a connection to himself, with his family troubles, and so resumed good-naturedly, “I am very glad to make your acquaintance at last, Mr. Leslie. You know, I hope, that you have good Hazeldean blood in your veins?”

RANDAL (smiling).--“I am not likely to forget that; it is the boast of our pedigree.”

SQUIRE (heartily).--“Shake hands again on it, my boy. You don’t want a friend, since my grandee of a half-brother has taken you up; but if ever you should, Hazeldean is not very far from Rood. Can’t get on with your father at all, my lad,--more ‘s the pity, for I think I could have given him a hint or two as to the improvement of his property. If he would plant those ugly commons--larch and fir soon come into profit, sir; and there are some low lands about Rood that would take mighty kindly to draining.”

RANDAL.--“My poor father lives a life so retired--and you cannot wonder at it. Fallen trees lie still, and so do fallen families.”

SQUIRE.--“Fallen families can get up again, which fallen trees can’t.”

RANDAL.--“Ah, sir, it often takes the energy of generations to repair the thriftlessness and extravagance of a single owner.”

SQUIRE (his brow lowering).--“That’s very true. Frank is d---d extravagant; treats me very coolly, too--not coming; near three o’clock. By the by, I suppose he told you where I was, otherwise how did you find me out?”

RANDAL (reluctantly).--“Sir, he did; and to speak frankly, I am not surprised that he has not yet appeared.”

SQUIRE.--“Eh!”

RANDAL.--“We have grown very intimate.”

SQUIRE.--“So he writes me word,--and I am glad of it. Our member, Sir John, tells me you are a very clever fellow, and a very steady one. And Frank says that he wishes he had your prudence, if he can’t have your talent. He has a good heart, Frank,” added the father, relentingly. “But zounds, sir, you say you are not surprised he has not come to welcome his own father!”

“My dear sir,” said Randal, “you wrote word to Frank that you had heard from Sir John and others of his goings-on, and that you were not satisfied with his replies to your letters.”

“Well.”

“And then you suddenly come up to town.”

“Well.”

“Well. And Frank is ashamed to meet you. For, as you say, he has been extravagant, and he has exceeded his allowance; and knowing my respect for you and my great affection for himself, he has asked me to prepare you to receive his confession and forgive him. I know I am taking a great liberty. I have no right to interfere between father and son; but pray--pray think I mean for the best.”

“Humph!” said the squire, recovering himself very slowly, and showing evident pain, “I knew already that Frank had spent more than he ought; but I think he should not have employed a third person to prepare me to forgive him. (Excuse me,--no offence.) And if he wanted a third person, was not there his own mother? What the devil! [firing up] am I a tyrant, a bashaw, that my own son is afraid to speak to me? ‘Gad, I’ll give it him!”

“Pardon me, sir,” said Randal, assuming at once that air of authority which superior intellect so well carries off and excuses, “but I strongly advise you not to express any anger at Frank’s confidence in me. At present I have influence over him. Whatever you may think of his extravagance, I have saved him from many an indiscretion, and many a debt,--a young man will listen to one of his own age so much more readily than even to the kindest friend of graver years. Indeed, sir, I speak for your sake as well as for Frank’s. Let me keep this influence over him; and don’t reproach him for the confidence placed in me. Nay, let him rather think that I have softened any displeasure you might otherwise have felt.”

There seemed so much good sense in what Randal said, and the kindness of it seemed so disinterested, that the squire’s native shrewdness was deceived.

“You are a fine young fellow,” said he, “and I am very much obliged to you. Well, I suppose there is no putting old heads upon young shoulders; and I promise you I’ll not say an angry word to Frank. I dare say, poor boy, he is very much afflicted, and I long to shake hands with him. So, set his mind at ease.”

“Ah, sir,” said Randal, with much apparent emotion, “your son may well love you: and it seems to be a hard matter for so kind a heart as yours to preserve the proper firmness with him.”

“Oh, I can be firm enough,” quoth the squire,--“especially when I don’t see him,--handsome dog that he is: very like his mother--don’t you think so?

“I never saw his mother, sir.”

“‘Gad! Not seen my Harry? No more you have; you must come and pay us a visit. I suppose my half-brother will let you come?”

“To be sure, sir. Will you not call on him while you are in town?”

“Not I. He would think I expected to get something from the Government. Tell him the ministers must go on a little better, if they want my vote for their member. But go, I see you are impatient to tell Frank that all ‘s forgot and forgiven. Come and dine with him here at six, and let him bring his bills in his pocket. Oh, I sha’n’t scold him.”

“Why, as to that,” said Randal, smiling, “I think (forgive me still) that you should not take it too easily; just as I think that you had better not blame him for his very natural and praiseworthy shame in approaching you, so I think, also, that you should do nothing that would tend to diminish that shame,--it is such a check on him. And therefore, if you can contrive to affect to be angry with him for his extravagance, it will do good.”

“You speak like a book, and I’ll try my best.”

“If you threaten, for instance, to take him out of the army, and settle him in the country, it would have a very good effect.”

“What! would he think it so great a punishment to come home and live with his parents?”

“I don’t say that; but he is naturally so fond of London. At his age, and with his large inheritance, that is natural.”

“Inheritance!” said the squire, moodily,--“inheritance! he is not thinking of that, I trust? Zounds, sir, I have as good a life as his own. Inheritance!--to be sure the Casino property is entailed on him; but as for the rest, sir, I am no tenant for life. I could leave the Hazeldean lands to my ploughman, if I chose it. Inheritance; indeed!”

“My dear sir, I did not mean to imply that Frank would entertain the unnatural and monstrous idea of calculating on your death; and all we have to do is to get him to sow his wild oats as soon as possible,--marry and settle down into the country. For it would be a thousand pities if his town habits and tastes grew permanent,--a bad thing for the Hazeldean property, that! And,” added Randal, laughing, “I feel an interest in the old place, since my grandmother comes of the stock. So, just force yourself to seem angry, and grumble a little when you pay the bills.”

“Ah, ah, trust me,” said the squire, doggedly, and with a very altered air. “I am much obliged to you for these hints, my young kinsman.” And his stout hand trembled a little as he extended it to Randal.

Leaving Limmer’s, Randal hastened to Frank’s rooms in St. James’s Street. “My dear fellow,” said he, when he entered, “it is very fortunate that I persuaded you to let me break matters to your father. You might well say he was rather passionate; but I have contrived to soothe him. You need not fear that he will not pay your debts.”

“I never feared that,” said Frank, changing colour; “I only feared his anger. But, indeed, I fear his kindness still more. What a reckless hound I have been! However, it shall be a lesson to me. And my debts once paid, I will turn as economical as yourself.”

“Quite right, Frank. And, indeed, I am a little afraid that, when your father knows the total, he may execute a threat that would be very unpleasant to you.”

“What’s that?”

“Make you sell out, and give up London.”

“The devil!” exclaimed Frank, with fervent emphasis; “that would be treating me like a child.”

“Why, it would make you seem rather ridiculous to your set, which is not a very rural one. And you, who like London so much, and are so much the fashion!”

“Don’t talk of it,” cried Frank, walking to and fro the room in great disorder.

“Perhaps, on the whole, it might be well not to say all you owe, at once. If you named half the sum, your father would let you off with a lecture; and really I tremble at the effect of the total.”

“But how shall I pay the other half?”

“Oh, you must save from your allowance; it is a very liberal one; and the tradesmen are not pressing.”

“No; but the cursed bill-brokers--”

“Always renew to a young man of your expectations. And if I get into an office, I can always help you, my dear Frank.”

“Ah, Randal, I am not so bad as to take advantage of your friendship,” said Frank, warmly. “But it seems to me mean after all, and a sort of a lie, indeed, disguising the real state of my affairs. I should not have listened to the idea from any one else; but you are such a sensible, kind, honourable fellow.”

“After epithets so flattering, I shrink from the responsibility of advice. But apart from your own interests, I should be glad to save your father the pain he would feel at knowing the whole extent of the scrape you have got into. And if it entailed on you the necessity to lay by--and give up hazard, and not be security for other men--why, it would be the best thing that could happen. Really, too, it seems hard upon Mr. Hazeldean that he should be the only sufferer, and quite just that you should bear half your own burdens.”

“So it is, Randal; that did not strike me before. I will take your counsel; and now I will go at once to Limmer’s. My dear father! I hope he is looking well?”

“Oh, very. Such a contrast to the sallow Londoners! But I think you had better not go till dinner. He has asked me to meet you at six. I will call for you a little before, and we can go together. This will prevent a good deal of gene and constraint. Good-by till then. Ha! by the way, I think if I were you, I would not take the matter too seriously and penitentially. You see the best of fathers like to keep their sons under their thumb, as the saying is. And if you want at your age to preserve your independence, and not be hurried off and buried in the country, like a schoolboy in disgrace, a little manliness of bearing would not be amiss. You can think over it.”

The dinner at Limmer’s went off very differently from what it ought to have done. Randal’s words had sunk deep, and rankled sorely in the squire’s mind; and that impression imparted a certain coldness to his manner which belied the hearty, forgiving, generous impulse with which he had come up to London, and which even Randal had not yet altogether whispered away. On the other hand, Frank, embarrassed both by the sense of disingenuousness, and a desire “not to take the thing too seriously,” seemed to the squire ungracious and thankless.

After dinner the squire began to hum and haw, and Frank to colour up and shrink. Both felt discomposed by the presence of a third person; till, with an art and address worthy of a better cause, Randal himself broke the ice, and so contrived to remove the restraint he had before imposed, that at length each was heartily glad to have matters made clear and brief by his dexterity and tact.

Frank’s debts were not in reality large; and when he named the half of them, looking down in shame, the squire, agreeably surprised, was about to express himself with a liberal heartiness that would have opened his son’s excellent heart at once to him.

But a warning look from Randal checked the impulse; and the squire thought it right, as he had promised, to affect an anger he did not feel, and let fall the unlucky threat, “that it was all very well once in a way to exceed his allowance; but if Frank did not, in future, show more sense than to be led away by a set of London sharks and coxcombs, he must cut the army, come home, and take to farming.”

Frank imprudently exclaimed, “Oh, sir, I have no taste for farming. And after London, at my age, the country would be so horribly dull.”

“Aha!” said the squire, very grimly--and he thrust back into his pocket-book some extra bank-notes which his fingers had itched to add to those he had already counted out. “The country is terribly dull, is it? Money goes there not upon follies and vices, but upon employing honest labourers, and increasing the wealth of the nation. It does not please you to spend money in that way: it is a pity you should ever be plagued with such duties.”

“My dear father--”

“Hold your tongue, you puppy. Oh, I dare say, if you were in my shoes, you would cut down the oaks, and mortgage the property; sell it, for what I know,--all go on a cast of the dice! Aha, sir--very well, very well--the country is horribly dull, is it? Pray stay in town.”

“My dear Mr. Hazeldean,” said Randal, blandly, and as if with the wish to turn off into a joke what threatened to be serious, “you must not interpret a hasty expression so literally. Why, you would make Frank as bad as Lord A-----, who wrote word to his steward to cut down more timber; and when the steward replied, ‘There are only three sign-posts left on the whole estate,’ wrote back, ‘They’ve done growing at all events,--down with them!’ You ought to know Lord A-----, sir; so witty; and--Frank’s particular friend.”

“Your particular friend, Master Frank? Pretty friends!” and the squire buttoned up the pocket to which he had transferred his note-book, with a determined air.

“But I’m his friend, too,” said Randal, kindly; “and I preach to him properly, I can tell you.” Then, as if delicately anxious to change the subject, he began to ask questions upon crops and the experiment of bone manure. He spoke earnestly, and with gusto, yet with the deference of one listening to a great practical authority. Randal had spent the afternoon in cramming the subject from agricultural journals and parliamentary reports; and like all practised readers, had really learned in a few hours more than many a man, unaccustomed to study, could gain from books in a year. The squire was surprised and pleased at the young scholar’s information and taste for such subjects.

“But, to be sure,” quoth he, with an angry look at poor Frank, “you have good Hazeldean blood in you, and know a bean from a turnip.”

“Why, sir,” said Randal, ingenuously, “I am training myself for public life; and what is a public man worth if he do not study the agriculture of his country?”

“Right--what is he worth? Put that question, with my compliments, to my half-brother. What stuff he did talk, the other night, on the malt-tax, to be sure!”

“Mr. Egerton has had so many other things to think of, that we must excuse his want of information upon one topic, however important. With his strong sense he must acquire that information, sooner or later; for he is fond of power; and, sir, knowledge is power!”

“Very true,--very fine saying,” quoth the poor squire, unsuspiciously, as Randal’s eye rested on Mr. Hazeldean’s open face, and then glanced towards Frank, who looked sad and bored.

“Yes,” repeated Randal, “knowledge is power;” and he shook his head wisely, as he passed the bottle to his host.

Still, when the squire, who meant to return to the Hall next morning, took leave of Frank, his heart warmed to his son; and still more for Frank’s dejected looks. It was not Randal’s policy to push estrangement too far at first, and in his own presence.

“Speak to poor Frank,--kindly now, sir--do;” whispered be, observing the squire’s watery eyes, as he moved to the window.

The squire, rejoiced to obey, thrust out his hand to his son.

“My dear boy,” said he, “there, don’t fret--pshaw!--it was but a trifle after all. Think no more of it.”

Frank took the hand, and suddenly threw his arm round his father’s broad shoulder.

“Oh, sir, you are too good,--too good.” His voice trembled so that Randal took alarm, passed by him, and touched him meaningly.

The squire pressed his son to his heart,--heart so large, that it seemed to fill the whole width under his broadcloth. “My dear Frank,” said he, half blubbering, “it is not the money; but, you see, it so vexes your poor mother; you must be careful in future; and, zounds, boy, it will be all yours one day; only don’t calculate on it; I could not bear that, I could not, indeed.”

“Calculate!” cried Frank. “Oh, sir, can you think it?”

“I am so delighted that I had some slight hand in your complete reconciliation with Mr. Hazeldean,” said Randal, as the young men walked from the hotel. “I saw that you were disheartened, and I told him to speak to you kindly.”

“Did you? Ah--I am sorry he needed telling.”

“I know his character so well already,” said Randal, “that I flatter myself I can always keep things between you as they ought to be. What an excellent man!”

“The best man in the world,” cried Frank, heartily; and then, as his accents drooped, “yet I have deceived him. I have a great mind to go back--”

“And tell him to give you twice as much money as you had asked for? He would think you had only seemed so affectionate in order to take him in. No, no, Frank! save, lay by, economize; and then tell him that you have paid half your own debts. Something high-minded in that.”

“So there is. Your heart is as good as your head. Goodnight.”

“Are you going home so early? Have you no engagements!”

“None that I shall keep.”

“Good-night, then.”

They parted, and Randal walked into one of the fashionable clubs. He neared a table where three or four young men (younger sons, who lived in the most splendid style, Heaven knew how) were still over their wine.

Leslie had little in common with these gentlemen, but he forced his nature to be agreeable to them, in consequence of a very excellent piece of worldly advice given to him by Audley Egerton. “Never let the dandies call you a prig,” said the statesman. “Many a clever fellow fails through life, because the silly fellows, whom half a word well spoken could make his claqueurs, turn him into ridicule. Whatever you are, avoid the fault of most reading men: in a word, don’t be a prig!”

“I have just left Hazeldean,” said Randal. “What a good fellow he is!”

“Capital!” said the Honourable George Borrowell. “Where is he?”

“Why, he is gone to his rooms. He has had a little scene with his father, a thorough, rough country squire. It would be an act of charity if you would go and keep him company, or take him with you to some place a little more lively than his own lodgings.”

“What! the old gentleman has been teasing him!--a horrid shame! Why, Frank is not extravagant, and he will be very rich, eh?”

“An immense property,” said Randal, “and not a mortgage on it: an only son,” he added, turning away.

Among these young gentlemen there was a kindly and most benevolent whisper, and presently they all rose, and walked away towards Frank’s lodgings.

“The wedge is in the tree,” said Randal to himself, “and there is a gap already between the bark and the wood.”

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Chapter XXII

Harley L’Estrange is seated beside Helen at the lattice-window in the cottage at Norwood. The bloom of reviving health is on the child’s face, and she is listening with a smile, for Harley is speaking of Leonard with praise, and of Leonard’s future with hope. “And thus,” he continued, “secure from his former trials, happy in his occupation, and pursuing the career he has chosen, we must be content, my dear child, to leave him.”

“Leave him!” exclaimed Helen, and the rose on her cheek faded.

Harley was not displeased to see her emotion. He would have been disappointed in her heart if it had been less susceptible to affection.

“It is hard on you, Helen,” said he, “to be separated from one who has been to you as a brother. Do not hate me for doing so. But I consider myself your guardian, and your home as yet must be mine. We are going from this land of cloud and mist, going as into the world of summer. Well, that does not content you. You weep, my child; you mourn your own friend, but do not forget your father’s. I am alone, and often sad, Helen; will you not comfort me? You press my hand, but you must learn to smile on me also. You are born to be the comforter. Comforters are not egotists; they are always cheerful when they console.”

The voice of Harley was so sweet and his words went so home to the child’s heart, that she looked up and smiled in his face as he kissed her ingenuous brow. But then she thought of Leonard, and felt so solitary, so bereft, that tears burst forth again. Before these were dried, Leonard himself entered, and, obeying an irresistible impulse, she sprang to his arms, and leaning her head on his shoulder, sobbed out,

“I am going from you, brother; do not grieve, do not miss me.”

Harley was much moved: he folded his arms, and contemplated them both silently,--and his own eyes were moist. “This heart,” thought he, “will be worth the winning!”

He drew aside Leonard, and whispered, “Soothe, but encourage and support her. I leave you together; come to me in the garden later.”

It was nearly an hour before Leonard joined Harley.

“She was not weeping when you left her?” asked L’Estrange.

“No; she has more fortitude than we might suppose. Heaven knows how that fortitude has supported mine. I have promised to write to her often.”

Harley took two strides across the lawn, and then, coming back to Leonard, said, “Keep your promise, and write often for the first year. I would then ask you to let the correspondence drop gradually.”

“Drop! Ah, my Lord!”

“Look you, my young friend, I wish to lead this fair mind wholly from the sorrows of the past. I wish Helen to enter, not abruptly, but step by step, into a new life. You love each other now, as do two children,--as brother and sister. But later, if encouraged, would the love be the same? And is it not better for both of you that youth should open upon the world with youth’s natural affections free and unforestalled?”

“True! And she is so above me,” said Leonard, mournfully.

“No one is above him who succeeds in your ambition, Leonard. It is not that, believe me.”

Leonard shook his head.

“Perhaps,” said Harley, with a smile, “I rather feel that you are above me. For what vantage-ground is so high as youth? Perhaps I may become jealous of you. It is well that she should learn to like one who is to be henceforth her guardian and protector. Yet how can she like me as she ought, if her heart is to be full of you?”

The boy bowed his head; and Harley hastened to change the subject, and speak of letters and of glory. His words were eloquent and his voice kindling; for he had been an enthusiast for fame in his boyhood, and in Leonard’s his own seemed to him to revive. But the poet’s heart gave back no echo,--suddenly it seemed void and desolate. Yet when Leonard walked back by the moonlight, he muttered to himself, “Strange, strange, so mere a child! this cannot be love! Still, what else to love is there left to me?”

And so he paused upon the bridge where he had so often stood with Helen, and on which he had found the protector that had given to her a home, to himself a career. And life seemed very long, and fame but a dreary phantom. Courage still, Leonard! These are the sorrows of the heart that teach thee more than all the precepts of sage and critic.

Another day, and Helen had left the shores of England, with her fanciful and dreaming guardian. Years will pass before our tale re-opens. Life in all the forms we have seen it travels on. And the squire farms and hunts; and the parson preaches and chides and soothes; and Riccabocca reads his Machiavelli, and sighs and smiles as he moralizes on Men and States; and Violante’s dark eyes grow deeper and more spiritual in their lustre, and her beauty takes thought from solitary dreams. And Mr. Richard Avenel has his house in London, and the Honourable Mrs. Avenel her opera-box; and hard and dire is their struggle into fashion, and hotly does the new man, scorning the aristocracy, pant to become aristocrat. And Audley Egerton goes from the office to the parliament, and drudges, and debates, and helps to govern the empire in which the sun never sets. Poor sun, how tired he must be--but not more tired than the Government! And Randal Leslie has an excellent place in the bureau of a minister, and is looking to the time when he shall resign it to come into parliament, and on that large arena turn knowledge into power. And meanwhile he is much where he was with Audley Egerton; but he has established intimacy with the squire, and visited Hazeldean twice, and examined the house and the map of the property, and very nearly fallen a second time into the ha-ha, and the squire believes that Randal Leslie alone can keep Frank out of mischief, and has spoken rough words to his Harry about Frank’s continued extravagance. And Frank does continue to pursue pleasure, and is very miserable, and horribly in debt. And Madame di Negra has gone from London to Paris, and taken a tour into Switzerland, and come back to London again, and has grown very intimate with Randal Leslie; and Randal has introduced Frank to her; and Frank thinks her the loveliest woman in the world, and grossly slandered by certain evil tongues. And the brother of Madame di Negra is expected in England at last; and what with his repute for beauty and for wealth, people anticipate a sensation. And Leonard, and Harley, and Helen? Patience,--they will all re-appear.

BOOK EIGHTH.

INITIAL CHAPTER.

THE ABUSE OF INTELLECT.

There is at present so vehement a flourish of trumpets, and so prodigious a roll of the drum, whenever we are called upon to throw up our hats, and cry “Huzza” to the “March of Enlightenment,” that, out of that very spirit of contradiction natural to all rational animals, one is tempted to stop one’s ears, and say, “Gently, gently; LIGHT is noiseless: how comes ‘Enlightenment’ to make such a clatter? Meanwhile, if it be not impertinent, pray, where is Enlightenment marching to?” Ask that question of any six of the loudest bawlers in the procession, and I’ll wager tenpence to California that you get six very unsatisfactory answers. One respectable gentleman, who, to our great astonishment, insists upon calling himself “a slave,” but has a remarkably free way of expressing his opinions, will reply, “Enlightenment is marching towards the seven points of the Charter.” Another, with his hair a la jeune France, who has taken a fancy to his friend’s wife, and is rather embarrassed with his own, asserts that Enlightenment is proceeding towards the Rights of Women, the reign of Social Love, and the annihilation of Tyrannical Prejudice. A third, who has the air of a man well-to-do in the middle class, more modest in his hopes, because he neither wishes to have his head broken by his errand-boy, nor his wife carried off to an Agapemone by his apprentice, does not take Enlightenment a step farther than a siege on Debrett, and a cannonade on the Budget. Illiberal man! the march that he swells will soon trample him under foot. No one fares so ill in a crowd as the man who is wedged in the middle. A fourth, looking wild and dreamy, as if he had come out of the cave of Trophonius, and who is a mesmerizer and a mystic, thinks Enlightenment is in full career towards the good old days of alchemists and necromancers. A fifth, whom one might take for a Quaker, asserts that the march of Enlightenment is a crusade for universal philanthropy, vegetable diet, and the perpetuation of peace by means of speeches, which certainly do produce a very contrary effect from the Philippics of Demosthenes! The sixth--good fellow without a rag on his back--does not care a straw where the march goes. He can’t be worse off than he is; and it is quite immaterial to him whether he goes to the dog-star above, or the bottomless pit below. I say nothing, however, against the march, while we take it altogether. Whatever happens, one is in good company; and though I am somewhat indolent by nature, and would rather stay at home with Locke and Burke (dull dogs though they were) than have my thoughts set off helter-skelter with those cursed trumpets and drums, blown and dub-a-dubbed by fellows whom I vow to heaven I would not trust with a five-pound note,--still, if I must march, I must; and so deuce take the hindmost! But when it comes to individual marchers upon their own account,--privateers and condottieri of Enlightenment,--who have filled their pockets with Lucifer matches, and have a sublime contempt for their neighbour’s barns and hay-ricks, I don’t see why I should throw myself into the seventh heaven of admiration and ecstasy.

If those who are eternally rhapsodizing on the celestial blessings that are to follow Enlightenment, Universal Knowledge, and so forth, would just take their eyes out of their pockets, and look about them, I would respectfully inquire if they have never met any very knowing and enlightened gentleman, whose acquaintance is by no means desirable. If not, they are monstrous lucky. Every man must judge by his own experience; and the worst rogues I have ever encountered were amazingly well-informed clever fellows. From dunderheads and dunces we can protect ourselves, but from your sharpwitted gentleman, all enlightenment and no prejudice, we have but to cry, “Heaven defend us!” It is true, that the rogue (let him be ever so enlightened) usually comes to no good himself,--though not before he has done harm enough to his neighbours. But that only shows that the world wants something else in those it rewards besides intelligence per se and in the abstract; and is much too old a world to allow any Jack Horner to pick out its plums for his own personal gratification. Hence a man of very moderate intelligence, who believes in God, suffers his heart to beat with human sympathies, and keeps his eyes off your strongbox, will perhaps gain a vast deal more power than knowledge ever gives to a rogue.

Wherefore, though I anticipate an outcry against me on the part of the blockheads, who, strange to say, are the most credulous idolators of Enlightenment, and if knowledge were power, would rot on a dunghill, yet, nevertheless, I think all really enlightened men will agree with me, that when one falls in with detached sharpshooters from the general March of Enlightenment, it is no reason that we should make ourselves a target, because Enlightenment has furnished them with a gun. It has, doubtless, been already remarked by the judicious reader that of the numerous characters introduced into this work, the larger portion belong to that species which we call the INTELLECTUAL,--that through them are analyzed and developed human intellect, in various forms and directions. So that this History, rightly considered, is a kind of humble familiar Epic, or, if you prefer it, a long Serio-Comedy, upon the Varieties of English Life in this our Century, set in movement by the intelligences most prevalent. And where more ordinary and less refined types of the species round and complete the survey of our passing generation, they will often suggest, by contrast, the deficiencies which mere intellectual culture leaves in the human being. Certainly, I have no spite against intellect and enlightenment. Heaven forbid I should be such a Goth! I am only the advocate for common-sense and fair play. I don’t think an able man necessarily an angel; but I think if his heart match his head, and both proceed in the Great March under the divine Oriflamine, he goes as near to the angel as humanity will permit: if not, if he has but a penn’orth of heart to a pound of brains, I say, “Bon jour, mon ange! I see not the starry upward wings, but the grovelling cloven-hoof.” I ‘d rather be obfuscated by the Squire of Hazeldean than en lightened by Randal Leslie. Every man to his taste. But intellect itself (not in the philosophical but the ordinary sense of the term) is rarely, if ever, one completed harmonious agency; it is not one faculty, but a compound of many, some of which are often at war with each other, and mar the concord of the whole. Few of us but have some predominant faculty, in itself a strength; but which, usurping unseasonably dominion over the rest, shares the lot of all tyranny, however brilliant, and leaves the empire weak against disaffection within, and invasion from without. Hence, intellect may be perverted in a man of evil disposition, and sometimes merely wasted in a man of excellent impulses, for want of the necessary discipline, or of a strong ruling motive. I doubt if there be one person in the world who has obtained a high reputation for talent, who has not met somebody much cleverer than himself, which said somebody has never obtained any reputation at all! Men like Audley Egerton are constantly seen in the great positions of life; while men like Harley L’Estrange, who could have beaten them hollow in anything equally striven for by both, float away down the stream, and, unless some sudden stimulant arouse their dreamy energies, vanish out of sight into silent graves. If Hamlet and Polonius were living now, Polonius would have a much better chance of being a Cabinet Minister, though Hamlet would unquestionably be a much more intellectual character. What would become of Hamlet? Heaven knows! Dr. Arnold said, from his experience of a school, that the difference between one man and another was not mere ability,--it was energy. There is a great deal of truth in that saying.

Submitting these hints to the judgment and penetration of the sagacious, I enter on the fresh division of this work, and see already Randal Leslie gnawing his lips on the background. The German poet observes that the Cow of Isis is to some the divine symbol of knowledge, to others but the milch cow, only regarded for the pounds of butter she will yield. O tendency of our age, to look on Isis as the milch cow! O prostitution of the grandest desires to the basest uses! Gaze on the goddess, Randal Leslie, and get ready thy churn and thy scales. Let us see what the butter will fetch in the market.

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Chapter II

A new Reign has commenced. There has been a general election; the unpopularity of the Administration has been apparent at the hustings. Audley Egerton, hitherto returned by vast majorities, has barely escaped defeat--thanks to a majority of five. The expenses of his election are said to have been prodigious. “But who can stand against such wealth as Egerton’s,--no doubt backed, too, by the Treasury purse?” said the defeated candidate. It is towards the close of October; London is already full; parliament will meet in less than a fortnight.

In one of the principal apartments of that hotel in which foreigners may discover what is meant by English comfort, and the price which foreigners must pay for it, there sat two persons side by side, engaged in close conversation. The one was a female, in whose pale clear complexion and raven hair, in whose eyes, vivid with a power of expression rarely bestowed on the beauties of the North, we recognize Beatrice, Marchesa di Negra. Undeniably handsome as was the Italian lady, her companion, though a man, and far advanced into middle age, was yet more remarkable for personal advantages. There was a strong family likeness between the two; but there was also a striking contrast in air, manner, and all that stamps on the physiognomy the idiosyncrasies of character. There was something of gravity, of earnestness and passion, in Beatrice’s countenance when carefully examined; her smile at times might be false, but it was rarely ironical, never cynical. Her gestures, though graceful, were unrestrained and frequent. You could see she was a daughter of the South. Her companion, on the contrary, preserved on the fair, smooth face, to which years had given scarcely a line or wrinkle, something that might have passed, at first glance, for the levity and thoughtlessness of a gay and youthful nature; but the smile, though exquisitely polished, took at times the derision of a sneer. In his manners he was as composed and as free from gesture as an Englishman. His hair was of that red brown with which the Italian painters produce such marvellous effects of colour; and if here and there a silver thread gleamed through the locks, it was lost at once amidst their luxuriance. His eyes were light, and his complexion, though without much colour, was singularly transparent. His beauty, indeed, would have been rather womanly than masculine, but for the height and sinewy spareness of a frame in which muscular strength was rather adorned than concealed by an admirable elegance of proportion. You would never have guessed this man to be an Italian; more likely you would have supposed him a Parisian. He conversed in French, his dress was of French fashion, his mode of thought seemed French. Not that he was like the Frenchman of the present day,--an animal, either rude or reserved; but your ideal of the marquis of the old regime, the roue of the Regency.

Italian, however, he was, and of a race renowned in Italian history. But, as if ashamed of his country and his birth, he affected to be a citizen of the world. Heaven help the world if it hold only such citizens!

“But, Giulio,” said Beatrice di Negra, speaking in Italian, “even granting that you discover this girl, can you suppose that her father will ever consent to your alliance? Surely you know too well the nature of your kinsman?”

“Tu to trompes, ma soeur,” replied Giulio Franzini, Count di Peschiera, in French as usual,--“tu to trompes; I knew it before he had gone through exile and penury. How can I know it now? But comfort yourself, my too anxious Beatrice, I shall not care for his consent, till I ‘ve made sure of his daughter’s.”

“But how win that in despite of the father?”

“Eh, mordieu!” interrupted the count, with true French gayety; “what would become of all the comedies ever written, if marriages were not made in despite of the father? Look you,” he resumed, with a very slight compression of his lip, and a still slighter movement in his chair,--“look you, this is no question of ifs and buts! it is a question of must and shall,--a question of existence to you and to me. When Danton was condemned to the guillotine, he said, flinging a pellet of bread at the nose of his respectable judge, ‘Mon individu sera bientot dans le neant.’ My patrimony is there already! I am loaded with debts. I see before me, on the one side, ruin or suicide; on the other side, wedlock and wealth.”

“But from those vast possessions which you have been permitted to enjoy so long, have you really saved nothing against the time when they might be reclaimed at your hands?”

“My sister,” replied the count, “do I look like a man who saved? Besides, when the Austrian Emperor, unwilling to raze from his Lombard domains a name and a House so illustrious as our kinsman’s, and desirous, while punishing that kinsman’s rebellion, to reward my adherence, forbore the peremptory confiscation of those vast possessions at which my mouth waters while we speak, but, annexing them to the crown during pleasure, allowed me, as the next of male kin, to retain the revenues of one half for the same very indefinite period,--had I not every reason to suppose that before long I could so influence his Imperial Majesty, or his minister, as to obtain a decree that might transfer the whole, unconditionally and absolutely, to myself? And methinks I should have done so, but for this accursed, intermeddling English Milord, who has never ceased to besiege the court or the minister with alleged extenuations of our cousin’s rebellion, and proofless assertions that I shared it in order to entangle my kinsman, and betrayed it in order to profit by his spoils. So that, at last, in return for all my services, and in answer to all my claims, I received from the minister himself this cold reply, Count of Peschiera, your aid was important, and your reward has been large. That reward it would not be for your honour to extend, and justify the ill opinion of your Italian countrymen by formally appropriating to yourself all that was forfeited by the treason you denounced. A name so noble as yours should be dearer to you than fortune itself.’”

“Ah Giulio,” cried Beatrice, her face lighting up, changed in its whole character, “those were words that might make the demon that tempts to avarice fly from your breast in shame.”

The count opened his eyes in great amaze; then he glanced round the room, and said quietly,

“Nobody else hears you, my dear Beatrice; talk commonsense. Heroics sound well in mixed society; but there is nothing less suited to the tone of a family conversation.”

Madame di Negra bent down her head abashed, and that sudden change in the expression of her countenance which had seemed to betray susceptibility to generous emotion, faded as suddenly away.

“But still,” she said coldly, “you enjoy one half of those ample revenues: why talk, then, of suicide and ruin?”

“I enjoy them at the pleasure of the crown; and what if it be the pleasure of the crown to recall our cousin, and reinstate him in his possessions?”

“There is a probability, then, of that pardon? When you first employed me in your researches you only thought there was a possibility.”

“There is a great probability of it, and therefore I am here. I learned some little time since that the question of such recall had been suggested by the emperor, and discussed in Council. The danger to the State, which might arise from our cousin’s wealth, his alleged abilities,--abilities! bah! and his popular name, deferred any decision on the point; and, indeed, the difficulty of dealing with myself must have embarrassed the minister. But it is a mere question of time. He cannot long remain excluded from the general amnesty already extended to the other refugees. The person who gave me this information is high in power, and friendly to myself; and he added a piece of advice on which I acted. ‘It was intimated,’ said he, ‘by one of the partisans of your kinsman, that the exile could give a hostage for his loyalty in the person of his daughter and heiress; that she had arrived at marriageable age; that if she were to wed, with the emperor’s consent, some one whose attachment to the Austrian crown was unquestionable, there would be a guarantee both for the faith of the father, and for the transmission of so important a heritage to safe and loyal hands. Why not’ (continued my friend) ‘apply to the emperor for his consent to that alliance for yourself,--you, on whom he can depend; you who, if the daughter should die, would be the legal heir to those lands?’ On that hint I spoke.”

“You saw the emperor?”

“And after combating the unjust prepossessions against me, I stated that so far from my cousin having any fair cause of resentment against me, when all was duly explained to him, I did not doubt that he would willingly give me the hand of his child.”

“You did!” cried the marchesa, amazed.

“And,” continued the count, imperturbably, as he smoothed, with careless hand, the snowy plaits of his shirt front,--“and that I should thus have the happiness of becoming myself the guarantee of my kinsman’s loyalty, the agent for the restoration of his honours, while, in the eyes of the envious and malignant, I should clear up my own name from all suspicion that I had wronged him.”

“And the emperor consented?”

“Pardieu, my dear sister, what else could his Majesty do? My proposition smoothed every obstacle, and reconciled policy with mercy. It remains, therefore, only to find out what has hitherto baffled all our researches, the retreat of our dear kinsfolk, and to make myself a welcome lover to the demoiselle. There is some disparity of years, I own; but--unless your sex and my glass flatter me overmuch--I am still a match for many a gallant of five-and-twenty.”

The count said this with so charming a smile, and looked so pre-eminently handsome, that he carried off the coxcombry of the words as gracefully as if they had been spoken by some dazzling hero of the grand old comedy of Parisian life.

Then interlacing his fingers and lightly leaning his hands, thus clasped, upon his sister’s shoulder, he looked into her face, and said slowly, “And now, my sister, for some gentle but deserved reproach. Have you not sadly failed me in the task I imposed on your regard for my interests? Is it not some years since you first came to England on the mission of discovering these worthy relations of ours? Did I not entreat you to seduce into your toils the man whom I new to be my enemy, and who was indubitably acquainted with our cousin’s retreat,--a secret he has hitherto locked within his bosom? Did you not tell me, that though he was then in England, you could find no occasion even to meet him, but that you had obtained the friendship of the statesman to whom I directed your attention, as his most intimate associate? And yet you, whose charms are usually so irresistible, learn nothing from the statesman, as you see nothing of Milord. Nay, baffled and misled, you actually suppose that the quarry has taken refuge in France. You go thither, you pretend to search the capital, the provinces, Switzerland, que sais je? All in vain,--though--foi de gentilhomme--your police cost me dearly. You return to England; the same chase, and the same result. Palsambleu, ma soeur, I do too much credit to your talents not to question your zeal. In a word, have you been in earnest,--or have you not had some womanly pleasure in amusing yourself and abusing my trust?”

“Giulio,” answered Beatrice, sadly, “you know the influence you have exercised over my character and my fate. Your reproaches are not just. I made such inquiries as were in my power, and I have now cause to believe that I know one who is possessed of this secret, and can guide us to it.”

“Ah, you do!” exclaimed the count. Beatrice did not heed the exclamation, and hurried on.

“But grant that my heart shrunk from the task you imposed on me, would it not have been natural? When I first came to England, you informed me that your object in discovering the exiles was one which I could honestly aid. You naturally wished first to know if the daughter lived; if not, you were the heir. If she did, you assured me you desired to effect, through my mediation, some liberal compromise with Alphonso, by which you would have sought to obtain his restoration, provided he would leave you for life in possession of the grant you hold from the crown. While these were your objects, I did my best, ineffectual as it was, to obtain the information required.”

“And what made me lose so important, though so ineffectual an ally?” asked the count, still smiling; but a gleam that belied the smile shot from his eye.

“What! when you bade me receive and co-operate with the miserable spies--the false Italians--whom you sent over, and seek to entangle this poor exile, when found, in some rash correspondence to be revealed to the court; when you sought to seduce the daughter of the Count of Peschiera, the descendant of those who had ruled in Italy, into the informer, the corrupter, and the traitress,--no, Giulio, then I recoiled; and then, fearful of your own sway over me, I retreated into France. I have answered you frankly.”

The count removed his hands from the shoulder on which they had reclined so cordially.

“And this,” said he, “is your wisdom, and this your gratitude! You, whose fortunes are bound up in mine; you, who subsist on my bounty; you, who--”

“Hold,” cried the marchesa, rising, and with a burst of emotion, as if stung to the utmost, and breaking into revolt from the tyranny of years,--“hold! Gratitude! bounty! Brother, brother! what, indeed, do I owe to you? The shame and the misery of a life. While yet a child, you condemned me to marry against my will, against my heart, against my prayers,--and laughed at my tears when I knelt to you for mercy. I was pure then, Giulio,--pure and innocent as the flowers in my virgin crown. And now--now--”

Beatrice stopped abruptly, and clasped her hands before her face.

“Now you upbraid me,” said the count, unruffled by her sudden passion, “because I gave you in marriage to a man young and noble?”

“Old in vices, and mean of soul! The marriage I forgave you. You had the right, according to the customs of our country, to dispose of my hand. But I forgave you not the consolations that you whispered in the ear of a wretched and insulted wife.”

“Pardon me the remark,” replied the count, with a courtly bend of his head, “but those consolations were also conformable to the customs of our country, and I was not aware till now that you had wholly disdained them. And,” continued the count, “you were not so long a wife that the gall of the chain should smart still. You were soon left a widow,--free, childless, young, beautiful.”

“And penniless.”

“True, Di Negra was a gambler, and very unlucky; no fault of mine. I could neither keep the cards from his hands, nor advise him how to play them.”

“And my own portion? O Giulio, I knew but at his death why you had condemned me to that renegade Genoese. He owed you money, and, against honour, and I believe against law, you had accepted my fortune in discharge of the debt.”

“He had no other way to discharge it; a debt of honour must be paid,--old stories these. What matters? Since then my purse has been open to you.”

“Yes, not as your sister, but your instrument, your spy! Yes, your purse has been open--with a niggard hand.”

“Un peu de conscience, ma chere,--you are so extravagant. But come, be plain. What would you?”

“I would be free from you.”

“That is, you would form some second marriage with one of these rich island lords. Ma foi, I respect your ambition.”

“It is not so high. I aim but to escape from slavery,--to be placed beyond dishonourable temptation. I desire,” cried Beatrice, with increased emotion,--“I desire to re-enter the life of woman.”

“Eno’!” said the count, with a visible impatience; “is there anything in the attainment of your object that should render you indifferent to mine? You desire to marry, if I comprehend you right. And to marry as becomes you, you should bring to your husband not debts, but a dowry. Be it so. I will restore the portion that I saved from the spendthrift clutch of the Genoese,--the moment that it is mine to bestow, the moment that I am husband to my kinsman’s heiress. And now, Beatrice, you imply that my former notions revolted your conscience; my present plan should content it, for by this marriage shall our kinsman regain his country, and repossess, at least, half his lands. And if I am not an excellent husband to the demoiselle, it will be her own fault. I have sown my wild oats. Je suis bon prince, when I have things a little my own way. It is my hope and my intention, and certainly it will be my interest, to become digne epoux et irreprochable pere de famille. I speak lightly,--‘t is my way. I mean seriously. The little girl will be very happy with me, and I shall succeed in soothing all resentment her father may retain. Will you aid me then, yes or no? Aid me, and you shall indeed be free. The magician will release the fair spirit he has bound to his will. Aid me not, ma chere, and mark, I do not threaten--I do but warn--aid me not; grant that I become a beggar, and ask yourself what is to become of you,--still young, still beautiful, and still penniless? Nay, worse than penniless; you have done me the honour,” and here the count, looking on the table, drew a letter from a portfolio emblazoned with his arms and coronet,--“you have done me the honour to consult me as to your debts.”

“You will restore my fortune?” said the marchesa, irresolutely,--and averting her head from an odious schedule of figures.

“When my own, with your aid, is secured.”

“But do you not overrate the value of my aid?”

“Possibly,” said the count, with a caressing suavity--and he kissed his sister’s forehead. “Possibly; but, by my honour, I wish to repair to you any wrong, real or supposed, I may have done you in past times. I wish to find again my own dear sister. I may over-value your aid, but not the affection from which it comes. Let us be friends, cara Beatrice mia,” added the count, for the first time employing Italian words.

The marchesa laid her head on his shoulder, and her tears flowed softly. Evidently this man had great influence over her,--and evidently, whatever her cause for complaint, her affection for him was still sisterly and strong. A nature with fine flashes of generosity, spirit, honour, and passion was hers; but uncultured, unguided, spoilt by the worst social examples, easily led into wrong, not always aware where the wrong was, letting affections good or bad whisper away her conscience or blind her reason. Such women are often far more dangerous when induced to wrong than those who are thoroughly abandoned,--such women are the accomplices men like the Count of Peschiera most desire to obtain.

“Ah, Giulio,” said Beatrice, after a pause, and looking up at him through her tears, “when you speak to me thus, you know you can do with me what you will. Fatherless and motherless, whom had my childhood to love and obey but you?”

“Dear Beatrice,” murmured the count, tenderly, and he again kissed her forehead. “So,” he continued, more carelessly,--“so the reconciliation is effected, and our interests and our hearts re-allied. Now, alas! to descend to business. You say that you know some one whom you believe to be acquainted with the lurking-place of my father-in-law--that is to be!”

“I think so. You remind me that I have an appointment with him this day: it is near the hour,--I must leave you.”

“To learn the secret?--Quick, quick. I have no fear of your success, if it is by his heart that you lead him!”

“You mistake; on his heart I have no hold. But he has a friend who loves me, and honourably, and whose cause he pleads. I think here that I have some means to control or persuade him. If not--ah, he is of a character that perplexes me in all but his worldly ambition; and how can we foreigners influence him through THAT?”

“Is he poor, or is he extravagant?”

“Not extravagant, and not positively poor, but dependent.”

“Then we have him,” said the count, composedly. “If his assistance be worth buying, we can bid high for it. Sur mon ame, I never yet knew money fail with any man who was both worldly and dependent. I put him and myself in your hands.”

Thus saying, the count opened the door, and conducted his sister with formal politeness to her carriage. He then returned, reseated himself, and mused in silence. As he did so, the muscles of his countenance relaxed. The levity of the Frenchman fled from his visage, and in his eye, as it gazed abstractedly into space, there was that steady depth so remarkable in the old portraits of Florentine diplomatist or Venetian Oligarch. Thus seen, there was in that face, despite all its beauty, something that would have awed back even the fond gaze of love,--something hard, collected, inscrutable, remorseless. But this change of countenance did not last long. Evidently thought, though intense for the moment, was not habitual to the man; evidently he had lived the life which takes all things lightly,--so he rose with a look of fatigue, shook and stretched himself, as if to cast off, or grow out of, an unwelcome and irksome mood. An hour afterwards, the Count of Peschiera was charming all eyes, and pleasing all ears, in the saloon of a high-born beauty, whose acquaintance he had made at Vienna, and whose charms, according to that old and never-truth-speaking oracle, Polite Scandal, were now said to have attracted to London the brilliant foreigner.

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Chapter III

The marehesa regained her house, which was in Curzon Street, and withdrew to her own room, to readjust her dress, and remove from her countenance all trace of the tears she had shed.

Half an hour afterwards she was seated in her drawing-room, composed and calm; nor, seeing her then, could you have guessed that she was capable of so much emotion and so much weakness. In that stately exterior, in that quiet attitude, in that elaborate and finished elegance which comes alike from the arts of the toilet and the conventional repose of rank, you could see but the woman of the world and the great lady.

A knock at the door was heard, and in a few moments there entered a visitor, with the easy familiarity of intimate acquaintance,--a young man, but with none of the bloom of youth. His hair, fine as a woman’s, was thin and scanty, but it fell low over the forehead, and concealed that noblest of our human features. “A gentleman,” says Apuleius, “ought to wear his whole mind on his forehead.” The young visitor would never have committed so frank an imprudence. His cheek was pale, and in his step and his movements there was a languor that spoke of fatigued nerves or delicate health. But the light of the eye and the tone of the voice were those of a mental temperament controlling the bodily,--vigorous and energetic. For the rest, his general appearance was distinguished by a refinement alike intellectual and social. Once seen, you would not easily forget him; and the reader, no doubt, already recognizes Randal Leslie. His salutation, as I before said, was that of intimate familiarity; yet it was given and replied to with that unreserved openness which denotes the absence of a more tender sentiment.

Seating himself by the marchesa’s side, Randal began first to converse on the fashionable topics and gossip of the day; but it was observable that while he extracted from her the current anecdote and scandal of the great world, neither anecdote nor scandal did he communicate in return. Randal Leslie had already learned the art not to commit himself, nor to have quoted against him one ill-natured remark upon the eminent. Nothing more injures the man who would rise beyond the fame of the salons than to be considered backbiter and gossip; “yet it is always useful,” thought Randal Leslie, “to know the foibles, the small social and private springs, by which the great are moved. Critical occasions may arise in which such a knowledge may be power.” And hence, perhaps (besides a more private motive, soon to be perceived), Randal did not consider his time thrown away in cultivating Madame di Negra’s friendship. For, despite much that was whispered against her, she had succeeded in dispelling the coldness with which she had at first been received in the London circles. Her beauty, her grace, and her high birth had raised her into fashion, and the homage of men of the first station, while it perhaps injured her reputation as woman, added to her celebrity as fine lady. So much do we cold English, prudes though we be, forgive to the foreigner what we avenge on the native.

Sliding at last from these general topics into very well-bred and elegant personal compliment, and reciting various eulogies, which Lord this and the Duke of that had passed on the marchesa’s charms, Randal laid his hand on hers, with the license of admitted friendship, and said,

“But since you have deigned to confide in me, since when (happily for me, and with a generosity of which no coquette could have been capable) you, in good time, repressed into friendship feelings that might else have ripened into those you are formed to inspire and disdain to return, you told me with your charming smile, ‘Let no one speak to me of love who does not offer me his hand, and with it the means to supply tastes that I fear are terribly extravagant,’--since thus you allowed me to divine your natural objects, and upon that understanding our intimacy has been founded, you will pardon me for saying that the admiration you excite amongst these grands seigneurs I have named only serves to defeat your own purpose, and scare away admirers less brilliant, but more in earnest. Most of these gentlemen are unfortunately married; and they who are not belong to those members of our aristocracy who, in marriage, seek more than beauty and wit,--namely, connections to strengthen their political station, or wealth to redeem a mortgage and sustain a title.”

“My dear Mr. Leslie,” replied the marchesa,--and a certain sadness might be detected in the tone of the voice and the droop of the eye,--“I have lived long enough in the real world to appreciate the baseness and the falsehood of most of those sentiments which take the noblest names. I see through the hearts of the admirers you parade before me, and know that not one of them would shelter with his ermine the woman to whom he talks of his heart. Ah,” continued Beatrice, with a softness of which she was unconscious, but which might have been extremely dangerous to youth less steeled and self-guarded than was Randal Leslie’s,--“ah, I am less ambitious than you suppose. I have dreamed of a friend, a companion, a protector, with feelings still fresh, undebased by the low round of vulgar dissipation and mean pleasures,--of a heart so new, that it might restore my own to what it was in its happy spring. I have seen in your country some marriages, the mere contemplation of which has filled my eyes with delicious tears. I have learned in England to know the value of home. And with such a heart as I describe, and such a home, I could forget that I ever knew a less pure ambition.”

“This language does not surprise me,” said Randal; “yet it does not harmonize with your former answer to me.”

“To you,” repeated Beatrice, smiling, and regaining her lighter manner; “to you,--true. But I never had the vanity to think that your affection for me could bear the sacrifices it would cost you in marriage; that you, with your ambition, could bound your dreams of happiness to home. And then, too,” said she, raising her head, and with a certain grave pride in her air,--“and then, I could not have consented to share my fate with one whom my poverty would cripple. I could not listen to my heart, if it had beat for a lover without fortune, for to him I could then have brought but a burden, and betrayed him into a union with poverty and debt. Now, it may be different. Now I may have the dowry that befits my birth. And now I may be free to choose according to my heart as woman, not according to my necessities, as one poor, harassed, and despairing.”

“Ah,” said Randal, interested, and drawing still closer towards his fair companion,--“ah, I congratulate you sincerely; you have cause, then, to think that you shall be--rich?”

The marchesa paused before she answered, and during that pause Randal relaxed the web of the scheme which he had been secretly weaving, and rapidly considered whether, if Beatrice di Negra would indeed be rich, she might answer to himself as a wife; and in what way, if so, he had best change his tone from that of friendship into that of love. While thus reflecting, Beatrice answered,

“Not rich for an Englishwoman; for an Italian, yes. My fortune should be half a million--”

“Half a million!” cried Randal, and with difficulty he restrained himself from falling at her feet in adoration. “Of francs!” continued the marchesa.

“Francs! Ah,” said Randal, with a long-drawn breath, and recovering from his sudden enthusiasm, “about L20,000? eight hundred a year at four per cent. A very handsome portion, certainly (Genteel poverty!” he murmured to himself. “What an escape I have had! but I see--I see. This will smooth all difficulties in the way of my better and earlier project. I see),--a very handsome portion,” he repeated aloud,--“not for a grand seigneur, indeed, but still for a gentleman of birth and expectations worthy of your choice, if ambition be not your first object. Ah, while you spoke with such endearing eloquence of feelings that were fresh, of a heart that was new, of the happy English home, you might guess that my thoughts ran to my friend who loves you so devotedly, and who so realizes your ideal. Proverbially, with us, happy marriages and happy homes are found not in the gay circles of London fashion, but at the hearths of our rural nobility, our untitled country gentlemen. And who, amongst all your adorers, can offer you a lot so really enviable as the one whom, I see by your blush, you already guess that I refer to?”

“Did I blush?” said the marchesa, with a silvery laugh. “Nay, I think that your zeal for your friend misled you. But I will own frankly, I have been touched by his honest ingenuous love,--so evident, yet rather looked than spoken. I have contrasted the love that honours me with the suitors that seek to degrade; more I cannot say. For though I grant that your friend is handsome, high-spirited, and generous, still he is not what--”

“You mistake, believe me,” interrupted Randal. “You shall not finish your sentence. He is all that you do not yet suppose him; for his shyness, and his very love, his very respect for your superiority, do not allow his mind and his nature to appear to advantage. You, it is true, have a taste for letters and poetry rare among your countrywomen. He has not at present--few men have. But what Cimon would not be refined by so fair an Iphigenia? Such frivolities as he now shows belong but to youth and inexperience of life. Happy the brother who could see his sister the wife of Frank Hazeldean.”

The marchesa leaned her cheek on her hand in silence. To her, marriage was more than it usually seems to dreaming maiden or to disconsolate widow. So had the strong desire to escape from the control of her unprincipled and remorseless brother grown a part of her very soul; so had whatever was best and highest in her very mixed and complex character been galled and outraged by her friendless and exposed position, the equivocal worship rendered to her beauty, the various debasements to which pecuniary embarrassments had subjected her--not without design on the part of the count, who though grasping, was not miserly, and who by precarious and seemingly capricious gifts at one time, and refusals of all aid at another, had involved her in debt in order to retain his hold on her; so utterly painful and humiliating to a woman of her pride and her birth was the station that she held in the world,--that in marriage she saw liberty, life, honour, self-redemption; and these thoughts, while they compelled her to co-operate with the schemes by which the count, on securing to himself a bride, was to bestow on herself a dower, also disposed her now to receive with favour Randal Leslie’s pleadings on behalf of his friend.

The advocate saw that he had made an impression, and with the marvellous skill which his knowledge of those natures that engaged his study bestowed on his intelligence, he continued to improve his cause by such representations as were likely to be most effective. With what admirable tact he avoided panegyric of Frank as the mere individual, and drew him rather as the type, the ideal of what a woman in Beatrice’s position might desire, in the safety, peace, and Honour of a home, in the trust and constancy and honest confiding love of its partner! He did not paint an elysium,--he described a haven; he did not glowingly delineate a hero of romance,--he soberly portrayed that Representative of the Respectable and the Real which a woman turns to when romance begins to seem to her but delusion. Verily, if you could have looked into the heart of the person he addressed, and heard him speak, you would have cried admiringly, “Knowledge is power; and this man, if as able on a larger field of action, should play no mean part in the history of his time.”

Slowly Beatrice roused herself from the reveries which crept over her as he spoke,--slowly, and with a deep sigh, and said,

“Well, well, grant all you say! at least before I can listen to so honourable a love, I must be relieved from the base and sordid pleasure that weighs on me. I cannot say to the man who wooes me, ‘Will you pay the debts of the daughter of Franzini, and the widow of Di Negra?’”

“Nay, your debts, surely, make so slight a portion of your dowry.”

“But the dowry has to be secured;” and here, turning the tables upon her companion, as the apt proverb expresses it, Madame di Negra extended her hand to Randal, and said in the most winning accents, “You are, then, truly and sincerely my friend?”

“Can you doubt it?”

“I prove that I do not, for I ask your assistance.”

“Mine? How?”

“Listen; my brother has arrived in London--”

“I see that arrival announced in the papers.”

“And he comes, empowered by the consent of the emperor, to ask the hand of a relation and countrywoman of his,--an alliance that will heal long family dissensions, and add to his own fortunes those of an heiress. My brother, like myself, has been extravagant. The dowry which by law he still owes me it would distress him to pay till this marriage be assured.”

“I understand,” said Randal. “But how can I aid this marriage?”

“By assisting us to discover the bride. She, with her father, sought refuge and concealment in England.”

“The father had, then, taken part in some political disaffections, and was proscribed?”

“Exactly; and so well has he concealed himself, that he has baffled all our efforts to discover his retreat. My brother can obtain him his pardon in cementing this alliance--”

“Proceed.”

“Ah, Randal, Randal, is this the frankness of friendship? You know that I have before sought to obtain the secret of our relation’s retreat,--sought in vain to obtain it from Mr. Egerton, who assuredly knows it--”

“But who communicates no secrets to living man,” said Randal, almost bitterly; “who, close and compact as iron, is as little malleable to me as to you.”

“Pardon me. I know you so well that I believe you could attain to any secret you sought earnestly to acquire. Nay, more, I believe that you know already that secret which I ask you to share with me.”

“What on earth makes you think so?”

“When, some weeks ago, you asked me to describe the personal appearance and manners of the exile, which I did partly from the recollections of my childhood, partly from the description given to me by others, I could not but notice your countenance, and remark its change; in spite,” said the marchesa, smiling, and watching Randal while she spoke,--“in spite of your habitual self-command. And when I pressed you to own that you had actually seen some one who tallied with that description, your denial did not deceive me. Still more, when returning recently, of your own accord, to the subject, you questioned me so shrewdly as to my motives in seeking the clew to our refugees, and I did not then answer you satisfactorily, I could detect--”

“Ha, ha,” interrupted Randal, with the low soft laugh by which occasionally he infringed upon Lord Chesterfield’s recommendations to shun a merriment so natural as to be illbred,--“ha, ha, you have the fault of all observers too minute and refined. But even granting that I may have seen some Italian exiles (which is likely enough), what could be more natural than my seeking to compare your description with their appearance; and granting that I might suspect some one amongst them to be the man you search for, what more natural also than that I should desire to know if you meant him harm or good in discovering his ‘whereabout’? For ill,” added Randal, with an air of prudery,--“ill would it become me to betray, even to friendship, the retreat of one who would hide from persecution; and even if I did so--for honour itself is a weak safeguard against your fascinations--such indiscretion might be fatal to my future career.”

“How?”

“Do you not say that Egerton knows the secret, yet will not communicate; and is he a man who would ever forgive in me an imprudence that committed himself? My dear friend, I will tell you more. When Audley Egerton first noticed my growing intimacy with you, he said, with his usual dryness of counsel, ‘Randal, I do not ask you to discontinue acquaintance with Madame di Negra, for an acquaintance with women like her forms the manners, and refines the intellect; but charming women are dangerous, and Madame di Negra is--a charming woman.’”

The marchesa’s face flushed. Randal resumed: “‘Your fair acquaintance’ (I am still quoting Egerton) ‘seeks to dis cover the home of a countryman of hers. She suspects that I know it. She may try to learn it through you. Accident may possibly give you the information she requires. Beware how you betray it. By one such weakness I should judge of your general character. He from whom a woman can extract a secret will never be fit for public life.’ Therefore, my dear marchesa, even supposing I possess this secret, you would be no true friend of mine to ask me to reveal what would imperil all my prospects. For as yet,” added Randal, with a gloomy shade on his brow,--“as yet, I do not stand alone and erect,--I lean, I am dependent.”

“There may be a way,” replied Madame di Negra, persisting, “to communicate this intelligence without the possibility of Mr. Egerton’s tracing our discovery to yourself; and, though I will not press you further, I add this,--You urge me to accept your friend’s hand; you seem interested in the success of his suit, and you plead it with a warmth that shows how much you regard what you suppose is his happiness; I will never accept his hand till I can do so without blush for my penury,--till my dowry is secured; and that can only be by my brother’s union with the exile’s daughter. For your friend’s sake, therefore, think well how you can aid me in the first step to that alliance. The young lady once discovered, and my brother has no fear for the success of his suit.”

“And you would marry Frank if the dower was secured?”

“Your arguments in his favour seem irresistible,” replied Beatrice, looking down.

A flash went from Randal’s eyes, and he mused a few moments.

Then slowly rising, and drawing on his gloves, he said, “Well, at least you so far reconcile my honour towards aiding your research, that you now inform me you mean no ill to the exile.”

“Ill!--the restoration to fortune, honours, his native land!”

“And you so far enlist my heart on your side, that you inspire me with the hope to contribute to the happiness of two friends whom I dearly love. I will, therefore, diligently try to ascertain if, among the refugees I have met with, lurk those whom you seek; and if so, I will thoughtfully consider how to give you the clew. Meanwhile, not one incautious word to Egerton.”

“Trust me,--I am a woman of the world.”

Randal now had gained the door. He paused, and renewed carelessly,--

“This young lady must be heiress to great wealth, to induce a man of your brother’s rank to take so much pains to discover her.”

“Her wealth will be vast,” replied the marchesa; “and if anything from wealth or influence in a foreign State could be permitted to prove my brother’s gratitude--”

“Ah, fie!” interrupted Randal; and, approaching Madame di Negra, he lifted her hand to his lips, and said gallantly, “This is reward enough to your preux chevalier.”

With those words he took his leave.

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Chapter IV

With his hands behind him, and his head drooping on his breast, slow, stealthy, noiseless, Randal Leslie glided along the streets on leaving the Italian’s house. Across the scheme he had before revolved, there glanced another yet more glittering, for its gain might be more sure and immediate. If the exile’s daughter were heiress to such wealth, might he himself hope--He stopped short even in his own soliloquy, and his breath came quick. Now, in his last visit to Hazeldean, he had come in contact with Riccabocca, and been struck by the beauty of Violante. A vague suspicion had crossed him that these might be the persons of whom the marchesa was in search, and the suspicion had been confirmed by Beatrice’s description of the refugee she desired to discover. But as he had not then learned the reason for her inquiries, nor conceived the possibility that he could have any personal interest in ascertaining the truth, he had only classed the secret in question among those the further research into which might be left to time and occasion. Certainly the reader will not do the unscrupulous intellect of Randal Leslie the injustice to suppose that he was deterred from confiding to his fair friend all that he knew of Riccabocca by the refinement of honour to which he had so chivalrously alluded. He had correctly stated Audley Egerton’s warning against any indiscreet confidence, though he had forborne to mention a more recent and direct renewal of the same caution. His first visit to Hazeldean had been paid without consulting Egerton. He had been passing some days at his father’s house, and had gone over thence to the squire’s. On his return to London, he had, however, mentioned this visit to Audley, who had seemed annoyed and even displeased at it, though Randal knew sufficient of Egerton’s character to guess that such feelings could scarce be occasioned merely by his estrangement from his half-brother. This dissatisfaction had, therefore, puzzled the young man. But as it was necessary to his views to establish intimacy with the squire, he did not yield the point with his customary deference to his patron’s whims. Accordingly he observed that he should be very sorry to do anything displeasing to his benefactor, but that his father had been naturally anxious that he should not appear positively to slight the friendly overtures of Mr. Hazeldean.

“Why naturally?” asked Egerton.

“Because you know that Mr. Hazeldean is a relation of mine,--that my grandmother was a Hazeldean.”

“Ah!” said Egerton, who, as it has been before said, knew little and cared less about the Hazeldean pedigree, “I was either not aware of that circumstance, or had forgotten it. And your father thinks that the squire may leave you a legacy?”

“Oh, sir, my father is not so mercenary,--such an idea never entered his head. But the squire himself has indeed said, ‘Why, if anything happened to Frank, you would be next heir to my lands, and therefore we ought to know each other.’ But--”

“Enough,” interrupted Egerton. “I am the last man to pretend to the right of standing between you and a single chance of fortune, or of aid to it. And whom did you meet at Hazeldean?”

“There was no one there, sir; not even Frank.”

“Hum. Is the squire not on good terms with his parson? Any quarrel about tithes?”

“Oh, no quarrel. I forgot Mr. Dale; I saw him pretty often. He admires and praises you very much, sir.”

“Me--and why? What did he say of me?”

“That your heart was as sound as your head; that he had once seen you about some old parishioners of his, and that he had been much impressed with the depth of feeling he could not have anticipated in a man of the world, and a statesman.”

“Oh, that was all; some affair when I was member for Lansmere?”

“I suppose so.”

Here the conversation had broken off; but the next time Randal was led to visit the squire he had formally asked Egerton’s consent, who, after a moment’s hesitation, had as formally replied, “I have no objection.”

On returning from this visit, Randal mentioned that he had seen Riccabocca: and Egerton, a little startled at first, said composedly, “Doubtless one of the political refugees; take care not to set Madame di Negra on his track. Remember, she is suspected of being a spy of the Austrian government.”

“Rely on me, sir,” said Randal; “but I should think this poor doctor can scarcely be the person she seeks to discover.”

“That is no affair of ours,” answered Egerton: “we are English gentlemen, and make not a step towards the secrets of another.”

Now, when Randal revolved this rather ambiguous answer, and recalled the uneasiness with which Egerton had first heard of his visit to Hazeldean, he thought that he was indeed near the secret which Egerton desired to conceal from him and from all,--namely, the incognito of the Italian whom Lord L’Estrange had taken under his protection.

“My cards,” said Randal to himself, as with a deep-drawn sigh he resumed his soliloquy, “are become difficult to play. On the one hand, to entangle Frank into marriage with this foreigner, the squire could never forgive him. On the other hand, if she will not marry him without the dowry--and that depends on her brother’s wedding this countrywoman--and that countrywoman be, as I surmise, Violante, and Violante be this heiress, and to be won by me! Tush, tush. Such delicate scruples in a woman so placed and so constituted as Beatrice di Negra must be easily talked away. Nay, the loss itself of this alliance to her brother, the loss of her own dowry, the very pressure of poverty and debt, would compel her into the sole escape left to her option. I will then follow up the old plan; I will go down to Hazeldean, and see if there be any substance in the new one; and then to reconcile both. Aha--the House of Leslie shall rise yet from its ruin--and--”

Here he was startled from his revery by a friendly slap on the shoulder, and an exclamation, “Why, Randal, you are more absent than when you used to steal away from the cricket-ground, muttering Greek verses, at Eton.”

“My dear Frank,” said Randal, “you--you are so brusque, and I was just thinking of you.”

“Were you? And kindly, then, I am sure,” said Frank Hazeldean, his honest handsome face lighted up with the unsuspecting genial trust of friendship; “and Heaven knows,” he added, with a sadder voice, and a graver expression on his eye and lip,--“Heaven knows I want all the kindness you can give me!”

“I thought,” said Randal, “that your father’s last supply, of which I was fortunate enough to be the bearer, would clear off your more pressing debts. I don’t pretend to preach, but really, I must say once more, you should not be so extravagant.”

FRANK (seriously).--“I have done my best to reform. I have sold off my horses, and I have not touched dice nor card these six months; I would not even put into the raffle for the last Derby.” This last was said with the air of a man who doubted the possibility of obtaining belief to some assertion of preternatural abstinence and virtue.

RANDAL.--“Is it possible? But with such self-conquest, how is it that you cannot contrive to live within the bounds of a very liberal allowance?”

FRANK (despondingly).--“Why, when a man once gets his head under water, it is so hard to float back again on the surface. You see, I attribute all my embarrassments to that first concealment of my debts from my father, when they could have been so easily met, and when he came up to town so kindly.”

“I am sorry, then, that I gave you that advice.”

“Oh, you meant it so kindly, I don’t reproach you; it was all my own fault.”

“Why, indeed, I did urge you to pay off that moiety of your debts left unpaid, with your allowance. Had you done so, all had been well.”

“Yes; but poor Borrowell got into such a scrape at Goodwood, I could not resist him; a debt of honour,--that must be paid; so when I signed another bill for him, he could not pay it, poor fellow! Really he would have shot himself, if I had not renewed it. And now it is swelled to such an amount with that cursed interest, that he never can pay it; and one bill, of course, begets another,--and to be renewed every three months; ‘t is the devil and all! So little as I ever got for all I have borrowed,” added Frank, with a kind of rueful amaze. “Not L1,500 ready money; and the interest would cost me almost as much yearly,--if I had it.” “Only L1,500!”

“Well; besides seven large chests of the worst cigars you ever smoked, three pipes of wine that no one would drink, and a great bear that had been imported from Greenland for the sake of its grease.”

“That should, at least, have saved you a bill with your hairdresser.”

“I paid his bill with it,” said Frank, “and very good-natured he was to take the monster off my hands,--it had already hugged two soldiers and one groom into the shape of a flounder. I tell you what,” resumed Frank, after a short pause, “I have a great mind even now to tell my father honestly all my embarrassments.”

RANDAL (solemnly).--“Hum!”

FRANK.--“What? don’t you think it would be the best way? I never can save enough,--never can pay off what I owe; and it rolls like a snowball.”

RANDAL.--“Judging by the squire’s talk, I think that with the first sight of your affairs you would forfeit his favour forever; and your mother would be so shocked, especially after supposing that the sum I brought you so lately sufficed to pay off every claim on you. If you had not assured her of that it might be different; but she, who so hates an untruth, and who said to the squire, ‘Frank says this will clear him; and with all his faults, Frank never yet told a lie!’”

“Oh, my dear mother!--I fancy I hear her!” cried Frank, with deep emotion. “But I did not tell a lie, Randal; I did not say that that sum would clear me.”

“You empowered and begged me to say so,” replied Randal, with grave coldness; “and don’t blame me if I believed you.”

“No, no! I only said it would clear me for the moment.”

“I misunderstood you, then, sadly; and such mistakes involve my own honour. Pardon me, Frank; don’t ask my aid in future. You see, with the best intentions, I only compromise myself.”

“If you forsake me, I may as well go and throw myself into the river,” said Frank, in a tone of despair; “and sooner or later, my father must know my necessities. The Jews threaten to go to him already; and the longer the delay, the more terrible the explanation.”

“I don’t see why your father should ever learn the state of your affairs; and it seems to me that you could pay off these usurers, and get rid of these bills, by raising money on comparatively easy terms--”

“How?” cried Frank, eagerly.

“Why, the Casino property is entailed on you, and you might obtain a sum upon that, not to be paid till the property becomes yours.”

“At my poor father’s death? Oh, no, no! I cannot bear the idea of this cold-blooded calculation on a father’s death. I know it is not uncommon; I know other fellows who have done it, but they never had parents so kind as mine; and even in them it shocked and revolted me. The contemplating a father’s death, and profiting by the contemplation it seems a kind of parricide: it is not natural, Randal. Besides, don’t you remember what the Governor said,--he actually wept while he said it,--‘Never calculate on my death; I could not bear that.’ Oh, Randal, don’t speak of it!”

“I respect your sentiments; but still, all the post-orbits you could raise could not shorten Mr. Hazeldean’s life by a day. However, dismiss that idea; we must think of some other device. Ha, Frank! you are a handsome fellow, and your expectations are great--why don’t you marry some woman with money?”

“Pooh!” exclaimed Frank, colouring. “You know, Randal, that there is but one woman in the world I can ever think of; and I love her so devotedly, that, though I was as gay as most men before, I really feel as if the rest of her sex had lost every charm. I was passing through the street now--merely to look up at her windows.”

“You speak of Madame di Negra? I have just left her. Certainly, she is two or three years older than you; but if you can get over that misfortune, why not marry her?”

“Marry her!” cried Frank, in amaze, and all his colour fled from his cheeks. “Marry her! Are you serious?”

“Why not?”

“But even if she, who is so accomplished, so admired, even if she would accept me, she is, you know, poorer than myself. She has told me so frankly. That woman has such a noble heart,--and--and--my father would never consent, nor my mother either. I know they would not.”

“Because she is a foreigner?”

“Yes--partly.”

“Yet the squire suffered his cousin to marry a foreigner.”

“That was different. He had no control over Jemima; and a daughter-in-law is so different; and my father is so English in his notions; and Madame di Negra, you see, is altogether so foreign. Her very graces would be against her in his eyes.”

“I think you do both your parents injustice. A foreigner of low birth--an actress or singer, for instance--of course would be highly objectionable; but a woman like Madame di Negra, of such high birth and connections--”

Frank shook his head. “I don’t think the Governor would care a straw about her connections, if she were a king’s daughter. He considers all foreigners pretty much alike. And then, you know” (Frank’s voice sank into a whisper),--“you know that one of the very reasons why she is so dear to me would be an insuperable objection to the old-fashioned folks at home.”

“I don’t understand you, Frank.”

“I love her the more,” said young Hazeldean, raising his front with a noble pride, that seemed to speak of his descent from a race of cavaliers and gentlemen,--“I love her the more because the world has slandered her name,--because I believe her to be pure and wronged. But would they at the Hall,--they who do not see with a lover’s eyes, they who have all the stubborn English notions about the indecorum and license of Continental manners, and will so readily credit the worst? Oh, no! I love, I cannot help it--but I have no hope.”

“It is very possible that you may be right,” exclaimed Randal, as if struck and half convinced by his companion’s argument,--“very possible; and certainly I think that the homely folks at the Hall would fret and fume at first, if they heard you were married to Madame di Negra. Yet still, when your father learned that you had done so, not from passion alone, but to save him from all pecuniary sacrifice,--to clear yourself of debt, to--”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Frank, impatiently.

“I have reason to know that Madame di Negra will have as large a portion as your father could reasonably expect you to receive with any English wife. And when this is properly stated to the squire, and the high position and rank of your wife fully established and brought home to him,--for I must think that these would tell, despite your exaggerated notions of his prejudices,--and then, when he really sees Madame di Negra, and can judge of her beauty and rare gifts, upon my word, I think, Frank, that there would be no cause for fear. After all, too, you are his only son. He will have no option but to forgive you; and I know how anxiously both your parents wish to see you settled in life.”

Frank’s whole countenance became illuminated. “There is no one who understands the squire like you, certainly,” said he, with lively joy. “He has the highest opinion of your judgment. And you really believe you could smooth matters?”

“I believe so; but I should be sorry to induce you to run any risk; and if, on cool consideration, you think that risk is incurred, I strongly advise you to avoid all occasion of seeing the poor marchesa. Ah, you wince; but I say it for her sake as well as your own. First, you must be aware, that, unless you have serious thoughts of marriage, your attentions can but add to the very rumours that, equally groundless, you so feelingly resent; and, secondly, because I don’t think any man has a right to win the affections of a woman--especially a woman who seems to me likely to love with her whole heart and soul--merely to gratify his own vanity.”

“Vanity! Good heavens! can you think so poorly of me? But as to the marchesa’s affections,” continued Frank, with a faltering voice, “do you really and honestly believe that they are to be won by me?”

“I fear lest they may be half won already,” said Randal, with a smile and a shake of the head; “but she is too proud to let you see any effect you may produce on her, especially when, as I take it for granted, you have never hinted at the hope of obtaining her hand.”

“I never till now conceived such a hope. My dear Randal, all my cares have vanished! I tread upon air! I have a great mind to call on her at once.”

“Stay, stay,” said Randal. “Let me give you a caution. I have just informed you that Madame di Negra will have, what you suspected not before, a fortune suitable to her birth. Any abrupt change in your manner at present might induce her to believe that you were influenced by that intelligence.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Frank, stopping short, as if wounded to the quick. “And I feel guilty,--feel as if I was influenced by that intelligence. So I am, too, when I reflect,” he continued, with a naivete that was half pathetic; “but I hope she will not be very rich; if so, I’ll not call.”

“Make your mind easy, it is but a portion of some twenty or thirty thousand pounds, that would just suffice to discharge all your debts, clear away all obstacle to your union, and in return for which you could secure a more than adequate jointure and settlement on the Casino property. Now I am on that head, I will be yet more communicative. Madame di Negra has a noble heart, as you say, and told me herself, that, until her brother on his arrival had assured her of this dowry, she would never have consented to marry you, never crippled with her own embarrassments the man she loves. Ah! with what delight she will hail the thought of assisting you to win back your father’s heart! But be guarded meanwhile. And now, Frank, what say you--would it not be well if I ran down to Hazeldean to sound your parents? It is rather inconvenient to me, to be sure, to leave town just at present; but I would do more than that to render you a smaller service. Yes, I’ll go to Rood Hall to-morrow, and thence to Hazeldean. I am sure your father will press me to stay, and I shall have ample opportunities to judge of the manner in which he would be likely to regard your marriage with Madame di Negra,--supposing always it were properly put to him. We can then act accordingly.”

“My dear, dear Randal, how can I thank you? If ever a poor fellow like me can serve you in return--but that’s impossible.”

“Why, certainly, I will never ask you to be security to a bill of mine,” said Randal, laughing. “I practise the economy I preach.”

“Ah!” said Frank, with a groan, “that is because your mind is cultivated,--you have so many resources; and all my faults have come from idleness. If I had had anything to do on a rainy day, I should never have got into these scrapes.”

“Oh, you will have enough to do some day managing your property. We who have no property must find one in knowledge. Adieu, my dear Frank, I must go home now. By the way, you have never, by chance, spoken of the Riccaboccas to Madame di Negra.”

“The Riccaboccas? No. That’s well thought of. It may interest her to know that a relation of mine has married her countryman. Very odd that I never did mention it; but, to say truth, I really do talk so little to her: she is so superior, and I feel positively shy with her.”

“Do me the favour, Frank,” said Randal, waiting patiently till this reply ended,--for he was devising all the time what reason to give for his request,--“never to allude to the Riccaboccas either to her or to her brother, to whom you are sure to be presented.”

“Why not allude to them?”

Randal hesitated a moment. His invention was still at fault, and, for a wonder, he thought it the best policy to go pretty near the truth.

“Why, I will tell you. The marchesa conceals nothing from her brother, and he is one of the few Italians who are in high favour with the Austrian court.”

“Well!”

“And I suspect that poor Dr. Riccabocca fled his country from some mad experiment at revolution, and is still hiding from the Austrian police.”

“But they can’t hurt him here,” said Frank, with an Englishman’s dogged inborn conviction of the sanctity of his native island. “I should like to see an Austrian pretend to dictate to us whom to receive and whom to reject.”

“Hum--that’s true and constitutional, no doubt; but Riccabocca may have excellent reasons--and, to speak plainly, I know he has (perhaps as affecting the safety of friends in Italy)--for preserving his incognito, and we are bound to respect those reasons without inquiring further.”

“Still I cannot think so meanly of Madame di Negra,” persisted Frank (shrewd here, though credulous elsewhere, and both from his sense of honour), “as to suppose that she would descend to be a spy, and injure a poor countryman of her own, who trusts to the same hospitality she receives herself at our English hands. Oh, if I thought that, I could not love her!” added Frank, with energy.

“Certainly you are right. But see in what a false position you would place both her brother and herself. If they knew Riccabocca’s secret, and proclaimed it to the Austrian Government, as you say, it would be cruel and mean; but if they knew it and concealed it, it might involve them both in the most serious consequences. You know the Austrian policy is proverbially so jealous and tyrannical?”

“Well, the newspapers say so, certainly.”

“And, in short, your discretion can do no harm, and your indiscretion may. Therefore, give me your word, Frank. I can’t stay to argue now.”

“I’ll not allude to the Riccaboccas, upon my honour,” answered Frank; “still, I am sure that they would be as safe with the marchesa as with--”

“I rely on your honour,” interrupted Randal, hastily, and hurried off.

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Chapter V

Towards the evening of the following day, Randal Leslie walked slowly from a village in the main road (about two miles from Rood Hall), at which he had got out of the coach. He passed through meads and cornfields, and by the skirts of woods which had formerly belonged to his ancestors, but had been long since alienated. He was alone amidst the haunts of his boyhood, the scenes in which he had first invoked the grand Spirit of Knowledge, to bid the Celestial Still One minister to the commands of an earthly and turbulent ambition. He paused often in his path, especially when the undulations of the ground gave a glimpse of the gray church tower, or the gloomy firs that rose above the desolate wastes of Rood.

“Here,” thought Randal, with a softening eye,--“here, how often, comparing the fertility of the lands passed away from the inheritance of my fathers, with the forlorn wilds that are left to their mouldering Hall,--here how often have I said to myself, ‘I will rebuild the fortunes of my House.’ And straightway Toil lost its aspect of drudge, and grew kingly, and books became as living armies to serve my thought. Again--again O thou haughty Past, brace and strengthen me in the battle with the Future.” His pale lips writhed as he soliloquized, for his conscience spoke to him while he thus addressed his will, and its voice was heard more audibly in the quiet of the rural landscape, than amidst the turmoil and din of that armed and sleepless camp which we call a city.

Doubtless, though Ambition have objects more vast and beneficent than the restoration of a name, that in itself is high and chivalrous, and appeals to a strong interest in the human heart. But all emotions and all ends of a nobler character had seemed to filter themselves free from every golden grain in passing through the mechanism of Randal’s intellect, and came forth at last into egotism clear and unalloyed. Nevertheless, it is a strange truth that, to a man of cultivated mind, however perverted and vicious, there are vouchsafed gleams of brighter sentiments, irregular perceptions of moral beauty, denied to the brutal unreasoning wickedness of uneducated villany,--which perhaps ultimately serve as his punishment, according to the old thought of the satirist, that there is no greater curse than to perceive virtue yet adopt vice. And as the solitary schemer walked slowly on, and his childhood--innocent at least indeed--came distinct before him through the halo of bygone dreams,--dreams far purer than those from which he now rose each morning to the active world of Man,--a profound melancholy crept over him, and suddenly he exclaimed aloud, “Then I aspired to be renowned and great; now, how is it that, so advanced in my career, all that seemed lofty in the end has vanished from me, and the only means that I contemplate are those which my childhood would have called poor and vile? Ah, is it that I then read but books, and now my knowledge has passed onward, and men contaminate more than books? But,” he continued, in a lower voice, as if arguing with himself, “if power is only so to be won,--and of what use is knowledge if it be not power--does not success in life justify all things? And who prizes the wise man if he fails?” He continued his way, but still the soft tranquillity around rebuked him, and still his reason was dissatisfied, as well as his conscience. There are times when Nature, like a bath of youth, seems to restore to the jaded soul its freshness,--times from which some men have emerged, as if reborn. The crises of life are very silent. Suddenly the scene opened on Randal Leslie’s eyes,--the bare desert common, the dilapidated church, the old house, partially seen in the dank dreary hollow, into which it seemed to Randal to have sunken deeper and lowlier than when he saw it last. And on the common were some young men playing at hockey. That old-fashioned game, now very uncommon in England, except at schools, was still preserved in the primitive vicinity of Rood by the young yeomen and farmers. Randal stood by the stile and looked on, for among the players he recognized his brother Oliver. Presently the ball was struck towards Oliver, and the group instantly gathered round that young gentleman, and snatched him from Randal’s eye; but the elder brother heard a displeasing din, a derisive laughter. Oliver had shrunk from the danger of the thick clubbed sticks that plied around him, and received some stroke across the legs, for his voice rose whining, and was drowned by shouts of, “Go to your mammy. That’s Noll Leslie all over. Butter shins!”

Randal’s sallow face became scarlet. “The jest of boors--a Leslie!” he muttered, and ground his teeth. He sprang over the stile, and walked erect and haughtily across the ground. The players cried out indignantly. Randal raised his hat, and they recognized him, and stopped the game. For him at least a certain respect was felt. Oliver turned round quickly, and ran up to him. Randal caught his arm firmly, and without saying a word to the rest, drew him away towards the house. Oliver cast a regretful, lingering look behind him, rubbed his shins, and then stole a timid glance towards Randal’s severe and moody countenance.

“You are not angry that I was playing at hockey with our neighbours,” said he, deprecatingly, observing that Randal would not break the silence.

“No,” replied the elder brother; “but in associating with his inferiors, a gentleman still knows how to maintain his dignity. There is no harm in playing with inferiors, but it is necessary to a gentleman to play so that he is not the laughing-stock of clowns.”

Oliver hung his head, and made no answer. They came into the slovenly precincts of the court, and the pigs stared at them from the palings, as their progenitors had stared, years before, at Frank Hazeldean.

Mr. Leslie, senior, in a shabby straw-hat, was engaged in feeding the chickens before the threshold, and he performed even that occupation with a maundering lack-a-daisical slothfulness, dropping down the grains almost one by one from his inert dreamy fingers.

Randal’s sister, her hair still and forever hanging about her ears, was seated on a rush-bottom chair, reading a tattered novel; and from the parlour window was heard the querulous voice of Mrs. Leslie, in high fidget and complaint.

Somehow or other, as the young heir to all this helpless poverty stood in the courtyard, with his sharp, refined, intelligent features, and his strange elegance of dress and aspect, one better comprehended how, left solely to the egotism of his knowledge and his ambition, in such a family, and without any of the sweet nameless lessons of Home, he had grown up into such close and secret solitude of soul,--how the mind had taken so little nutriment from the heart, and how that affection and respect which the warm circle of the heart usually calls forth had passed with him to the graves of dead fathers, growing, as it were, bloodless and ghoul-like amidst the charnels on which they fed.

“Ha, Randal, boy,” said Mr. Leslie, looking up lazily, “how d’ ye do? Who could have expected you? My dear, my dear,” he cried, in a broken voice, and as if in helpless dismay, “here’s Randal, and he’ll be wanting dinner, or supper, or something.” But, in the mean while, Randal’s sister Juliet had sprung up and thrown her arms round her brother’s neck, and he had drawn her aside caressingly, for Randal’s strongest human affection was for this sister.

“You are growing very pretty, Juliet,” said he, smoothing back her hair; “why do yourself such injustice,--why not pay more attention to your appearance, as I have so often begged you to do?”

“I did not expect you, dear Randal; you always come so suddenly, and catch us en dish-a-bill.”

“Dish-a-bill!” echoed Randal, with a groan. “Dishabille! you ought never to be so caught!”

“No one else does so catch us,--nobody else ever comes. Heigho!” and the young lady sighed very heartily. “Patience, patience; my day is coming, and then yours, my sister,” replied Randal, with genuine pity, as he gazed upon what a little care could have trained into so fair a flower, and what now looked so like a weed.

Here Mrs. Leslie, in a state of intense excitement--having rushed through the parlour, leaving a fragment of her gown between the yawning brass of the never-mended Brummagem work-table--tore across the hall, whirled out of the door, scattering the chickens to the right and left, and clutched hold of Randal in her motherly embrace. “La, how you do shake my nerves,” she cried, after giving him a most hasty and uncomfortable kiss. “And you are hungry too, and nothing in the house but cold mutton! Jenny, Jenny, I say, Jenny! Juliet, have you seen Jenny? Where’s Jenny? Out with the odd man, I’ll be bound.”

“I am not hungry, Mother,” said Randal; “I wish for nothing but tea.” Juliet, scrambling up her hair, darted into the house to prepare the tea, and also to “tidy herself.” She dearly loved her fine brother, but she was greatly in awe of him.

Randal seated himself on the broken pales. “Take care they don’t come down,” said Mr. Leslie, with some anxiety.

“Oh, Sir, I am very light; nothing comes down with me.” The pigs stared up, and grunted in amaze at the stranger. “Mother,” said the young man, detaining Mrs. Leslie, who wanted to set off in chase of Jenny, “Mother, you should not let Oliver associate with those village boors. It is time to think of a profession for him.”

“Oh, he eats us out of house and home--such an appetite! But as to a profession, what is he fit for? He will never be a scholar.”

Randal nodded a moody assent; for, indeed, Oliver had been sent to Cambridge, and supported there out of Randal’s income from his official pay; and Oliver had been plucked for his Little Go.

“There is the army,” said the elder brother,--“a gentleman’s calling. How handsome Juliet ought to be--but--I left money for masters--and she pronounces French like a chambermaid.”

“Yet she is fond of her book too. She’s always reading, and good for nothing else.”

“Reading! those trashy novels!”

“So like you,--you always come to scold, and make things unpleasant,” said Mrs. Leslie, peevishly. “You are grown too fine for us, and I am sure we suffer affronts enough from others, not to want a little respect from our own children.”

“I did not mean to affront you,” said Randal, sadly. “Pardon me. But who else has done so?”

Then Mrs. Leslie went into a minute and most irritating catalogue of all the mortifications and insults she had received; the grievances of a petty provincial family, with much pretension and small power,--of all people, indeed, without the disposition to please--without the ability to serve--who exaggerate every offence, and are thankful for no kindness. Farmer Jones had insolently refused to send his wagon twenty miles for coals. Mr. Giles, the butcher, requesting the payment of his bill, had stated that the custom at Rood was too small for him to allow credit. Squire Thornhill, who was the present owner of the fairest slice of the old Leslie domains, had taken the liberty to ask permission to shoot over Mr. Leslie’s land, since Mr. Leslie did not preserve. Lady Spratt (new people from the city, who hired a neighbouring country-seat) had taken a discharged servant of Mrs. Leslie’s without applying for the character. The Lord-Lieutenant had given a ball, and had not invited the Leslies. Mr. Leslie’s tenants had voted against their landlord’s wish at the recent election. More than all, Squire Hazeldean and his Harry had called at Rood, and though Mrs. Leslie had screamed out to Jenny, “Not at home,” she had been seen at the window, and the squire had actually forced his way in, and caught the whole family “in a state not fit to be seen.” That was a trifle, but the squire had presumed to instruct Mr. Leslie how to manage his property, and Mrs. Hazeldean had actually told Juliet to hold up her head, and tie up her hair, “as if we were her cottagers!” said Mrs. Leslie, with the pride of a Montfydget.

All these, and various other annoyances, though Randal was too sensible not to perceive their insignificance, still galled and mortified the listening heir of Rood. They showed, at least, even to the well-meant officiousness of the Hazeldeans, the small account in which the fallen family was held. As he sat still on the moss-grown pales, gloomy and taciturn, his mother standing beside him, with her cap awry, Mr. Leslie shamblingly sauntered up, and said in a pensive, dolorous whine,

“I wish we had a good sum of money, Randal, boy!”

To do Mr. Leslie justice, he seldom gave vent to any wish that savoured of avarice. His mind must be singularly aroused, to wander out of its normal limits of sluggish, dull content.

So Randal looked at him in surprise, and said, “Do you, Sir?--why?”

“The manors of Rood and Dulmansberry, and all the lands therein, which my great-grandfather sold away, are to be sold again when Squire Thornhill’s eldest son comes of age, to cut off the entail. Sir John Spratt talks of buying them. I should like to have them back again! ‘T is a shame to see the Leslie estates hawked about, and bought by Spratts and people. I wish I had a great, great sum of ready money.” The poor gentleman extended his helpless fingers as he spoke, and fell into a dejected revery.

Randal sprang from the paling, a movement which frightened the contemplative pigs, and set them off squalling and scampering. “When does young Thornhill come of age?”

“He was nineteen last August. I know it, because the day he was born I picked up my fossil of the sea-horse, just by Dulmansberry church, when the joy-bells were ringing. My fossil sea-horse! It will be an heirloom, Randal--”

“Two years--nearly two years--yet--ah, ah!” said Randal; and his sister now appearing, to announce that tea was ready, he threw his arm round her neck and kissed her. Juliet had arranged her hair and trimmed up her dress. She looked very pretty, and she had now the air of a gentlewoman,--something of Randal’s own refinement in her slender proportions and well-shaped head.

“Be patient, patient still, my dear sister,” whispered Randal, “and keep your heart whole for two years longer.” The young man was gay and good-humoured over his simple meal, while his family grouped round him. When it was over, Mr. Leslie lighted his pipe, and called for his brandy-and-water. Mrs. Leslie began to question about London and Court, and the new king and the new queen, and Mr. Audley Egerton, and hoped Mr. Egerton would leave Randal all his money, and that Randal would marry a rich woman, and that the king would make him a prime minister one of these days; and then she should like to see if Farmer Jones would refuse to send his wagon for coals! And every now and then, as the word “riches” or “money” caught Mr. Leslie’s ears, he shook his head, drew his pipe from his mouth, “A Spratt should not have what belonged to my great-great-grandfather. If I had a good sum of ready money! the old family estates!” Oliver and Juliet sat silent, and on their good behaviour; and Randal, indulging his own reveries, dreamily heard the words “money,” “Spratt,” “great-great-grandfather,” “rich wife,” “family estates;” and they sounded to him vague and afar off, like whispers from the world of romance and legend,--weird prophecies of things to be.

Such was the hearth which warmed the viper that nestled and gnawed at the heart of Randal, poisoning all the aspirations that youth should have rendered pure, ambition lofty, and knowledge beneficent and divine.

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Chapter VI

When the rest of the household were in deep sleep, Randal stood long at his open window, looking over the dreary, comfortless scene,--the moon gleaming from skies half-autumnal, half-wintry, upon squalid decay, through the ragged fissures of the firs; and when he lay down to rest, his sleep was feverish, and troubled by turbulent dreams.

However, he was up early, and with an unwonted colour in his cheeks, which his sister ascribed to the country air. After breakfast, he took his way towards Hazeldean, mounted upon a tolerable, horse, which he borrowed of a neighbouring farmer who occasionally hunted. Before noon, the garden and ter race of the Casino came in sight. He reined in his horse, and by the little fountain at which Leonard had been wont to eat his radishes and con his book, he saw Riccabocca seated under the shade of the red umbrella. And by the Italian’s side stood a form that a Greek of old might have deemed the Naiad of the Fount; for in its youthful beauty there was something so full of poetry, something at once so sweet and so stately, that it spoke to the imagination while it charmed the sense.

Randal dismounted, tied his horse to the gate, and, walking down a trellised alley, came suddenly to the spot. His dark shadow fell over the clear mirror of the fountain just as Riccabocca had said, “All here is so secure from evil!--the waves of the fountain are never troubled like those of the river!” and Violante had answered in her soft native tongue, and lifting her dark, spiritual eyes, “But the fountain would be but a lifeless pool, oh my father, if the spray did not mount towards the skies!”

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Chapter VII

RANDAL advanced--“I fear, Signor Riccabocca, that I am guilty of some want of ceremony.”

“To dispense with ceremony is the most delicate mode of conferring a compliment,” replied the urbane Italian, as he recovered from his first surprise at Randal’s sudden address, and extended his hand.

Violante bowed her graceful head to the young man’s respectful salutation. “I am on my way to Hazeldean,” resumed Randal, “and, seeing you in the garden, could not resist this intrusion.”

RICCOBOCCA.--“YOU come from London? Stirring times for you English, but I do not ask you the news. No news can affect us.”

RANDAL (softly).--“Perhaps yes.”

RICCABOCCA (startled).--“How?”

VIOLANTE.--“Surely he speaks of Italy, and news from that country affects you still, my father.”

RICCABOCCA.--“Nay, nay, nothing affects me like this country; its east winds might affect a pyramid! Draw your mantle round you, child, and go in; the air has suddenly grown chill.”

Violante smiled on her father, glanced uneasily towards Randal’s grave brow, and went slowly towards the house. Riccabocca, after waiting some moments in silence, as if expecting Randal to speak, said, with affected carelessness,

“So you think that you have news that might affect me? Corpo di Bacco! I am curious to learn what?”

“I may be mistaken--that depends on your answer to one question. Do you know the Count of Peschiera?”

Riccabocca winced, and turned pale. He could not baffle the watchful eye of the questioner.

“Enough,” said Randal; “I see that I am right. Believe in my sincerity. I speak but to warn and to serve you. The count seeks to discover the retreat of a countryman and kinsman of his own.”

“And for what end?” cried Riccabocca, thrown off his guard, and his breast dilated, his crest rose, and his eye flashed; valour and defiance broke from habitual caution and self-control. “But--pooh!” he added, striving to regain his ordinary and half-ironical calm, “it matters not to me. I grant, sir, that I know the Count di Peschiera; but what has Dr. Riccabocca to do with the kinsman of so grand a personage?”

“Dr. Riccabocca--nothing. But--” here Randal put his lip close to the Italian’s ear, and whispered a brief sentence. Then retreating a step, but laying his hand on the exile’s shoulder, he added, “Need I say that your secret is safe with me?”

Riccabocca made no answer. His eyes rested on the ground musingly.

Randal continued, “And I shall esteem it the highest honour you can bestow on me, to be permitted to assist you in forestalling danger.”

RICCABOCCA (slowly).--“Sir, I thank you; you have my secret, and I feel assured it is safe, for I speak to an English gentleman. There may be family reasons why I should avoid the Count di Peschiera; and, indeed, he is safest from shoals who steers clearest of his relations.”

The poor Italian regained his caustic smile as he uttered that wise, villanous Italian maxim.

RANDAL.--“I know little of the Count of Peschiera save from the current talk of the world. He is said to hold the estates of a kinsman who took part in a conspiracy against the Austrian power.”

RICCABOCCA.--“It is true. Let that content him; what more does he desire? You spoke of forestalling danger; what danger? I am on the soil of England, and protected by its laws.”

RANDAL.--“Allow me to inquire if, had the kinsman no child, the Count di Peschiera would be legitimate and natural heir to the estates he holds?”

RICCABOCCA.--“He would--What then?”

RANDAL.--“Does that thought suggest no danger to the child of the kinsman?”

Riccabocca recoiled, and gasped forth, “The child! You do not mean to imply that this man, infamous though he be, can contemplate the crime of an assassin?”

Randal paused perplexed. His ground was delicate. He knew not what causes of resentment the exile entertained against the count. He knew not whether Riccabocca would not assent to an alliance that might restore him to his country,--and he resolved to feel his way with precaution.

“I did not,” said he, smiling gravely, “mean to insinuate so horrible a charge against a man whom I have never seen. He seeks you,--that is all I know. I imagine, from his general character, that in this search he consults his interest. Perhaps all matters might be conciliated by an interview!”

“An interview!” exclaimed Riccabocca; “there is but one way we should meet,--foot to foot, and hand to hand.”

“Is it so? Then you would not listen to the count if he proposed some amicable compromise,--if, for instance, he was a candidate for the hand of your daughter?”

The poor Italian, so wise and so subtle in his talk, was as rash and blind when it came to action as if he had been born in Ireland and nourished on potatoes and Repeal. He bared his whole soul to the merciless eye of Randal.

“My daughter!” he exclaimed. “Sir, your very question is an insult.”

Randal’s way became clear at once. “Forgive me,” he said mildly; “I will tell you frankly all that I know. I am acquainted with the count’s sister. I have some little influence over her. It was she who informed me that the count had come here, bent upon discovering your refuge, and resolved to wed your daughter. This is the danger of which I spoke. And when I asked your permission to aid in forestalling it, I only intended to suggest that it might be wise to find some securer home, and that I, if permitted to know that home, and to visit you, could apprise you from time to time of the count’s plans and movements.”

“Sir, I thank you sincerely,” said Riccabocca, with emotion; “but am I not safe here?”

“I doubt it. Many people have visited the squire in the shooting season, who will have heard of you,--perhaps seen you, and who are likely to meet the count in London. And Frank Hazeldean, too, who knows the count’s sister--”

“True, true” interrupted Riccabocca. “I see, I see. I will consider, I will reflect. Meanwhile you are going to Hazel dean. Do not say a word to the squire. He knows not the secret you have discovered.”

With those words Riccabocca turned slightly away, and Randal took the hint to depart.

“At all times command and rely on me,” said the young traitor, and he regained the pale to which he had fastened his horse.

As he remounted, he cast his eyes towards the place where he had left Riccabocca. The Italian was still standing there. Presently the form of Jackeymo was seen emerging from the shrubs. Riccabocca turned hastily round, recognized his servant, uttered an exclamation loud enough to reach Randal’s ear, and then, catching Jackeymo by the arm, disappeared with him amidst the deep recesses of the garden.

“It will be indeed in my favour,” thought Randal, as he rode on, “if I can get them into the neighbourhood of London,--all occasion there to woo, and if expedient, to win, the heiress.”

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Chapter VIII

“Br the Lord, Harry!” cried the squire, as he stood with his wife in the park, on a visit of inspection to some first-rate Southdowns just added to his stock,--“by the Lord, if that is not Randal Leslie trying to get into the park at the back gate! Hollo, Randal! you must come round by the lodge, my boy,” said he. “You see this gate is locked to keep out trespassers.”

“A pity,” said Randal. “I like short cuts, and you have shut up a very short one.”

“So the trespassers said,” quoth the squire; “but Stirn insisted on it--valuable man, Stirn. But ride round to the lodge. Put up your horse, and you’ll join us before we can get to the house.”

Randal nodded and smiled, and rode briskly on. The squire rejoined his Harry.

“Ah, William,” said she, anxiously, “though certainly Randal Leslie means well, I always dread his visits.”

“So do I, in one sense,” quoth the squire, “for he always carries away a bank-note for Frank.”

“I hope he is really Frank’s friend,” said Mrs. Hazeldean. “Who’s else can he be? Not his own, poor fellow, for he will never accept a shilling from me, though his grandmother was as good a Hazeldean as I am. But, zounds, I like his pride, and his economy too. As for Frank--”

“Hush, William!” cried Mrs. Hazeldean, and put her fair hand before the squire’s mouth. The squire was softened, and kissed the fair hand gallantly,--perhaps he kissed the lips too; at all events, the worthy pair were walking lovingly arm-in-arm when Randal joined them.

He did not affect to perceive a certain coldness in the manner of Mrs. Hazeldean, but began immediately to talk to her about Frank; praise that young gentleman’s appearance; expatiate on his health, his popularity, and his good gifts, personal and mental,--and this with so much warmth, that any dim and undeveloped suspicions Mrs. Hazeldean might have formed soon melted away.

Randal continued to make himself thus agreeable, until the squire, persuaded that his young kinsman was a first-rate agriculturalist, insisted upon carrying him off to the home-farm; and Harry turned towards the house; to order Randal’s room to be got ready: “For,” said Randal, “knowing that you will excuse my morning dress, I venture to invite myself to dine and sleep at the Hall.”

On approaching the farm-buildings, Randal was seized with the terror of an impostor; for, despite all the theoretical learning on Bucolics and Georgics with which he had dazzled the squire, poor Frank, so despised, would have beat him hollow when it came to the judging of the points of an ox, or the show of a crop.

“Ha, ha,” cried the squire, chuckling, “I long to see how you’ll astonish Stirn. Why, you’ll guess in a moment where we put the top-dressing; and when you come to handle my short-horns, I dare swear you’ll know to a pound how much oil-cake has gone into their sides.”

“Oh, you do me too much honour,--indeed you do. I only know the general principles of agriculture; the details are eminently interesting, but I have not had the opportunity to acquire them.”

“Stuff!” cried the squire. “How can a man know general principles unless he has first studied the details? You are too modest, my boy. Ho! there ‘s Stirn looking out for us!” Randal saw the grim visage of Stirn peering out of a cattleshed, and felt undone. He made a desperate rush towards changing the squire’s humour.

“Well, sir, perhaps Frank may soon gratify your wish, and turn farmer himself.”

“Eh!” quoth the squire, stopping short,--“what now?”

“Suppose he were to marry?”

“I’d give him the two best farms on the property rent free. Ha, ha! Has he seen the girl yet? I’d leave him free to choose; sir, I chose for myself,--every man should. Not but what Miss Stick-to-rights is an heiress, and, I hear, a very decent girl, and that would join the two properties, and put an end to that law-suit about the right of way, which began in the reign of King Charles the Second, and is likely otherwise to last till the day of judgment. But never mind her; let Frank choose to please himself.”

“I’ll not fail to tell him so, sir. I did fear you might have some prejudices. But here we are at the farmyard.”

“Burn the farmyard! How can I think of farmyards when you talk of Frank’s marriage? Come on--this way. What were you saying about prejudices?”

“Why, you might wish him to marry an Englishwoman, for instance.”

“English! Good heavens, sir, does he mean to marry a Hindoo?”

“Nay, I don’t know that he means to marry at all; I am only surmising; but if he did fall in love with a foreigner--”

“A foreigner! Ah, then Harry was--” The squire stopped short.

“Who might, perhaps,” observed Randal--not truly, if he referred to Madame di Negra--“who might, perhaps, speak very little English?”

“Lord ha’ mercy!”

“And a Roman Catholic--”

“Worshipping idols, and roasting people who don’t worship them.”

“Signor Riccabocca is not so bad as that.”

“Rickeybockey! Well, if it was his daughter! But not speak English! and not go to the parish church! By George, if Frank thought of such a thing, I’d cut him off with a shilling. Don’t talk to me, sir; I would. I ‘m a mild man, and an easy man; but when I say a thing, I say it, Mr. Leslie. Oh, but it is a jest,--you are laughing at me. There ‘s no such painted good-for-nothing creature in Frank’s eye, eh?”

“Indeed, sir, if ever I find there is, I will give you notice in time. At present, I was only trying to ascertain what you wished for a daughter-in-law. You said you had no prejudice.”

“No more I have,--not a bit of it.”

“You don’t like a foreigner and a Catholic?”

“Who the devil would?”

“But if she had rank and title?”

“Rank and title! Bubble and squeak! No, not half so good as bubble and squeak. English beef and good cabbage. But foreign rank and title!--foreign cabbage and beef!--foreign bubble and foreign squeak!” And the squire made a wry face, and spat forth his disgust and indignation.

“You must have an Englishwoman?”

“Of course.”

“Money?”

“Don’t care, provided she is a tidy, sensible, active lass, with a good character for her dower.”

“Character--ah, that is indispensable?”

“I should think so, indeed. A Mrs. Hazeldean of Hazeldean--You frighten me. He’s not going to run off with a divorced woman, or a--”

The squire stopped, and looked so red in the face that Randal feared he might be seized with apoplexy before Frank’s crimes had made him alter his will.

Therefore he hastened to relieve Mr. Hazeldean’s mind, and assured him that he had been only talking at random; that Frank was in the habit, indeed, of seeing foreign ladies occasionally, as all persons in the London world were; but that he was sure Frank would never marry without the full consent and approval of his parents. He ended by repeating his assurance, that he would warn the squire if ever it became necessary. Still, however, he left Mr. Hazeldean so disturbed and uneasy that that gentleman forgot all about the farm, and went moodily on in the opposite direction, reentering the park at its farther extremity. As soon as they approached the house, the squire hastened to shut himself with his wife in full parental consultation; and Randal, seated upon a bench on the terrace, revolved the mischief he had done, and its chances of success.

While thus seated, and thus thinking, a footstep approached cautiously, and a low voice said, in broken English, “Sare, sare, let me speak vid you.”

Randal turned in surprise, and beheld a swarthy, saturnine face, with grizzled hair and marked features. He recognized the figure that had joined Riccabocca in the Italian’s garden. “Speak-a-you Italian?” resumed Jackeymo.

Randal, who had made himself an excellent linguist, nodded assent; and Jackeymo, rejoiced, begged him to withdraw into a more private part of the grounds.

Randal obeyed, and the two gained the shade of a stately chestnut avenue.

“Sir,” then said Jackeymo, speaking in his native tongue, and expressing himself with a certain simple pathos, “I am but a poor man; my name is Giacomo. You have heard of me; servant to the signore whom you saw to-day,--only a servant; but he honours me with his confidence. We have known danger together; and of all his friends and followers, I alone came with him to the stranger’s land.”

“Good, faithful fellow,” said Randal, examining the man’s face, “say on. Your master confides in you? He has confided that which I told him this day?”

“He did. Ah, sir; the padrone was too proud to ask you to explain more,--too proud to show fear of another. But he does fear, he ought to fear, he shall fear,” continued Jackeymo, working himself up to passion,--“for the padrone has a daughter, and his enemy is a villain. Oh, sir, tell me all that you did not tell to the padrone. You hinted that this man might wish to marry the signora. Marry her!--I could cut his throat at the altar!”

“Indeed,” said Randal, “I believe that such is his object.”

“But why? He is rich, she is penniless,--no, not quite that, for we have saved--but penniless, compared to him.”

“My good friend, I know not yet his motives; but I can easily learn them. If, however, this count be your master’s enemy, it is surely well to guard against him, whatever his designs; and to do so, you should move into London or its neighbourhood. I fear that, while we speak, the count may get upon his track.”

“He had better not come here!” cried the servant, menacingly, and putting his hand where the knife was not.

“Beware of your own anger, Giacomo. One act of violence, and you would be transported from England, and your mast’r would lose a friend.”

Jackeymo seemed struck by this caution.

“And if the padrone were to meet him, do you think the padrone would meekly say, ‘Come sta sa Signoria’? The padrone would strike him dead!”

“Hush! hush! You speak of what in England is called murder, and is punished by the gallows. If you really love your master, for Heaven’s sake get him from this place, get him from all chance of such passion and peril. I go to town to-morrow; I will find him a house, that shall be safe from all spies, all discovery. And there, too, my friend. I can do what I cannot at this distance,--watch over him, and keep watch also on his enemy.”

Jackeymo seized Randal’s hand, and lifted it towards his lip; then, as if struck by a sudden suspicion, dropped the hand, and said bluntly, “Signore, I think you have seen the padrone twice. Why do you take this interest in him?”

“Is it so uncommon to take interest even in a stranger who is menaced by some peril?”

Jackeymo, who believed little in general philanthropy, shook his head sceptically.

“Besides,” continued Randal, suddenly bethinking himself of a more plausible reason,--“besides, I am a friend and connection of Mr. Egerton; and Mr. Egerton’s most intimate friend is Lord L’Estrange; and I have heard that Lord L’Estrange--”

“The good lord! Oh, now I understand,” interrupted Jackeymo, and his brow cleared. “Ah, if he were in England! But you will let us know when he comes?”

“Certainly. Now, tell me, Giacomo, is this count really unprincipled and dangerous? Remember I know him not personally.”

“He has neither heart nor conscience.”

“That defect makes him dangerous to men; perhaps not less so to women. Could it be possible, if he obtained any interview with the signora, that he could win her affections?” Jackeymo crossed himself rapidly and made no answer.

“I have heard that he is still very handsome.” Jackeymo groaned.

Randal resumed, “Enough; persuade the padrone to come to town.”

“But if the count is in town?”

“That makes no difference; the safest place is always the largest city. Everywhere else, a foreigner is in himself an object of attention and curiosity.”

“True.”

“Let your master, then, come to London, or rather, into its neighbourhood. He can reside in one of the suburbs most remote from the count’s haunts. In two days I will have found him a lodging and write to him. You trust to me now?”

“I do indeed,--I do, Excellency. Ah, if the signorina were married, we would not care!”

“Married! But she looks so high!”

“Alas! not now! not here!”

Randal sighed heavily. Jackeymo’s eyes sparkled. He thought he had detected a new motive for Randal’s interest,--a motive to an Italian the most natural, the most laudable of all.

“Find the house, Signore, write to the padrone. He shall come. I’ll talk to him. I can manage him. Holy San Giacomo, bestir thyself now,--‘t is long since I troubled thee!”

Jackeymo strode off through the fading trees, smiling and muttering as he went.

The first dinner-bell rang, and on entering the drawingroom, Randal found Parson Dale and his wife, who had been invited in haste to meet the unexpected visitor.

The preliminary greetings over, Mr. Dale took the opportunity afforded by the squire’s absence to inquire after the health of Mr. Egerton.

“He is always well,” said Randal. “I believe he is made of iron.”

“His heart is of gold,” said the parson.

“Ah,” said Randal, inquisitively, “you told me you had come in contact with him once, respecting, I think, some of your old parishioners at Lansmere?”

The parson nodded, and there was a moment’s silence.

“Do you remember your battle by the stocks, Mr. Leslie?” said Mr. Dale, with a good-humoured laugh.

“Indeed, yes. By the way, now you speak of it, I met my old opponent in London the first year I went up to it.”

“You did! where?”

“At a literary scamp’s,--a cleverish man called Burley.”

“Burley! I have seen some burlesque verses in Greek by a Mr. Burley.”

“No doubt the same person. He has disappeared,--gone to the dogs, I dare say. Burlesque Greek is not a knowledge very much in power at present.”

“Well, but Leonard Fairfield--you have seen him since?”

“No.”

“Nor heard of him?”

“No; have you?”

“Strange to say, not for a long time. But I have reason to believe that he must be doing well.”

“You surprise me! Why?”

“Because two years ago he sent for his mother. She went to him.”

“Is that all?”

“It is enough; for he would not have sent for her if he could not maintain her.”

Here the Hazeldeans entered, arm-in-arm, and the fat butler announced dinner.

The squire was unusually taciturn, Mrs. Hazeldean thoughtful, Mrs. Dale languid and headachy. The parson, who seldom enjoyed the luxury of converse with a scholar, save when he quarrelled with Dr. Riccaboeca, was animated by Randal’s repute for ability into a great desire for argument.

“A glass of wine, Mr. Leslie. You were saying, before dinner, that burlesque Greek is not a knowledge very much in power at present. Pray, Sir, what knowledge is in power?”

RANDAL (laconically).--“Practical knowledge.”

PARSON.--“What of?”

RANDAL.--“Men.”

PARSON (candidly).--“Well, I suppose that is the most available sort of knowledge, in a worldly point of view. How does one learn it? Do books help?”

RANDAL.--“According as they are read, they help or injure.”

PARSON.--“How should they be read in order to help?”

RANDAL.--“Read specially to apply to purposes that lead to power.”

PARSON (very much struck with Randal’s pithy and Spartan logic).--“Upon my word, Sir, you express yourself very well. I must own that I began these questions in the hope of differing from you; for I like an argument.”

“That he does,” growled the squire; “the most contradictory creature!”

PARSON.--“Argument is the salt of talk. But now I am afraid I must agree with you, which I was not at all prepared for.”

Randal bowed and answered, “No two men of our education can dispute upon the application of knowledge.”

PARSON (pricking up his ears).--“Eh?--what to?”

RANDAL.--“Power, of course.”

PARSON (overjoyed).--“Power!--the vulgarest application of it, or the loftiest? But you mean the loftiest?”

RANDAL (in his turn interested and interrogative).--“What do you call the loftiest, and what the vulgarest?”

PARSON.--“The vulgarest, self-interest; the loftiest, beneficence.”

Randal suppressed the half-disdainful smile that rose to his lip.

“You speak, Sir, as a clergyman should do. I admire your sentiment, and adopt it; but I fear that the knowledge which aims only at beneficence very rarely in this world gets any power at all.”

SQUIRE (seriously).--“That’s true; I never get my own way when I want to do a kindness, and Stirn always gets his when he insists on something diabolically brutal and harsh.”

PARSON.--“Pray, Mr. Leslie, what does intellectual power refined to the utmost, but entirely stripped of beneficence, most resemble?”

RANDAL.--“Resemble?--I can hardly say. Some very great man--almost any very great man--who has baffled all his foes, and attained all his ends.”

PARSON.--“I doubt if any man has ever become very great who has not meant to be beneficent, though he might err in the means. Caesar was naturally beneficent, and so was Alexander. But intellectual power refined to the utmost, and wholly void of beneficence, resembles only one being, and that, sir, is the Principle of Evil.”

RANDAL (startled).--“Do you mean the Devil?”

PARSON.--“Yes, Sir, the Devil; and even he, Sir, did not succeed! Even he, Sir, is what your great men would call a most decided failure.”

MRS. DALE.--“My dear, my dear!”

PARSON.--“Our religion proves it, my love; he was an angel, and he fell.”

There was a solemn pause. Randal was more impressed than he liked to own to himself. By this time the dinner was over, and the servants had retired. Harry glanced at Carry. Carry smoothed her gown and rose.

The gentlemen remained over their wine; and the parson, satisfied with what he deemed a clencher upon his favourite subject of discussion, changed the subject to lighter topics, till, happening to fall upon tithes, the squire struck in, and by dint of loudness of voice, and truculence of brow, fairly overwhelmed both his guests, and proved to his own satisfaction that tithes were an unjust and unchristianlike usurpation on the part of the Church generally, and a most especial and iniquitous infliction upon the Hazeldean estates in particular.

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Chapter IX

On entering the drawing-room, Randal found the two ladies seated close together, in a position much more appropriate to the familiarity of their school-days than to the politeness of the friendship now existing between them. Mrs. Hazeldean’s hand hung affectionately over Carry’s shoulder, and both those fair English faces were bent over the same book. It was pretty to see these sober matrons, so different from each other in character and aspect, thus unconsciously restored to the intimacy of happy maiden youth by the golden link of some Magician from the still land of Truth or Fancy, brought together in heart, as each eye rested on the same thought; closer and closer, as sympathy, lost in the actual world, grew out of that world which unites in one bond of feeling the readers of some gentle book.

“And what work interests you so much?” asked Randal, pausing by the table.

“One you have read, of course,” replied Mrs. Dale, putting a book-mark embroidered by herself into the page, and handing the volume to Randal. “It has made a great sensation, I believe.”

Randal glanced at the title of the work. “True,” said he, “I have heard much of it in London, but I have not yet had time to read it.”

MRS. DALE.--“I can lend it to you, if you like to look over it to-night, and you can leave it for me with Mrs. Hazeldean.”

PARSON (approaching).--“Oh, that book!--yes, you must read it. I do not know a work more instructive.”

RANDAL.--“Instructive! Certainly I will read it then. But I thought it was a mere work of amusement,--of fancy. It seems so as I look over it.”

PARSON.--“So is the ‘Vicar of Wakefield;’ yet what book more instructive?”

RANDAL.--“I should not have said that of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield.’ A pretty book enough, though the story is most improbable. But how is it instructive?”

PARSON.--“By its results: it leaves us happier and better. What can any instruction do more? Some works instruct through the head, some through the heart. The last reach the widest circle, and often produce the most genial influence on the character. This book belongs to the last. You will grant my proposition when you have read it.”

Randal smiled and took the volume.

MRS. DALE.--“Is the author known yet?”

RANDAL.--“I have heard it ascribed to many writers, but I believe no one has claimed it.”

PARSON.--“I think it must have been written by my old college friend, Professor Moss, the naturalist,--its descriptions of scenery are so accurate.”

MRS. DALE.--“La, Charles dear! that snuffy, tiresome, prosy professor? How can you talk such nonsense? I am sure the author must be young, there is so much freshness of feeling.”

MRS. HAZELDEAN (positively).--“Yes, certainly, young.”

PARSON (no less positively).--“I should say just the contrary. Its tone is too serene, and its style too simple, for a young man. Besides, I don’t know any young man who would send me his book, and this book has been sent me, very handsomely bound, too, you see. Depend upon it Moss is the loan--quite his turn of mind.”

MRS. DALE.--“You are too provoking, Charles dear! Mr. Moss is so remarkably plain, too.”

RANDAL.--“Must an author be handsome?”

PARSON.--“Ha! ha! Answer that if you can, Carry.” Carry remained mute and disdainful.

SQUIRE (with great naivete).--“Well, I don’t think there’s much in the book, whoever wrote it; for I’ve read it myself, and understand every word of it.”

MRS. DALE.--“I don’t see why you should suppose it was written by a man at all. For my part, I think it must be a woman.”

MRS. HAZELDEAN.--“Yes, there’s a passage about maternal affection, which only a woman could have written.”

PARSON.--“Pooh! pooh! I should like to see a woman who could have written that description of an August evening before a thunderstorm; every wild-flower in the hedgerow exactly the flowers of August, every sign in the air exactly those of the month. Bless you! a woman would have filled the hedge with violets and cowslips. Nobody else but my friend Moss could have written that description.”

SQUIRE.--“I don’t know; there’s a simile about the waste of corn-seed in hand-sowing, which makes me think he must be a farmer!”

MRS. DALE (scornfully).--“A farmer! In hobnailed shoes, I suppose! I say it is a woman.”

MRS. HAZELDEAN.--“A WOMAN, and A MOTHER!”

PARSON.--“A middle-aged man, and a naturalist.”

SQUIRE.--“No, no, Parson, certainly a young man; for that love-scene puts me in mind of my own young days, when I would have given my ears to tell Harry how handsome I thought her; and all I could say was, ‘Fine weather for the crops, Miss.’ Yes, a young man and a farmer. I should not wonder if he had held the plough himself.”

RANDAL (who had been turning over the pages).--“This sketch of Night in London comes from a man who has lived the life of cities and looked at wealth with the eyes of poverty. Not bad! I will read the book.”

“Strange,” said the parson, smiling, “that this little work should so have entered into our minds, suggested to all of us different ideas, yet equally charmed all,--given a new and fresh current to our dull country life, animated us as with the sight of a world in our breasts we had never seen before save in dreams: a little work like this by a man we don’t know and never may! Well, that knowledge is power, and a noble one!”

“A sort of power, certainly, sir,” said Randal, candidly; and that night, when Randal retired to his own room, he suspended his schemes and projects, and read, as he rarely did, without an object to gain by the reading.

The work surprised him by the pleasure it gave. Its charm lay in the writer’s calm enjoyment of the beautiful. It seemed like some happy soul sunning itself in the light of its own thoughts. Its power was so tranquil and even, that it was only a critic who could perceive how much force and vigour were necessary to sustain the wing that floated aloft with so imperceptible an effort. There was no one faculty predominating tyrannically over the others; all seemed proportioned in the felicitous symmetry of a nature rounded, integral, and complete. And when the work was closed, it left behind it a tender warmth that played round the heart of the reader and vivified feelings which seemed unknown before. Randal laid down the book softly; and for five minutes the ignoble and base purposes to which his own knowledge was applied stood before him, naked and unmasked.

“Tut!” said he, wrenching himself violently away from the benign influence, “it was not to sympathize with Hector, but to conquer with Achilles, that Alexander of Macedon kept Homer under his pillow. Such should be the true use of books to him who has the practical world to subdue; let parsons and women construe it otherwise, as they may!”

And the Principle of Evil descended again upon the intellect from which the guide of Beneficence was gone.

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