CHAPTER VIII.

JASPER LOSELY SLEEPS UNDER THE PORTICO FROM WHICH FALSEHOOD WAS BORNE BY BLACK HORSES. HE FORGETS A PROMISE, REWEAVES A SCHEME, VISITS A RIVER-SIDE, AND A DOOR CLOSES ON THE STRONG MAN AND THE GRIM WOMAN.

Jasper, had satisfied the wild yearnings of his wounded vanity. He had vindicated his claim to hardihood and address, which it seemed to him he had forfeited in his interview with Darrell. With crest erect and a positive sense of elation, of animal joy that predominated over hunger, fatigue, remorse, he strided on--he knew not whither. He would not go back to his former lodgings; they were too familiarly known to the set which he had just flung from him, with a vague resolve to abjure henceforth all accomplices, and trust to himself alone. The hour was now late--the streets deserted--the air bitingly cold. Must he at last resign himself to the loathed dictation of Arabella Cram? Well, he now preferred even that to humbling himself to Darrell, after what had pa.s.sed. Darrell's parting words had certainly implied that he would not be as obdurate to entreaty as he had shown himself to threats. But Jasper was in no humour to entreat. Mechanically he continued to stride on towards the solitary district in which Arabella held her home; but the night was now so far advanced that he shrunk from disturbing the grim woman at that hour--almost as respectfully afraid of her dark eye and stern voice as the outlaws he had quitted were of his own crushing hand and levelled pistol. So finding himself in one of the large squares of Bloomsbury, he gathered himself up under the sheltering porch of a s.p.a.cious mansion, unconscious that it was the very residence which Darrell had once occupied, and that from that portico the Black Horses had borne away the mother of his wife. In a few minutes he was fast asleep--sleeping with such heavy deathlike soundness, that the policeman pa.s.sing him on his beat, after one or two vain attempts to rouse him, was seized with a rare compa.s.sion, and suffered the weary outcast to slumber on.

When Jasper woke at last in the grey dawn, he felt a strange numbness in his limbs; it was even with difficulty that he could lift himself up.

This sensation gradually wearing off, was followed by a quick tingling down the arms to the tips of the fingers. A gloomy noise rang in his ears, like the boom of funeral church-bells; and the pavement seemed to be sliding from under him. Little heeding these symptoms, which he ascribed to cold and want of food, and rather agreeably surprised not to feel the gnaw of his accustomed pains, Jasper now betook himself to Podden Place. The house was still unclosed; and it was not till Jasper's knock had been pretty often repeated, that the bolts were withdrawn from the door, and Bridgett Greggs appeared. "Oh, it is you, Mr. Losely,"

she said, with much sullenness, but with no apparent surprise. "Mistress thought you would come while she was away, and I'm to get you the bedroom you had, over the stationer's, six years ago, if you like it.

You are to take your meals here, and have the best of everything; that's mistress's orders."

"Oh, Mrs. Crane is out of town," said Jasper, much relieved; "where has she gone?"

"I don't know."

"When will she be back?"

"In a few days; so she told me. Will you walk in, and have breakfast?

Mistress said there was to be always plenty in the house--you might come any moment. Please sc.r.a.pe your feet."

Jasper heavily mounted into the drawing-room, and impatiently awaited the substantial refreshments, which were soon placed before him. The room looked unaltered, as if he had left it but the day before--the prim book-shelves--the empty birdcage--the broken lute--the patent easy-chair--the footstool--the sofa, which had been added to the original furniture for his express comfort, in the days when he was first adopted as a son-nay, on the hearth-rug the very slippers, on the back of the chair the very dressing-gown, graciously worn by him while yet the fairness of his form justified his fond respect for it.

For that day he was contented with the negative luxury of complete repose; the more so as, in every attempt to move, he felt the same numbness of limb as that with which he had woke, accompanied by a kind of painful weight at the back of the head, and at the junction which the great seat of intelligence forms at the spine with the great mainspring of force; and, withal, a reluctance to stir, and a more than usual inclination to doze. But the next day, though these unpleasant sensations continued, his impatience of thought and hate of solitude made him anxious to go forth and seek some distraction. No distraction left to him but the gaming-table--no companions but fellow-victims in that sucking whirlpool. Well, he knew a low gaming-house, open all day as all night. Wishing to add somewhat to the miserable remains of the L1 borrowed on the horse, that made all his capital, he asked Bridgett, indifferently, to oblige him with two or three sovereigns; if she had them not, she might borrow them in the neighbourhood till her mistress returned. Bridgett answered, with ill-simulated glee, that her mistress had given positive orders that Mr. Losely was to have everything he called for, except--money. Jasper coloured with wrath and shame; but he said no more--whistled--took his hat--went out--repaired to the gaming-house--lost his last shilling, and returned moodily to dine in Podden Place. The austerity of the room, the loneliness of the evening, began now to inspire him with unmitigated disgust, which was added in fresh account to his old score of repugnance for the absent Arabella.

The affront put upon him in the orders which Bridgett had so faithfully repeated made him yet more distastefully contemplate the dire necessity of falling under the rigid despotism of this determined guardian: it was like going back to a preparatory school, to be mulcted of pocket-money, and set in a dark corner! But what other resource? None but appeal to Darrell--still more intolerable; except--he paused in his cogitation, shook his head, muttered "No, no." But that "except" would return!--except to forget his father's prayer and his own promise--except to hunt out Sophy, and extract from the generosity, compa.s.sion, or fear of her protectress, some such conditions as he would have wrung from Darrell. He had no doubt now that the girl was with Lady Montfort; he felt that, if she really loved Sophy, and were sheltering her in tender recollection, whether of Matilda or of Darrell himself, he might much more easily work on the delicate nerves of a woman, shrinking from all noise and scandal, than he could on the stubborn pride of his resolute father-in-law. Perhaps it was on account of Sophy--perhaps to plead for her--that Lady Montfort had gone to Fawley; perhaps the grief visible on that lady's countenance, as he caught so hasty a glimpse of it, might be occasioned by the failure of her mission. If so, there might be now some breach or dissension between her and Darrell, which might render the Marchioness still more accessible to his demands. As for his father--if Jasper played his cards well and luckily, his father might never know of his disobedience; he might coax or frighten Lady Montfort into secresy. It might be quite unnecessary for him even to see Sophy; if she caught sight of him, she would surely no more recognise his altered features than Rugge had done. These thoughts gathered on him stronger and stronger all the evening, and grew into resolves with the next morning. He sallied out after breakfast--the same numbness; but he walked it off. Easy enough to find the address of the Marchioness of Montfort. He asked it boldly of the porter at the well-known house of the present Lord, and, on learning it, proceeded at once to Richmond--on foot, and thence to the small, scattered hamlet immediately contiguous to Lady Montfort's villa. Here he found two or three idle boatmen lounging near the river-side; and entering into conversation with them about their craft, which was sufficiently familiar to him, for he had plied the strongest oar on that tide in the holidays of his youth, he proceeded to inquiries, which were readily and unsuspectingly answered.

"Yes, there was a young lady with Lady Montfort; they did not know her name. They had seen her often in the lawn--seen her too, at church. She was very pretty; yes, she had blue eyes and fair hair." Of his father he only heard that "there had been an old gentleman such as he described--lame, and with one eye--who had lived some months ago in a cottage on Lady Montfort's grounds. They heard he had gone away. He had made baskets--they did not know if for sale; if so, perhaps for a charity. They supposed he was a gentleman, for they heard he was some relation to the young lady. But Lady Montfort's head coachman lived in the village, and could, no doubt, give him all the information he required." Jasper was too wary to call on the coachman; he had learned enough for the present. Had he prosecuted his researches farther, he might only have exposed himself to questions, and to the chance of his inquiries being repeated to Lady Montfort by one of her servants, and thus setting her on her guard; for no doubt his father had cautioned her against him. It never occurred to him that the old man could already have returned; and those to whom he confined his interrogatories were quite ignorant of the fact. Jasper had no intention to intrude himself that day on Lady Montfort. His self-love shrank from presenting himself to a lady of such rank, and to whom he had been once presented on equal terms, as the bridegroom of her friend and the confidential visitor to her mother, in habiliments that bespoke so utter a fall. Better, too, on all accounts, to appear something of a gentleman; more likely to excite pity for suffering--less likely to suggest excuse for reb.u.t.ting his claims, and showing him to the door. Nay, indeed, so dressed, in that villanous pea-jacket, and with all other habiliments to match, would any servant admit him?--could he get into Lady Montfort's presence? He must go back--wait for Mrs. Crane's return. Doubtless she would hail his wish--half a reform in itself--to castoff the outward signs of an accepted degradation.

Accordingly he went back to town in much better spirits, and so absorbed in his hopes, that, when he arrived at Podden Place, he did not observe that, from some obliquity of vision, or want of the normal correspondence between will and muscle, his hand twice missed the knocker-wandering first above, then below it; and that, when actually in his clasp, he did not feel the solid iron: the sense of touch seemed suspended. Bridgett appeared. "Mistress is come back, and will see you."

Jasper did not look charmed; he winced, but screwed up his courage, and mounted the stairs--slowly-heavily. Form the landing-place above glared down the dark shining eyes that had almost quailed his bold spirit nearly six years before; and almost in the same words as then, a voice as exulting, but less stern, said: "So you come at last to me, Jasper Losely--you are come." Rapidly-flittingly, with a step noiseless as a spectre's, Arabella Crane descended the stairs; but she did not, as when he first sought that house in the years before, grasp his hand or gaze into his face. Rather, it was with a shrinking avoidance of his touch--with something like a shudder-that she glided by him into the open drawing-room, beckoning him to follow. He halted a moment; he felt a longing to retreat--to fly the house; his superst.i.tious awe of her very benefits came back to him more strongly than ever. But her help at the moment was necessary to his very hope to escape all future need of her, and, though with a vague foreboding of unconjecturable evil, he stepped into the room, and the door closed on both.

BOOK XI.

CHAPTER I.

"THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DOES RUN SMOOTH!" MAY IT NOT BE BECAUSE WHERE THERE ARE NO OBSTACLES, THERE ARE NO TESTS TO THE TRUTH OF LOVE? WHERE THE COURSE IS SMOOTH, THE STREAM IS CROWDED WITH PLEASURE-BOATS. WHERE THE WAVE SWELLS, AND THE SHOALS THREATEN, AND THE SKY LOWERS, THE PLEASURE-BOATS HAVE GONE BACK INTO HARBOUR. SHIPS FITTED FOR ROUGH WEATHER ARE THOSE BUILT AND STORED FOR LONG VOYAGE.

I pa.s.s over the joyous meeting between Waife and Sophy. I pa.s.s over George's account to his fair cousin of the scene he and Hartopp had witnessed, in which Waife's innocence had been manifested and his reasons for accepting the penalties of guilt had been explained. The first few agitated days following Waife's return have rolled away. He is resettled in the cottage from which he had fled; he refuses, as before, to take up his abode at Lady Montfort's house. But Sophy has been almost constantly his companion, and Lady Montfort herself has spent hours with him each day--sometimes in his rustic parlour, sometimes in the small garden-plot round his cottage, to which his rambles are confined. George has gone back to his home and duties at Humberston, promising very soon to revisit his old friend, and discuss future plans.

The scholar, though with a sharp pang, conceding to Waife that all attempt publicly to clear his good name at the cost of reversing the sacrifice he had made must be forborne, could not, however, be induced to pledge himself to unconditional silence. George felt that there were at least some others to whom the knowledge of Waife's innocence was imperatively due.

Waife is seated by his open window. It is noon; there is sunshine in the pale blue skies--an unusual softness in the wintry air. His Bible lies on the table beside him. He has just set his mark in the page, and reverently closed the book. He is alone. Lady Montfort--who, since her return from Fawley, has been suffering from a kind of hectic fever, accompanied by a languor that made even the walk to Waife's cottage a fatigue, which the sweetness of her kindly nature enabled her to overcome, and would not permit her to confess--has been so much worse that morning as to be unable to leave her room. Sophy has gone to see her. Waife is now leaning his face upon his hand, and that face is sadder and more disquieted than it lead been, perhaps, in all his wanderings. His darling Sophy is evidently unhappy. Her sorrow had not been visible during the first two or three days of his return, chased away by the joy of seeing him--the excitement of tender reproach and question--of tears that seemed as joyous as the silvery laugh which responded to the gaiety that sported round the depth of feeling with which he himself beheld her once more clinging to his side, or seated, with upward loving eyes, on the footstool by his knees. Even at the first look, however, he had found her altered; her cheek was thinner, her colour paled. That might be from fretting for him. She would be herself again, now that her tender anxiety was relieved. But she did not become herself again. The arch and playful Sophy he had left was gone, as if never to return. He marked that her step, once so bounding, had become slow and spiritless. Often when she sat near him, seemingly reading or at her work, he noticed that her eyes were not on the page--that the work stopped abruptly in listless hands; and then he would hear her sigh--a heavy but short impatient sigh! No mistaking that sigh by those who have studied grief; whether in maid or man, in young or old, in the gentle Sophy, so new to life, or in the haughty Darrell, weary of the world, and shrinking from its honours, that sigh had the same character, a like symptom of a malady in common; the same effort to free the heart from an oppressive load; the same token of a sharp and rankling remembrance lodged deep in that finest nerve-work of being, which no anodyne can reach--a pain that comes without apparent cause, and is sought to be expelled without conscious effort.

The old man feared at first that she might, by some means or other, in his absence, have become apprised of the brand on his own name, the verdict that had blackened his repute, the sentence that had hurled him from his native sphere; or that, as her reason had insensibly matured, she herself, reflecting on all the mystery that surrounded him--his incognitos, his hidings, the incongruity between his social grade and his education or bearing, and his repeated acknowledgments that there were charges against him which compelled him to concealment, and from which he could not be cleared on earth; that she, reflecting on all these evidences to his disfavour, had either secretly admitted into her breast a conviction of his guilt, or that, as she grew up to woman, she had felt, through him, the disgrace entailed upon herself. Or if such were not the cause of her sadness, had she learned more of her father's evil courses; had an emissary of Jasper's worked upon her sensibilities or her fears? No, that could not be the case, since whatever the grounds upon which Jasper had conjectured that Sophy was with Lady Montfort, the accuracy of his conjectures had evidently been doubted by Jasper himself; or why so earnestly have questioned Waife? Had she learned that she was the grandchild and natural heiress of a man wealthy and renowned--a chief amongst the chiefs of England--who rejected her with disdain? Was she pining for her true position? or mortified by the contempt of a kinsman, whose rank so contrasted the vagrancy of the grandsire by whom alone she was acknowledged?

Tormented by these doubts, he was unable to solve them by such guarded and delicate questions as he addressed to Sophy herself. For she, when he falteringly asked what ailed his darling, would start, brighten up for the moment, answer, "Nothing, now that he had come back"; kiss his forehead, play with Sir Isaac, and then manage furtively to glide away.

But the day before that in which we now see him alone, he had asked her abruptly, "If, during his absence, any one besides George Morley had visited at Lady Montfort's--any one whom she had seen?" And Sophy's cheek had as suddenly become crimson, then deadly pale; and first she said "no," and then "yes"; and after a pause, looking away from him, she added: "The young gentleman who--who helped us to buy Sir Isaac, he has visited Lady Montfort--related to some dear friend of hers."

"What, the painter!"

"No--the other, with the dark eyes."

"Haughton!" said Waife, with an expression of great pain in his face.

"Yes--Mr. Haughton; but he has not been here a long, long time. He will not come again, I believe."

Her voice quivered, despite herself, at the last words, and she began to bustle about the room--filled Waife's pipe, thrust it into his hands with a laugh, the false mirth of which went to his very heart, and then stepped from the open window into the little garden, and began to sing one of Waife's favourite simple old Border songs; but before she got through the first line, the song ceased, and she was was as lost to sight as a ringdove, whose note comes and goes so quickly amongst the impenetrable coverts.

But Waife had heard enough to justify profound alarm for Sophy's peace of mind, and to waken in his own heart some of its most painful a.s.sociations. The reader, who knows the wrong inflicted on William Losely by Lionel Haughton's father--a wrong which led to all poor w.i.l.l.y's subsequent misfortunes--may conceive that the very name of Haughton was wounding to his ear; and when, in his brief, sole, and bitter interview with Darrell, the latter had dropped out that Lionel Haughton, however distant of kin, would be a more grateful heir than the grandchild of a convicted felon--if w.i.l.l.y's sweet nature could have admitted a momentary hate, it would have been for the thus vaunted son of the man who had stripped him of the modest all which would perhaps have saved his own child from the robber's guilt, and himself from the robber's doom. Long since, therefore, the reader will have comprehended why, when Waife came to meet Sophy at the riverside, and learned at the inn on its margin that the name of her younger companion was Lionel Haughton--why, I say, he had so morosely parted from the boy, and so imperiously bade Sophy dismiss all thought of meeting "the pretty young gentleman" again.

And now again this very Lionel Haughton to have stolen into the retreat in which poor Waife had deemed he left his treasure so secure! Was it for this he had fled from her? Did he return to find her youth blighted, her affections robbed from him, by the son of Charles Haughton? The father had despoiled his manhood of independence; must it be the son who despoiled his age of its only solace? Grant even that Lionel was worthy of Sophy--grant that she had been loyally wooed--must not that attachment be fruitless--be fatal? If Lionel were really now adopted by Darrell, Waife knew human nature too well to believe that Darrell would complacently hear Lionel ask a wife in her whose claim to his lineage had so galled and incensed him. It was while plunged in these torturing reflections that Lady Montfort (not many minutes after Sophy's song had ceased and her form vanished) had come to visit him, and he at once accosted her with agitated inquiries: "When had Mr. Haughton first presented himself?--how often had he seen Sophy?--what had pa.s.sed between them?--did not Lady Montfort see that his darling's heart was breaking?"

But he stopped as suddenly as he had rushed into his th.o.r.n.y maze of questions; for, looking imploringly into Caroline Montfort's face, he saw there more settled signs of a breaking heart than Sophy had yet betrayed, despite her paleness and her sighs. Sad, indeed, the change in her countenance since he had left the place months ago, though Waife, absorbed in Sophy, had not much remarked it till now, when seeking to read therein secrets that concerned his darling's welfare. Lady Montfort's beauty was so perfect in that rare harmony of feature which poets, before Byron, have compared to music, that sorrow could no more mar the effect of that beauty on the eye, than pathos can mar the effect of the music that admits it on the ear. But the change in her face seemed that of a sorrow which has lost all earthly hope. Waife, therefore, checked questions that took the tone of reproaches, and involuntarily murmured "Pardon."

Then Caroline Montfort told him all the tender projects she had conceived for his grandchild's happiness--how, finding Lionel so disinterested and n.o.ble, she had imagined she saw in him the providential agent to place Sophy in the position to which Waife had desired to raise her; Lionel, to share with her the heritage of which he might otherwise despoil her--both to become the united source of joy and of pride to the childless man who now favoured the one to exclude the other. Nor in these schemes had the absent wanderer been forgotten. No; could Sophy's virtues once be recognised by Darrell, and her alleged birth acknowledged by him--could the guardian, who, in fostering those virtues to bloom by Darrell's hearth, had laid under the deepest obligations one who, if unforgiving to treachery, was grateful for the humblest service--could that guardian justify the belief in his innocence which George Morley had ever entertained, and, as it now proved, with reason--then where on all earth a man like Guy Darrell to vindicate William Losely's attainted honour, or from whom William Losely might accept cherishing friendship and independent ease, with so indisputable a right to both! Such had been the picture that the fond and sanguine imagination of Caroline Montfort had drawn from generous hope, and coloured with tender fancies. But alas for such castles in the air! All had failed. She had only herself to blame. Instead of securing Sophys welfare, she had endangered Sophy's happiness. They whom she had desired to unite were irrevocably separated. Bitterly she accused herself--her error in relying so much on Lionel's influence with Darrell--on her own early remembrance of Darrell's affectionate nature and singular sympathies with the young--and thus suffering Lionel and Sophy to grow familiar with each other's winning characters, and carry on childlike romance into maturer sentiment. She spoke, though briefly, of her visit to Darrell, and its ill success--of the few letters that had pa.s.sed since then between herself and Lionel, in which it was settled that he should seek no parting interview with Sophy. He had declared to Sophy no formal suit--they had exchanged no lovers' vows. It would be, therefore, but a dishonourable cruelty to her to say, "I come to tell you that I love you, and that we must part for ever." And how avow the reason--that reason that would humble her to the dust? Lionel was forbidden to wed with one whom Jasper Losely called daughter, and whom the guardian she so venerated believed to be his grandchild. All of comfort that Lady Montfort could suggest was, that Sophy was so young that she would conquer what might be but a girl's romantic sentiment--or, if a more serious attachment, one that no troth had cemented--for a person she might not see again for years; Lionel was negotiating exchange into a regiment on active service. "Meanwhile,"

said Lady Montfort, "I shall never wed again. I shall make it known that I look on your Sophy as the child of my adoption. If I do not live to save sufficient for her out of an income that is more than thrice what I require, I have instructed my lawyers to insure my life for her provision; it will be ample. Many a wooer, captivating as Lionel, and free from the scruples that fetter his choice, will be proud to kneel at the feet of one so lovely. This rank of mine, which has never yet bestowed on me a joy, now becomes of value, since it will give dignity to--to Matilda's child, and--and to--" Lady Montfort sobbed.

Waife listened respectfully, and for the time was comforted. Certainly, in his own heart he was glad that Lionel Haughton was permanently separated from Sophy. There was scarcely a man on earth, of fair station and repute, to whom he would have surrendered Sophy with so keen a pang as to Charles Haughton's son.

The poor young lovers! all the stars seemed against them! Was it not enough that Guy Darrell should be so obdurate! must the mild William Losely be also a malefic in their horoscope?

But when, that same evening, the old man more observantly than ever watched his grandchild, his comfort vanished--misgivings came over him--he felt a.s.sured that the fatal shaft had been broken in the wound, and that the heart was bleeding inly.

True; not without prophetic insight had Arabella Crane said to the pining, but resolute, quiet child, behind the scenes of Mr. Rugge's show, "How much you will love one day." All that night Waife lay awake pondering--revolving--exhausting that wondrous fertility of resource which teemed in his inventive brain. In vain!

And now--(the day after this conversation with Lady Montfort, whose illness grieves, but does not surprise him)--now, as he sits and thinks, and gazes abstractedly into that far, pale, winter sky-now, the old man is still scheming how to reconcile a human loving heart to the eternal loss of that affection which has so many perishable counterfeits, but which, when true in all its elements--complete in all its varied wealth of feeling, is never to be forgotten and never to be replaced.

CHAPTER II.

AN OFFERING TO THE MANES.

Three sides of Waife's cottage were within Lady Montfort's grounds; the fourth side, with its more public, entrance, bordered the lane. Now, as he thus sate, he was startled by a low timid ring at the door which opened on the lane. Who could it be?--not Jasper! He began to tremble.

The ring was repeated. One woman-servant composed all his establishment.

He heard her opening the door--heard a low voice; it seemed a soft, fresh, young voice. His room-door opened, and the woman, who of course knew the visitor by sight and name, having often remarked him on the grounds with Lady Montfort and Sophy, said, in a cheerful tone, as if bringing good news, "Mr. Lionel Haughton."

Scarcely was the door closed--scarcely the young man in the room, before, with all his delightful, pa.s.sionate frankness, Lionel had clasped Waife's reluctant hand in both his own, and, with tears in his eyes, and choking in his voice, was pouring forth sentences so loosely knit together that they seemed almost incoherent; now a burst of congratulation--now a falter of condolence--now words that seemed to supplicate as for pardon to an offence of his own--rapid transitions from enthusiasm to pity, from joy to grief--variable, with the stormy April of a young, fresh, hearty nature.

Taken so wholly by surprise, Waife, in vain attempting to appear cold and distant, and only very vaguely comprehending what the unwelcome visitor so confusedly expressed, at last found voice to interrupt the jet and gush of Lionel's impetuous emotion, and said as drily as he could: "I am really at a loss to conceive the cause of what appears to be meant as congratulations to me and reproaches to yourself, Mr.--, Mr.

Haugh--;" his lips could not complete the distasteful name.