Part 54 (1/2)
CHAPTER LXXIX.
But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew, And dull the film along his dim eye grew.--BYRON.
The light broke partially through the half-closed shutters of the room in which lay Lord Ulswater, who, awakened to sense and pain by the motion of the carriage, had now relapsed into insensibility. By the side of the sofa on which he was laid, knelt Clarence, bathing one hand with tears violent and fast; on the opposite side leaned over, with bald front, and an expression of mingled fear and sorrow upon his intent countenance, the old steward; while, at a little distance, Lord Westborough, who had been wheeled into the room, sat mute in his chair, aghast with bewilderment and horror, and counting every moment to the arrival of the surgeon, who had been sent for. The stranger to whom the carriage belonged stood by the window, detailing in a low voice to the chaplain of the house what particulars of the occurrence he was acquainted with, while the youngest scion of the family, a boy of about ten years, and who in the general confusion had thrust himself unnoticed into the room, stood close to the pair, with open mouth and thirsting ears and a face on which childish interest at a fearful tale was strongly blent with the more absorbed feeling of terror at the truth.
Slowly Lord Ulswater opened his eyes; they rested upon Clarence.
”My brother! my brother!” cried Clarence, in a voice of powerful anguish, ”is it thus--thus that you have come hither to--” He stopped in the gus.h.i.+ng fulness of his heart. Extricating from Clarence the only hand he was able to use, Lord Ulswater raised it to his brow, as if in the effort to clear remembrance; and then, turning to Wardour, seemed to ask the truth of Clarence's claim,--at least so the old man interpreted the meaning of his eye, and the faint and scarce intelligible words which broke from his lips.
”It is; it is, my honoured lord,” cried he, struggling with his emotion; ”it is your brother, your lost brother, Clinton L'Estrange.” And as he said these words, Clarence felt the damp chill hand of his brother press his own, and knew by that pressure and the smile--kind, though brief from exceeding pain--with which the ill-fated n.o.bleman looked upon him, that the claim long unknown was at last acknowledged, and the ties long broken united, though in death.
The surgeon arrived: the room was cleared of all but Clarence; the first examination was sufficient. Unaware of Clarence's close relations.h.i.+p to the sufferer, the surgeon took him aside. ”A very painful operation,”
said he, ”might be performed, but it would only torture, in vain, the last moments of the patient; no human skill can save or even protract his life.”
The doomed man, who, though in great pain, was still sensible, stirred.
His brother flew towards him. ”Flora,” he murmured, ”let me see her, I implore.”
Curbing, as much as he was able, his emotion, and conquering his reluctance to leave the sufferer even for a moment, Clarence flew in search of Lady Flora. He found her; in rapid and hasty words, he signified the wish of the dying man, and hurried her, confused, trembling, and scarce conscious of the melancholy scene she was about to witness, to the side of her affianced bridegroom.
I have been by the death-beds of many men, and I have noted that shortly before death, as the frame grows weaker and weaker, the fiercer pa.s.sions yield to those feelings better harmonizing with the awfulness of the hour. Thoughts soft and tender, which seem little to belong to the character in the health and vigour of former years, obtain then an empire, brief, indeed, but utter for the time they last; and this is the more impressive because (as in the present instance I shall have occasion to portray) in the moments which succeed and make the very latest of life, the ruling pa.s.sion, suppressed for an interval by such gentler feelings, sometimes again returns to take its final triumph over that frail clay, which, through existence, it has swayed, agitated, and moulded like wax unto its will.
When Lord Ulswater saw Flora approach and bend weepingly over him, a momentary softness stole over his face. Taking her hand he extended it towards Clarence, and turning to the latter faltered out, ”Let this--my--brother--atone--for--;” apparently unable to finish the sentence, he then relaxed his hold and sank upon the pillow; and so still, so apparently breathless did he remain for several minutes, that they thought the latest agony was over.
As, yielding to this impression, Clarence was about to withdraw the scarce conscious Flora from the chamber, words, less tremulous and indistinct than aught which he had yet uttered, broke from Lord Ulswater's lips. Clarence hastened to him; and bending over his countenance saw that even through the rapid changes and shades of death, it darkened with the peculiar characteristics of the unreleased soul within: the brow was knit into more than its wonted sternness and pride; and in the eye which glared upon the opposite wall, the light of the waning life broke into a momentary blaze,--that flash, so rapid and evanescent, before the air drinks in the last spark of the being it has animated, and night--the starless and eternal--falls over the extinguished lamp! The hand of the right arm (which was that unshattered by the fall) was clenched and raised; but, when the words which came upon Clarence's ear had ceased, it fell heavily by his side, like a clod of that clay which it had then become. In those words it seemed as if, in the confused delirium of pa.s.sing existence, the brave soldier mingled some dim and bewildered recollection of former battles with that of his last most fatal though most ign.o.ble strife.
”Down, down with them!” he muttered between his teeth, though in a tone startlingly deep and audible; ”down with them! No quarter to the infidels! strike for England and Effingham. Ha!--who strives for flight there!--kill him! no mercy, I say,--none!--there, there, I have despatched him; ha! ha! What, still alive?--off, slave, off! Oh, slain!
slain in a ditch, by a base-born hind; oh, bitter! bitter! bitter!” And with these words, of which the last, from their piercing anguish and keen despair, made a dread contrast with the fire and defiance of the first, the jaw fell, the flas.h.i.+ng and fierce eye glazed and set, and all of the haughty and bold patrician which the earth retained was--dust!
CHAPTER Lx.x.x.
Il n'est jamais permis de deteriorer une ame humaine pour l'avantage des autres, ni de faire un scelerat pour le service des honnetes gens.--ROUSSEAU.
[”It is not permitted us to degrade one single soul for the sake of conferring advantage on others, nor to make a rogue for the good of the honest.”]
As the reader approaches the termination of this narrative, and looks back upon the many scenes he has pa.s.sed, perhaps, in the mimic representation of human life, he may find no unfaithful resemblance to the true.
As, amongst the crowd of characters jostled against each other in their course, some drop off at the first, the second, or the third stage, and leave a few only continuing to the last, while Fate chooses her agents and survivors among those whom the bystander, perchance, least noticed as the objects of her selection; and they who, haply, seemed to him, at first, among the most conspicuous as characters, sink, some abruptly, some gradually, into actors of the least importance in events; as the reader notes the same pa.s.sion, in different strata, producing the most opposite qualities, and gathers from that notice some estimate of the vast perplexity in the code of morals, deemed by the shallow so plain a science; when he finds that a similar and single feeling will produce both the virtue we love and the vice we detest, the magnanimity we admire and the meanness we despise; as the feeble hands of the author force into contrast ignorance and wisdom, the affectation of philosophy and its true essence, coa.r.s.eness and refinement, the lowest vulgarity of sentiment with an exaltation of feeling approaching to morbidity, the reality of virtue with the counterfeit, the glory of the Divinity with the hideousness of the Idol, sorrow and eager joy, marriage and death, tears and their young successors, smiles; as all, blent together, these varieties of life form a single yet many-coloured web, leaving us to doubt whether, in fortune the bright hue or the dark, in character the base material or the rich, predominate,--the workman of the web could almost reconcile himself to his glaring and great deficiency in art by the fond persuasion that he has, at least in his choice of tint and texture, caught something of the likeness of Nature: but he knows, to the abas.e.m.e.nt of his vanity, that these enumerated particulars of resemblance to life are common to all, even to the most unskilful of his brethren; and it is not the mere act of copying a true original, but the rare circ.u.mstance of force and accuracy in the copy, which can alone const.i.tute a just pretension to merit, or flatter the artist with the hope of a moderate success.
The news of Lord Ulswater's untimely death soon spread around the neighbourhood, and was conveyed to Mordaunt by the very gentleman whom that n.o.bleman had charged with his hostile message. Algernon repaired at once to W----, to gather from Wolfe some less exaggerated account of the affray than that which the many tongues of Rumour had brought to him.
It was no difficult matter to see the precise share of blame to be attached to Wolfe; and, notwithstanding the biased account of Glumford and the strong spirit of party then existing in the country, no rational man could for a moment term the event of a sudden fray a premeditated murder, or the violence of the aggrieved the black offence of a wilful criminal. Wolfe, therefore, soon obtained a release from the confinement to which he had been at first committed; and with a temper still more exasperated by the evident disposition of his auditors to have treated him, had it been possible, with the utmost rigour, he returned to companions well calculated by their converse and bent of mind to inflame the fester of his moral const.i.tution.
It happens generally that men very vehement in any particular opinion choose their friends, not for a general similarity of character, but in proportion to their mutual congeniality of sentiment upon that particular opinion; it happens, also, that those most audibly violent, if we may so speak, upon any opinion, moral or political, are rarely the wisest or the purest of their party. Those with whom Wolfe was intimate were men who shared none of the n.o.bler characteristics of the republican; still less did they partic.i.p.ate in or even comprehend the enlightened and benevolent views for which the wise and great men of that sect--a sect to which all philanthropy is, perhaps too fondly, inclined to lean--have been so conspicuously eminent. On the contrary, Wolfe's comrades, without education and consequently without principle, had been driven to disaffection by desperate fortunes and ruined reputations acting upon minds polluted by the ignorance and hardened among the dross of the populace. But the worst can by constant intercourse corrupt the best; and the barriers of good and evil, often confused in Wolfe's mind by the blindness of his pa.s.sions, seemed, as his intercourse with these lawless and ruffian a.s.sociates thickened, to be at last utterly broken down and swept away.