Part 78 (1/2)
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 t.i.tian 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sed 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 astonis.h.i.+ng,” continued her son, so rapt in his own thoughts that he did not, perhaps, hear her outcry. ”Yea, verily, it is astonis.h.i.+ng, 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 d.u.c.h.ess.”
”What d.u.c.h.ess, my dear father?”
”Why, your mother's first cousin, to be sure,--the d.u.c.h.ess of Knaresborough, whom, to oblige me, you condescended to call upon; and delighted I am to hear that you admire Lady Mary--”