Part 157 (1/2)
”Feel nothing here but duty!” cried Helen, drawing from his clasp both her hands, and placing them firmly on her breast.
”Miss Digby,” said Leonard, after a short pause of bitter reflection, in which he wronged, while he thought to divine, her meaning, ”you speak of new claims on you, your altered position--I comprehend. You may retain some tender remembrance of the past; but your duty now is to rebuke my presumption. It is as I thought and feared. This vain reputation which I have made is but a hollow sound,--it gives me no rank, a.s.sures me no fortune. I have no right to look for the Helen of old in the Helen of to-day. Be it so--forget what I have said, and forgive me.”
This reproach stung to the quick the heart to which it appealed. A flash brightened the meek, tearful eyes, almost like the flash of resentment; her lips writhed in torture, and she felt as if all other pain were light compared with the anguish that Leonard could impute to her motives which to her simple nature seemed so unworthy of her, and so galling to himself.
A word rushed as by inspiration to her lip, and that word calmed and soothed her.
”Brother!” she said touchingly, ”brother!”
The word had a contrary effect on Leonard. Sweet as it was, tender as the voice that spoke it, it imposed a boundary to affection, it came as a knell to hope. He recoiled, shook his head mournfully: ”Too late to accept that tie,--too late even for friends.h.i.+p. Henceforth--for long years to come--henceforth, till this heart has ceased to beat at your name to thrill at your presence, we two--are strangers.”
”Strangers! Well--yes, it is right--it must be so; we must not meet. Oh, Leonard Fairfield, who was it that in those days that you recall to me, who was it that found you dest.i.tute and obscure; who, not degrading you by charity, placed you in your right career; opened to you, amidst the labyrinth in which you were well-nigh lost, the broad road to knowledge, independence, fame? Answer me,--answer! Was it not the same who reared, sheltered your sister orphan? If I could forget what I have owed to him, should I not remember what he has done for you? Can I hear of your distinction, and not remember it? Can I think how proud she may be who will one day lean on your arm, and bear the name you have already raised beyond all the t.i.tles of an hour,--can I think of this, and not remember our common friend, benefactor, guardian? Would you forgive me, if I failed to do so?”
”But,” faltered Leonard, fear mingling with the conjectures these words called forth--”but is it that Lord L'Estrange would not consent to our union? Or of what do you speak? You bewilder me.”
Helen felt for some moments as if it were impossible to reply; and the words at length were dragged forth as if from the depth of her very soul.
”He came to me, our n.o.ble friend. I never dreamed of it. He did not tell me that he loved me. He told me that he was unhappy, alone; that in me, and only in me, he could find a comforter, a soother--He, he! And I had just arrived in England, was under his mother's roof, had not then once more seen you; and--and--what could I answer? Strengthen me, strengthen me, you whom I look up to and revere. Yes, yes, you are right. We must see each other no more. I am betrothed to another,--to him! Strengthen me!”
All the inherent n.o.bleness of the poet's nature rose at once at this appeal.
”Oh, Helen--sister--Miss Digby, forgive me. You need no strength from me; I borrow it from you. I comprehend you, I respect. Banish all thought of me. Repay our common benefactor. Be what he asks of you,--his comforter, his soother; be more,--his pride and his joy. Happiness will come to you, as it comes to those who confer happiness and forget self.
G.o.d comfort you in the pa.s.sing struggle; G.o.d bless you, in the long years to come. Sister, I accept the holy name now, and will claim it hereafter, when I too can think more of others than myself.”
Helen had covered her face with her hands, sobbing; but with that soft, womanly constraint which presses woe back into the heart. A strange sense of utter solitude suddenly pervaded her whole being, and by that sense of solitude she knew that he was gone.
CHAPTER XIV.
In another room in that same house sat, solitary as Helen, a stern, gloomy, brooding man, in whom they who had best known him from his childhood could scarcely have recognized a trace of the humane, benignant, trustful, but wayward and varying Harley, Lord L'Estrange.
He had read that fragment of a memoir, in which, out of all the chasms of his barren and melancholy past, there rose two malignant truths that seemed literally to glare upon him with mocking and demon eyes. The woman whose remembrance had darkened all the suns.h.i.+ne of his life had loved another; the friend in whom he had confided his whole affectionate loyal soul had been his perfidious rival. He had read from the first word to the last, as if under a spell that held him breathless; and when he closed the ma.n.u.script, it was without a groan or sigh; but over his pale lips there pa.s.sed that withering smile, which is as sure an index of a heart overcharged with dire and fearful pa.s.sions, as the arrowy flash of the lightning is of the tempests that are gathered within the cloud.
He then thrust the papers into his bosom, and, keeping his hand over them, firmly clenched, he left the room, and walked slowly on towards his father's house. With every step by the way, his nature, in the war of its elements, seemed to change and harden into forms of granite.
Love, humanity, trust, vanished away. Hate, revenge, misanthropy, suspicion, and scorn of all that could wear the eyes of affection, or speak with the voice of honour, came fast through the gloom of his thoughts, settling down in the wilderness, grim and menacing as the harpies of ancient song--
”Uncaeque ma.n.u.s, et pallida semper Ora.”
”Hands armed with fangs, and lips forever pale.”
Thus the gloomy man had crossed the threshold of his father's house, and silently entered the apartments still set apart for him. He had arrived about an hour before Leonard; and as he stood by the hearth, with his arms folded on his breast, and his eyes fixed lead-like on the ground, his mother came in to welcome and embrace him. He checked her eager inquiries after Violante, he recoiled from the touch of her hand.
”Hold, madam,” said he, startling her ear with the cold austerity of his tone. ”I cannot heed your questions,--I am filled with the question I must put to yourself. You opposed my boyish love for Leonora Avenel. I do not blame you,--all mothers of equal rank would have done the same.
Yet, had you not frustrated all frank intercourse with her, I might have taken refusal from her own lips,--survived that grief, and now been a happy man. Years since then have rolled away,--rolled over her quiet slumbers, and my restless waking life. All this time were you aware that Audley Egerton had been the lover of Leonora Avenel?”
”Harley, Harley! do not speak to me in that cruel voice, do not look at me with those hard eyes!”
”You knew it, then,--you, my mother!” continued Harley, unmoved by her rebuke; ”and why did you never say, 'Son, you are wasting the bloom and uses of your life in sorrowful fidelity to a lie! You are lavis.h.i.+ng trust and friends.h.i.+p on a perfidious hypocrite.'”