Part 170 (2/2)
”I honoured the prototype of gentleness and valour. I honoured one who seemed to me to clothe with life every grand and generous image that is born from the souls of poets. Destroy that ideal, and you destroy the Harley whom I honoured. He is dead to me forever. I will mourn for him as his widow, faithful to his memory, weeping over the thought of what he was.” Sobs choked her voice; but as Harley, once more melted, sprang forward to regain her side, she escaped with a yet quicker movement, gained the door, and darting down the corridor, vanished from his sight.
Harley stood still one moment, thoroughly irresolute, nay, almost subdued. Then sternness, though less rigid than before, gradually came to his brow. The demon had still its hold in the stubborn and marvellous pertinacity with which the man clung to all that once struck root at his heart. With a sudden impulse that still withheld decision, yet spoke of sore-shaken purpose, he strode to his desk, drew from it Nora's ma.n.u.script, and pa.s.sed from his room.
Harley had meant never to have revealed to Audley the secret he had gained until the moment when revenge was consummated. He had contemplated no vain reproach. His wrath would have spoken forth in deeds, and then a word would have sufficed as the key to all. Willing, perhaps, to hail some extenuation of perfidy, though the possibility of such extenuation he had never before admitted, he determined on the interview which he had hitherto so obstinately shunned, and went straight to the room in which Audley Egerton still sat, solitary and fearful.
CHAPTER x.x.x.
Egerton heard the well-known step advancing near and nearer up the corridor, heard the door open and reclose; and he felt, by one of those strange and unaccountable instincts which we call forebodings, that the hour he had dreaded for so many secret years had come at last. He nerved his courage, withdrew his hands from his face, and rose in silence.
No less silent, Harley stood before him. The two men gazed on each other; you might have heard their breathing.
”You have seen Mr. Dale?” said Egerton, at length. ”You know--”
”All!” said Harley, completing the arrested sentence. Audley drew a long sigh. ”Be it so; but no, Harley, you deceive yourself; you cannot know all, from any one living, save myself.”
”My knowledge comes from the dead,” answered Harley, and the fatal memoir dropped from his hand upon the table. The leaves fell with a dull, low sound, mournful and faint as might be the tread of a ghost, if the tread gave sound. They fell, those still confessions of an obscure, uncomprehended life, amidst letters and doc.u.ments eloquent of the strife that was then agitating millions,--the fleeting, turbulent fears and hopes that torture parties and perplex a nation; the stormy business of practical public life, so remote from individual love and individual sorrow.
Egerton's eye saw them fall. The room was but partially lighted. At the distance where he stood, he did not recognize the characters; but involuntarily he s.h.i.+vered, and involuntarily drew near.
”Hold yet awhile,” said Harley. ”I produce my charge, and then I leave you to dispute the only witness that I bring. Audley Egerton, you took from me the gravest trust one man can confide to another. You knew how I loved Leonora Avenel. I was forbidden to see and urge my suit; you had the access to her presence which was denied to myself. I prayed you to remove scruples that I deemed too generous, and to woo her not to dishonour, but to be my wife. Was it so? Answer.”
”It is true,” said Audley, his hand clenched at his heart. ”You saw her whom I thus loved,--her thus confided to your honour. You wooed her for yourself. Is it so?”
”Harley, I deny it not. Cease here. I accept the penalty; I resign your friends.h.i.+p; I quit your roof; I submit to your contempt; I dare not implore your pardon. Cease; let me go hence, and soon!”
The strong man gasped for breath. Harley looked at him steadfastly, then turned away his eyes, and went on. ”Nay,” said he, ”is that ALL? You wooed her for yourself,--you won her. Account to me for that life which you wrenched from mine. You are silent. I will take on myself your task; you took that life and destroyed it.”
”Spare me, spare me!”
”What was the fate of her who seemed so fresh from heaven when these eyes beheld her last? A broken heart, a dishonoured name, an early doom, a forgotten gravestone!”
”No, no--forgotten,--no!”
”Not forgotten! Scarce a year pa.s.sed, and you were married to another.
I aided you to form those nuptials which secured your fortunes. You have had rank and power and fame. Peers call you the type of English gentlemen; priests hold you as a model of Christian honour. Strip the mask, Audley Egerton; let the world know you for what you are!”
Egerton raised his head, and folded his arms calmly; but he said, with a melancholy humility, ”I bear all from you; it is just. Say on.”
”You took from me the heart of Nora Avenel. You abandoned her, you destroyed. And her memory cast no shadow over your daily suns.h.i.+ne; while over my thoughts, over my life--oh, Egerton--Audley, Audley--how could you have deceived me thus!” Here the inherent tenderness under all this hate, the fount imbedded under the hardening stone, broke out. Harley was ashamed of his weakness, and hurried on,
”Deceived,--not for an hour, a day, but through blighted youth, through listless manhood,--you suffered me to nurse the remorse that should have been your own; her life slain, mine wasted,--and shall neither of us have revenge?”
”Revenge! Ah, Harley, you have had it!”
”No, but I await it! Not in vain from the charnel have come to me the records I produce. And whom did fate select to discover the wrongs of the mother, whom appoint as her avenger? Your son,--your own son; your abandoned, nameless son!”
”Son! son!”
”Whom I delivered from famine, or from worse; and who, in return, has given into my hands the evidence which proclaims in you the perjured friend of Harley L'Estrange, and the fraudulent seducer, under mock marriage forms--worse than all franker sin--of Leonora Avenel.”
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