The Disowned — Complete

CHAPTER LXI

“It is rather singular,” said Lady Westborough to her daughter as they sat alone one afternoon in the music-room at Westborough Park,—“it is rather singular that Lord Ulswater should not have come yet. He said he should certainly be here before three o’clock.”

“You know, Mamma, that he has some military duties to detain him at W——,” answered Lady Flora, bending over a drawing in which she appeared to be earnestly engaged.

“True, my dear, and it was very kind in Lord —— to quarter the troop he commands in his native county; and very fortunate that W——, being his head-quarters, should also be so near us. But I cannot conceive that any duty can be sufficiently strong to detain him from you,” added Lady Westborough, who had been accustomed all her life to a devotion unparalleled in this age. “You seem very indulgent, Flora.”

“Alas! she should rather say very indifferent,” thought Lady Flora: but she did not give her thought utterance; she only looked up at her mother for a moment, and smiled faintly.

Whether there was something in that smile or in the pale cheek of her daughter that touched her we know not, but Lady Westborough was touched: she threw her arms round Lady Flora’s neck, kissed her fondly, and said, “You do not seem well to-day, my love, are you?”

“Oh!—very—very well,” answered Lady Flora, returning her mother’s caress, and hiding her eyes, to which the tears had started.

“My child,” said Lady Westborough, “you know that both myself and your father are very desirous to see you married to Lord Ulswater,—of high and ancient birth, of great wealth, young, unexceptionable in person and character, and warmly attached to you, it would be impossible even for the sanguine heart of a parent to ask for you a more eligible match. But if the thought really does make you wretched,—and yet,—how can it?”

“I have consented,” said Flora, gently; “all I ask is, do not speak to me more of the—the event than you can avoid.”

Lady Westborough pressed her hand, sighed, and replied not.

The door opened, and the marquis, who had within the last year become a cripple, with the great man’s malady, dire podagra, was wheeled in on his easy-chair; close behind him followed Lord Ulswater.

“I have brought you,” said the marquis, who piqued himself on a vein of dry humour,—“I have brought you, young lady, a consolation for my ill humours. Few gouty old fathers make themselves as welcome as I do; eh, Ulswater?”

“Dare I apply to myself Lord Westborough’s compliment?” said the young nobleman, advancing towards Lady Flora; and drawing his seat near her, he entered into that whispered conversation so significant of courtship. But there was little in Lady Flora’s manner by which an experienced eye would have detected the bride elect: no sudden blush, no downcast, yet sidelong look, no trembling of the hand, no indistinct confusion of the voice, struggling with unanalyzed emotions. No: all was calm, cold, listless; her cheek changed not tint nor hue, and her words, clear and collected, seemed to contradict whatever the low murmurs of her betrothed might well be supposed to insinuate. But, even in his behaviour, there was something which, had Lady Westborough been less contented than she was with the externals and surface of manner, would have alarmed her for her daughter. A cloud, sullen and gloomy, sat upon his brow; and his lip alternately quivered with something like scorn, or was compressed with a kind of stifled passion. Even in the exultation that sparkled in his eye, when he alluded to their approaching marriage, there was an expression that almost might have been termed fierce, and certainly was as little like the true orthodox ardour of “gentle swain,” as Lady Flora’s sad and half unconscious coldness resembled the diffident passion of the “blushing maiden.”

“You have considerably passed the time in which we expected you, my lord,” said Lady Westborough, who, as a beauty herself, was a little jealous of the deference due to the beauty of her daughter.

“It is true.,” said Lord Ulswater, glancing towards the opposite glass, and smoothing his right eyebrow with his forefinger, “it is true, but I could not help it. I had a great deal of business to do with my troop: I have put them into a new manoeuvre. Do you know, my lord [turning to the marquis], I think it very likely the soldiers may have some work on the —— of this month?”

“Where, and wherefore?” asked Lord Westborough, whom a sudden twinge forced into the laconic.

“At W——. Some idle fellows hold a meeting there on that day; and if I may judge by bills and advertisements, chalkings on the walls, and, more than all popular rumour, I have no doubt but what riot and sedition are intended: the magistrates are terribly frightened. I hope we shall have some cutting and hewing: I have no patience with the rebellious dogs.”

“For shame! for shame!” cried Lady Westborough, who, though a worldly, was by no means an unfeeling, woman “the poor people are misguided; they mean no harm.”

Lord Ulswater smiled scornfully. “I never dispute upon politics, but at the head of my men,” said he, and turned the conversation.

Shortly afterwards Lady Flora, complaining of indisposition, rose, left the apartment, and retired to her own room. There she sat motionless and white as death for more than an hour. A day or two afterwards Miss Trevanion received the following letter from her:—

Most heartily, most truly do I congratulate you, my dearest Eleanor, upon your approaching marriage. You may reasonably hope for all that happiness can afford; and though you do affect (for I do not think that you feel) a fear lest you should not be able to fix a character, volatile and light, like your lover’s; yet when I recollect his warmth of heart and high sense, and your beauty, gentleness, charms of conversation, and purely disinterested love for one whose great worldly advantages might so easily bias or adulterate affection, I own that I have no dread for your future fate, no feeling that can at all darken the brightness of anticipation. Thank you, dearest, for the delicate kindness with which you allude to my destiny: me indeed you cannot congratulate as I can you. But do not grieve for me, my generous Eleanor: if not happy, I shall, I trust, be at least contented. My poor father implored me with tears in his eyes; my mother pressed my hand, but spoke not; and I, whose affections were withered and hopes strewn, should I not have been hard-hearted indeed if they had not wrung from me a consent? And oh should I not be utterly lost, if in that consent which blessed them I did not find something of peace and consolation?

Yes, dearest, in two months, only two months, I shall be Lord Ulswater’s wife; and when we meet, you shall look narrowly at me, and see if he or you have any right to complain of me.

Have you seen Mr. Linden lately? Yet do not answer the question: I ought not to cherish still that fatal clinging interest for one who has so utterly forgotten me. But I do rejoice in his prosperity; and when I hear his praises, and watch his career, I feel proud that I should once have loved him! Oh, how could he be so false, so cruel, in the very midst of his professions of undying, unswerving faith to me; at the very moment when I was ill, miserable, wasting my very heart, for anxiety on his account,—and such a woman too! And had he loved me, even though his letter was returned, would not his conscience have told him he deserved it, and would he not have sought me out in person, and endeavoured to win from my folly his forgiveness? But without attempting to see me, or speak to me, or soothe a displeasure so natural, to leave the country in silence, almost in disdain; and when we met again, to greet me with coldness and hauteur, and never betray, by word, sign, or look, that he had ever been to me more than the merest stranger! Fool! Fool! that I am, to waste another thought upon him; but I will not, and ought not to do so. In two months I shall not even have the privilege of remembrance.

I wish, Eleanor,—for I assure you that I have tried and tried,—that I could find anything to like and esteem (since love is out of the question) in this man, who seems so great, and, to me, so unaccountable a favourite with my parents. His countenance and voice are so harsh and stern; his manner at once so self-complacent and gloomy; his very sentiments so narrow, even in their notions of honour; his very courage so savage, and his pride so constant and offensive,—that I in vain endeavour to persuade myself of his virtues, and recur, at least, to the unwearying affection for me which he professes. It is true that he has been three times refused; that I have told him I cannot love him; that I have even owned former love to another: he still continues his suit, and by dint of long hope has at length succeeded. But at times I could almost think that he married me from very hate, rather than love: there is such an artificial smoothness in his stern voice, such a latent meaning in his eye; and when he thinks I have not noticed him, I have, on suddenly turning towards him, perceived so dark and lowering an expression upon his countenance that my heart has died within me for very fear.

Had my mother been the least less kind, my father the least less urgent, I think, nay, I know, I could not have gained such a victory over myself as I have done in consenting to the day. But enough of this. I did not think I should have run on so long and so foolishly; but we, dearest, have been children and girls and women together: we have loved each other with such fondness and unreserve that opening my heart to you seems only another phrase for thinking aloud.

However, in two months I shall have no right even to thoughts; perhaps I may not even love you: till then, dearest Eleanor, I am, as ever, your affectionate and faithful friend, F. A.

Had Lord Westborough, indeed, been “less urgent,” or her mother “less kind,” nothing could ever have wrung from Lady Flora her consent to a marriage so ungenial and ill-omened.

Thrice had Lord Ulswater (then Lord Borodaile) been refused, before finally accepted; and those who judge only from the ordinary effects of pride would be astonished that he should have still persevered. But his pride was that deep-rooted feeling which, so far from being repelled by a single blow, fights stubbornly and doggedly onward, till the battle is over and its object gained. From the moment he had resolved to address Lady Flora Ardenne he had also resolved to win her. For three years, despite of a refusal, first gently, then more peremptorily, urged, he fixed himself in her train. He gave out that he was her affianced. In all parties, in all places, he forced himself near her, unheeding alike of her frowns or indifference; and his rank, his hauteur, his fierceness of mien, and acknowledged courage kept aloof all the less arrogant and hardy pretenders to Lady Flora’s favour. For this, indeed, she rather thanked than blamed him; and it was the only thing which in the least reconciled her modesty to his advances or her pride to his presumption.

He had been prudent as well as bold. The father he had served, and the mother he had won. Lord Westborough, addicted a little to politics, a good deal to show, and devotedly to gaming, was often greatly and seriously embarrassed. Lord Ulswater, even during the life of his father (who was lavishly generous to him), was provided with the means of relieving his intended father-in-law’s necessities; and caring little for money in comparison to a desired object, he was willing enough, we do not say to bribe, but to influence, Lord Westborough’s consent. These matters of arrangement were by no means concealed from the marchioness, who, herself ostentatious and profuse, was in no small degree benefited by them; and though they did not solely procure, yet they certainly contributed to conciliate, her favour.

Few people are designedly and systematically wicked: even the worst find good motives for bad deeds, and are as intent upon discovering glosses for conduct to deceive themselves as to delude others. What wonder, then, that poor Lady Westborough, never too rigidly addicted to self-examination, and viewing all things through a very worldly medium, saw only, in the alternate art and urgency employed against her daughter’s real happiness, the various praiseworthy motives of permanently disentangling Lady Flora from an unworthy attachment, of procuring for her an establishment proportioned to her rank, and a husband whose attachment, already shown by such singular perseverance, was so likely to afford her everything which, in Lady Westborough’s eyes, constituted felicity?

All our friends, perhaps, desire our happiness; but then it must invariably be in their own way. What a pity that they do not employ the same zeal in making us happy in ours!

CHAPTER LXII

If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;

If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures:

Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.—Proverbs ii. 3, 4, 5.

While Clarence was thus misjudged by one whose affections and conduct he, in turn, naturally misinterpreted; while Lady Flora was alternately struggling against and submitting to the fate which Lady Westborough saw approach with gladness, the father with indifference, and the bridegroom with a pride that partook less of rapture than revenge,—our unfortunate lover was endeavouring to glean, from Mordaunt’s conversation and example, somewhat of that philosophy so rare except in the theories of the civilized and the occasional practice of the barbarian, which, though it cannot give us a charm against misfortune, bestows, at least, upon us the energy to support it.

We have said already that when the first impression produced by Mordaunt’s apparent pride and coldness wore away, it required little penetration to discover the benevolence and warmth of his mind. But none ignorant of his original disposition, or the misfortunes of his life, could ever have pierced the depth of his self-sacrificing nature, or measured the height of his lofty and devoted virtue. Many men may perhaps be found who will give up to duty a cherished wish or even a darling vice; but few will ever renounce to it their rooted tastes, or the indulgence of those habits which have almost become by long use their happiness itself. Naturally melancholy and thoughtful, feeding the sensibilities of his heart upon fiction, and though addicted to the cultivation of reason rather than fancy, having perhaps more of the deeper and acuter characteristics of the poet than those calm and half-callous properties of nature supposed to belong to the metaphysician and the calculating moralist, Mordaunt was above all men fondly addicted to solitude, and inclined to contemplations less useful than profound. The untimely death of Isabel, whom he had loved with that love which is the vent of hoarded and passionate musings long nourished upon romance, and lavishing the wealth of a soul that overflows with secreted tenderness upon the first object that can bring reality to fiction,—that event had not only darkened melancholy into gloom, but had made loneliness still more dear to his habits by all the ties of memory and all the consecrations of regret. The companionless wanderings; the midnight closet; the thoughts which, as Hume said of his own, could not exist in the world, but were all busy with life in seclusion,—these were rendered sweeter than ever to a mind for which the ordinary objects of the world were now utterly loveless; and the musings of solitude had become, as it were, a rightful homage and offering to the dead. We may form, then, some idea of the extent to which, in Mordaunt’s character, principle predominated over inclination, and regard for others over the love of self, when we see him tearing his spirit from its beloved retreats and abstracted contemplations, and devoting it to duties from which its fastidious and refined characteristics were particularly calculated to revolt. When we have considered his attachment to the hermitage, we can appreciate the virtue which made him among the most active citizens in the great world; when we have considered the natural selfishness of grief, the pride of philosophy, the indolence of meditation, the eloquence of wealth, which says, “Rest, and toil not,” and the temptation within, which says, “Obey the voice,”—when we have considered these, we can perhaps do justice to the man who, sometimes on foot and in the coarsest attire, travelled from inn to inn and from hut to hut; who made human misery the object of his search and human happiness of his desire; who, breaking aside an aversion to rude contact, almost feminine in its extreme, voluntarily sought the meanest companions, and subjected himself to the coarsest intrusions; for whom the wail of affliction or the moan of hunger was as a summons which allowed neither hesitation nor appeal; who seemed possessed of a ubiquity for the purposes of good almost resembling that attributed to the wanderer in the magnificent fable of Melmoth for the temptations to evil; who, by a zeal and labour that brought to habit and inclination a thousand martyrdoms, made his life a very hour-glass, in which each sand was a good deed or a virtuous design.

Many plunge into public affairs, to which they have had a previous distaste, from the desire of losing the memory of a private affliction; but so far from wishing to heal the wounds of remembrance by the anodynes which society can afford, it was only in retirement that Mordaunt found the flowers from which balm could be distilled. Many are through vanity magnanimous, and benevolent from the selfishness of fame but so far from seeking applause where he bestowed favour, Mordaunt had sedulously shrouded himself in darkness and disguise. And by that increasing propensity to quiet, so often found among those addicted to lofty or abstruse contemplation, he had conquered the ambition of youth with the philosophy of a manhood that had forestalled the affections of age. Many, in short, have become great or good to the community by individual motives easily resolved into common and earthly elements of desire; but they who inquire diligently into human nature have not often the exalted happiness to record a character like Mordaunt’s, actuated purely by a systematic principle of love, which covered mankind, as heaven does earth, with an atmosphere of light extending to the remotest corners and penetrating the darkest recesses.

It was one of those violent and gusty evenings which give to an English autumn something rude, rather than gentle, in its characteristics, that Mordaunt and Clarence sat together,

The young Isabel, the only living relic of the departed one, sat by her father’s side upon the floor; and though their discourse was far beyond the comprehension of her years, yet did she seem to listen with a quiet and absorbed attention. In truth, child as she was, she so loved, and almost worshipped, her father that the very tones of his voice had in them a charm which could always vibrate, as it were, to her heart; and hush her into silence; and that melancholy and deep though somewhat low voice, when it swelled or trembled with thought,—which in Mordaunt was feeling,—made her sad, she knew not why; and when she heard it, she would creep to his side, and put her little hand on his, and look up to him with eyes in whose tender and glistening blue the spirit of her mother seemed to float. She was serious and thoughtful and loving beyond the usual capacities of childhood; perhaps her solitary condition and habits of constant intercourse with one so grave as Mordaunt, and who always, when not absent on his excursions of charity, loved her to be with him, had given to her mind a precocity of feeling, and tinctured the simplicity of infancy with what ought to have been the colours of after years. She was not inclined to the sports of her age; she loved, rather, and above all else, to sit by Mordaunt’s side and silently pore over some books or feminine task, and to steal her eyes every now and then away from her employment, in order to watch his motions or provide for whatever her vigilant kindness of heart imagined he desired. And often, when he saw her fairy and lithe form hovering about him and attending on his wants, or her beautiful countenance glow with pleasure, when she fancied she supplied them, he almost believed that Isabel yet lived, though in another form, and that a love so intense and holy as hers had been, might transmigrate, but could not perish.