"None! No one to care whether I live or die," answered the stranger, with a mixture of pride and sadness in his voice. "But, as the song has it--
""I care for n.o.body--no, not I, For n.o.body cares for me!""
There was a certain pathos in the mockery with which he repeated the homely lines, although, as he did, he gathered himself up, as if conscious of a certain consolation and reliance on the resources not dependent on others which he had found in his own strong limbs and his own stout heart.
At that moment he felt a soft touch upon his hand, and he saw f.a.n.n.y looking at him through the tears that still flowed.
"You have no one to care for you? Don"t say so! Come and live with us, brother; we"ll care for you. I have never forgotten the flowers--never!
Do come! f.a.n.n.y shall love you. f.a.n.n.y can work for three!"
"And they call her an idiot!" mumbled the old man, with a vacant smile on his lips.
"My sister! You shall be my sister! Forlorn one--whom even Nature has fooled and betrayed! Sister!--we, both orphans! Sister!" exclaimed that dark, stern man, pa.s.sionately, and with a broken voice; and he opened his arms, and f.a.n.n.y, without a blush or a thought of shame, threw herself on his breast. He kissed her forehead with a kiss that was, indeed, pure and holy as a brother"s: and f.a.n.n.y felt that he had left upon her cheek a tear that was not her own.
"Well," he said, with an altered voice, and taking the old man"s hand, "what say you? Shall I take up my lodging with you? I have a little money; I can protect and aid you both. I shall be often away--in London or else where--and will not intrude too much on you. But you blind, and she--(here he broke off the sentence abruptly and went on)--you should not be left alone. And this neighbourhood, that burial-place, are dear to me. I, too, f.a.n.n.y, have lost a parent; and that grave--"
He paused, and then added, in a trembling voice, "And you have placed flowers over that grave?"
"Stay with us," said the blind man; "not for our sake, but your own. The world is a bad place. I have been long sick of the world. Yes! come and live near the burial-ground--the nearer you are to the grave, the safer you are;--and you have a little money, you say!"
"I will come to-morrow, then. I must return now. Tomorrow, f.a.n.n.y, we shall meet again."
"Must you go?" said f.a.n.n.y, tenderly. "But you will come again; you know I used to think every one died when he left me. I am wiser now. Yet still, when you do leave me, it is true that you die for f.a.n.n.y!"
At this moment, as the three persons were grouped, each had a.s.sumed a posture of form, an expression of face, which a painter of fitting sentiment and skill would have loved to study. The visitor had gained the door; and as he stood there, his n.o.ble height--the magnificent strength and health of his manhood in its full prime--contrasted alike the almost spectral debility of extreme age and the graceful delicacy of f.a.n.n.y--half girl, half child. There was something foreign in his air--and the half military habit, relieved by the red riband of the Bourbon knighthood. His complexion was dark as that of a Moor, and his raven hair curled close to the stately head. The soldier-moustache--thick, but glossy as silk-shaded the firm lip; and the pointed beard, a.s.sumed by the exiled Carlists, heightened the effect of the strong and haughty features and the expression of the martial countenance.
But as f.a.n.n.y"s voice died on his ear, he half averted that proud face; and the dark eyes--almost Oriental in their brilliancy and depth of shade--seemed soft and humid. And there stood f.a.n.n.y, in a posture of such unconscious sadness--such childlike innocence; her arms drooping--her face wistfully turned to his--and a half smile upon the lips, that made still more touching the tears not yet dried upon her cheeks. While thin, frail, shadowy, with white hair and furrowed cheeks, the old man fixed his sightless...o...b.. on s.p.a.ce; and his face, usually only animated from the lethargy of advancing dotage by a certain querulous cynicism, now grew suddenly earnest, and even thoughtful, as f.a.n.n.y spoke of Death!
CHAPTER V.
"Ulyss. Time hath a wallet at his back Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.
* * Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright."--Troilus and Cressida.
I have, not sought--as would have been easy, by a little ingenuity in the earlier portion of this narrative--whatever source of vulgar interest might be derived from the mystery of names and persons. As in Charles Spencer the reader is allowed at a glance to detect Sidney Morton, so in Philip de Vaudemont (the stranger who rescued f.a.n.n.y) the reader at once recognises the hero of my tale; but since neither of these young men has a better right to the name resigned than to the name adopted, it will be simpler and more convenient to designate them by those appellations by which they are now known to the world. In truth, Philip de Vaudemont was scarcely the same being as Philip Morton. In the short visit he had paid to the elder Gawtrey, when he consigned f.a.n.n.y to his charge, he had given no name; and the one he now took (when, towards the evening of the next day he returned to Simon"s house) the old man heard for the first time. Once more sunk into his usual apathy, Simon did not express any surprise that a Frenchman should be so well acquainted with English--he scarcely observed that the name was French.
Simon"s age seemed daily to bring him more and more to that state when life is mere mechanism, and the soul, preparing for its departure, no longer heeds the tenement that crumbles silently and neglected into its lonely dust. Vaudemont came with but little luggage (for he had an apartment also in London), and no attendant,--a single horse was consigned to the stables of an inn at hand, and he seemed, as soldiers are, more careful for the comforts of the animal than his own. There was but one woman servant in the humble household, who did all the ruder work, for f.a.n.n.y"s industry could afford it. The solitary servant and the homely fare sufficed for the simple and hardy adventurer.
f.a.n.n.y, with a countenance radiant with joy, took his hand and led him to his room. Poor child! with that instinct of woman which never deserted her, she had busied herself the whole day in striving to deck the chamber according to her own notions of comfort. She had stolen from her little h.o.a.rd wherewithal to make some small purchases, on which the Dowbiggin of the suburb had been consulted. And what with flowers on the table, and a fire at the hearth, the room looked cheerful.
She watched him as he glanced around, and felt disappointed that he did not utter the admiration she expected. Angry at last with the indifference which, in fact, as to external accommodation, was habitual to him, she plucked his sleeve, and said,--
"Why don"t you speak? Is it not nice?--f.a.n.n.y did her best."
"And a thousand thanks to f.a.n.n.y! It is all I could wish."
"There is another room, bigger than this, but the wicked woman who robbed us slept there; and besides, you said you liked the churchyard.
See!" and she opened the window and pointed to the church-tower rising dark against the evening sky.
"This is better than all!" said Vaudemont; and he looked out from the window in a silent reverie, which f.a.n.n.y did not disturb.
And now he was settled! From a career so wild, agitated, and various, the adventurer paused in that humble resting-nook. But quiet is not repose--obscurity is not content. Often as, morn and eve, he looked forth upon the spot, where his mother"s heart, unconscious of love and woe, mouldered away, the indignant and bitter feelings of the wronged outcast and the son who could not clear the mother"s name swept away the subdued and gentle melancholy into which time usually softens regret for the dead, and with which most of us think of the distant past, and the once joyous childhood!
In this man"s breast lay, concealed by his external calm, those memories and aspirations which are as strong as pa.s.sions. In his earlier years, when he had been put to hard shifts for existence, he had found no leisure for close and brooding reflection upon that spoliation of just rights--that calumny upon his mother"s name, which had first brought the Night into his Morning. His resentment towards the Beauforts, it is true, had ever been an intense but a fitful and irregular pa.s.sion. It was exactly in proportion as, by those rare and romantic incidents which Fiction cannot invent, and which Narrative takes with diffidence from the great Store-house of Real Life, his steps had ascended in the social ladder--that all which his childhood had lost--all which the robbers of his heritage had gained, the grandeur and the power of WEALTH--above all, the hourly and the tranquil happiness of a stainless name, became palpable and distinct. He had loved Eugenie as a boy loves for the first time an accomplished woman. He regarded her, so refined--so gentle--so gifted, with the feelings due to a superior being, with an eternal recollection of the ministering angel that had shone upon him when he stood on the dark abyss. She was the first that had redeemed his fate--the first that had guided aright his path--the first that had tamed the savage at his breast:--it was the young lion charmed by the eyes of Una. The outline of his story had been truly given at Lord Lilburne"s. Despite his pride, which revolted from such obligations to another, and a woman--which disliked and struggled against a disguise which at once and alone saved him from the detection of the past and the terrors of the future--he had yielded to her, the wise and the gentle, as one whose judgment he could not doubt; and, indeed, the slanderous falsehoods circulated by the lackey, to whose discretion, the night of Gawtrey"s death, Eugenie had preferred to confide her own honour, rather than another"s life, had (as Liancourt rightly stated) left Philip no option but that which Madame de Merville deemed the best, whether for her happiness or her good name. Then had followed a brief season--the holiday of his life--the season of young hope and pa.s.sion, of brilliancy and joy, closing by that abrupt death which again left him lonely in the world.
When, from the grief that succeeded to the death of Eugenie, he woke to find himself amidst the strange faces and exciting scenes of an Oriental court, he turned with hard and disgustful contempt from Pleasure, as an infidelity to the dead. Ambition crept over him--his mind hardened as his cheek bronzed under those burning suns--his hardy frame, his energies prematurely awakened, his const.i.tutional disregard to danger,--made him a brave and skilful soldier. He acquired reputation and rank. But, as time went on, the ambition took a higher flight--he felt his sphere circ.u.mscribed; the Eastern indolence that filled up the long intervals between Eastern action chafed a temper never at rest: he returned to France: his reputation, Liancourt"s friendship, and the relations of Eugenie--grateful, as has before been implied, for the generosity with which he surrendered the princ.i.p.al part of her donation--opened for him a new career, but one painful and galling. In the Indian court there was no question of his birth--one adventurer was equal with the rest. But in Paris, a man attempting to rise provoked all the sarcasm of wit, all the cavils of party; and in polished and civil life, what valour has weapons against a jest? Thus, in civilisation, all the pa.s.sions that spring from humiliated self-love and baffled aspiration again preyed upon his breast. He saw, then, that the more he struggled from obscurity, the more acute would become research into his true origin; and his writhing pride almost stung to death his ambition.
To succeed in life by regular means was indeed difficult for this man; always recoiling from the name he bore--always strong in the hope yet to regain that to which he conceived himself ent.i.tled--cherishing that pride of country which never deserts the native of a Free State, however harsh a parent she may have proved; and, above all, whatever his ambition and his pa.s.sions, taking, from the very misfortunes he had known, an indomitable belief in the ultimate justice of Heaven;--he had refused to sever the last ties that connected him with his lost heritage and his forsaken land--he refused to be naturalised--to make the name he bore legally undisputed--he was contented to be an alien. Neither was Vaudemont fitted exactly for that crisis in the social world when the men of journals and talk bustle aside the men of action. He had not cultivated literature, he had no book-knowledge--the world had been his school, and stern life his teacher. Still, eminently skilled in those physical accomplishments which men admire and soldiers covet, calm and self-possessed in manner, of great personal advantages, of much ready talent and of practised observation in character, he continued to breast the obstacles around him, and to establish himself in the favour of those in power. It was natural to a person so reared and circ.u.mstanced to have no sympathy with what is called the popular cause. He was no citizen in the state--he was a stranger in the land. He had suffered and still suffered too much from mankind to have that philanthropy, sometimes visionary but always n.o.ble, which, in fact, generally springs from the studies we cultivate, not in the forum, but the closet. Men, alas! too often lose the Democratic Enthusiasm in proportion as they find reason to suspect or despise their kind. And if there were not hopes for the Future, which this hard, practical daily life does not suffice to teach us, the vision and the glory that belong to the Great Popular Creed, dimmed beneath the injustice, the follies, and the vices of the world as it is, would fade into the lukewarm sectarianism of temporary Party. Moreover, Vaudemont"s habits of thought and reasoning were those of the camp, confirmed by the systems familiar to him in the East: he regarded the populace as a soldier enamoured of discipline and order usually does. His theories, therefore, or rather his ignorance of what is sound in theory, went with Charles the Tenth in his excesses, but not with the timidity which terminated those excesses by dethronement and disgrace. Chafed to the heart, gnawed with proud grief, he obeyed the royal mandates, and followed the exiled monarch: his hopes overthrown, his career in France annihilated forever. But on entering England, his temper, confident and ready of resource, fastened itself on new food. In the land where he had no name he might yet rebuild his fortunes. It was an arduous effort--an improbable hope; but the words heard by the bridge of Paris--words that had often cheered him in his exile through hardships and through dangers which it is unnecessary to our narrative to detail--yet rung again in his ear, as he leaped on his native land,--"Time, Faith, Energy."
While such his character in the larger and more distant relations of life, in the closer circles of companionship many rare and n.o.ble qualities were visible. It is true that he was stern, perhaps imperious--of a temper that always struggled for command; but he was deeply susceptible of kindness, and, if feared by those who opposed, loved by those who served him. About his character was that mixture of tenderness and fierceness which belonged, of old, to the descriptions of the warrior. Though so little unlettered, Life had taught him a certain poetry of sentiment and idea--More poetry, perhaps, in the silent thoughts that, in his happier moments, filled his solitude, than in half the pages that his brother had read and written by the dreaming lake. A certain largeness of idea and n.o.bility of impulse often made him act the sentiments of which bookmen write. With all his pa.s.sions, he held licentiousness in disdain; with all his ambition for the power of wealth, he despised its luxury. Simple, masculine, severe, abstemious, he was of that mould in which, in earlier times, the successful men of action have been cast. But to successful action, circ.u.mstance is more necessary than to triumphant study.
It was to be expected that, in proportion as he had been familiar with a purer and n.o.bler life, he should look with great and deep self-humiliation at his early a.s.sociation with Gawtrey. He was in this respect more severe on himself than any other mind ordinarily just and candid would have been,--when fairly surveying the circ.u.mstances of penury, hunger, and despair, which had driven him to Gawtrey"s roof, the imperfect nature of his early education, the boyish trust and affection he had felt for his protector, and his own ignorance of, and exemption from, all the worst practices of that unhappy criminal. But still, when, with the knowledge he had now acquired, the man looked calmly back, his cheek burned with remorseful shame at his unreflecting companionship in a life of subterfuge and equivocation, the true nature of which, the boy (so circ.u.mstanced as we have shown him) might be forgiven for not at that time comprehending. Two advantages resulted, however, from the error and the remorse: first, the humiliation it brought curbed, in some measure, a pride that might otherwise have been arrogant and unamiable, and, secondly, as I have before intimated, his profound grat.i.tude to Heaven for his deliverance from the snares that had beset his youth gave his future the guide of an earnest and heartfelt faith. He acknowledged in life no such thing as accident. Whatever his struggles, whatever his melancholy, whatever his sense of worldly wrong, he never despaired; for nothing now could shake his belief in one directing Providence.
The ways and habits of Vaudemont were not at discord with those of the quiet household in which he was now a guest. Like most men of strong frames, and accustomed to active, not studious pursuits, he rose early;--and usually rode to London, to come back late at noon to their frugal meal. And if again, perhaps after the hour when f.a.n.n.y and Simon retired, he would often return to London, his own pa.s.s-key re-admitted him, at whatever time he came back, without disturbing the sleep of the household. Sometimes, when the sun began to decline, if the air was warm, the old man would crawl out, leaning on that strong arm, through the neighbouring lanes, ever returning through the lonely burial-ground; or when the blind host clung to his fireside, and composed himself to sleep, Philip would saunter forth along with f.a.n.n.y; and on the days when she went to sell her work, or select her purchases, he always made a point of attending her. And her cheek wore a flush of pride when she saw him carrying her little basket, or waiting without, in musing patience, while she performed her commissions in the shops. Though in reality f.a.n.n.y"s intellect was ripening within, yet still the surface often misled the eye as to the depths. It was rather that something yet held back the faculties from their growth than that the faculties themselves were wanting. Her weakness was more of the nature of the infant"s than of one afflicted with incurable imbecility. For instance, she managed the little household with skill and prudence; she could calculate in her head, as rapidly as Vaudemont himself, the arithmetic necessary to her simple duties; she knew the value of money, which is more than some of us wise folk do. Her skill, even in her infancy so remarkable, in various branches of female handiwork, was carried, not only by perseverance, but by invention and peculiar talent, to a marvellous and exquisite perfection. Her embroidery, especially in what was then more rare than at present, viz., flowers on silk, was much in request among the great modistes of London, to whom it found its way through the agency of Miss Semper. So that all this had enabled her, for years, to provide every necessary comfort of life for herself and her blind protector. And her care for the old man was beautiful in its minuteness, its vigilance. Wherever her heart was interested, there never seemed a deficiency of mind. Vaudemont was touched to see how much of affectionate and pitying respect she appeared to enjoy in the neighbourhood, especially among the humbler cla.s.ses--even the beggar who swept the crossings did not beg of her, but bade G.o.d bless her as she pa.s.sed; and the rude, discontented artisan would draw himself from the wall and answer, with a softened brow, the smile with which the harmless one charmed his courtesy. In fact, whatever attraction she took from her youth, her beauty, her misfortune, and her affecting industry, was heightened, in the eyes of the poorer neighbours, by many little traits of charity and kindness; many a sick child had she tended, and many a breadless board had stolen something from the stock set aside for her father"s grave.
"Don"t you think," she once whispered to Vaudemont, "that G.o.d attends to us more if we are good to those who are sick and hungry?"
"Certainly we are taught to think so."
"Well, I"ll tell you a secret--don"t tell again. Grandpapa once said that my father had done bad things; now, if f.a.n.n.y is good to those she can help, I think that G.o.d will hear her more kindly when she prays him to forgive what her father did. Do you think so too? Do say--you are so wise!"
"f.a.n.n.y, you are wiser than all of us; and I feel myself better and happier when I hear you speak."
There were, indeed, many moments when Vaudemont thought that her deficiencies of intellect might have been repaired, long since, by skilful culture and habitual companionship with those of her own age; from which companionship, however, f.a.n.n.y, even when at school, had shrunk aloof. At other moments there was something so absent and distracted about her, or so fantastic and incoherent, that Vaudemont, with the man"s hard, worldly eye, read in it nothing but melancholy confusion. Nevertheless, if the skein of ideas was entangled, each thread in itself was a thread of gold.
f.a.n.n.y"s great object--her great ambition--her one hope--was a tomb for her supposed father. Whether from some of that early religion attached to the grave, which is most felt in Catholic countries, and which she had imbibed at the convent; or from her residence so near the burial ground, and the affection with which she regarded the spot;--whatever the cause, she had cherished for some years, as young maidens usually cherish the desire of the Altar--the dream of the Gravestone. But the h.o.a.rd was ama.s.sed so slowly;--now old Gawtrey was attacked by illness;--now there was some little difficulty in the rent; now some fluctuation in the price of work; and now, and more often than all, some demand on her charity, which interfered with, and drew from, the pious savings. This was a sentiment in which her new friend sympathised deeply; for he, too, remembered that his first gold had bought that humble stone which still preserved upon the earth the memory of his mother.
Meanwhile, days crept on, and no new violence was offered to f.a.n.n.y.
Vaudemont learned, then, by little and little--and f.a.n.n.y"s account was very confused--the nature of the danger she had run.
It seemed that one day, tempted by the fineness of the weather up the road that led from the suburb farther into the country, f.a.n.n.y was stopped by a gentleman in a carriage, who accosted her, as she said, very kindly: and after several questions, which she answered with her usual unsuspecting innocence, learned her trade, insisted on purchasing some articles of work which she had at the moment in her basket, and promised to procure her a constant purchaser, upon much better terms than she had hitherto obtained, if she would call at the house of a Mrs.
West, about a mile from the suburb towards London. This she promised to do, and this she did, according to the address he gave her. She was admitted to a lady more gaily dressed than f.a.n.n.y had ever seen a lady before,--the gentleman was also present,--they both loaded her with compliments, and bought her work at a price which seemed about to realise all the hopes of the poor girl as to the gravestone for William Gawtrey,--as if his evil fate pursued that wild man beyond the grave, and his very tomb was to be purchased by the gold of the polluter! The lady then appointed her to call again; but, meanwhile, she met f.a.n.n.y in the streets, and while she was accosting her, it fortunately chanced that Miss Semper the milliner pa.s.sed that way--turned round, looked hard at the lady, used very angry language to her, seized f.a.n.n.y"s hand, led her away while the lady slunk off; and told her that the said lady was a very bad woman, and that f.a.n.n.y must never speak to her again. f.a.n.n.y most cheerfully promised this. And, in fact, the lady, probably afraid, whether of the mob or the magistrates, never again came near her.
"And," said f.a.n.n.y, "I gave the money they had both given to me to Miss Semper, who said she would send it back."
"You did right, f.a.n.n.y; and as you made one promise to Miss Semper, so you must make me one--never to stir from home again without me or some other person. No, no other person--only me. I will give up everything else to go with you."
"Will you? Oh, yes. I promise! I used to like going alone, but that was before you came, brother."
And as f.a.n.n.y kept her promise, it would have been a bold gallant indeed who would have ventured to molest her by the side of that stately and strong protector.
CHAPTER VI.
"Timon. Each thing"s a thief The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power Have unchecked theft.