His father, absorbed in his own more selfish fears (though, at the first sight of Arthur, overcome by the alteration of his appearance), had ceased to consider his illness fatal. In fact, his affection for Arthur was rather one of pride than love: long absence had weakened the ties of early custom. He prized him as an heir rather than treasured him as a son. It almost seemed that as the Heritage was in danger, so the Heir became less dear: this was only because he was less thought of. Poor Mrs. Beaufort, yet but partially acquainted with the terrors of her husband, still clung to hope for Arthur. Her affection for him brought out from the depths of her cold and insignificant character qualities that had never before been apparent. She watched--she nursed--she tended him. The fine lady was gone; nothing but the mother was left behind.
With a delicate const.i.tution, and with an easy temper, which yielded to the influence of companions inferior to himself, except in bodily vigour and more st.u.r.dy will, Arthur Beaufort had been ruined by prosperity.
His talents and acquirements, if not first-rate, at least far above mediocrity, had only served to refine his tastes, not to strengthen his mind. His amiable impulses, his charming disposition and sweet temper, had only served to make him the dupe of the parasites that feasted on the lavish heir. His heart, frittered away in the usual round of light intrigues and hollow pleasures, had become too sated and exhausted for the redeeming blessings of a deep and a n.o.ble love. He had so lived for Pleasure that he had never known Happiness. His frame broke by excesses in which his better nature never took delight, he came home--to hear of ruin and to die!
It was evening in the sick-room. Arthur had risen from the bed to which, for some days, he had voluntarily taken, and was stretched on the sofa before the fire. Camilla was leaning over him, keeping in the shade, that he might not see the tears which she could not suppress. His mother had been endeavouring to amuse him, as she would have amused herself, by reading aloud one of the light novels of the hour; novels that paint the life of the higher cla.s.ses as one gorgeous holyday.
"My dear mother," said the patient querulously, "I have no interest in these false descriptions of the life I have led. I know that life"s worth. Ah! had I been trained to some employment, some profession! had I--well--it is weak to repine. Mother, tell me, you have seen Mons. de Vaudemont: is he strong and healthy?"
"Yes; too much so. He has not your elegance, dear Arthur."
"And do you admire him, Camilla? Has no other caught your heart or your fancy?"
"My dear Arthur," interrupted Mrs. Beaufort, "you forget that Camilla is scarcely out; and of course a young girl"s affections, if she"s well brought up, are regulated by the experience of her parents. It is time to take the medicine: it certainly agrees with you; you have more colour to-day, my dear, dear son."
While Mrs. Beaufort was pouring out the medicine, the door gently opened, and Mr. Robert Beaufort appeared; behind him there rose a taller and a statelier form, but one which seemed more bent, more humbled, more agitated. Beaufort advanced. Camilla looked up and turned pale. The visitor escaped from Mr. Beaufort"s grasp on his arm; he came forward, trembling, he fell on his knees beside Arthur, and seizing his hand, bent over, it in silence. But silence so stormy! silence more impressive than all words his breast heaved, his whole frame shook. Arthur guessed at once whom he saw, and bent down gently as if to raise his visitor.
"Oh! Arthur! Arthur!" then cried Philip; "forgive me! My mother"s comforter--my cousin--my brother! Oh! brother, forgive me!"
And as he half rose, Arthur stretched out his arms, and Philip clasped him to his breast.
It is in vain to describe the different feelings that agitated those who beheld; the selfish congratulations of Robert, mingled with a better and purer feeling; the stupor of the mother; the emotions that she herself could not unravel, which rooted Camilla to the spot.
"You own me, then,--you own me!" cried Philip. "You accept the brotherhood that my mad pa.s.sions once rejected! And you, too--you, Camilla--you who once knelt by my side, under this very roof--do you remember me now? Oh, Arthur! that letter--that letter!--yes, indeed, that aid which I ascribed to any one--rather than to you--made the date of a fairer fortune. I may have owed to that aid the very fate that has preserved me till now; the very name which I have not discredited. No, no; do not think you can ask me a favour; you can but claim your due.
Brother! my dear brother!"
CHAPTER XVII.
"Warwick.--Exceeding well! his cares are now all over."
--Henry IV.
The excitement of this interview soon overpowering Arthur, Philip, in quitting the room with Mr. Beaufort, asked a conference with that gentleman; and they went into the very parlour from which the rich man had once threatened to expel the haggard suppliant. Philip glanced round the room, and the whole scene came again before him. After a pause, he thus began,--
"Mr. Beaufort, let the Past be forgotten. We may have need of mutual forgiveness, and I, who have so wronged your n.o.ble son, am willing to suppose that I misjudged you. I cannot, it is true, forego this lawsuit."
Mr. Beaufort"s face fell.
"I have no right to do so. I am the trustee of my father"s honour and my mother"s name: I must vindicate both: I cannot forego this lawsuit. But when I once bowed myself to enter your house--then only with a hope, where now I have the certainty of obtaining my heritage--it was with the resolve to bury in oblivion every sentiment that would transgress the most temperate justice. Now, I will do more. If the law decide against me, we are as we were; if with me--listen: I will leave you the lands of Beaufort, for your life and your son"s. I ask but for me and for mine such a deduction from your wealth as will enable me, should my brother be yet living, to provide for him; and (if you approve the choice, which out of all earth I would desire to make) to give whatever belongs to more refined or graceful existence than I myself care for,--to her whom I would call my wife. Robert Beaufort, in this room I once asked you to restore to me the only being I then loved: I am now again your suppliant; and this time you have it in your power to grant my prayer.
Let Arthur be, in truth, my brother: give me, if I prove myself, as I feel a.s.sured, ent.i.tled to hold the name my father bore, give me your daughter as my wife; give me Camilla, and I will not envy you the lands I am willing for myself to resign; and if they pa.s.s to any children, those children will be your daughter"s!"
The first impulse of Mr. Beaufort was to grasp the hand held out to him; to pour forth an incoherent torrent of praise and protestation, of a.s.surances that he could not hear of such generosity, that what was right was right, that he should be proud of such a son-in-law, and much more in the same key. And in the midst of this, it suddenly occurred to Mr. Beaufort, that if Philip"s case were really as good as he said it was, he could not talk so coolly of resigning the property it would secure him for the term of a life (Mr. Beaufort thought of his own) so uncommonly good, to say nothing of Arthur"s. At this notion, he thought it best not to commit himself too far; drew in as artfully as he could, until he could consult Lord Lilburne and his lawyer; and recollecting also that he had a great deal to manage with respect to Camilla and her prior attachment, he began to talk of his distress for Arthur, of the necessity of waiting a little before Camilla was spoken to, while so agitated about her brother, of the exceedingly strong case which his lawyer advised him he possessed--not but what he would rather rest the matter on justice than law--and that if the law should be with him, he would not the less (provided he did not force his daughter"s inclinations, of which, indeed, he had no fear) be most happy to bestow her hand on his brother"s nephew, with such a portion as would be most handsome to all parties.
It often happens to us in this world, that when we come with our heart in our hands to some person or other,--when we pour out some generous burst of feeling so enthusiastic and self-sacrificing, that a bystander would call us fool and Quixote;--it often, I say, happens to us, to find our warm self suddenly thrown back upon our cold self; to discover that we are utterly uncomprehended, and that the swine who would have munched up the acorn does not know what to make of the pearl. That sudden ice which then freezes over us, that supreme disgust and despair almost of the whole world, which for the moment we confound with the one worldling--they who have felt, may reasonably ascribe to Philip. He listened to Mr. Beaufort in utter and contemptuous silence, and then replied only,--
"Sir, at all events this is a question for law to decide. If it decide as you think, it is for you to act; if as I think, it is for me. Till then I will speak to you no more of your daughter, or my intentions.
Meanwhile, all I ask is the liberty to visit your son. I would not be banished from his sick-room!"
"My dear nephew!" cried Mr. Beaufort, again alarmed, "consider this house as your home."
Philip bowed and retreated to the door, followed obsequiously by his uncle.
It chanced that both Lord Lilburne and Mr. Blackwell were of the same mind as to the course advisable for Mr. Beaufort now to pursue. Lord Lilburne was not only anxious to exchange a hostile litigation for an amicable lawsuit, but he was really eager to put the seal of relationship upon any secret with regard to himself that a man who might inherit L20,000. a year--a dead shot, and a bold tongue--might think fit to disclose. This made him more earnest than he otherwise might have been in advice as to other people"s affairs. He spoke to Beaufort as a man of the world--to Blackwell as a lawyer.
"Pin the man down to his generosity," said Lilburne, "before he gets the property. Possession makes a great change in a man"s value of money.
After all, you can"t enjoy the property when you"re dead: he gives it next to Arthur, who is not married; and if anything happen to Arthur, poor fellow, why, in devolving on your daughter"s husband and children, it goes in the right line. Pin him down at once: get credit with the world for the most n.o.ble and disinterested conduct, by letting your counsel state that the instant you discovered the lost doc.u.ment you wished to throw no obstacle in the way of proving the marriage, and that the only thing to consider is, if the marriage be proved; if so, you will be the first to rejoice, &c. &c. You know all that sort of humbug as well as any man!"
Mr. Blackwell suggested the same advice, though in different words--after taking the opinions of three eminent members of the bar; those opinions, indeed, were not all alike--one was adverse to Mr.
Robert Beaufort"s chance of success, one was doubtful of it, the third maintained that he had nothing to fear from the action--except, possibly, the ill-natured construction of the world. Mr. Robert Beaufort disliked the idea of the world"s ill-nature, almost as much as he did that of losing his property. And when even this last and more encouraging authority, learning privately from Mr. Blackwell that Arthur"s illness was of a nature to terminate fatally, observed, "that a compromise with a claimant, who was at all events Mr. Beaufort"s nephew, by which Mr. Beaufort could secure the enjoyment of the estates to himself for life, and to his son for life also, should not (whatever his probabilities of legal success) be hastily rejected--unless he had a peculiar affection for a very distant relation--who, failing Mr.
Beaufort"s male issue and Philip"s claim, would be heir-at-law, but whose rights would cease if Arthur liked to cut off the entail."
Mr. Beaufort at once decided. He had a personal dislike to that distant heir-at-law; he had a strong desire to retain the esteem of the world; he had an innate conviction of the justice of Philip"s claim; he had a remorseful recollection of his brother"s generous kindness to himself; he preferred to have for his heir, in case of Arthur"s decease, a nephew who would marry his daughter, than a remote kinsman. And should, after all, the lawsuit fail to prove Philip"s right, he was not sorry to have the estate in his own power by Arthur"s act in cutting off the entail.
Brief; all these reasons decided him. He saw Philip--he spoke to Arthur--and all the preliminaries, as suggested above, were arranged between the parties. The entail was cut off, and Arthur secretly prevailed upon his father, to whom, for the present, the fee-simple thus belonged, to make a will, by which he bequeathed the estates to Philip, without reference to the question of his legitimacy. Mr. Beaufort felt his conscience greatly eased after this action--which, too, he could always retract if he pleased; and henceforth the lawsuit became but a matter of form, so far as the property it involved was concerned.
While these negotiations went on, Arthur continued gradually to decline.
Philip was with him always. The sufferer took a strange liking to this long-dreaded relation, this man of iron frame and thews. In Philip there was so much of life, that Arthur almost felt as if in his presence itself there was an antagonism to death. And Camilla saw thus her cousin, day by day, hour by hour, in that sick chamber, lending himself, with the gentle tenderness of a woman, to soften the pang, to arouse the weariness, to cheer the dejection. Philip never spoke to her of love: in such a scene that had been impossible. She overcame in their mutual cares the embarra.s.sment she had before felt in his presence; whatever her other feelings, she could not, at least, but be grateful to one so tender to her brother. Three letters of Charles Spencer"s had been, in the afflictions of the house, only answered by a brief line. She now took the occasion of a momentary and delusive amelioration in Arthur"s disease to write to him more at length. She was carrying, as usual, the letter to her mother, when Mr. Beaufort met her, and took the letter from her hand. He looked embarra.s.sed for a moment, and bade her follow him into his study. It was then that Camilla learned, for the first time, distinctly, the claims and rights of her cousin; then she learned also at what price those rights were to be enforced with the least possible injury to her father. Mr. Beaufort naturally put the case before her in the strongest point of the dilemma. He was to be ruined--utterly ruined; a pauper, a beggar, if Camilla did not save him. The master of his fate demanded his daughter"s hand. Habitually subservient to even a whim of her parents, this intelligence, the entreaty, the command with which it was accompanied, overwhelmed her.
She answered but by tears; and Mr. Beaufort, a.s.sured of her submission, left her, to consider of the tone of the letter he himself should write to Mr. Spencer. He had sat down to this very task when he was summoned to Arthur"s room. His son was suddenly taken worse: spasms that threatened immediate danger convulsed and exhausted him, and when these were allayed, he continued for three days so feeble that Mr. Beaufort, his eyes now thoroughly opened to the loss that awaited him, had no thoughts even for worldly interests.
On the night of the third day, Philip, Robert Beaufort, his wife, his daughter, were grouped round the death-bed of Arthur. The sufferer had just wakened from sleep, and he motioned to Philip to raise him. Mr.
Beaufort started, as by the dim light he saw his son in the arms of Catherine"s! and another Chamber of Death seemed, shadow-like, to replace the one before him. Words, long since uttered, knelled in his ear: "There shall be a death-bed yet beside which you shall see the spectre of her, now so calm, rising for retribution from the grave!" His blood froze, his hair stood erect; he cast a hurried, shrinking glance round the twilight of the darkened room: and with a feeble cry covered his white face with his trembling hands! But on Arthur"s lips there was a serene smile; he turned his eyes from Philip to Camilla, and murmured, "She will repay you!" A pause, and the mother"s shriek rang through the room! Robert Beaufort raised his face from his hands. His son was dead!
CHAPTER XVIII.
"Jul. And what reward do you propose?
It must be my love."--The Double Marriage.
While these events, dark, hurried, and stormy, had befallen the family of his betrothed, Sidney lead continued his calm life by the banks of the lovely lake. After a few weeks, his confidence in Camilla"s fidelity overbore all his apprehensions and forebodings. Her letters, though constrained by the inspection to which they were submitted, gave him inexpressible consolation and delight. He began, however, early to fancy that there was a change in their tone. The letters seemed to shun the one subject to which all others were as nought; they turned rather upon the guests a.s.sembled at Beaufort Court; and why I know not,--for there was nothing in them to authorise jealousy--the brief words devoted to Monsieur de Vaudemont filled him with uneasy and terrible suspicion.
He gave vent to these feelings, as fully as he dared do, under the knowledge that his letter would be seen; and Camilla never again even mentioned the name of Vaudemont. Then there was a long pause; then her brother"s arrival and illness were announced; then, at intervals, but a few hurried lines; then a complete, long, dreadful silence, and lastly, with a deep black border and a solemn black seal, came the following letter from Mr. Beaufort:
"MY DEAR SIR,--I have the unutterable grief to announce to you and your worthy uncle the irreparable loss I have sustained in the death of my only son. It is a month to day since he departed this life. He died, sir, as a Christian should die--humbly, penitently--exaggerating the few faults of his short life, but--(and here the writer"s hypocrisy, though so natural to him--was it, that he knew not that he was hypocritical?--fairly gave way before the real and human anguish, for which there is no dictionary!) but I cannot pursue this theme!
"Slowly now awakening to the duties yet left me to discharge, I cannot but be sensible of the material difference in the prospects of my remaining child. Miss Beaufort is now the heiress to an ancient name and a large fortune. She subscribes with me to the necessity of consulting those new considerations which so melancholy an event forces upon her mind. The little fancy--or liking--(the acquaintance was too short for more) that might naturally spring up between two amiable young persons thrown together in the country, must be banished from our thoughts. As a friend, I shall be always happy to hear of your welfare; and should you ever think of a profession in which I can serve you, you may command my utmost interest and exertions. I know, my young friend, what you will feel at first, and how disposed you will be to call me mercenary and selfish. Heaven knows if that be really my character! But at your age, impressions are easily effaced; and any experienced friend of the world will a.s.sure you that, in the altered circ.u.mstances of the case, I have no option. All intercourse and correspondence, of course, cease with this letter,--until, at least, we may all meet, with no sentiments but those of friendship and esteem. I desire my compliments to your worthy uncle, in which Mrs. and Miss Beaufort join; and I am sure you will be happy to hear that my wife and daughter, though still in great affliction, have suffered less in health than I could have ventured to antic.i.p.ate.
"Believe me, dear Sir,
"Yours sincerely,
"ROBERT BEAUFORT.
"To C. SPENCER, Esq., Jun."
When Sidney received this letter, he was with Mr. Spencer, and the latter read it over the young man"s shoulder, on which he leant affectionately. When they came to the concluding words, Sidney turned round with a vacant look and a hollow smile. "You see, sir," he said, "you see---"