"O! gracious me!--miss--ma"am--I am so sorry--I"d rather bite out my tongue than say a word to offend you; it was only my love for you, dear innocent creature that you are!" and the honest woman sobbed with real pa.s.sion as she clasped f.a.n.n.y"s hand. "There have been so many young persons, good and harmless, yes, even as you are, ruined. But you don"t understand me. Miss f.a.n.n.y! hear me; I must try and say what I would say.
That man, that gentleman--so proud, so well-dressed, so grand-like, will never marry you, never--never. And if ever he says he does love you, and you say you love him, and you two don"t marry, you will be ruined and wicked, and die--die of a broken heart!"
The earnestness of Sarah"s manner subdued and almost awed f.a.n.n.y. She sank down again in her chair, and suffered the old woman to caress and weep over her hand for some moments in a silence that concealed the darkest and most agitated feelings f.a.n.n.y"s life had hitherto known. At length she said:--
"Why may he not marry me if he loves me?--he is not my brother,--indeed he is not! I"ll never call him so again."
"He cannot marry you," said Sarah, resolved, with a sort of rude n.o.bleness, to persevere in what she felt to be a duty; "I don"t say anything about money, because that does not always signify. But he cannot marry you, because--because people who are hedicated one way never marry those who are hedicated and brought up in another. A gentleman of that kind requires a wife to know--oh--to know ever so much; and you--"
"Sarah," interrupted f.a.n.n.y, rising again, but this time with a smile on her face, "don"t say anything more about it; I forgive you, if you promise never to speak unkindly of him again--never--never--never, Sarah!"
"But may I just tell him that--that--"
"That what?"
"That you are so young and innocent, and has no pertector like; and that if you were to love him it would be a shame in him--that it would!"
And then (oh, no, f.a.n.n.y, there was nothing clouded now in your reason!)--and then the woman"s alarm, the modesty, the instinct, the terror came upon her:--
"Never! never! I will not love him, I do not love him, indeed, Sarah.
If you speak to him, I will never look you in the face again. It is all past--all, dear Sarah!"
She kissed the old woman; and Sarah, fancying that her sagacity and counsel had prevailed, promised all she was asked; so they went up-stairs together--friends.
CHAPTER VIII.
"As the wind Sobs, an uncertain sweetness comes from out The orange-trees.
Rise up, Olympia.--She sleeps soundly. Ho!
Stirring at last." BARRY CORNWALL.
The next day, f.a.n.n.y was seen by Sarah counting the little h.o.a.rd that she had so long and so painfully saved for her benefactor"s tomb. The money was no longer wanted for that object. f.a.n.n.y had found another; she said nothing to Sarah or to Simon. But there was a strange complacent smile upon her lip as she busied herself in her work, that puzzled the old woman. Late at noon came the postman"s unwonted knock at the door. A letter!--a letter for Miss f.a.n.n.y. A letter!--the first she had ever received in her life! And it was from him!--and it began with "Dear f.a.n.n.y." Vaudemont had called her "dear f.a.n.n.y" a hundred times, and the expression had become a matter of course. But "Dear f.a.n.n.y" seemed so very different when it was written. The letter could not well be shorter, nor, all things considered, colder. But the girl found no fault with it. It began with "Dear f.a.n.n.y," and it ended with "yours truly."
"--Yours truly--mine truly--and how kind to write at all!" Now it so happened that Vaudemont, having never merged the art of the penman into that rapid scrawl into which people, who are compelled to write hurriedly and constantly, degenerate, wrote a remarkably good hand,--bold, clear, symmetrical--almost too good a hand for one who was not to make money by caligraphy. And after f.a.n.n.y had got the words by heart, she stole gently to a cupboard and took forth some specimens of her own hand, in the shape of house and work memoranda, and extracts which, the better to help her memory, she had made from the poem-book Vaudemont had given her. She gravely laid his letter by the side of these specimens, and blushed at the contrast; yet, after all, her own writing, though trembling and irresolute, was far from a bad or vulgar hand. But emulation was now fairly roused within her. Vaudemont, pre-occupied by more engrossing thoughts, and indeed, forgetting a danger which had seemed so thoroughly to have pa.s.sed away, did not in his letter caution f.a.n.n.y against going out alone. She remarked this; and having completely recovered her own alarm at the attempt that had been made on her liberty, she thought she was now released from her promise to guard against a past and imaginary peril. So after dinner she slipped out alone, and went to the mistress of the school where she had received her elementary education. She had ever since continued her acquaintance with that lady, who, kindhearted, and touched by her situation, often employed her industry, and was far from blind to the improvement that had for some time been silently working in the mind of her old pupil.
f.a.n.n.y had a long conversation with this lady, and she brought back a bundle of books. The light might have been seen that night, and many nights after, burning long and late from her little window. And having recovered her old freedom of habits, which Simon, poor man, did not notice, and which Sarah, thinking that anything was better than moping at home, did not remonstrate against, f.a.n.n.y went out regularly for two hours, or sometimes for even a longer period, every evening after old Simon had composed himself to the nap that filled up the interval between dinner and tea.
In a very short time--a time that with ordinary stimulants would have seemed marvellously short--f.a.n.n.y"s handwriting was not the same thing; her manner of talking became different; she no longer called herself "f.a.n.n.y" when she spoke; the music of her voice was more quiet and settled; her sweet expression of face was more thoughtful; the eyes seemed to have deepened in their very colour; she was no longer heard chaunting to herself as she tripped along. The books that she nightly fed on had pa.s.sed into her mind; the poetry that had ever unconsciously sported round her young years began now to create poetry in herself.
Nay, it might almost have seemed as if that restless disorder of the intellect, which the dullards had called Idiotcy, had been the wild efforts, not of Folly, but of GENIUS seeking to find its path and outlet from the cold and dreary solitude to which the circ.u.mstances of her early life had compelled it.
Days, even weeks, pa.s.sed--she never spoke of Vaudemont. And once, when Sarah, astonished and bewildered by the change in her young mistress, asked:
"When does the gentleman come back?"
f.a.n.n.y answered, with a mysterious smile, "Not yet, I hope,--not quite yet!"
CHAPTER IX.
"Thierry. I do begin To feel an alteration in my nature, And in his full-sailed confidence a shower Of gentle rain, that falling on the fire Hath quenched it.
How is my heart divided Between the duty of a son and love!"
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: Thierry and Theodorat.
Vaudemont had now been a month at Beaufort Court. The scene of a country-house, with the sports that enliven it, and the accomplishments it calls forth, was one in which he was well fitted to shine. He had been an excellent shot as a boy; and though long unused to the fowling-piece, had, in India, acquired a deadly precision with the rifle; so that a very few days of practice in the stubbles and covers of Beaufort Court made his skill the theme of the guests and the admiration of the keepers. Hunting began, and--this pursuit, always so strong a pa.s.sion in the active man, and which, to the turbulence and agitation of his half-tamed breast, now excited by a kind of frenzy of hope and fear, gave a vent and release--was a sport in which he was yet more fitted to excel. His horsemanship, his daring, the stone walls he leaped and the floods through which he dashed, furnished his companions with wondering tale and comment on their return home. Mr. Marsden, who, with some other of Arthur"s early friends, had been invited to Beaufort Court, in order to welcome its expected heir, and who retained all the prudence which had distinguished him of yore, when having ridden over old Simon he dismounted to examine the knees of his horse;--Mr. Marsden, a skilful huntsman, who rode the most experienced horses in the world, and who generally contrived to be in at the death without having leaped over anything higher than a hurdle, suffering the bolder quadruped (in case what is called the "knowledge of the country"--that is, the knowledge of gaps and gates--failed him) to perform the more dangerous feats alone, as he quietly scrambled over or scrambled through upon foot, and remounted the well-taught animal when it halted after the exploit, safe and sound;--Mr. Marsden declared that he never saw a rider with so little judgment as Monsieur de Vaudemont, and that the devil was certainly in him.
This sort of reputation, commonplace and merely physical as it was in itself, had a certain effect upon Camilla; it might be an effect of fear. I do not say, for I do not know, what her feelings towards Vaudemont exactly were. As the calmest natures are often those the most hurried away by their contraries, so, perhaps, he awed and dazzled rather than pleased her;--at least, he certainly forced himself on her interest. Still she would have started in terror if any one had said to her, "Do you love your betrothed less than when you met by that happy lake?"--and her heart would have indignantly rebuked the questioner. The letters of her lover were still long and frequent; hers were briefer and more subdued. But then there was constraint in the correspondence--it was submitted to her mother. Whatever might be Vaudemont"s manner to Camilla whenever occasion threw them alone together, he certainly did not make his attentions glaring enough to be remarked. His eye watched her rather than his lip addressed; he kept as much aloof as possible from the rest of her family, and his customary bearing was silent even to gloom. But there were moments when he indulged in a fitful exuberance of spirits, which had something strained and unnatural. He had outlived Lord Lilburne"s short liking; for since he had resolved no longer to keep watch on that n.o.ble gamester"s method of play, he played but little himself; and Lord Lilburne saw that he had no chance of ruining him--there was, therefore, no longer any reason to like him. But this was not all; when Vaudemont had been at the house somewhat more than two weeks, Lilburne, petulant and impatient, whether at his refusals to join the card-table, or at the moderation with which, when he did, he confined his ill-luck to petty losses, one day limped up to him, as he stood at the embrasure of the window, gazing on the wide lands beyond, and said:--
"Vaudemont, you are bolder in hunting, they tell me, than you are at whist."
"Honours don"t tell against one--over a hedge!"
"What do you mean?" said Lilburne, rather haughtily.
Vaudemont was, at that moment, in one of those bitter moods when the sense of his situation, the sight of the usurper in his home, often swept away the gentler thoughts inspired by his fatal pa.s.sion. And the tone of Lord Lilburne, and his loathing to the man, were too much for his temper.
"Lord Lilburne," he said, and his lip curled, "if you had been born poor, you would have made a great fortune--you play luckily."
"How am I to take this, sir?"
"As you please," answered Vaudemont, calmly, but with an eye of fire.
And he turned away.
Lilburne remained on the spot very thoughtful: "Hum! he suspects me.
I cannot quarrel on such ground--the suspicion itself dishonours me--I must seek another."
The next day, Lilburne, who was familiar with Mr. Harsden (though the latter gentleman never played at the same table), asked that prudent person after breakfast if he happened to have his pistols with him.
"Yes; I always take them into the country--one may as well practise when one has the opportunity. Besides, sportsmen are often quarrelsome; and if it is known that one shoots well,--it keeps one out of quarrels!"
"Very true," said Lilburne, rather admiringly. "I have made the same remark myself when I was younger. I have not shot with a pistol for since years. I am well enough now to walk out with the help of a stick.
Suppose we practise for half-an-hour or so."
"With all my heart," said Mr. Marsden.
The pistols were brought, and they strolled forth;--Lord Lilburne found his hand out.
"As I never hunt now," said the peer, and he gnashed his teeth, and glanced at his maimed limb; "for though lameness would not prevent my keeping my seat, violent exercise hurts my leg; and Brodie says any fresh accident might bring on tic douloureux;--and as my gout does not permit me to join the shooting parties at present, it would be a kindness in you to lend me your pistols--it would while away an hour or so; though, thank Heaven, my duelling days are over!"
"Certainly," said Mr. Marsden; and the pistols were consigned to Lord Lilburne.
Four days from the date, as Mr. Marsden, Vaudemont, and some other gentlemen were making for the covers, they came upon Lord Lilburne, who, in a part of the park not within sight or sound of the house, was amusing himself with Mr. Marsden"s pistols, which d.y.k.eman was at hand to load for him.
He turned round, not at all disconcerted by the interruption.