Part 8

Poor Vic!--never in all her life had she been urged to such mad and merciless speed as on that ill-starred day. Protesting, at first, by various plunges and rearings, she finally fell in with her master's wild humor, and sped through the village at a pace that sent the foot-passengers to the fences in terror, and crowded the doors and windows with wondering gazers. Whether he were fleeing from destruction, or riding straight to it, was no affair of hers; in either case, she would do her best to meet his wishes. The village was quickly left behind; house after house, and field after field, slid by in a swift panorama; already they were turning the corner, toward the Hall, when Bergan's scattered senses were suddenly recalled by a stern "Halloo! what are you about?" mingled with a faint cry of alarm. To his horror, he saw himself to be on the point of riding down a young lady equestrian, who was on her way to the village, accompanied by her father. There was not an instant to lose, not a moment for reflection; the heads of the two horses were almost in contact. Putting his whole strength into one sudden, ill-considered jerk, Vic was thrown back on her haunches, and he and she rolled over in the mud together.

Fortunately, neither was much hurt, and both sprang to their feet considerably sobered by the shock. Bergan was deeply humiliated, also; he would gladly have compounded with his mortification for almost any amount of physical pain. No bodily injury could have made him writhe with so sharp a pang, as the conviction that he had flawed his claim to the title of gentleman. To have nearly ridden over a lady, in a blind frenzy of rage and semi-intoxication, was a disgrace that he could never forget. He would gladly have buried himself in the mud with which he was already tolerably well coated. Since he could not do that, he took off his hat to the horseman,--he dared neither address nor look at the lady,--and said, in a tone that trembled with shame and regret,--

"I beg your pardon, sir."

"You would have done better to look where you were going," replied the gentleman, with the unreasoning anger that often follows upon the reaction from fear and anxiety. "No thanks to you that my daughter is not maimed or killed!"

"I think you mistake, father," quickly interposed the young lady, in a low, sweet voice, tremulous from the recent shock to her nerves;--"did you not see how promptly the gentleman sacrificed himself to save me, as soon as he saw the danger? I hope you are not hurt, sir," she added, courteously, turning to Bergan.

"Thank you; not half so much as I deserve to be," replied he, only the more remorseful on account of the delicate consideration that she showed for him, while her cheek was still blanched, and her lips trembling, at her own narrow escape from danger caused by his rashness. And, feeling wholly unworthy to say another word to anything so pure and sweet, so utterly incompatible with the vile place and scene which he had just quitted, he stood aside, with uncovered head, to let her pass.

Apparently, she would have lingered long enough to make sure that he was really uninjured; but her father, who had been eyeing him keenly, hurried her away. "Do you not see," he inquired, sharply, as they rode on, "that the fellow is drunk?"

"Impossible, father! He had such a fine, noble countenance!"

"It will not be noble long," replied the father. "Neither will it be the first noble countenance that has been spoiled by drunkenness," he added, with a sigh.

Left alone, Bergan remounted Vic, though not without difficulty. The bewildering effect of his potent draught, which had momentarily been overcome by the excitement of his late adventure, now made itself felt again. As he rode along, his head began to swim; a deadly nausea seized him; his limbs seemed paralyzed. Arrived within the gates of his uncle's domain, he suffered himself to slide slowly from the saddle to the ground; and almost immediately, consciousness forsook him.

VIII.

AS A DREAM WHEN ONE AWAKETH.

When, in due course of time, Bergan came partially to himself, he found that he was lying on his own bed, with the twilight shadows gathering duskily in its hangings. But his mind was too dull and confused to trouble itself with the question how he came there, notwithstanding that his ears seemed still to retain the sound of low voices, and his limbs the pressure of careful hands. Scarcely had he unclosed his heavy eyes, ere he was glad to shut them again, and to sink anew into slumber.

But this time, it was not, as before, a profound stupor, a deaf, blind, torpid, state of nothingness. Though it lasted some hours, he never quite lost an oppressive sense of overhanging trouble, imperfectly as its nature was apprehended. Moreover, he was harassed by dreams of that most trying character, wherein varying images revolve around one fixed idea; combining the misery of continual change with that of ceaseless iteration into one intolerable horror.

Breaking, at length, from the teasing spell of these phantasms, he saw that it was past midnight. Through the opposite window, he beheld a pale, waning moon, and, by its light, a gray, dimly-outlined landscape,--a faint and lifeless sketch, as it were, of a once bright, breathing world. While he looked, over it came the black shadow of a wind-driven cloud, blurring the lines, here and there, into still grayer indistinctness, sweeping across the lawn, mounting the steps of Bergan Hall, and laying, at last, its thin, light hand over his own brow and eyes.

With it, as if by right of near kinship, a deep gloom fell upon his heart. Till now, it had not occurred to him why his head ached so heavily, nor what weary weight it was that burdened his mind. Yet he did not--as too many would have done, after a brief flush of shame, and a momentary feeling of regret--seek to throw off this burden by telling himself that his late aberration was, after all, a matter of small moment, since it was only what hundreds like him had done before, were now doing, and would continue to do till the end of time. Not of any such weak stuff, incapable of looking his own acts squarely in the face, and judging them according to their merits, was Bergan made. On the contrary, he felt as much humiliated as if he had been the first, last, only intoxicated young man in the universe.

And this, be it understood, was not so much because he had violated the higher law, as because he had broken his own law unto himself. With the Bergan temper, he had also inherited a fair share of the Bergan pride, and the Bergan strength of will. But, softened and guided by home influences at once wise and genial, the one had hitherto shown itself mainly in a lofty, almost an ideal, purity of character, and the other had expended its force chiefly upon himself. The two, therefore, had served him little less effectually, in keeping him free from current vices, than higher motives might have done. He had taken a stern, proud pleasure in knowing that he wore no yoke but such as it pleased him deliberately to assume. He would have scorned to say, what he often heard from the lips of his fellows,--"I _cannot_ quit drinking, I cannot live without smoking, I _cannot_ resist the fascinations of gambling," et cætera;--he would have felt it a woful slur upon his manhood to avow himself so abject a slave to his animal nature. So strong was this pride of character, that no sooner did he feel any habit, any appetite, any pleasure, however innocent in itself, taking firm hold of him, than he was immediately impelled to give it up, to refuse it indulgence,--for a time, at least,--just to satisfy one part of himself that its control over the other and baser part was still perfect. At whatever price, he was determined to be his own master.

It may be imagined, then, with what sharp sting of pride, what miserable sense of weakness and failure, he writhed, as Memory now flung open the doors of her silent gallery, and showed him sombre picture after picture, representing his own figure in divers humiliating positions. It shrank from the utterance of its strong convictions of right; it gave way to the assaults of a poor ambition; it drifted with circumstance; it was driven to and fro like a shuttlecock between outward temptation and inward passion; it was successively a fighting rowdy, a blind lunatic, an insensate drunkard.

Not that these representations were all true in tone, unexaggerated in color, and correct in sentiment. Often, there is nothing more difficult than to fix upon the exact point where the plain boundary line between right and wrong was crossed; and neither pride nor remorse is apt to do it correctly. Some steps may have been taken upon a kind of debatable ground; had the march been arrested at any one of these, its tendency would have been different. In reviewing his conduct, Bergan failed to do justice either to his uncle's undeniable claims to his respectful consideration, up to the point where he had been required to follow him into a low bar-room, or to the real beauty and worth of some of his own feelings and motives. Looking back, he saw--or seemed to see--only a pitiable career of irresolution and moral cowardice, ending in disgrace. Covering his face with his hands, as if to shut out the unwelcome sight, he groaned aloud.

To his surprise, the groan was distinctly prolonged and repeated. Was it the responsive wail of the ancestral spirits, mourning over their degenerate scion, or only the sympathizing echo of the ancestral walls? Springing to his feet, he beheld a tall, erect figure standing on the hearth, showing strangely weird and unearthly by the flickering blaze of a few dying embers. Not till it turned and came toward him did he recognize the dusky features and age-whitened hair of Maumer Rue.

"I hope that it is not on my account that you are up at this time of night," said he, gravely.

"You forget that night and day are both alike to me," she quietly answered. "Are you better?"

"Much better, thank you." And he added after a moment,--"How came I here?"

"Brick found you in the avenue. By my direction, you were brought in. At first, it was thought that you had been thrown from your horse, but--"

Rue paused.

"I understand," said Bergan, bitterly. "I was drunk."

Rue did not immediately answer. It was only after some moments that she said, earnestly;--

"Master Bergan, I am an old woman. I have seen four generations of your house,--I have nursed two,--and I have spent my life in its service. If it had been my own, I could not have loved it better, nor felt its welfare nearer my heart. If these things give me any right to say a word of warning to you, let me say it now!"

"Say whatever seems good to you," replied Bergan, gloomily, as he flung himself into a chair. "I doubt if you can say anything so hard to bear as what I have already said to myself."

"Is that so?" asked Rue, in a tone of relief--"is that really so? Then I need not say anything. It is a higher voice than mine that speaks within you; and my poor words would only weaken its effect. Only listen to it, Master Bergan, pray listen to it!" she went on, with tears streaming from her blind eyes. "If you stifle it now, it may never speak so clearly again!"

"Make yourself easy, maumer," answered Bergan, much affected, yet doing his best to speak cheerfully,--"I have not the least intention of stifling it. Moreover, I assure you that I am in no danger of repeating last night's miserable experience; drunkenness is not my besetting sin. I only wish I were as certain that I should never again give way to my temper."

"It has run in the blood a great while," remarked Rue, not without a certain respect for its length of pedigree; "it will be hard to get it out."

"It _shall_ be gotten out, though," responded Bergan, knitting his brows and setting his teeth with true hereditary doggedness.

"Very likely it may," replied Rue, quietly, "if you take _that_ tone. No doubt the Lord meant the Bergan will to conquer the Bergan temper--with His help. But I will not trouble you any longer, sir;--thank you for setting my mind at rest. And don't be offended if I recommend you not to come in your uncle's way this morning; give him a little time to get into a better mood. I will send your breakfast out to you."

Bergan's brow darkened. "I do not intend to come in his way," he answered a little shortly, "neither this morning, nor at any other time. My visit here is at an end. I leave this house directly."

"Oh, Master Bergan, I beg you will not do that!" exclaimed Rue. "Your uncle really loves you in his heart; he will soon forget all about his anger."

"It is not because I dread his anger that I go," replied Bergan, gravely; "it is because he has lowered me in my own eyes, and disgraced me in the eyes of others, in a way that _I_ cannot forget. At least, not until I have proved to myself that I am neither a moral coward nor a miserable parasite, and to the world that drinking and fighting are not the essential conditions of my existence. I cannot well do either without leaving Bergan Hall. And I certainly shall not put myself in my uncle's way again, until he sees fit to apologize for what he did yesterday."

"Is the world turned upside down, then," asked Rue, with a kind of slow wonder, "that an old uncle must apologize to a young nephew?"

Bergan colored, and the unwonted bitterness and irritation of his manner gave way before the force of the implied rebuke.

"Thank you," said he, almost in his natural tone, "I see that I am--or, at least, that I was,--a little beside myself. Still, I must leave Bergan Hall. I cannot think it right or expedient to remain here longer. But when I have put myself in the way of living independently, and cleared up my reputation, I will do what I can, without loss of self-respect, to establish friendly relations with my uncle. Indeed, I do not mean to be foolishly resentful, nor unbecomingly exacting."

"May I ask what you are going to do?" inquired Rue, after a few moments of thought.

"Certainly. I am going to carry out my original plan, and my mother's express wish, by opening a law-office in Berganton, and doing my best to win fame and fortune in the place which my ancestors founded; and in which," he added, with a smile, "their shades may reasonably be expected to watch my career with especial interest, and also to do me a good turn, whenever they have it in their power."

"Well," said Rue, after a long pause, "perhaps you are right. I think I begin to see that it may be quite as well for you to go away, for a time. You shall not lose anything by it; I will take care of that. I have more influence with your uncle than you would think. And I promise you,--remember, I promise you," she repeated, with marked emphasis,--"whatever comes, you shall have Bergan Hall."

The young man shook his head. "I think not," said he. "Indeed, I have ceased to wish for it; I do not see any place for it in the life which I now contemplate. It was but a pleasant day-dream, at best; and it is over."

"It may be over for you," rejoined Rue, quietly, "but it is not over for me. And my dreams are apt to come true. I may not live to see it,--indeed, it is borne in upon me that I shall not,--but the Hall will surely be yours, one day."

Bergan again shook his head. Without making any pretensions to the prophetic gift, he thought he could foretell, better than old Rue, the effect of the course which he had marked out for himself, upon his uncle. But the blind woman could not see the gesture; and he forebore to put his doubt into words,--unless its subtle prompting was to be detected in his next apparently irrelevant sentence:--

"I shall think it one of my first duties to go and see my uncle Godfrey."

"I am glad to hear it," replied Rue, placidly. "He is a wise, just man; and no doubt he will give you good advice about setting up your profession. I have been hoping that, through you, this long family breach would be healed."

And here the conversation strayed off amid thick-growing family topics, where it is unnecessary to follow it.

Gray dawn was in the east when, after a long, lingering look at the ancestral portraits, Bergan went out from the old Hall. He could scarcely believe that it was less than a week since he first entered it. He had passed there one of those crises of life which do the work of years. His short occupancy had left its indelible impress upon his character, for good or evil.

Rue attended him to the door, and detained him for a moment on the threshold.

"If ever you are in need of a quiet place where you can feel perfectly at home," said she, "come here. Your room shall always be ready for you; and you might stay here for weeks together, and no one be the wiser,--rarely does any one but me come inside the door. And if ever you should be in any trouble, or in any want, come and see what the old, blind woman can do for you; she may be better able to help you than you think. And now, good-bye, and God bless you, my dear young master--the future master of Bergan Hall!"

She raised her withered hands and sightless eyes to heaven, as she ended; and when Bergan looked back from the farther verge of the lawn, she was standing there still, in the dim dawn-light, a gray, venerable, ghostly figure, framed in his ancestral doorway, calling down blessings on his head.

IX.

THE BLOT CLEAVES.

Youthful spirits have a natural buoyancy that floats them easily over the first wave of trouble, however severe. It is the long succession of wearing disappointments and corroding griefs, of anxious days and restless nights, of abortive aims and hopes deferred, which finally overcomes their lightsomeness, and sinks them fathoms deep under a smooth-flowing surface of gentle cheerfulness, a teasing ebb and flow of worriment, or an icy plane of despair.

But of this grievous iteration, and its depressing effect, Bergan, as yet, had no experience. His heart involuntarily grew lighter as he went down the long avenue. The old Hall, with its dust-clogged and tradition-darkened atmosphere, its dusky delights and duskier temptations, seemed to fade back again into the unsubstantiality of his childhood's visions. His sojourn there was, at best, but a brief, casual episode in an otherwise coherent life. He now recurred to the main argument. Not that he could foresee precisely how it was to be wrought out. But the very uncertainty before him was not without its own special and potent charm. It gave such unlimited scope to hope and imagination; there was in it so much room for sturdy endeavor and noble achievement, for an iron age of progress, and a golden era of fame!

It was still early when he reached the Berganton Hotel. The landlord was in the office; he was also in the midst of a prolonged matutinal stretch and yawn, when Bergan surprised him with a pleasant;--

"Good morning. Have you a vacant room for me?"

"Yes, sir,--that is, I will see," was the somewhat inconclusive reply; its first clause being due to the favorable impression made by Bergan's face and manner, and its last to prudential considerations arising from the quickly recognized facts that this prepossessing young man was on foot, and without baggage. "Do you want it long?"

"I can hardly tell,--some days, perhaps; possibly longer. I wish to see if it be worth my while to locate myself permanently here. My name is Bergan Arling. My baggage is to be sent over from Bergan Hall."

"Ah, I see," said the landlord, in a tone which implied that he had suddenly been lifted to a point of observation at once wide and unpromising. And almost immediately he added,--"On the whole, I believe I haven't got an eligible room to offer you. The one that I thought of at first is partially engaged; I cannot let it go till I know the gentleman's decision."

Bergan was gifted with perceptions too quick and fine not to notice the unfavorable effect produced by his frank explanation of himself. Nor was he slow to divine the cause. No doubt his name had been bruited abroad in connection with the disgraceful scenes of yesterday; and, as a natural consequence, in the very place where it would otherwise have been an advantage to him, it would now stand in his way. His heart sank a little to find that he had not left yesterday's acts so completely behind him as he had allowed himself to believe. He had still to endure his inevitable term of bondage to their evil consequences.

Yet herein, he remembered, was his strongest motive for perseverance in the path upon which he had entered. He could not leave a tarnished reputation behind him in the place founded by his ancestors,--the very dust of which, blowing about the streets, doubtless held many particles closely akin to his own earthly substance, and dimly capable of pride or shame on his account. At whatever cost of present pain or ulterior loss, he must stay in Berganton long enough to set himself right in the public eyes.

And loss, it was plain, there might be. Berganton was no longer the busy and prosperous town of his mother's reminiscences. All these years, it had been going backwards. Looking up and down its long, tame, principal street, with its scant and sluggish flow of human life, he could discover little field for energy, little scope for ambition. Were it not for the cords of obligation woven around him by yesterday's events, he would scarcely have stayed for a second look. But those cords held him firmly to his purpose.

"Do you know of any respectable family where I should be likely to obtain board, or, at least, lodgings?" was his next inquiry.

"I do not. I think they might take you in at the Gregg House, down at the lower end of the street."

The words were spoken carelessly enough, yet Bergan could scarcely fail to detect in them a covert insinuation, or to imagine one. His cheek crimsoned, and his eye flashed. Ere he could speak, however, a gentleman whom he had observed sitting near him, with a newspaper before his face, dropped the printed screen, and came forward.

"Mr. Arling can breakfast here, at any rate," said he, in the tone of a man accustomed to overcome all obstacles; "it will give me pleasure to have him for my _vis-à-vis_ at the early breakfast that I have bespoken this morning, in order to gain time for a visit to a far-away patient. And you can at least give him the room of which you speak until it is called for; by that time, we will hope, he may be provided with one even more to his mind."

"Certainly, doctor," returned the landlord, looking a little crestfallen. "If I had known the gentleman was a friend of yours--"

"Hardly that yet," interposed the doctor, smiling, "though I trust he may be, in good time. I know your uncle very well," he continued, addressing Bergan, as the landlord moved away,--"indeed, I may say, your two uncles,--if that be any ground of acquaintance. But I have the advantage of you, in that I heard your name just now;--mine is Remy--Felix Remy--very much at your service. Not that this announcement places us on an equal footing; for, while your name puts me at once in possession of your antecedents, to a certain extent, mine tells you nothing about me except that I am of French descent. Are you willing to take the rest on trust, until a fitting time for a fuller explanation?" And the doctor held out his hand.

"Until the end of time," replied Bergan, grasping it warmly. "It would be strange if kindness were not its own sufficient explanation."