CHAPTER LI.--CONTAINS MUCH SORROW, AND PREPARES THE WAY FOR MORE.

The letter to which reference was made at the conclusion of the preceding chapter, and which Lewis received on the day following that on which he visited Mr. Coke, the family solicitor, proved to be from General Grant, and ran as follows:--

“My dear young Friend,--for in that light I must ever consider you, after the many important services you have rendered me,--I am anxious to lose no time in forwarding to your account, at Messrs.--, your salary for the year beginning May 18--; and as you have been compelled by honourable feeling to throw up your appointment so unexpectedly, and may not be fortunate enough to meet immediately with another suited to your wishes, you will, I feel sure, allow me, as some small testimony of the high esteem in which I hold you, to enclose a cheque for £500 instead of,£300. I shall feel hurt if you refuse to accept this token of my regard.”

“Two hundred pounds for giving up his daughter! he would scarcely have bought me off so cheap if I had looked at the matter in a pecuniary point of view,” was Lewis’s ironical comment, as with an inward resolution instantly to return the £200 he continued to peruse the letter.

“You will be glad to hear that Walter bears your absence wonderfully well; your kind consideration in leaving him the dog has produced a very good effect, as the animal serves to amuse him. We have not as yet been able to disabuse him of the notion that you will return, although I have impressed upon my daughter, who appears to possess more influence with him than any other member of the family, the necessity for so doing. The mention of my daughter’s name leads me for the last time to touch upon a subject which I can conceive may be painful even to your well-disciplined mind. During an interview which I held with her yesterday, she expressed her readiness to be guided entirely by my wishes. With her full concurrence, the engagement to Lord Bellefield was formally renewed, and the marriage is to take place as soon as she comes of age. I may add that, as far as I am able to judge upon so delicate a point, I do not doubt that her intended bridegroom possesses her entire affection. You will not think me unnecessarily communicative, or careless of your feelings, in mentioning these facts; but I conceive the knowledge of them may tend sooner to restore your mind to its usually healthy tone. Should you still be in England after my daughter’s marriage, I shall have much pleasure in seeing you either at Broadhurst or in Park Crescent. Convey my remembrances to Mrs. and Miss Arundel,

“And believe me to remain, yours sincerely and faithfully,

“Archibald Grant.”

Lewis read the letter steadily to the end. With trembling lips and starting eyeballs did he reperuse it; he could not avert his gaze, it appeared to possess a species of horrible fascination for him; he felt as if his brain would burst, as if his reason were failing him. Annie loving Lord Bellefield, and allowing the engagement to be formally renewed--oh, it was impossible! he _must_ be going mad--an evil which his worst fears pointed at only as a remote possibility, when time should have effaced his image, and the influence of those around her have conquered her lingering scruples, come to pass ere the rosebud she had given him had withered on its stem. Why was it that the trial had become too great for him to bear--that his selfcontrol had failed--was it only the intensity of his own feelings that he feared? or was it that he hoped, yet dreaded to learn, that he was beloved? Did the sacrifice that he had made consist only of his love for her, or did the belief that he was relinquishing the certainty of winning hers in return add a redoubled bitterness to his self-renunciation? were a thousand remembered words, looks, glances, realities, or the creations of his morbid fancy? He rose and paced the room, as was his wont when deeply excited. Where should he seek a clue to this mystery? could he believe--the thought flashed like lightning through his brain, like lightning, searing as it passed--could he believe that he had again been duped by a coquette? were all women false and heartless alike? could the goodness, and innocence, and purity which rendered beauty such as Annie’s a link between earth and heaven be mere counterfeits, and not the angel-instincts they appeared? Did good exist at all? or was this world an initiatory hell, and the evil principle predominant? Were Annie untrue, truth itself might be but a great and specious falsehood.

From this chaos of passionate distraction a few clearer, but on that account no less painful, ideas began to evolve themselves: his newfound dream of joy had vanished; rank and fortune, valued only because they would bring him nearer to Annie, would become a tie and a burden without her--he would have none of them. For his mother and sister he would still labour; to support them was his first duty: in works which he _must_ perform lay his only refuge against despair, perhaps even against madness. There was something else: some promise he made, what was it? his brain swam, he could recollect nothing clearly; hastily removing his neckcloth he plunged his head and face into a basin of cold water--this precaution in all probability saved him from a brain fever. Having partially dried his streaming locks and resumed his walk up and down the apartment, he remembered his promise to Hardy. Yes, that also was a sacred duty; the girl must be discovered, rescued from a life of ‘infamy, separated for ever from----, and here he stopped abruptly as a new idea occurred to him--Lord Bellefield! the retribution he had vowed to exact from him! he was now free, in a position to demand it! For a moment his eyes flashed, and the fingers of his right hand involuntarily closed as if grasping a weapon, and then many conflicting thoughts crowded upon him, and the eyes sought the ground, and the fingers insensibly relaxed. If he provoked Lord Bellefield to meet him now, at this particular juncture, would not it appear as if he were actuated solely by jealousy of his more fortunate rival, as if his hopeless passion for Annie were the cause of his animosity? This idea was especially repugnant to him for many reasons. In the first place, he had argued himself into the belief that his resentment against Lord Bellefield was a just and reasonable feeling, and that in punishing him for the unmanly insults he had heaped upon him, he was only exacting a due penalty; it was by this subtle argument alone that he could regard the act he contemplated as at all a justifiable one. Again, he considered that it would be completely beneath him to be jealous of Lord Bellefield. If Annie were able to love such a character, she was unworthy _his_ affection. Lastly, although he was himself scarcely aware of the feeling, and although a personal meeting with the object of his hatred, a contemptuous word or insolent look, would in a moment have conquered it, he felt a natural repugnance to take any step which might necessitate shedding a fellow-mortal’s blood. To plan a duel _à l’outrance_ as a distant possibility was one thing, to take measures coolly and deliberately to bring about such an event immediately was quite another affair. So catching at the only _grey_ spot among the blackness that surrounded him, he consoled himself with the reflection that, as Annie would not be of age till the expiration of between two and three years, he might during that period contrive to learn how far her heart was likely to go with her hand in the proposed alliance, and to regulate his conduct accordingly. Shaping his plans for the present in accordance with this resolve, he wrote sundry letters (one to General Grant respectfully declining his present) more or less coherently, and then going to bed in the frame of mind of one who

“Dotes yet doubts, suspects yet fondly loves,”

must have been singularly fortunate if he enjoyed a very good night’s sleep.

We must now take a retrospective glance at Broadhurst during the short space that had elapsed since Lewis quitted it, and learn how events, which caused him such bitter grief, have been brought about.

’Tis the night of Lewis’s departure, and Annie Grant sits at her open window gazing pensively at the moon, which moon, by the way, was at that identical moment lighting the old abbey and shining on her lover’s throbbing brow, as he stood thinking of her beside the ruined altar. Now Annie was by no means in a comfortable frame of mind; in the first place, she began more than to suspect that she was falling deeply in love, and in the second, “the thing she loved” had not exactly “died,” but what was quite as inconvenient and much more inexplicable, had suddenly “conveyed itself away” without telling her why or wherefore. Lewis and Walter had of late been in the habit of spending their evenings in the drawing-room, General Grant considering that it was desirable to accustom the latter to the forms and habits of society, but on that evening they had not made their appearance as usual; Annie had inquired of her aunt the reason of their absence. Miss Livingstone, looking like a very vicious old owl, replied “that really _she_ was the last person likely to know. General Grant was doubtless well informed on the subject, but he was always strangely, and as she thought, most unnecessarily reserved; she believed Mr. Arundel had been driven to resign his situation, and she was not at all surprised; she did not know who that could avoid it would reside in a family ordered about like a regiment of dragoons; she dared say Lord Bellefield had some broken-down blackleg ready to recommend as tutor to teach Walter gambling and horse-racing. Would Annie oblige her by looking under the sofa? she thought she saw the shadow of a man’s foot against the chimney-piece; she expected they should all be murdered in their beds of a night, now the only person able to defend them was driven away. Would Annie oblige her by ringing the bell? she wished to ascertain whether Robert had remembered to load the percussion cap of his blunderbuss.” Foiled in this quarter, Annie waited till Lord Bellefield was so obliging as to stroll out in pursuit of a cigar, “smoking under difficulties” being one of his most severe trials during a visit at Broadhurst. When he was gone she attacked her father with a direct inquiry as to what had become of Walter and Mr. Arundel?

“Walter was in his own study, Mr. Arundel was absent,” was the reply.

“Absent,” returned Annie; “why, where is he gone, papa?”

“I did not inquire Mr. Arundel’s intended route, my dear; his age and character render him fully competent to regulate his own movements,” was the stiff response.

Annie’s lip curled: “Able to regulate his own movements!” she thought him fit to rule a universe.

“When is he coming back, papa?”

“A--ahem! not at present, my dear; that is, in fact, you may consider his absence as permanent. The reasons for his departure which he imparted to me lead me to this conclusion.”

“There, I told you so--I said he had been sent away,” observed Minerva snappishly.

“Madam, you have been misinformed,” interposed the General with much irritation; “Mr. Arundel has not been sent away, he resigned his position as tutor to my ward of his own free will, for reasons which I considered good and sufficient.”

“And what were these wonderful reasons, if one might make so bold as to ask without having one’s nose snapped off one’s face?” inquired Minerva, curiosity and crossness combined overcoming her habitual fear of her august nephew-in-law.

“A--really I am not accustomed to be cross-questioned in this way. A--you, madam, strangely forget our relative pos----; however, I may as well mention once for all that I have Mr. Arundel’s authority for stating that his reasons for quitting Broadhurst are purely of a personal nature. And now I beg this subject may not be alluded to again; I am the last person who should be accused of driving him out of the family;” and having by this time worked himself up into a very considerable passion, in which frame of mind he was, like most other of his fellow-mortals, particularly unreasonable and incautious, he glanced furiously at poor innocent Annie and strode out of the room like an offended autocrat, as he was.

And this agreeable little scene formed the subject of Annie’s reverie, as, with her golden hair hanging like a veil around her, she watched the moonbeams sleeping on the velvet turf. Why had Lewis left them so suddenly?--why, if her father knew the reason, did he refuse to reveal it; and still more strange, why should Lewis so scrupulously have concealed it from her? Then again, her father had appeared angry with her--could he suppose _she_ had had anything to do with the young tutor’s departure? And then an idea struck her which even there, alone, beneath the silent night, caused her face and neck to become suffused by a burning blush--could it be possible that she had betrayed herself, that Lewis had discovered her affection for him? And then she blushed yet more deeply at the plain words in which she had for the first time expressed, even to herself, her heart’s secret yearnings. The idea was painful in the highest degree to a mind of such child-like purity as Annie’s, and yet the more she thought of it the more probable did it appear; it would account for everything that perplexed her. If she really had been so madly imprudent, so utterly deficient in maidenly reserve, as to allow Lewis to perceive the depth of her regard for him, his honourable feeling would instantly oblige him to leave the family, and no doubt her father’s cross-questioning had in some degree elicited from him the truth. Oh! what deep humiliation--regard it in whatever light she would, what bitter, endless misery! Lewis’s calm manner, his gentle, unimpassioned kindness, his late avoidance of her society, since--distracting thought--since he had begun to perceive her regard, his stern resolve, so soon acted upon, to quit the family, all proved that her affection was not returned. Cruel degradation, to love a man who was indifferent to her, and to have allowed him to perceive it. Annie possessed a spice of her father’s haughty disposition, though in general the many essentially feminine points of her character prevented it from appearing; but this was an occasion which called forth every particle of pride in her nature. What could she do to remove the stain (for such in her morbid self-reproach did she consider it) from her? Nothing! Would to heaven she could lie down and die! Her father, too, evidently suspected the truth; Lord Bellefield would probably be the next person to become acquainted with the disgraceful history--and with the recollection of her cousin’s name a new idea flashed across her. Yes, there was a way of escape--a method of silencing every busy tongue! But at what a sacrifice! Could she bring herself to consent to marry Lord Bellefield her object would be at once attained. No, she felt it was impossible. But then, on the other hand, could she bear to labour under the suspicion of loving, without return (there was the bitter sting!), a man beneath her in station?--(she could remember this difference now, when it would only add to her self-torment). Well, fortunately, she was not called on to decide the question at once; she would think more upon the matter: at all events, there was the possibility to fall back upon as a last resource. Then her thoughts reverted to Lewis, the brave, the true, the noble-hearted! She should never see him again; he would achieve greatness--(she felt as sure of _that_ as if she had held in her hand the “Gazette” announcing his acceptance of the Premiership)--and some other would share it with him, while she should be the wife----the alternative was too hateful to contemplate, so she substituted, in her grave. Yes, she should never see him again! And she recalled his image, as on that summer day he had approached the window to summon her to the German lesson, when, as she read of Max Piccolomini, she had realised his appearance in the dark, proud beauty of him who sat beside her. She remembered his joyous, animated look as he bounded across the lawn, his glowing cheek, his bright, sparkling eye, the waving masses of his raven hair, and his eager, happy smile as his glance met hers! Two ideas engrossed her: he did not love her--she should never see him again; and forgetting her pride, her woman’s dignity, even her self-upbraiding, in the intensity of her sorrow, the poor child flung herself on her bed in an agony of tears, and poured forth the bitter desolation of a lonely, breaking heart.

The next morning she pleaded a headache (a heart-ache would have been nearer the truth) as an excuse for breakfasting in her room, and did not make her appearance till it was nearly luncheon time. During that meal the General was unusually dictatorial, not to say fractious, and more than once spoke so harshly to Annie that she had some difficulty in repressing her tears. The meal was above half concluded ere Lord Bellefield, who excused himself by saying he had had some important letters to write, made his appearance. When at last he joined them, he did so apparently in the most amiable frame of mind; he received a reprimand from the General for his want of punctuality with a good-humoured smile, and introduced a carefully veiled compliment into his apology, which greatly tended to soften that gallant veteran’s ill-temper; he interposed with skilful kindness to avert sundry crabbed attacks, aimed by Miss Livingstone at poor Annie, and introduced some interesting topic which drew out the elders, and gave a new and agreeable turn to the conversation; he sympathised with Annie’s headache, for which he invented an equally opportune, plausible, and false excuse, and, in short, he laid himself out to fascinate, and succeeded _à merveille_. Annie felt really grateful to him, for he had come to her rescue at a moment in which kindness and sympathy were peculiarly acceptable to her.

When luncheon was concluded the General requested his daughter’s presence in the library. Poor Annie rose to obey him. A strange, wild idea seized her, that he might be going to refer to Lewis’s departure, perhaps to upbraid her for her share in causing it; and she trembled so violently that her knees almost refused to support her: in a moment Lord Bellefield was at her side.

“Take my arm,” he said kindly; “the effects of your headache have scarcely passed away even yet.” Annie accepted his arm in grateful silence, and in her guileless gentleness of heart accused herself of never before having done proper justice to her cousin’s kindly nature. As they approached the library he detained her.

“Dear Annie,” he said, “it would be affectation on my part to pretend ignorance of the subject on which your father is about to converse with you. The General appears for some cause, which I am unable to divine, especially irritable this morning: do not needlessly oppose him; and should he chance to urge my cause urgently, remember, dear one, how entirely my future happiness is involved in your decision.” As he ceased speaking he opened the library door without giving her an opportunity to reply, then, leading her in, pressed her hand, cast towards her an appealing glance, and turning, quitted the room. Lord Bellefield was a good tactician: for the first time the idea crossed Annie’s mind, “He loves me then,” and contrasting his devotion with Lewis’s supposed indifference, she pitied him. Could she have seen his change of countenance as the door closed upon him she would scarcely have done so; his look was that of some fiend who had compassed the destruction of a human soul, the personification of triumphant malevolence.

The General began his harangue: he informed Annie that she was no longer a child, and so far he was right; but he did not add, as he might have done, had he been as well acquainted with the workings of her mind as we happen to be, that the last twenty-four hours had performed the work of years to effect the change from the thoughtless child to the thinking, feeling woman, for the first time cognisant of those fearful realities, _life_ and _love!_ But if the worthy General said nothing of love, he soon discoursed at great length of (we were about thoughtlessly to add) its usual _termination_, marriage; which institution he looked upon solely in a military point of view--viz., as a solemn alliance between two powers for their mutual benefit. Having given his oratorical powers a good breathing canter around (as he attempted to depict them) the flowery meads of matrimony, he gradually narrowed his circle till he was ambling about his daughter’s proposed union with Lord Bellefield, and having by this time pretty well exhausted his eloquence, he dashed at once _in médias res_ by inquiring whether she knew any just cause or impediment wherefore the engagement, broken off by him on the ground of her cousin’s falsely supposed misconduct, should not there and then be renewed, with a view, at the fitting time, i.e., as soon as she should attain the age of twenty-one, to their becoming man and wife. To this Annie replied with down-cast looks and many blushes, that if her father had no objection, she had made up her mind to live and die an old maid--she was going to add, like Aunt Martha, but, on second thoughts, doubting whether the association of ideas was likely to aid her cause, she repressed the simile. To this the General merely said “Pish!” and took snuff contemptuously: so Annie tried another tack.

“If ever,” she observed, “she were to marry, it must be a great many years hence; she was such a careless, silly little thing, not at all fit to manage a family. Did not papa remember when she went with him and Charles Leicester on their grouse-shooting expedition, and their cottage was fifteen miles from everywhere, how she forgot to take any tea or sugar, and they were obliged to drink whisky-and-water for breakfast for nearly a week?”

But to this papa turned a deaf ear, and showed such unequivocal signs of being about to get into a rage, that Annie in despair fell back upon her last argument, which was that, although her cousin Bellefield was very kind to her, and she had always looked upon him and Charles Leicester as her brothers, yet she did not like him well enough to wish to marry him,--“she was sure it was wicked to marry any one unless you loved him better--than anybody else,” she was going to say, but she changed it to, “than she loved Adolphus.” Thereupon the General’s anger, scarcely hitherto controlled, burst forth, and he informed her, with great volubility, that she had spoken the truth when she had called herself silly; for that her whole argument was so childish and absurd that he was perfectly ashamed of it and of her; and that if she chose to talk and act so childishly, she must expect to be treated as a child, and submit to the decision of those who were older and wiser than herself--that he would give her five minutes to reconsider the matter; and if she then refused to consent to a renewal of the engagement, he should begin to fear that she must have had some unworthy reason for such continued obstinacy. And as he uttered the last cruel words he fixed his little sharp eyes upon her as if he were trying to look her through and through. For a moment his reproach roused somewhat of his own spirit in his daughter; and drawing herself up proudly, the girl confronted him with flashing eyes and heaving bosom, and then, poor child! the consciousness of her secret attachment rushed upon her, and with streaming eyes she threw herself at his feet, exclaiming, “I am very foolish--very wicked. Dearest papa, forgive me, and I will do whatever you wish!”

And thus it came about that the engagement with Lord Bellefield was so speedily renewed.