CHAPTER LII.--VINDICATES THE APHORISM THAT “’TIS AN ILL WIND WHICH

BLOWS NO ONE ANY GOOD.”

Richard Frere sat at his breakfast-table; before him stood an egg untasted, which, having once been hot, was so no longer, whilst a cup of coffee, that had undergone the same refrigerating process, threw out its fragrance unregarded. In his hand was an opened letter: we will take the liberty of peeping over his shoulder and making our readers acquainted with its contents. They ran thus:--

“Dear Frere,--I have quitted Broadhurst for ever, and broken off all connection between General Grant and myself. _Why_ I have done this I cannot at present tell you; years hence, when time shall have seared wounds which now bleed at the slightest touch of memory, you shall know all. I have suffered, and must suffer, much; but suffering appears identical with existence--at least, in this present phase of being. I am ill in mind and body; the restless spirit within is at length beginning to tell upon even my iron constitution. The mind must have rest if I would continue sane, the body must be braced by exertion if I wish not to degenerate into a mere nervous hypochondriac. Accordingly, when you receive this letter I shall have quitted England. My project--if such vague ideas as mine deserve the title--embraces a walking tour through Europe, which may possibly be extended to Syria and Persia, should my object not be previously attained. At my banker’s lies the sum of £500, the wages (minus the little my travelling expenses will require) of my two years’ slavery; before that is exhausted fresh funds will be placed at the disposal of my mother and sister, or I shall be dead; in either case I leave my family as a sacred deposit to your care. Dear old Frere, do not judge me harshly. I am not (if I know my own motives) acting with selfish rashness in this matter. My whole being, intellectual and physical, has received a fearful shock, and the course I propose to pursue appears to offer the only chance of a restoration to a healthy frame of mind. I could not do this did I not know that in you my mother and Rose will find a more efficient protector than the one they will lose for a season; I could not do this did I not love you so well as to have perfect faith in your friendship in the very highest sense of the word. Enough on this head--we _know_ each other. In the unlikely event of pecuniary difficulty arising, apply to Mr. Coke, the solicitor, in Lincoln’s Inn. He has my directions also in case of any accident befalling me, and from time to time he will be informed of my whereabouts, as for at least the next year I shall not write to any of you--it is my wish to forget that such a country as England exists. I enclose a note for poor Rose: may I ask you to deliver it in person, and break this matter to her and my mother? As yet they are not even aware that I have quitted Broadhurst. God bless you, and good-bye for----; but we will not pry into the future--‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof:’

“Yours ever, Lewis Arundel.”

This letter Frere read carefully through; having done so, he ejaculated “Well!” in a tone of the utmost astonishment; then pushing his hair back from his forehead, as if he sought to give his intellectual powers freer play, he steadily reperused it, but apparently with little better success, for when he had a second time arrived at the signature, he gazed round the room with an expression of the most intense perplexity, exclaiming, “I never read such a letter, _never!_”

Spreading the paper before him, he carefully turned up his wristbands, seized a silver butter-knife, which in his abstraction he conceived to be a pen, felt the point to see if it would write, dipped it into the milk by way of ink, and thus prepared, again attacked the mysterious document sentence by sentence, keeping up during this third reading a running fire of comments somewhat after the following fashion--

“Hum! well! he’s left Broadhurst for ever, etc., etc., and he can’t tell me why now, but will years hence--when he has forgotten all the minute particulars which would make the affair intelligible, I suppose; sensible, very. Thrown away three hundred pounds a year, with a mother and sister depending upon him, and ‘no future prospects,’ as they say in all the ‘shocking destitution’ advertisements. Oh, wise young judge! Well, never mind. ‘Seared wounds--existence identical with suffering--restless spirit affecting iron constitution’--_cum multis allis_, etc. Now, all that clone into plain English means that he has got into a rampant state of mind about something, which, interfering with the gastric juices and all the other corporeal chemicals, has put his digestion out of sorts; _ergo_, in order to repair damages he has started on a continental walking-tour: might have done worse; the exercise will settle the dyspepsia in double-quick time; I’m doctor enough to know that. Then he leaves five hundred pounds to support one mother and sister till further notice, or till I receive intelligence of his untimely decease. In the meantime he very obligingly commits the live stock aforesaid to my care, as a sacred deposit; thus, without being allowed as much as even a voice in the matter, I suddenly find myself _plus_ a mother and sister--more peculiar than pleasant, eh? Well, never mind. Then he asserts the truism that he could not do this without faith in my friendship, mentioning the unnecessary fact that we know each other Next comes a very funny idea: if the money runs short, I’m to apply to a _lawyer_ of all people in the world. Now, in my innocence I should have fancied just the reverse, and that if we had been burdened with more cash than we knew what to do with, the lawyer would have been the boy to help us through the difficulty! Well, one lives and learns--what have we next? Oh! my young friend wishes to forget the existence of--England! nothing more--wishes to forget the existence of his own glorious country! The boy’s as mad as a March hare. Then he very coolly hands over to me the pleasant task of breaking the news of his most uncomfortable conduct to his left-off mother and sister; and for the prospective performance of all this toil and trouble he benevolently blesses me, and adducing a text of Scripture, which applies much more to my case than to his own, concludes.

“Well, I should just like anybody to explain to me the meaning of that letter; for as to making out either what he has done, or what he is going to do, from that document, I’d defy Odipus himself to accomplish it. Now, let me see what is the first article in my little list of commissions: enlightening our mother and sister, I suppose; and a very hazy style of illumination I expect it will be, unless sister’s note. should happen to throw some brightness on the matter. ‘Poor Rose!’ He may well say poor! Why, she dotes on him--actually dotes on him. I’d give anything in the world to have her--that is, to have a sister love me as that girl loves him. I know she will be miserable; I’m certain of it;” and sticking the butter-knife behind his ear, a place in which he still retained the school-boy habit of putting his pen, Frere rose from his seat, and resuming his soliloquy, began to pace the room with hasty strides.

“What can have induced the boy to throw up his appointment in this insane fashion I can’t conceive. If it were any one else, I should fancy he had misconducted himself, and that the rhapsodical letter was merely an excuse for avoiding a plain statement of a disgraceful truth; but there’s something about Lewis Arundel which makes one certain he’d never commit a small sin or conceal a large one. If he had murdered that scamp Bellefield in a duel, he would have mentioned it directly. Perhaps old Grant has insulted his dignity; _Arcades ambo_, they’re a peppery pair; ‘high stomached are they both, and full of ire.’ The elder gentleman has a double claim, literal and metaphorical, to the quotation, if I remember his build rightly. Poor Lewis! I expect he is in a dreadful state of mind; I should feel very sorry for him if I were not so angry with him for bothering Rose in this way. Well, I must think about starting; no science shop for me to-day, or to-morrow either. By the bye, I must ring for Jemima, and enlighten her as to my movements, and she’ll be as cantankerous as a bilious crocodile, I expect. However, it must be done, so here goes;” and giving the bell a very modest pull, he dropped into his reading-chair awaiting the arrival of his acidulated domestic with a singularly mild, not to say timid expression of countenance.

“Oh, Jemima, I rang--that is to say, the bell rang--to tell you I am obliged to go out of town to-day, and shall not return till tomorrow evening at the earliest,” began Frere in an apologetic tone of voice, as his ancient duenna, puffing and blowing from the ascent of the staircase, entered.

As he spoke, the positively cross expression of her antique features advanced a degree, and became comparatively crosser as she replied with a toss of the head--

“Well, I’m sure! what next, I wonder!” Then addressing her master in a tone of withering contempt, she continued: “Do you know what it is you’re a sayin’ of, Master Richard?”

“Well, I believe I do,” returned Frere humbly.

“I believe you don’t,” was the unceremonious rejoinder. “I believe you go on reading them foreign books in heathen Greek till you don’t know what you’re a saying or a doing of; here you tell me one thing one day, and something diametrically contradictious of it the next, till old Nick his blessed self wouldn’t know how to act to please you!”

“Why, what have I said contradictious, as you call it?” inquired Frere.

“What have you said?” repeated Jemima in a tone of intense disgust; “why you’ve told me to get ready a dinner for six this here very day, and now you say you’re a going out of town, and won’t be back till to-morrow night. Do you call that behaving as a master of a house ought to do, let alone a sanatory Christian?”

“A true bill, by all that’s unlucky!” muttered Frere.

“It’s a true bill that you’ll have to pay for as fine a couple of chickens as ever was trussed, which is now cast away before swine, for as to ’em keeping till the day after to-morrow, it’s a model impossibilitude.”

“I should rather have thought a physical one,” suggested Frere _sotto voce_.

“Then there’s a tongue,” continued Jemima, unheeding the interruption, “as beautiful a one as ever I set my two eyes on.”

“I wonder if it’s as long as her own,” observed Frere, speculatively pursuing the under-current of his private annotations.

“A tongue that with care and good carving would have lasted you for breakfast for a fortnight.”

“Then it would not have gone by any means as fast as a certain unruly member with which I am acquainted,” continued the commentator.

“Together with a lovely turbot, which I almost had to go down on my bended knees to get out of the fishmonger--turbots being like pearls of price at this time of year, with three dozen of natives, which was astonished not to be able to procure, so was forced to put up with lobster sauce instead, and a beauty it is now, though it will be _non compo scenlis_ by the day after to-morrow, and fit only to make people sick in the dusthole, where it’s a sin to let it go, with so many poor starving creatures a-wanting it, which was not the case when your blessed mother was upon the face of the earth, in a violent satin gownd, a setting you moral copies ‘A woeful waist makes wilful want,’ and ‘My name is Norval, on the Grumpy Hills,’ which ought to have taught you better than to have asked five gents to come here, looking like fools, and yourself the sixth, gone out of town, leaving me to tell ’em so, with the house full of good things all turning bad, and nobody but me to eat ’em, which is a hard trial for an aged woman, that, taking you from the month, ought to be respected, if grey hairs is honourable, which they don’t seem to be nowadays, when we have got a bad lot of wigs over our heads, with half of ’em nothing in ’em but crimped horsehair, I do believe.”

Here the worthy woman’s breath failing her, Frere was at length able to get in a word or two.

“My good Jemima,” he began blandly, “listen to me. When I invited my friends and ordered a dinner, I was of course not aware that I should be suddenly called upon to leave town; such being the case, however, we must make the best of it. I will, therefore, despatch notes to the gentlemen who were to have been my guests, putting them off; and in regard to the comestibles, such as from their animal fabric require cooking must be cooked, and we must endeavour to consume them in detail at--at our earliest convenience. Now have I slain your Hydra, my good Jemima?”

“I don’t understand your gibberish, Master Richard, nor don’t want to. My poor dear mistress, which piously departed this moral life in a mahogany coffin and silver nails, didn’t used to talk so, though she’d been brought up at boarding-school with the best of pastors and masters to honour and obey; but this I know, that the blessed dinner will go to rack and ruin in spite of all your cooking retail combustibles, and that puts me in mind, what have you been doing with your breakfast? why, goodness gracious! he’s never touched a bit of it, and” (here she caught sight of the butter-knife), “Oh lor, oh lor! if he ain’t gone clean demented. What’s the matter?” she continued, as Frere, astonished at her unusual vehemence, sought to learn the cause of her disquietude; “what’s the matter, indeed? Look in the glass, and if you’re fit for any place but Bedlam you’ll soon see what’s the matter.”

Thus apostrophised, Frere turned his eyes in the unwonted direction of the chimney-glass, and there descrying the butter-knife behind his ear, was somewhat disconcerted; and muttering that it must have got there by accident, of its own accord, instead of a pen, he felt that his position was quite untenable, and so, retreating ignominiously to the stronghold of his own bedroom, he busied himself in preparation for his departure, actually going the length of shaving himself and putting on a decent suit of clothes. Another half-hour saw him on the road to----.

It was on the afternoon of the same day that Rose Arundel sat at the window of their little drawing-room sketching the tower of an old church, which peeped prettily from amid a luxuriant group of giant elms. Mrs. Arundel had gone in a friend’s carriage to execute a host of minor commissions at a neighbouring town, and Rose, having written part of her quota for the next month’s magazine, was rewarding her industry by endeavouring to catch a peculiar effect of sunlight on the tower aforesaid. Having worked with brush and pencil for some minutes, she paused to criticise her drawing. It was a faithful copy of the landscape before her nicely executed, but she shook her head in dissatisfaction.

“It is laboured and tame,” she said; “half-a-dozen touches from Lewis’s pencil would have given the effect twice as well. What a strange thing is the power of genius, the hand creating at a stroke the brilliant conceptions of the mind!” and then she drew out some of her brother’s sketches in Germany: bold, free, spirited, and marked by refined, severe taste, skilled alike to select the telling points and reject the commonplace details, save where such details were required to assist in carrying out the leading idea, they all bore indisputable evidence of a true artist-mind.

From the sketches Rose grew to think of him who had traced them. She had not heard from Lewis for quite three weeks; his last letter had indicated a mind ill at ease, and Rose had written to him to entreat him to confide in her, if, as she feared, he was unhappy. Why did he not reply to her letter? Answering her question with a sigh, she turned again, pencil in hand, to the window, and perceived a gentleman advancing rapidly along the road leading to their cottage. For a moment her pulse beat quickly: could it be her brother? but Lewis’s was a figure not easily to be mistaken, and a second glance convinced her she was wrong; and then she gave a little start, and a bright blush made her look so pretty that it was quite a shame nobody was there to see her; had there been, perhaps she would not have turned to the glass, and still blushing and smiling, smoothed the glossy bands of her rich brown hair. Why she performed this ceremony at this particular moment we leave our female readers to discover, and having done so, of their courtesy to enlighten us. Then, like a puritanical little hypocrite as she was, she reseated herself at her drawing-table, sketching away as zealously as if the results of _fixature_ and _bandcline_ had been as little known to the philosophy of the nineteenth century as is the secret of alchemy.

In another minute the full, rich tones of a man’s voice were heard, bearing down the shrill expostulations of Rachel--

“Never mind about your mistress, young woman; where’s Miss Rose?”

“Upstairs, sir; but----”

“There, that’ll do, ‘but me no buts;’ let me get by; which is the door?--here we are.”

And as he uttered the last words, Frere, tired and dusty, with a carpet bag and a parcel of books in one hand, and his hat and _the_ umbrella in the other, entered the little drawing-room. Rose advanced to receive him with a bright smile.

“This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Frere,” she said, extending her hand. Frere shook it heartily, squeezing it in the process much harder than was agreeable.

“Why, how prett--a--I mean to say how well you are looking,” he began. “Country air suits you better than the pea-soup-coloured atmosphere of London.”

So unable did he appear to remove his eyes from her face, that, in spite of her best endeavours, the becoming blush again overspread her features; turning away as if for the purpose of arranging her drawing materials, she observed--

“Mamma is taking a drive with a friend; I’m afraid she won’t return just yet.”

“So much the better,” began Frere; then perceiving the rudeness of the remark, he continued, “what I mean is that I want to talk to you about a letter I’ve received from Lewis, and I can get on better with you than with mamma, I expect. You and I understand each other, you see; now Mrs. Arundel thinks I’m a bear or thereabouts, and fit for nothing but growling and biting.”

“Perhaps I think the same,” remarked Rose, smiling at this unexpected proof of his penetration; “but you spoke of a letter from Lewis; I’m so glad he has written to you, for it’s three weeks since I’ve heard from him. You are looking grave,” she added hurriedly; then becoming suddenly alarmed, she continued: “Something has happened to him, and you have come to break it to us--is it not so?”

Frere regarded her with a good-natured smile, half laughing at, half pitying her; then holding up his finger, as if he were rebuking an impetuous child, he said--

“How thoroughly woman-like and unreasonable, jumping to a conclusion without any sufficient data to go upon; selecting the most dolorous hypothesis imaginable, and then preparing to afflict yourself at sight of the phantom your own fancy has conjured up; now,” he continued, taking her hand and half leading, half urging her to the sofa--“sit down, listen quietly to what I have to tell you--think the matter over with your usual good sense--and then we’ll consult together as to the best course to pursue; and if anything useful and expedient can be devised, rely upon me to execute it.”

Pale and trembling, but in every other respect collected, Rose obeyed. As soon as she was seated Frere placed himself by her side, and drawing out Lewis’s letter, said--

“Your brother has left Broadhurst and thrown up his tutorship; his reasons for so doing he has not explained to me; but as he evidently wrote in a state of considerable mental agitation, that may account for the omission. Moreover, he promises to tell me all at some future time: he sends also a note for you, which may perhaps throw more light upon the matter. Here it is.”

So saying, he produced the enclosure, and breaking the seal, handed it to Rose. It ran as follows:--

“Do not fancy me unkind, dearest Rose, or insensible to the blessing (almost the only one now left me) of your affection, when at this miserable crisis of my fate I deny myself the consolation of your sympathy: I say, deny myself, for wretched as I am, torn as is my soul by the blackest unbelief in the existence of human truth and goodness, I yet know you to be good and true, and love you more entirely than I have ever done. Frere will tell you that I am even now, as you read these words, upon a foreign soil; the length of my self-imposed exile is as yet unfixed, but many months must elapse ere I shall again visit England. Had I come to you, I could not have withheld my confidence; your sympathy would have utterly unmanned me; I should have lost the little strength and self-reliance remaining to me, and have totally succumbed to the blow that has fallen upon me. Rose, love, at times I fancied, when you were staying in Park Crescent, that you divined my secret! The struggle was then going on, and I dreamed in my folly that self-conquest was attainable; thus madly have I accomplished the ruin of my happiness. I have quitted Broad-hurst by my own act--fled to preserve my honour; that and an aching heart are all that remain to me. I trust to you and Frere to communicate this matter to my mother: of course, should you from my broken hints divine the truth, you would never dream of imparting it to her; a thousand reasons forbid it. In regard to Frere, I leave you to judge; he is trustworthy as yourself. If he smile at my folly in loving so poor a thing as he holds woman to be, his kind heart will sympathise with my wretchedness, even if my own weakness has produced it. I have entrusted him to pay my mother the usual yearly allowance, and placed funds at his disposal to enable him to do so. While I live, she and you shall never know greater poverty than you endure at present. I go to regain, in foreign travel, the vigour of mind and body which this blow has well-nigh paralysed. Thank God in your prayers that he has spared my reason, and left me strength to make this effort: may he watch over you both! In all difficulties apply to Richard Frere. Good-bye, dearest; forgive me the sorrow I occasion you; it seems as though I were fated alike to suffer myself and to cause suffering to all I love.--Yours ever affectionately, Lewis.”

Rose perused her brother’s letter eagerly; as she proceeded her bright eyes filled with tears. Frere waited until she had concluded, and then, without speaking, handed her the epistle he himself had received. When she had also finished this, he inquired, “Well, what do you make of it--anything?”

Rose turned away her head, and drying her eyes, replied with a deep sigh, “Poor fellow, it is only too clear!”

“That’s just about the very last remark now that I should have expected any one to utter, after having read that letter. What a thing it is to be clever!” observed Frere.

Without noticing his observation, Rose placed in his hand Lewis’s letter to herself. Frere read it with a gradually elongating countenance merely pausing to mutter, “Much he knows about my opinion of women.”

Having finished it, he refolded it carefully, and handing it back to Rose, began, “This enlightens us in some degree as to the matter; Lewis has, it seems, fallen in love as they call it, disastrously, with some party unknown.”

“Oh, you cannot doubt to whom he refers,” exclaimed Rose earnestly. “It is this to which my fears have pointed ever since I first beheld her; thrown into constant communication with such a creature, one fitted----”

“Why you don’t mean to say he’s fallen in love with Miss Livingstone?” interrupted Frere, looking the very picture of astonishment.

“This is scarcely a subject on which it is kind to jest, Mr. Frere,” rejoined Rose almost sternly; “of course I refer to that gentle, lovely, fascinating Annie Grant.”

“I do assure you I was perfectly serious,” returned Frere hastily. “I wouldn’t joke about anything that makes you unhappy, if my life depended upon it; but I never dreamed of its being Annie Grant; why, she’s engaged to her unpleasant cousin, Lord Bellefield.”

“I thought the engagement was broken off,” observed Rose.

“Ay, but it’s on again,” resumed Frere. “I met a man yesterday who is one of Bellefield’s intimates, and he told me that his lordship was staying at Broadhurst--that he has made up his feud with the General, and that the engagement has been, formally renewed.”

“Now, then, I see it all,” exclaimed Rose. “Poor Lewis has been long struggling against a deep attachment for that sweet Annie, whom none could know without loving; nourishing, perhaps half-unconsciously, a secret hope that she was not wholly indifferent to him--a hope which to an honourable mind like his must have brought more pain than pleasure. And now this renewal of the engagement must have proved to him how entirely he was mistaken; and unable to witness his rival’s triumph, he has, as he tells me, fled the spot where each kind word from Annie, and every haughty glance from Lord Bellefield, would have been like a dagger to his heart. No wonder the mental conflict has nearly maddened him--my poor, poor Lewis!”

Preoccupied by her sympathy for her brother’s sorrow, Rose did not observe the effect her words had produced upon Frere; nor was it till he spoke in a low, deep voice, which trembled with suppressed feeling, that she observed his emotion.

“Ay,” he said, more as if communing with his own spirit than as though he were addressing her, “Ay, it must be a hard thing to love with all the depth of such a passionate nature as Lewis’s one who is indifferent to him; but it is a more bitter thing still to see the long years gliding by, and to pass from boyhood to youth, from youth to manhood, and to find middle age stealing quickly upon you, and never to have had any human being to love you--never to have found any heart on which you might pour out those riches of affection which every generous nature pants to bestow.” He paused--then, as the recollections he had excited seemed to crowd upon him, continued, “Oh, the bitter tears I have shed when, scarcely more than a child, I have wept to hear other boys tell of happy homes, and a mother’s love, and the affection of brothers and sisters; then came the silent but more enduring sorrow of youth, when tears can no longer form a vent for the heart’s isolation, and the restless spirit preys upon itself; and last, the struggle of maturer manhood, which in its meridian strength contends against the sorrows of its weaker morning, and strives to live down the fruitless longing for that affection which it cannot attain, and conquering all but the one abiding grief, remains to own itself still lonely-hearted, and sees its only hope of comfort in the grave. Ay, this is grief which the help of God alone can enable one to endure.”

The deep feeling, the simple, manly pathos with which he spoke were more than Rose or any true woman could hear unmoved. Laying her hand on his to attract his attention, she said in a sweet, gentle voice, “Indeed, Mr. Frere, you do your friends injustice. Lewis loves you as a brother; my dear father had the warmest affection for you, and often said that if Lewis did but resemble you, if he proved as high-principled, as kind-hearted, and as persevering, his dearest wishes would be fulfilled: even I myself----” she paused, glancing timidly at her companion; but as he remained with his hand pressed upon his brow, apparently buried in abstraction, she gathered courage, and continued--

“Even I feel that in you God has given me a second brother, and that I should be most ungrateful, most unworthy such disinterested kindness as you have invariably shown me, did I not feel the warmest esteem and--and--gratitude----”

And here, suddenly becoming aware that Frere’s beautiful eyes were fixed upon her with the same peculiar expression of delight which she had once before observed in them, on the occasion of his telling her how he had convinced Rasper the irascible of the evil of duelling, poor Rose’s eloquence failed her, and she became abruptly silent. Frere paused for a moment, and then with a forced calmness which scarcely veiled the depth of his emotion, said--

“Dear Rose, forgive me if I am about to cause you pain; but your kindness has afforded me a vision of such exquisite happiness that it would be a source of endless self-reproach to me if through any reserve on my part I failed to realise it. Rose, you cannot be my sister, but you can, if you will, hold a far dearer title--you can become my honoured wife. I have loved you long, although it was my sorrow at your departure from London which first opened my eyes to the nature of my feelings. Since then my sense of my own unworthiness to aspire to the joy of possessing such an angel has alone kept me silent. Rose, I know my own presumption in thus addressing you; I am aware only too painfully of my own uncouthness, my deficiency in all the polished conventionalities of life; but if the deepest, tenderest devotion of a heart which has pined through a lifetime for some object on which to pour forth its treasure of love can make you happy; if you think that in time you could in some degree return my affection----”

“Oh, hush, hush!” interrupted Rose, in a broken, faltering voice; “I cannot bear to hear you speak thus! If, good and noble as you are, my love can indeed make you happier-”

She could not conclude her sentence, but Frere seemed perfectly satisfied with the fragment as it stood.

The result of the interview may best be gathered from the following remark of Mrs. Arundel, who, returning home about an hour after the occurrence of the conversation above related, declared that when she came in “she found to her horror and astonishment _Ursa Major_ looking as if he would like to hug Rose, and, stranger still, Rose appearing rather flattered by the attention than otherwise.”