CHAPTER X.
Such scenes had tempered with a pensive grace
The maiden lustre of that faultless face;
Had hung a sad and dreamlike spell upon
The gliding music of her silver tone,
And shaded the soft soul which loved to lie
In the deep pathos of that volumed eye.--O'Neill; or, The Rebel.
The love thus kindled between them was of no common or calculating
nature: it was vigorous and delicious, and at times so suddenly
intense as to appear to their young hearts for a moment or so with
almost an awful character.--Inesilla.
The reader will figure to himself a small chamber, in a remote wing of
a large and noble mansion. The walls were covered with sketches whose
extreme delicacy of outline and colouring betrayed the sex of the
artist; a few shelves filled with books supported vases of flowers. A
harp stood neglected at the farther end of the room, and just above
hung the slender prison of one of those golden wanderers from the
Canary Isles which hear to our colder land some of the gentlest music
of their skies and zephyrs. The window, reaching to the ground, was
open, and looked, through the clusters of jessamine and honeysuckle
which surrounded the low veranda, beyond upon thick and frequent
copses of blossoming shrubs, redolent of spring and sparkling in the
sunny tears of a May shower which had only just wept itself away.
Embosomed in these little groves lay plots of flowers, girdled with
turf as green as ever wooed the nightly dances of the fairies; and
afar off, through one artful opening, the eye caught the glittering
wanderings of water, on whose light and smiles the universal happiness
of the young year seemed reflected.
But in that chamber, heedless of all around, and cold to the joy with
which everything else, equally youthful, beautiful, and innocent,
seemed breathing and inspired, sat a very young and lovely female.
Her cheek leaned upon her hand, and large tears flowed fast and
burningly over the small and delicate fingers. The comb that had
confined her tresses lay at her feet, and the high dress which
concealed her swelling breast had been loosened, to give vent to the
suffocating and indignant throbbings which had rebelled against its
cincture; all appeared to announce that bitterness of grief when the
mind, as it were, wreaks its scorn upon the body in its contempt for
external seemings, and to proclaim that the present more subdued and
softened sorrow had only succeeded to a burst far less quiet and
uncontrolled. Woe to those who eat the bread of dependence their
tears are wrung from the inmost sources of the heart.
Isabel St. Leger was the only child of a captain in the army who died
in her infancy; her mother had survived him but a few months; and to
the reluctant care and cold affections of a distant and wealthy
relation of the same name the warm-hearted and penniless orphan was
consigned. Major-General Cornelius St. Leger, whose riches had been
purchased in India at the price of his constitution, was of a temper
as hot as his curries, and he wreaked it the more unsparingly on his
ward, because the superior ill-temper of his maiden sister had
prevented his giving vent to it upon her. That sister, Miss Diana St.
Leger, was a meagre gentlewoman of about six feet high, with a loud
voice and commanding aspect. Long in awe of her brother, she rejoiced
at heart to find some one whom she had such right and reason to make
in awe of herself; and from the age of four to that of seventeen
Isabel suffered every insult and every degradation which could be
inflicted upon her by the tyranny of her two protectors. Her spirit,
however, was far from being broken by the rude shocks it received; on
the contrary, her mind, gentleness itself to the kind, rose
indignantly against the unjust. It was true that the sense of wrong
did not break forth audibly; for, though susceptible, Isabel was meek,
and her pride was concealed by the outward softness and feminacy of
her temper: but she stole away from those who had wounded her heart or
trampled upon its feelings, and nourished with secret but passionate
tears the memory of the harshness or injustice she had endured. Yet
she was not vindictive: her resentment was a noble not a debasing
feeling; once, when she was yet a child, Miss Diana was attacked with
a fever of the most malignant and infectious kind; her brother loved
himself far too well to risk his safety by attending her; the servants
were too happy to wreak their hatred under the pretence of obeying
their fears; they consequently followed the example of their master;
and Miss Diana St. Leger might have gone down to her ancestors
"unwept, unhonoured, and unsung," if Isabel had not volunteered and
enforced her attendance. Hour after hour her fairy form flitted
around the sick-chamber; or sat mute and breathless by the feverish
bed; she had neither fear for contagion nor bitterness for past
oppression; everything vanished beneath the one hope of serving, the
one gratification of feeling herself, in the wide waste of creation,
not utterly without use, as she had been hitherto without friends.
Miss St. Leger recovered. "For your recovery, in the first place,"
said the doctor, "you will thank Heaven; in the second, you will thank
your young relation;" and for several days the convalescent did
overwhelm the happy Isabel with her praises and caresses. But this
change did not last long: the chaste Diana had been too spoiled by the
prosperity of many years for the sickness of a single month to effect
much good in her disposition. Her old habits were soon resumed; and
though it is probable that her heart was in reality softened towards
the poor Isabel, that softening by no means extended to her temper.
In truth, the brother and sister were not without affection for one so
beautiful and good, but they had been torturing slaves all their
lives, and their affection was, and could be, but that of a taskmaster
or a planter.
But Isabel was the only relation who ever appeared within their walls;
and among the guests with whom the luxurious mansion was crowded, she
passed no less for the heiress than the dependant; to her, therefore,
was offered the homage of many lips and hearts, and if her pride was
perpetually galled and her feelings insulted in private, her vanity
(had that equalled her pride and her feelings in its susceptibility)
would in no slight measure have recompensed her in public. Unhappily,
however, her vanity was the least prominent quality she possessed; and
the compliments of mercenary adulation were not more rejected by her
heart than despised by her understanding.
Yet did she bear within her a deep fund of buried tenderness, and a
mine of girlish and enthusiastic romance,--dangerous gifts to one so
situated, which, while they gave to her secret moments of solitude a
powerful but vague attraction, probably only prepared for her future
years the snare which might betray them into error or the delusion
which would colour them with regret.
Among those whom the ostentatious hospitality of General St. Leger
attracted to his house was one of very different character and
pretensions to the rest. Formed to be unpopular with the generality
of men, the very qualities that made him so were those which
principally fascinate the higher description of women of ancient
birth, which rendered still more displeasing the pride and coldness of
his mien; of talents peculiarly framed to attract interest as well as
esteem; of a deep and somewhat morbid melancholy, which, while it
turned from ordinary ties, inclined yearningly towards passionate
affections; of a temper where romance was only concealed from the many
to become more seductive to the few; unsocial, but benevolent;
disliked, but respected; of the austerest demeanour, but of passions
the most fervid, though the most carefully concealed,--this man united
within himself all that repels the common mass of his species, and all
that irresistibly wins and fascinates the rare and romantic few. To
these qualities were added a carriage and bearing of that high and
commanding order which men mistake for arrogance and pretension, and
women overrate in proportion to its contrast to their own. Something
of mystery there was in the commencement of the deep and eventful love
which took place between this person and Isabel, which I have never
been able to learn whatever it was, it seemed to expedite and heighten
the ordinary progress of love; and when in the dim twilight, beneath
the first melancholy smile of the earliest star, their hearts opened
audibly to each other, that confession had been made silently long
since and registered in the inmost recesses of the soul.
But their passion, which began in prosperity, was soon darkened.
Whether he took offence at the haughtiness of Isabel's lover, or
whether he desired to retain about him an object which he could
torment and tyrannize over, no sooner did the General discover the
attachment of his young relation than he peremptorily forbade its
indulgence, and assumed so insolent and overbearing an air towards the
lover that the latter felt he could no longer repeat his visits to or
even continue his acquaintance with the nabob.
To add to these adverse circumstances, a relation of the lover, from
whom his expectations had been large, was so enraged, not only at the
insult his cousin had received, but at the very idea of his forming an
alliance with one in so dependent a situation and connected with such
new blood as Isabel St. Leger, that, with that arrogance which
relations, however distant, think themselves authorized to assume, he
enjoined his cousin, upon pain of forfeiture of favour and fortune, to
renounce all idea of so disparaging an alliance. The one thus
addressed was not of a temper patiently to submit to such threats: he
answered them with disdain; and the breach, so dangerous to his
pecuniary interest, was already begun.
So far had the history of our lover proceeded at the time in which we
have introduced Isabel to the reader, and described to him the chamber
to which, in all her troubles and humiliations, she was accustomed to
fly, as to a sad but still unviolated sanctuary of retreat.
The quiet of this asylum was first broken by a slight rustling among
the leaves; but Isabel's back was turned towards the window, and in
the engrossment of her feelings she heard it not. The thick copse
that darkened the left side of the veranda was pierced, and a man
passed within the covered space, and stood still and silent before the
window, intently gazing upon the figure, which (though the face was
turned from him) betrayed in its proportions that beauty which in his
eyes had neither an equal nor a fault.
The figure of the stranger, though not very tall, was above the
ordinary height, and gracefully rather than robustly formed. He was
dressed in the darkest colours and the simplest fashion, which
rendered yet more striking the nobleness of his mien, as well as the
clear and almost delicate paleness of his complexion; his features
were finely and accurately formed; and had not ill health, long
travel, or severe thought deepened too much the lines of the
countenance, and sharpened its contour, the classic perfection of
those features would have rendered him undeniably and even eminently
handsome. As it was, the paleness and the somewhat worn character of
his face, joined to an expression at first glance rather haughty and
repellent, made him lose in physical what he certainly gained in
intellectual beauty. His eyes were large, deep, and melancholy, and
had the hat which now hung over his brow been removed, it would have
displayed a forehead of remarkable boldness and power.
Altogether, the face was cast in a rare and intellectual mould, and,
if wanting in those more luxuriant attractions common to the age of
the stranger, who could scarcely have attained his twenty-sixth year,
it betokened, at least, that predominance of mind over body which in
some eyes is the most requisite characteristic of masculine beauty.
With a soft and noiseless step, the stranger moved from his station
without the window, and, entering the room, stole towards the spot on
which Isabel was sitting. He leaned over her chair, and his eye
rested upon his own picture, and a letter in his own writing, over
which the tears of the young orphan flowed fast.
A moment more of agitated happiness for one, of unconscious and
continued sadness for the other,--
"'T is past, her lover's at her feet."
And what indeed "was to them the world beside, with all its changes of
time and tide"? Joy, hope, all blissful and bright sensations, lay
mingled, like meeting waters, in one sunny stream of heartfelt and
unfathomable enjoyment; but this passed away, and the remembrance of
bitterness and evil succeeded.
"Oh, Algernon!" said Isabel, in a low voice, "is this your promise?"
"Believe me," said Mordaunt, for it was indeed he, "I have struggled
long with my feelings, but in vain; and for both our sakes, I rejoice
at the conquest they obtained. I listened only to a deceitful
delusion when I imagined I was obeying the dictates of reason. Ah,
dearest, why should we part for the sake of dubious and distant evils,
when the misery of absence is the most certain, the most unceasing
evil we can endure?"
"For your sake, and therefore for mine!" interrupted Isabel,
struggling with her tears. "I am a beggar and an outcast. You must
not link your fate with mine. I could bear, Heaven knows how
willingly, poverty and all its evils for you and with you; but I
cannot bring them upon you."
"Nor will you," said Mordaunt, passionately, as he covered the hand he
held with his burning kisses. "Have I not enough for both of us? It
is my love, not poverty, that I beseech you to share."
"No! Algernon, you cannot deceive me; your own estate will be torn
from you by the law: if you marry me, your cousin will not assist you;
I, you know too well, can command nothing; and I shall see you, for
whom in my fond and bright dreams I have presaged everything great and
exalted, buried in an obscurity from which your talents can never
rise, and suffering the pangs of poverty and dependence and
humiliation like my own; and--and--I--should be the wretch who caused
you all. Never, Algernon, never!--I love you too--too well!"
But the effort which wrung forth the determination of the tone in
which these words were uttered was too violent to endure; and, as the
full desolation of her despair crowded fast and dark upon the orphan's
mind, she sank back upon her chair in very sickness of soul, nor
heeded, in her unconsious misery, that her hand was yet clasped by her
lover and that her head drooped upon his bosom.
"Isabel," he said, in a low, sweet tone, which to her ear seemed the
concentration of all earthly music,--"Isabel, look up,--my own, my
beloved,--look up and hear me. Perhaps you say truly when you tell me
that the possessions of my house shall melt away from me, and that my
relation will not offer to me the precarious bounty which, even if he
did offer, I would reject; but, dearest, are there not a thousand
paths open to me,--the law, the state, the army?--you are silent,
Isabel,--speak!"
Isabel did not reply, but the soft eyes which rested upon his told, in
their despondency, how little her reason was satisfied by the
arguments he urged.
"Besides," he continued, "we know not yet whether the law may not
decide in my favour: at all events years may pass before the judgment
is given; those years make the prime and verdure of our lives; let us
not waste them in mourning over blighted hopes and severed hearts; let
us snatch what happiness is yet in our power, nor anticipate, while
the heavens are still bright above us, the burden of the thunder or
the cloud."
Isabel was one of the least selfish and most devoted of human beings,
yet she must be forgiven if at that moment her resolution faltered,
and the overpowering thought of being in reality his forever flashed
upon her mind. It passed from her the moment it was formed; and,
rising from a situation in which the touch of that dear hand and the
breath of those wooing lips endangered the virtue and weakened the
strength of her resolves, she withdrew herself from his grasp, and
while she averted her eyes, which dared not encounter his, she said in
a low but firm voice,--
"It is in vain, Algernon; it is in vain. I can be to you nothing but
a blight or burden, nothing but a source of privation and anguish.
Think you that I will be this?--no, I will not darken your fair hopes
and impede your reasonable ambition. Go (and here her voice faltered
for a moment, but soon recovered its tone), go, Algernon, dear
Algernon; and if my foolish heart will not ask you to think of me no
more, I can at least implore you to think of me only as one who would
die rather than cost you a moment of that poverty and debasement, the
bitterness of which she has felt herself, and who for that very reason
tears herself away from you forever."
"Stay, Isabel, stay!" cried Mordaunt, as he caught hold of her robe,
"give me but one word more, and you shall leave me. Say that if I can
create for myself a new source of independence; if I can carve out a
road where the ambition you erroneously impute to me can be gratified,
as well as the more moderate wishes our station has made natural to us
to form,--say, that if I do this, I may permit myself to hope,--say,
that when I have done it, I may claim you as my own!"
Isabel paused, and turned once more her face towards his own. Her
lips moved, and though the words died within her heart, yet Mordaunt
read well their import in the blushing cheek and the heaving bosom,
and the lips which one ray of hope and comfort was sufficient to
kindle into smiles. He gazed, and all obstacles, all difficulties,
disappeared; the gulf of time seemed passed, and he felt as if already
he had earned and won his reward.
He approached her yet nearer; one kiss on those lips, one pressure of
that thrilling hand, one long, last embrace of that shrinking and
trembling form,--and then, as the door closed upon his view, he felt
that the sunshine of Nature had passed away, and that in the midst of
the laughing and peopled earth he stood in darkness and alone.
