CHAPTER XXVIII.
Live while ye may, yet happy pair; enjoy
Short pleasures, for long woes are to succeed.--MILTON.
The autumn and the winter passed away; Mordaunt's relation continued
implacable. Algernon grieved for this, independent of worldly
circumstances; for, though he had seldom seen that relation, yet he
loved him for former kindness--rather promised, to be sure, than yet
shown--with the natural warmth of an affection which has but few
objects. However, the old gentleman (a very short, very fat person;
very short and very fat people, when they are surly, are the devil and
all; for the humours of their mind, like those of their body, have
something corrupt and unpurgeable in them) wrote him one bluff,
contemptuous letter, in a witty strain,--for he was a bit of a
humourist,--disowned his connection, and very shortly afterwards died,
and left all his fortune to the very Mr. Vavasour who was at law with
Mordaunt, and for whom he had always openly expressed the strongest
personal dislike: spite to one relation is a marvellous tie to
another. Meanwhile the lawsuit went on less slowly than lawsuits
usually do, and the final decision was very speedily to be given.
We said the autumn and the winter were gone; and it was in one of
those latter days in March, when, like a hoyden girl subsiding into
dawning womanhood, the rude weather mellows into a softer and tenderer
month, that, by the side of a stream, overshadowed by many a brake and
tree, sat two persons.
"I know not, dearest Algernon," said one, who was a female, "if this
is not almost the sweetest month in the year, because it is the month
of Hope."
"Ay, Isabel; and they did it wrong who called it harsh, and dedicated
it to Mars. I exult even in the fresh winds which hardier frames than
mine shrink from, and I love feeling their wild breath fan my cheek as
I ride against it. I remember," continued Algernon, musingly, "that
on this very day three years ago, I was travelling through Germany,
alone and on horseback, and I paused, not far from Ens, on the banks
of the Danube; the waters of the river were disturbed and fierce, and
the winds came loud and angry against my face, dashing the spray of
the waves upon me, and filling my spirit with a buoyant and glad
delight; and at that time I had been indulging old dreams of poetry,
and had laid my philosophy aside; and, in the inspiration of the
moment, I lifted up my hand towards the quarter whence the winds came,
and questioned them audibly of their birthplace and their bourne; and,
as the enthusiasm increased, I compared them to our human life, which
a moment is, and then is not; and, proceeding from folly to folly, I
asked them, as if they were the interpreters of heaven, for a type and
sign of my future lot."
"And what said they?" inquired Isabel, smiling, yet smiling timidly.
"They answered not," replied Mordaunt; "but a voice within me seemed
to say, 'Look above!' and I raised my eyes,--but I did not see thee,
love,--so the Book of Fate lied."
"Nay, Algernon, what did you see?" asked Isabel, more earnestly than
the question deserved.
"I saw a thin cloud, alone amidst many dense and dark ones scattered
around; and as I gazed it seemed to take the likeness of a funeral
procession--coffin, bearers, priests, all--as clear in the cloud as I
have seen them on the earth: and I shuddered as I saw; but the winds
blew the vapour onwards, and it mingled with the broader masses of
cloud; and then, Isabel, the sun shone forth for a moment, and I
mistook, love, when I said you were not there, for that sun was you;
but suddenly the winds ceased, and the rain came on fast and heavy: so
my romance cooled, and my fever slacked; I thought on the inn at Ens,
and the blessings of a wood fire, which is lighted in a moment, and I
spurred on my horse accordingly."
"It is very strange," said Isabel.
"What, love?" whispered Algernon, kissing her cheek.
"Nothing, dearest, nothing."
At that instant, the deer, which lay waving their lordly antlers to
and fro beneath the avenue which sloped upward from the stream to the
house, rose hurriedly and in confusion, and stood gazing, with
watchful eyes, upon a man advancing towards the pair.
It was one of the servants with a letter. Isabel saw a faint change
(which none else could have seen) in Mordaunt's countenance, as he
recognized the writing and broke the seal. When he had read the
letter, his eyes fell upon the ground, and then, with a slight start,
he lifted them up, and gazed long and eagerly around. Wistfully did
he drink, as it were, into his heart the beautiful and expanded scene
which lay stretched on either side; the noble avenue which his
forefathers had planted as a shelter to their sons, and which now in
its majestic growth and its waving boughs seemed to say, "Lo! ye are
repaid!" and the never silent and silver stream, by which his boyhood
had sat for hours, lulled by its music, and inhaling the fragrance of
the reed and wild flower that decoyed the bee to its glossy banks; and
the deer, to whose melancholy belling be had listened so often in the
gray twilight with a rapt and dreaming ear; and the green fern waving
on the gentle hill, from whose shade his young feet had startled the
hare and the infant fawn; and far and faintly gleaming through the
thick trees, which clasped it as with a girdle, the old Hall, so
associated with vague hopes and musing dreams, and the dim legends of
gone time, and the lofty prejudices of ancestral pride,--all seemed to
sink within him, as he gazed, like the last looks of departing
friends; and when Isabel, who had not dared to break a silence which
partook so strongly of gloom, at length laid her hand upon his arm,
and lifted her dark, deep, tender eyes to his, he said, as he drew her
towards him, and a faint and sickly smile played upon his lips,--
"It is past, Isabel: henceforth we have no wealth but in each other.
The cause has been decided--and--and--we are beggars!"
