CHAPTER LVIII.
For ours was not like earthly love.
And must this parting be our very last?
No! I shall love thee still when death itself is past.
. . . . . .
Hush'd were his Gertrude's lips! but still their bland
And beautiful expression seem'd to melt
With love that could not die! and still his hand
She presses to the heart, no more that felt.
Ah, heart! where once each fond affection dwelt.
CAMPBELL.
"I wonder," said Mr. Brown to himself, as he spurred his shaggy pony
to a speed very unusual to the steady habits of either party, "I wonder
where I shall find him. I would not for the late Lady Waddilove's
best diamond cross have any body forestall me in the news. To think
of my young master dying so soon after my last visit, or rather my
last visit but one; and to think of the old gentleman taking on so,
and raving about his injustice to the rightful possessor, and saying
that he is justly punished, and asking me so eagerly if I could
discover the retreat of the late squire, and believing me so
implicitly when I undertook to do it, and giving me this letter!" And
here Mr. Brown wistfully examined an epistle sealed with black wax,
peeping into the corners, which irritated rather than satisfied his
curiosity. "I wonder what the old gentleman says in it; I suppose he
will, of course, give up the estate and house. Let me see; that long
picture gallery, just built, will, at all events, want furnishing.
That would be a famous opportunity to get rid of the Indian jars, and
the sofas, and the great Turkey carpet. How lucky that I should just
have come in time to get the letter. But let me consider how I shall
find out?--an advertisement in the paper? Ah! that's the plan.
'Algernon Mordaunt, Esq.: something greatly to his advantage; apply to
Mr. Brown, etc.' Ah! that will do well, very well. The Turkey carpet
won't be quite long enough. I wish I had discovered Mr. Mordaunt's
address before, and lent him some money during the young gentleman's
life: it would have seemed more generous. However, I can offer it
now, before I show the letter. Bless me, it's getting dark. Come,
Dobbin, ye-up!" Such were the meditations of the faithful friend of
the late Lady Waddilove, as he hastened to London, charged with the
task of discovering Mordaunt and with the delivery of the following
epistle:--
You are now, sir, the heir to that property which, some years ago,
passed from your hands into mine. My son, for whom alone wealth or I
may say life was valuable to me, is no more. I only, an old,
childless man, stand between you and the estates of Mordaunt. Do not
wait for my death to enjoy them. I cannot live here, where everything
reminds me of my great and irreparable loss. I shall remove next
month into another home. Consider this, then, as once more yours.
The house, I believe, you will not find disimproved by my alterations:
the mortgages on the estate have been paid off; the former rental you
will perhaps allow my steward to account to you for, and after my
death the present one will be yours. I am informed that you are a
proud man, and not likely to receive favours. Be it so, sir! it is no
favour you will receive, but justice; there are circumstances
connected with my treaty with your father which have of late vexed my
conscience; and conscience, sir, must be satisfied at any loss. But
we shall meet, perhaps, and talk over the past; at present I will not
enlarge on it. If you have suffered by me, I am sufficiently
punished, and my only hope is to repair your losses.
I am, etc., H. VAVASOUR MORDAUNT.
Such was the letter, so important to Mordaunt, with which our worthy
friend was charged. Bowed to the dust as Vavasour was by the loss of
his son, and open to conscience as affliction had made him, he had
lived too long for effect, not to be susceptible to its influence,
even to the last. Amidst all his grief, and it was intense, there were
some whispers of self-exaltation at the thought of the eclat which his
generosity and abdication would excite; and, with true worldly
morality, the hoped-for plaudits of others gave a triumph rather than
humiliation to his reconcilement with himself.
To say truth, there were indeed circumstances connected with his
treaty with Mordaunt's father calculated to vex his conscience. He
knew that he had not only taken great advantage of Mr. Mordaunt's
distress, but that at his instigation a paper which could forever have
prevented Mr. Mordaunt's sale of the property, had been destroyed.
These circumstances, during the life of his son, he had endeavoured to
forget or to palliate. But grief is rarely deaf to remorse; and at
the death of that idolized son the voice at his heart grew imperious,
and he lost the power in losing the motive of reasoning it away.
Mr. Brown's advertisement was unanswered; and, with the zeal and
patience of the Christian proselyte's tribe and calling, the good man
commenced, in person, a most elaborate and painstaking research. For
a long time, his endeavours were so ineffectual that Mr. Brown, in
despair, disposed of the two Indian jars for half their value, and
heaved a despondent sigh, whenever he saw the great Turkey carpet
rolled up in his warehouse with as much obstinacy as if it never meant
to unroll itself again.
At last, however, by dint of indefatigable and minute investigation,
he ascertained that the object of his search had resided in London,
under a feigned name; from lodging to lodging, and corner to corner,
he tracked him, till at length he made himself master of Mordaunt's
present retreat. A joyful look did Mr. Brown cast at the great Turkey
carpet, as he passed by it, on his way to his street door, on the
morning of his intended visit to Mordaunt. "It is a fine thing to
have a good heart," said he, in the true style of Sir Christopher
Findlater, and he again eyed the Turkey carpet. "I really feel quite
happy at the thought of the pleasure I shall give."
After a walk through as many obscure and filthy wynds and lanes and
alleys and courts as ever were threaded by some humble fugitive from
justice, the patient Morris came to a sort of court, situated among
the miserable hovels in the vicinity of the Tower. He paused
wonderingly at a dwelling in which every window was broken, and where
the tiles, torn from the roof, lay scattered in forlorn confusion
beside the door; where the dingy bricks looked crumbling away, from
very age and rottenness, and the fabric, which was of great antiquity,
seemed so rocking and infirm that the eye looked upon its distorted
and overhanging position with a sensation of pain and dread; where the
very rats had deserted their loathsome cells from the insecurity of
their tenure, and the ragged mothers of the abject neighbourhood
forbade their brawling children to wander under the threatening walls,
lest they should keep the promise of their mouldering aspect, and,
falling, bare to the obstructed and sickly day the secrets of their
prison-house. Girt with the foul and reeking lairs of that extreme
destitution which necessity urges irresistibly into guilt, and
excluded, by filthy alleys and an eternal atmosphere of smoke and rank
vapour, from the blessed sun and the pure air of heaven, the miserable
mansion seemed set apart for every disease to couch within,--too
perilous even for the hunted criminal; too dreary even for the beggar
to prefer it to the bare hedge, or the inhospitable porch, beneath
whose mockery of shelter the frost of winter had so often numbed him
into sleep.
Thrice did the heavy and silver-headed cane of Mr. Brown resound upon
the door, over which was a curious carving of a lion dormant, and a
date, of which only the two numbers 15 were discernable. Roused by a
note so unusual, and an apparition so unwontedly smug as the worthy
Morris, a whole legion of dingy and smoke-dried brats, came trooping
from the surrounding huts, and with many an elvish cry, and strange
oath, and cabalistic word, which thrilled the respectable marrow of
Mr. Brown, they collected in a gaping, and, to his alarmed eye, a
menacing group, as near to the house as their fears and parents would
permit them.
"It is very dangerous," thought Mr. Brown, looking shiveringly up at
the hanging and tottering roof, "and very appalling," as he turned to
the ragged crowd of infant reprobates which began with every moment to
increase. At last he summoned courage, and inquired, in a tone half
soothing and half dignified, if they could inform him how to obtain
admittance or how to arouse the inhabitants.
An old crone, leaning out of an opposite window, with matted hair
hanging over a begrimed and shrivelled countenance, made answer. "No
one," she said, in her peculiar dialect, which the worthy man scarcely
comprehended, "lived there or had done so for years:" but Brown knew
better; and while he was asserting the fact, a girl put her head out
of another hovel, and said that she had sometimes seen, at the dusk of
the evening, a man leave the house, but whether any one else lived in
it she could not tell. Again Mr. Brown sounded an alarm, but no
answer came forth, and in great fear and trembling he applied violent
hands to the door: it required but little force; it gave way; he
entered; and, jealous of the entrance of the mob without, reclosed and
barred, as well as he was able, the shattered door. The house was
unnaturally large for the neighbourhood, and Brown was in doubt
whether first to ascend a broken and perilous staircase or search the
rooms below: he decided on the latter; he found no one, and with a
misgiving heart, which nothing but the recollection of the great
Turkey carpet could have inspired, he ascended the quaking steps. All
was silent. But a door was unclosed. He entered, and saw the object
of his search before him.
Over a pallet bent a form, on which, though youth seemed withered and
even pride broken, the unconquerable soul left somewhat of grace and
of glory, that sustained the beholder's remembrance of better days; a
child in its first infancy knelt on the nearer side of the bed with
clasped hands, and vacant eyes that turned towards the intruder with a
listless and lacklustre gaze. But Glendower, or rather Mordaunt, as
he bent over the pallet, spoke not, moved not: his eyes were riveted
on one object; his heart seemed turned into stone and his veins
curdled into ice. Awed and chilled by the breathing desolation of the
spot, Brown approached, and spoke he scarcely knew what. "You are,"
he concluded his address, "the master of Mordaunt Court; "and he
placed the letter in the hands of the person he thus greeted.
"Awake, hear me!" cried Algernon to Isabel, as she lay extended on the
couch; and the messenger of glad tidings, for the first time seeing
her countenance, shuddered, and knew that he was in the chamber of
death.
"Awake, my own, own love! Happy days are in store for us yet: our
misery is past; you will live, live to bless me in riches, as you have
done in want."
Isabel raised her eyes to his, and a smile, sweet, comforting, and
full of love, passed the lips which were about to close forever.
"Thank Heaven," she murmured, "for your dear sake. It is pleasant to
die now, and thus;" and she placed the hand that was clasped in her
relaxing and wan fingers within the bosom which had been for anguished
and hopeless years his asylum and refuge, and which now when fortune
changed, as if it had only breathed in comfort to his afflictions, was
for the first time and forever to be cold,--cold even to him!
"You will live, you will live," cried Mordaunt, in wild and
incredulous despair, "in mercy live! You, who have been my angel of
hope, do not,--O God, O God! do not desert me now!"
But that faithful and loving heart was already deaf to his voice, and
the film grew darkening and rapidly over the eye which still with
undying fondness sought him out through the shade and agony of death.
Sense and consciousness were gone, and dim and confused images whirled
round her soul, struggling a little moment before they sank into the
depth and silence where the past lies buried. But still mindful of
him, and grasping, as it were, at his remembrance, she clasped, closer
and closer, the icy hand which she held, to her breast. "Your hand is
cold, dearest, it is cold," said she, faintly, "but I will warm it
here!" And so her spirit passed away, and Mordaunt felt afterwards,
in a lone and surviving pilgrimage, that her last thought had been
kindness to him, and that her last act had spoken forgetfulness even
of death in the tenderness of love!
