'There was once a king,' began Louis, as if the tale were the newest in the world, 'whose son was predestined to be killed by a lion. After much consideration, his majesty enclosed his royal highness in a tower, warranted wild-beast proof, and forbade the chase to be mentioned in his hearing. The result was, that the locked-up prince died of look-jaw in consequence of tearing his hand with a nail in the picture of the lion.'
'I shall send that apologue straight to Ormersfield.'
'You may spare that trouble. My father has been with me all the evening.'
'Oh! his double-ganger visits you. That accounts for your freaks.'
'Double-gangers seldom come in yellow-bodied flys.'
'His lordship in propria persona. You don't mean it.'
'He is sleeping at the 'George' at Bickleypool. There is a letter coming to-morrow by the post, to say he is coming to-day, with every imaginable civility to you; but I am to go to the rose-coloured pastor's with him on Wednesday.'
'So there's an end of our peace and comfort!'
'I am afraid we have sadly discomposed his peace.'
'Did you discover whether his warnings have the slightest foundation?'
'He told me a history that somewhat accounts for his distrust of my aunt. I think there must be another side to it, and nothing can be more unjust than to condemn all the family, but it affected him so exceedingly that I do not wonder at his doing so. He gave no names, but I am sure it touched him very nearly. Can you tell who it could have been?' And he narrated enough to make James exclaim, 'It ought to touch him nearly. He was talking of himself.'
'Impossible!-my mother!' cried Louis, leaping up.
'Yes-his own version of his married life.'
'How do you know? You cannot remember it,' said Louis, though too well convinced, as he recollected the suppressed anguish, and the horror with which all blame of the young wife had been silenced.
'I have heard of it again and again. It was an unhappy, ill-assorted marriage: she was gay, he was cold.'
'My Aunt Catharine says so?'
'As far as she can blame anything. Your mother was a sweet blossom in a cold wind. She loved and pitied her with all her heart. Your aunt was talking, this very evening, of your father having carried her sister to Ormersfield, away from all her family, and one reason of her desire to go to Northwold is to see those who were with her at last.'
Louis was confounded. 'Yes! I see,' he said. 'How obtuse not to read it in his own manner! How much it explains!' and he silently rested his brow on his hands.
'Depend upon it, there are two sides to the story. I would not be a pretty, petted, admired girl in his keeping.'
'Do you think it mends matters with me to fasten blame on either?' said Louis, sadly. 'No; I was realizing the perception of such a thread of misery woven into his life, and thinking how little I have felt for him.'
'Endowing him with your own feelings, and then feeling for him!'
'No. I cannot estimate his feeling. He is of harder, firmer stuff than I; and for that very reason, I suspect, suffering is a more terrific thing. I heard the doctors saying, when I bore pain badly, that it would probably do the less future harm: a bad moral, but I believe it is true of the mental as of the physical constitution.' Answering something between a look and a shrug of James, he mused on, aloud-'I understand better what the wreck of affection must have been.'
'For my part,' said James, 'I do not believe in the affection that can tyrannize over and blight a woman.'
'Nay, James! I cannot doubt. My very name-my having been called by it, are the more striking in one so fond of usage and precedent. Things that passed between him and Mrs. Ponsonby while I was ill- much that I little regarded and ill requited-show what force of love and grief there must have been. The cold, grave manner, is the broken, inaccessible edge of the cliff rent asunder.'
'If romance softens the rough edge, you are welcome to it! I may as well go to bed!'
'Not romance-the sad reality of my poor father's history. I trust I shall never treat his wishes so lightly-'
Impatient of one-sided sympathy, James exclaimed, 'As if you did not give way to him like a slave!'
'Yes, like a slave,' said Louis, gravely. 'I wish to give way like a son who would try to comfort him for what he has undergone.'
'Now, I should have thought your feeling would have been for your mother!'
'If my mother could speak to me,' said Louis, with trembling lips, 'she would surely bid me to try my utmost, as far as in me lies, to bring peace and happiness to my father. I cannot tell where the errors may have been, and I will never ask. If she was as like to me as they say, I could understand some of them! At least, I know that I am doubly bound to give as little vexation to him as possible, and I trust that you will not make it harder to me. You lost your father so early, that you can hardly estimate-'
'The trial?' said James, willing to give what had passed the air of a joke.
'Exactly so-Good night.'
CHAPTER XIV. NEW INHABITANTS.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad- Sometimes a curly shepherd lad, Or long-haired page in crimson clad, Goes by to towered Camelot; And sometimes, through the mirror blue, The knights come riding two and two. She hath no loyal knight and true- The Lady of Shalott. TENNYSON.
'Oakstead, Oct. 14th, 1847.
'My Dear Aunt,-I find that Fitzjocelyn is writing to you, but I think you will wish for a fuller account of him than can be obtained from his own letters. Indeed, I should be much obliged if you would kindly exercise your influence to persuade him that he is not in a condition to be imprudent with impunity. Sir Miles Oakstead was absolutely shocked to see the alteration in his appearance, as well as in his spirits; and although both our kind host and hostess are most solicitous on his account, it happens unfortunately that they are at this juncture quite alone, so that he is without companions of his own age. I must not, however, alarm you. The fact is, that circumstances have occurred which, though he has acted in the most exemplary manner, have harassed and distressed him a good deal, and his health suffers from the difficulty of taking sufficient exercise. James will triumph when he hears that I regret having shortened his stay by the sea-side; for neither the place nor the weather seems to agree with him: he has had a recurrence of wakeful nights, and is very languid. Poor boy! yesterday he wandered out alone in the rain, lost his way, and came home so fatigued that he slept for three hours on the sofa, but to-day he seems better-has more colour, and has been less silent. We go to Leffingham Castle from Monday till Thursday, when I shall take him to London for Hastings to decide whether it be fit for him to return to Christchurch after the vacation, according to his own most anxious wish. With my love to Mary Ponsonby and her daughter, and best remembrances to James,
'Your affectionate nephew, 'ORMERSFIELD.'
The same envelope contained another letter of many sheets, beginning in a scrawclass="underline" -
'Scene-Rose-coloured Pastor's Nest. Tables, chairs, books, papers, despatch-boxes. The two ex-ministers writing and consulting. Viscount F. looking on like a colt running beside its parent at plough, thinking that harness leaves deep marks, and that he does not like the furrow.
'October 13th, 1847.-That correct date must be a sign that he is getting into harness.
'Well, dear Aunt Kitty, to make a transition from the third to the first person, like Mrs. Norris, you have in this short scene an epitome of the last fortnight. Lady Oakstead is an honourable matron, whom I pity for having me in her way; a man unable to be got rid of by the lawful exercises of shooting and riding, and with a father always consulting her about him, and watching every look and movement, till the blood comes throbbing to my temples by the mere attraction of his eyes. To be watched into a sense of impatience and ingratitude, is a trial of life for which one is not prepared. My father and Sir Miles are very busy; I hang here an anomaly, sitting with them as being less in their way than in Lady Oakstead's, and wondering what I shall be twenty years hence. I am sick of the only course of life that will content my father, and I can see no sunshine likely to brighten it. But, at least, no one's happiness is at stake but my own. Here is a kind, cordial letter from Lady Conway, pressing me to join her at Scarborough, make expeditions, My father is in such a state about me, that I believe I could get his consent to anything, but I suppose it would not be fair, and I have said nothing to him as yet. On Monday we go to Leffingham, which, I hear, is formality itself. After that, more state visits, unless I can escape to Oxford. My father fancies me not well enough; but pray unite all the forces of the Terrace to impress that nothing else will do me any good. Dragging about in this dreary, heartless way is all that ails me, and reading for my degree would be the best cure. I mean to work hard for honours, and, if possible, delude myself with hopes of success. Work is the need. Here, there is this one comfort. There is no one to talk to, no birds in last year's nest, sons absent, daughters disposed of, but, unluckily, the Pastoress, under a mistaken sense of kindness, has asked the Vicar's son to walk with me, and he is always lying in wait,-an Ensign in a transition state between the sheepish schoolboy and the fast man, with an experience of three months of depot. Having roused him from the pristine form, I regret the alternative.