“Home will no longer be like home, dear father, when you are far absent,” she said to him, pleadingly, a few days before the appointed time for departure had come. “Do not go away.”
“It is no desire to leave home that prompts the journey, Fanny, love,” he answered, drawing his arm around her and pressing her closely to his side. “At the call of duty, none of us should hesitate to obey.”
“Duty, father?” Fanny did not comprehend the meaning of his words.
“It is the duty of all men to thoroughly comprehend what they are doing, and to see that their business is well conducted at every point.”
“I did not before understand that you had business in that distant country,” said Fanny.
“I am largely interested there,” replied Mr. Markland, speaking as though the admission to her was half-extorted.
“Not with Mr. Lyon, I hope?” said Fanny, quickly and earnestly. It was the first time she had mentioned his name since the day his cold allusion to her had nearly palsied her heart.
“Why not with Mr. Lyon, my child? Do you know any thing in regard to him that would make such a connection perilous to my interest?” Mr. Markland looked earnestly into the face of his daughter. Her eyes did not fall from his, but grew brighter, and her person became more erect. There was something of indignant surprise in the expression of her countenance.
“Do you know any thing in regard to him that would make the connection perilous to my interest?” repeated Mr. Markland.
“Will that man be true to the father, who is false to his child?” said Fanny, in a deep, hoarse voice.
He looked long and silently into her face, his mind bewildered by the searching interrogatory.
“False to you, Fanny!” he at length said, in a confused way. “Has he been false to you?”
“Oh, father! father! And is it from you this question comes?” exclaimed Fanny, clasping her hands together and then pressing them tightly against her bosom.
“He spoke of you in his letter with great kindness,” said Mr. Markland. “I know that he has been deeply absorbed in a perplexing business; and this may be the reason why he has not written.”
“Father,”—Fanny’s words were uttered slowly and impressively—”if you are in any manner involved in business with Mr. Lyon—if you have any thing at stake through confidence in him—get free from the connection as early as possible. He is no true man. With the fascinating qualities of the serpent, he has also the power to sting.”
“I fear, my daughter,” said Mr. Markland, “that too great a revulsion has taken place in your feelings toward him; that wounded pride is becoming unduly active.”
“Pride!” ejaculated Fanny—and her face, that had flushed, grew pale again—”pride! Oh, father! how sadly you misjudge your child! No—no. I was for months in the blinding mazes of a delicious dream; but I am awake now—fully awake, and older—how much older it makes me shudder to think—than I was when lulled into slumber by melodies so new, and wild, and sweet, that it seemed as if I had entered another state of existence. Yes, father, I am awake now; startled suddenly from visions of joy and beauty into icy realities, like thousands of other dreamers around me. Pride? Oh, my father!”
And Fanny laid her head down upon the breast of her parent, and wept bitterly.
Mr. Markland was at a loss what answer to make. So entire a change in the feelings of his daughter toward Mr. Lyon was unsuspected, and he scarcely knew how to explain the fact. Fascinated as she had been, he had looked for nothing else but a clinging to his image even in coldness and neglect. That she would seek to obliterate that image from her heart, as an evil thing, was something he had not for an instant expected. He did not know how, treasured up in tenderest infancy, through sunny childhood, and in sweetly dawning maidenhood, innocence and truth had formed for her a talisman by which the qualities of others might be tested. At the first approach of Mr. Lyon this had given instinctive warning; but his personal attractions were so great, and her father’s approving confidence of the man so strong, that the inward monitor was unheeded. But, after a long silence following a series of impassioned letters, to find herself alluded to in this cold and distant way revealed a state of feeling in the man she loved so wildly, that proved him false beyond all question. Like one standing on a mountain-top, who suddenly finds the ground giving way beneath his feet, she felt herself sweeping down through a fearfully intervening space, and fell, with scarcely a pulse of life remaining, on the rocky ground beneath. She caught at no object in her quick descent, for none tempted her hand. It was one swift plunge, and the shock was over.
“No, father,” she said, in a calmer voice, lifting her face from his bosom—”it is not pride, nor womanly indignation at a deep wrong. I speak of him as he is now known to me. Oh, beware of him! Let not his shadow fall darker on our household.”
The effect of this conversation in no way quieted the apprehensions of Mr. Markland, but made his anxieties the deeper. That Lyon had been false to his child was clear even to him; and the searching questions of Fanny he could not banish from his thoughts.
“All things confirm the necessity of my journey,” he said, when alone, and in close debate with himself on the subject. “I fear that I am in the toils of a serpent, and that escape, even with life, is doubtful. By what a strange infatuation I have been governed! Alas! into what a fearful jeopardy have I brought the tangible good things given me by a kind Providence, by grasping at what dazzled my eyes as of supremely greater value! Have I not been lured by a shadow, forgetful of the substance in possession?”
CHAPTER XXXI.
“I SHOULD have been contented amid so much beauty, and with even more than my share of earthly blessings.” Thus Mr. Markland communed with himself, walking about alone, near the close of the day preceding that on which his appointed journey was to begin. “Am I not acting over again that old folly of the substance and shadow? Verily, I believe it is so. Ah! will we ever be satisfied with any achievement in this life? To-morrow I leave all by which I am here surrounded, and more, a thousand-fold more—my heart’s beloved ones; and for what? To seek the fortune I was mad enough to cast from me into a great whirlpool, believing that it would be thrown up at my feet again, with every disk of gold changed into a sparkling diamond. I have waited eagerly on the shore for the returning tide, but yet there is no reflux, and now my last hope rests on the diver’s strength and doubtful fortune. I must make the fearful plunge.”
A cold shudder ran through the frame of Mr. Markland, as he realized, too distinctly, the image he had conjured up. A feeling of weakness and irresolution succeeded.
“Ah!” he murmured to himself, “if all had not been so blindly cast upon this venture, I might be willing to wait the issue, providing for the worst by a new disposition of affairs, and by new efforts here. But I was too eager, too hopeful, too insanely confident. Every thing is now beyond my reach.”
This was the state of his mind when Mr. Allison, whom he had not met in a familiar manner for several weeks, joined him, saying, as he came up with extended hand, and fine face, bright with the generous interest in others that always burned in his heart—
“What is this I hear, Mr. Markland? Is it true that you are going away, to be absent for some months? Mr. Willet was telling me about it this morning.”
“It is too true,” replied Mr. Markland, assuming a cheerful air, yet betraying much of the troubled feeling that oppressed him. “The calls of business cannot always be disregarded.”
“No—but, if I understand aright, you contemplate going a long distance South—somewhere into Central America.”
“Such is my destination. Having been induced to invest money in a promising enterprise in that far-off region, it is no more than right to look after my interests there.”