"My Novel" — Complete

“And that terrible Mr. Burley?”

“Poor, poor Burley! He, too, is vanished out of my present life. I have made many inquiries after him; all I can hear is that he went abroad, supposed as a correspondent to some journal. I should like so much to see him again, now that perhaps I could help him as he helped me.”

“Helped you—ah!”

Leonard smiled with a beating heart, as he saw again the dear prudent, warning look, and involuntarily drew closer to Helen. She seemed more restored to him and to her former self.

“Helped me much by his instructions; more, perhaps, by his very faults. You cannot guess, Helen,—I beg pardon, Miss Digby, but I forgot that we are no longer children,—you cannot guess how much we men, and more than all, perhaps, we writers whose task it is to unravel the web of human actions, owe even to our own past errors; and if we learned nothing by the errors of others, we should be dull indeed. We must know where the roads divide, and have marked where they lead to, before we can erect our sign-post; and books are the sign-posts in human life.”

“Books! and I have not yet read yours. And Lord L’Estrange tells me you are famous now. Yet you remember me still,—the poor orphan child, whom you first saw weeping at her father’s grave, and with whom you burdened your own young life, over-burdened already. No, still call me Helen—you must always be to me a brother! Lord L’Estrange feels that; he said so to me when he told me that we were to meet again. He is so generous, so noble. Brother!” cried Helen, suddenly, and extending her hand, with a sweet but sublime look in her gentle face,—“brother, we will never forfeit his esteem; we will both do our best to repay him! Will we not?—say so!”

Leonard felt overpowered by contending and unanalyzed emotions. Touched almost to tears by the affectionate address, thrilled by the hand that pressed his own, and yet with a vague fear, a consciousness that something more than the words themselves was implied,—something that checked all hope. And this word “brother,” once so precious and so dear, why did he shrink from it now; why could he not too say the sweet word “sister”?

“She is above me now and evermore!” he thought mournfully; and the tones of his voice, when he spoke again, were changed. The appeal to renewed intimacy but made him more distant, and to that appeal itself he made no direct answer; for Mrs. Riccabocca, now turning round, and pointing to the cottage which came in view, with its picturesque gable-ends, cried out,

“But is that your house, Leonard? I never saw anything so pretty.”

“You do not remember it then,” said Leonard to Helen, in accents of melancholy reproach,—“there where I saw you last? I doubted whether to keep it exactly as it was, and I said, ‘—No! the association is not changed because we try to surround it with whatever beauty we can create; the dearer the association, the more the Beautiful becomes to it natural.’ Perhaps you don’t understand this,—perhaps it is only we poor poets who do.”

“I understand it,” said Helen, gently. She looked wistfully at the cottage.

“So changed! I have so often pictured it to myself, never, never like this; yet I loved it, commonplace as it was to my recollection; and the garret, and the tree in the carpenter’s yard.”

She did not give these thoughts utterance. And they now entered the garden.

CHAPTER IV

Mrs. Fairfield was a proud woman when she received Mrs. Riccabocca and Violante in her grand house; for a grand house to her was that cottage to which her boy Lenny had brought her home. Proud, indeed, ever was Widow Fairfield; but she thought then in her secret heart, that if ever she could receive in the drawing-room of that grand house the great Mrs. Hazeldean, who had so lectured her for refusing to live any longer in the humble, tenement rented of the squire, the cup of human bliss would be filled, and she could contentedly die of the pride of it. She did not much notice Helen,—her attention was too absorbed by the ladies who renewed their old acquaintance with her, and she carried them all over the house, yea, into the very kitchen; and so, somehow or other, there was a short time when Helen and Leonard found themselves alone. It was in the study. Helen had unconsciously seated herself in Leonard’s own chair, and she was gazing with anxious and wistful interest on the scattered papers, looking so disorderly (though, in truth, in that disorder there was method, but method only known to the owner), and at the venerable well-worn books, in all languages, lying on the floor, on the chairs—anywhere. I must confess that Helen’s first tidy womanlike idea was a great desire to arrange the litter. “Poor Leonard,” she thought to herself, “the rest of the house so neat, but no one to take care of his own room and of him!”

As if he divined her thought, Leonard smiled and said, “It would be a cruel kindness to the spider, if the gentlest band in the world tried to set its cobweb to rights.”

HELEN.—“You were not quite so bad in the old days.”

LEONARD.—“Yet even then you were obliged to take care of the money. I have more books now, and more money. My present housekeeper lets me take care of the books, but she is less indulgent as to the money.”

HELEN (archly).—“Are you as absent as ever?”

LEONARD.—“Much more so, I fear. The habit is incorrigible, Miss Digby—”

HELEN.—“Not Miss Digby; sister, if you like.”

LEONARD (evading the word that implied so forbidden an affinity).—“Helen, will you grant me a favour? Your eyes and your smile say ‘yes.’ Will you lay aside, for one minute, your shawl and bonnet? What! can you be surprised that I ask it? Can you not understand that I wish for one minute to think that you are at home again under this roof?”

Helen cast down her eyes, and seemed troubled; then she raised them, with a soft angelic candour in their dovelike blue, and, as if in shelter from all thoughts of more warm affection, again murmured “brother,” and did as he asked her.

So there she sat, amongst the dull books, by his table, near the open window, her fair hair parted on her forehead, looking so good, so calm, so happy! Leonard wondered at his own self-command. His heart yearned to her with such inexpressible love, his lips so longed to murmur, “Ah, as now so could it be forever! Is the home too mean?” But that word “brother” was as a talisman between her and him. Yet she looked so at home—perhaps so at home she felt!—more certainly than she had yet learned to do in that stiff stately house in which she was soon to have a daughter’s rights. Was she suddenly made aware of this, that she so suddenly arose, and with a look of alarm and distress on her face.

“But—we are keeping Lady Lansmere too long,” she said falteringly. “We must go now,” and she hastily took up her shawl and bonnet.

Just then Mrs. Fairfield entered with the visitors, and began making excuses for inattention to Miss Digby, whose identity with Leonard’s child-angel she had not yet learned.

Helen received these apologies with her usual sweetness. “Nay,” she said, “your son and I are such old friends, how could you stand on ceremony with me?”

“Old friends!” Mrs. Fairfield stared amazed, and then surveyed the fair speaker more curiously than she had yet done. “Pretty, nice-spoken thing,” thought the widow; “as nice-spoken as Miss Violante, and humbler-looking like,—though, as to dress, I never see anything so elegant out of a picter.”

Helen now appropriated Mrs. Riccabocca’s arm; and, after a kind leave-taking with the widow, the ladies returned towards Riccabocca’s house.

Mrs. Fairfield, however, ran after them with Leonard’s hat and gloves, which he had forgotten.

“‘Deed, boy,” she said, kindly, yet scoldingly, “but there’d be no more fine books, if the Lord had not fixed your head on your shoulders. You would not think it, marm,” she added to Mrs. Riccabocca, “but sin’ he has left you, he’s not the ‘cute lad he was; very helpless at times, marm!”

Helen could not resist turning round, and looking at Leonard, with a sly smile.

The widow saw the smile, and catching Leonard by the arm, whispered, “But where before have you seen that pretty young lady? Old friends!”

“Ah, Mother,” said Leonard, sadly, “it is a long tale; you have heard the beginning, who can guess the end?” and he escaped. But Helen still leaned on the arm of Mrs. Riccabocca, and, in the walk back, it seemed to Leonard as if the winter had re-settled in the sky.

Yet he was by the side of Violante, and she spoke to him with such praise of Helen! Alas! it is not always so sweet as folks say to hear the praises of one we love. Sometimes those praises seem to ask ironically, “And what right hast thou to hope because thou lovest? All love her.”

CHAPTER V

No sooner had Lady Lansmere found herself alone with Riccabocca and Harley than she laid her hand on the exile’s arm, and, addressing him by a title she had not before given him, and from which he appeared to shrink nervously, said, “Harley, in bringing me to visit you, was forced to reveal to me your incognito, for I should have discovered it. You may not remember me, in spite of your gallantry; but I mixed more in the world than I do now, during your first visit to England, and once sat next to you at dinner at Carlton House. Nay, no compliments, but listen to me. Harley tells me you have cause for some alarm respecting the designs of an audacious and unprincipled adventurer, I may call him; for adventurers are of all ranks. Suffer your daughter to come to me on a visit, as long as you please. With me, at least, she will be safe; and if you, too, and the—”

“Stop, my dear madam,” interrupted Riccabocca, with great vivacity; “your kindness overpowers me. I thank you most gratefully for your invitation to my child; but—”

“Nay,” in his turn interrupted Harley, “no buts. I was not aware of my mother’s intention when she entered this room. But since she whispered it to me, I have reflected on it, and am convinced that it is but a prudent precaution. Your retreat is known to Mr. Leslie, he is known to Peschiera. Grant that no indiscretion of Mr. Leslie’s betray the secret; still I have reason to believe that the count guesses Randal’s acquaintance with you. Audley Egerton this morning told me he had gathered that, not from the young man himself, but from questions put to himself by Madame di Negra; and Peschiera might and would set spies to track Leslie to every house that he visits,—might and would, still more naturally, set spies to track myself. Were this man an Englishman, I should laugh at his machinations; but he is an Italian, and has been a conspirator. What he could do I know not; but an assassin can penetrate into a camp, and a traitor can creep through closed walls to one’s hearth. With my mother, Violante must be safe; that you cannot oppose. And why not come yourself?”

Riccabocca had no reply to these arguments, so far as they affected Violante; indeed, they awakened the almost superstitious terror with which he regarded his enemy, and he consented at once that Violante should accept the invitation proffered. But he refused it for himself and Jemima.

“To say truth,” said he, simply, “I made a secret vow, on re-entering England, that I would associate with none who knew the rank I had formerly held in my own land. I felt that all my philosophy was needed to reconcile and habituate myself to my altered circumstances. In order to find in my present existence, however humble, those blessings which make all life noble,—dignity and peace,—it was necessary for poor, weak human nature wholly to dismiss the past. It would unsettle me sadly, could I come to your house, renew awhile, in your kindness and respect—nay, in the very atmosphere of your society—the sense of what I have been; and then (should the more than doubtful chance of recall from my exile fail me) to awake, and find myself for the rest of life what I am. And though, were I alone, I might trust myself perhaps to the danger, yet my wife: she is happy and contented now; would she be so, if you had once spoiled her for the simple position of Dr. Riccabocca’s wife? Should I not have to listen to regrets and hopes and fears that would prick sharp through my thin cloak of philosophy? Even as it is, since in a moment of weakness I confided my secret to her, I have had ‘my rank’ thrown at me,—with a careless hand, it is true, but it hits hard nevertheless. No stone hurts like one taken from the ruins of one’s own home; and the grander the home, why, the heavier the stone! Protect, dear madam, protect my daughter, since her father doubts his own power to do so. But—ask no more.”

Riccabocca was immovable here; and the matter was settled as he decided, it being agreed that Violante should be still styled but the daughter of Dr. Riccabocca.

“And now, one word more,” said Harley. “Do not confide to Mr. Leslie these arrangements; do not let him know where Violante is placed,—at least, until I authorize such confidence in him. It is sufficient excuse that it is no use to know unless he called to see her, and his movements, as I said before, may be watched. You can give the same reason to suspend his visits to yourself. Suffer me, meanwhile, to mature my judgment on this young man. In the meanwhile, also, I think that I shall have means of ascertaining the real nature of Peschiera’s schemes. His sister has sought to know me; I will give her the occasion. I have heard some things of her in my last residence abroad, which make me believe that she cannot be wholly the count’s tool in any schemes nakedly villanous; that she has some finer qualities in her than I once supposed; and that she can be won from his influence. It is a state of war; we will carry it into the enemy’s camp. You will promise me, then, to refrain from all further confidence in Mr. Leslie?”

“For the present, yes,” said Riccabocca, reluctantly.

“Do not even say that you have seen me, unless he first tell you that I am in England, and wish to learn your residence. I will give him full occasion to do so. Pish! don’t hesitate; you know your own proverb—

       “‘Boccha chiusa, ed occhio aperto         Non fece mai nissun deserto.’

“The closed mouth and the open eye,’ etc.”

“That’s very true,” said the doctor, much struck. “Very true. ‘In boccha chiusa non c’entrano mosche.’ One can’t swallow flies if one keeps one’s mouth shut. Corpo di Bacco! that’s very true indeed.”

CHAPTER VI

Violante and Jemima were both greatly surprised, as the reader may suppose, when they heard, on their return, the arrangements already made for the former. The countess insisted on taking her at once, and Riccabocca briefly said, “Certainly, the sooner the better.” Violante was stunned and bewildered. Jemima hastened to make up a little bundle of things necessary, with many a woman’s sigh that the poor wardrobe contained so few things befitting. But among the clothes she slipped a purse, containing the savings of months, perhaps of years, and with it a few affectionate lines, begging Violante to ask the countess to buy her all that was proper for her father’s child. There is always something hurried and uncomfortable in the abrupt and unexpected withdrawal of any member from a quiet household. The small party broke into still smaller knots. Violante hung on her father, and listened vaguely to his not very lucid explanations. The countess approached Leonard, and, according to the usual mode with persons of quality addressing young authors, complimented him highly on the books she had not read, but which her son assured her were so remarkable. She was a little anxious to know where Harley had first met with Mr. Oran, whom he called his friend; but she was too highbred to inquire, or to express any wonder that rank should be friends with genius. She took it for granted that they had formed their acquaintance abroad.

Harley conversed with Helen.—“You are not sorry that Violante is coming to us? She will be just such a companion for you as I could desire; of your own years too.”

HELEN (ingenuously).—“It is hard to think I am not younger than she is.”

HARLEY.—“Why, my dear Helen?”

HELEN.—“She is so brilliant. She talks so beautifully. And I—”

HARLEY.—“And you want but the habit of talking, to do justice to your own beautiful thoughts.”

Helen looked at him gratefully, but shook her head. It was a common trick of hers, and always when she was praised.

At last the preparations were made, the farewell was said, Violante was in the carriage by Lady Lansmere’s side. Slowly moved on the stately equipage with its four horses and trim postilions, heraldic badges on their shoulders, in the style rarely seen in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, and now fast vanishing even amidst distant counties.

Riccabocca, Jemima, and Jackeymo continued to gaze after it from the gate.

“She is gone,” said Jackeymo, brushing his eyes with his coat-sleeve. “But it is a load off one’s mind.”

“And another load on one’s heart,” murmured Riccabocca. “Don’t cry, Jemima; it may be bad for you, and bad for him that is to come. It is astonishing how the humours of the mother may affect the unborn. I should not like to have a son who has a more than usual propensity to tears.”

The poor philosopher tried to smile; but it was a bad attempt. He went slowly in, and shut himself with his books. But he could not read. His whole mind was unsettled. And though, like all parents, he had been anxious to rid himself of a beloved daughter for life, now that she was gone but for a while, a string seemed broken in the Music of Home.

CHAPTER VII

The evening of the same day, as Egerton, who was to entertain a large party at dinner, was changing his dress, Harley walked into his room.

Egerton dismissed his valet by a sign, and continued his toilet.

“Excuse me, my dear Harley, I have only ten minutes to give you. I expect one of the royal dukes, and punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes.”

Harley had usually a jest for his friend’s aphorisms; but he had none now. He laid his hand kindly on Egerton’s shoulder. “Before I speak of my business, tell me how you are,—better?”

“Better,—nay, I am always well. Pooh! I may look a little tired,—years of toil will tell on the countenance. But that matters little: the period of life has passed with me when one cares how one looks in the glass.”

As he spoke, Egerton completed his dress, and came to the hearth, standing there, erect and dignified as usual, still far handsomer than many a younger man, and with a form that seemed to have ample vigour to support for many a year the sad and glorious burden of power.

“So now to your business, Harley.”

“In the first place, I want you to present me, at the earliest opportunity, to Madame di Negra. You say she wished to know me.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, she receives this evening. I did not mean to go; but when my party breaks up—”

“You can call for me at The Travellers. Do!”

“Next, you knew Lady Jane Horton better even than I did, at least in the last year of her life.” Harley sighed, and Egerton turned and stirred the fire.

“Pray, did you ever see at her house, or hear her speak of, a Mrs. Bertram?”

“Of whom?” said Egerton, in a hollow voice, his face still turned towards the fire.

“A Mrs. Bertram; but heavens! my dear fellow, what is the matter? Are you ill?”

“A spasm at the heart, that is all; don’t ring, I shall be better presently; go on talking. Mrs.—why do you ask?”

“Why? I have hardly time to explain; but I am, as I told you, resolved on righting my old Italian friend, if Heaven will help me, as it ever does help the just when they bestir themselves; and this Mrs. Bertram is mixed up in my friend’s affairs.”

“His! How is that possible?”

Harley rapidly and succinctly explained. Audley listened attentively, with his eyes fixed on the floor, and still seeming to labour under great difficulty of breathing.

At last he answered, “I remember something of this Mrs.—Mrs.—Bertram. But your inquiries after her would be useless. I think I have heard that she is long since dead; nay, I am sure of it.”

“Dead!—that is most unfortunate. But do you know any of her relations or friends? Can you suggest any mode of tracing this packet, if it came to her hands?”

“No.”

“And Lady Jane had scarcely any friend that I remember except my mother, and she knows nothing of this Mrs. Bertram. How unlucky! I think I shall advertise. Yet, no. I could only distinguish this Mrs. Bertram from any other of the same name, by stating with whom she had gone abroad, and that would catch the attention of Peschiera, and set him to counterwork us.”

“And what avails it?” said Egerton. “She whom you seek is no more—no more!” He paused, and went on rapidly: “The packet did not arrive in England till years after her death, was no doubt returned to the post-office, is destroyed long ago.”

Harley looked very much disappointed. Egerton went on in a sort of set, mechanical voice, as if not thinking of what he said, but speaking from the dry practical mode of reasoning which was habitual to him, and by which the man of the world destroys the hopes of an enthusiast. Then starting up at the sound of the first thundering knock at the street door, he said, “Hark! you must excuse me.”

“I leave you, my dear Audley. But I must again ask, Are you better now?”

“Much, much,—quite well: I will call for you,—probably between eleven and twelve.”

CHAPTER VIII

If any one could be more surprised at seeing Lord L’Estrange at the house of Madame di Negra that evening than the fair hostess herself, it was Randal Leslie. Something instinctively told him that this visit threatened interference with whatever might be his ultimate projects in regard to Riccabocca and Violante. But Randal Leslie was not one of those who shrink from an intellectual combat. On the contrary, he was too confident of his powers of intrigue not to take a delight in their exercise. He could not conceive that the indolent Harley could be a match for his own restless activity and dogged perseverance. But in a very few moments fear crept on him. No man of his day could produce a more brilliant effect than Lord L’Estrange, when he deigned to desire it. Without much pretence to that personal beauty which strikes at first sight, he still retained all the charm of countenance, and all the grace of manner, which had made him in boyhood the spoiled darling of society. Madame di Negra had collected but a small circle round her; still it was of the elite of the great world,—not, indeed, those more precise and reserved dames de chateau, whom the lighter and easier of the fair dispensers of fashion ridicule as prudes; but nevertheless, ladies were there, as unblemished in reputation, as high in rank, flirts and coquettes, perhaps,—nothing more; in short, “charming women,”—the gay butterflies that hover over the stiff parterre. And there were ambassadors and ministers, and wits and brilliant debaters, and first-rate dandies (dandies, when first-rate, are generally very agreeable men). Amongst all these various persons, Harley, so long a stranger to the London world, seemed to make himself at home with the ease of an Alcibiades. Many of the less juvenile ladies remembered him, and rushed to claim his acquaintance, with nods and becks, and wreathed smiles. He had ready compliment for each. And few indeed were there, men or women, for whom Harley L’Estrange had not appropriate attraction. Distinguished reputation as soldier and scholar for the grave; whim and pleasantry for the gay; novelty for the sated; and for the more vulgar natures was he not Lord L’Estrange, unmarried, possessed already of a large independence, and heir to an ancient earldom, and some fifty thousands a year?