John Halifax, Gentleman

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

  506The letter, which I saw afterwards, was thus;

  “DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,

  “I have disgraced you all. I have been drunk—in a gaming-house. A man insulted me—it was about my father—but you will hear—all the world will hear presently. I struck him—there was something in my hand, and—the man was hurt.

  “He may be dead by this time. I don’t know.

  “I am away to America to-night. I shall never come home any more. God bless you all.

  “GUY HALIFAX.

  “P.S. I got my mother’s letter to-day. Mother—I was not in my right senses, or I should not have done it. Mother, darling! forget me. Don’t let me have broken your heart.”

  Alas, he had broken it!

  “Never come home any more!—Never come home any more!”

  She repeated this over and over again, vacantly: nothing but these five words.

  Nature refused to bear it; or rather, Nature mercifully helped her to bear it. When John took his wife in his arms she was insensible; and remained so, with intervals, for hours.

  This was the end of Edwin’s wedding-day.

  507CHAPTER XXXVI

  Lord Ravenel knew—as all Paris did by this time—the whole story. Though, as he truly said, he had not seen Guy. The lad was hurried off immediately, for fear of justice: but he had written from shipboard to Lord Ravenel, begging him himself to take the letter and break the news to us at Beechwood.

  The man he had struck was not one of Lord Luxmore’s set—though it was through some of his “noble” friends Guy had fallen into his company. He was an Englishman, lately succeeded to a baronetcy and estate; his name—how we started to hear it, though by Lord Ravenel and by us, for his sake, it was both pronounced and listened to, as if none of us had ever heard it before—Sir Gerard Vermilye.

  As soon as Ursula recovered, Mr. Halifax and Lord Ravenel went to Paris together. This was necessary, not only to meet justice, but to track the boy—to whose destination we had no clue but the wide world, America. Guy’s mother hurried them away—his mother, who rose from her bed, and moved about the house like a ghost—up-stairs and down-stairs—everywhere—excepting in that room, which was now once more locked, and the outer blind drawn down, as if Death himself had taken possession there.

  508Alas! we learned now that there may be sorrows bitterer even than death.

  Mr. Halifax went away. Then followed a long season of torpid gloom—days or weeks, I hardly remember—during which we, living shut up at Beechwood, knew that our name—John’s stainless, honourable name—was in everybody’s mouth—parrotted abroad in every society—canvassed in every newspaper. We tried, Walter and I, to stop them at first, dreading lest the mother might read in some foul print or other scurrilous tales about her boy; or, as long remained doubtful, learn that he was proclaimed through France and England as a homicide—an assassin. But concealments were idle—she would read everything— hear everything—meet everything—even those neighbours who out of curiosity or sympathy called at Beechwood. Not many times, though; they said they could not understand Mrs. Halifax. So, after a while, they all left her alone, except good little Grace Oldtower.

  “Come often,” I heard her say to this girl, whom she was fond of: they had sat talking a whole morning—idly and pensively; of little things around them, never once referring to things outside. “Come often, though the house is dull. Does it not feel strange, with Mr. Halifax away?”

  Ay, this was the change—stranger at first than what had befallen Guy—for that long seemed a thing we could not realise; like a story told of some other family than ours. The present tangible blank was the house with its head and master away.

  Curiously enough, but from his domestic habits easily accountable, he had scarcely ever been more than a few days absent from home before. We missed him continually; in his place at the head of the table; in his chair by the fire; his quick ring at the hall bell, when he came up from the mills—his step—his voice—his laugh. The life and soul of the house seemed to have gone out of it from the hour the father went away.

  509I think in the wonderful workings of things—as we know all things do work together for good—this fact was good for Ursula. It taught her that, in losing Guy, she had not lost all her blessings. It showed her what in the passion of her mother-love she might have been tempted to forget—many mothers do—that beyond all maternal duty, is the duty that a woman owes to her husband: beyond all loves, is the love that was hers before any of them were born.

  So, gradually, as every day John’s letters came,—and she used to watch for them and seize them as if they had been love-letters; as every day she seemed to miss him more, and count more upon his return; referring all decisions, and all little pleasures planned for her, to the time “when your father comes home;”—hope and comfort began to dawn in the heart of the mourning mother.

  And when at last John fixed the day of his coming back, I saw Ursula tying up the small bundle of his letters—his letters, of which in all her happy life she had had so few—his tender, comforting, comfortable letters.

  “I hope I shall never need to have any more,” she said, half-smiling—the faint smile which began to dawn in her poor face, as if she must accustom it to look bright again in time for her husband’s coming.

  And when the day arrived, she put all the house in trim order, dressed herself in her prettiest gown, sat patient while Maud brushed and curled her hair—how white it had turned of late!—and then waited, with a flush on her cheek—like that of a young girl waiting for her lover—for the sound of carriage-wheels.

  All that had to be told about Guy—and it was better news than any one of us had hoped for—John had already told in his letters. When he came back, therefore, he was burthened with no trouble undisclosed—greeted with no anguish of fear or bitter remembrance. As he sprang out of the post-chaise, it 510was to find his wife standing at the door, and his home smiling for him its brightest welcome. No blessing on earth could be like the blessing of the father’s return.

  John looked pale, but not paler than might have been expected. Grave, too—but it was a soft seriousness altogether free from the restlessness of keen anxiety. The first shock of this heavy misfortune was over. He had paid all his son’s debts; he had, as far as was possible, saved his good name; he had made a safe home for the lad, and heard of his safely reaching it, in the New World. Nothing more was left but to cover over the inevitable grief, and hope that time would blot out the intolerable shame. That since Guy’s hand was clear of blood—and, since his recovery, Sir Gerard Vermilye had risen into a positive hero of society—men’s minds would gradually lose the impression of a deed committed in heat of youth, and repented of with such bitter atonement.

  So the father took his old place, and looked round on the remnant of his children, grave indeed, but not weighed down by incurable suffering. Something, deeper even than the hard time he had recently passed through, seemed to have made his home more than ever dear to him. He sat in his arm-chair, never weary of noticing everything pleasant about him, of saying how pretty Beechwood looked, and how delicious it was to be at home. And perpetually, if any chance unlinked it, his hand would return to its clasp of Ursula’s; the minute she left her place by his side, his restless “Love, where are you going?” would call her back again. And once, when the children were out of the room, and I, sitting in a dark corner, was probably thought absent likewise, I saw John take his wife’s face between his two hands, and look in it—the fondest, most lingering, saddest look!—then fold her tightly to his breast.

  “I must never be away from her again. Mine—for as long as I live, mine—MY wife, MY Ursula!”

  She took it all naturally, as she had taken every expression of his love these nine-and-twenty years. I left them, standing 511eye to eye, heart to heart, as if nothing in this world could ever part them.

  Next morning was as gay as any of our mornings used to be, for, before breakfast, came Edwin and Louise. And after br
eakfast, the father and mother and I walked up and down the garden for an hour, talking over the prospects of the young couple. Then the post came—but we had no need to watch for it now. It only brought a letter from Lord Ravenel.

  John read it, somewhat more seriously than he had been used to read these letters—which for the last year or so had come often enough—the boys usually quizzing, and Mistress Maud vehemently defending, the delicate small hand-writing, the exquisite paper, the coronetted seal, and the frank in the corner. John liked to have them, and his wife also—she being not indifferent to the fact, confirmed by many other facts, that if there was one man in the world whom Lord Ravenel honoured and admired, it was John Halifax of Beechwood. But this time her pleasure was apparently damped; and when Maud, claiming the letter as usual, spread abroad, delightedly, the news that “her” Lord Ravenel was coming shortly, I imagined this visit was not so welcome as usual to the parents.

  Yet still, as many a time before, when Mr. Halifax closed the letter, he sighed, looked sorrowful, saying only, “Poor Lord Ravenel!”

  “John,” asked his wife, speaking in a whisper, for by tacit consent all public allusion to his doings at Paris was avoided in the family—“did you, by any chance, hear anything of—You know whom I mean?”

  “Not one syllable.”

  “You inquired?” He assented. “I knew you would. She must be almost an old woman now, or perhaps she is dead. Poor Caroline!”

  It was the first time for years and years that this name had been breathed in our household. Involuntarily it carried me 512back—perhaps others besides me—to the day at Longfield when little Guy had devoted himself to his “pretty lady;” when we first heard that other name, which by a curious conjuncture of circumstances had since become so fatally familiar, and which would henceforward be like the sound of a death-bell in our family—Gerard Vermilye.

  On Lord Ravenel’s re-appearance at Beechwood—and he seemed eager and glad to come—I was tempted to wish him away. He never crossed the threshold but his presence brought a shadow over the parents’ looks—and no wonder. The young people were gay and friendly as ever; made him always welcome with us; and he rode over daily from desolate, long-uninhabited Luxmore, where, in all its desolation, he appeared so fond of abiding.

  He wanted to take Maud and Walter over there one day, to see some magnificent firs that were being cut down in a wholesale massacre, leaving the grand old Hall as bare as a workhouse front. But the father objected; he was clearly determined that all the hospitalities between Luxmore and Beechwood should be on the Beechwood side.

  Lord Ravenel apparently perceived this. “Luxmore is not Compiegne,” he said to me, with his dreary smile, half-sad, half-cynical. “Mr. Halifax might indulge me with the society of his children.”

  And as he lay on the grass—it was full summer now—watching Maud’s white dress flit about under the trees, I saw, or fancied I saw, something different to any former expression that had ever lighted up the soft languid mien of William Lord Ravenel.

  “How tall that child has grown lately! She is about nineteen, I think?”

  “Not seventeen till December.”

  “Ah, so young?—Well, it is pleasant to be young!—Dear little Maud!”

  513He turned on one side, hiding the sun from his eyes with those delicate ringed hands—which many a time our boys had laughed at, saying they were mere lady’s hands, fit for no work at all.

  Perhaps Lord Ravenel felt the cloud that had come over our intercourse with him; a cloud which, considering late events, was scarcely unnatural: for when evening came, his leave-taking, always a regret, seemed now as painful as his blase indifference to all emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, could allow. He lingered—he hesitated—he repeated many times how glad he should be to see Beechwood again; how all the world was to him “flat, stale, and unprofitable,” except Beechwood.

  John made no special answer; except that frank smile not without a certain kindly satire, under which the young nobleman’s Byronic affectations generally melted away like mists in the morning. He kindled up into warmth and manliness.

  “I thank you, Mr. Halifax—I thank you heartily for all you and your household have been to me. I trust I shall enjoy your friendship for many years. And if, in any way, I might offer mine, or any small influence in the world—”

  “Your influence is not small,” John returned earnestly. “I have often told you so. I know no man who has wider opportunities than you have.”

  “But I have let them slip—for ever.”

  “No, not for ever. You are young still; you have half a lifetime before you.”

  “Have I?” And for the moment one would hardly have recognized the sallow, spiritless face, that with all the delicacy of boyhood still, at times looked so exceedingly old. “No, no, Mr. Halifax, who ever heard of a man beginning life at seven-and-thirty?”

  “Are you really seven-and-thirty?” asked Maud.

  “Yes—yes, my girl. Is it so very old?”

  He patted her on the shoulder, took her hand, gazed at it—514the round, rosy, girlish hand—with a melancholy tenderness; then bade “Good-bye” to us all generally, and rode off.

  It struck me then, though I hurried the thought away—it struck me afterwards, and does now with renewed surprise—how strange it was that the mother never noticed or took into account certain possibilities that would have occurred naturally to any worldly mother. I can only explain it by remembering the unworldliness of our lives at Beechwood, the heavy cares which now pressed upon us from without, and the notable fact—which our own family experience ought to have taught us, yet did not—that in cases like this, often those whom one would have expected to be most quick-sighted, are the most strangely, irretrievably, mournfully blind.

  When, the very next day, Lord Ravenel, not on horse-back but in his rarely-used luxurious coronetted carriage, drove up to Beechwood, every one in the house except myself was inconceivably astonished to see him back again.

  He said that he had delayed his journey to Paris, and gave no explanation of that delay. He joined as usual in our midday dinner; and after dinner, still as usual, took a walk with me and Maud. It happened to be through the beech-wood, almost the identical path that I remembered taking, years and years ago, with John and Ursula. I was surprised to hear Lord Ravenel allude to the fact, a well-known fact in our family; for I think all fathers and mothers like to relate, and all children to hear, the slightest incidents of the parents’ courting days.

  “You did not know father and mother when they were young?” said Maud, catching our conversation and flashing back her innocent, merry face upon us.

  “No, scarcely likely.” And he smiled. “Oh, yes—it might have been—I forget, I am not a young man now. How old were Mr. and Mrs. Halifax when they married?”

  “Father was twenty-one and mother was eighteen—only a year older than I.” And Maud, half ashamed of this suggestive 515remark, ran away. Her gay candour proved to me—perhaps to others besides me—the girl’s entire free-heartedness. The frank innocence of childhood was still hers.

  Lord Ravenel looked after her and sighed. “It is good to marry early; do you not think so, Mr. Fletcher?”

  I told him—(I was rather sorry after I had said it, if one ought to be sorry for having, when questioned, given one’s honest opinion)—I told him that I thought those happiest who found their happiness early, but that I did not see why happiness should be rejected because it was the will of Providence that it should not be found till late.

  “I wonder,” he said, dreamily, “I wonder whether I shall ever find it.”

  I asked him—it was by an impulse irresistible—why he had never married?

  “Because I never found any woman either to love or to believe in. Worse,” he added, bitterly, “I did not think there lived the woman who could be believed in.”

  We had come out of the beech-wood and were standing by the low churchyard wall; the sun glittered on the white marble head-ston
e on which was inscribed, “Muriel Joy Halifax.”

  Lord Ravenel leaned over the wall, his eyes fixed upon that little grave. After a while, he said, sighing:

  “Do you know, I have thought sometimes that, had she lived, I could have loved—I might have married—that child!”

  Here Maud sprang towards us. In her playful tyranny, which she loved to exercise and he to submit to, she insisted on knowing what Lord Ravenel was talking about.

  “I was saying,” he answered, taking both her hands and looking down into her bright, unshrinking eyes, “I was saying, how dearly I loved your sister Muriel.”

  “I know that,” and Maud became grave at once. “I know you care for me because I am like my sister Muriel.”

  “If it were so, would you be sorry or glad?”

  516“Glad, and proud too. But you said, or you were going to say, something more. What was it?”

  He hesitated long, then answered:

  “I will tell you another time.”

  Maud went away, rather cross and dissatisfied, but evidently suspecting nothing. For me, I began to be seriously uneasy about her and Lord Ravenel.

  Of all kinds of love, there is one which common sense and romance have often combined to hold obnoxious, improbable, or ridiculous, but which has always seemed to me the most real and pathetic form that the passion ever takes—I mean, love in spite of great disparity of age. Even when this is on the woman’s side, I can imagine circumstances that would make it far less ludicrous and pitiful; and there are few things to me more touching, more full of sad earnest, than to see an old man in love with a young girl.

  Lord Ravenel’s case would hardly come under this category; yet the difference between seventeen and thirty-seven was sufficient to warrant in him a trembling uncertainty, and eager catching at the skirts of that vanishing youth whose preciousness he never seemed to have recognized till now. It was with a mournful interest that all day I watched him follow the child about, gather her posies, help her to water her flowers, and accommodate himself to those whims and fancies, of which, as the pet and the youngest, Mistress Maud had her full share.