Chapter VIII

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds,
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
... wherever I have heard
A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its pains;
Such comprehensive views the spirit takes
That in a few short moments I retrace
The windings of my way through many years.
COWPER.

The family at Clare Abbey, were assembled at the breakfast table, on the following morning. Lord and Lady Vere sate opposite each other; one side of the table was empty; on the other side, Camilla St. Maur sate, as she always chose to do, by her brother. Though there might be some few points of similarity, nothing could be more dissimilar than the general character, and common habits of these two, and yet the affection subsisting between them, was of that close and devoted kind, which is sometimes said to be peculiar to twins, but which probably only needs some similarity of age, and the days of childhood passed together. This affection and union was the stronger, because in their home, they were thrown entirely upon each other for companionship, meeting with little attention from one parent, and finding little sympathy in the other.

Lady Vere’s character may, I hope, be tolerably well guessed, from the few words she has already spoken. She was very beautiful, at forty still beautiful, an utter want of thought and sensation preserving to her all the smoothness and freshness of youth. Besides this uncommon beauty, she had little to attract, for her only other marked qualities, were indolence and folly. She was, however, a patient and forbearing wife, and though an injudicious, or rather an unthinking, yet in her way, was an affectionate mother. She was proud of her son, and had reason to be so, and treated his opinions with deference: to her daughter she allowed (except on a few points, where some strict rules of her own youth, chiefly of bodily restraint, were remembered and enforced) unlimited indulgence, and if there was no sympathy, there was no want of harmony.

Lord Vere’s character had more expression. Lady Vere always called him, “My love,” but he looked very unlike anybody’s love,--most of all unlike hers. He was a tall, thin, dry-looking man, whose features once had been, nay still were, handsome; but were disfigured by an expression of mingled sourness and discontent, sternness and melancholy. His character in early youth had not been without promise; resembling, in many of its features, the proud aspiring nature which now characterized his son; but his son’s ambition was of a lofty and generous kind, his own had been simply selfish. It might possibly have been turned to good; success, that salutary medicine to many minds, might have enlarged and purified it; but it was disappointed, and it shrank into the recesses of his spirit, and turned to sourness.

Many trials await the pride of those who at once court and despise their fellows. Lord Vere suffered much, but struggled on till a blow was struck which raised his pride and withered his ambition. He came into Parliament; and if his heart could ever have been said to glow, at that time it glowed,--not with the noblest passion, the desire of being an instrument of good, yet with a not ignoble one, the desire of fame. He determined to make a figure, to earn a name: a question arose on which he felt some interest; he took advantage of it; he devoted himself to the study of the subject, made himself master of it; at length rose to speak: spoke,--and _failed_. His manner was hard and dry, his arguments, though plausible, false,--and words and manner both alike were tinged, and more than tinged, with the only youthful fault which produces harsh and malicious criticism,--arrogance. His speech, his argument, nay he himself, was turned into ridicule, not only by his opponents in the heat of the moment, but by many of the leading papers of the day. Stung to the quick, too proud to retort, too scornful to explain, he withdrew into himself, and abjured friends, foes, and political life for ever. His father’s death shortly afterwards changing his condition, he retired into the country and lived on his own property the life of a recluse. So ended his dream of ambition; ever afterwards all generous sentiments, all lofty aspirations, if expressed in his presence, were crushed with a cold sneer of scorn.

His second dream was of love; and from love his second disappointment came. It might have been said, his friends had often said, that love was a passion which could find no place in his heart; but human nature is strangely inconsistent, for ever escaping from the rules with which we endeavour to trammel it; and so Lord Vere, inconsistent as it was with his previous habits and openly expressed opinions, was betrayed, not only into a romantic passion, but into a foolish and romantic marriage. He was some years more than thirty, when he was ordered to Buxton for his health; he there saw, admired, and voluntarily made acquaintance with a young lady of no fortune and no family, but whose beauty was of a remarkable and dazzling kind. Perhaps the extreme languor and softness of her voice and manner were soothing to the hardened nature of the man, who fancied himself injured by his kind: however this might be, he married her after a short acquaintance; and so extreme was his love and devotion, that it was many months before he became aware that the lips of his beautiful wife were incapable of uttering anything but the most intolerable folly--and that she was still more incapable of comprehending the fervour of that affection, which, overcoming all barriers from within and from without, had prevailed to make her his wife. Such a discovery once made, is made for ever,--the illusion which casts a spell over folly, once dispersed, returns no more. For the second time Lord Vere withdrew into himself, and the spark of unselfish feeling which might yet have kindled the dormant energies of his nature, appeared to be extinguished. Henceforward he lived to himself only,--and the life with his own dry self was dreary and uninspiring indeed. In vain the beauty, the infantile charms, the youthful grace of his daughter--in vain the talents and promise of his son--he took no heed of them; and if it was with an effort that pride and affection were sometimes restrained, it was not apparently so. He was not an unkind father; though cold and repulsive in manner, in action he was rather indulgent than otherwise. Except on such points as interfered with his determined plan of seclusion, he never thwarted their wishes, or their will; but a wish thwarted with an expression of interest is worth, a thousand times over, a careless acquiescence in our desires,--and so his children felt.

“You have got a letter, Reginald,” exclaimed Camilla, laying her hand on one which her brother put down beside him; “where does it come from? May I read it--pray let me read it?”

In some houses letters are even too plentiful; but a letter was a rare sight at Clare Abbey.

“It will not interest you, my dear Camilla.”

“Oh! yes it will; everything interests me that interests you; and besides, I like to hear of things that happen in some other world than this. Now, let me read it--_pray_ do,” and she put her hand on his arm.

He gave her the letter.

“What is it all about?” she cried, looking up with a puzzled look; “I can’t understand it! What have you been doing,--and what has made a sensation, as the man says?”

“I told you, Camilla, it would not interest you,” Reginald said, smiling, and he held out his hand.

“But it does interest me, and I will understand it. Now take your hand away, for I mean to make it out. Now I begin to see; you have been making a speech, and your friend says that it has been so much admired, that Somebody Somebody--I wish he wrote a little better--calls you Demosthenes. Oh! Reginald, when did you speak; and why didn’t you tell me?”

“My dear Camilla,” he said, with a look of annoyance, “I wish you would not make such a fuss. We occasionally meet to speak, to practice speaking at Oxford; and one night, there was some rather good speaking, that was all.”

“I thought people only made speeches in Parliament,” remarked Lady Vere.

“Oh, mamma, don’t you remember Colonel Ashby’s speech at Salisbury, last week, which they said lasted two hours?”

“Yes, to be sure; I wonder what it was all about. What did you speak about, Reginald?”

“It was a mere question for the purpose of debate, mother; it was of no importance.”

“What was the subject?” asked Lord Vere, shortly and suddenly,--looking up from the newspaper.

Reginald coloured, but replied in the respectful tone in which he always addressed both his parents,

“The question that was proposed was on the subject of ambition; whether greatness was or was not desirable simply for itself?”

“And what might your sage opinion be?”

“I said that to rise was in itself an object for ambition”; and his eyes flashed as he spoke.

His father turned to the newspaper with a slight scoffing laugh; but Camilla exclaimed,

“Right, Reginald, right; who were the dull, stupid people who could think otherwise?”

“They were not dull or stupid,” he said, gravely; “and though for some reasons my speech was the most applauded, _I_ know that there was no comparison between mine and that of the person who answered me. He did not convince me,” he added, with a slight sigh; “but I felt that his words were better, and wiser too.”

“Applauded! Reginald!” exclaimed his sister, eagerly; “were you cheered?--oh! if I had but been there.”

“Talking of speaking,” said Lady Vere, in her languid voice, “Mitford tells me that we shall have a new preacher to-day. Shall you go to church, my love?”

“My love” took no notice of the question. She turned to her son, and repeated it.

“Yes, mother, certainly.”

“I think I shall go, because Mitford has trimmed my new bonnet,--a sort of white fancy straw, with blue marabout feathers; it’s exceedingly pretty. What shall you wear, Camilla?”

“The same as usual, mamma,” she replied, carelessly; “I didn’t know that we need dress for Mr. De Grey.”

Reginald glanced at her: her disrespectful manner to her mother was the subject of his constant but unavailing remonstrance.

“Now, my dear Reginald,” she said, always distressed by his displeasure, though rarely amended by it, “can you say that there is any necessity for a new bonnet because a new clergyman happens to come to our dull church?”

He shook his head with a slight grave smile, but said nothing.

“Do you know, Reginald,” she added, suddenly, “from what Mitford was telling mamma last night, I think our very civil friend must have been Mr. De Grey.”

“Do you think it was?” he asked, with interest in his manner.

“I am sure it must have been; because Mitford says when she went down to buy some ribbon she saw him arrive, and when she came back, about half an hour afterwards, she saw the same person walking in our direction. I hope it was; I liked his looks, didn’t you, Reginald?”

“I really hardly observed him, Camilla,--I was thinking of you;” and he looked at her with one of the sweet fond smiles which brightened and softened his proud beauty.

“_I_ thought you were very short to him,” she said, laughing; “I liked his looks, not the least like a clergyman; how different to that poor, wretched Mr. Hervey. I don’t know if mamma was not right, and that he would have been worth a new bonnet after all;” and she looked mischievously up in her brother’s grave face as she spoke.

He shook his head again, but indulgently, as at a pretty naughty child whose wilful ways are too winning for anger, and left the breakfast-table.

Untamed and unrestrained, Camilla St. Maur had grown to be a woman; a few strict rules laid upon her body, forming the only yoke of her education. Unless when emancipated by her brother’s presence, her body was a slave to the precincts of the Abbey; for Lady Vere had strict ideas as to what a young lady should, and should not do: but no such restraint was imposed on her mind. She had had one or two foolish governesses; but folly exerts no authority, or if it exerts, fails to obtain it; and so her mind had grown in unfettered freedom, with few principles to guide her, and those few caught from her brother’s example, or springing up naturally in a mind as fruitful in flowers as in weeds. She spent what she chose; did what she chose; read what she chose; learned what she chose, or wasted her time as she chose,--and so at sixteen and a half, she was nothing but as Mrs. Hervey said, “a wild, sweet, heedless thing,” surpassingly lovely, quick in apprehension, vivid in imagination; yet all these good things wasting their sweetness from want of culture.

* * * * *

Strange, unspeakably strange, were the feelings of Ernest De Grey as he stood in the pulpit of the village church, and prepared to address his parishioners for the first time. The voices of the school-children were singing the hundredth psalm, the favourite of his childish fancy; and as the sounds fell upon his ear (the same discordant tones from the old grinding organ, the same unsoftened, unmusical notes from the children), memory transported him from the spot on which he now stood, and once more placed him a child by his mother’s side, and once more he gazed upon the old organ as the wonder of the world, and the twang of the children fell pleasantly upon his ear. A sudden failure in the organ, such as he remembered in the olden time, aroused him from this first backward flight of his fancy; and there came a remembrance of the hour in his boyish life, when the idea first dawned upon his mind that the music in Cranleigh church was not such a concord of sweet sounds as he had childishly imagined; and then, connected with this discovery, he almost smiled as he recalled the day when, in the independence of enlightened boyhood, he had left his mother’s side, and had chosen for himself a prominent and luxurious position in the large curtained roomy pew, which of all the deformities of Cranleigh church was the most unsightly and the most indefensible. Led away by this recollection, he involuntarily turned his eyes upon the interior of the pew, until this moment hidden from his sight, and there, in his boyhood’s chosen seat, stood Camilla St. Maur, the vision of the preceding evening. A bright slanting gleam of sunshine was falling upon her, encircling her fairy figure, her airy dress, making her laughing eyes to sparkle, and her hair to shine like threads of gold. It was too lovely a vision for such a time, and almost

“The preacher in his parting prayer
Shut his dark eyes, and warn’d men to beware
Of beauty.”

These trains of thought are long in description, but they passed through the mind swifter than the arrow from the bow. The last verse of the psalm was singing, when Ernest stood up in the pulpit and looked around him; the verse concluded, and calm, grave, and composed, he began the words of the opening prayer, driving back with one strong resolute effort the feverish dreams of the past and the future into the recesses of his mind.

The discourse of the new rector of Cranleigh was not heard unmoved by his congregation. Many tears were shed by the poor, who have those outward signs of emotion ready at every call of sorrow and of joy; and even in the less excitable hearts of the rich there were feelings unexpressed, inexpressible, whose only outward sign could have been tears. And this not because Ernest was a fine preacher--far from it. His sermon was short, his language simple and concise; his manner serious, and no more. There was no kindling of the eloquence which, whatever may be its ultimate effect, for the moment few can resist; there was no fervour of religious feeling, no ardour of youthful zeal; there was but that which goes straight and direct to the hearts of all men, young and old, rich and poor--_Truth_,--the plain and simple expression of natural feeling. He spoke of its being the first time on which he was called to address them--quietly, with a kind of restrained feeling, far more touching than its full expression; he spoke of his former connection with them, and of the additional interest which that connection must give to his duties amongst them, and to his wishes for their welfare. He spoke of the awful responsibility that was laid upon his shoulders, and touchingly, as if he felt it in his heart, of his own weakness and unworthiness to bear it; concluding with a short and earnest appeal to his flock, imploring them to make that burden less by their own attention to their duty, and by assisting him with their endeavours and their prayers.

If to such words be added the influence of a voice low and melodious, and of an appearance singularly prepossessing, few perhaps will be disposed to wonder at the good resolutions made that day by many a youthful heart,--resolutions frail and fleeting as youth itself,--that neither look, nor word, nor deed of theirs should ever grieve the heart of him who had looked down upon them “as tenderly,” a young girl said, “as if he had been the father of them all.”

Reginald St. Maur sat during the sermon with his hand over his eyes. Once Camilla looked at him, and smiled--smiled as the young, ashamed of being touched are apt to do; but he did not heed her. The interest with which he had early thought of Ernest De Grey had strengthened with his advancing years; and that interest his present position amongst them, and his appearance and language that day, were further calculated to increase. There was that about him, in his manner and in his words--speaking of feeling and the conquest of feeling--a kind of “brave tenderness,” as it has been happily expressed, which went to Reginald’s heart; and as he gazed on the youthful preacher, and hung upon his words, he felt his spirit stirred with undefinable emotion.

At the conclusion of the service, when he had assisted to place his mother comfortably in the barouche, he drew back, saying he would walk home.

“Now, Reginald,” exclaimed Camilla, leaning out, and looking at him reproachfully, “what are you going to do? Why didn’t you tell me? I would a thousand times rather walk.”

He smiled, but made no answer, and desired the coachman to drive on. He stood in the churchyard, while the throng of villagers passed by, raising his hat to every bow, even to the curtsey of every little child, with the grave and distant courtesy which distinguished him,--speaking to none, familiar with none, but courteous to all. When all had departed, and he was left alone, he turned into the path which led from the porch of the church, and there waited till Ernest and Mr. Hervey appeared. He then went forward to meet them, and begging Mr. Hervey to introduce him, he held out his hand to Ernest. His manner was not _cordial_, for the word cordiality implies a heartiness of welcome which was foreign to Reginald’s nature; but there was in it a deep and respectful interest, far removed from the condescension usually characterizing the unbending of stateliness.

“I did not know you last night, Mr. De Grey, or I should have done more than thank you for your kindness to my sister.”

“Neither did I know you,” replied Ernest, smiling; “though, perhaps, I guessed who you might be.”

They stood for a few moments in silence, a little awkwardness and constraint on both sides; but Reginald seemed determined to overcome it.

“If you are going home, Mr. De Grey,” he began again, “perhaps you will let us go together as far as your house.”

And together they set off: but little advance was made in acquaintance; for Mr. Hervey, feeling for once somewhat important, could not refrain from making an exhibition to Ernest of his intimacy with “the proud young Lord,” as Reginald was commonly called. It was a momentary ebullition of vanity, for usually he was humble enough; and, in fact, his pride in Reginald’s notice was prompted by a better feeling than mere servile vanity: it was far rather the unconscious homage paid to a character above the common level of humanity; and Mr. Hervey was but one among many by whom this homage was paid.

“I hope Lady Vere and Miss St. Maur are quite well,” he began, as they walked along.

“Quite well, thank you,” Reginald replied, with cold civility.

“I suppose they came to church in the barouche, as usual?”

“Yes. My mother is not a great walker.”

“What do you take to be the distance from here to Clare Abbey?”

“I don’t know,” Reginald said, coldly. He was annoyed at the mention of the name. Those whose minds are fixed on one particular event in the life of others, are apt to fancy a power to wound in allusions which the most interested do not even remark.

“I suppose it is rather more than a mile by the road,” Ernest said, indifferently.

“Mr. De Grey is better acquainted with the country than either you or I,” was Mr. Hervey’s next opportune remark.

Reginald coloured, and they walked on in silence till they came in sight of the parsonage.

He then stopped; and after shaking hands with distant civility with Mr. Hervey, turned to Ernest, and, colouring again, said, hesitatingly:

“I hope to see you again soon, Mr. De Grey, and my mother and sister also wish to make your acquaintance. May we expect, if it is not disagreeable to you, to see you at ... at home?”

“May I call at _Clare Abbey_ to-morrow?” Ernest said, with a slight smile and a slight emphasis on the words.

Reginald smiled also, and held out his hand. Each understood perfectly the feelings and the meaning of the other. All awkwardness vanished between them; the awkwardness on Ernest’s side, of fearing to remind of what he once had been; on Reginald’s side, of seeming to patronize him who had once stood in his position. It was such an understanding as could never have been given by the comparatively shackled language of the tongue.

“I don’t know how it is, mother,” said Mr. Hervey, throwing himself with some vexation, though without a spark of resentment, into a chair, in the little drawing-room of their cottage; “I don’t know how it is, but that young St. Maur seems to take more to Mr. De Grey in this one day, than he has to me in the whole three years that we have been acquainted with him?”

“It is but natural, Edward,” said Mrs. Hervey, consolingly; continuing, with some observation, “you know, as one may say, there is something between them that binds them together. One stands in the other’s place; just so, I remember, when your sister, Mary, and Anne Morrisson, poor girl, were both in love with Alfred, and didn’t know for the life of them which he liked best. They were always clinging together, as if, though they said nothing about it, there was something that joined them; and so it is with these young men. And what did you think of Mr. De Grey’s sermon, my dear?”

“It was very good, mother. What do you suppose the length of it to have been?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It made me feel all up and down, and I didn’t think of the length. I am sure, though, that it was not long, for I could have listened for another hour with pleasure. And how sweetly pretty Miss St. Maur looked to-day. I don’t know what young men are made of now-a-days; they’re not a bit what I remember. In my young days we should have had them falling down and worshipping such a sweet, sprightly blossom as that; and now you are all taken up with Mr. St. Maur, and not a word of that young flower. However, no doubt, it’s as well as it is,” she added, with a nod of her head and a look of recollection.