CHAPTER VIII.

A BLASTED LIFE.

THOUGH, however, Wilfred could not rise, he could, when at last he found himself alone, think; and Heaven only knows how exceedingly bitter were his thoughts. For some hours he lay like one stunned, trying, but trying in vain, to see his way out of the maze of sin and misery in which he was involved. Lionel, his heroic brother; Evelyn, his tenderly loved and loving sister; the grey old Rector, who had been his steadfast friend and adviser from childhood upwards; and Mary Elthorne, his sister’s friend--what would all these think of him? And the village lads at Holmcastle, his companions in every manly game, and to whom erewhile he had been the friend and adviser--would not they too, when they came to know it, despise him in their honest hearts? He had loved those rough, honest, true-hearted fellows as friends and comrades, with that love which, in this country, thank God, so often subsists between the best-born and the rural poor--a thing which it enters not into the heart of a United States republican to conceive or understand; and now Wilfred felt he dare not look one of them in the face. And his father? His father had indeed been a cold, unsympathetic parent, so far as personal intercourse was concerned, and there had been little or no confidence between them; but the boy reflected that he owed food, and raiment, and education, and many of the joys of life to him alone, and his grateful heart swelled with grief at the disappointment he would feel. Wilfred probably appreciated anything which was of good in his father’s character more, and loved him better, than did his other children. He had the poet’s gift of idealising. His own high-strung, enthusiastic nature led him to feel that his father’s foibles, ridiculous and even wrong as they were when viewed from some aspects, had yet for their basis something which, if not noble, was at least unsordid. At all events, they sprang not from that “_fons et origo mali_,” the base love of money. His father’s family pride was in some respects redeemed by the fact that he could _make_ nothing by it; and Wilfred mourned as he thought of the shock which the announcement he would surely receive would have on his father’s reserved and proud nature. It may seem strange, but it is nevertheless true, that the thought of attempting to justify himself scarcely even entered into the lad’s over-sensitive mind. The foul accusation had been made, that accusation was supported by a chain of circumstantial evidence, and he felt he was doomed to take the consequences. As regarded justification, he must let that alone for ever. Bowed down in the dust of the degradation of the present hour, the boy could look out with no hope upon the future; all was a blank before him. Heretofore, to his poetic soul, life itself had been very dear, and his happiness in that life had been great and vivid. Heretofore, his young life had been to him as life was to Adam before the fall. That was the outcome and the reward of his innocence. Where there was no sin, there was no shame. He had made the poet’s words his own--

“Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir trees, the cool, silver shock Of the plunge in the pool’s living waters----”

He had rejoiced in his strength, as he climbed the crags of Stanwick Chase; he had joyed in his lonely rambles over the solemn moors with his gun, with which he had shot the casual grouse, or the rare falcons which haunted the highest rocks; he had revelled in the swift paces of his horse; he had loved the excitement of the manly games, in which he was himself the foremost actor. Not a star shone in the silent midnight sky, not a bird sang in the leafy copses, not a flower blossomed by the wayside, not a fern uncurled its fronds in the crevices of the rocks, that had not been to him a source of living joy.

Now, all that was passed and over; the light had died out from his life, and the blackness of darkness covered his soul.

Alas, that it should be so! Alas, that to some noble natures a sense of injustice received is the most crushing and most deadly of all blows that can be dealt!

It was near nine o’clock in the evening when Dr. Massenger came up to Wilfred’s room. After the expression of a cold and mechanical hope that he was feeling better, the Heidelberg Doctor said, “I have come to inform you, Mr. Manwaring, that I have written to your father, and have despatched the letter by this evening’s post, to prepare him for your immediate return to the honourable home you have disgraced, as, in justice to my other pupils, I can no longer permit you to be the associate of gentlemen of noble birth and refined feelings, into whose company I confess I was wrong ever to have permitted one of your station to enter. No,” pursued the Doctor, as he saw Wilfred was attempting to speak--“no, I cannot permit any explanation or any excuses. Your manifest reluctance to have your effects examined (how widely different was the behaviour of that exemplary young man, the-heir of Lord Guttleborough!), and the fortuitously fortunate discovery of a portion of your ill-gotten plunder in the recesses of a garment which you wore when you were unsuspiciously admitted to view the Lares--the household gods, I may say--of a gentleman who is not only an ornament to society, but whom I am proud to reckon amongst the number of my own personal friends, renders all explanation superfluous and useless. The restitution of the rest of the plunder (although I fear that is rendered impossible by your recent purchase of an expensive instrument calculated to destroy life--I mean a fowling-piece) will, I apprehend, be a matter for the consideration of the legal advisers on both sides, since, with what I confess appears to me to be a misplaced leniency, my outraged friend declines to prosecute you for the criminal offence. All I have to say at present is, that you will leave this roof to-morrow, and will return at once to your parental mansion. For the remainder of the evening, I have to insist upon your remaining in your own chamber, and you will depart by the first train in the morning. As I shall not see you again, I now bid you farewell, with the earnest hope that, not yet utterly hardened in crime, you may live to redeem the shameful past.” With these words, the proprietor of “Ehrenbreitstein” turned on his heel, and stumped out of the room.

Wilfred, who, during the foregoing oration, was prostrate upon his bed, turned himself to the wall on the Doctor’s exit, a prey to the deepest shame and sorrow. He was just sinking into a disturbed slumber, when he was aroused by a friendly arm being thrown round his neck, and, as he turned in the darkness, he felt a warm kiss imprinted upon his fevered brow by some one who was leaning over him, as he half-knelt by the bedside.

“Manwaring, Manwaring, my dear old fellow,” cried a sympathetic voice, “don’t take this horrid matter so much to heart. All will be explained; I know it will. I felt sure from the first it was some devilry of that infernal cad, Cubleigh. You can’t think that I, your friend and companion, could ever think you guilty--you who are the dearest and best and noblest fellow I ever saw; you, who I know, and shall always gratefully remember, have done me good; you, whose advice and entreaties saved me from sin, and to whom I owe more than I can ever repay!”

The speaker was the young Duke of Ribblesdale, and as he spoke, he nestled close to the forlorn youth, and threw his strong arms around him, and wetted him with his tears.

“Look here,” he continued; “Massenger has told me you are to be sent home to-morrow in disgrace. It’s a beastly shame. But don’t think I shall remain here without you; I would bolt first. But I know my mother will remove me at Christmas if I ask her. Massenger is an old snob, and I have no pity for, nor patience with him. He told me not to speak to you again; but you see here I am, come to say good-bye and God bless you. We shall meet again, I know, in happier times.”

Wilfred felt deeply moved by the affectionate kindness of his friend, but he was too weak and miserable to speak. He returned, however, the embrace, and then once more he was left alone to the company of his own sad thoughts.

It is indeed grievous to reflect upon a blasted life.