CHAPTER V.

Ever still must I adore thee: Though wide seas between us roll, Each fond thought shall hover o'er thee, And thine image fill my soul.

Morning breaking o'er the ocean Will thine opening graces wear, And with evening's last devotion I will breathe thy name in prayer.

_Unpublished Poems._

Upon leaving Cransley, Captain De Molton had hastened to town. He there found his father, who having left the rest of the family at Brighton, had also repaired to London for the purpose of effecting the proposed exchange.

Lord Cumberworth was preparing to enter a hackney-coach, which waited to carry him to Brookes's, where he meant to dine and to solace himself with a quiet game at tolerably high whist, when he was startled at the unexpected appearance of his son.

"Why, Francis!" he exclaimed, "I thought you were gone to Cransley for a fortnight! What brings you here?"

"I wished to see you, father, and to talk to you seriously concerning my prospects in life. You are come up about my exchange, are you not?"

"Yes--and I hope I shall be able to settle it all comfortably. Your mother has been in one of her nervous ways at the bare thoughts of your going to India."

"I think I ought to go, father."

"Why! which way does the wind blow now? Why the d--l did you not tell me so sooner? They have all been pestering me to come to town, and to leave no stone unturned to save you from this banishment, as you all called it; and now I have taken the trouble of coming, you change your mind! Upon my word, this is very inconsiderate. But, after all, I myself do not like your going into such an unhealthy climate, and I would rather keep you at home if I could. If you are to go into danger, let it be where some honour and renown are to be obtained. There is no glory in dying of a liver complaint, as yellow as a guinea."

"I am very sorry, my dear father, to have given you so much unnecessary trouble, but I have fully made up my mind to sail with my regiment."

"And pray, Master Francis, what has worked this wondrous revolution in your mind?"

"Why, father, to tell you the truth, happiness is out of the question for me; and therefore I had rather do whatever will make me least burthensome to my family, and also take me out of the way for a time."

"And why do you want to lie perdue? You have not been running in debt, have you?"

"No, father; I am too well aware what are your circumstances."

"Not a scrape? eh, my boy!"--and Lord Cumberworth, whose morals were not puritanical, smiled. "It can't be Lady Westhope, she is such a prude. You have not been playing the fool, I hope?" continued Lord Cumberworth, putting more of parental gravity into his countenance.

"I have been guilty of nothing wrong in deed or thought," replied De Molton with seriousness.

"Egad! but there's a woman in question though," replied Lord Cumberworth. "You are not in any danger of marrying?" and his face really assumed an expression of sincere alarm.

"Not exactly, father; but I am unfortunately attached to a person who is on the eve of marriage with another."

"Thank heaven that is all!" exclaimed Lord Cumberworth. "Remember one thing, Frank--a man is never thoroughly undone till he is married."

De Molton remained silent. His father's tone of feeling was so little in unison with his own, that he wished to say no more upon the subject than was absolutely necessary.

"Does the girl like you, my boy?" added Lord Cumberworth.

De Molton was somewhat perplexed how to answer, but he said, "I told you, father, she was going to be married to another man."

"Ah! but women have married a rich man, when they have been in love with a poor man, before now. And you are a d----sh handsome fellow, and more like me than any of my children. Well, don't look so sheepish, like a bashful maiden yourself. Is the girl in love with you?"

"I conclude not," resolutely answered De Molton.

"Have you told her you are in love with her?"

"Why, yes, I have."

"And she was not angry, eh? Come, I suppose your nice sense of honour will allow you to say whether she is very much in love with her future husband or not?"

"I should say she esteemed him highly, but was not precisely in love with him," was De Molton's guarded reply.

"Wheugh--gh--gh!" with an elevation of the eye-brows, and a sound that ended in something like a whistle, was the response produced by this last communication of his son's. "You had better go, my boy. I see how it is: if you stay, we shall have the marriage broken off and the d--l to pay. Ah! well I am sorry to part with you, but you had better go--we will do no more about the exchange. But I am as hungry as a hound--I have eat nothing since I left Brighton. There is no dinner in the house--nothing in it but the old housemaid: we can't roast her--she would be tougher than Pedrillo. Let's be off to Brookes's. By the by, you don't belong to Brookes's: I remember you said it was too expensive, when George wanted to get you put up. Well, you can eat your dinner at your Junior United Service Club; and we will meet here, at home, at ten o'clock, and talk matters over quietly."

Lord Cumberworth got into his hackney-coach, and De Molton walked off to his club, to snatch a hasty morsel, and return to South Audley Street, there to ruminate sadly upon his future fate until his father should join him. There was much of bitterness in his reflections. He could not help repining at the unequal distribution of fortune, and thinking it hard that the happiness of two beings should be wrecked for lack of that contemptible thing, money. He almost doubted whether he was acting rightly by Lady Blanche in abandoning her when she had all but acknowledged her love for him. And yet, what could he do? His worldly pelf consisted but of his pay, and the very moderate allowance his father was able to make him. He had nothing to look to. His father's property was entailed upon the eldest son--his circumstances were embarrassed--he had been obliged to let Cumberworth Hall, and lived principally in London, making an occasional excursion to some watering-place: there was no chance of his saving money, and there were twelve of them to divide the fifty thousand pounds settled on younger children. Lady Blanche certainly had no dislike to Glenrith, or she would never have accepted him: and who could know Glenrith, and not learn to value and to love his kind feelings and singleness of heart? The more he reflected, the more strengthened he was in his purpose. When he was far away, she would assuredly forget the slight prepossession she had entertained for him, and she would soon give her whole heart to Glenrith. When he had brought his reasonings to this most desirable point, he found it infinitely more painful than any other view of the subject.

His father returned about ten o'clock, and after arranging to write immediately to the person with whom they had been in treaty for the exchange, and to lose no time in procuring the proper stock of articles necessary for the voyage, as there was a possibility of the regiment sailing within a fortnight, they agreed to leave London the following afternoon, and to join the rest of the family at Brighton.

"Well, cheer up, my boy!" said Lord Cumberworth, as he bade his son good night. "There is no use in fretting--there are more pretty girls than one in the world, and you are not the first sentimental young man who has been crossed in love. _Il en faut passer par là._ We have all been crossed in love in our time. I, myself, was very much smitten with another woman when I married your mother; but I saw that my marrying Helen was out of the question, and so I did what they all wished me to do, and it answered just as well. Your mother is a very good woman, Frank, and I am very fond of her. So cheer up, my boy--never be down-hearted! You will forget your Dulcinea long before you cross the line." He was closing the door, when he turned back again to say,--"Frank, you look for all the world as if you were younger brother to the knight of La Mancha--_el cavaliere de la triste figura_,--with your pale cheeks and your high forehead. I would not be a skill of wine or a windmill in your way for something!"

The good-humoured but unsentimental father chuckled at his own joke, and went off to bed so relieved that his son would be secured from the impending danger, that it quite reconciled him to his departure.

When they arrived at Brighton late the following evening, poor Lady Cumberworth was in despair at the prospect of her pet, her darling, the most affectionate, the most considerate, the most dutiful of all her children, running all the risks consequent upon a banishment to India; "not only," as she said, "braving perils by sea and perils by land, but those of climate and disease."

"There are worse perils in England, Mary," replied her husband with a knowing wink. "Perils by eyes are the most dangerous for handsome young fellows! Depend upon it, he is far safer in the other hemisphere; for peril by marriage is the worst of all--that is to say, when a man has nothing, and never can have anything as long as lives."

De Molton shrunk at hearing his attachment alluded to among all the family circle; though to his dear gentle mother he could have opened his whole heart, and to most of his sisters individually also. The eldest was grown a little starch, and the youngest was rather too young and giddy; but the four middle ones had plenty of romance in them, and would have listened to his tale with tears in their eyes. To any one of them in a tête-à-tête he might have spoken his feelings; but to have twelve curious, wondering, though kind eyes, turn upon him at once, was peculiarly unpleasant to a sensitive and reserved man.

Lady Cumberworth saw his distress, and hastened to say, "We were just going to bed when you arrived. I shall carry Frank off to have a quiet gossip with him; so good night, girls!"

De Molton followed his mother, and in her found a sympathizing listener--one who entered into all his difficulties, and who was ready to love poor Blanche for appreciating her own dear Frank as he deserved. But she saw that, deeply as his affections were engaged, their union was impracticable; and she was obliged, though most reluctantly, to confess that a temporary absence, and entire change of scene, were likely to spare his feelings and principles many a trial.

Lady Cumberworth entreated her husband not to annoy poor Frank by any allusion to his unfortunate attachment.

"Lord bless the fellow!" exclaimed Lord Cumberworth, "I never meant to annoy him! I know he is d--shly in love, and that is all I said! And I only said, he could not marry, and that he knows well enough!"

"He is unhappy, and we must refrain from remarks that wound his delicacy just now."

"Delicacy--fiddlestick! You always did spoil that boy--and you will make him as full of feelings, and nerves, and refinement, as the most fanciful woman of you all!"

The young ladies also met in a nocturnal synod. "What is this love of Frank's?" exclaimed Mary.

"How papa made him blush!" said Laura.

"And is he really going to India?" asked Charlotte.

"Who is the girl?" inquired Emily.

"And why could not mamma talk to him before us, I wonder?" added Katherine, the youngest, who was rather pert.

"When you are a little older, you will know that people do not like to discuss _les affaires du cœur en pleine salle_," answered Jane the eldest; and with a dignified air she retired to bed.

"I suppose Jane wishes to persuade us she has some love affairs of her own, though we know nothing about them," continued the merry Katherine: "she has preserved a most dignified mystery upon the subject, ever since I have been grown up."

After a few more questions which could elicit no answers, seeing that all parties were equally in the dark, the sisters separated for the night, and all found the repose they sought except Lady Cumberworth, who acutely felt the approaching separation from her son, and still more the pain that darling son was doomed to endure.

Lady Cumberworth was not one who considered the sufferings of lovers as matter for sport;--she had been fervently attached in her early youth, and the object of that attachment had been snatched from her by death. On her side, as well as on her husband's, their marriage had been one of reason and of expediency. But she had made him an excellent wife, had borne him a large family, and they had always been a happy and affectionate couple--happier, perhaps, than if one of the parties, and only one, had felt more warmly.

In a fortnight from the time De Molton joined his family at Brighton, he tore himself from the arms of his sisters, and, lastly, from the long, speechless, close embrace of his mother, to whose more sad and sacred affection all instinctively yielded the parting caress.

He sailed with his regiment, and we will leave him for a while, losing the sense of all his romantic and high-wrought sensibilities in the absorbing sufferings often endured in the Bay of Biscay.