CHAPTER XI.
HIDDEN HOPES.
UPON Mr. Jerningham the tidings of his wife’s death came suddenly, but not unexpectedly. He hastened to arrange that all honour should be paid to the ashes of this fair scion of the house of Jerningham. The ponderous doors of the vault which had not been opened since his father’s death unclosed to receive his wife’s coffin. The bells which had rung a merry peal of welcome when she first came to Greenlands tolled long and dismally upon the day of her burial. All deference and ceremony that could have attended the burial of a beloved wife attended the funeral rites of her who had been only tolerated by her husband. Harold Jerningham was chief mourner at that stately, yet quiet ceremonial. His own hand had addressed the invitation that summoned Laurence Desmond to the funeral.
“The world shall read how we stood, side by side, at the door of the vault,” thought Mr. Jerningham; “and the lips of Slander shall be mute about the poor soul’s friendship for her father’s friend.”
Mr. Desmond understood and appreciated the delicacy of mind which had inspired the invitation. Even in that last dread ceremonial it was well that there should be some votive offering to Society. That deity has her shrine in every temple, and must be propitiated alike at wedding-feast or funeral. She is the modern successor of those nameless goddesses whom the men of old called amiable, and worshipped in mortal fear.
Theodore de Bergerac was present at the opening and closing of the vault, and invited Laurence Desmond to dinner when they left the church; but his invitation was declined.
“I will run down to dine with you in a week or two, if you will allow me,” he said; “but to-day it is impossible. I have business that will take me back to town.”
And so they parted; Laurence to go back to his chambers and spend the evening in dreary meditation, looking over the letters that had been written to him by that hand which now lay cold in the Berkshire vault. He had a photograph of the never-to-be-forgotten face, a few water-colour sketches of the river-scenery about Hampton; and these were all his memorials of the dead.
He packed them carefully in white paper, sealed the packet with many seals, and laid it in the most secret drawer of his desk.
“Thus ends the love of my youth,” he said, to himself; “God grant the love of my manhood may come to a happier ending!”
The first two months of his widowhood Mr. Jerningham spent abroad. For some subtle reason of his own he preferred to be away from Greenlands, and from his friends at the cottage, during that period of conventional mourning. Perhaps he would have been less inclined to absent himself from that beloved retreat if Eustace Thorburn had still been a dweller in M. de Bergerac’s household.
That gentleman’s residence in Paris threatened to extend itself to several months. The work found for him amongst old manuscripts and rare Oriental books increased every day, and the notes of the great history seemed likely to become as voluminous as Gibbon’s _Rome_. Like Gibbon, M. de Bergerac had bestowed the greater part of his lifetime upon the collection of materials for his great book; but the materials, when collected, were more difficult to deal with than those upon which the matchless historian founded his massive monument of human genius; or it may be that M. de Bergerac was something less than Gibbon. In earnestness, at least, he was that great man’s equal.
“Do not leave Paris until you have completely sifted the Oriental department of the library,” he wrote to his secretary; “and if it is necessary for you to have the aid of a translator, do not hesitate to engage one.”
To this Mr. Thorburn replied, modestly, that his own knowledge of the Oriental languages was increasing day by day; that he had been fortunate enough to fall in with a learned, though somewhat shabby, pundit among the frequenters of the Imperial Library; and that he had induced this person to work with him for an hour or two every evening on very reasonable terms.
“I cannot tell you what pleasure it has been to me to conquer the difficulties of these languages,” he wrote to his kind employer. And, indeed, to this friendless young man every grammatical triumph had been sweet, every tedious struggle with the obscurities of Devanagari or Sanscrit a labour of love. Riches or rank he had none to lay at the feet of the fair girl he loved; but by such dryasdust studies as these he could testify his devotion to that service which of all others was most dear to her affectionate heart.
Weeks and months slipped by in these congenial labours. The notes for the great book, and Eustace Thorburn’s poem, grew side by side, and the young man had no leisure hour in which to nurse despondent thoughts. He was happier than he could have imagined it possible for him to be away from Greenlands. His work was delightful to him, because he was working for her. Yes; for her! His patient industry at the library was a tribute to her. His poem was written for her; since, if it won him reputation, he might dare to offer her the name so embellished.
To Helen those autumn months seemed very dull. Her father’s secretary had made himself so completely a part of the household as to leave a blank not easily filled. Both father and daughter missed his bright face, his earnest, enthusiastic talk, his affectionate but unobtrusive devotion to their smallest interests.
“We shall never have such a friend again, papa,” Helen said, naïvely; and the little speech, with the tone in which it was spoken, inclined M. de Bergerac to think that Harold Jerningham’s fears had not been groundless.
“You miss him very much, Helen?”
“More than I thought it possible I could miss any one but you?”
“And yet he only came to us as a stranger, my dear, to perform a stipulated service. In France a young lady would scarcely care to express so much interest in her father’s secretary.”
The girl’s innocent face grew crimson. What! had she said more than was becoming? Had she deserved a reproof from that dear father whom she lived only to please? After this she spoke no more of Eustace Thorburn; but her father’s mild reproof had awakened strange misgivings in her mind.
Mr. Jerningham returned to Greenlands before Christmas, and spent that pleasant season at the cottage. A peace of mind which he had not known since boyhood possessed him in that calm abode, now that he was a free man, and Eustace Thorburn no longer exhibited before him the insolent happiness of youth.
“This is indeed home!” he exclaimed, as he sat by M. de Bergerac’s hearth, and heard the carol-singers in the garden. “It is more than thirty years since Christmas was kept at the great house yonder. I wonder whether it will ever be kept there again within my life?”
“Why not?” asked his old friend; “you are young enough to marry again.”
“Do you think so, Theodore?” inquired Mr. Jerningham, earnestly.
“Do I think so? Who should think so more than I? Was there ever a happier marriage than mine? And I do not ask you to make so bold a venture as I made in marrying a dear girl twenty years my junior. There are handsome and distinguished widows enough in your English society; women who, in the prime of middle age, retain the fresh beauty of their youth, with all the added graces given by experience of life.”
“Thanks,” said Mr. Jerningham, coldly; “I should not care to entrust the remnant of my life to a middle-aged person, however well preserved. I can exist without a wife. If ever I marry again, I shall marry for love.”
He stole a glance at Helen. She was sitting by the fire, with an open book upon her lap, her eyes fixed dreamily. Where her wandering thoughts might be Harold Jerningham knew not; but he perceived they were not given to him. “Has the hour gone by?” he asked himself. “Has my hour gone for ever?”
“Nobly spoken, my friend,” said Theodore; “you will marry for love. And why not? God gave me a fair young bride, and seven years of happiness more complete than a man dare hope for on earth.”
No more was said upon a subject so delicate. But from this conversation Mr. Jerningham derived considerable comfort; for he perceived that his old friend found no incongruity in the idea of his seeking something more than a marriage of convenience in a second union.
After this he came to the cottage with something akin to hope in his breast. Helen received him always with the same sweetness. He was her father’s friend, and had been her father’s protector in the hour of evil fortune. This fact was ever present to her mind; it imparted to her manner a sweetness which was fatal to Harold Jerningham.
Theodore de Bergerac watched the two together; and one day, as if by inspiration, the secret of his old friend’s frequent visits flashed upon him. The danger that had existed for the young secretary existed also for the weary worldling, and girlish sweetness and simplicity had won a heart sated with life’s factitious joys.
Within a week after the student achieved this brilliant discovery, Harold Jerningham made a full confession of his weakness.
“I know that at present I am no more to her than her father’s old friend,” he said, when he had told his story, and had discovered that M. de Bergerac was neither surprised nor shocked by the revelation; “but give me only sufficient time, and I may win that pure heart, which already half belongs to me by right of my affection for you. Earnest feeling in a man who is not quick to feel must count for something. Do not judge me by my past, Theodore. Dissever me from that past, if you can; for, as I live, I am a new man since I have loved your daughter. To love a creature so pure is a spiritual baptism. If I can win that innocent heart, you will not stand between me and happiness, will you, old friend?”
“If you can win her heart, no; but I will not sacrifice my daughter, or persuade her. I will confess to you that the uncertainty of her future is a constant perplexity to me, and that I would gladly see that future secured. I will say even more than this; I will admit that I should be proud to see my only child allied to a race so distinguished as yours, the mistress of a home so splendid as your Greenlands yonder. But by no word of mine will I influence her to a step so solemn. The difference between your ages is greater than in the case of myself and my dear wife; but the world might possibly have augured ill for the result of our union. Again, I say, if you can win my child’s heart, I will not refuse you her hand.”
This was all Mr. Jerningham desired. A reluctant bride, sacrificed on the altar of ambition, would have been no bride for him. He was too much a gentleman not to have recoiled from the brutality involved in such an union. All he desired was the liberty to woo and to win; to set his many gifts against that one obvious disadvantage of his fifty years, and to triumph in spite of that stumbling-block.
“Time and I against any two,” said Philip II. of Spain. Mr. Jerningham’s chief reliance was on time; time, which might first render his society habitual, and then necessary, to Helen; time, which would familiarize her with the difference between their ages, until that difference would scarcely seem to exist; time, which by demonstrating his constancy and devotion, must in the end give him a claim upon Helen’s gratitude, a right to her compassion.
Time might, perhaps, have done all this for Mr. Jerningham but for one small circumstance: the stake for which he was playing this patient game had already been won. It remained no more upon the table for gamblers to venture its winning. The girl’s innocent heart had been given unconsciously to a silent adorer; and while Harold Jerningham was hanging upon her looks and studying her careless words, all her tenderest thoughts and dreams were wafted across the Channel to the industrious exile clearing his way through the great jungle of Arianism, in the Imperial Library of Paris.
Winter passed, and the early spring brought news to Mr. Jerningham. A noble Scottish kinsman had died, leaving him a handsome estate in Perthshire. It was necessary that he should visit this new acquisition, and make all arrangements for its due maintenance; but he was sorely averse from leaving Greenlands, and the simple household in which he had learned to be happy.
“I suppose I must go,” he said; “Lord Pendarvoch was a confirmed miser, and I know he kept the place in a most miserable condition. When I was last in the neighbourhood, many years ago, there was not a fence fit for a civilized country, or a boundary-wall that kept out his neighbour’s cattle. Yes, I suppose I must go and take possession, and shake hands with my tacksmen, and establish my claim to be regarded as a scion of the true blood--though it comes to me zigzag fashion, through a female branch of the old house. My mother’s mother was an aunt of the last lord.”
Mr. Jerningham lapsed into reverie. It was early April; green buds already bursting in the old-fashioned garden, and a wealth of pear and plum-blossom, snowy white; but the rich red of the apple-trees not yet opened. Tulip and hyacinth, polyanthus and primrose, were bright in the borders; rich red wallflowers bloomed on the old wall; all the garden was gay with the fresh spring blossoms.
“Do you remember what you said about Switzerland, Helen?” Mr. Jerningham asked, abruptly, after rather a long silence.
“I remember saying a great deal about Switzerland.”
“And of your desire to see that country?”
“Yes, indeed! but that is too bright a dream. Papa confesses that his book is the kind of book that never _is_ finished. William Mure of Caldwell did not live to finish his book, you know, though the subject is a narrow one compared to the theme of my dear father’s labours; and Müller’s book was left unfinished. How can I ever hope to go to Switzerland, since I should care nothing for the most beautiful land unless papa was my fellow-traveller?”
“We will persuade your father to publish the first two volumes of his book some day, and then we can all start for Switzerland together. But in the meantime allow me to inquire if you have ever thought about Scotland?”
“I have read Sir Walter Scott’s delightful stories.”
“Of course,” cried Mr. Jerningham, with unwonted vivacity; “and those charming romances have inspired you with an ardent desire to behold the scenes which they embellish--the land of mountain and of fell, the land of Macgregor and Ravenswood, of heart-broken Lucy Ashton and weird Meg Merrilies. Do not think of Switzerland till you have seen the Scottish highlands.”
“But the snow!” urged Helen.
“Snow! In Scotland I will show you mountain-peaks upon which the snows have never melted since the days of the Bruce; and from those snow-clad hills you shall look down into no dazzling abyss of awful whiteness, but out upon the waste of waters, with all their changeful play of light and shade, and varying splendour of colour, and animated motion. In Switzerland, remember, you have no sea.”
“But the ice-oceans--the glaciers?”
“Better in the descriptions of Berlepsch than in reality; and even he admits that they are dirty. Upon my honour, the highlands of Scotland are unsurpassable.”
“And then?” inquired Helen, laughing. “Why this sudden enthusiasm for Scotland, Mr. Jerningham? Oh! I forgot; you are now a proprietor of the northern soil, and I suppose this is only a natural burst of proprietorial pride.”
This accusation Mr. Jerningham disdained to answer.
“Helen!” he said, with mock solemnity, “has it never occurred to you that your father must require change of scene--some relief from the monotonous verdancy of sylvan Berkshire--some respite from those eternal spreading beeches which provoke from commonplace lips ever-recurring allusion to the hackneyed Tityrus? That you yourself have languished for bolder scenery--snow-clad mountain-top, and wide blue lake--I am well aware; but do you think our dear scholar does not also require that mental and physical refreshment which comes from the contemplation of unknown lands and the breathing of unfamiliar breezes; or, in two words, do you not think that a brief spring holiday in the highlands would be of great advantage to my dear friend?”
The student came out of the porch in time to hear the conclusion of Mr. Jerningham’s speech. The master of Greenlands and Helen de Bergerac had been strolling up and down the lawn in front of the cottage during this conversation.
“What are you talking about, Harold?” asked the Frenchman.
Helen was prompt to answer his question.
“Oh, papa, Mr. Jerningham has been saying that you must require change of air and scene, and that a trip to Scotland would do you wonderful good. And so I am sure it would.”
“Yes, Theodore, I want you to go with me to Pendarvoch. The place itself is scarcely worth showing you, but the surrounding scenery is superb; and Helen informs me she languishes to behold the Scottish highlands.”
“Oh, Mr. Jerningham!” cried Helen; “when did I ever say----”
“Not a minute ago. And you know the advantage to your father will be unspeakable.”
“But my book?” urged the student.
“You will return to it with renewed vigour after your holiday. You told me only the other day that you had of late experienced a languor, a distaste for your work, which denoted physical weakness; and----”
“Oh, papa!” cried Helen, alarmed; “you do not confess these things to me! It is quite true; you have been looking tired lately. Nanon remarked it. Pray let us go to Scotland.”
“Can you refuse her?” asked Mr. Jerningham.
“When did I ever refuse anything to this dear child?”
“And when did she ever ask anything that you should refuse? Come, Theodore, it is the first favour I have asked of you for a long time. I must go to Pendarvoch; and I cannot bear to leave this place, where I have been so happy, unless I can take those with me who have made the spot so dear.”
To a woman of the world, the tone of these words, and the look which accompanied them, would have spoken volumes. To Helen they told nothing, except that Mr. Jerningham was sincerely attached to her father and herself. She had always thought of him as her father’s devoted friend, and it seemed to her only natural that she should be included in that friendship. She liked Harold Jerningham better than she liked any one, except those two people who reigned side by side in her heart; and the line which divides the outer tokens of liking and loving is so narrow a demarcation, that Harold Jerningham might easily be betrayed into fond hopes that were without foundation. Her manner to this friend of her father’s was all sweetness. His tender accents, his fond, admiring looks, she accepted as the natural gallantries of a man so much her senior. Her very innocence made her more dangerous than the most accomplished of coquettes. And at this notion of a trip to the Highlands she brightened and sparkled, and placed herself at once on Mr. Jerningham’s side. For so many reasons the plan was delightful to her. First and chiefest of such reasons, it promised to benefit her father; secondly, she had long known and rejoiced in the romances of the northern enchanter, and the very sound of Scottish names conjured a hundred visions of romance before her mind’s eye; thirdly, there had come upon Greenlands, upon her garden, her poultry-yard, her books, her piano, the river, the woods--nay, over the very sky that arched the woods and river, a shadow of dulness from the hour of Eustace Thorburn’s departure. The old places had lost their familiar charm--the old pursuits had become wearisome. She fancied that amidst new scenes she would be less likely to miss her old companion; and then, in the next breath, said to herself, “How _he_ would have liked to see Scotland!”
A great deal of argument was required to convince Theodore de Bergerac that it could be for his benefit to uproot himself from the spot he so dearly loved in order to travel to remotest regions of the north. He had the Frenchman’s natural horror of foreign countries; and having once niched himself at his nest at Greenlands, cared not to stir thence, how fair soever might be the distant lands he was invited to visit. The argument which at last prevailed was that urged by Helen’s pleading face. _That_ entreaty the tender father was powerless to resist.
“My darling, it must be as you wish,” he said, and the rest was easy. Mr. Jerningham did not suffer the grass to grow under his feet. He was prompt to make all arrangements, and three days after the subject had been mooted, the travellers were on their northward way, speeding to Edinburgh by express.
They were to spend three days in Edinburgh, then onward by easy stages, “doing” all the lions in their way, to the village and castle of Pendarvoch, which lay half in Perthshire, half in Aberdeenshire.