"Impossible," cried my mother. "And as for this Lady Ellinor, I am shocked at her – I don't know what to call it!"
"Nor I either, my dear!" said my father, slowly taking his hand from his waistcoat, as if the effort were too much for him, and the problem were insoluble. "But this, begging your pardon, I do think, that before a young woman does really, truly, and cordially centre her affections on one object, she suffers fancy, imagination, the desire of power, curiosity, or heaven knows what, to simulate, even to her own mind, pale reflexions of the luminary not yet risen – parhelia that precede the sun. Don't judge of Roland as you see him now, Pisistratus – grim, and gray, and formal; imagine a nature soaring high amongst daring thoughts, or exuberant with the nameless poetry of youthful life – with a frame matchless for bounding elasticity – an eye bright with haughty fire – a heart from which noble sentiments sprang like sparks from an anvil. Lady Ellinor had an ardent, inquisitive imagination. This bold fiery nature must have moved her interest. On the other hand, she had an instructed, full, and eager mind. Am I vain if I say, now at the lapse of so many years, that in my mind her intellect felt companionship? When a woman loves, and marries, and settles, why then she becomes – a one whole, a completed being. But a girl like Ellinor has in her many women. Various herself, all varieties please her. I do believe that, if either of us had spoken the word boldly, Lady Ellinor would have shrunk back to her own heart – examined it, tasked it, and given a frank and generous answer. And he who had spoken first might have had the better chance not to receive a 'No.' But neither of us spoke. And perhaps she was rather curious to know if she had made an impression, than anxious to create it. It was not that she willingly deceived us, but her whole atmosphere was delusion. Mists come before the sunrise. However this be, Roland and I were not long in detecting each other. And hence arose, first coldness, then jealousy, then quarrels."
"Oh, my father, your love must have been indeed powerful, to have made a breach between the hearts of two such brothers!"
"Yes," said my father; "it was amidst the old ruins of the castle, there, where I had first seen Ellinor – that, winding my arm round Roland's neck, as I found him seated amongst the weeds and stones, his face buried in his hands – it was there that I said – 'Brother, we both love this woman! My nature is the calmer of the two, I shall feel the loss less. Brother, shake hands, and God speed you, for I go!'"
"Austin," murmured my mother, sinking her head on my father's breast.
"And therewith we quarrelled. For it was Roland who insisted, while the tears rolled down his eyes, and he stamped his foot on the ground, that he was the intruder, the interloper – that he had no hope – that he had been a fool and a madman – and that it was for him to go! Now, while we were disputing, and words began to run high, my father's old servant entered the desolate place, with a note from Lady Ellinor to me, asking for the loan of some book I had praised. Roland saw the hand-writing, and while I turned the note over and over irresolutely, before I broke the seal, he vanished.
"He did not return to my father's house. We did not know what had become of him. But I, thinking over that impulsive volcanic nature, took quick alarm. And I went in search of him; came on his track at last; and, after many days, found him in a miserable cottage amongst the most dreary of the dreary wastes which form so large a part of Cumberland. He was so altered I scarcely knew him. To be brief, we came at last to a compromise. We would go back to Compton. This suspense was intolerable. One of us at least should take courage and learn his fate. But who should speak first? We drew lots, and the lot fell on me.
"And now that I was really to pass the Rubicon, now that I was to impart that secret hope which had animated me so long – been to me a new life – what were my sensations? My dear boy, depend on it that that age is the happiest, when such feelings as I felt then can agitate us no more. They are mistakes in the serene order of that majestic life which heaven meant for thoughtful man. Our souls should be as stars on earth, not as meteors and tortured comets. What could I offer to Ellinor – to her father? What but a future of patient labour? And in either answer, what alternative of misery! – my own existence shattered, or Roland's noble heart!
"Well, we went to Compton. In our former visits we had been almost the only guests. Lord Rainsforth did not much affect the intercourse of country squires, less educated then than now. And in excuse for Ellinor and for us, we were almost the only men of her own age she saw when in that large dull house. But now the London season had broken up, the house was filled; there was no longer that familiar and constant approach to the mistress of the Hall, which had made us like one family. Great ladies, fine people, were round her; a look, a smile, a passing word, were as much as I had a right to expect. And the talk, too, how different! Before, I could speak on books, – I was at home there! Roland could pour forth his dreams, his chivalrous love for the past, his bold defiance of the unknown future. And Ellinor, cultivated and fanciful, could sympathise with both. And her father, scholar and gentleman, could sympathise too. But now – "
CHAPTER XXXII.
WHEREIN MY FATHER BRINGS ABOUT HIS DENOUEMENT
"It is no use in the world," said my father, "to know all the languages expounded in grammars and splintered up into lexicons, if we don't learn the language of the world. It is a talk apart, Kitty," cried my father warming up. "It is an ANAGLYPH – a spoken anaglyph, my dear! If all the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians had been A B C to you, still if you did not know the anaglyph, you would know nothing of the true mysteries of the priests.1
"Neither Roland nor I knew one symbol-letter of the anaglyph. Talk, talk – talk on persons we never heard of, things we never cared for. All we thought of importance, puerile or pedantic trifles – all we thought so trite and childish, the grand momentous business of life! If you found a little schoolboy, on his half holiday, fishing for minnows with a crooked pin, and you began to tell him of all the wonders of the deep, the laws of the tides, and the antediluvian relics of iguanodon and ichthyosaurus – nay, if you spoke but of pearl fisheries, and coral banks, or water-kelpies and naiads, would not the little boy cry out peevishly, 'Don't tease me with all that nonsense! let me fish in peace for my minnows.' I think the little boy is right after his own way – it was to fish for minnows that he came out, poor child, not to hear about iguanodons and water-kelpies!
"So the company fished for minnows, and not a word could we say about our pearl fisheries and coral banks! And as for fishing for minnows ourselves, my dear boy, we should have been less bewildered if you had asked us to fish for a mermaid! Do you see, now, one reason why I have let you go thus early into the world? Well, but amongst these minnow-fishers there was one who fished with an air that made the minnows look larger than salmons.
"Trevanion had been at Cambridge with me. We were even intimate. He was a young man like myself, with his way to make in the world. Poor as I – of a family upon a par with mine – old enough but decayed. There was, however, this difference between us. He had connexions in the great world – I had none. Like me his chief pecuniary resource was a college fellowship. Now, Trevanion had established a high reputation at the university; but less as a scholar, though a pretty fair one, than as a man to rise in life. Every faculty he had was an energy. He aimed at every thing – lost some things, gained others. He was a great speaker in a debating society, a member of some politico-economical club. He was an eternal talker – brilliant, various, paradoxical, florid – different from what he is now. For, dreading fancy, his career since has been an effort to curb it. But all his mind attached itself to something that we Englishmen call solid; it was a large mind – not, my dear Kitty, like a fine whale sailing through knowledge from the pleasure of sailing – but like a polypus, that puts forth all its feelers for the purpose of catching hold of something. Trevanion had gone at once to London from the university: his reputation and his talk dazzled his connexions, not unjustly. They made an effort – they got him into parliament: he had spoken, he had succeeded. He came to Compton with the flush of his virgin fame. I cannot convey to you, who know him now – with his care-worn face, and abrupt dry manner, – reduced by perpetual gladiatorship to the skin and bone of his former self – what that man was when he first stepped into the arena of life.
"You