He spoke as if he would willingly have heard them again detailed; but, for a moment or two, De Vaux made no reply; and the next instant the sound of a horse's feet at a quick trot suddenly broke upon the ear, and called the attention of both. In a minute more, a horseman wrapped in a large roquelaure passed them rapidly; and though he neither spoke nor bowed, his sudden appearance was enough to break off the thread of their discourse. When he was gone, Colonel Manners felt that, though De Vaux might take it up again if he would, he himself could not in propriety do so. De Vaux, however, was silent; for he was not one of those men to whom the accidents and misfortunes of their friends and relations furnished matter for pleasant discourse; and the topic of course dropped there. Perhaps, indeed, the younger traveller showed some inclination even to avoid the subject; for he led the conversation almost immediately into another channel, pointing out to his friend the various hills and landmarks which distinguished the grounds of his father from those of his aunt, and dwelling with enthusiasm upon the pleasures that his boyhood had there known, and the hopes which his return had re-awakened in his bosom; and yet there was mingled with the whole a touch of fastidiousness which contrasted strangely enough with the warmth of feeling and expression to which he gave way in other respects. He seemed to doubt the very love, the happiness of which he pictured so brightly; he seemed to distrust the joys to which he was so sensitively alive; he even seemed, in some degree, to sneer at himself for giving the credence that he did to those things which he most desired to believe true.
But Edward de Vaux had been brought up in a fastidious school. He had lived at the acmé of fortune and trod upon circumstances all his life, and this we hold to be the true way of becoming misanthropical. It is nonsense to suppose that a man turns misanthrope in consequence of great misfortunes. No such thing! it is by being fortunate ter et amplius. The spoiled children of the blind goddess are those that kick at her wheel; and those on whom she showers nothing but misfortunes cling tight to the tire, in hopes of a better turn, till the next whirl casts them off into the wide hereafter.
Edward de Vaux stood at the climax of fortune. Never in his life had he known what a serious reverse or great misfortune is; and consequently he had gathered together all the petty vexations and minor disappointments that he had met with, and, to use the term of Napoleon Bonaparte, had nearly stung himself to death with wasps. Perhaps, too, he might be fastidious by inheritance, for his father was so in a still higher degree than himself; though in the father it showed itself in irritable impatience, and a sort of contempt both tyrannical and insulting towards those whom he disliked; while in the son, mingled with, if not springing from, finer feelings: passing, too, through the purifying medium of a gentler heart, and corrected by a high sense of what is gentlemanly, his fastidiousness seldom showed itself except in a passing sneer at any thing that is false, affected, or absurd, in an indignant sarcasm at that which is base or evil, or in petulant irritability at that which is weak.
As he now rode onward to rejoin those friends whom he had not seen for nearly three years, accompanied by a companion who had never seen them at all, the little world of his heart was in a strange commotion. All the joy which an affectionate disposition can feel was rising up at every point against the sway of cold propriety, and yet he tormented himself with a thousand imaginary annoyances. Now he fancied that the delight he felt and expressed was undignified, and might lower him in the eyes of his companion; now he chose to doubt that his reception from those he had left behind would be warm enough to justify the exuberant pleasure that he himself experienced; while, keenly alive to the slightest ridicule, he shrunk from the idea of exposing, even to his dearest friend, one single spot in his heart to which the lash could be applied.
"I was foolish," he thought, "not to leave Manners in London for a day, and get all the joyful absurdities of a first welcome over before he came down. However, my aunt would have it so; and it cannot be avoided now."
As they proceeded, the purple of the evening died entirely away, and a gray dimness fell over tree, and stream, and hill. Star by star looked out, grew brighter and brighter, as the wandering ball on which we travel through the inconceivable depth turned our hemisphere from the superior light, and at length all was night.
In the lapse of ten minutes more, the road--which, winding about between the hills and the stream, was forced often out of its true direction,--had conducted them to a steep bank overhanging a wider part of the valley, and here Colonel Manners divined--for he could scarcely be said to see--that a scattered but considerable village lay before them. Up and down the sides of the hill, a hundred twinkling lights in cottage windows were sprinkled like glow-worms among the darker masses of orchard and copsewood; and now and then, as the travellers advanced, a bright glare suddenly flashed forth from some opening door; and then again was as speedily extinguished, when the entrance or the exit of the visiter was accomplished. Some watchful dog, too, caught the sound of horses' feet, and, after one or two desultory barks, set up his tongue into a continual peal. His neighbours of the canine race took the signal, and--not at all unlike the human species--ever inclined to clamour, yelped forth in concert, whether they had heard or not the noise that roused their comrade's indignation, so that the village was soon one continued roar with the efforts of various hairy throats.
The salutation, however, was sweet to Edward de Vaux, for it spoke of home--or at least of a dwelling that was dearer than any other home he might possess; and, pausing a moment, he pointed onward to a spot, where, on the edge of the hill beyond the village, might be seen, cutting sharp upon the pale silvery gray of the western sky, the dark outline of a large house, with a plentiful supply of chimneys, of an architecture somewhat less light and fanciful than that of Palladio, but very well suited to a dwelling in the land of peace and comfort.
"That is my aunt's house," said De Vaux, "and, though it is nearly three miles by the road from the spot where that horseman passed us, it is not much more than three-quarters of a mile by the path over the hill. But that path," he added, "is impracticable for horses, or I should certainly have risked breaking your neck, Manners, rather than take this long tedious round."
Now, strange to say, the round that they had taken seemed longer and more tedious to Edward de Vaux, when he came within sight of the mansion which was to end his journey, than it had done at any other moment of the ride. But so it was; and without inquiring into things with which we have nothing to do, we may conclude that he felt some of those vague, unreasonable doubts and apprehensions, which almost every one experiences on the first view of one's home after a long absence--those fears which are the very children of our hopes--that anxiety which the uncertainty of human fate impresses upon our minds, till we are sure that all is well. Who is there that has not gazed up at his own dwelling-place as he returned from far, and asked himself, with a sudden consciousness of the instability of all things, "Shall I find nothing gone amiss? Has no misfortune trod that threshold? Has disease or sorrow never visited it? Has death turned his steps aside?"
Whatever it was that Edward de Vaux felt, although the round seemed a long one, and the time tedious that it had consumed, he yet drew in his rein, not so as to bring his horse quite up, but to check him into a walk; while he pointed out the house to his companion, and gazed at its dark and distant mass himself. At that very moment, a single ray glimmered in one of the windows, passed on into another, and then three windows suddenly streamed forth with light. It looked like a beacon to say that all was well; and though no man in the present day cares a straw for things that in other years, when skilfully applied, have won battles and overthrown dynasties--I mean omens--yet every man has a silent, unacknowledged, foolish little system of augury of his own; and Edward de Vaux and his companion, at the sight of this dexter omen, set spurs to their horses, and rode merrily on their way.
The reader, who loves variety, will not be displeased, perhaps, to find that this story, leaving