"When what?" said Camilla, innocently.
"When I have longed, but did not dare to ask another, if to share such a lot would content her!"
He bent, as he spoke, his soft blue eyes full upon the blushing face of her whom he addressed, and Camilla half smiled and half sighed:
"Our companions are far before us," said she, turning away her face, "and see, the road is now smooth." She quickened her horse's pace as she said this; and Spencer, too new to women to interpret favourably her evasion of his words and looks, fell into a profound silence which lasted during the rest of their excursion.
As towards the decline of day he bent his solitary way home, emotions and passions to which his life had hitherto been a stranger, and which, alas! he had vainly imagined a life so tranquil would everlastingly restrain, swelled his heart.
"She does not love me," he muttered, half aloud; "she will leave me, and what then will all the beauty of the landscape seem in my eyes? And how dare I look up to her? Even if her cold, vain motherher father, the man, they say, of forms and scruples, were to consent, would they not question closely of my true birth and origin? And if the one blot were overlooked, is there no other? His early habits and vices, his?a brother'shis unknown career terminating at any day, perhaps, in shame, in crime, in exposure, in the gibbet,will they overlook this?" As he spoke, he groaned aloud, and, as if impatient to escape himself, spurred on his horse and rested not till he reached the belt of trim and sober evergreens that surrounded his hitherto happy home.
Leaving his horse to find its way to the stables, the young man passed through rooms, which he found deserted, to the lawn on the other side, which sloped to the smooth waters of the lake.
Here, seated under the one large tree that formed the pride of the lawn, over which it cast its shadow broad and far, he perceived his guardian poring idly over an oft-read book, one of those books of which literary dreamers are apt to grow fanatically fondbooks by the old English writers, full of phrases and conceits half quaint and half sublime, interspersed with praises of the country, imbued with a poetical rather than orthodox religion, and adorned with a strange mixture of monastic learning and aphorisms collected from the weary experience of actual life.
To the left, by a greenhouse, built between the house and the lake, might be seen the white dress and lean form of the eldest spinster sister, to whom the care of the flowersfor she had been early crossed in lovewas consigned; at a little distance from her, the other two were seated at work, and conversing in whispers, not to disturb their studious brother, no doubt upon the nephew, who was their all in all. It was the calmest hour of eve, and the quiet of the several forms, their simple and harmless occupationsif occupations they might be calledthe breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in the temper to woo CONTENT.
The young man glided to his guardian and touched his shoulder,"Sir, may I speak to you?Hush! they need not see us now! it is only you I would speak with."
The elder Spencer rose; and, with his book still in his hand, moved side by side with his nephew under the shadow of the tree and towards a walk to the right, which led for a short distance along the margin of the lake, backed by the interlaced boughs of a thick copse.
"Sir!" said the young man, speaking first, and with a visible effort, "your cautions have been in vain! I love this girlthis daughter of the haughty Beauforts! I love herbetter than life I love her!"
"My poor boy," said the uncle tenderly, and with a simple fondness passing his arm over the speaker's shoulder, "do not think I can chide youI know what it is to love in vain!"
"In vain!but why in vain?" exclaimed the younger Spencer, with a vehemence that had in it something of both agony and fierceness. "She may love meshe shall love me!" and almost for the first time in his life, the proud consciousness of his rare gifts of person spoke in his kindled eye and dilated stature. "Do they not say that Nature has been favourable to me?What rival have I here?Is she not young?And (sinking his voice till it almost breathed like music) is not love contagious?"
"I do not doubt that she may love youwho would not?butbutthe parents, will they ever consent?" "Nay!" answered the lover, as with that inconsistency common to passion, he now argued stubbornly against those fears in another to which he had just before yielded in himself, "Nay!after all, am I not of their own blood?Do I not come from the elder branch?Was I not reared in equal luxury and with higher hopes? And my mothermy poor motherdid she not to the last maintain our birthrighther own honour?Has not accident or law unjustly stripped us of our true station?Is it not for us to forgive spoliation?Am I not, in fact, the person who descends, who forgets the wrongs of the deadthe heritage of the living?"
The young man had never yet assumed this tonehad never yet shown that he looked back to the history connected with his birth with the feelings of resentment and the remembrance of wrong. It was a tone contrary to his habitual calm and contentmentit struck forcibly on his listener and the elder Spencer was silent for some moments before he replied, "If you feel thus (and it is natural), you have yet stronger reason to struggle against this unhappy affection."
"I have been conscious of that, sir," replied the young man, mournfully. "I have struggled!and I say again it is in vain! I turn, then, to face the obstacles! My birthlet us suppose that the Beauforts overlook it. Did you not tell me that Mr. Beaufort wrote to inform you of the abrupt and intemperate visit of my brotherof his determination never to forgive it? I think I remember something of this years ago."
"It is true!" said the guardian; "and the conduct of that brother is, in fact, the true cause why you never ought to reassume your proper name! never to divulge it, even to the family with whom you connect yourself by marriage; but, above all, to the Beauforts, who for that cause, if that cause alone, would reject your suit."
The young man groanedplaced one hand before his eyes, and with the other grasped his guardian's arm convulsively, as if to check him from proceeding farther; but the good man, not divining his meaning, and absorbed in his subject, went on, irritating the wound he had touched.
"Reflect!your brother in boyhoodin the dying hours of his mother, scarcely saved from the crime of a thief, flying from a friendly pursuit with a notorious reprobate; afterwards implicated in some discreditable transaction about a horse, rejecting allevery hand that could save him, clinging by choice to the lowest companions and the meanest-habits, disappearing from the country, and last seen, ten years agothe beard not yet on his chinwith that same reprobate of whom I have spoken, in Paris; a day or so only before his companion, a coinera murdererfell by the hands of the police! You remember that when, in your seventeenth year, you evinced some desire to retake your namenay, even to re-find that guilty brotherI placed before you, as a, sad, and terrible duty, the newspaper that contained the particulars of the death and the former adventures of that wretched accomplice, the notorious Gawtrey. And, telling you that Mr. Beaufort had long since written to inform me that his own son and Lord Lilburne had seen your brother in company with the miscreant just before his fatenay, was, in all probability, the very youth described in the account as found in his chamber and escaping the pursuitI asked you if you would now venture to leave that disguise that shelter under which you would for ever be safe from the opprobrium of the worldfrom the shame that, sooner or later, your brother must bring upon your name!"