TREES THAT, LIKE THE POPLAR, LIFT UPWARD ALL THEIR BOUGHS, GIVE NO SHADE AND NO SHELTER, WHATEVER THEIR HEIGHT. TREES THE MOST LOVINGLY SHELTER AND SHADE US, WHEN, LIKE THE WILLOW, THE HIGHER SOAR THEIR SUMMITS, THE LOWLIER DROOP THEIR BOUGHS.
Usually when Sophy left Waife in the morning, she would wander out into the grounds, and he could see her pass before his window; or she would look into the library, which was almost exclusively given up to the Morleys, and he could hear her tread on the old creaking stairs. But now she had stolen into her own room, which communicated with his sitting-room—a small lobby alone intervening—and there she remained so long that he grew uneasy. He crept softly to her door and listened. He had a fineness of hearing almost equal to his son’s; but he could not hear a sob—not a breath. At length he softly opened the door and looked in with caution.
The girl was seated at the foot of the bed, quite still—her eyes fixed on the ground, and her finger to her lip, just as she had placed it there when imploring silence; so still, it might be even slumber. All who have grieved respect grief. Waife did not like to approach her; but he said, from his stand at the threshold: “The sun is quite bright now, Sophy; go out for a little while, darling.”
She did not look round, she did not stir; but she answered with readiness, “Yes, presently.”
So he closed the door and left her. An hour passed away; he looked in again; there she was still—in the same place, in the same attitude.
“Sophy, dear, it is time to take your walk; go—Mrs. Morley is in front, before my window. I have called to her to wait for you.”
“Yes—presently,” answered Sophy, and she did not move.
Waife was seriously alarmed. He paused a moment-then went back to his room—took his hat and his staff—came back.
“Sophy, I should like to hobble out and breathe the air; it will do me good. Will you give me your arm? I am still very weak.”
Sophy now started—shook back her fair curls-rose-put on her bonnet, and in less than a minute was by the old man’s side. Drawing his arm fondly into hers, they descend the stairs; they are in the garden; Mrs. Morley comes to meet them—then George. Wife exerts himself to talk—to be gay—to protect Sophy’s abstracted silence by his own active, desultory, erratic humour. Twice or thrice, as he leans on Sophy’s arm, she draws it still nearer to her, and presses it tenderly. She understands—she thanks him. Hark! from some undiscovered hiding-place near the water—Fairthorn’s flute! The music fills the landscape as with a living presence; the swans pause upon the still lake—the tame doe steals through yonder leafless trees; and now, musing and slow, from the same desolate coverts, comes the doe’s master. The music spells them all. Guy Darrell sees his guests where they have halted by the stone sun-dial. He advances—joins them—congratulates Waife on his first walk as a convalescent. He quotes Gray’s well-known verses applicable to that event, and when, in that voice sweet as the flute itself, he comes to the lines: [“See the wretch who long has tost,” &c.—GRAY.]
“The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening paradise”
Sophy, as if suddenly struck with remorse at the thought that she, and she alone, was marring that opening paradise to the old man in his escape from the sick-room to “the sun, the air, the skies,” abruptly raised her looks from the ground, and turned them full upon her guardian’s face, with an attempt at gladness in her quivering smile, which, whatever its effect on Waife, went straight to the innermost heart of Guy Darrell. On the instant he recognised, as by intuitive sympathy, the anguish from which that smile struggled forth—knew that Sophy had now learned that grief which lay deep within himself—that grief which makes a sick chamber of the whole external world, and which greets no more, in the common boons of Nature, the opening Paradise of recovered Hope! His eye lingered on her face as its smile waned, and perceived that CHANGE which had so startled Waife. Involuntarily he moved to her side—involuntarily drew her arm within his own—she thus supporting the one who cherished—supported by the one who disowned her. Guy Darrell might be stern in resolves which afflicted others, as he was stern in afflicting himself; but for others he had at least compassion.
Poor Waife, with nature so different, marked Darrell’s movement, and, ever ready to seize on comfort, said inly: “He relents. I will not go to-morrow as I had intended. Sophy must win her way; who can resist her?”
Talk languished—the wintry sun began to slope—the air grew keen—Waife was led in—the Morleys went up into his room to keep him company—Sophy escaped back to her own. Darrell continued his walk, plunging deep into his maze of beechwoods, followed by the doe. The swans dip their necks amongst the water-weeds; the flute has ceased, and drearily still is the grey horizon, seen through the skeleton boughs—seen behind the ragged sky-line of shaft and parapet in the skeleton palace.
Darrell does not visit Waife’s room that day; he concludes that Waife and Sophy would wish to be much alone; he dreads renewal of the only subject on which he has no cheering word to say. Sophy’s smile, Sophy’s face haunted him. In vain he repeated to himself: “Tut, it will soon pass—only a girl’s first fancy.”
But Sophy does not come back to Waife’s room when the Morleys have left it: Waife creeps into her room as before, and, as before, there she sits still as if in slumber. She comes in, however, of her own accord, to assist, as usual, in the meal which he takes apart in his room helps him—helps herself, but eats nothing. She talks, however, almost gaily; hopes he will be well enough to leave the next day; wonders whether Sir Isaac has missed them very much; reads to him Lady Montfort’s affectionate letter to herself; and when dinner is over, and Waife’s chair drawn to the fireside, she takes her old habitual place on the stool beside him, and says: “Now, dear grandfather—all about yourself—what happy thing has chanced to you?”
Alas! poor Waife has but little heart to speak; but he forces himself; what he has to say may do good to her.
“You know that, on my own account, I had reasons for secresy—change of name. I shunned all those whom I had ever known in former days; could take no calling in life by which I might be recognised; deemed it a blessed mercy of Providence that when, not able to resist offers that would have enabled me to provide for you as I never otherwise could, I assented to hazard an engagement at a London theatre—trusting for my incognito to an actor’s arts of disguise—came the accident which, of itself, annihilated the temptation into which I had suffered myself to be led. For, ah, child! had it been known who and what was the William Waife whose stage-mime tricks moved harmless mirth, or tears as pleasant, the audience would have risen, not to applaud, but hoot, ‘Off, off,’ from both worlds—the Mimic as the Real! Well, had I been dishonest, you—you alone felt that I could not have dared to take you, guiltless infant, by the hand. You remember that, on my return to Rugge’s wandering theatre, bringing you with me, I exaggerated the effects of my accident—affected to have lost voice—stipulated to be spared appearing on his stage. That was not the mere pride of manhood shrinking from the display of physical afflictions. No. In the first village that we arrived at, I recognised an old friend, and I saw that, in spite of time, and the accident that had disfigured me, he recognised me, and turned away his face, as if in loathing. An old friend, Sophy—an old friend! Oh, it pierced me to the heart; and I resolved, from that day, to escape from Rugge’s stage; and I consented till the means of escape, and some less dependent mode of livelihood, were found, to live on thy earnings, child; for if I were discovered by other old friends, and they spoke out, my disgrace would reflect on you; and better to accept support, from you than that! Alas! appearances were so strong against me, I never deemed they could be cleared away, even from the sight of my nearest friends. But Providence, you know, has been so kind to us hitherto; and so Providence will be kind to us again, Sophy. And now, the very man I thought most hard to me—this very Guy Darrell, under whose roof we are—has been the man to make those whose opinion I most value know that I am not dishonest; and Providence has raised a witness on my behalf in that very Mr. Hartopp, who judged me (and any one else might have done the same) too bad to be fit company for you! And that is why I am congratulated; and, oh, Sophy, though I have borne it as Heaven does enable us to bear what of ourselves we could not, and though one learns to shrug a patient shoulder under the obloquy which may be heaped on us by that crowd of mere strangers to us and to each other, which is called ‘the WORLD,’ yet to slink out of sight from a friend, as one more to be shunned than a foe—to take like a coward the lashings of Scorn—to wince, one raw sore, from the kindness of Pity—to feel that in life the sole end of each shift and contrivance is to slip the view—hallo, into a grave without epitaph, by paths as stealthy and sly as the poor hunted fox, when his last chance—and sole one—is, by winding and doubling, to run under the earth; to know that it would be an ungrateful imposture to take chair at the board—at the hearth, of the man who, unknowing your secret, says, ‘Friend, be social’; accepting not a crust that one does not pay for, lest one feel a swindler to the kind fellow-creature whose equal we must not be!—all this—all this, Sophy, did at times chafe and gall more than I ought to have let it do, considering that there was ONE who saw it all, and would—Don’t cry, Sophy; it is all over now.”
“Not cry! Oh, it does me so much good.”
“All over now! I am under this roof—without shame or scruple; and if Guy Darrell, knowing all my past, has proved my innocence in the eyes of those whom alone I cared for, I feel as if I had the right to stand before any crowd of men erect and shameless—a Man once more with Men! Oh, darling! let me but see thy old happy smile again! The happy smiles of the young are the sunshine of the old. Be patient—be firm; Providence is so very kind, Sophy.”
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