Egerton heard the well-known step advancing near and nearer up the corridor, heard the door open and reclose; and he felt, by one of those strange and unaccountable instincts which we call forebodings, that the hour he had dreaded for so many secret years had come at last. He nerved his courage, withdrew his hands from his face, and rose in silence.
No less silent, Harley stood before him. The two men gazed on each other; you might have heard their breathing.
“You have seen Mr. Dale?” said Egerton, at length. “You know—”
“All!” said Harley, completing the arrested sentence. Audley drew a long sigh. “Be it so; but no, Harley, you deceive yourself; you cannot know all, from any one living, save myself.”
“My knowledge comes from the dead,” answered Harley, and the fatal memoir dropped from his hand upon the table. The leaves fell with a dull, low sound, mournful and faint as might be the tread of a ghost, if the tread gave sound. They fell, those still confessions of an obscure, uncomprehended life, amidst letters and documents eloquent of the strife that was then agitating millions,—the fleeting, turbulent fears and hopes that torture parties and perplex a nation; the stormy business of practical public life, so remote from individual love and individual sorrow.
Egerton’s eye saw them fall. The room was but partially lighted. At the distance where he stood, he did not recognize the characters; but involuntarily he shivered, and involuntarily drew near.
“Hold yet awhile,” said Harley. “I produce my charge, and then I leave you to dispute the only witness that I bring. Audley Egerton, you took from me the gravest trust one man can confide to another. You knew how I loved Leonora Avenel. I was forbidden to see and urge my suit; you had the access to her presence which was denied to myself. I prayed you to remove scruples that I deemed too generous, and to woo her not to dishonour, but to be my wife. Was it so? Answer.”
“It is true,” said Audley, his hand clenched at his heart. “You saw her whom I thus loved,—her thus confided to your honour. You wooed her for yourself. Is it so?”
“Harley, I deny it not. Cease here. I accept the penalty; I resign your friendship; I quit your roof; I submit to your contempt; I dare not implore your pardon. Cease; let me go hence, and soon!”
The strong man gasped for breath. Harley looked at him steadfastly, then turned away his eyes, and went on. “Nay,” said he, “is that ALL? You wooed her for yourself,—you won her. Account to me for that life which you wrenched from mine. You are silent. I will take on myself your task; you took that life and destroyed it.”
“Spare me, spare me!”
“What was the fate of her who seemed so fresh from heaven when these eyes beheld her last? A broken heart, a dishonoured name, an early doom, a forgotten gravestone!”
“No, no—forgotten,—no!”
“Not forgotten! Scarce a year passed, and you were married to another. I aided you to form those nuptials which secured your fortunes. You have had rank and power and fame. Peers call you the type of English gentlemen; priests hold you as a model of Christian honour. Strip the mask, Audley Egerton; let the world know you for what you are!”
Egerton raised his head, and folded his arms calmly; but he said, with a melancholy humility, “I bear all from you; it is just. Say on.”
“You took from me the heart of Nora Avenel. You abandoned her, you destroyed. And her memory cast no shadow over your daily sunshine; while over my thoughts, over my life—oh, Egerton—Audley, Audley—how could you have deceived me thus!” Here the inherent tenderness under all this hate, the fount imbedded under the hardening stone, broke out. Harley was ashamed of his weakness, and hurried on,
“Deceived,—not for an hour, a day, but through blighted youth, through listless manhood,—you suffered me to nurse the remorse that should have been your own; her life slain, mine wasted,—and shall neither of us have revenge?”
“Revenge! Ah, Harley, you have had it!”
“No, but I await it! Not in vain from the charnel have come to me the records I produce. And whom did fate select to discover the wrongs of the mother, whom appoint as her avenger? Your son,—your own son; your abandoned, nameless son!”
“Son! son!”
“Whom I delivered from famine, or from worse; and who, in return, has given into my hands the evidence which proclaims in you the perjured friend of Harley L’Estrange, and the fraudulent seducer, under mock marriage forms—worse than all franker sin—of Leonora Avenel.”
“It is false! false!” exclaimed Egerton, all his stateliness and all his energy restored to him. “I forbid you to speak thus to me. I forbid you by one word to sully the memory of my lawful wife!”
“Ah!” said Harley, startled. “Ah! false? prove that, and revenge is over! Thank Heaven!”
“Prove it! What so easy? And wherefore have I delayed the proof; wherefore concealed, but from tenderness to you,—dread, too—a selfish but human dread—to lose in you the sole esteem that I covet; the only mourner who would have shed one tear over the stone inscribed with some lying epitaph, in which it will suit a party purpose to proclaim the gratitude of a nation. Vain hope. I resign it! But you spoke of a son. Alas, alas! you are again deceived. I heard that I had a son,—years, long years ago. I sought him, and found a grave. But bless you, Harley, if you succoured one whom you even erringly suspect to be Leonora’s child!” He stretched forth his hands as he spoke.
“Of your son we will speak later,” said Harley, strangely softened. “But before I say more of him, let me ask you to explain; let me hope that you can extenuate what—”
“You are right,” interrupted Egerton, with eager quickness. “You would know from my own lips at last the plain tale of my own offence against you. It is due to both. Patiently hear me out.”
Then Egerton told all,—his own love for Nora, his struggles against what he felt as treason to his friend, his sudden discovery of Nora’s love for him; on that discovery, the overthrow of all his resolutions; their secret marriage, their separation; Nora’s flight, to which Audley still assigned but her groundless vague suspicion that their nuptials had not been legal, and her impatience of his own delay in acknowledging the rite.
His listener interrupted him here with a few questions, the clear and prompt replies to which enabled Harley to detect Levy’s plausible perversion of the facts; and he vaguely guessed the cause of the usurer’s falsehood, in the criminal passion which the ill-fated bride had inspired.
“Egerton,” said Harley, stifling with an effort his own wrath against the vile deceiver both of wife and husband, “if, on reading those papers, you find that Leonora had more excuse for her suspicions and flight than you now deem, and discover perfidy in one to whom you trusted your secret, leave his punishment to Heaven. All that you say convinces me more and more that we cannot even see through the cloud, much less guide the thunderbolt. But proceed.”
Audley looked surprised and startled, and his eye turned wistfully towards the papers; but after a short pause he continued his recital. He came to Nora’s unexpected return to her father’s house, her death, his conquest of his own grief, that he might spare Harley the abrupt shock of learning her decease. He had torn himself from the dead, in remorseful sympathy with the living. He spoke of Harley’s illness, so nearly fatal, repeated Harley’s jealous words, “that he would rather mourn Nora’s death, than take comfort from the thought that she had loved another.” He spoke of his journey to the village where Mr. Dale had told him Nora’s child was placed—“and, hearing that child and mother were alike gone, whom now could I right by acknowledging a bond that I feared would so wring your heart?” Audley again paused a moment, and resumed in short, nervous, impressive sentences. This cold, austere man of the world for the first time bared his heart,—unconscious, perhaps, that he did so; unconscious that he revealed how deeply, amidst State cares and public distinctions, he had felt the absence of affections; how mechanical was that outer circle in the folds of life which is called a “career;” how valueless wealth had grown—none to inherit it. Of his gnawing and progressive disease alone he did not speak; he was too proud and too masculine to appeal to pity for physical ills. He reminded Harley how often, how eagerly, year after year, month after month, he had urged his friend to rouse himself from mournful dreams, devote his native powers to his country, or seek the surer felicity of domestic ties. “Selfish in these attempts I might be,” said Egerton; “it was only if I saw you restored to happiness that I could believe you could calmly hear my explanation of the past, and on the floor of some happy home grant me your forgiveness. I longed to confess, and I dared not. Often have the words rushed to my lips,—as often some chance sentence from you repelled me. In a word, with you were so entwined all the thoughts and affections of my youth—even those that haunted the grave of Nora—that I could not bear to resign your friendship, and, surrounded by the esteem and honour of a world I cared not for, to meet the contempt of your reproachful eye.”
Amidst all that Audley said, amidst all that admitted of no excuse, two predominant sentiments stood clear, in unmistakable and touching pathos,—remorseful regret for the lost Nora, and self-accusing, earnest, almost feminine tenderness for the friend he had deceived. Thus, as he continued to speak, Harley more and more forgot even the remembrance of his own guilty and terrible interval of hate; the gulf that had so darkly yawned between the two closed up, leaving them still standing side by side, as in their schoolboy days. But he remained silent, listening, shading his face from Audley, and as if under some soft but enthralling spell, till Egerton thus closed,
“And now, Harley, all is told. You spoke of revenge?”
“Revenge!” muttered Harley, starting.
“And believe me,” continued Egerton, “were revenge in your power, I should rejoice at it as an atonement. To receive an injury in return for that which, first from youthful passion, and afterwards from the infirmity of purpose that concealed the wrong, I have inflicted upon you—why, that would soothe my conscience, and raise my lost self-esteem. The sole revenge you can bestow takes the form which most humiliates me,—to revenge is to pardon.”
Harley groaned; and still hiding his face with one hand, stretched forth the other, but rather with the air of one who entreats than who accords forgiveness. Audley took and pressed the hand thus extended.
“And NOW, Harley, farewell. With the dawn I leave this house. I cannot now accept your aid in this election. Levy shall announce my resignation. Randal Leslie, if you so please it, may be returned in my stead. He has abilities which, under safe guidance, may serve his country; and I have no right to reject from vain pride whatever will promote the career of one whom I undertook, and have failed, to serve.”
“Ay, ay,” muttered Harley; “think not of Randal Leslie; think but of your son.”
“My son! But are you sure that he still lives? You smile; you—you—oh, Harley, I took from you the mother,—give to me the son; break my heart with gratitude. Your revenge is found!”
Lord L’Estrange rose with a sudden start, gazed on Audley for a moment,—irresolute, not from resentment, but from shame. At that moment he was the man humbled; he was the man who feared reproach, and who needed pardon. Audley, not divining what was thus passing in Harley’s breast, turned away.
“You think that I ask too much; and yet all that I can give to the child of my love and the heir of my name is the worthless blessing of a ruined man. Harley, I say no more. I dare not add, ‘You too loved his mother! and with a deeper and a nobler love than mine.’” He stopped short, and Harley flung himself on his breast.
“Me—me—pardon me, Audley! Your offence has been slight to mine. You have told me your offence; never can I name to you my own. Rejoice that we have both to exchange forgiveness, and in that exchange we are equal still, Audley, brothers still. Look up! look up! think that we are boys now as we were once,—boys who have had their wild quarrel, and who, the moment it is over, feel dearer to each other than before.”
“Oh, Harley, this is revenge! It strikes home,” murmured Egerton, and tears gushed fast from eyes that could have gazed unwinking on the rack. The clock struck; Harley sprang forward.
“I have time yet,” he cried. “Much to do and to undo. You are saved from the grasp of Levy; your election will be won; your fortunes in much may be restored; you have before you honours not yet achieved; your career as yet is scarce begun; your son will embrace you to-morrow. Let me go—your hand again! Ah, Audley, we shall be so happy yet!”
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