“Jul. And what reward do you propose?
It must be my love.”—The Double Marriage.
While these events, dark, hurried, and stormy, had befallen the family of his betrothed, Sidney Beaufort continued his calm life by the banks of the lovely lake. After a few weeks, his confidence in Camilla’s fidelity overbore all his apprehensions and forebodings. Her letters, though constrained by the inspection to which they were submitted, gave him inexpressible consolation and delight. He began, however, early to fancy that there was a change in their tone. The letters seemed to shun the one subject to which all others were as nought; they turned rather upon the guests assembled at Beaufort Court; and why I know not,—for there was nothing in them to authorise jealousy—the brief words devoted to Monsieur de Vaudemont filled him with uneasy and terrible suspicion. He gave vent to these feelings, as fully as he dared do, under the knowledge that his letter would be seen; and Camilla never again even mentioned the name of Vaudemont. Then there was a long pause; then her brother’s arrival and illness were announced; then, at intervals, but a few hurried lines; then a complete, long, dreadful silence, and lastly, with a deep black border and a solemn black seal, came the following letter from Mr. Beaufort:
“MY DEAR SIR,—I have the unutterable grief to announce to you and your worthy uncle the irreparable loss I have sustained in the death of my only son. It is a month to day since he departed this life. He died, sir, as a Christian should die—humbly, penitently—exaggerating the few faults of his short life, but—(and here the writer’s hypocrisy, though so natural to him—was it, that he knew not that he was hypocritical?—fairly gave way before the real and human anguish, for which there is no dictionary!) but I cannot pursue this theme!
“Slowly now awakening to the duties yet left me to discharge, I cannot but be sensible of the material difference in the prospects of my remaining child. Miss Beaufort is now the heiress to an ancient name and a large fortune. She subscribes with me to the necessity of consulting those new considerations which so melancholy an event forces upon her mind. The little fancy—or liking—(the acquaintance was too short for more) that might naturally spring up between two amiable young persons thrown together in the country, must be banished from our thoughts. As a friend, I shall be always happy to hear of your welfare; and should you ever think of a profession in which I can serve you, you may command my utmost interest and exertions. I know, my young friend, what you will feel at first, and how disposed you will be to call me mercenary and selfish. Heaven knows if that be really my character! But at your age, impressions are easily effaced; and any experienced friend of the world will assure you that, in the altered circumstances of the case, I have no option. All intercourse and correspondence, of course, cease with this letter,—until, at least, we may all meet, with no sentiments but those of friendship and esteem. I desire my compliments to your worthy uncle, in which Mrs. and Miss Beaufort join; and I am sure you will be happy to hear that my wife and daughter, though still in great affliction, have suffered less in health than I could have ventured to anticipate.
“Believe me, dear Sir,
“Yours sincerely,
“ROBERT BEAUFORT.
“To C. SPENCER, Esq., Jun.”
When Sidney received this letter, he was with Mr. Spencer, and the latter read it over the young man’s shoulder, on which he leant affectionately. When they came to the concluding words, Sidney turned round with a vacant look and a hollow smile. “You see, sir,” he said, “you see—-”
“My boy—my son—you bear this as you ought. Contempt will soon efface—”
Sidney started to his feet, and his whole countenance was changed.
“Contempt—yes, for him! But for her—she knows it not—she is no party to this—I cannot believe it—I will not! I—I——” and he rushed out of the room. He was absent till nightfall, and when he returned, he endeavoured to appear calm—but it was in vain.
The next day brought him a letter from Camilla, written unknown to her parents,—short, it is true (confirming the sentence of separation contained in her father’s), and imploring him not to reply to it,—but still so full of gentle and of sorrowful feeling, so evidently worded in the wish to soften the anguish she inflicted, that it did more than soothe—it even administered hope.
Now when Mr. Robert Beaufort had recovered the ordinary tone of his mind sufficiently to indite the letter Sidney had just read, he had become fully sensible of the necessity of concluding the marriage between Philip and Camilla before the publicity of the lawsuit. The action for the ejectment could not take place before the ensuing March or April. He would waive the ordinary etiquette of time and mourning to arrange all before. Indeed, he lived in hourly fear lest Philip should discover that he had a rival in his brother, and break off the marriage, with its contingent advantages. The first announcement of such a suit in the newspapers might reach the Spencers; and if the young man were, as he doubted not, Sidney Beaufort, would necessarily bring him forward, and ensure the dreaded explanation. Thus apprehensive and ever scheming, Robert Beaufort spoke to Philip so much, and with such apparent feeling, of his wish to gratify, at the earliest possible period, the last wish of his son, in the union now arranged—he spoke, with such seeming consideration and good sense, of the avoidance of all scandal and misinterpretation in the suit itself, which suit a previous marriage between the claimant and his daughter would show at once to be of so amicable a nature,—that Philip, ardently in love as he was, could not but assent to any hastening of his expected happiness compatible with decorum. As to any previous publicity by way of newspaper comment, he agreed with Mr. Beaufort in deprecating it. But then came the question, What name was he to bear in the interval?
“As to that,” said Philip, somewhat proudly, “when, after my mother’s suit in her own behalf, I persuaded her not to bear the name of Beaufort, though her due—and for my own part, I prized her own modest name, which under such dark appearances was in reality spotless—as much as the loftier one which you bear and my father bore;—so I shall not resume the name the law denies me till the law restores it to me. Law alone can efface the wrong which law has done me.”
Mr. Beaufort was pleased with this reasoning (erroneous though it was), and he now hoped that all would be safely arranged.
That a girl so situated as Camilla, and of a character not energetic or profound, but submissive, dutiful, and timid, should yield to the arguments of her father, the desire of her dying brother—that she should not dare to refuse to become the instrument of peace to a divided family, the saving sacrifice to her father’s endangered fortunes—that, in fine, when, nearly a month after Arthur’s death, her father, leading her into the room, where Philip waited her footstep with a beating heart, placed her hand in his—and Philip falling on his knees said, “May I hope to retain this hand for life?”—she should falter out such words as he might construe into not reluctant acquiescence; that all this should happen is so natural that the reader is already prepared for it. But still she thought with bitter and remorseful feelings of him thus deliberately and faithlessly renounced. She felt how deeply he had loved her—she knew how fearful would be his grief. She looked sad and thoughtful; but her brother’s death was sufficient in Philip’s eyes to account for that. The praises and gratitude of her father, to whom she suddenly seemed to become an object of even greater pride and affection than ever Arthur had been—the comfort of a generous heart, that takes pleasure in the very sacrifice it makes—the acquittal of her conscience as to the motives of her conduct—began, however, to produce their effect. Nor, as she had lately seen more of Philip, could she be insensible of his attachment—of his many noble qualities—of the pride which most women might have felt in his addresses, when his rank was once made clear; and as she had ever been of a character more regulated by duty than passion, so one who could have seen what was passing in her mind would have had little fear for Philip’s future happiness in her keeping—little fear but that, when once married to him, her affections would have gone along with her duties; and that if the first love were yet recalled, it would be with a sigh due rather to some romantic recollection than some continued regret. Few of either sex are ever united to their first love; yet married people jog on, and call each other “my dear” and “my darling” all the same. It might be, it is true, that Philip would be scarcely loved with the intenseness with which he loved; but if Camilla’s feelings were capable of corresponding to the ardent and impassioned ones of that strong and vehement nature—such feelings were not yet developed in her. The heart of the woman might still be half concealed in the vale of the virgin innocence. Philip himself was satisfied—he believed that he was beloved: for it is the property of love, in a large and noble heart, to reflect itself, and to see its own image in the eyes on which it looks. As the Poet gives ideal beauty and excellence to some ordinary child of Eve, worshipping less the being that is than the being he imagines and conceives—so Love, which makes us all poets for a while, throws its own divine light over a heart perhaps really cold; and becomes dazzled into the joy of a false belief by the very lustre with which it surrounds its object.
The more, however, Camilla saw of Philip, the more (gradually overcoming her former mysterious and superstitious awe of him) she grew familiarised to his peculiar cast of character and thought, so the more she began to distrust her father’s assertion, that he had insisted on her hand as a price—a bargain—an equivalent for the sacrifice of a dire revenge. And with this thought came another. Was she worthy of this man?—was she not deceiving him? Ought she not to say, at least, that she had known a previous attachment, however determined she might be to subdue it? Often the desire for this just and honourable confession trembled on her lips, and as often was it checked by some chance circumstance or some maiden fear. Despite their connection, there was not yet between them that delicious intimacy which ought to accompany the affiance of two hearts and souls. The gloom of the house; the restraint on the very language of love imposed by a death so recent and so deplored, accounted in much for this reserve. And for the rest, Robert Beaufort prudently left them very few and very brief opportunities to be alone.
In the meantime, Philip (now persuaded that the Beauforts were ignorant of his brother’s fate) had set Mr. Barlow’s activity in search of Sidney; and his painful anxiety to discover one so dear and so mysteriously lost was the only cause of uneasiness apparent in the brightening Future. While these researches, hitherto fruitless, were being made, it so happened, as London began now to refill, and gossip began now to revive, that a report got abroad, no one knew how (probably from the servants) that Monsieur de Vaudemont, a distinguished French officer, was shortly to lead the daughter and sole heiress of Robert Beaufort, Esq., M.P., to the hymeneal altar; and that report very quickly found its way into the London papers: from the London papers it spread to the provincial—it reached the eyes of Sidney in his now gloomy and despairing solitude. The day that he read it he disappeared.
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