CHAPTER XIX. THE COTTAGE NEAR SNOWDON
At an early portion of this true story, our reader was incidentally told that Charles Conway had a mother, and that she lived in Wales. Her home was a little cottage near the village of Bedgellert, a neighborhood wherein her ancestors had once possessed large estates, but of which not an acre now acknowledged her as owner. Here, on a mere pittance, she had lived for years a life of unbroken solitude. The few charities to the poor her humble means permitted had served to make her loved and respected; while her gentle manners and kind address gave her that sort of eminence which such qualities are sure to attain in remote and simple circles.
All her thoughts in life, all her wishes and ambitions, were centred in her son; and although it was to the wild and reckless extravagance of his early life that she owed the penury which now pressed her, although but for his wasteful excesses she had still been in affluence and comfort, she never attached to him the slightest blame, nor did her lips ever utter one syllable of reproach. Strong in the conviction that so long as the wild excesses of youth stamp nothing of dishonor on the character, the true nature within has sustained no permanent injury, she waited patiently for the time when, this season of self-indulgence over, the higher dictates of manly reason would assert their influence, and that Charley, having sown his wild oats, would come forth rather chastened and sobered than stained by his intercourse with the world.
If this theory of hers has its advocates, there are many—and wise people, too—who condemn it, and who deem those alone safe who have been carefully guarded from the way of temptation, and have been kept estranged from the seductions of pleasure. To ourselves the whole question resolves itself into the nature of the individual, at the same time that we had far rather repose our confidence in one who had borne his share in life's passages, gaining his experience, mayhap, with cost, but coming honorably through the trial, than on him who, standing apart, had but looked out over the troubled ocean of human passion, nor risked himself on the sea of man's temptations.
The former was Conway's case: he had led a life of boundless extravagance; without any thought of the cost, he had launched out into every expensive pursuit. What we often hear applied to others figuratively, was strictly applicable to him; he never knew the value of money; he never knew that anything one desired could be overpaid for. The end came at last. With a yacht ready stored and fitted out for a Mediterranean cruise, with three horses heavily engaged at Doncaster, with a shooting-lodge filled with distinguished company in the Highlands, with negotiations all but completed for the Hooksley hounds, with speculations rife as to whether the Duchess of This or the Countess of That had secured him for a daughter or a niece, there came, one morning, the startling information from his solicitor that a large loan he had contemplated raising was rendered impossible by some casualty of the money-market Recourse must be had to the Jews; heavy liabilities incurred at Newmarket must be met at once and at any cost. A week of disaster fell exactly at this conjuncture; he lost largely at the Portland, largely on the turf; a brother officer, for whom he had given surety, levanted immensely in debt; while a local bank, in which a considerable sum of his was vested, failed. The men of sixty per cent saved him from shipwreck; but they took the craft for the salvage, and Conway was ruined.
Amidst the papers which Conway had sent to his solicitor as securities for the loan, a number of family documents had got mingled, old deeds and titles to estates of which the young man had not so much as heard, claims against property of whose existence he knew nothing. When questioned about them by the man of law, he referred him coolly to his mother, saying, frankly, “it was a matter on which he had never troubled his head.'” Mrs. Conway herself scarcely knew more. She had heard that there was a claim in the family to a peerage; her husband used to allude to it in his own dreamy, indolent fashion, and say that it ought to be looked after, and that was all.
Had the information come to the mind of an active or enterprising man of business, it might have fared differently. The solicitor to the family was, however, himself a lethargic, lazy sort of person, and he sent back the papers to Mrs. Conway, stating that he was not sure “something might not be made of them;” that is, added he, “if he had five or six thousand pounds to expend upon searches, and knew where to prosecute them.”
This was but sorry comfort, but it did not fall upon a heart high in hope or strong in expectation. Mrs. Conway had never lent herself to the impression that the claim had much foundation, and she heard the tidings with calm; and all that was remembered of the whole transaction was when some jocular allusion would be made by Charles to the time when he should succeed to his peerage, or some as light-hearted jest of the old lady as to whether she herself was to enjoy a title or not The more stirring incidents of a great campaign had latterly, however, so absorbed all the young soldier's interest that he seemed totally to have forgotten the oft-recurring subject of joke between them. Strange enough was it, yet, that in the very letter which conveyed to his mother an account of his Tchernaya achievement, a brief postscript had the following words:—
“Since I have been confined to hospital, a person connected
with the newspapers, I believe, has been here to learn the
exact story of my adventure, and, curiously enough, has been
pumping me about our family history. Can it be that 'our
peerage' is looking up again? This last sabre-cut on my
skull makes me rather anxious to exchange a chako for a
coronet. Can you send me anything hopeful in this
direction?”
It was on an answer to this letter the old lady was occupied, seated at an open window, as the sun was just setting on a calm and mellow evening in late autumn. Well understanding the temperament of him she addressed, she adverted little to the danger of his late achievement, and simply seemed to concur in his own remark when recounting it, that he who has made his name notorious from folly has, more than others, the obligation to achieve a higher and better reputation; and added, at the same time: “Charley, what I liked best in your feat was its patriotism. The sense of rendering a good and efficient service to the cause of your country was a nobler prompting than any desire for personal distinction.” From this she turned to tell him about what she well knew he loved best to hear of,—her home and her daily life, with its little round of uneventful cares, the little Welsh pony “Crw,” and his old spaniel “Belle,” and the tulips he had taken such pains about, and the well he had sunk in the native rock. She had good tidings, too, that the railroad—the dreadful railroad—was not to take the line of their happy valley, but to go off in some more “favored” direction. Of the cottage itself she had succeeded in obtaining a renewed lease,—a piece of news well calculated to delight him, “if,” as she said, “grand dreams of the peerage might not have impaired his relish for the small hut at the foot of Snowdon.” She had just reached so far when a little chaise, drawn by a mountain pony, drew up before the door, and a lady in a sort of half-mourning dress got out and rang the bell. As the old lady rose to admit her visitor,—for her only servant was at work in the garden,—she felt no small astonishment. She was known to none but the peasant neighborhood about her; she had not a single acquaintance in the country with its gentry; and although the present arrival came with little display, in her one glance at the figure of the stranger she saw her to be distinctly of a certain condition in life.
It will conduce equally to brevity and to the interests of our story if we give what followed in the words wherein Mrs. Conway conveyed it to her son:—
“Little, I thought, my dear Charley, that I should have to
cross this already long letter,—little suspected that its
real and only interest was to have been suggested as I drew
to its close; and here, if I had the heart for it, were the
place to scold you for a pretty piece of mystification you
once practised upon me, when you induced me to offer the
hospitality of this poor cottage to an humble gentlewoman,
whose poverty would not deem even my life an existence of
privation,—the sister of a fellow-soldier you called her,
and made me to believe—whose the fault I am not sure—that
she was some not very young or very attractive person, but
one whose claim lay in her friendless lot and forlorn
condition. Say what you will, such was my impression, and it
could have no other source than your description.
“Yes, Charley, my mind-picture was of a thin-faced, somewhat
sandy-haired lady, of some six or eight and thirty years,
bony, angular, and awkward, greatly depressed, and naturally
averse to intercourse with those who had not known her or
her better fortunes; shall I add that I assisted my
portrait by adding coarse hands, and filled up my
anticipation by suspecting a very decided Irish brogue? Of
course this flattering outline could not have been revealed
in a vision, and must have come from your hands, deny it
whenever and however you may! And now for the reality,—the
very prettiest girl I ever saw, since I left off seeing
pretty people, when I was young and had pretensions myself:
even then I do not remember any one handsomer, and with a
winning grace of manner equal, if not superior, to her
beauty. You know me as a very difficult critic on the
subject of breeding and maintien. I feel that I am so,
even to injustice, because I look for the reserved courtesy
of one era as well as the easy frankness of another. Shehas both; and she is a court lady who could adorn a
cottage. Of my own atrocious sketch there was nothing about
her. Stay, there was. She had the Irish accent, but by
some witchery of her own I got to like it,—fancied it was
musical and breathed of the sweet south; but if I go on
with her perfections, I shall never come to the important
question, for which you care more to hear besides, as to how
I know all these things. And now, to my horror, I find how
little space is left me to tell you. Well, in three words
you shall have it. She has been here to see me on her way
somewhere, her visit being prompted by the wish to place in
my hands some very curious and very old family records,
found by a singular accident in an Irish country-house. They
relate to the claim of some ancestor of yours to certain
lands in Ireland, and the right is asserted in the name of
Baron Conway, and afterwards the Lord Viscount Lackington. I
saw no further; indeed, except that they all relate to our
dear peerage, they seem to possess no very peculiar
interest. If it were not that she would introduce your name,
push me with interminable questions as to what it was you
had really done, what rewards you had or were about to reap,
where you were, and, above all, how, I should have called
her visit the most disinterested piece of kindness I ever
heard of. Still she showed a sincere and ardent desire to
serve us, and said that she would be ready to make any delay
in London to communicate with our lawyer, and acquaint him
fully with the circumstances of this discovery.
“I unceasingly entreated her to be my guest, were it only
for a few days. I even affected to believe that I would send
for our lawyer to come down and learn the curious details of
the finding of the papers; but she pleaded the absolute
necessity of her presence in London so strongly—she
betrayed, besides, something like a deep anxiety for some
coming event—that I was obliged to abandon my attempt, and
limit our acquaintance by the short two hours we had passed
together.
“It will take some time, and another long letter, to tell
you of the many topics we talked over; for, our first
greeting over, we felt towards each other like old friends.
At last she arose to leave me, and never since the evening
you bade me good-bye did the same loneliness steal over my
heart as when I saw her little carriage drive away from the
door.
“One distressing recollection alone clouds the memory of our
meeting: I suffered her to leave me without a promise to
return. I could not, without infringing delicacy, have
pressed her more to tell me of herself and her plans for the
future, and yet even now I regret that, at any hazard, I did
not risk the issue. The only pledge I could obtain was that
she would write to me. I am now at the end of my paper, but
not of my theme, of which you shall hear more in my next.
Meanwhile, if you are not in love with her, I am.
“Your affectionate mother,
“Marian Conway.”
We have ourselves nothing to add to the narrative of this letter save the remark that Mrs. Conway felt far more deeply than she expressed the disappointment of not being admitted to Sybella's full confidence. The graceful captivation of the young girl's manner, heightened in interest by her friendless and lone condition,—the perilous path in life that must be trodden by one so beautiful and unprotected,—had made a deep impression on the old lady's heart, and she was sincere in self-reproach that she had suffered her to leave her.
She tried again and again, by recalling all that passed between them, to catch some clew to what Sybella's future pointed; but so guardedly had the young girl shrouded every detail of her own destiny, that the effort was in vain. Sybella had given an address in town, where Mrs. Conway's lawyer might meet her if necessary, and with a last hope the old lady had written a note to that place, entreating, as the greatest favor, that she would come down and pass some days with her at the cottage; but her letter came back to her own hands. Miss Kellett was gone.