“Very well!—in five minutes I shall be off. Meanwhile, see the witness yourself; the sight of his benefactor’s son will do more to keep him steady than anything else. There’s his address, and take care not to give him money. And now I will order my chaise—the matter begins to look worth expense. Oh! I forgot to say that Monsieur Liancourt called on you yesterday about his own affairs. He wishes much to consult you. I told him you would probably be this evening in town, and he said he would wait you at your lodging.”
“Yes—I will lose not a moment in going to London, and visiting our witness. And he saw my mother at the altar! My poor mother—Ah, how could my father have doubted her!” and as he spoke, he blushed for the first time with shame at that father’s memory. He could not yet conceive that one so frank, one usually so bold and open, could for years have preserved from the woman who had sacrificed all to him, a secret to her so important! That was, in fact, the only blot on his father’s honour—a foul and grave blot it was. Heavily had the punishment fallen on those whom the father loved best! Alas, Philip had not yet learned what terrible corrupters are the Hope and the Fear of immense Wealthy, even to men reputed the most honourable, if they have been reared and pampered in the belief that wealth is the Arch blessing of life. Rightly considered, in Philip Beaufort’s solitary meanness lay the vast moral of this world’s darkest truth!
Mr. Barlow was gone. Philip was about to enter his own chaise, when a dormeuse-and-four drove up to the inn-door to change horses. A young man was reclining, at his length, in the carriage, wrapped in cloaks, and with a ghastly paleness—the paleness of long and deep disease upon his cheeks. He turned his dim eye with, perhaps, a glance of the sick man’s envy on that strong and athletic, form, majestic with health and vigour, as it stood beside the more humble vehicle. Philip did not, however, notice the new arrival; he sprang into the chaise, it rattled on, and thus, unconsciously, Arthur Beaufort and his cousin had again met. To which was now the Night—to which the Morning?
CHAPTER XII.
“Bakam. Let my men guard the walls.
Syana. And mine the temple.”—The Island Princess.
While thus eventfully the days and the weeks had passed for Philip, no less eventfully, so far as the inner life is concerned, had they glided away for Fanny. She had feasted in quiet and delighted thought on the consciousness that she was improving—that she was growing worthier of him—that he would perceive it on his return. Her manner was more thoughtful, more collected—less childish, in short, than it had been. And yet, with all the stir and flutter of the aroused intellect, the charm of her strange innocence was not scared away. She rejoiced in the ancient liberty she had regained of going out and coming back when she pleased; and as the weather was too cold ever to tempt Simon from his fireside, except, perhaps, for half-an-hour in the forenoon, so the hours of dusk, when he least missed her, were those which she chiefly appropriated for stealing away to the good school-mistress, and growing wiser and wiser every day in the ways of God and the learning of His creatures. The schoolmistress was not a brilliant woman. Nor was it accomplishments of which Fanny stood in need, so much as the opening of her thoughts and mind by profitable books and rational conversation. Beautiful as were all her natural feelings, the schoolmistress had now little difficulty in educating feelings up to the dignity of principles.
At last, hitherto patient under the absence of one never absent from her heart, Fanny received from him the letter he had addressed to her two days before he quitted Beaufort Court;—another letter—a second letter—a letter to excuse himself for not coming before—a letter that gave her an address that asked for a reply. It was a morning of unequalled delight approaching to transport. And then the excitement of answering the letter—the pride of showing how she was improved, what an excellent hand she now wrote! She shut herself up in her room: she did not go out that day. She placed the paper before her, and, to her astonishment, all that she had to say vanished from her mind at once. How was she even to begin? She had always hitherto called him “Brother.” Ever since her conversation with Sarah she felt that she could not call him that name again for the world—no, never! But what should she call him—what could she call him? He signed himself “Philip.” She knew that was his name. She thought it a musical name to utter, but to write it! No! some instinct she could not account for seemed to whisper that it was improper—presumptuous, to call him “Dear Philip.” Had Burns’s songs—the songs that unthinkingly he had put into her hand, and told her to read—songs that comprise the most beautiful love-poems in the world—had they helped to teach her some of the secrets of her own heart? And had timidity come with knowledge? Who shall say—who guess what passed within her? Nor did Fanny herself, perhaps, know her own feelings: but write the words “Dear Philip” she could not. And the whole of that day, though she thought of nothing else, she could not even get through the first line to her satisfaction. The next morning she sat down again. It would be so unkind if she did not answer immediately: she must answer. She placed his letter before her—she resolutely began. But copy after copy was made and torn. And Simon wanted her—and Sarah wanted her—and there were bills to be paid; and dinner was over before her task was really begun. But after dinner she began in good earnest.
“How kind in you to write to me” (the difficulty of any name was dispensed with by adopting none), “and to wish to know about my dear grandfather! He is much the same, but hardly ever walks out now, and I have had a good deal of time to myself. I think something will surprise you, and make you smile, as you used to do at first, when you come back. You must not be angry with me that I have gone out by myself very often—every day, indeed. I have been so safe. Nobody has ever offered to be rude again to Fanny” (the word “Fanny” was carefully scratched out with a penknife, and me substituted). “But you shall know all when you come. And are you sure you are well—quite—quite well? Do you never have the headaches you complained of sometimes? Do say this! Do you walk out-every day? Is there any pretty churchyard near you now? Whom do you walk with?
“I have been so happy in putting the flowers on the two graves. But I still give yours the prettiest, though the other is so dear to me. I feel sad when I come to the last, but not when I look at the one I have looked at so long. Oh, how good you were! But you don’t like me to thank you.”