CHAPTER XX.
“Vec. Ye see what follows.
Duke. O gentle sir! this shape again!”—The Chances.
That evening Sidney Beaufort arrived in London. It is the nature of solitude to make passions calm on the surface—agitated in the deeps. Sidney had placed his whole existence in one object. When the letter arrived that told him to hope no more, he was at first rather sensible of the terrible and dismal blank—the “void abyss”—to which all his future was suddenly changed, than roused to vehement and turbulent emotion. But Camilla’s letter had, as we have seen, raised his courage and animated his heart. To the idea of her faith he still clung with the instinct of hope in the midst of despair. The tidings that she was absolutely betrothed to another, and in so short a time since her rejection of him, let loose from all restraint his darker and more tempestuous passions. In a state of mind bordering upon frenzy, he hurried to London—to seek her—to see her; with what intent—what hope, if hope there were—he himself could scarcely tell. But what man who has loved with fervour and trust will be contented to receive the sentence of eternal separation except from the very lips of the one thus worshipped and thus foresworn?
The day had been intensely cold. Towards evening the snow fell fast and heavily. Sidney had not, since a child, been before in London; and the immense City, covered with a wintry and icy mist, through which the hurrying passengers and the slow-moving vehicles passed, spectre-like, along the dismal and slippery streets—opened to the stranger no hospitable arms. He knew not a step of the way—he was pushed to and fro—his scarce intelligible questions impatiently answered—the snow covered him—the frost pierced to his veins. At length a man, more kindly than the rest, seeing that he was a stranger to London, procured him a hackney-coach, and directed the driver to the distant quarter of Berkeley Square. The snow balled under the hoofs of the horses—the groaning vehicle proceeded at the pace of a hearse. At length, and after a period of such suspense, and such emotion, as Sidney never in after-life could recall without a shudder, the coach stopped—the benumbed driver heavily descended—the sound of the knocker knelled loud through the muffled air—and the light from Mr. Beaufort’s hall glared full upon the dizzy eyes of the visitor. He pushed aside the porter, and sprang into the hall. Luckily, one of the footmen who had attended Mrs. Beaufort to the Lakes recognised him; and, in answer to his breathless inquiry, said,—
“Why, indeed, Mr. Spencer, Miss Beaufort is at home—up-stairs in the drawing-room, with master and mistress, and Monsieur de Vaudemont; but—”
Sidney waited no more. He bounded up the stairs—he opened the first door that presented itself to him, and burst, unannounced and unlooked-for, upon the eyes of the group seated within. He saw not the terrified start of Mr. Robert Beaufort—he heeded not the faint, nervous exclamation of the mother—he caught not the dark and wondering glace of the stranger seated beside Camilla—he saw but Camilla herself, and in a moment he was at her feet.
“Camilla, I am here!—I, who love you so—I, who have nothing in the world but you! I am here—to learn from you, and you alone, if I am indeed abandoned—if you are indeed to be another’s!”
He had dashed his hat from his brow as he sprang forward; his long fair hair, damp with the snows, fell disordered over his forehead; his eyes were fixed, as for life and death, upon the pale face and trembling lips of Camilla. Robert Beaufort, in great alarm, and well aware of the fierce temper of Philip, anticipative of some rash and violent impulse, turned his glance upon his destined son-in-law. But there was no angry pride in the countenance he there beheld. Philip had risen, but his frame was bent—his knees knocked together—his lips were parted—his eyes were staring full upon the face of the kneeling man.
Suddenly Camilla, sharing her father’s fear, herself half rose, and with an unconscious pathos, stretched one hand, as if to shelter, over Sidney’s head, and looked to Philip. Sidney’s eyes followed hers. He sprang to his feet.
“What, then, it is true! And this is the man for whom I am abandoned! But unless you—you, with your own lips, tell me that you love me no more—that you love another—I will not yield you but with life.”