The town of H————— was situated about ten miles from the park gates of Broadhurst, and thither did Lewis direct his steps. He paced along mechanically, with a dull, heavy tread, as unlike his usual free elastic bounding step as possible; he kept his eyes fixed on the road before him, neither glancing to the right nor the left, and all his actions appeared like those of one moving in a dream. The night was dry and warm, and when Lewis had proceeded about six miles on his way the moon came out and bathed hill and valley in a flood of silvery light. Suddenly he paused, as the ruins of a picturesque old abbey, thrown out in bold relief by a dark background of trees, became visible at a turning of the road, and fixing his eyes on the time-worn structure, gazed long and earnestly; then a new idea seemed to strike him, and springing over a gate, he ascended with vigorous strides the green hillside on which the ruin was situated. Passing beneath crumbling arches and over the fallen stone-work covering old graves of a forgotten generation, he reached a portion of the building which seemed in somewhat better repair than the remainder. Having reached the upper end of the chancel, he paused, and leaning his back against the broken shaft of a pillar which had supported one of the arches, gave way to the painful recollections which the place excited. The last time he had visited that spot, Annie Grant had stood by his side, and as he taught her how the mystic piety of our forefathers had striven to symbolise the truths of Christianity in the cruciform cathedral, with its vaulted arches and heaven-aspiring pinnacles, her soft blue eyes had looked into his face with an expression of the respectful love we feel towards one whom we deem better and wiser than ourselves. And now how cruel was the contrast—how completely and painfully alone he felt. Then he longed (who has not at some crisis of the inner-life?) so earnestly that he almost fancied he possessed the power to separate mind and matter, and flying in the spirit to her he loved, to learn whether she thought of him and grieved for his absence. Pursuing the idea, he came to speculate on many things. Had they yet told her he would not return? What reason would the General assign for such an abrupt departure? Would she believe his account, or would her heart divine the true cause? And if it did, would she pity him?—strongest proof of love—he could bear the idea of her pity.
Poor Lewis! perhaps his greatest trial was this, that at the very moment when he gave her up for ever, a latent sense of power told him that he could have won her; this was indeed the “sorrow’s crown of sorrow”—the bitterness of more than self-renunciation, for Annie, too, might be rendered unhappy by his act. Then the future, the blank, fearful future—what lay in store for him there? “Fresh sorrow—no” (and he smiled as men on the rack have smiled when the tormentors have outwitted themselves, and the numbness of approaching death has produced insensibility to pain and robbed them of their victim), “he was dead alike to sorrow as to joy;” but at the moment, as if to prove him weak even in the vis inertio of despair, the possibility of Annie’s union with Lord Bellefield came before him like some hideous phantom, and he was forced to own that there might be depths of misery awaiting him greater than he had yet proved. And thus recalling the past and imagining the future, he afflicted himself with griefs real and visionary, till the moonbeams grew paler and altogether fled, and the stars disappeared one by one, and the red glow of the eastern sky proclaimed the coming day, and the sun arose glorious in his majesty, and his earliest rays poured through the broken roof and fell in a stream of golden light upon the ruined altar; then for the first time that night Lewis thought of Rose, and of what her advice would have been had she known of his unhappiness; and prostrating himself upon the altar-step, he prayed long and fervently.
The reflection that when our sorrow has become too heavy for us to bear there is One mighty to save, Himself in His earthly career a “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” who will strengthen us to support them, must console the deepest mental anguish; and we do not believe that any man has ever prayed truly and earnestly without receiving comfort from so doing. For the very act recognises a belief in the existence and faith in the benevolence of a Being, all powerful alike to avert the evil we dread, and to bestow upon us the good we desire. And Lewis, when he arose from his knees, did so refreshed in spirit, and better fitted to do or to suffer, as he might be required by the changes and chances of that portion of The Railroad of Life over which he had yet to pass.
He reached the town of H———— as the inhabitants, aroused from their slumbers, were drowsily opening the shop-windows, and making his way to a small, unobtrusive inn, breakfasted. Having ascertained at what hour the last coach passed through for London, he left his valise under the care of the waiter, and passing along several dirty, narrow streets, at length reached a court, in one of the poorest and most wretched quarters of the town. Here, after some trouble and a disagreeable amount of threatening glances from sundry suspicious-looking characters, he succeeded in discovering the abode of a certain Jerry Sullivan. This worthy, having satisfied himself that Lewis was not a member of the detective police, graciously accorded him an interview, wherein Lewis explained to him that, in consequence of a communication made to him by Hardy on his death-bed, he was anxious to investigate the contents of a packet left in possession of his (Sullivan’s) maternal ancestor. This fact, Mr. Sullivan, whose brogue was considerably stronger than his regard for truth, immediately saw fit to deny, and was proceeding to lament the death of his mother, which he averred had taken place that day fortnight, when he was interrupted by the inopportune entrance of the lady in question, who appeared by no means dead, but in a very lively state of virtuous indignation. She immediately silenced her mendacious offspring, and beckoning Lewis into a kind of den which she inhabited, shut the door, and then questioned and cross-questioned him as to his connection with Hardy. Having satisfied herself, by perusing Hardy’s letter, that Lewis was no impostor, she unlocked an old trunk, whence she produced a bundle of papers and a sheet of parchment.
“There,” she said, “that’s the will he spoke of, poor fellow, and them’s the letters—and I only hope as you’ll be able to find the unfort’nate childring, and that they will come into the money all right—it’s nigh £100 year, I’m told.”
“Have you any idea whether Hardy had at all traced his daughter since she left him?” inquired Lewis.
“No; he heard nothink of her, poor chap; he was a’most brokenhearted about her, and that’s what drove him to the courses he took to. He worn’t a reg’lar prig, bless yer; he did a little in the poarching line wiles, but only for the sake o’ the sport, same as you gents—he wor above them things altogether. But I knows more than he did about the gal: there were a young ’ooman here a week ago as had seen her in London, dressed out and riding about in a coach like a lady; but that wor soon arter she fust went off with the young swell, and wor a kind of new toy like.”