The Convict: A Tale

by G. P. R. James

Sir Arthur took the note, and looked at the address without any apparent emotion; but when he opened it, his aspect changed considerably, and he stopped, saying, in a hesitating manner, "I must go back--I must go back."

"Oh! it is but a short distance," said Eda; "we can return with you."

"No, my dear, no," answered her uncle, with what seemed a good deal of embarrassment in his air; "you had better go on to Brandon. Mr. Dudley will, I am sure, escort you."

"Assuredly," replied Dudley, gravely; and Sir Arthur adding, "I may not, perhaps, be back to luncheon, Eda, but do not wait for me," turned, and with a quick step hurried along the road towards Mr. Clive's house.

It seemed as if everything had combined to leave Charles Dudley and Eda Brandon alone together. If he had laboured a couple of years for such a consummation it would not have occurred. He did not offer Eda his arm, however; and although his heart was beating very fast with feelings that longed for utterance, he walked on for at least a hundred and fifty yards, without a word being spoken on either side. Ladies, however, feel the awkwardness of silence more than men; and Eda, though she was shaking very unaccountably, said at length, "I am afraid, Mr. Dudley, that what you find here is not so beautiful and interesting as the scenes you have lately come from. You used, I remember, to be a very enthusiastic admirer of the beauties of nature."

Dudley raised his fine eyes to her face, and gazed at her for a moment with melancholy gravity. "All I admired then," he said at length, "I admire now. All I loved then, dear Miss Brandon, I love now. It is circumstances which have changed, not I."

"I did not know that circumstances had changed," said Eda, in a low and sweet tone, as if she really felt sympathy with him for the grief his manner implied. "I had heard that a sad, a terrible change of circumstances had occurred some time before; but I was not at all aware that any new cause of grief or disappointment had been added."

Dudley again thought before he answered; but it was not the thought of calculation, or if it was, it was but the calculation of how he should answer calmly; how he should speak the true feelings of his heart with moderation and gentleness: not at all a calculation of whether it were better to speak those feelings or not.

"You are right, Miss Brandon," he said, "the change of circumstances had taken place before; but all things have their consequences; and the results of those material alterations in fortune and station which had befallen me, were still to be made manifest to, and worked out by, myself. When first we met, you were very young--not sixteen, I think--and I was not old. Everything was in the spring-day with me. It was all full of promise. I had in those days two fortunes: worldly wealth, and even a greater store of happy hopes and expectations--the bright and luxuriant patrimony of inexperienced youth. From time to time we saw each other; till, when last we met, prosperity had been taken from me, the treasure of earthly riches was gone, and though not actually beggared, I and my poor father were in a state of absolute poverty. Still the other fortune, that rich estate of youthful hope and inexperienced expectation, though somewhat diminished, was not altogether gone. I fancied that, in the eyes of the noble and the good, wealth would make no difference. I had never found it make any difference to me in my estimation of others. I imagined that those qualities which some had esteemed and liked in me, would still at least retain my friends. I never for an instant dreamed that it could or ought to have an influence on the adamant of love. I had almost said and done rash things in those days; but you went away out of London, and I soon began to perceive that I had bitterly deceived myself."

"You never perceived any difference in me," cried Eda, her voice trembling with emotions which carried away all discretion. "You do not mean to say, Mr. Dudley, that you saw, or that you thought you saw, such base weakness in my nature as would render of the slightest value in my eyes a change of fortune in those I--I----" And extending her left hand, as if to cast the idea from her, she turned away, and shook her head sorrowfully, with her eyes full of tears.