The Fate: A Tale of Stirring Times

by G. P. R. James

Within were written a few complimentary lines in the French language, expressing the regret of Lady Diana Fullerton that she could not have the extreme pleasure of doing the honors of her relative's house to Lady Danvers's guest, as she had been for some time too seriously unwell to venture out of her own dressing-room. Plenty of polite and courtly expressions were employed; but the main fact was, that there was no chance of Lady Fullerton being able to give her society and countenance to Hortensia during Ralph's stay at Danvers's New Church.

To say the truth, Ralph did not very much embarrass himself with reflections upon this derangement of Lady Danvers's plans. He was young, inexperienced in the world, and a college life of those days was not at all likely to open the eyes of a young man to the proprieties of society. He saw no more reason why he should not stay in the same house with Hortensia than stay in the same street; and it must be remembered, also, that that horrible cloak of decorum, which but too frequently covers, like charity, a multitude of sins, was a thing hardly known in those days, when the phrensied license of the Restoration was but just giving place to the colder and more covert debaucheries which succeeded. He quietly tore to pieces Lady Diana Fullerton's note with very little reverence, and, casting the subject from his mind, let his thoughts rest again, with some of that impatience for action which is peculiar to youth, upon the death of his poor cousin Henry, and the anguish which he knew Margaret must be feeling both for her brother and for himself, if she believed him guilty. He longed to fly to her, to console her, to comfort her, to assure her of his innocence, and of his ever-enduring affection; but how rarely is it that Fate allows us to do any thing that we long to do. Had not even the warning of Lady Danvers kept him in inactivity, he would not have dared either to visit or to write to her whom he so much loved. He did not know if their attachment to each other had been really made known or not; for, although he had at first imagined that the anxiety of the Duke of Norfolk and Hortensia to remove him from the vicinity of Lord Woodhall was occasioned by a discovery which he knew would excite the old lord's highest indignation, even without any of those insinuations which Robert Woodhall was too likely to add, yet that anxiety was now explained in another manner, and his and Margaret's mutual love might be still unknown, and their happiness periled by any indiscreet act.

Thought, so rapid in itself that it can girdle the great earth ere the leviathan can swim a mile, makes time often pass rapidly along with it. The evening wore away insensibly, broken by only one solitary ramble through the galleries and rooms which he had visited the night before. That ramble, indeed, occupied some time, because there were many of the pictures which interested him; and more than once he stood with the light in his hand gazing at the face of departed greatness or beauty, and comparing what he knew of the life passed away with the permanent expression of the countenance.

It has always given me a strange sensation to go through an ancient portrait-gallery, and see the faces of the dead looking down at me from the wall--living, as it were, again in the spiritual world of art. Their acts may be recorded on the page of history--their thoughts, their words transmitted to us even in their own hands; but these are voices without substance, vague shadows of a name. It is only the hand of the painter or the sculptor, that can give us the definite and the clear. On the broad brow, in the liquid eye, in the curl of the lip, in the dimpled cheek, in the poise of the figure, in the very fall of the hand, we read more of men's character, or more of its truths, than in all that they have written--even, than in all that they have done. Men write for the world, and often act for the world. Circumstances control them--events rule them. Few, if any, are not at some time, if not at all times, acting a part; and even where passion has spurned all governance, and the fiery deed of love or hate has seemed in its bright glare to reveal the very inner secrets of the heart, still no one can tell how that heart may have been affected by events of which we know nothing--how many motives, sensations, feelings, passions, accidents, may have prompted and mingled with the deeds which we only see in their harsh whole. But, upon the face and form, we are fond to think that Nature has herself written the description of her handiwork. There, with some experience, and but very little skill, by indications as small as the letters of a book, we can read much of the mind, the heart, the character, which no other page can ever display; and, at the same time, the likeness of the fleshly tabernacle of the spirit stands before us, so that all which can be known of the mixed being is at once in presence.

Oh, great Lavater! every one is more or less a physiognomist.

Ralph gazed, then, upon those faces with association very busy in his mind. Or, again, he would pause before a sunny landscape, and let the eye rest upon the golden skies, or wander through the far-prolonged vales, or pause among the deep groves of trees, watching the nymph bathing in the limpid stream, or the ancient armament sailing up, amid columns, and trophies, and palaces, to an imagined city; and the poetry of painting would wake in his heart as many bright images as ever were called up by verse or the lyre.

Again, he would go on, and, feeling free in the solitude, he ventured once more into Hortensia's own apartments. But this time he got no further than her picture. It had certainly something fascinating in it, for he stood and gazed on that bright face, bursting through the branches, in its wild, gay youth, and comparing it, line by line, with the features which memory preserved; and as he did so, imagination was busy too. He asked himself, what were the events, what the course of life, which had subdued and chastened the light hilarity there displayed--what was it that, like Undine's love, had given a soul to the wild spirit sparkling there? He did not puzzle, though he did not satisfy himself; he enjoyed the wanderings of his own imagination round the pleasant theme, and when at length he turned away to retire to rest, he said to himself, "She must always have been very lovely."

Let us not ask if Hortensia shared his dreams with Margaret. We have no right to lift up sleep's shadowy curtain, and see the fairy sports of fancies freed from the control of will and reason. He slept, and doubtless he dreamed too; but he woke early, ere the sun had so far climbed the eastern hill as to overtop the wood, and while the slant rays were still pouring in golden splendor through the branches of the trees.

As he paused to look through the open window after having dressed himself, his eye passed over the park to the valley beyond, and, where the open ground stretched out from the banks of the stream up the sides of the hills, he was surprised to see a number of horsemen, in groups of two or three together, cantering lightly hither and thither, as if in sport. It was no season for hunting; but he thought that perhaps they might be flying a hawk, and he watched them with some interest till he convinced himself that that supposition was incorrect.

A moment after he saw a single figure on horseback riding up the broad road from the great gates to the house, and as it came nearer he recognized his servant, Gaunt Stilling, who had been absent since noon of the day before.