Harry Joscelyn; vol. 3 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

“I don’t think now that he is related to Mr. Oliver,” Lydia said.

“I wonder,” said Lionel, “what reason you have for that? It seems much more likely to me than before. I don’t think the fellow is a gentleman. Oh, he looks well enough, there is nothing amiss about his appearance; still there are some things I have remarked.”

“If Lionel thinks so,” said Lady Brotherton, “my dear, in these matters, I always take the opinion of a man, just as about women I would take a lady’s opinion before all the men in the world. Oh, yes, it is very pretty to talk of jealousy, and all that; but you may be sure we all know our own kind the best. If Lionel thinks so, I would take his opinion before my own.”

At this Lionel had compunctions, and drew back a little.

“Perhaps I went too far,” he said. “I was out of temper. Still there are some things a man would not do, if——” but though he felt that he had been rash, he did not complete his sentence. The carriage stopped, indeed, at that moment at the inn door, and there was no time for him to say anything more; and Lydia took no further part in the discussion.

She bade her friends good night in the hall of the inn and ran upstairs to her room. She was rather glad to have disagreed with Lionel and set her own opinion before his, and she felt angry with him, indignant, and almost wounded, that he should have given such an opinion. She felt it almost to be something against herself. She hurried up to her own room, to finish her packing, she said. She had taken out her white dress to wear that evening, and had now to put it back, to resume her travelling-garments. It was their last night in Italy; next evening they would be at sea, seeing the sun set in the Mediterranean. It was a warm night, and her mind was far too restless and busy for sleep. When she had put away her dress, and arranged all her possessions in order, she went to the open window and sat down there, looking out at the moon. The room was high up near the skies, and she had all the firmament to herself, nothing to disturb its calm except the old belfry of a convent with its little tinkling bell, which was always in movement all day long, but which seemed to have gone to bed along with the peaceful sisters and their pupils. This little belfry stood out against the deep blue of the sky, which lined out every little curve and corner, but all was quiet in and about it, its shrill tongue still till morning. All was quiet; the room looked out to the back of the house, and not an echo of the street reached Lydia in her retirement. She felt, half with the giddiness of her excited condition, half with the expectation of to-morrow, as if she were sailing upon a sea of space, floating between the earth and sky; and as she sat there so still, her candles burning in the background unnoticed, sedately awaiting her leisure, and the soft night blowing in upon her with a breath of the sea in it, a perfect crowd and storm of thoughts burst on Lydia in the quiet. She thought, you would suppose, of what she had been doing to-night, of the curious questions about Isaac Oliver, and the examination to which the Vice-Consul had subjected her, and all the novelty of this story into which she had been thrust head and shoulders without any will of her own; but, to tell the truth, Lydia thought nothing about this at all, at first. She thought of to-morrow, of the tide of movement which would sweep her away, of leaning over the bulwark and seeing the long trail of the water gliding under the ship, and of what might be said to her there. Sir John would be safely installed in the deck-cabin, which had always to be secured for him, and Lady Brotherton would stretch herself out on a sofa and close her eyes, in preparation for being ill. And then: what would be said? She wove a great many imaginary conversations that came to nothing. Why should they come to anything? He would tell her—what he was going to do in town; that he hoped she would enjoy going home; something commonplace, ordinary—or else he would say foolish things about the months they had been together, and pretend to regret them. Why should he regret them? Lydia imagined herself saying much that would not be true, that she was impatient to get back, that the quiet of the Fells would be delightful after so much wandering; and much besides which would pique him and wound him, and perhaps goad him to say other unpleasant things in return.

And then all at once, without any doing of hers, her thoughts gave a leap back to to-night, and there began to float and move before her all the new faces never seen before, never, probably, to be seen again, which for an hour or two had filled her with such strange, strong interest. From the moment Mr. Isaac Oliver had been announced, startling her out of herself, until now, when still discussing him, she had left the rest of the party in the hall, the encounter had agitated and disturbed her. “We are of the same country, and I know what you think—but it is not that.” What did he mean?—it is not that! and why did a stranger whom she had never seen before look at her so, and understand her so strangely? Her heart began to beat loudly once more when she thought of her impertinent production of old Isaac, when seated beside her silent host at the table, taunting him with the old man; and he understood her—that was the strange thing. If he did not really belong to old Isaac Oliver, how was it that he understood her? When he looked at her with that curious appeal, as if saying “Do not vex me—do not trouble me,” there would have been no meaning in it if he had not known what she meant; and how could he know if it was not true? Lydia felt herself caught as in a net of confusing questions and thoughts. Another man would have been surprised; he would have asked “Who is this namesake of mine? Tell me about him.” But this man did not ask a question; he knew. She felt that from the first moment she had perceived this involuntarily, and that her little pricks of questions could not have had any point if he had not known old Isaac, and if she had not felt that he knew him. Mr. Bonamy, for instance, did not know at all, and asked natural questions—who the gentleman was? the gentleman! if he was a neighbour, a farmer, a yeoman?—none of which things Mr. Oliver so much as suggested. Then who was this that knew Isaac Oliver, that knew her own name she began to remember, starting when he heard it first, as she had started when she heard his?

By this time Lydia began to get hot after the puzzle which unfolded itself slowly before her. Why did the Vice-Consul ask her so many questions? and he had begun to say something about “the name of Joscelyn.” What about the name of Joscelyn? Then a crowd of bewildering recollections, like motes in the sunbeam, like the whirling flakes of a snowstorm, began to circle and dance and palpitate around her. “We are of the same country, and I know what you think—but it is not that.” What was it, then? What was it? He a relative of Isaac Oliver! no, no!—it was impossible; but he knew Isaac Oliver; he knew his name and herself; he knew what she meant when she spoke; and when she tried to humble him with her impertinence, he was not angry, but sorry. She seemed to see now his kind, half-reproachful, half-appealing eyes, the look which bewildered and arrested her, she could not tell why. Quicker and quicker went the course of Lydia’s thoughts. He had a child who was called Ralph, and another Joan—no, not Joan, but Giovanna; but there had come a gleam out of his eyes when Lionel had suggested Joan. Who was he, who could he be to use these names, to look like that, like somebody she had seen, to understand all she meant, yet not to be angry? And their voices that were of the same tone! She could see this herself, or rather she could hear it herself—that their voices sounded alike, with a suspicion of a North-Country accent. Good heavens! where was this flood of suggestion, of recollection, carrying her? She jumped up from her seat in the confusion and hurry of her thoughts, and began to pace about the room, her hands clasped together like her mother’s. Then she stopped in the centre of the room, and in the silence, in the middle of the night, threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture, and gave a sudden cry. “Harry!” she almost screamed to herself in the stillness. Everybody was asleep around her, the stars winking in the sky as if about to shut up their wakeful eyes, the blue behind the belfry beginning to glow with a pale radiation into the air of the coming dawn—and as if they had given each other a signal, all the clocks of the silent town began chiming and striking, some of them prolonging the lengthened measure of the Italian time into the soft tuning of the night. Lydia standing in the middle of the room in wild excitement, her hair streaming about her, her arms thrown up, her mouth open, looked like a prophetess in a trance, seeing the invisible, almost shrieking her revelation into the heart of the silence. Harry! Harry! She could not keep it to herself; she could not help but scream it out into the night, to make sure that she was not dreaming or raving—but was a sane creature, who had made a discovery which seemed to set her whole being on fire.

It was a long time before she could calm herself down. If there had been anybody to tell it to, that would have been something; but, as she had no way of getting rid of her excitement, it blazed up in her higher and higher. She did not know what to do to calm herself down. She walked about for nearly an hour, now and then going to the window, leaning half out, exposing herself to the fresh air and coolness, eagerly looking for the first early riser, the first window opening, and watching the little belfry grow black against the lightening sky, then flash and blaze to the first touch of the sun. Sleep! she could have sooner done anything else in the world—stretched out her arms like wings and flown, leaped down from the window, called out to all the city, that was what she wanted to do—“Harry, Harry!” She seemed to have but one idea left in the world.

After a while, however, in the desperation of being unable to communicate her discovery, or do anything to bring herself more clearly face to face with so wonderful a revelation, Lydia sat down to trace it again step by step, then lay down on her bed, going over and over the familiar ground. She fell asleep just as the sunshine began to stream into her room, and slept soundly for an hour or two in the depths of her exhaustion; but when she woke it was still early, and a long day before her. Naturally the first thing she did was to survey again the entire circumstances, going over them one by one. She had not much experience, and in her whole life no such lawless incident as a nuit blanche, a night spent without taking off her clothes had ever occurred to Liddy before. She felt almost guilty as she found herself lying there, her long hair streaming about her, in her dressing-gown, as she had been when she first sat down at her window to think. Sometimes the morning light dissipates the wisest calculations and conclusions of the night, and turns its theories and revelations into folly; but as she started up hastily, and began to put her facts together again, no such awakening occurred. They seemed more conclusive, more certain, in the sober light of the morning, than they did in the feverish wakefulness of the long, silent night. She pieced them all together hurriedly, in a tremble of excitement. He had been there ten years, and it was ten years since Harry disappeared. He had said nothing about his family, he had even married without any explanation on that point. He had started at the sound of her name; he had understood all she said. He had called his child Ralph—Ralph! after his father, with a prejudice that was North-country all over; and his name was Harry, so called by his wife, though he had himself announced as Isaac Oliver. Lydia thought she could understand exactly what had made him take Isaac Oliver’s name—a moment of despite and despair, yet humour—a putting down of himself from the pinnacle of the Joscelyns to the humility of the lowliest servant, an expedient which would direct the thoughts of anyone who might seek him into another direction. She sprang up, and was fully dressed and ready to begin the extraordinary piece of work she had in hand, before anyone else of the party had stirred. But what was she to do? Was she to go to him straight, without any further inquiry, without a pause, and say, Are you my brother Harry? or, You are my brother Harry! If by any chance he was not so, after all, he would think her mad. What was she to do? She sat down again at the window where she had sat for half the night. The sunshine was pouring in, growing every moment more brilliant, not like the temperate British sunshine which it is a pleasure in the early morning to bathe and bask in, but already blazing, slaying in its Italian force and fervour. She had to close the persiani, which she had herself thrown open in her restlessness on the previous night. When all the people of the hotel were in motion, and life fully astir, she went downstairs; but there was nothing to be done there, save to sit down once more and think it all over again. She had not been there long, however, when Lionel came into the room in search of a book; he had been restless too; but he started violently when he caught sight of her buried in a great chair, with her hands clasped in her lap. For the first moment he thought that she must have been there all night.