“Well, Mr. Wade,” said he, “perhaps you are right. We have only to fancy this the terrace outside the chateau, and it is as much according to rule to promenade here, as to stifle in the ballroom. You are very kind, gentlemen, both, to prefer our society to the entertainment inside. Certainly Brother Bottery’s violin is not like one of our modern bands; but when I was your age I could dance to anything and anywhere. I suppose young men see so much more of the world now, that they outgrow those fancies sooner.”
So we walked on, away from the harsh sounds of the ball. Brent dropped behind, talking earnestly with the lady. How sibylline she looked in that dim starlight! How Cassandra-like,—as one dreams that heroic and unflinching prophetess of ills unheeded or disdained!
CHAPTER XIV.
HUGH CLITHEROE.
Mr. Clitheroe grew more and more communicative, as we wandered about over the open. I drew from him, or rather, with few words of guidance now and then, let him impart, his history. He seemed to feel that he had an explanation to offer. Men whose life has been error and catastrophe rarely have much pride of reticence. Whatever friendly person will hear their apology can hear it. That form of more lamentable error called Guilt is shyer of the confessional; but it also feels its need of telling to brother man why it was born in the heart in the form of some small sin.
Again Mr. Clitheroe talked of the scenes of his youth and prosperity. He “babbled of green fields,” and parks, and great country-houses, and rural life. So he went on to talk of himself, and, leaving certain blanks, which I afterward found the means of filling, told me his story. A sad story! A pitiful story! Sadder and more pitiful to me because a filial feeling toward this hapless gentleman was all the while growing stronger in my heart. I have already said that I was fatherless from infancy. This has left a great want in my life. I cannot find complete compensation for the lack of a father’s love in my premature manhood and my toughening against the world too young. I yearned greatly toward the feeble old man, my companion in that night walk on the plain of Fort Bridger. I longed to do by him the duties of sonship; as, indeed, having no such duties, I have often longed when I found age weak and weary. And as I began to feel son-like toward the father, a sentiment simply brotherly took its place in my heart for the daughter, whose love my friend, I believe, was seeking.
A sad history was Mr. Clitheroe’s. He was a prosperous gentleman once, of one of the ancient families of his country.
“We belong,” he said, “to the oldest gentry of England. We have been living at Clitheroe Hall, and where the Hall now stands, for centuries. Our family history goes back into the pre-historic times. We have never been very famous; we have always sustained our dignity. We might have had a dozen peerages; but we were too much on the side of liberty, of free speech and free thought, to act with the powers that be.
“There was never a time, until my day, when one of us was not in Parliament for Clitheroe. Clitheroe had two members, and one of the old family that gave its name to the town, and got for it its franchises, was always chosen without contest.
“It is a lovely region, sir, where the town, of Clitheroe and the old manor-house of my family stand,—the fairest part of Lancashire. If you have only seen, as you say, the flat country about Liverpool and Manchester, you do not know at all what Lancashire can do in scenery. Why, there is Pendle Hill,—it might better be called a mountain,—Pendle Hill rises almost at my door-step, at the door of Clitheroe Hall. Pendle Hill, sir, is eighteen hundred and odd feet high. And a beautiful hill it is. I talked of the Wind River Mountains this afternoon; they are very fine; but I never should have learned to love heights, if my boyhood had not been trained by the presence of Pendle Hill.