"I will--I will!" said Blanche, and, dropping her voice, she added--while for one moment she raised her beautiful eyes to Beauchamp's face, and the warm blood mounted again into her cheek--"Henry Beauchamp, my dear cousin, it is most likely the last time we shall ever meet--but if ever you loved me--if you would have poor Blanche Delaware bless and pray for you to her last hour--use your whole strength and mind to clear my poor brother's name and character--God bless you, God bless you!" and she ran on, down the stairs.
Beauchamp paused for a moment in utter bewilderment, then, darting into his room, seized his hat and followed with all the speed he could employ. That, however, was but little. The harbor was not far, it is true; but ere he could reach the narrow pier, from which the passengers had been embarked, the ship bound to Cherbourg had shot out to sea, and with a strong and favorable wind was making its way toward the coast of France.
Beauchamp gazed after her in vain; for nothing but the faint, indistinct forms of the many people that crowded the deck could now be discovered; and, with feelings as bitter and painful as ever man felt, he turned away and went back to the inn.
CHAPTER XXXI.
On entering the sitting-room, which had been appropriated to him, Beauchamp cast himself back in a chair, and, for a moment, reflected on the extraordinary interview he had just gone through. But a new discomfort now assailed him, and he felt a degree of confusion of thought, and even indistinctness of memory, that pained and alarmed him. Could the blow he had received on the head, he asked himself, the consequences of which he had entirely neglected--could it have injured his brain! Nevertheless, his personal feelings occupied him but for an instant, and were only permitted to cut across his thoughts of Blanche Delaware, and interrupt the ideas which his conversation with her had called up, when the dizzy mistiness of his brain prevented him from pursuing clearly any defined train of thinking.
Should he engage a boat, he asked himself, and follow Sir Sidney to Cherbourg, in search of farther explanations--perhaps, I might say, in search of farther hopes; for with all the confused and painful feelings that his brief interview with Blanche Delaware had excited, there had also been left behind a sweet, consoling hope, that after all he was beloved, and that time might yet make her his own.
He paused upon that idea, which, like a gleam of sunshine upon the dark and struggling waters of the sea, gave one bright spot for the mind's eye to rest upon, in the midst of the doubts and anxieties that whirled around him. Should he follow her, he thought, and inquire what was meant by her allusion to her brother; or should he stay and do what he conceived to be his duty, in bringing to justice, as far as he could effect it, the men who had committed the crime at Ryebury. "I will see what has been already discovered," he said at length, "and then act as I find necessary."
In consequence of this resolution, he rang the bell, and demanded the newspapers of the last two or three days; but for some minutes after they were brought, he could scarcely read the matter they contained, so fearfully did the letters dance before his sight when he attempted to fix his eyes upon the page. He succeeded at length in gathering the contents; and it may be unnecessary to say, that, when he did so, he found sufficient at once to determine his conduct. The whole account of what had taken place at Emberton was now before him; and, with feelings that it is impossible to describe, he perceived that the very means he had taken to remove the difficulties of Sir Sidney Delaware and his family had, on the contrary, accumulated upon them a load of evils and distresses which his utmost apprehensions could never have anticipated.
Summoning the waiter once more, he ordered breakfast, and a place to be secured for him in the London coach. All was done according to his desire, with prompt activity; and, by a quarter after ten, Henry Beauchamp was on his way to London, in the inside of a hot stage-coach, crammed full of humanity; while his own feelings consisted of a compound of intense mental anxiety, and all those horrible corporeal sensations which precede a violent attack of fever. His hands and his head burned like living coals; his feet were as cold as ice; and a faint sort of chilly shiverings thrilled over all his frame, alternating with a degree of heat that became sometimes intolerable.
He endured all this with firm determination for six mortal hours; but at length he found that nature would bear no more, and that he must stop. At Hartford Bridge, then, where his name and station in society were well known, from his having often spent a night in that most pleasant of all country inns--the White Lion--he desired the coachman to put him down, and entered the house. His appearance was so altered, that the old waiter did not recognize him for a moment; but the moment that he did so, he declared, upon his word then, that Major Beauchamp must be ill, in which assertion Beauchamp found strong reason within his own bosom to coincide.