The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851

Now in describing the park of Sir Philip Hastings, I have said that there was a wide open space around the mansion; but I have also said, that at some distance the trees gathered thick and sombre. Those nearest the house gathered together in clumps, confusing the eye in a wilderness of hawthorns, and bushes, and evergreen oaks, while beyond appeared a dense mass of wood; and, through the scattered tufts of trees and thick woodland at the extreme of the park ran several paths traced by deer, and park-keepers, and country folk. Thus for various reasons some guidance was needful to Marlow on his way, and for more reasons still he was well pleased that the guide should be Emily Hastings. In the course of their walk, amongst many other subjects they spoke of Mrs. Hazleton, and Marlow expatiated warmly on her beauty, and grace, and kindness of heart. How different was the effect of all this upon Emily Hastings from that which his words in her praise had produced upon her of whom he spoke! Emily's heart was free. Emily had no schemes, no plans, no purposes. She knew not that there was one feeling in her bosom with which praise of Mrs. Hazleton could ever jar. She loved her well. Such eyes as hers are not practised in seeing into darkness. She had divined the Italian singer—perhaps by instinct, perhaps by some distinct trait, which occasionally will betray the most wily. But Mrs. Hazleton was a fellow-woman—a woman of great brightness and many fine qualities. Neither had she any superficial defects to indicate a baser metal or a harder within. If she was not all gold, she was doubly gilt.

Emily praised her too, warmed with the theme; and eagerly exclaimed, "She always seems to me like one of those dames of fairy tales, upon whom some enchanter has bestowed a charm that no one can resist. It is not her beauty; for I feel the same when I hear her voice and shut my eyes. It is not her conversation; for I feel the same when I look at her and she is silent. It seems to breathe from her presence like the odor of a flower. It is the same when she is grave as when she is gay."

"Aye, and when she is melancholy," replied Marlow. "I never felt it more powerfully than a few days ago when I spent an hour with her, and she was not only grave but sad."

"Melancholy!" exclaimed Emily. "I never saw her so. Grave I have seen her—thoughtful, silent—but never sad; and I do not know that she has not seemed more charming to me in those grave, stiller moods, than in more cheerful ones. Do you know that in looking at the beautiful statues which I have seen in London, I have often thought they might lose half their charm if they would move and speak? Thus, too, with Mrs. Hazleton; she seems to me even more lovely, more full of grace, in perfect stillness than at any other time. My father," she added, after a moment's pause, "is the only one who in her presence seems spell-proof."

Her words threw Marlow into a momentary fit of thought. "Why," he asked himself, "was Sir Philip Hastings spell-proof when all others were charmed?"

Men have a habit of depending much upon men's judgment, whether justly or unjustly I will not stop to inquire. They rely less upon woman's judgment in such matters; and yet women are amongst the keenest discerners—when they are unbiassed by passion. But are they often so? Perhaps it is from a conviction that men judge less frequently from impulse, decide more generally from cause, that this presumption of their accuracy exists. Woman—perhaps from seclusion, perhaps from nature—is more a creature of instincts than man. They are given her for defence where reason would act too slowly; and where they do act strongly, they are almost invariably right. Man goes through the slower process, and naturally relies more firmly on the result; for reason demonstrates where instinct leads blindfold. Marlow judged Sir Philip Hastings by himself, and fancied that he must have some cause for being spell-proof against the fascinations of Mrs. Hazleton. This roused the first doubt in his mind as to her being all that she seemed. He repelled the doubt as injurious, but it returned from time to time in after days, and at length gave him a clue to an intricate labyrinth.

The walk came to an end, too soon he thought. Emily pointed out the gate as soon as it appeared in sight, shook hands with him and returned homeward. He thought more of her after they had parted, than when she was with him. There are times when the most thoughtful do not think—when they enjoy. But now, every word, every look of her who had just left him, came back to memory. Not that he would admit to himself that there was the least touch of love in his feelings. Oh no! He had known her too short a time for such a serious passion as love to have any thing to do with his sensations. He only thought of her—mused—pondered—recalled all she had said and done, because she was so unlike any thing he had seen or heard of before—a something new—a something to be studied.

She was but a girl—a mere child, he said; and yet there was something more than childish grace in that light, but rounded form, where beauty was more than budding, but not quite blossomed, like a moss-rose in its loveliest state of loveliness. And her mind too; there was nothing childish in her thoughts except their playfulness. The morning dew-drops had not yet exhaled; but the day-star of the mind was well up in the sky.

She was one of those, on whom it is dangerous for a man afraid of love to meditate too long. She was one the effect of whose looks and words is not evanescent. That of mere beauty passes away. How many a face do we see and think it the loveliest in the world; yet shut the eyes an hour after, and try to recall the features—to paint them to the mind's eye. You cannot. But there are others that link themselves with every feeling of the heart, that twine themselves with constantly recurring thoughts, that never can be effaced—never forgotten—on which age or time, disease or death, may do its work without effecting one change in the reality embalmed in memory. Destroy the die, break the mould, you may; but the medal and the cast remain. Had Marlow lived a hundred years—had he never seen Emily Hastings again, not one line of her bright face, not one speaking look, would have passed from his memory. He could have painted a portrait of her had he been an artist. Did you ever gaze long at the sun, trying your eyes against the eagle's? If so, you have had the bright orb floating before your eyes the whole day after. And so it was with Marlow: throughout the long hours that followed, he had Emily Hastings ever before him. But yet he did not love her. Oh dear no, not in the least. Love he thought was very different from mere admiration. It was a plant of slower growth. He was no believer in love at first sight. He was an infidel as to Romeo and Juliet, and he had firmly resolved if ever he did fall in love, it should be done cautiously.

Poor man! he little knew how deep he was in already.

In the meanwhile, Emily walked onward. She was heart-whole at least. She had never dreamed of love. It had not been one of her studies. Her father had never presented the idea to her. Her mother had often talked of marriage, and marriages good and bad; but always put them in the light of alliances—compacts—negotiated treaties. Although Lady Hastings knew what love is as well as any one, and had felt it as deeply, yet she did not wish her daughter to be as romantic as she had been, and therefore the subject was avoided. Emily thought a good deal of Mr. Marlow, it is true. She thought him handsome, graceful, winning—one of the pleasantest companions she had ever known. She liked him better than any one she had ever seen; and his words rang in her ears long after they were spoken. But even imagination, wicked spinner of golden threads as she is, never drew one link between his fate and hers. The time had not yet come, if it was to come.

She walked on, however, through the wood; and just when she was emerging from the thicker part into the clumps and scattered trees, she saw a stranger before her, leaning against the stump of an old hawthorn, and seeming to suffer pain. He was young, handsome, well-dressed, and there was a gun lying at his feet. But as Emily drew nearer, she saw blood slowly trickling from his arm, and falling on the gray sand of the path.

She was not one to suffer shyness to curb humanity; and she exclaimed at once, with a look of alarm, "I am afraid you are hurt, sir. Had you not better come up to the house?"

The young man looked at her, fainted, and answered in a low tone, "The gun has gone off, caught by a branch, and has shattered my arm. I thought I could reach the cottage by the park gates, but I feel faint."

"Stay, stay a moment," cried Emily, "I will run to the hall and bring assistance—people to assist you upon a carriage."

"No, no!" answered the stranger quickly, "I cannot go there—I will not go there! The cottage is nearer," he continued more calmly; "I think with a little help I could reach it, if I could staunch the blood."

"Let me try," exclaimed Emily; and with ready zeal, she tied her handkerchief round his arm, not without a shaking hand indeed, but with firmness and some skill.

"Now lean upon me," she said, when she had done; "the cottage is indeed nearer, but you would have better tendance if you could reach the hall."

"No, no, the cottage," replied the stranger, "I shall do well there."

The cottage was perhaps two hundred yards nearer to the spot on which they stood than the hall; but there was an eagerness about the young man's refusal to go to the latter, which Emily remarked. Suspicion indeed was alive to her mind; but those were days when laws concerning game, which have every year been becoming less and less strict, were hardly less severe than in the time of William Rufus. Every day, in the country life which she led, she heard some tale of poaching or its punishment. The stranger had a gun with him; she had found him in her father's park; he was unwilling even in suffering and need of help to go up to the hall for succor; and she could not but fancy that for some frolic, perhaps some jest, or some wild whim, he had been trespassing upon the manor in pursuit of game. That he was an ordinary poacher she could not suppose; his dress, his appearance forbade such a supposition.

But there was something more.

In the young man's face—more in its expression than its features perhaps—more in certain marking lines and sudden glances than in the general whole—there was something familiar to her—something that seemed akin to her. He was handsomer than her father; of a more perfect though less lofty character of beauty; and yet there was a strange likeness, not constant, but flashing occasionally upon her brow, in what, when, she could hardly determine.

It roused another sort of sympathy from any she had felt before; and once more she asked him to go up to the hall.

"If you have been taking your sport," she said, "where perhaps you ought not, I am sure my father will look over it without a word, when he sees how you are hurt. Although people sometimes think he is stern and severe, that is all a mistake. He is kind and gentle, I assure you, when he does not feel that duty requires him to be rigid."

The stranger gave a quick start, and replied in a tone which would have been haughty and fierce, had not weakness subdued it, "I have been shooting only where I have a right to shoot. But I will not go up to the hall, till—but I dare say I can get down to the cottage without help, Mistress Emily. I have been accustomed to do without help in the world;" and he withdrew his arm from that which supported him. The next moment, however, he tottered, and seemed ready to fall, and Emily again hurried to help him. There were no more words spoken. She thought his manner somewhat uncivil; she would not leave him, and the necessity for her kindness was soon apparent. Ere they were within a hundred yards of the cottage, he sunk slowly down. His face grew pale and death-like, and his eyes closed faintly as he lay upon the turf. Emily ran on like lightning to the cottage, and called out the old man who lived there. The old man called his son from the little garden, and with his and other help, carried the fainting man in.

"Ay, master John, master John," exclaimed the old cottager, as he laid him in his own bed; "one of your wild pranks, I warrant!"

His wife, his son, and he himself tended the young man with care; and a young boy was sent off for a surgeon.

Emily did not know what to do; but compassion kept her in the cottage till the stranger recovered his consciousness, and then after inquiring how he felt, she was about to withdraw, intending to send down further aid from the hall. But the stranger beckoned her faintly to come nearer, and said in tones of real gratitude, "Thank you a thousand times, Mistress Emily; I never thought to need such kindness at your hands. But now do me another, and say not a word to any one at the mansion of what has happened. It will be better for me, for you, for your father, that you should not speak of this business."

"Do not! do not! Mistress Emily!" cried the old man, who was standing near. "It will only make mischief and bring about evil."

He spoke evidently under strong apprehension, and Emily was much surprised, both to find that one quite a stranger to her knew her at once, and to find the old cottager, a long dependant upon her family, second so eagerly his strange injunction.

"I will say nothing unless questions are asked me," she replied; "then of course I must tell the truth."

"Better not," replied the young man gloomily.

"I cannot speak falsely," replied the beautiful girl, "I cannot deal doubly with my parents or any one," and she was turning away.

But the stranger besought her to stop one moment, and said, "I have not strength to explain all now; but I shall see you again, and then I will tell you why I have spoken as you think strangely. I shall see you again. In common charity you will come to ask if I am alive or dead. If you knew how near we are to each other, I am sure you would promise!"

"I can make no such promise," replied Emily; but the old cottager seemed eager to end the interview; and speaking for her, he exclaimed, "Oh, she will come, I am sure, Mistress Emily will come;" and hurried her away, seeing her back to the little gate in the park wall.

CHAPTER XVI

Mrs. Hazleton found Mr. Shanks, the attorney, the most difficult person to deal with whom she had ever met in her life. She had remarked that he was keen, active, intelligent, unscrupulous, confident in his own powers, bold as a lion in the wars of quill, parchment, and red tape; without fear, without hesitation, without remorse. There was nothing that he scrupled to do, nothing that he ever repented having done. She had fancied that the only difficulty which she could have to encounter was that of concealing from him, at least in a degree, the ultimate objects and designs which she herself had in view.

So shrewd people often deceive themselves as to the character of other shrewd people. The difficulty was quite different. It was a peculiar sort of stolidity on the part of Mr. Shanks, for which she was utterly unprepared.

Now the attorney was ready to do any thing on earth which his fair patroness wished. He would have perilled his name on the roll in her service; and was only eager to understand what were her desires, even without giving her the trouble of explaining them. Moreover, there was no point of law or equity, no manner of roguery or chicanery, no object of avarice, covetousness, or ambition, which he could not have comprehended at once. They were things within his own ken and scope, to which the intellect and resources of his mind were always open. But to other passions, to deeper, more remote motives and emotions, Mr. Shanks was as stolid as a door-post. It required to hew a way as it were to his perceptions, to tunnel his mind for the passage of a new conception.

The only passion which afforded the slightest cranny of an opening was revenge; and after having tried a dozen other ways of making him comprehend what she wished without committing herself, Mrs. Hazleton got him to understand that she thought Sir Philip Hastings had injured—at all events, that he had offended—her, and that she sought vengeance. From that moment all was easy. Mr. Shanks could understand the feeling, though not its extent. He would himself have given ten pounds out of his own pocket—the largest sum he had ever given in life for any thing but an advantage—to be revenged upon the same man for the insult he had received; and he could perceive that Mrs. Hazleton would go much further, without, indeed, being able to conceive, or even dream of, the extent to which she was prepared to go.

However, when he had once got the clue, he was prepared to run along the road with all celerity; and now she found him every thing she had expected. He was a man copious in resources, prolific of schemes. His imagination had exercised itself through life in devising crooked paths; but in this instance the road was straight-forward before him. He would rather it had been tortuous, it is true; but for the sake of his dear lady he was ready to follow even a plain path, and he explained to her that Sir Philip Hastings stood in a somewhat dangerous position.

He was proceeding to enter into the details, but Mrs. Hazleton interrupted him, and, to his surprise, not only told him, but showed him, that she knew all the particulars.

"The only question is, Mr. Shanks," she said, "can you prove the marriage of his elder brother to this woman before the birth of the child?"

"We think we can, madam," replied the attorney, "we think we can. There is a very strong letter, and there has been evidently–"

He paused and hesitated, and Mrs. Hazleton demanded, "There has been what, Mr. Shanks?"

"There has been evidently a leaf torn out of the register," replied the lawyer.

There was something in his manner which made the lady gaze keenly in his face; but she would ask no questions on that subject, and she merely said, "Then why has not the case gone on, as it was put in your hands six months ago?"

"Why, you see, my dear madam," replied Shanks, "law is at best uncertain. One wants two or three great lawyers to make a case. Money was short; John and his mother had spent all last year's annuity. Barristers won't plead without fees, and besides–"

He paused again, but an impatient gesture from the lady urged him on. "Besides," he said, "I had devised a little scheme, which, of course, I shall abandon now, for marrying him to Mistress Emily Hastings. He is a very handsome young fellow, and–"

"I have seen him," said Mrs. Hazleton thoughtfully, "but why should you abandon this scheme, Mr. Shanks? It seems to me by no means a bad one."