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neighbouring gentleman, and Lord Rainsforth had welcomed his acquaintance, at first perhaps for my sake, afterwards for his own.

"I could not for the life of me," continued my father, “ ask Roland if he admired Ellinor; but when I found that he did not put that question to me, I trembled !"'

"We went to Compton together, speaking little by the way. We stayed there some days."

My father here thrust his hand into

his waistcoat-all men have their little ways, which denote much; and when my father thrust his hand into his waistcoat, it was always a sign of some mental effort-he was going to prove, or to argue, to moralize, or to preach. Therefore, though I listening before with all my ears, I believe I had, speaking magnetically and mesmerically, an extra pair of ears, a new sense supplied to me, when my father put his hand into his waistcoat.

CHAPTER XXXI.

WHEREIN MY FATHER CONTINUES HIS STORY.

"There is not a mystical creation, type, symbol, or poetical invention for meanings abstruse, recondite, and incomprehensible, which is not represented by the female gender," said my father, having his hand quite buried in his waistcoat. 66 There is the Sphynx, and the Enigma, and the Chimera, and Isis, whose veil no man had ever lifted; they are all ladies, Kitty, every one of them! And so was Persephone, who must be always either in heaven or hell-and Hecate, who was one thing by night and another by day. The Sibyls were females; and so were the Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, the Fates, and the Teutonic Valkyrs, Nornies, and Hela herself: in short, all representations of ideas, obscure, inscrutable, and portentous, are nouns feminine."

Heaven bless my father! Augustine Caxton was himself again! I began to fear that the story had slipped away from him, lost in that labyrinth of learning. But luckily, as he paused for breath, his look fell on those limpid blue eyes of my mother's, and that honest open brow of hers, which had certainly nothing in common with Sphynxes, Chimeras, Fates, Furies, or Valkyrs; and, whether his heart smote him, or his reason made him own that he had fallen into a very disingenuous and unsound train of assertion, I know not, but his front relaxed, and with a smile he resumed-" Ellinor was the last person in the world to deceive any one willingly. Did she deceive me and Roland that we both, though not conceited men, fancied that, if we had dared to speak

was

openly of love, we had not so dared in vain? or do you think, Kitty, that a woman really can love (not much, perhaps, but somewhat) two or three, or half a dozen at a time?"

66

Impossible," cried my mother. "And as for this Lady Ellinor, I am shocked at her-I don't know what to call it !"

"Nor I either, my dear!" said my father, slowly taking his hand from his waistcoat, as if the effort were too much for him, and the problem were insoluble. "But this, begging your pardon, I do think, that before a young woman does really, truly, and cordially centre her affections on one object, she suffers fancy, imagination, the desire of power, curiosity, or heaven knows what, to stimulate, even to her own mind, pale reflexions of the luminary not yet risen-parhelia that precede the sun. Don't judge of Roland as you see him now, Pisistratus-grim, and gray, and formal; imagine a nature soaring high amongst daring thoughts, or exuberant with the nameless poetry of youthful life-with a frame matchless for bounding elasticity-an eye bright with haughty fire-a heart from which noble sentiments sprang like sparks from anvil. Lady Ellinor had an ardent, inquisitive imagination. This bold fiery nature must have moved her interest. On the other hand, she had an instructed, full, and eager mind. Am I vain if I say, now at the lapse of so many years, that in my mind her intellect felt companionship! When a woman loves, and marries, and settles, why then she becomes a one

an

6

whole, a completed being. But a girl like Ellinor has in her many women. Various herself, all varieties please her. I do believe that, if either of us had spoken the word boldly, Lady Ellinor would have shrunk back to her own heart-examined it, tasked it, and given a frank and generous answer. And he who had spoken first might have had the better chance not to receive a No.' But neither of us spoke. And perhaps she was rather curious to know if she had made an impression, than anxious to create it. It was not that she willingly deceived us, but her whole atmosphere was delusion. Mists come before the sunrise. However this be, Roland and I were not long in detecting each other. And hence arose, first coldness, then jealousy, then quarrels."

"Oh, my father, your love must have been indeed powerful, to have made a breach between the hearts of two such brothers !"

"Yes," said my father; "it was amidst the old ruins of the castle, there, where I had first seen Ellinor -that, winding my arm round Roland's neck, as I found him seated amongst the weeds and stones, his face buried in his hands-it was there that I said- Brother, we both love this woman ! My nature is the calmer of the two, I shall feel the loss less. Brother shake hands, and God speed you, for I go!"

"Austin," murmured my mother, sinking her head on my father's breast. "And therewith we quarrelled. For it was Roland who insisted, while the tears rolled down his eyes, and he stamped his foot on the ground, that he was the intruder, the interloper-that he had no hope that he had been a fool and a madman-and that it was for him to go! Now, while we were disputing, and words began to run high, my father's old servant entered the desolate place, with a note from Lady Ellinor to me, asking for the loan of some book I had praised. Roland saw the hand-writing, and while I turned the note over and over irresolutely, before I broke the seal, he vanished.

"He did not return to my father's house. We did not know what had become of him. But I, thinking

over that impulsive volcanic nature, took quick alarm. And I went in search of him; came on his track at last; and, after many days, found him in a miserable cottage amongst the most dreary of the dreary wastes which form so large a part of Cumberland. He was so altered I scarcely knew him. To be brief, we came at last to a compromise. We would go back to Compton. This suspense was intolerable. One of us at least should take courage and learn his fate. But who should speak first? We drew lots, and the lot fell on me.

"And now that I was really to pass the Rubicon, now that I was to impart that secret hope which had animated me so long-been to me a new life-what were my sensations ? My dear boy, depend on it that that age is the happiest, when such feelings as I felt then can agitate us no more. They are mistakes in the serene order of that majestic life which heaven meant for thoughtful man. Our souls should be as stars on earth, not as meteors and tortured comets. What could I offer to Ellinor-to her father? What but a future of patient labour? And in either answer, what alternative of misery!-my own existence shattered, or Roland's noble heart!

In

"Well, we went to Compton. our former visits we had been almost the only guests. Lord Rainsforth did not much affect the intercourse of country squires, less educated then than now. And in excuse for Ellinor and for us, we were almost the only men of her own age she saw when in that large dull house. But now the London season had broken up, the house was filled; there was no longer that familiar and constant approach to the mistress of the Hall, which had made us like one family. Great ladies, fine people, were around her! a look, a smile, a passing word, were as much as I had a right to expect. And the talk, too, how different; Before, I could speak on books-I was at home there ! Roland could pour forth his dreams, his chivalrous love for the past, his bold defiance of the unknown future. And Ellinor, cultivated and fanciful, could sympathize with both. And her father, scholar and gentleman, could sympa. thize too. But now-"

CHAPTER XXXII.

WHEREIN MY FATHER BRINGS ABOUT HIS DENOUEMENT.

"It is no use in the world," said my father," to know all the languages expounded in grammars and splintered up into lexicons, if we don't learn the language of the world. It is a talk apart, Kitty," cried my father warming up. "It is an ANACLYPH -a spoken anaglyph, my dear! If all the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians had been A B C to you, still if you did not know the anaglyph, you would know nothing of the true mysteries of the priests.*

"Neither Roland nor I knew one symbol-letter of the anaglyph. Talk, talk-talk-on persons we never heard of, things we never cared for. All we thought of importance, puerile or pedantic trifles-all we thought so trite and childish, the grand momentous business of life! If you found a little schoolboy, on his half holiday, fishing for minnows with a crooked pin, and you began to tell him of all the wonders of the deep, the laws of the tides, and the antediluvian relics of iguanodon and ichthyosaurus nay, if you spoke but of pearl fisheries, and coral banks, or waterkelpies and naiads, would not the little boy cry out peevishly, Don't tease me with all that nonsense! let me fish in peace for my minnows.' I think the little boy is right after his own way it was to fish for minnows that he came out, poor child, not to hear about iguanodons and water kelpies!

"So the company fished for minnows and not a word could we say about our pearl fisheries and coral banks ! And as for fishing for minnows ourselves, my dear boy, we should have been less bewildered if you had asked us to fish for a mermaid! Do you see, now, one reason why I have let you go thus early into the world? Well, but amongst these minnowfishers there was one who fished with an air that made the minnows look larger than salmons.

"Trevanion had been at Cambridge with me. We were even intimate, He was a young man like myself. with his way to make in the world. Poor as I-of a family upon a par with mine-old enough but decayed. There was, however, this difference between us. He bad connexions in the great world—I had none. Like me his chief pecuniary resource was a college fellowship. Now, Trevanion had established a high reputation at the university; but less as a scholar, though a pretty fair one, than as a man to rise in life. Every faculty he had was an energy. He aimed at every thing-lost some things, gained others. He was a great speaker in a debating society, a member of some politico-economical club. He was an eternal talker brilliant, various, paradoxical, florid — different from what he is now. For, dreading fancy, his career since has been an effort to curb it. But all his mind attached itself to something that we Englishmen call solid; it was a large mind-not, my dear Kitty, like a fine whale sailing through knowledge from the pleasure of sailing. but like a polypus, that puts forth all its feelers for the purpose of catching hold of something. Trevanion had gone at once to London from the university: his reputation and his talk dazzled his connexions, not unjustly. They made an effort—they got him into parlia ment: he had spoken, he had succeeded. He came to Compton with the flush of his virgin fame. I cannot convey to you, who know him nowwith his care-worn face, and abrupt dry manner - reduced by perpetual gladiatorship to the skin and bone of his former self-what that man was when he first stepped into the arena of life.

"You see, my listeners, that you have to recollect that we middle-aged folks were young then-that is to say, we were as different from what we are

*The anaglyph was peculiar to the Egyptian priests-the hieroglyph generally known to the well-educated.

now, as the green bough of summer is from the dry wood, out of which we make a ship or a gate-post. Neither man nor wood comes to the uses of life till the green leaves are stripped and the sap gone. And then the uses of life transform us into strange things with other names: the tree is a tree no more-it is a gate or a ship; the youth is a youth no more, but a onelegged soldier; a hollow-eyed statesman; a scholar spectacled and slippered! When Micyllus-(here the hand slides into the waiscoat again !)-when Micyllus," said my father, " asked the cock that had once been Pythagoras,* if the affair of Troy was really as Homer told it, the cock replied scornfully, How could Homer know any thing about it?-at that time he was a camel in Bactria.' Pisistratus, according to the doctrine of metempsychosis, you might have been a Bactrian camel when that which to my life was the siege of Troy saw Roland and Trevanion before the walls.

"Handsome you can see that Trevanion has been; but the beauty of his countenance then was in its perpetual play, its intellectual eagerness; and his conversation was so discursive, so various, so animated, and, above all, so full of the things of the day! If he had been a priest of Serapis for fifty years, he could not have known the Anaglyph better! Therefore he filled up every crevice and pore of that hollow society with his broken, inquisitive, petulant light. Therefore he was admired, talked of, listened to; and everybody said, Trevanion is a rising man.'

"Yet I did not do him then the justice I have done since-for we students and abstract thinkers are apt too much, in our first youth, to look to the depth of a man's mind or knowledge, and not enough to the surface it may cover. There may be more water in a flowing stream, only four feet deep, and certainly more force and more bealth, than in a sullen pool, thirty yards to the bottom! I did not do Trevanion justice. I did not see how naturally he realized Lady Ellinor's ideal. I have said that she was like many women in one. Trevanion was a thousand men in one.

VOL. LXIV.

He had learning to please her mind, eloquence to dazzle her fancy, beauty to please her eye, reputation precisely of the kind to allure her vanity, honour and conscientious purpose to satisfy her judgment. And, above all, he was ambitious. Ambitious not as Inot as Roland was, but ambitious as Ellinor was: ambitious, not to realize some grand ideal in the silent heart, but to grasp the practical positive substances that lay without.

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Ellinor was a child of the great world, and so was he. I saw not all this, nor did Roland; and Trevanion seemed to pay no particular court to Ellinor.

"But the time approached when I ought to speak. The house began to thin. Lord Rainsforth had leisure to resume his easy conferences with me ; And one day walking in his garden he gave me the opportunity. For I need not say, Pisistratus," said my father, looking at me earnestly, "that before any man of honour, especially if of inferior worldly pretensions, will open his heart seriously to the daughter, it is his duty to speak first to the parent, whose confidence has imposed that trust." I bowed my head and coloured.

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"I know not how it was," continued my father, "but Lord Rainsforth turned the conversation Ellinor. After speaking of his expectations from his son, who was returning home, he said, But he will of course enter public life,-will, I trust, soon marry, have a separate establishment, and I shall see but little of him. My Ellinor!—I cannot bear the thought of parting wholly with her. And that, to say the selfish truth, is one reason why I have never wished her to marry a rich man, and so leave me for ever. could hope that she will give herself to one who may be contented to reside at least great part of the year with me--who may bless me with another son, not steal from me a daughter. I do not mean that he should waste his life in the country; his occupations would probably lead him to London. I care not where my house is, all I want is to keep my home. You know (he added, with

*LUCIAN, The Dream of Micyllus. 27

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a smile that I thought meaning), how hand, many were sketches of the often I have implied to you that I haunts we had visited together-the have no vulgar ambition for Ellinor. simple ornaments, womanly but not Her portion must be very small, for effeminate the very looks on the my estate is strictly entailed, and I table that had been made familiar by have lived too much up to my income dear associations. Yes, there the all my life to hope to save much now. Tasso in which we had read together But her tastes do not require ex- the episode of Clorinda-there the pense; and while I live at least, Eschylus in which I translated to her there need be no change. She can the Prometheus. Pedantries these only prefer a man whose talents, con- might seem to some: pedantrics, pergenial to hers, will win their own haps, they were; but they were proofs career, and ere I die that career may of that congeniality which had knit be made.' Lord Rainsforth paused, the man of books to the daughter of and then-how, in what words I the world. That room-it was the know not-but out all burst-my home of my heart! Such, in my vanlong-suppressed, timid, anxious, ity of spirit, methought would be the doubtful, fearful love. The strange air round a home to come. I looked energy it had given to a nature till about me, troubled and confused, and, then so retiring and calm! My recent halting timidly, I saw Ellinor before devotion to the law, my confidence me, leaning her face on her hand, her that, with such a prize, I could suc- cheek more flushed than usual, and ceed, it was but a transfer of labour tears in her eyes. I approached in from one study to another. Labour silence, and as I drew my chair to could conquer all things, and custom the table, my eye fell on a glove on sweeten them in the conquest. The the floor. It was a man's glove. Do bar was a less brilliant career than you know," said my father, "that the senate. But the first aim of the once, when I was very young, I saw a poor man should be independence. Dutch picture called The Glove, and In short, Pisistratus, wretched egotist the subject was of murder. There that I was, I forgot Roland in that was a weed-grown marshy pool, a moment; and I spoke as one who desolate dismal landscape, that of itfelt his life was in his words. self inspired thoughts of ill deeds and terror. And two men, as if walkng by chance, came to this pool, the finger of one pointed to a blood-stained glove, and the eyes of both were fixed on each other, as if there were no need of words. That glove told its tale! The picture had long haunted me in my boyhood, but it never gave me so uneasy and fearful a feeling as did that real glove upon the floor. Why? My dear Pisistratus, the theory of forebodings involves one of those questions on which we may ask why' for ever. More chilled than I had been in speaking to her father, I took heart at last and spoke to Ellinor."

"Lord Rainsforth looked at me, when I had done, with a countenance full of affection-but it was not cheerful.

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My dear Caxton,' said he, tremulously, I own that I once wished this-wished it from the hour I knew you; but why did you so long-I never suspected that-nor I am sure did Ellinor. He stopped short, and added quickly-'However, go and speak, as you have spoken to me, to Ellinor. Go, it may not yet be too late. And yet but go.'

"Too late what meant those words? Lord Rainsforth had turned hastily down another walk, and left me alone, to ponder over an answer which concealed a riddle. Slowly I took my way towards the house, and sought Lady Ellinor, half hoping, half dreading to find her alone. There was a little room communicating with a conservatory, where she usually sat in the morning. Thither I took my

course.

“That room, I see it still!—the walls covered with pictures from her own

But

My father stopped short; the moon had risen, and was shining full into the room and on his face. And by that light the face was changed; young emotions had brought back youthmy father looked a young man. what pain was there! If the memory alone could raise what, after all, was but the ghost of suffering, what had been its living reality! Involuntarily I seized his hand: my father pressed

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