It was near the end of May, beautiful May, that month of strange contrarieties in our lovely land. In the haunts of Nature, robed with such gorgeous beauty, bringing such a lavish garniture of tree and shrub, and flowers; such fresh and dewy mornings; such glorious sunsets; and those soft sweet hours of twilight, so fraught with spiritual musings; and those lovely nights, when the mind loses itself in the infinitude of thought, in the vain yearning to grasp something beyond our present being, in itself evidence of Immortality! In the city, in the proud metropolis, seat of empire and wealth, fashion and beauty, luxury and pleasure, crime and famine, misery and desolation, clothed as May still is with her natural beauty, we know her not, save as the “Season!” and in that word what a host of thoughts spring up—enjoyment, luxury, fêtes, balls, dinners! These were once, and but a few years back, its sole association; but now a mighty spirit is abroad, and over the festal halls a dim cloud is hovering, breathing of oppression born in that very thoughtless joyance. Through the gay music, the silvery laugh, the murmur of glad voices—aye, through every tone that tells of luxurious pleasure only—a thrilling cry is sounding! the voice of suffering thousands, claiming brotherhood with Joy; demanding a portion of that which a beneficent Father ordained for ALL—rest, recreation, homes.
In the drawing-room of one of the smaller mansions of the aristocratic west, a young lady was sitting near an open window, inhaling the delicious scent of the beautiful flowers, which filled the balcony in such profusion that, shaded in the background as they were by the magnificent trees of the park, they looked as if the goddess May had brought a garden from her most sylvan haunts, to mark her presence even there.
Lucy Neville, the sole inmate of this pleasant room, was neither very young nor very beautiful, yet she had charms enough to occasion some degree of wonderment that she should have passed through four London seasons and attained the venerable age of three-and-twenty, and was Lucy Neville still. She had the advantage of mingling with some of the most highly gifted and most learned patriots of the age; for her brother, Lord Valery, of whose house she was sole mistress, was one of the most influential men of his day. She went into society also continually; and, altogether, it was a constant marvel to all those who had nothing to do but to talk of their neighbours, why she had never married. Lucy Neville might not have had regular beauty, but she had something better—she had MIND, and a heart so full of good and kindly feeling that she was an exception to the general idea, that we must know sorrow ourselves before we can feel for others. She was indeed, only just putting off mourning for a young and darling brother; but she had begun to think years before that, and the six months of quietude had only deepened, not created, the principles on which she acted.
“Visitors so late! why it is just six o’clock!” passed through her mind, as a loud impetuous ring announced a carriage; and a party of young ladies, of ultra-fashionable exterior, hurried into the drawing-room, all talking at once, and of something so very delightful, that Miss Neville had great difficulty in comprehending their meaning.
“Now, Lucy, don’t look so bewildered. You are quick enough at comprehension sometimes, and I really want you to understand me with a word now, for I am in a terrible hurry. I ought to have come to you by eleven this morning, but really this short invitation has given me so many things to think about, I could not.”
“But what am I to understand, Charlotte?” replied Miss Neville, laughing so good-humouredly, that it was difficult to discover why those of her own age and standing so often kept aloof from her, as having so little in common. “Laura—Mary—have pity on my obtuseness.”
“Why, Lady Gresham’s long-talked-of fête is fixed at last; and of course you will go. Your invitation was enclosed in mamma’s last night. Absolutely her ladyship condescends to entreat her to introduce you. I cannot imagine the reason of this sudden empressement—she could have visited you long ago, had she wished it.”
“She did wish it individually, I believe; but an unfortunate misunderstanding between her brother and mine prevented it. Edward has long wished the estrangement to cease, so I shall be very happy to meet her half-way, and accept the invitation. When is it?”
“Next Monday.”
“Monday! Why, to-day is Friday! You must mean Monday week.”
“Indeed I do not. How she will manage I cannot tell, except that when people have more wealth than they know what to do with, they can do what they please. Her villa at Richmond, too, is just the place for a fête champétre; and the novel shortness of the invitation, and being the day before a drawing-room, will crowd her rooms, depend upon it. It is something unusually exciting, the very bustle of the thing.”
“But I thought it was not to be until—”
“Until Herbert Gresham returned. Nor will it. He arrives to-morrow night, or some time on Sunday, quite suddenly, not having been expected for several weeks yet. What with his foreign honours, his promised baronetcy, and last, not least, his distinguished appearance, he will be sought and fêted by all the money-loving mammas and husband-seeking daughters for the remainder of the season.”
“The worst of its being a fête champétre is, that we must have complete new dresses,” rejoined Laura. “And how to coax papa for the necessary help, I know not; my last quarter was all gone before I received it, and my debts actually frighten me. But what is to be done? go I must.”
“And then the shortness of the notice!” continued Mary; “really Lady Gresham might have given us more time. Who can decide what to wear, or even what colour, in three days?”
“Come, Lucy, decide! But of course you will go!” exclaimed Charlotte, impatiently. “It will be your first appearance in public this season, and so you can have nothing to think about in the way of expense. Nothing but the trouble of seeing about a new dress.”
“Which will prevent my going, much as I might wish it,” replied Miss Neville, very quietly, though the faint tinge rising to her cheek, and the quiver of the lip, might have betrayed some degree of internal emotion.
“Prevent your going! What can you possibly mean?” exclaimed her guests together.
“That as it is now six o’clock on Friday, and you tell me Lady Gresham’s fête is three o’clock on Monday, I have not sufficient time to procure all I want (for having been so long in mourning, I have literally nothing that will do), without breaking a resolution, and sacrificing a principle, which I do not feel at all inclined to do.”
“Sacrificing a principle! Lucy, you are perfectly ridiculous! What has principle to do with a fête champétre? Your head is turned with the stupid cant of oppressing, and the people, as if we had not annoyances, and vexations, and pressure too, when we want more money than we happen to have! And as for time, what is to prevent your sending to Mrs. Smith to-night, (by-the-bye, how can you employ an English artiste?) and get all you want by ten o’clock on Monday morning? Why, I cannot even give, an order till after the post comes in to-morrow. I must wait to know what was worn at the Duchesse de Nemours’ fête champétre the other day. One feels just out of the ark, in England.”
“And I am sure I cannot decide what to wear till then,” languidly remarked Mary.
“And as for me, I am in a worse predicament than either of you,” laughed Laura, but her laugh was not a gay one. “Raise the wind I must, but it requires time to think how.”
We have no space to follow this conversation further. Persuasions, reproaches, and taunts assailed Miss Neville on all sides, but she did not waver. Charlotte left her in high dudgeon; Mary marvelled at her unfortunate delusion, quite convinced that she was on the verge of insanity; and Laura wishing that she could be but as firm. Not that she comprehended or allowed the necessity of the principle on which she acted, but only as it would save her the disagreeable task of thinking how to get the necessary costume when both modiste and jeweller had refused to trust her any more.
For nearly half an hour Lucy remained sitting where her visitors had left her, her hands pressed on her eyes, and her whole posture denoting a painful intensity of thought. Herbert Gresham returning! His mother’s unexpected and pressing invitation! Could it be that the bar between the families was indeed so entirely removed, that she might hope as she had never dared hope before? Sir Sydney’s hatred to her brother, from some political opposition, had been such, it was whispered at the time, that he had obtained his nephew some honourable appointment abroad, only because he feared that he not only loved Lucy, but leaned towards Lord Valery’s political opinions. Four years had passed since then, and Herbert Gresham was no longer a cipher in another’s hands. He had formed his own principles, marked out his own course; and Lucy heard his name so often and so admiringly from her brother’s lips, that the dream of her first season could not pass away, strive against it as she might, for she knew not whether she claimed more than a passing thought from him who held her being so enchained. And now he was returning; and to the fête to welcome him she was invited, with such an evident desire for her presence, that her heart bounded beneath the thronging fancies that would come, seeming to whisper it was at his instigation. And why could she not go? Was it not, indeed, a quixotic and uncalled-for sacrifice? How could the resolution of one feeble individual aid in removing the heavy pressure of over-work from the thousands of her fellow-creatures? There was time, full time, for all she required, if she saw about it at once. It was but adding an atom to the weight of oppression, which, whether added or withheld, could be of no moment; and surely, surely, for such a temptation there was enough excuse. How would Herbert construe her absence, if, indeed, it was at his wish the invitation came? Why might she not——
“Lucy, seven o’clock and not ready for dinner! Why, what are you so engrossed about?” exclaimed her brother, half-jestingly, half-anxiously, the latter feeling prevailing, as she hastily looked up. A few, a very few words, and he understood it all.
“And yet I know, even under such circumstances, you will not fail,” he said; and how powerful is the voice of affectionate confidence in the dangerous moment of hesitation between right and wrong? “You may, indeed, be but one where there needs the aid of hundreds; but if all hold back because they are but one, how shall we gain the necessary muster? To check this thoughtless waste of human life, this (in many) unconscious crushing of all that makes existence, is WOMAN’S work. Man may legislate, may theorise, but he looks to his female relatives for its practical fulfilment. Dearest, do you choose the right, and trust me, useless as the sacrifice now seems, you will yet thank God that it was made.”
Lady Gresham’s fête was brilliant, recherché—crowded as anticipated. The weather was lovely, the gardens magnificent, the arrangements in the best taste that an ultra-fashionist of some thirty years’ experience could devise. Youth, beauty, rank, wealth, all were there, and the female portion set off to the best advantage by an elegance of costume and an extreme carefulness of attire, without which all knew an entrance into Lady Gresham’s select coterie could never be obtained. A despot in the empire of dress and appearance, she little knew, and still less cared, for all the petty miseries (alas, that such a word should be spoken in the same breath with dress!) which her invitations usually excited. The resolve to outvie—the utter carelessness of expenditure while the excitement lasted—the depression, almost despair, at the accumulated debts which followed—the rivalry of a first fashion—the petty man?uvres not to give a hint of the intended costume, and the equally petty man?uvres to discover it—the mortification when, after all the lavish expense, all the mysteries, others appeared more fashionable, more recherché—the disgust with which, in consequence, the previously considered perfect dress was henceforth regarded—these, and a hundred other similar emotions had been, during the “season,” called forth again and again; and in beings destined for immortality! was it marvel they had no thought for other than themselves?
That this fête was in commemoration of Herbert Gresham’s return, and that he was present, the hero of the day, not a little increased its excitement and importance. But he moved amongst his mother’s guests with native and winning courtesy indeed, but as if his mind were engrossed with other and deeper things. In the four years of his absence many changes, powerful in themselves, but still only invisibly working, had taken place in the political aspect of his country. By means of private correspondence with the most influential men of the day, and through the public journals, he had felt the deepest interest in these changes; and from the very fact of his looking on from a distance, and not mingling with the contending waves of party, he had formed clearer views concerning them than many on the spot. He had returned, determined to devote the whole energies of his powerful mind to removing invisible oppression, so lessening labour that MIND might resume her supremacy, and create for every position its own immortal joys. He was no leveller of ranks; no believer in that vain dream, equality. He had travelled and thought much, and felt to his heart’s core the superiority of England as a nation, both for constitution and morality; but this conviction, instead of blinding him to her faults, quickened his perceptions, not only regarding the evils, but their causes, and increased the intensity of his desire to remove them.
It was not, however, only the habitude of thought which, on this occasion, had given him a look of abstraction. He was disappointed. His mother had told him that, in compliance with his desire, all foolish coolness between his family and that of Lord Valery should cease—she had condescended to make advances to Miss Neville, which were coldly rejected. She did not tell him that these advances had been merely an invitation to her fête (of whose sudden arrangement Herbert was himself unconscious), and did not know herself, and certainly would never have imagined the real reason of Lucy’s refusal. Before the day closed, however, her son was destined to be enlightened.
He was standing near a group of very gay young ladies and gentlemen, conversing at first on grave topics with a friend, when his quick ear was irresistibly attracted by the mention of Miss Neville’s name, coupled with much satirical laughter.
“She will become a second Mrs. Fry, depend upon it,” was the observation of one. “I should not be at all surprised that at last we shall find her making pilgrimages through the streets of London, to see if all the shops are closed at a certain hour, and the released apprentices properly employed. She should set up an evening school for drapers’ assistants and milliners’ apprentices. Why don’t you propose it to her, Miss Balfour?”
Charlotte, whose superb Parisian costume gave her the triumph of being almost universally envied, laughed, and declared it was too much trouble.
“You stand in rather too much awe of both her and Lord Valery,” was her brother’s rejoinder. “It is a pity, though, that Miss Neville has imbibed such outré notions, otherwise she would be a nice girl enough.”
“And did she really refuse to come only because the notice was too short for her to get a proper costume without injuring or oppressing—as the cant of the day has it—the poor milliners? How perfectly ridiculous! I am sure the artistes who come for our orders are in the finest condition both as to health and wealth.”
“And the shopmen—they are sleek, gay, care-nothing looking fellows. As for their needing greater rest, more recreation, opportunities to cultivate the mind, one has only to look at them to feel the pure romance of the thing. What are some people born for but to work?”
“And just imagine how dull London would be if all the shops were closed by seven or eight o’clock! I should lose half my enjoyment in walking to my club.”
“I should like to know what good Miss Neville and her party of philanthropists think they will accomplish by giving so much liberty and leisure. We shall have to build double the number of taverns, for such will be their only resort. What can such people know of intellectual amusement!”
“And if they did, what do they want with it? We should have a cessation of all labour, and then what is to become of us, or the country either?”
“It is pure folly. Some people must have a hobby to make a noise about; and so now nothing is heard but oppression, internal slavery, broken-hearted milliners’ apprentices, and maimed drapers’ assistants! Really, for so much eloquence, it is a pity they do not choose a higher subject!”
“And I wish the present subject may never drop till the work is done,” interposed Herbert Gresham, joining the conversation with a suddenness, and speaking with such startling eloquence, that it caused a general retreat of individual opinion. He would have been amused had he felt less interested, to see the effect on both sexes of his unexpected interference. He spoke very briefly, for he was too disgusted with the littleness, the selfishness, of all he had heard to attempt anything like argument. And the effort to excuse former sentiments—to dare say he was right, but they had not reflected much about it—thought it a pity to alter things which had been going on so long—could not understand, even granting there was a good deal of misery, how could it be helped, but if Herbert Gresham thought it might be, no doubt there was more in it than they believed, and very many other similar speeches, only excited his contempt.
We must change the scene, for our space will not allow us more than a slight sketch: a momentary glance, as it were, on things passing daily, hourly around, and yet seen, known of, by how few! Four or five days after Lady Gresham’s fête, Miss Neville might have been seen entering one of those small, close, back streets, found even in the aristocratic west, and whose dilapidated dwellings present almost as great a contrast with the proud mansions which surround and conceal them as the inhabitants themselves.
It was a poor old needlewoman whom Lucy was visiting, and, surprised at finding her usual sitting-room empty, and fearing she was ill—for there was no sign of work about, and Mrs. Miller was infirm and ailing—she gently entered her sleeping apartment. The rough bed was occupied indeed, but not by its usual inmate, who was sitting by its side, tears rolling down her withered cheeks, and her attention so fixed that she did not perceive Miss Neville’s entrance. She was watching the painful, restless movements of a girl, who, in a high state of delirium and fever, was lying on the pallet; she was very young, and had been beautiful, but suffering had scarcely left any trace but its own. Earnestly and pityingly, Lucy entered into the sad, but only too common tale, her inquiries elicited; but the old woman’s narration being garrulous and unfinished, we will give it in our own words.
Fanny Roberts and Harry Merton, born and nurtured in the same village, had been playmates, schoolfellows, friends, and at last lovers—not only faithful and affectionate, but prudent and thoughtful. The parents of both were poor, even in their humble village, but the wishes and interests of their children were their first object, and to see them somewhat higher in the world than themselves their sole ambition. To set up an establishment in the neighbouring town, combining linen-draper, dressmaker, and milliner, had been their day-dream from the time they had conned their school lessons and taken long walks together, instead of joining their playmates on the green; and to fulfil this earnest wish, their parents, by many sacrifices, which, measured by their love, seemed absolutely nothing, gathered together sufficient to send them to London, and apprentice them there. Harry was then nineteen and Fanny two years younger. Hope was bright for both. Their only drawback seemed the impossibility of meeting more than once a week; and six days of entire separation was a weary interval to those accustomed to exchange affection’s kindly words and looks each day. Only too soon, however, did the oppressive reality of the present absorb the rosy hues of the future. On the daily routine of unmitigated work, the exhausting labour, the deadened energies, the absorption of every faculty in the depressing weariness, we need not touch. It was no distaste for work, for both had set to their respective duties with hearts burning to conquer every difficulty—to do even more than was required of them, the sooner to gain the longed-for goal; and had it not been for the fearful burden of over-work, the absence of sufficient rest, of all wholesome recreation, how brightly and nobly might these young loving beings have walked the path of life, by mutual exertion creating a home, and all the joys, which, in England that one word speaks! Alas! ere eighteen months elapsed, every thought of buoyancy and joy seemed strangely to have deserted Fanny. She could not tell why, for outward things seemed exactly the same as they had been at first. Harry was still faithful, still fond. Her heart intuitively felt that he was altered. Why, she would often ask herself, could she no longer feel happy? Why should every thought of her own dear home cause such a sickly longing for fresh air and green fields, that the hysteric sob would often rise choking in her throat, and more than once, nothing but a timely burst of incomprehensible tears had saved her from fainting as she sat. She could not satisfy herself; but in reality it was the silent workings of insidious disease, seeming mental, because impossible to be traced as physical, save by the constant sensation of weariness, which she attributed merely to sitting so long in close and crowded rooms; but though happiness seemed gone, she retained the power of endurance; woman can and will endure, but in nine cases out of ten, men cannot. In the one, suffering often purifies; in the other, it but too often deteriorates.
Harry Merton had entered on his work joyfully and buoyantly, determined to make the best of everything, and be good friends with everybody. Naturally lively, with the power of very quick acquirement, and a restless activity of mind as well as body, a very few months’ trial convinced him that if he had not entirely mistaken his vocation, he certainly must do something to make it more endurable. He had heard of institutions for the people in London, of amusements open even to the most economical; he had pictured enjoying them with his Fanny, and gaining improvement likewise. He found it all a dream. There were, indeed, such things, but not for him or her. The hour of his release found not only every wholesome amusement closed, but himself so weary, that mental recreation was impossible, and yet with the yearning for some pleasure, some relief from wearisome work, so natural in youth, stronger than ever. His convivial, unsuspecting disposition led him to join the most seemingly attractive, but in reality the most dangerous, of his companions. The consequences need scarcely be narrated. He became intemperate, gay, reckless, looking back on the pure, fresh feelings of his early youth with wonder, and retaining but one of their memories, his love for Fanny; but even that was no longer the glad, hopeful feeling which it had been. He was constantly told, and he saw, that it must be years before they could marry. He was laughed at for imagining that either he or she would retain their early feelings. He heard her beauty admired, and then pitied as a most dangerous gift, which must eventually and most fearfully separate her from him; and the most furious but most unfounded jealousy took possession of him, and so darkened every hour of meeting, that poor Fanny at length anticipated them with more dread than pleasure. It was long, indeed, nearly three years, before things came to such a crisis; but the gradual conviction of the deterioration of her lover’s character was to Fanny the heaviest suffering of all: that she still loved him, surely we need not say. She saw the circumstances of this miserable change, not the change itself. Her woman’s heart clung to him the more, from the very anxiety he inspired. So intensely did she mourn for his long, wearisome hours of joyless toil, that she scarcely felt her own; though, when he was released at ten or eleven, she was often working unceasingly till two in the morning. The choking cough, the shortened breath, the aching spine, she scarcely felt, in the one absorbing thought of him.
Whenever she could be spared, which in the “season” was very seldom, it was Fanny’s custom to go to Mrs. Miller (her only friend in London) Saturday night and remain till Sunday evening. Two or three days before the invitations were out for Lady Gresham’s fête, a note was given to her from Harry, the perusal of which occasioned deeper suffering than anything she had yet endured. Snatching half an hour from the scanty time allowed for sleep, the following was her reply:—
“Harry! Harry! this from you! when you so fondly promised you would never doubt me more! Yes, he did seek me that Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, for it was one o’clock; and I would not have gone there, had you not made me promise that I would not disappoint you, and that you would take me home. Why were you not there? Why did you leave me to the chance of such a meeting? And then upbraid me with putting myself in that bad man’s way! Oh, Harry! Harry! by the memories of our early home, our early love, spare me such unjust suspicion! You tell me writing will not satisfy you, you must see me, hear from my own lips my version of this cruel and most false tale. How can I see you till Saturday night, the earliest, if then? Sunday if I can only crawl to Mrs. Miller’s, indeed I will come, pain as it is now to move. Only trust me till then, dearest, dearest Harry. Do not add to your burden and mine by thoughts like these. You know that I am innocent; that I never have loved, never can love, any one but you.”
The Sunday came, but Fanny was unable to keep her engagement. Madame Malin was so overwhelmed with orders for Lady Gresham’s fête, that even the Sabbath day was compelled to be sacrificed. The peculiar trimmings which it was absolutely necessary for Miss Balfour to have to complete the Parisian costume (the details of which never arrived till eleven o’clock, Saturday, and then all the materials had to be purchased) were Fanny’s work; and, from her delicate taste, she, of all the assistants, could the least be spared. In fact, extra hands were hired; for to complete twenty or thirty full dresses from the noon of Saturday to ten o’clock Monday, in addition to those already in hand for the drawing-room the following day, was an unusual undertaking, even for the indefatigable Madame Malin. Hour after hour those poor girls worked,—through Saturday night, the yearned-for Sabbath, again late into the night, till many fainted on their seats, and the miserable toil was continued in a recumbent posture by those unable to sit upright. A dead weight was on poor Fanny’s heart, a foreboding misery; but the sufferings of the frame were such as almost to deaden the agony of mind. The hour of release came at length, inasmuch that, ill as she was, she craved permission to take home some of the dresses, that she might call at Mrs. Miller’s on her way back, and learn some news of Harry, and beseech her old friend to seek him, and tell him the reason of her forced absence. Exhausted and most wretched as she was, she had to wait till the dresses were tried on—the capricious humour of the young ladies proved, by altering, realtering, and final arrangement as they were originally—to bear with petty fault-finding—until her whole frame seemed one mass of nerve; and so detained, that she only entered the street leading to her old friend’s abode, as the carriages whirled off their elegantly-attired inmates to Lady Gresham’s fête.
What a tale awaited her! Harry, restless, miserable,—almost maddened by the false reports against her,—and from the great pressure of business in his master’s shop, from the innumerable visits of modistes’ assistants to procure the necessary materials so needed for the costumes of Mrs. Gresham’s fête, not released till past one o’clock Sunday morning, had perambulated the streets all night, in the vain hope of meeting Fanny, encountering one of his jovial companions, who, half intoxicated, swore he had seen her entering a coach with—Merton knew whom—and when collared and shaken by the infuriated lover till he recovered his more sober senses, declared he could not tell exactly, but he thought it was her: at all events, Harry would know to-morrow, if she had gone as usual to Mrs. Miller’s.
There she was not. Never before had six o’clock on Sunday evening come without her presence; and really anxious, Mrs. Miller (though not believing a syllable against her) conjured the unhappy young man to call himself at Madame Malin’s, and inquire if she were ill or detained. He did so. The well-instructed lacquey declared the family were all at evening service, and if the apprentices were not with their friends, he supposed they were there also; he knew nothing about them; but he was quite sure his mistress never permitted them to work on Sundays. Harry was in no state coolly to consider his words. He rushed back like a madman to Mrs. Miller, uttered a few incoherent sentences, and darted away before she had time or thought even to reply. That very evening he enlisted, and the Monday found him marching to Southampton with other troops about to embark for India. A few lines to Mrs. Miller told her this, and accompanied a parcel directed to Fanny, in case she should ever see or hear of her again. The poor girl had just strength to tear it open, to discover all her letters and formerly treasured gifts, even to some withered flowers, returned, with a few words of stinging reproach, bidding her farewell for ever, and dropped lifeless at the old woman’s feet. One or two intervals of coherency enabled her, by a few broken phrases, to explain the reason of her absence; but brain fever followed, and even when Miss Neville saw her, all hope was over. Vain was the skill of the gifted and benevolent physician Lucy called in. Disease had been too long and too deeply rooted for resistance to a shock which, in its agony, would have prostrated even a healthy constitution. A few, a very few days of intense suffering, and the crushed heart ceased to beat, the blighted frame to feel, and misery for her was over. But for poor Harry—for the parents of both—what might comfort them? We have seen the deterioration of Harry’s character. There were many to mark and condemn the faults, but none to perceive their cause. And when he absconded from his apprenticeship, it did but bring conviction as to his determined depravity. Who may tell the agony of those two humble English homes, when the post brought the miserable news of death to the one, and of sin and utter separation to the other? They had not even the poor comfort of knowing the cause of their son’s change; their own bold, free, happy, loving Harry,—how could his parents associate him with sin?—or Fanny, the healthy, rosy, graceful Fanny, with suffering and death? And what caused these fearful evils, amongst which our tale is but one amongst ten thousand? Lucy Neville buried her face in her hands as she sat by the lowly pallet, where lay the faded form whence life had only half an hour before departed, and thanked God that the temptation had been indeed resisted, and that she had not made one at Lady Gresham’s fête. It had not, indeed, been the primary, or even the secondary cause. It did but strike the last blow and shiver to atoms the last lingering dream of hope and joy which, despite of oppression, misery, despair, will rest invisibly in the youthful heart, till driven thence by death.
“Lucy!” exclaimed Lord Valery that same day, stopping the carriage unexpectedly as it was about to drive off from that part of St. James’s where it usually waited for her (she shrunk from the notice which a nobleman’s carriage, seen in such localities as Mrs. Miller’s, would inevitably produce),—“Lucy, an old friend wishes to recall himself to your memory; will you give him a seat in your carriage, and take me on the box? We both pine for fresh air, and a drive in the Park will revive us for dinner, which, whether he will or no, I intend this gentleman to partake.”
The words were the lightest, but the tone which spoke them betrayed the truth at once. It was Herbert Gresham by his side. Herbert Gresham, whose earnest eyes were fixed on hers, with an expression in their dark depths needing no words to tell her that his early dream, even as her own, was unchanged—that the first action of his now unshackled will was to seek her, requiring no renewal of acquaintance, again to love and trust her. And though the suddenness of the meeting, the rapid transition from sorrowing sympathy to individual joy, did so flush and pale her cheek, that her brother looked at her with some alarm, there was neither hesitation nor idle reserve. Her hand was extended at once, and the pressure which clasped it was sufficient response. Whether they continued so silent, when Herbert did spring into the carriage, and took his seat by her side, indeed we know not. Certain it is that, had it not been for Lord Valery, the footman might have waited long enough for orders to drive “home;” and equally certain that no day had ever seemed so short to Lucy,—short in its fullness of present enjoyment; in its retrospect, could it have been but one brief day?
“And that poor girl is really gone?” inquired Lord Valery, just as Herbert Gresham was about taking his departure, most reluctantly warned to do so by a neighbouring clock striking midnight. “Another victim to that hateful system, desecrating our lovely and most noble land!”
“Dear Edward, hush!” interposed Lucy, gently, as her eye rested on her lover.
“Do not check him, dearest, though I prize that fond thought for me. I know the whole tale—that the fête welcoming my return, by misdirected zeal and thoughtless folly, has added incalculably to the general burden, and to individuals brought death and a life-long despair. The past, alas! we cannot remedy—the future——” and his arm was fondly thrown round Lucy, and his lip pressed her brow—“dearest, let us hope next season there will be another Lady Gresham’s fête fraught with happiness for all.”