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Page 60
When kindly good-nature is snubbed, it feels it keenly; and there was a
mist of tears in the squire's blue eyes when Harry followed, and he
turned them on him. And it was part of his punishment, that, even in the
first flush of the pleasure of his sin, he felt all the pangs of
remorse.
"Father?"
"Well, well, Harry! I see you are wanting money again."
"It will be the last time. I am married, and am going to Italy to live."
"Eh? What?" The squire flushed hotly. His hand shook, his long clay pipe
fell to the hearthstone, and was shattered to pieces.
Then a reckless desire to have the whole wrong out urged the unhappy
son to a most cruel distinctness of detail. Without wasting a word in
explanation or excuse, he stated broadly that he had fallen in love with
the famous singer, Beatrice Lanza, and had married her. He spared
himself or his father nothing; he appeared to gather a hard courage as
he spoke of her failing health, her hatred of England, her devotion to
her own faith, and the necessity of his retirement to Italy with her. He
seemed determined to put it out of the power of any one to say worse of
him than he had already said of himself. In conclusion he added, "I have
sold my commission, and paid what I owed, and have very little money
left. Life, however, is not an expensive affair in the village to which
I am going. If you will allow me two hundred pounds a year I shall be
very grateful."
"I will not give you one penny, sir."
The words came thick and heavy, and with great difficulty; though the
wretched father had risen, and was standing by the table, leaning hard
with both hands upon it.
He would not look at his son, though the young man went on speaking. He
heard nothing that he said. In his ears there was the roaring of mighty
waters. All the waves and the billows were going over him. For a few
moments he struggled desperately with the black, advancing tide. His
sight failed, it was growing dark. Then he threw the last forces of life
into one terrible cry, and fell, as a great tree falls, heavily to the
ground.
The cry rang through the house. The mother, trembling in her bed;
Charlotte, crouching upon the stairs, fearing and listening; the
servants, chattering in the kitchen and the chambers,--all heard it, and
were for a moment horrified by the agony and despair it expressed. But
ere the awful echo had quite subsided, Charlotte was at her father's
side; in a moment afterwards, Mrs. Sandal, sobbing at every flying step,
and still in her night-clothing, followed; and then servants from every
quarter came rushing to the master's room.
There was no time for inquiry or lamentation. Harry and two of the men
mounted swift horses in search of medical help. Others lifted the
insensible man, and carried him tenderly to his bed. In a moment the
atmosphere of the house had changed. The master's room, which had held
for generations nothing but memories of pastoral business and sylvan
pleasures, had suddenly become a place of sorrow. The shattered pipe
upon the hearthstone made Charlotte utter a low, hopeless cry of pain.
She closed the shutters, and put the burning logs upon the hearth safely
together, and then locked the door. Alas! alas! they had carried the
master out, and in Charlotte's heart there was a conviction that he
would never more cross its threshold.
After Harry's first feelings of anguish and horror had subsided, he was
distinctly resentful. He felt his father's suffering to be a wrong to
him. He began to reflect that the day for such intense emotions had
passed away. But he forgot that the squire belonged to a generation
whose life was filled and ruled by a few strong, decided feelings and
opinions that struck their roots deep into the very foundations of
existence; a generation, also, which was bearing the brunt of the
transition between the strong, simple life of the past, and the rapid,
complex life of the present. Thus the squire opposed to the indifference
of the time a rigidity of habits, which, to even small events, gave
that exceptional character which rarity once imparted. He felt every
thing deeply, because every thing retained its importance to him. He had
great reverence. He loved, and he hated. All his convictions and
prejudices were for life.
Harry's marriage had been a blow at the roots of all his conscious
existence. The Sandals had always married in their own county,
Cumberland ladies of honorable pedigree, good daughters of the Church of
England, good housewives, gentle and modest women, with more or less
land and gold as their dowry. Emily Beverley would have been precisely
such a wife. And in a moment, even while Harry was speaking, the squire
had contrasted this Beatrice Lanza with her;--a foreigner,--an Italian,
of all foreigners most objectionable; a subject of the Papal States; a
member of the Romish Church; a woman of obscure birth, poor and
portionless, and in ill-health; worse than all, a public woman, who had
sung for money, and yet who had made Harry desert his home and country
and profession for her. And with this train of thought another ran
parallel,--the shame and the wrong of it all. The disgrace to his wife
and daughters, the humiliation to himself. Each bitter thought beat on
his heart like the hammer on the anvil. They fought and blended with
each other. He could not master one. He felt himself being beaten to the
ground. He made agonizing efforts to retain control over the surging
wave of anguish, rising, rising, rising from his breast to his brain.
And failing to do so, he fell with the mighty cry of one who, even in
the death agony, protests against the victor.
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