LORD HILLESBOROUGH HAD never married; but he was not without ties of family on that account. He had led a wild and wandering youth, and for the greater part of his middle age had been pursuing researches, which nobody could quite trace out, in distant parts of the universe, sometimes for years together dropping out of the knowledge of men. He had got beyond the climax of life when he returned and took for the first time possession of his ancestral place and honours. There he had neither been unaware of nor indifferent to the responsibilities of such a position. He had done all that a member of the House of Lords can to stimulate good legislation and control bad, — which is the highly important and useful office of that body, — taking care that the nation should have full time to think, and do nothing rashly or unadvisedly. He had taken up many schemes which seemed visionary to his colleagues and fellows, and some which were very practical and excellent. His estates were governed with great care under his own special supervision — no wrong being left without a remedy, and no poverty which could be helped being permitted to exist. Whatever was best in the way of leases and improvements to the farmers, and of good cottages, allotments, and indulgences to the labourers, existed on his land before the younger theorists had begun to speak of such schemes. He was not altogether successful — what man is or can be? — and yet life was as tolerable at and about Hillesborough as it could well be made. He could not change the nature or the character of his surroundings. He that was unclean was unclean still, except now and then when a miracle would happen with which Lord Hillesborough had nothing to do. He did not believe that allotments or anything else that he could do would save either men’s souls or bodies; but when that divine something did come into an erring man’s breast which makes him a good man — a miracle still daily accomplished among us, heaven be praised! which is greater than healing — the old lord acknowledged it with reverence however it came, — whether by means of the Methodist preacher in the village, or by the ministrations of an anachronism under the form of a modern brother of St Benedict, or by more intimate and secret help from heaven, — always allowing that this gift from God was beyond all allotments, and that to be made good was the one primary necessity of life. This was a point in which he differed from most law-makers of to-day; and yet he was very modern in his way, and scorned no suggestion, even when coming from the least venerable quarter, which seemed to have any good in it. He was surrounded, in consequence, with what might be called a very high average of general wellbeing. More, perhaps, is scarcely to be looked for, whatever men may do or say.
I have said, however, that he did not want for the ties of a family, notwithstanding that he had never married, and had consequently no children of his own. His house was superintended and reigned over by his sister, Lady Elizabeth Camden, who had an only daughter, to whom the old gentleman was much attached; and it was the home of his nephew and heir, the son of a younger brother, who had been Lord Hillesborough’s favourite in life. It was the evident and most commonplace conclusion that these two young persons, both so dear to the master of the house and both so deeply indebted to his bounty, should marry and carry on the lineage after him; but this most desirable and natural issue had been put aside some time before, when it became evident that Arthur was not likely to turn out so well as had been hoped. There were many excuses for him, people said. Why should he work either at school or college, when he knew there was no need whatever that he should do so, and when, without any exertion, he could have everything that is desirable in life? No doubt he would sow his wild oats, and settle down and marry some nice girl, and be as irreproachable as most of his fathers had been before him. Anyhow, he should not marry Lucy, Lady Elizabeth said, and she was a woman not given to changing her mind. At the same time she had indicated, which perhaps was not so wise, the man who was to marry Lucy, who was already an epitome of all the virtues, a man with very fine estates and a good deal of money, and universally approved of wherever he went. But, unfortunately, Lucy was not of her mother’s opinion in this latter respect. Therefore even in this admirably regulated house, with such a man as Lord Hillesborough at its head, all was not peace as it ought to have been. He was an example to the whole county, but it was not an example which was efficacious in his own house. And yet these two erring young people were both very fond of him, and considered him the best of men. They would have liked to please him; there was no opposition to him in either of their minds.
Sometimes they were both in rebellion in different ways against Lady Elizabeth; but Uncle Hillesborough was to both the most loved and trusted of friends.
It was not long before this state of things was made very apparent to the Prince. He fathomed it the first evening, when he saw the young people doing their utmost to entertain their guests, though nothing could have been more natural or delightful than the family affection between them. What might have been the confidences between him and Lord Hillesborough I cannot say — nor if there were any confidences; but it was not very long before this important and evidently most influential visitor, whose manners were such as gained everybody’s trust, was sought by young Arthur with his tale, and a prayer for his intervention. “For one can see that Uncle Hillesborough thinks nothing too much to do for you,” he said. “If Lord Hillesborough is so good, is not that a reason why I should be very cautious what I ask him?” said the Prince, with a smile. But he soon was made aware very plainly what it was the young man had to ask. He listened patiently, and then he proceeded in his usual way to trace the trouble to its cause.
“What,” he said, in the words he had already used so often, “has brought you to this pass? — for one like you, so young, so full of happiness, so well off, cannot have come to despair in a day. What has brought you to this pass?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the young man, with his hands in his pockets, swaying backward and forward against the light of the broad window—” nothing that was very bad. I got drawn in a bit with fellows I had known at school, — not for any harm, only for fun, don’t you know. Every one bets a little; and you never think when you begin that you can’t stop just when you please. Then that leads to other things. When you get into your first hole, and see what an ass you’ve been, the thing you want most is not to think about it. It seems no use thinking about it when you can’t mend it. Then fellows tell you how by risking a little more you have such a good chance of recovering yourself; and then you get awfully excited, and you heap on everything, and you feel sure you must win this time. Some fellows do, and set themselves straight, and then pull up, and are not a bit the worse for it. That’s what I meant. They are actually the better for it, don’t you know, getting such loads of experience; and, after all, nothing but experience ever teaches a man. Well! then when you have everything in the world hanging upon the chance of what is going to happen at a race meeting, or something else of that sort — don’t you see your head’s not any good for work or reading, and you can’t bear home or being quiet. You have got not to think; and the only way not to think is to keep yourself in a whirl with — well, with other things; and so you get into what people call dissipation, without wanting to, without meaning to, just to keep yourself from thinking—”
The Prince said nothing, but shook his head: there was perhaps a half smile on his face — or so at least the young man thought.
“What’s the good of talking?” he said; “I can see you know it all quite well: and of course, however far off your country is, and however mysterious you make it, Uncle Hillesborough and you — human nature, I suppose, is the same there as here.”
The Prince did not make any reply to this: he continued to shake his head. “It seems to me,” he said, “that if, instead of taking precautions against thinking, you had allowed yourself to think, all might have been mended at any moment before things came to this pass.”
“I didn’t come to a man like you,” cried the youth, almost indignantly, “to be told that! Why, any old woman could have told me that! Don’t you know how it draws you on? Oh, hang it all, you must know! You can’t have come to know such lots of things, and to understand men so well, without finding that out. It draws you on; and in a kind of a way you like to be drawn on; and you think it’s life, and all that; and after a while you can’t bear the quiet of home, and the routine. You must have something to excite you, to fill up the gaps. I don’t know why things that are called wrong should always be nicer than things that are called right. They make you spin, they keep you going. But it isn’t because they’re wicked you care for them; it’s because they are fun.”
“To me they seem very poor fun,” the Stranger said.
“Well, perhaps,” said the youth, subdued. “You’re above all that. I shouldn’t suppose they would seem fun to you. I — shouldn’t like it if they were. They’re not always fun, to tell the truth, even to me; but they keep a fellow on. But you don’t blame me badly, do you, — you that know what men are?” he added, after a pause, glancing up with a pleading look, like the insinuating plea of a child.
“Yes,” said the Prince, “I blame you: — but still more, I wonder at you, selling your youth and all your chances and hopes for less than the mess of pottage! That was always something, — it satisfied a hunger of the moment; but yours are only the husks that the swine eat.”
“Oh, I say!” cried the youth; then he paused, and said, penitently, with a drooping head, “I believe you’re not far wrong. I have been a dreadful ass, that is the truth.” He looked up again with his boyish insinuating plea. “But I’ve learned better now. I’ve bought my experience. Prince! if you will get Uncle Hillesborough to look over things this once, and start me straight, you shall see it will be very different another time.”
“Will it be very different?” said the other. “If you had meant wrong the first time, and now meant right the second, I think there would be better hope: but you meant only fun, as you say; and how can you be sure that you will not mean fun again?”
“Oh, by Jove!” cried the young man, “I know better now! Fun’s very well, but if it can only end in a revolver, one sees that won’t pay. I’m up to a great many things now that I never thought of before. If you’ll stand my friend, Prince—”
“In any way, in every way that is permitted, I shall certainly stand your friend,” the Stranger said, in his grave tones but with his benignant look.
Young Arthur could not burst out with his schoolboy exuberance, “Oh, thank you; thank you awfully!” as he had intended. He was silenced by that look, which seemed to mean so much more than the words meant, which is not the usual way; but yet he did not know what they meant. He went away a little awestricken; yet he was full of hope.
And it was, I think, the same day that Lucy also sought the Stranger with her story. She was more timid than her cousin. She had no confession of wrongdoing to make, in Arthur’s way, but yet it was dreadful to the girl to be in opposition to her mother, and to be appealing to a person she knew so little. She said to him prettily, with downcast eyes, that she did not know how it was that it seemed more natural to speak to him than to any of her old friends whom she had known all her life.
“Perhaps it is because I am a stranger,” said the Prince.
“Oh,” cried Lucy, “perhaps it is that! The others would either take sides with mamma or blame her, — and she is not to be blamed, she is right; but oh, Prince, you who know everything, I can’t help thinking I am right too.”
“I am afraid I don’t know everything. I am only an inquirer among you little young people on the earth; but you will teach me to know—”
“I — teach you!” cried Lucy, clapping her hands; “but if you don’t know everything, you understand, and that is better. Oh, Prince, I am so full of trouble and difficulty! One thinks naturally that anything one wishes for, very, very much, must be wrong, you know. But this I am quite, quite sure is not wrong.”
“Tell me what it is,” he said, with a smile.
She gave him a quick glance, and then drooped her head again. “You will know,” she said, very softly, “even though I didn’t tell you, that it must be something about — about my marriage, Prince.” The last words came out with a little rush, as if Lucy were glad to get them said. “Oh! “ he said, “is that so?”
“What else could it be?” said Lucy, with a sigh. “Of course on no other subject would I oppose mamma. I know that she understands most things far better than I do; and she is very, very good. She is my best friend; she loves me more than anybody in the world. Oh, Prince! you must not think I don’t know that.”
The Prince smiled, looking down upon her benignantly, but said no word.
“But when you think that it is I who must pass my life with him, not she — and that there is one whom — whom I while the other, though I know he is a good man, and that mamma is right about him, and — and all that — yet I could not, I could not bear him, oh, Prince, how could I? when there is another — another!”
Lucy put up her hands to her face with a little sound of tears.
“Tell me about this other,” the Stranger said; “sit down and be composed and tell me — everything you can tell—”
“I can tell you — all!” cried the girl. “I couldn’t to anybody else; but I am sure you must have loved — some one, very, very much, and you understand.”
He smiled over her downcast head, and in answer to the sudden upward glance of her wet eyes; but the smile was mysterious, reticent, opening no confidences on his own part. He did not assent to the assertion she made, nor yet contradict it. His attention was given solely to the suppliant, not disturbed by any reflection from experiences of his own.
“This gentleman,” said Lucy, plunging into the middle of her subject, “whom mamma thinks so much of, is old — at least older a great deal. I seem to have always known him. He is very nice, and he has always been very good to me. I might have done — what mamma and he wanted, and never known anything better, and just lived dull and half alive all my days. But one day last summer I went over quite by accident to see — some other girls at Horndean. I had not been invited. It was only because it was a fine day, and Uncle Hillesborough had given me my pretty little pony-cart, and I thought I should like to go: just a fancy — and quite by accident.”
“Quite by accident,” the Prince echoed, in a tone which made Lucy look up at him once more; but she did not understand either his look or his mysterious spectator-smile.
“And there was — some one, who came in for tennis quite by accident too; they had not asked him; they did not even know he was at home. And we drew each other for partners in the game, and we played all the afternoon; and afterwards he walked by the side of the pony-cart half the way home. He walks so quickly and so light, he went as fast as the pony. Oh, Prince, do not you think that when we met like this, without a thought, knowing nothing about it, that it must have been Providence — Providence I heaven itself that brought us together when we never knew!”
“And this was the man?” the Prince asked.
“Oh yes!” cried Lucy with fervour, clasping her hands, too earnest even to blush, “this was the man! the only man — the only, only one that I could ever —
And it is all so different. I might have married the other gentleman whom I was always meant to marry, and never known what it was at all — But the first moment I saw Harry I knew. I was ready to put my hand in his and go with him anywhere; and I don’t mind if he is poor or rich, we could always, always get on together. We don’t need even to speak to understand each other. We know what we mean — he me, and I him. And to think that we should have met like that — !”
“Quite by accident,” the Prince repeated, in his musing tone.
“I prefer to say,” said Lucy, with great gravity and solemnity, “by Providence, Prince! It seems accident to us, but God,” — the girl lowered her voice with tender reverence and enthusiasm,—” God must have put us down for each other long before, and brought it about so, that we might always see His hand in it. He thinks so too. We are quite, quite sure that it has all been brought about by heaven. They say, you know, that marriages are made in heaven,” she added, flashing a wistful smile at him out of her shining wet eyes.
“And is it a proof for that that earth opposes?” the Prince asked.
“Mamma opposes,” said Lucy \ “this is my great trial. He is not rich, and the other gentleman of course is; and she still wants me to marry him, as if our love was a mere fancy and meant nothing: when it means everything — our whole lives! Oh, Prince! you can help us; everybody listens to you.”
“But,” he said, “do you not think that your mother knows best? that this gentleman, whom I do not know, whom she has chosen and selected for you, who has thought of you for years, is very likely a better mate for you than one whom you have met without any choice, inadvertently, quite, as you say, by accident.”
“Love doesn’t choose,” cried Lucy, “it comes! it doesn’t think of being suitable or not, it just is, and there is no more to be said. Oh, Prince! I shall think you do not know so much as I supposed, have not had so much experience as I thought, if you don’t know that. It is the only thing in all the world that is quite, quite true.”
“It seems a beautiful thing — through your eyes,” he said; “but if I talked with your mother—”
“Mamma,” cried Lucy, “would not deny that — nobody would deny it; they may try to get over it, but they would not deny it: for everybody at least, though they may go against their knowledge — which is blasphemy — knows what Love is.”
“They know what Love is?”
“Oh yes, yes, Prince! and that it comes like the wind in the Bible where it listeth — bloweth where it listeth — comes when no one is thinking of it, without any invitation, without any arrangement.”
“Quite by accident!” the Prince repeated, with a smile.