Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIII.—April, 1852.—Vol. IV.

Meanwhile Helen and Harley seated themselves a little apart, and were both silent – the first, from timidity; the second, from abstraction. At length the door opened, and Harley suddenly sprang to his feet – Violante and Jemima entered. Lady Lansmere's eyes first rested on the daughter, and she could scarcely refrain from an exclamation of admiring surprise; but then, when she caught sight of Mrs. Riccabocca's somewhat humble, yet not obsequious mien – looking a little shy, a little homely, yet still thoroughly a gentlewoman (though of your plain rural kind of that genus) – she turned from the daughter, and with the savoir vivre of the fine old school, paid her first respects to the wife; respects literally, for her manner implied respect – but it was more kind, simple and cordial than the respect she had shown to Riccabocca; as the sage himself had said, here, "it was Woman to Woman." And then she took Violante's hand in both hers, and gazed on her as if she could not resist the pleasure of contemplating so much beauty. "My son," she said, softly, and with a half sigh – "my son in vain told me not to be surprised. This is the first time I have ever known reality exceed description!"

Violante's blush here made her still more beautiful; and as the countess returned to Riccabocca she stole gently to Helen's side.

"Miss Digby, my ward," said Harley, pointedly, observing that his mother had neglected her duty of presenting Helen to the ladies. He then reseated himself, and conversed with Mrs. Riccabocca; but his bright quick eye glanced ever at the two girls. They were about the same age – and youth was all that, to the superficial eye, they seemed to have in common. A greater contrast could not well be conceived; and, what is strange, both gained by it. Violante's brilliant loveliness seemed yet more dazzling, and Helen's fair, gentle face yet more winning. Neither had mixed much with girls of their own age; each took to the other at first sight. Violante, as the less shy, began the conversation.

"You are his ward – Lord L'Estrange's?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps you came with him from Italy?"

"No, not exactly. But I have been in Italy for some years."

"Ah! you regret – nay, I am foolish – you return to your native land. But the skies in Italy are so blue – here it seems as if nature wanted colors."

"Lord L'Estrange says that you were very young when you left Italy; you remember it well. He, too, prefers Italy to England."

"He! Impossible!"

"Why impossible, fair skeptic?" cried Harley, interrupting himself in the midst of a speech to Jemima.

Violante had not dreamed that she could be overheard – she was speaking low; but, though visibly embarrassed, she answered distinctly —

"Because in England there is the noblest career for noble minds."

Harley was startled, and replied, with a slight sigh, "At your age I should have said as you do. But this England of ours is so crowded with noble minds, that they only jostle each other, and the career is one cloud of dust."

"So, I have read, seems a battle to the common soldier, but not to the chief."

"You have read good descriptions of battles, I see."

Mrs. Riccabocca, who thought this remark a taunt upon her daughter-in-law's studies, hastened to Violante's relief.

"Her papa made her read the history of Italy, and I believe that is full of battles."

Harley. – "All history is, and all women are fond of war and of warriors. I wonder why."

Violante (turning to Helen, and in a very low voice, resolved that Harley should not hear this time). – "We can guess why – can we not?"

Harley (hearing every word, as if it had been spoken in St. Paul's Whispering Gallery.) – "If you can guess, Helen, pray tell me."

Helen (shaking her pretty head, and answering with a livelier smile than usual.) – "But I am not fond of war and warriors."

Harley (to Violante). – "Then I must appeal at once to you, self-convicted Bellona that you are. Is it from the cruelty natural to the female disposition?"

Violante (with a sweet musical laugh). – "From two propensities still more natural to it."

Harley. – "You puzzle me: what can they be?"

Violante. – "Pity and admiration; we pity the weak, and admire the brave."

Harley inclined his head and was silent.

Lady Lansmere had suspended her conversation with Riccabocca to listen to this dialogue. "Charming!" she cried. "You have explained what has often perplexed me. Ah, Harley, I am glad to see that your satire is foiled; you have no reply to that."

"No; I willingly own myself defeated – too glad to claim the Signorina's pity, since my cavalry sword hangs on the wall, and I can have no longer a professional pretense to her admiration."

He then rose, and glanced toward the window. "But I see a more formidable disputant for my conqueror to encounter is coming into the field – one whose profession it is to substitute some other romance for that of camp and siege."

"Our friend Leonard," said Riccabocca, turning his eye also toward the window. "True; as Quevedo says wittily, 'Ever since there has been so great a demand for type, there has been much less lead to spare for cannon-balls.'"

Here Leonard entered. Harley had sent Lady Lansmere's footman to him with a note, that prepared him to meet Helen. As he came into the room, Harley took him by the hand, and led him to Lady Lansmere.

"The friend of whom I spoke. Welcome him now for my sake, ever after for his own;" and then, scarcely allowing time for the Countess's elegant and gracious response, he drew Leonard toward Helen. "Children," said he, with a touching voice, that thrilled through the hearts of both, "go and seat yourselves yonder, and talk together of the past. Signorina, I invite you to renewed discussion upon the abstruse metaphysical subject you have started; let us see if we can not find gentler sources for pity and admiration than war and warriors." He took Violante aside to the window. "You remember that Leonard, in telling you his history last night, spoke, you thought, rather too briefly of the little girl who had been his companion in the rudest time of his trials. When you would have questioned more, I interrupted you, and said 'You should see her shortly, and question her yourself.' And now what think you of Helen Digby? Hush, speak low. But her ears are not so sharp as mine."

Violante. – "Ah! that is the fair creature whom Leonard called his child-angel? What a lovely innocent face! – the angel is there still."

Harley (pleased both at the praise and with her who gave it). – "You think so, and you are right. Helen is not communicative. But fine natures are like fine poems – a glance at the first two lines suffices for a guess into the beauty that waits you, if you read on."

Violante gazed on Leonard and Helen as they sat apart. Leonard was the speaker, Helen the listener; and though the former had, in his narrative the night before, been indeed brief as to the episode in his life connected with the orphan, enough had been said to interest Violante in the pathos of their former position toward each other, and in the happiness they must feel in their meeting again – separated for years on the wide sea of life, now both saved from the storm and shipwreck. The tears came into her eyes. "True," she said very softly, "there is more here to move pity and admiration than in – " She paused.

Harley. – "Complete the sentence. Are you ashamed to retract? Fie on your pride and obstinacy."

Violante. – "No; but even here there have been war and heroism – the war of genius with adversity, and heroism in the comforter who shared it and consoled. Ah! wherever pity and admiration are both felt, something nobler than mere sorrow must have gone before: the heroic must exist."

"Helen does not know what the word heroic means," said Harley, rather sadly; "you must teach her."

Is it possible, thought he as he spoke, that a Randal Leslie could have charmed this grand creature? No heroic, surely, in that sleek young place-man. "Your father," he said aloud, and fixing his eyes on her face, "sees much, he tells me, of a young man, about Leonard's age, as to date; but I never estimate the age of men by the parish register; and I should speak of that so-called young man as a contemporary of my great-grandfather; – I mean Mr. Randal Leslie. Do you like him?"

"Like him?" said Violante slowly, and as if sounding her own mind. "Like him – yes."

"Why?" asked Harley, with dry and curt indignation.

"His visits seem to please my dear father. Certainly, I like him."

"Hum. He professes to like you, I suppose?"

Violante laughed, unsuspiciously. She had half a mind to reply, "Is that so strange?" But her respect for Harley stopped her. The words would have seemed to her pert.

"I am told he is clever," resumed Harley.

"O, certainly."

"And he is rather handsome. But I like Leonard's face better."

"Better – that is not the word. Leonard's face is as that of one who has gazed so often upon heaven; and Mr. Leslie's – there is neither sunlight nor starlight reflected there."

"My dear Violante!" exclaimed Harley, overjoyed; and he pressed her hand.

The blood rushed over the girl's cheek and brow; her hand trembled in his. But Harley's familiar exclamation might have come from a father's lips.

At this moment, Helen softly approached them, and looking timidly into her guardian's face, said, "Leonard's mother is with him: he asks me to call and see her. May I?"

"May you! A pretty notion the Signorina must form of your enslaved state of pupilage, when she hears you ask that question. Of course you may."

"Will you take me there?"

Harley looked embarrassed. He thought of the widow's agitation at his name; of that desire to shun him, which Leonard had confessed, and of which he thought he divined the cause. And so divining, he too shrank from such a meeting.

"Another time, then," said he, after a pause.

Helen looked disappointed, but said no more.

Violante was surprised at this ungracious answer. She would have blamed it as unfeeling in another. But all that Harley did, was right in her eyes.

"Can not I go with Miss Digby?" said she, "and my mother will go too. We both know Mrs. Fairfleld. We shall be so pleased to see her again."

"So be it," said Harley; "I will wait here with your father till you come back. O, as to my mother, she will excuse the – excuse Madame Ricccabocca, and you too. See how charmed she is with your father. I must stay to watch over the conjugal interests of mine."

But Mrs. Riccabocca had too much good old country breeding to leave the Countess; and Harley was forced himself to appeal to Lady Lansmere. When he had explained the case in point, the Countess rose and said —

"But I will call myself, with Miss Digby."

"No," said Harley, gravely, but in a whisper. "No – I would rather not. I will explain later."

"Then," said the Countess aloud, after a glance of surprise at her son, "I must insist on your performing this visit, my dear Madam, and you, Signorina. In truth, I have something to say confidentially to – "

"To me," interrupted Riccabocca. "Ah, Madame la Comtesse, you restore me to five-and-twenty. Go, quick – O jealous and injured wife; go, both of you, quick; and you, too, Harley."

"Nay," said Lady Lansmere, in the same tone, "Harley must stay, for my design is not at present upon destroying your matrimonial happiness, whatever it may be later. It is a design so innocent that my son will be a partner in it."

Here the Countess put her lips to Harley's ear, and whispered. He received her communication in attentive silence: but when she had done, pressed her hand, and bowed his head, as if in assent to a proposal.

In a few minutes, the three ladies and Leonard were on their road to the neighboring cottage.

Violante, with her usual delicate intuition, thought that Leonard and Helen must have much to say to each other; and ignorant as Leonard himself was, of Helen's engagement to Harley, began already, in the romance natural to her age, to predict for them happy and united days in the future. So she took her step-mother's arm, and left Helen and Leonard to follow.

"I wonder," she said musingly, "how Miss Digby became Lord L'Estrange's ward. I hope she is not very rich, nor very high-born."

"La, my love," said the good Jemima, "that is not like you; you are not envious of her, poor girl?"

"Envious! Dear mamma, what a word! But don't you think Leonard and Miss Digby seem born for each other? And then the recollections of their childhood – the thoughts of childhood are so deep, and its memories so strangely soft!" The long lashes drooped over Violante's musing eyes as she spoke. "And therefore," she said; after a pause, "therefore, I hoped that Miss Digby might not be very rich, nor very high-born."

"I understand you now, Violante," exclaimed Jemima, her own early passion for match-making instantly returning to her; "for as Leonard, however clever and distinguished, is still the son of Mark Fairfield the carpenter, it would spoil all if Miss Digby was, as you say, rich and high-born. I agree with you – a very pretty match, a very pretty match, indeed. I wish dear Mrs. Dale were here now – she is so clever in settling such matters."

Meanwhile Leonard and Helen walked side by side a few paces in the rear. He had not offered her his arm. They had been silent hitherto since they left Riccabocca's house.

Helen now spoke first. In similar cases it is generally the woman, be she ever so timid, who does speak first. And here Helen was the bolder; for Leonard did not disguise from himself the nature of his feelings, and Helen was engaged to another; and her pure heart was fortified by the trust reposed in it.

"And have you ever heard more of the good Dr. Morgan, who had powders against sorrow, and who meant to be so kind to us – though," she added, coloring, "we did not think so then?"

"He took my child-angel from me," said Leonard, with visible emotion; "and if she had not returned, where and what should I be now? But I have forgiven him. No, I have never met him since."

"And that terrible Mr. Burley?"

"Poor, poor Burley! He, too, is vanished out of my present life. I have made many inquiries after him; all I can hear is that he went abroad, supposed as a correspondent to some journal. I should like so much to see him again, now that perhaps I could help him as he helped me."

"Helped you – ah!"

Leonard smiled with a beating heart, as he saw again the dear, prudent, warning look, and involuntary drew closer to Helen. She seemed more restored to him and to her former self.

"Helped me much by his instructions; more, perhaps, by his very faults. You can not guess, Helen – I beg pardon, Miss Digby – but I forgot that we are no longer children; you can not guess how much we men, and, more than all perhaps, we writers, whose task it is to unravel the web of human actions, owe even to our own past errors; and if we learn nothing by the errors of others, we should be dull indeed. We must know where the roads divide, and have marked where they lead to, before we can erect our sign-posts; and books are the sign-posts in human life."

"Books! – And I have not yet read yours. And Lord L'Estrange tells me you are famous now. Yet you remember me still – the poor orphan child, whom you first saw weeping at her father's grave, and with whom you burdened your own young life, over-burdened already. No, still call me Helen – you must always be to me – a brother! Lord L'Estrange feels that; he said so to me when he told me that we were to meet again. He is so generous, so noble. Brother!" cried Helen, suddenly, and extending her hand, with a sweet but sublime look in her gentle face – "brother, we will never forfeit his esteem; we will both do our best to repay him! Will we not – say so?"

Leonard felt overpowered by contending and unanalyzed emotions. Touched almost to tears by the affectionate address – thrilled by the hand that pressed his own – and yet with a vague fear a consciousness that something more than the words themselves was implied – something that checked all hope. And this word "brother," once so precious and so dear, why did he shrink from it now? – why could he not too say the sweet word "sister?"

"She is above me now and evermore?" he thought, mournfully; and the tones of his voice, when he spoke again, were changed. The appeal to renewed intimacy but made him more distant; and to that appeal itself he made no direct answer; for Mrs. Riccabocca, now turning round, and pointing to the cottage which came in view, with its picturesque gable-ends, cried out,

"But is that your house, Leonard? I never saw any thing so pretty."

"You do not remember it, then," said Leonard to Helen, in accents of melancholy reproach – "there where I saw you last! I doubted whether to keep it exactly as it was, and I said, 'No! the association is not changed because we try to surround it with whatever beauty we can create; the dearer the association, the more the Beautiful becomes to it natural." "Perhaps you don't understand this – perhaps it is only we poor poets who do."

"I understand it," said Helen, gently. She looked wistfully at the cottage.

"So changed – I have so often pictured it to myself – never, never like this; yet I loved it, commonplace as it was to my recollection; and the garret, and the tree in the carpenter's yard."

She did not give these thoughts utterance And they now entered the garden.

CHAPTER IV

Mrs. Fairfield was a proud woman when she received Mrs. Riccabocca and Violante in her grand house; for a grand house to her was that cottage to which her boy Lenny had brought her home. Proud, indeed, ever was Widow Fairfield; but she thought then in her secret heart, that if ever she could receive in the drawing-room of that grand house the great Mrs. Hazeldean, who had so lectured her for refusing to live any longer in the humble tenement rented of the Squire, the cup of human bliss would be filled, and she could contentedly die of the pride of it. She did not much notice Helen – her attention was too absorbed by the ladies who renewed their old acquaintance with her, and she carried them all over the house, yea, into the very kitchen; and so, somehow or other, there was a short time when Helen and Leonard found themselves alone. It was in the study. Helen had unconsciously seated herself in Leonard's own chair, and she was gazing with anxious and wistful interest on the scattered papers, looking so disorderly (though, in truth, in that disorder there was method, but method only known to the owner), and at the venerable, well-worn books, in all languages, lying on the floor, on the chairs – any where. I must confess that Helen's first tidy womanlike idea was a great desire to arrange the latter. "Poor Leonard," she thought to herself – "the rest of the house so neat, but no one to take care of his own room and of him!"

As if he divined her thought, Leonard smiled, and said, "It would be a cruel kindness to the spider, if the gentlest hand in the world tried to set its cobweb to rights."

Helen. – "You were not quite so bad in the old days."

Leonard. – "Yet even then, you were obliged to take care of the money. I have more books now, and more money. My present housekeeper lets me take care of the books, but she is less indulgent as to the money."

Helen (archly). – "Are you as absent as ever?"

Leonard. – "Much more so, I fear. The habit is incorrigible, Miss Digby – "

Helen. – "Not Miss Digby – sister, if you like."

Leonard (evading the word that implied so forbidden an affinity). – "Helen, will you grant me a favor? Your eyes and your smile say 'yes.' Will you lay aside, for one minute, your shawl and bonnet? What! can you be surprised that I ask it? Can you not understand that I wish for one minute to think you are at home again under this roof?"

Helen cast down her eyes, and seemed troubled; then she raised them, with a soft angelic candor in their dovelike blue, and as if in shelter from all thoughts of more warm affection, again murmured "brother," and did as he asked her.

So there she sate, among the dull books, by his table, near the open window – her fair hair parted on her forehead – looking so good, so calm, so happy! Leonard wondered at his own self-command. His heart yearned to her with such inexpressible love – his lips so longed to murmur, "Ah, as now so could it be forever! Is the home too mean?" But that word "brother" was as a talisman between her and him.

Yet she looked so at home – perhaps so at home she felt! – more certainly than she had yet learned to do in that stiff stately house in which she was soon to have a daughter's rights. Was she suddenly made aware of this – that she so suddenly arose – and with a look of alarm and distress on her face —

"But – we are keeping Lady Lansmere too long," she said, falteringly. "We must go now," and she hastily took up her shawl and bonnet.

Just then Mrs. Fairfield entered with the visitors, and began making excuses for inattention to Miss Digby, whose identity with Leonard's child-angel she had not yet learned.

Helen received these apologies with her usual sweetness. "Nay," she said, "your son and I are such old friends, how could you stand on ceremony with me?"

"Old friends!" Mrs. Fairfield stared amazed, and then surveyed the fair speaker more curiously than she had yet done. "Pretty, nice spoken thing," thought the widow; "as nice spoken as Miss Violante, and humbler-looking-like – though as to dress, I never see any thing so elegant out of a picter."

Helen now appropriated Mrs. Riccabocca's arm; and after a kind leave-taking with the widow, the ladies returned toward Riccabocca's house.

Mrs. Fairfield, however, ran after them with Leonard's hat and gloves, which he had forgotten.

"'Deed, boy," said she, kindly, yet scoldingly, "but there'd be no more fine books, if the Lord had not fixed your head on your shoulders. You would not think it, marm," she added to Mrs. Riccabocca, "but sin' he has left you, he's not the 'cute lad he was; very helpless at times, marm!"

Helen could not resist turning round, and looking at Leonard, with a sly smile.

The widow saw the smile, and catching Leonard by the arm, whispered, "But, where before have you seen that pretty young lady? Old friends!"

"Ah, mother," said Leonard, sadly, "it is a long tale; you have heard the beginning, who can guess the end?" – and he escaped. But Helen still leant on the arm of Mrs. Riccabocca, and, in the walk back, it seemed to Leonard as if the winter had resettled in the sky.

Yet he was by the side of Violante, and she spoke to him with such praise of Helen! Alas! it is not always so sweet as folks say, to hear the praises of one we love. Sometimes those praises seem to ask ironically, "And what right hast thou to hope because thou lovest? All love her."

CHAPTER V

o sooner had Lady Lansmere found herself alone with Riccabocca and Harley than she laid her hand on the exile's arm, and, addressing him by a title she had not before given him, and from which he appeared to shrink nervously, said: "Harley, in bringing me to visit you, was forced to reveal to me your incognito, for I should have discovered it. You may not remember me, in spite of your gallantry. But I mixed more in the world than I do now, during your first visit to England, and once sate next to you at dinner at Carlton House. Nay, no compliments, but listen to me. Harley tells me you have cause for some alarm respecting the designs of an audacious and unprincipled – adventurer, I may call him; for adventurers are of all ranks. Suffer your daughter to come to me, on a visit, as long as you please. With me, at least, she will be safe; and if you, too, and the – "

"Stop, my dear madam," interrupted Riccabocca, with great vivacity; "your kindness over-powers me. I thank you most gratefully for your invitation to my child; but – "

"Nay," in his turn interrupted Harley, "no buts. I was not aware of my mother's intention when she entered this room. But since she whispered it to me, I have reflected on it, and am convinced that it is but a prudent precaution. Your retreat is known to Mr. Leslie – he is known to Peschiera. Grant that no indiscretion of Mr. Leslie's betray the secret; still I have reason to believe that the Count guesses Randal's acquaintance with you. Audley Egerton this morning told me he had gathered that, not from the young man himself, but from questions put to himself by Madame di Negra; and Peschiera might, and would, set spies to track Leslie to every house that he visits – might and would, still more naturally, set spies to track myself. Were this man an Englishman, I should laugh at his machinations; but he is an Italian, and has been a conspirator. What he could do, I know not; but an assassin can penetrate into a camp, and a traitor can creep through closed walls to one's hearth. With my mother, Violante must be safe; that you can not oppose. And why not come yourself?"