the morning broke lowering and thunderous; small white clouds, dull and immovable, studded the leaden sky; the waters of the rushing darl seemed to have become black and almost stagnant; the terraces of hellingsley looked like the hard lines of a model; and the mansion itself had a harsh and metallic character. before the chief portal of his hall, the elder millbank, with an air of some anxiety, surveyed the landscape and the heavens, as if he were speculating on the destiny of the day.
often his eye wandered over the park; often with an uneasy and restless step he paced the raised walk before him. the clock of hellingsley church had given the chimes of noon. his son and coningsby appeared at the end of one of the avenues. his eye lightened; his lip became compressed; he advanced to meet them.
‘are you going to fish to-day, oswald?’ he inquired of his son.
‘we had some thoughts of it, sir.’
‘a fine day for sport, i should think,’ he observed, as he turned towards the hall with them.
coningsby remarked the fanciful beauty of the portal; its twisted columns, and caryatides carved in dark oak.
‘yes, it’s very well,’ said millbank; ‘but i really do not know why i came here; my presence is an effort. oswald does not care for the place; none of us do, i believe.’
‘oh! i like it now, father; and edith doats on it.’
‘she was very happy at millbank,’ said the father, rather sharply.
‘we are all of us happy at millbank,’ said oswald.
‘i was much struck with the valley and the whole settlement when i first saw it,’ said coningsby.
‘suppose you go and see about the tackle, oswald,’ said mr. millbank, ‘and mr. coningsby and i will take a stroll on the terrace in the meantime.’
the habit of obedience, which was supreme in this family, instantly carried oswald away, though he was rather puzzled why his father should be so anxious about the preparation of the fishing-tackle, as he rarely used it. his son had no sooner departed than mr. millbank turned to coningsby, and said very abruptly,
‘you have never seen my own room here, mr. coningsby; step in, for i wish to say a word to you.’ and thus speaking, he advanced before the astonished, and rather agitated coningsby, and led the way through a door and long passage to a room of moderate dimensions, partly furnished as a library, and full of parliamentary papers and blue-books. shutting the door with some earnestness and pointing to a chair, he begged his guest to be seated. both in their chairs, mr. millbank, clearing his throat, said without preface, ‘i have reason to believe, mr. coningsby, that you are attached to my daughter?’
‘i have been attached to her for a long time most ardently,’ replied coningsby, in a calm and rather measured tone, but looking very pale.
‘and i have reason to believe that she returns your attachment?’ said mr. millbank.
‘i believe she deigns not to disregard it,’ said coningsby, his white cheek becoming scarlet.
‘it is then a mutual attachment, which, if cherished, must produce mutual unhappiness,’ said mr. millbank.
‘i would fain believe the reverse,’ said coningsby.
‘why?’ inquired mr. millbank.
‘because i believe she possesses every charm, quality, and virtue, that can bless man; and because, though i can make her no equivalent return, i have a heart, if i know myself, that would struggle to deserve her.’
‘i know you to be a man of sense; i believe you to be a man of honour,’ replied mr. millbank. ‘as the first, you must feel that an union between you and my daughter is impossible; what then should be your duty as a man of correct principle is obvious.’
‘i could conceive that our union might be attended with difficulties,’ said coningsby, in a somewhat deprecating tone.
‘sir, it is impossible,’ repeated mr. millbank, interrupting him, though not with harshness; ‘that is to say, there is no conceivable marriage which could be effected at greater sacrifices, and which would occasion greater misery.’
‘the sacrifices are more apparent to me than the misery,’ said coningsby, ‘and even they may be imaginary.’
‘the sacrifices and the misery are certain and inseparable,’ said mr. millbank. ‘come now, see how we stand! i speak without reserve, for this is a subject which cannot permit misconception, but with no feelings towards you, sir, but fair and friendly ones. you are the grandson of my lord monmouth; at present enjoying his favour, but dependent on his bounty. you may be the heir of his wealth to-morrow, and to-morrow you may be the object of his hatred and persecution. your grandfather and myself are foes; bitter, irreclaimable, to the death. it is idle to mince phrases; i do not vindicate our mutual feelings, i may regret that they have ever arisen; i may regret it especially at this exigency. they are not the feelings of good christians; they may be altogether to be deplored and unjustifiable; but they exist, mutually exist; and have not been confined to words. lord monmouth would crush me, had he the power, like a worm; and i have curbed his proud fortunes often. were it not for this feeling i should not be here; i purchased this estate merely to annoy him, as i have done a thousand other acts merely for his discomfiture and mortification. in our long encounter i have done him infinitely more injury than he could do me; i have been on the spot, i am active, vigilant, the maker of my fortunes. he is an epicurean, continually in foreign parts, obliged to leave the fulfilment of his will to others. but, for these very reasons, his hate is more intense. i can afford to hate him less than he hates me; i have injured him more. here are feelings to exist between human beings! but they do exist; and now you are to go to this man, and ask his sanction to marry my daughter!’
‘but i would appease these hatreds; i would allay these dark passions, the origin of which i know not, but which never could justify the end, and which lead to so much misery. i would appeal to my grandfather; i would show him edith.’
‘he has looked upon as fair even as edith,’ said mr. millbank, rising suddenly from his seat, and pacing the room, ‘and did that melt his heart? the experience of your own lot should have guarded you from the perils that you have so rashly meditated encountering, and the misery which you have been preparing for others besides yourself. is my daughter to be treated like your mother? and by the same hand? your mother’s family were not lord monmouth’s foes. they were simple and innocent people, free from all the bad passions of our nature, and ignorant of the world’s ways. but because they were not noble, because they could trace no mystified descent from a foreign invader, or the sacrilegious minion of some spoliating despot, their daughter was hunted from the family which should have exulted to receive her, and the land of which she was the native ornament. why should a happier lot await you than fell to your parents? you are in the same position as your father; you meditate the same act. the only difference being aggravating circumstances in your case, which, even if i were a member of the same order as my lord monmouth, would prevent the possibility of a prosperous union. marry edith, and you blast all the prospects of your life, and entail on her a sense of unceasing humiliation. would you do this? should i permit you to do this?’
coningsby, with his head resting on his arm, his face a little shaded, his eyes fixed on the ground, listened in silence. there was a pause; broken by coningsby, as in a low voice, without changing his posture or raising his glance, he said, ‘it seems, sir, that you were acquainted with my mother!’
‘i knew sufficient of her,’ replied mr. millbank, with a kindling cheek, ‘to learn the misery that a woman may entail on herself by marrying out of her condition. i have bred my children in a respect for their class. i believe they have imbibed my feeling; though it is strange how in the commerce of the world, chance, in their friendships, has apparently baffled my designs.’
‘oh! do not say it is chance, sir,’ said coningsby, looking up, and speaking with much fervour. ‘the feelings that animate me towards your family are not the feelings of chance: they are the creation of sympathy; tried by time, tested by thought. and must they perish? can they perish? they were inevitable; they are indestructible. yes, sir, it is in vain to speak of the enmities that are fostered between you and my grandfather; the love that exists between your daughter and myself is stronger than all your hatreds.’
‘you speak like a young man, and a young man that is in love,’ said mr. millbank. ‘this is mere rhapsody; it will vanish in an instant before the reality of life. and you have arrived at that reality,’ he continued, speaking with emphasis, leaning over the back of his chair, and looking steadily at coningsby with his grey, sagacious eye; ‘my daughter and yourself can meet no more.’
‘it is impossible you can be so cruel!’ exclaimed coningsby.
‘so kind; kind to you both; for i wish to be kind to you as well as to her. you are entitled to kindness from us all; though i will tell you now, that, years ago, when the news arrived that my son’s life had been saved, and had been saved by one who bore the name of coningsby, i had a presentiment, great as was the blessing, that it might lead to unhappiness.’
‘i can answer for the misery of one,’ said coningsby, in a tone of great despondency. ‘i feel as if my sun were set. oh! why should there be such wretchedness? why are there family hatreds and party feuds? why am i the most wretched of men?’
‘my good young friend, you will live, i doubt not, to be a happy one. happiness is not, as we are apt to fancy, entirely dependent on these contingencies. it is the lot of most men to endure what you are now suffering, and they can look back to such conjunctures through the vista of years with calmness.’
‘i may see edith now?’
‘frankly, i should say, no. my daughter is in her room; i have had some conversation with her. of course she suffers not less than yourself. to see her again will only aggravate woe. you leave under this roof, sir, some sad memories, but no unkind ones. it is not likely that i can serve you, or that you may want my aid; but whatever may be in my power, remember you may command it; without reserve and without restraint. if i control myself now, it is not because i do not respect your affliction, but because, in the course of my life, i have felt too much not to be able to command my feelings.’
‘you never could have felt what i feel now,’ said coningsby, in a tone of anguish.
‘you touch on delicate ground,’ said millbank; ‘yet from me you may learn to suffer. there was a being once, not less fair than the peerless girl that you would fain call your own, and her heart was my proud possession. there were no family feuds to baffle our union, nor was i dependent on anything, but the energies which had already made me flourishing. what happiness was mine! it was the first dream of my life, and it was the last; my solitary passion, the memory of which softens my heart. ah! you dreaming scholars, and fine gentlemen who saunter through life, you think there is no romance in the loves of a man who lives in the toil and turmoil of business. you are in deep error. amid my career of travail, there was ever a bright form which animated exertion, inspired my invention, nerved my energy, and to gain whose heart and life i first made many of those discoveries, and entered into many of those speculations, that have since been the foundation of my wide prosperity.
‘her faith was pledged to me; i lived upon her image; the day was even talked of when i should bear her to the home that i had proudly prepared for her.
‘there came a young noble, a warrior who had never seen war, glittering with gewgaws. he was quartered in the town where the mistress of my heart, who was soon to share my life and my fortunes, resided. the tale is too bitter not to be brief. he saw her, he sighed; i will hope that he loved her; she gave him with rapture the heart which perhaps she found she had never given to me; and instead of bearing the name i had once hoped to have called her by, she pledged her faith at the altar to one who, like you, was called, coningsby.’
‘my mother!’
‘you see, i too have had my griefs.’
‘dear sir,’ said coningsby, rising and taking mr. millbank’s hand, ‘i am most wretched; and yet i wish to part from you even with affection. you have explained circumstances that have long perplexed me. a curse, i fear, is on our families. i have not mind enough at this moment even to ponder on my situation. my head is a chaos. i go; yes, i quit this hellingsley, where i came to be so happy, where i have been so happy. nay, let me go, dear sir! i must be alone, i must try to think. and tell her, no, tell her nothing. god will guard over us!’
proceeding down the avenue with a rapid and distempered step, his countenance lost, as it were, in a wild abstraction, coningsby encountered oswald millbank. he stopped, collected his turbulent thoughts, and throwing on oswald one look that seemed at the same time to communicate woe and to demand sympathy, flung himself into his arms.
‘my friend!’ he exclaimed, and then added, in a broken voice, ‘i need a friend.’
then in a hurried, impassioned, and somewhat incoherent strain, leaning on oswald’s arm, as they walked on together, he poured forth all that had occurred, all of which he had dreamed; his baffled bliss, his actual despair. alas! there was little room for solace, and yet all that earnest affection could inspire, and a sagacious brain and a brave spirit, were offered for his support, if not his consolation, by the friend who was devoted to him.
in the midst of this deep communion, teeming with every thought and sentiment that could enchain and absorb the spirit of man, they came to one of the park-gates of coningsby. millbank stopped. the command of his father was peremptory, that no member of his family, under any circumstances, or for any consideration, should set his foot on that domain. lady wallinger had once wished to have seen the castle, and coningsby was only too happy in the prospect of escorting her and edith over the place; but oswald had then at once put his veto on the project, as a thing forbidden; and which, if put in practice, his father would never pardon. so it passed off, and now oswald himself was at the gates of that very domain with his friend who was about to enter them, his friend whom he might never see again; that coningsby who, from their boyish days, had been the idol of his life; whom he had lived to see appeal to his affections and his sympathy, and whom oswald was now going to desert in the midst of his lonely and unsolaced woe.
‘i ought not to enter here,’ said oswald, holding the hand of coningsby as he hesitated to advance; ‘and yet there are duties more sacred even than obedience to a father. i cannot leave you thus, friend of my best heart!’
the morning passed away in unceasing yet fruitless speculation on the future. one moment something was to happen, the next nothing could occur. sometimes a beam of hope flashed over the fancy of coningsby, and jumping up from the turf, on which they were reclining, he seemed to exult in his renovated energies; and then this sanguine paroxysm was succeeded by a fit of depression so dark and dejected that nothing but the presence of oswald seemed to prevent coningsby from flinging himself into the waters of the darl.
the day was fast declining, and the inevitable moment of separation was at hand. oswald wished to appear at the dinner-table of hellingsley, that no suspicion might arise in the mind of his father of his having accompanied coningsby home. but just as he was beginning to mention the necessity of his departure, a flash of lightning seemed to transfix the heavens. the sky was very dark; though studded here and there with dingy spots. the young men sprang up at the same time.
‘we had better get out of these trees,’ said oswald.
‘we had better get to the castle,’ said coningsby.
a clap of thunder that seemed to make the park quake broke over their heads, followed by some thick drops. the castle was close at hand; oswald had avoided entering it; but the impending storm was so menacing that, hurried on by coningsby, he could make no resistance; and, in a few minutes, the companions were watching the tempest from the windows of a room in coningsby castle.
the fork-lightning flashed and scintillated from every quarter of the horizon: the thunder broke over the castle, as if the keep were rocking with artillery: amid the momentary pauses of the explosion, the rain was heard descending like dissolving water-spouts.
nor was this one of those transient tempests that often agitate the summer. time advanced, and its fierceness was little mitigated. sometimes there was a lull, though the violence of the rain never appeared to diminish; but then, as in some pitched fight between contending hosts, when the fervour of the field seems for a moment to allay, fresh squadrons arrive and renew the hottest strife, so a low moaning wind that was now at intervals faintly heard bore up a great reserve of electric vapour, that formed, as it were, into field in the space between the castle and hellingsley, and then discharged its violence on that fated district.
coningsby and oswald exchanged looks. ‘you must not think of going home at present, my dear fellow,’ said the first. ‘i am sure your father would not be displeased. there is not a being here who even knows you, and if they did, what then?’
the servant entered the room, and inquired whether the gentlemen were ready for dinner.
‘by all means; come, my dear millbank, i feel reckless as the tempest; let us drown our cares in wine!’
coningsby, in fact, was exhausted by all the agitation of the day, and all the harassing spectres of the future. he found wine a momentary solace. he ordered the servants away, and for a moment felt a degree of wild satisfaction in the company of the brother of edith.
thus they sat for a long time, talking only of one subject, and repeating almost the same things, yet both felt happier in being together. oswald had risen, and opening the window, examined the approaching night. the storm had lulled, though the rain still fell; in the west was a streak of light. in a quarter of an hour, he calculated on departing. as he was watching the wind he thought he heard the sound of wheels, which reminded him of coningsby’s promise to lend him a light carriage for his return.
they sat down once more; they had filled their glasses for the last time; to pledge to their faithful friendship, and the happiness of coningsby and edith; when the door of the room opened, and there appeared, mr. rigby!
