Chapter XXIII: Failure

Our conversation on that eventful day was not half ended--I mean that I longed to ask Norah a great deal more about her engagement, or rather her affection, for Sir Alfred, when we were startled by the arrival of a telegram, which Mrs. Mordaunt brought up to my room for Norah. It was dated from Chandos Mount, and contained these words:

“_Come home immediately, your father is dangerously ill._”

Poor Norah, I well knew the deep and all-absorbing affection she had for her father, and could read the anxious misery her quivering lips and tearless eyes expressed as she hastily bade me good-bye. She was too eager to be off, and too anxious to allow herself the relief of tears. Her whole being was in a state of suspense--prayerful suspense, I saw plainly. She promised to let me hear of his state, and, with marvellously unselfish thought, she suggested to Mrs. Mordaunt to take me to the house Mr. Mordaunt had engaged, as the change might be of use, now that I was fast recovering my strength.

So I was removed to the Regent’s Park, and the day after our arrival there Sir Alfred Rivers called, and hearing that Mrs. Mordaunt was out, begged to be allowed to see me. When I heard he was downstairs, I determined to carry out the resolution I had made during the conversation with Norah. I would give him up--yes, most certainly I would--and endeavour to re-awaken his love for that beautiful and most perfect girl. So I went downstairs, half triumphing in the feeling of unselfishness which prompted me, and half regretful at the greatness of the sacrifice--for I loved him still! But I was still too prone to evil. I had no strength to pursue the narrow and thorny path which led to peaceful and eternal happiness.

The fascination of his words, his looks, counteracted the blessed influence that Norah had exercised over me, and before many minutes had passed in his presence, I found myself re-engaged to him! Norah’s love, her devotion to me during my long illness--all was forgotten. I seemed to live only for the present, in my wild adoration for Sir Alfred. Every other thought and recollection was swept away. I felt only a kind of joyful exultation in being thus bound, and in giving up all my resolutions of self-sacrifice.

The next few days and sleepless nights were passed in this kind of unnatural and fatal excitement, and then came a strange and sudden reverse. I afterwards learnt that something of the same kind of reckless forgetfulness of his former love, and best and highest intentions, had possessed Sir Alfred, but the effect with him was in some respects more fatal.

The season was now over; he had more unoccupied time, and he played so deeply every night and lost such large sums--unknown to me--that total ruin ensued. Part of his property was strictly entailed, but he had exhausted all resources, so that four days after our engagement he was compelled suddenly to leave England.

That very morning I had expected him to come earlier than usual, for we had arranged to spend the day at Richmond. I had my bonnet on, the carriage was at the door, and I was eagerly awaiting his arrival, when Mr. Mordaunt came into the drawing-room with a thunder-cloud on his face, and handed me a note in Sir Alfred’s well-known writing, while he broke forth into a torrent of invective against his nephew. This violent abuse betrayed to me, even before I was able to read the note, that he had fully expected this. He declared that he was certain his wife was wrong when she mentioned that his love for me would reform him.

“I knew he ought to have kept his engagement,” he continued, “to that poor Norah. It is owing to his self-reproach at having forsaken her that he has risked all his remaining fortune. There, Miss Vivian, you may thank yourself for this boy’s ruin and your own loss; for Lady Horatia told us that the Marquis of Lorrington wished to marry you.”

I had some difficulty in reading the blotted lines of this unfortunate note, and the angry clamour Mr. Mordaunt kept up did not assist my efforts to decipher it.

I was so stunned by the unexpected blow that I could only take in that he was gone, obliged to fly from his numerous creditors; but why, oh! why could he not have permitted me to accompany him in his flight! This was the wild and sinful thought that came uppermost. “He could not love me with the all-absorbing devotion I felt for him--impossible!” I thought.

I was hastening from the room, with the perverse intention of shutting myself up in despair, of locking the door of my own room as I had done in both the fits of utter wretchedness into which I had before fallen, when the humiliating thought flashed into my mind that I had no home, that I was only a visitor in Mr. Mordaunt’s house, and that he was (as I afterwards saw) justly annoyed with me for helping largely to ruin his nephew.

I must leave his house at once; and where was I to go? The perplexity of my strange situation seemed to paralyse all my faculties, and I sank down into a chair with a feeling of utter helplessness.

“I must go to my mother; I have no home in England,” I sobbed.

“No, no, not yet; you are not fit to travel such a long distance; besides, I have just heard that Miss Stanway is expected in England, if she has not yet arrived, and I know she wants to see you. In fact, I believe she hastened home on purpose, from some reports she had heard about you.”

Aunt Jane! how could I bear to see her clear searching eyes, to be looked through and through in the perverse state of mind in which I had lived for many months.

“Oh, I cannot see her!” I exclaimed, as I covered my face with my hands, as if to hide it from every eye, and, above all, from hers.

“Not see her? What a silly girl! Why, she is the person of all others to advise you best; why, you used to love Aunt Jane better than you did any of us. And, by Jove! I verily believe that she is at the door,” he added, as he looked out at the window. “Yes, there’s the same old brown bonnet and shawl!”

Oh! what a vision of lost peace and happiness did the recollection of this old brown bonnet and shawl produce.

The associations called up by it already seemed to give me some degree of peace. Mr. Mordaunt had rushed downstairs, and in a few moments I felt that Aunt Jane’s arms were round my neck, although I still continued to cover my face with my hands.

She did not attempt to draw them away, nor did she speak, but she softly kissed my forehead, and stroked my head, with that mesmeric touch of peace which some few favoured mortals have the wondrous power to give.

But pride and perversity had a sharp battle in my breast before I withdrew my hands and ventured to look up at Aunt Jane’s anxious face.

It had a more anxious and severe expression than I thought it was capable of wearing; but after a few moments her countenance somewhat cleared, and she said,

“Poor child! she must still have much to suffer!--there will be a long battle; but I will not desert you again--you shall remain with me now till you can become happy. I will take her away, Mr. Mordaunt--she shall go with me to Roland Grange; but that fatal engagement she has made with Sir Alfred must be quite given up.”

“_He_ seems to have given it up,” I exclaimed, with a kind of savage bitterness which made Aunt Jane start. “Look, look at his letter. He only expresses regret--there, read his letter--he says nothing of hope--he evidently does not look forward--does not express any wish ever to see me again.”

“So much the better,” said Aunt Jane, in a more severe tone than I thought she could ever assume. “You fully deserve this, for I learn that you actually accepted him after you knew of his former engagement to your best and kindest friend.”

After reading the letter I had given her, with the same determined and severe look, she placed ink and paper before me, and, putting a pen into my trembling hand, said, in a voice of strange authority,

“Write, write, and tell him that his fancied engagement to you was quite a mistake--that you entirely release him, in case he might possibly have any intention of regarding it as serious. In fact, by his letter, he does not seem to do so. It was a passing fancy, and he resolved to have the triumph of captivating a girl who had refused the greatest _parti_ of the day.”

I wrote the words she dictated, though my anger was fearfully excited. I wrote it through with burning, tearless eyes. The bell was rung, and the letter was despatched to the post. Then I felt as if I had received a sudden blow, which deprived me of reason; the room seemed to be turning round. Aunt Jane’s face, the blotting-book, all swam in a confused jumble before my eyes, and I became quite insensible.