The Disowned — Complete. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
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thunder or the cloud.”
Isabel was one of the least selfish and most devoted of human beings, yet she must be forgiven if at that moment her resolution faltered, and the overpowering thought of being in reality his forever flashed upon her mind. It passed from her the moment it was formed; and, rising from a situation in which the touch of that dear hand and the breath of those wooing lips endangered the virtue and weakened the strength of her resolves, she withdrew herself from his grasp, and while she averted her eyes, which dared not encounter his, she said in a low but firm voice,—
“It is in vain, Algernon; it is in vain. I can be to you nothing but a blight or burden, nothing but a source of privation and anguish. Think you that I will be this?—no, I will not darken your fair hopes and impede your reasonable ambition. Go (and here her voice faltered for a moment, but soon recovered its tone), go, Algernon, dear Algernon; and if my foolish heart will not ask you to think of me no more, I can at least implore you to think of me only as one who would die rather than cost you a moment of that poverty and debasement, the bitterness of which she has felt herself, and who for that very reason tears herself away from you forever.”
“Stay, Isabel, stay!” cried Mordaunt, as he caught hold of her robe, “give me but one word more, and you shall leave me. Say that if I can create for myself a new source of independence; if I can carve out a road where the ambition you erroneously impute to me can be gratified, as well as the more moderate wishes our station has made natural to us to form,—say, that if I do this, I may permit myself to hope,—say, that when I have done it, I may claim you as my own!”
Isabel paused, and turned once more her face towards his own. Her lips moved, and though the words died within her heart, yet Mordaunt read well their import in the blushing cheek and the heaving bosom, and the lips which one ray of hope and comfort was sufficient to kindle into smiles. He gazed, and all obstacles, all difficulties, disappeared; the gulf of time seemed passed, and he felt as if already he had earned and won his reward.
He approached her yet nearer; one kiss on those lips, one pressure of that thrilling hand, one long, last embrace of that shrinking and trembling form,—and then, as the door closed upon his view, he felt that the sunshine of Nature had passed away, and that in the midst of the laughing and peopled earth he stood in darkness and alone.
CHAPTER XI
He who would know mankind must be at home with all men.
We left Clarence safely deposited in his little lodgings. Whether from the heat of his apartment or the restlessness a migration of beds produces in certain constitutions, his slumbers on the first night of his arrival were disturbed and brief. He rose early and descended to the parlour; Mr. de Warens, the nobly appellatived foot-boy, was laying the breakfast-cloth. From three painted shelves which constituted the library of “Copperas Bower,” as its owners gracefully called their habitation, Clarence took down a book very prettily bound; it was “Poems by a Nobleman.” No sooner had he read two pages than he did exactly what the reader would have done, and restored the volume respectfully to its place. He then drew his chair towards the window, and wistfully eyed sundry ancient nursery maids, who were leading their infant charges to the “fresh fields and pastures new” of what is now the Regent’s Park.
In about an hour Mrs. Copperas descended, and mutual compliments were exchanged; to her succeeded Mr. Copperas, who was well scolded for his laziness: and to them, Master Adolphus Copperas, who was also chidingly termed a naughty darling for the same offence. Now then Mrs. Copperas prepared the tea, which she did in the approved method adopted by all ladies to whom economy is dearer than renown, namely, the least possible quantity of the soi-disant Chinese plant was first sprinkled by the least possible quantity of hot water; after this mixture had become as black and as bitter as it could possibly be without any adjunct from the apothecary’s skill, it was suddenly drenched with a copious diffusion, and as suddenly poured forth—weak, washy, and abominable,—into four cups, severally appertaining unto the four partakers of the matutinal nectar.
Then the conversation began to flow. Mrs. Copperas was a fine lady, and a sentimentalist,—very observant of the little niceties of phrase and manner. Mr. Copperas was a stock-jobber and a wit,—loved a good hit in each capacity; was very round, very short, and very much like a John Dory; and saw in the features and mind of the little Copperas the exact representative of himself.
“Adolphus, my love,” said Mrs. Copperas, “mind what I told you, and sit upright. Mr. Linden, will you allow me to cut you a leetle piece of this roll?”
“Thank you,” said Clarence, “I will trouble you rather for the whole of it.”
Conceive Mrs. Copperas’s dismay! From that moment she saw herself eaten out of house and home; besides, as she afterwards observed to her friend Miss Barbara York, the “vulgarity of such an amazing appetite!”
“Any commands in the city, Mr. Linden?” asked the husband; “a coach will pass by our door in a few minutes,—must be on ‘Change in half an hour. Come, my love, another cup of tea; make haste; I have scarcely a moment to take my fare for the inside, before coachee takes his for the outside. Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Linden.”
“Lord, Mr. Copperas,” said his helpmate, “how can you be so silly? setting such an example to your son, too; never mind him, Adolphus, my love; fie, child! a’n’t you ashamed of yourself? never put the spoon in your cup till you have done tea: I must really send you to school to learn manners. We have a very pretty little collection of books here, Mr. Linden, if you would like to read an hour or two after breakfast,—child, take your hands out of your pockets,—all the best English classics I believe,—‘Telemachus,’ and Young’s ‘Night Thoughts,’ and ‘Joseph Andrews,’ and the ‘Spectator,’ and Pope’s Iliad, and Creech’s Lucretius; but you will look over them yourself! This is Liberty Hall, as well as Copperas Bower, Mr. Linden!”
“Well, my love,” said the stock-jobber, “I believe I must be off. Here Tom,” Tom (Mr. de Warens had just entered the room with some more hot water, to weaken still further “the poor remains of what was once”—the tea!), “Tom, just run out and stop the coach; it will be by in five minutes.”
“Have not I prayed and besought you, many and many a time, Mr. Copperas,” said the lady, rebukingly, “not to call De Warens by his Christian name? Don’t you know that all people in genteel life, who only keep one servant, invariably call him by his surname, as if he were the butler, you know?”
“Now, that is too good, my love,” said Copperas. “I will call poor Tom by any surname you please, but I really can’t pass him off for a butler! Ha—ha—ha—you must excuse me there, my love!”
“And pray, why not, Mr. Copperas? I have known many a butler bungle more at a cork than he does; and pray tell me who did you ever see wait better at dinner?”
“He wait at dinner, my love! it is not he who waits.”
“Who then, Mr. Copperas?”
“Why we, my love; it’s we who wait for dinner; but that’s the cook’s fault, not his.”
“Pshaw! Mr. Copperas; Adolphus, my love, sit upright, darling.”
Here De Warens cried from the bottom of the stairs,—“Measter, the coach be coming up.”
“There won’t be room for it to turn then,” said the facetious Mr. Copperas, looking round the apartment as if he took the words literally.
“What coach is it, boy?”
Now that was not the age in which coaches scoured the city every half hour, and Mr. Copperas knew the name of the coach as well as he knew his own.
“It be the Swallow coach, sir.”
“Oh, very well: then since I have swallowed in the roll, I will now roll in the Swallow—ha—ha—ha! Good-by, Mr. Linden.”
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