Mark Hurdlestone; Or, The Two Brothers. Susanna Moodie
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estimate of Squire Hurdlestone's powers of hating.
The arrival of Captain Wildegrave's widow in his immediate vicinity greatly enraged the old Squire; but as he possessed no power of denouncing women as traitors, he was obliged to content himself by pouring forth, on every occasion, the most ill-natured invectives against his poor unprotected neighbors.
He wondered at the impudence of the traitor Wildegrave's widow and daughter daring to lift up their heads among a loyal community, where her husband's conduct and his shameful death were but too well known. Alas! he know not how the lonely heart will pine for the old familiar haunts—how the sight of inanimate objects which have been loved in childhood will freshen into living greenness its desolate wastes. The sordid lover of gold, the eager aspirant for this world's trifling distinctions, feels nothing, knows nothing, of this.
Elinor Wildegrave, the only child of these unhappy parents, had just completed her seventeenth year, and might have formed a perfect model of youthful innocence and beauty. Her personal endowments were so remarkable, that they soon became the subject of conversation, alike in the halls of the wealthy and in the humble abodes of the poor. The village-gossips were not backward in mating the young heiress of sorrow with the richest and noblest in the land. Elinor was not unconscious of her personal attractions, but a natural delicacy of mind made her shrink from general admiration. Her mother's scanty income did not enable them to hire servants; and the work of the house devolved upon Elinor, who was too dutiful a child to suffer her ailing mother to assist her in these domestic labors. The lighter employments of sewing and knitting, her mother shared; and they were glad to increase their slender means by taking in plain work; which so completely occupied the young girl's time, that she was rarely seen abroad, excepting on Sundays, when she accompanied her mother to the parish church; and then, the loveliness which attracted such attention was always partially concealed by a large veil. Mark Hurdlestone's valet happened to meet the young lady returning home through the park without this envious appendage, and was so struck with her beauty, that he gave his young master an eloquent description of the angel he had seen.
"Believe me, sir, she is a mate for the King. If I were but a gentleman of fortune like you, I should feel proud to lay it at her feet."
Mark heard him with indifference. He had never felt the least tender emotion towards woman, whom he regarded as an inferior being, only formed to administer to the wants, and contribute to the pleasures, of man.
"Miss Wildegrave," he said, "might be a fine girl. But he could see no beauty in a woman whose father had died upon the scaffold, and who had no fortune. She and her mother were outcasts, who could no longer be received into genteel society."
The valet, with more taste than his master, shrugged up his shoulders, and answered with a significant smile: "Ah, sir! if we could but exchange situations."
A few days after this conversation, Mark Hurdlestone met Elinor Wildegrave by accident, and became deeply enamoured with the lovely orphan.
In spite of his blunt speech and misanthropic manners, the young heir of Oak Hall, at that period, was not wholly destitute of the art of pleasing. He was sensible and well-read. His figure was commanding, and his carriage good. His stern features were set off by the ruddy glow of health; and the brilliancy of his lip and eye, the dazzling whiteness of his small even teeth, and the rich masses of raven hair that curled in profusion round his high forehead, atoned in some measure for the disagreeable expression which at all times pervaded his remarkable countenance.
"The young Squire is certainly very handsome," said Elinor Wildegrave to her mother, the morning after their first meeting. "But there is something about him which I cannot like. His face is as stern and as cold as a marble statue's. I should think it would be impossible for that man to shed a tear, or be capable of feeling the least tender emotion."
"My dear Elinor, you judge too much by externals. These taciturn people are often possessed of the keenest sensibility."
"Ah! dearest mother, believe it not. 'From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.' I love not these silent people. The heart that is worn on the sleeve is better, and more to be trusted, than the heart that is concealed in a marble shell."
The human countenance never lies. If read aright, it always presents the real index of the mind. The first impression it makes upon a stranger is always the correct one. Pleasing manners and affable smiles may tend to weaken, nay, even to efface these first impressions, but they will invariably return, and experience will attest their truth.
In her first estimate of the Squire's character, formed from his physiognomy, Elinor was correct, for it was some time before she could reconcile herself to his harsh countenance; but her dislike gradually wore away, and she received his passing civilities with the pleasure which a young girl of her age invariably feels, when regarded with admiration by one so much her superior in rank and fortune.
His retired habits, which at the age of twenty-four his neighbors attributed more to pride than avarice, though in truth they arose from a mixture of both, invested him with a sort of mysterious interest. Elinor felt her vanity flattered by the belief that her charms had touched a heart hitherto invulnerable to female beauty. She was, indeed, his first love, and his last.
Elinor was too romantic to think of uniting herself to a man whom she could not love, for the sake of his wealth; and she prudently and honorably shunned the advances of her taciturn admirer. She knew that his father had been her father's implacable enemy; that all intimacy between the families had been strictly prohibited at the Hall; and when the heir of that noble demesne made their cottage a resting-place after the fatigues of hunting, and requested a draught of milk from her hands to allay his thirst, or a bunch of roses from her little flower plot to adorn his waistcoat, Elinor answered his demands with secret mistrust and terror; although, with the coquetry so natural to her sex, she could not hate him for the amiable weakness of regarding her with admiration.
Alas, poor Elinor! why sacrifice to this heartless vanity the peace and integrity of your mind; and for the sake of winning a smile, to which you attach no real value, unseal for ever the fountain of tears?
Avarice for a long time struggled with Mark Hurdlestone's growing passion for Elinor Wildegrave; nor could he prevail upon himself to ask the penniless daughter of an executed traitor to become his wife. He was too proud to brave the sneers of the world; too prudent to combat with his father's disappointed hopes and fierce anger. His fortune he knew would be large—but when is avarice satisfied? and he abandoned the first generous impulse he had ever felt, with the first sigh he had ever breathed.
He contented himself with wandering, day after day around the widow's dwelling, in the hope of catching a passing glance of the object of his idolatry, without incurring the danger of a personal interview, which might lead to an indiscreet avowal of the passion which consumed him, and place him in the power of his fair enslaver. He hovered around her path, and at church disturbed her devotions by never removing his eyes from her face; but the tale of his love remained untold, and was scarcely acknowledged even to himself.
This was the happiest period of Mark Hurdlestone's life. His passion for Elinor Wildegrave, though selfish and unrefined, was deep and sincere. He contemplated the beautiful and friendless girl, as in after years he viewed the gold in his coffers, as a secret treasure hid from the world, and only known to him.
From this dream he was at length aroused, by the sudden and unexpected appearance of his brother Algernon at the Hall. With quivering lips he congratulated him upon his return to his native land; exchanging with cold and nerveless grasp the warm pressure of his brother's hand, while he contemplated with envy and alarm the elegant person of the returned prodigal. From a boy, he had never loved Algernon; coveting with unnatural greed the property which would accrue to him, should it please Heaven to provide for his twin brother by taking him to itself. But when that brother stood before him in the pride and glory of manhood; with health glowing on his cheek, and beauty on his brow, he could scarcely conceal his envy; for he beheld in him a formidable, and, if seen by Elinor, in all probability a successful rival. Hatred took possession of his breast, and while he pronounced with his lips a chilling welcome, his mind, active in malice, had already planned his ruin. In the first joyous