Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar - Anonymous - Страница 50

For some four or five weeks after this Peace was busily engaged in executing the orders he had received from people of almost every denomination. It was evident enough that he did not intend to shift his quarters for some time, as orders were falling in pretty fast, and he had promised Bricket to regild his frames before he left the village.

Lord Ethalwood returned to Broxbridge Hall. Before introducing him to the reader, we must, for the purpose of our history, give a brief chronicle of past events. He had the reputation of being proud and haughty to a fault. Austere and inflexible as he was in outward appearance, he was not deficient in the softer and more tender promptings of the heart; but he was proud—​this fact his best friends could not deny, and therein, perhaps, lay the secret of all his trials and troubles.

He was proud of his name, of his lineage, of his unsullied honour, proud of the repute in which he was held, of his high standing in the county.

As a river gathers force and strength from every tributary stream, so he made every gift heaven had bestowed upon him tributary to his pride.

It was a grand old place he owned, in the county in which he was born. Broxbridge Hall had everything to recommend it. Situated on the summit of a hill, with acres and acres of land spreading out on all sides, fine old woods, fertile land, through which a silver stream wound its sinuous course, and a house of the old Elizabethan type, together with a princely income. Nevertheless this man was not happy.

Nay more, he was supremely wretched.

No wonder a shadow had crossed over his house—​a shadow deep and sinister.

The misfortunes that had befallen him and his were, to a certain extent, attributable to circumstances beyond his control; but he had added to these misfortunes by his own indomitable pride.

People, in speaking of him, said he was just and generous, but very proud.

He was a rigid observer of class distinctions. He paid all persons the honour due to them, and he expected the same in return.

“The Ethalwoods came in with the Conqueror,” he would say. “Had fate ordained them to be kings, they would have known how to reign. Old as the line is, there is not a blot on the escutcheon. No Ethalwood ever forfeited his honour.”

It is an axiom as old as the hills—​much older, it may be, than the honoured line of the Ethalwoods—​that pride must have a fall.

Never, surely, was the truth of this more terribly exemplified than in the life of the nobleman now immediately under our notice.

Bertram Lord Ethalwood, married a young creature of surpassing beauty. She was nobly born, but vivacious and volatile. She bore him three children—​two sons and one daughter.

The first blow that fell upon our nobleman—​a blow which fell upon him “even as a flail falls upon the garnered grain”—​was the elopement of his wife with an officer attached to the Indian army.

The injured husband did not show externally any signs of the sorrow which weighed so heavily on his heart. He sued for a divorce, which he obtained without opposition.

His wife, shortly after this, died in Calcutta. It was a relief to him when he was apprised of her death.

He did not marry again, but he loved his daughter and was proud of his sons. His children were the delight of his heart—​the very light and brightness of his home was his daughter.

A beautiful, gay, high-spirited girl, who had all the Ethalwood spirit with its attendant pride. Her father literally worshipped her; he watched her beauty as it developed day by day; he pleased himself by fondly imagining what a glorious future was before her.

He could not bear to part with her, and would not upon any consideration be persuaded to send her from home.

He had governesses and masters for her—​he did his best to ensure her a good education at home, but it was, perhaps, the most imprudent thing he could possibly do. He made no allowance for girlish gaiety or exuberance of spirits, and the result of this was that the girl began to look upon her home as a sort of prison.

She loved her father, had the greatest respect for his character, but still at the same time she looked upon him as a sort of gaoler, and gloried in evading his rules.

Her brothers she did not see a very great deal of. They spent very little time at Broxbridge Hall; they went to Eton and from thence to Oxford, and were principally under the charge of tutors.

Lord Ethalwood had impressed upon them in a most marked manner the nobility of their race and the obligation they were under to keep their name unsullied and honour unstained; he left the rest to their teachers.

The name of Lady Ethalwood no one in the household durst mention; his lordship had given orders to that effect. Even his sons and daughter never once alluded to their dead mother.

Whatever they knew or had heard about her they had the prudence to keep to themselves.

The years flew by and the Honourable Miss Ethalwood was approaching her eighteenth summer, and her father was looking forward to the time when she would be presented at Court and take her place among the ladies of the fashionable world.

He almost dreaded this ordeal, for he felt that she would, as a natural consequence, become hurried on into a vortex of pleasure, and be constrained to keep up an incessant round of visits; but a greater evil, a more serious estrangement, was destined to take place before the dreaded time arrived.

When his lordship took up his quarters in his town residence he left his daughter at the old ancestral home, where, during his absence, she reigned supreme. This just suited her, for, like her father, she was immensely fond of having her own way.

With all his intellect and acquirements, how blind was the haughty nobleman to the common affairs of life—​how little did he reckon upon the danger which beset his daughter’s path at this time!

An Italian professor taught her music and singing. He was, as many Italians are, a remarkably handsome young man, and he had a voice which was simply magnificent.

Bending over the piano, and turning over the leaves of the music, he had ample opportunity afforded him of coming in close contact with his fair pupil.

His visits—​or lessons would be the more correct term—​were much more frequent during his lordship’s absence than they were when he was residing at Broxbridge; even the servants could not help noticing this.

A thought came into the head of the music-master—​indeed, it had been there for a very long time; it was this—

“What a grand future I shall make for myself,” he murmured, “if I woo and win the Honourable Miss Ethalwood!”

To do the Italian professor justice, he was really not actuated by mercenary motives. He had conceived a passion for his pupil, and, as a natural consequence, she became aware of this without his uttering a word relative to so important a subject.

The professor had all the qualities to captivate one of the opposite sex.

He was light-hearted, animated, had no inconsiderable amount of passionate eloquence, and was, in short, a very dangerous man to hover about a thoughtless and inexperienced girl.

The Honourable Miss Ethalwood inherited much of her father’s pride, but that was not much protection when her heart was touched.

In a very short time she became infatuated with the handsome young Italian.

To make use of a common phrase, she was over head and heels in love, or, as Mr. Artemus Ward would say, “I cannot tell you how muchly she loved him.”

Meanwhile, while all this was going on, Lord Ethalwood had not the faintest notion of the coming storm, and even if a suspicion had crossed his mind he would have dismissed it, for it would have seemed as probable to him that his daughter would fall in love with one of his grooms as with her music-master.

He returned to Broxbridge Hall, and demonstrated all his old fondness for his daughter, and did not observe at this time that her manner was at times constrained.

The professor’s visits were now few and far between, but the love between the two grew stronger—​the Italian grew bolder—​he asked his fair pupil to meet him at an appointed spot in the neighbourhood.

She foolishly consented, and on one occasion when her ardent admirer told her in passionate accents how dearly he loved her she owned that the feeling was reciprocal.

It is not easy to determine whether it was love or ambition that prompted the Italian to make the declaration—​it might be both.

It was, however, a base betrayal of trust and a cruel fraud—​a most unpardonable deception, a most dishonourable deed.

They plighted their troth. The professor asked the young lady to broach the question to her father.

She drew back a pace or two, and exclaimed—

“Mention it to my father! You must be mad to make such a proposition.”

“He would never consent?”

“Consent! He would die first. Oh, you do not know him.”

The Italian shrugged his shoulders, and looked on the ground in a desponding manner.

The lovers parted.

A day or two after this the Italian went to Broxbridge Hall for the purpose of giving his usual lesson. He met his lordship in the passage, who bowed stiffly and passed on.

“Can he suspect anything?” murmured the professor, “or is it the natural pride which all the English aristocracy have, more or less? Ah, she’s right enough! It will never do to mention the subject to him. Ha, ha, we must elope!”

He told his pupil of the meeting, and informed her also that her parent was stiff and haughty in his manner.

“That is not unusual with him,” she answered. “It’s his way. Do not take any notice of it.”

“Does he suspect aught?”

“No. Oh, dear no!”

While this love-making had been going on there was one in the house who had her own private reasons for suspecting something was amiss—​this was the housekeeper in the establishment.

She was under the impression that a little harmless flirtation was taking place, but she had no idea of its nature or extent. Had she been aware of this, in all likelihood she would have mentioned the subject to her young mistress or his lordship.

She, however, deemed it expedient, for divers reasons, to remain silent.

The very last person in the whole establishment to suspect the state of affairs was the master of Broxbridge.

He had unlimited faith in the integrity of his daughter, and, indeed, to say the truth, there was not much excuse to be made for her, save that she was charmed with her lover’s handsome person, his musical voice, his fascinating and engaging manners. She was infatuated—​so much so, indeed, as to be heedless of the great wrong she was doing, but she had now gone too far to retract.

She consented to elope with her music-master, who had repeatedly suggested a clandestine marriage.

She persuaded herself that he was a gentleman, although a poor one. He was an artist, a man of polished manners, and equal in many ways to her father’s friends and companions—​in some respects he was their superior.

Poor, giddy, thoughtless girl, she knew but little of the world. Had she mixed more in society she would have hesitated before she took the first false step which led to untold misery both to her and hers.

The end came. She stole one afternoon from the time-honoured walls of Broxbridge, and eloped with Signor Montini.

It would be impossible to describe the despair of Lord Ethalwood when he heard of his daughter’s flight. He was frantic for a time, after which he was preternaturally calm; but a storm raged within more terrible than any sudden burst of passion. She had written to him avowing her love for Montini, and informing him at the same time that she took it for granted he would never give his consent. Hence it was she had consented to a clandestine marriage. She implored him to forgive her, to pity and pardon her for her disobedience.

No member of the old Inquisition could have looked more relentless and spectral than did the lord of Broxbridge when he read this epistle.

“She has passed from me, even as did her mother,” he ejaculated, in a low deep whisper. “Even as did her mother,” he repeated, like the burthen of a song. “Fool that I was, I never counted on this blow.”

He took an oath never to look upon her face again. Dear as she had been to him, he was resolved upon thinking only of her as one dead.

This terrible oath he kept unbroken.

He knew but little of Montini, and, strange to say, he was not so embittered against him as might have been supposed. The full measure of his wrath fell upon the head of his undutiful thankless daughter. His love for her had changed to the most deadly hate, which neither time nor circumstances would change.

He was relentless. As far as he was concerned, the noble sentiments conveyed in the words of a celebrated poet, “To err is human; to forgive, divine,” never for a moment passed through his mind.

She had brought disgrace upon him. She had sullied the name of Ethalwood by running away with a low-born foreigner, a miserable teacher. The thought was agony. He never would acknowledge her—​never more.

It was something fearful to witness the inexorable determination of the injured and unforgiving father, who never for a moment reflected that he was in some measure responsible for the misfortune which had befallen him. Had he been less exacting, given her a wider sphere of action, the chances would have been she would not have been forced into the error which brought with it so much misery.