University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

Farewell! farewell! that is a sad word at the best, and full of dark associations.
Even when in all fruition of the present, and high anticipation of the future, we leave
some spot where we have passed glad days; which is linked to our hearts by golden
memories; although perhaps we leave it at the suggestion of our own wishes, and for
the furtherance of our own interests, even then there is a sense of indistinct and undefinable
melancholy, that will o'ershadow us, clouding our joys, as it were in despite
of our reason, and mingling our hopes with regret. Even when friends part, light
hearted, and care-free, after some pleasant merry-making, some spirit-stirring revel, part
with the certainty—as if alas! aught that pertains to poor humanity can be called certain
of meeting to renew that sweet communion, now for a little space dissevered—after
a few brief months or weeks, or perhaps days, there is still in every sensitive and
thoughtful soul, a tender and prophetic gloom, a mellowed sadness, a sprinkling[1] of
that bitterness which, rising from the mid-fount of our pleasures, leaves a sting in the
veriest flowers of existence. What is it, then, to say “farewell” to the place of our
birth, to the home of our childhood, the cradle of our intellcet, the shrine of our affections,
the temple of our memories? to say “farewell,” when we go forth to cross wide
seas, and visit foreign climes; to exchange all the sweet and magical associations,
which belong not to any other word in our land's language as they do to that one—
“home”—all the familiarity of friends, all the deep love of kindred, for the cold heartless
stare of the great world, the chilling intercourse of strangers? what, when there is
no term set to our reluctant wanderings, when there is no time named, when we may
once again return to all we prize so far beyond all else that the earth circles—when
hope herself is silent of the future? I know not how it is, but it seems to me, to be
something more than the mere work of fancy; something more real than the imagining
of spirits depressed, and saddened, and rendered half poetical by sorrow—for sorrow is
a mighty wakener into life of whatsoever gems of the ideal lurk unsuspected in the
soul. I know not how it is—I say, that we never leave any place, which we have
loved and should regret hereafter; but some chance circumstances will occur, some
accidents, as painters call them, of light or shadow, or of the time of day, or of the
ever-varying seasons, to clothe it with a new and fresher beauty than it has ever worn
before; to make it put on a guise, rendering it far more difficult to quit without reluctance,
or to think of without regretful memories. At such times it would be a relief,
that the lovely scenes wherein our spirits have delighted, were veiled in the gray and
ghostly mists of dark November: that the trees which have budded green and fresh,
as our young hopes, were like them sere and cold and leafless; that the voice of the
joyous streamlet were bridled by the ice of winter; the brilliant gardens flowerless, the

happy warblers songless; but it is rarely so. We are for the most part torn from our
pleasures, when they are the sweetest; exiled from our homes, when they are loveliest.
And so it was now, to Mark Selby and his fair daughter. The gorgeous light of an
unclouded afternoon, at midsummer, was clothing the rich woods and grassy lawns in
a resplendent robe of golden glory—the air was alive and vocal with the hum of ten
thousand glittering insects, the gardens were one glow of roses, with myriads of light
butterflies fluttering round their perfumed petals—the streams were rippling with a soft
melody like woman's laughter. Earth, water, air, were redolent of mirth and beauty;
and as the slow and ponderous carriage which conveyed the old man and his daughter
from the place of their birth, rolled, as it were, reluctantly over the smoothly-gravelled
road, it seemed to Alice as if the grinding wheels were crushing out the joys, the hopes,
the very life of her young heart; yet gloriously she bore up, and subdued the almost
overwhelming sorrow; and though her sweet eyes swam with tears, and her voice faltered
as she spoke, she yet compelled herself to talk hopefully and almost gayly to the
depressed and spirit-broken man, who, utterly prostrated by the shock of this last great
calamity, sat by her side, with his gray head bowed upon his knees, and all his senses
for the moment paralyzed.

As they passed through the gates, and the old porter with his long white hair uncovered,
stood in the ivied porch of the brick lodge, his little grand-children, Alice's special
favorites, smiling, and curtseying at his side, while they held back the leaves of the
great gate; she almost thought that life could contain nothing more of pain or sorrow,
than she experienced in that passing moment. For who of us, even the wisest, can so
much as dream what is in store for him, save death alone, the one sure consequence—
the sole, immutable, inevitable offspring of the future? The trifling shock occasioned
by the turning of the cumbrous vehicle into the narrow lane, beyond the park gates,
aroused Mark Selby for a few seconds from his stupor; he looked about him with a
long wistful gaze, upon the calm green fields, and fine old trees among which he had
lived all his days, and grown up from the joyous prattling child, to whom the whole
world is but one happy present, to the frail bowed octogenarian, looking from a sad past
on to a sadder future. He gazed with a set meaningless eye on the gray moss-grown
roofs of his old home; he thought of her whom he had brought long years ago, a happy
bride, to fill those dim and silent halls with merriment and glee; who, after a few little
years, years that seemed in the retrospect as less than minutes, had left him more alone
than ever; whose very grave he never should see any more—he gazed, until a sudden
angle of the park wall, with the thick leafy elms above it, shut off the well-known prospect;
then, heaving a deep sigh, as if he was half refreshed—

“Alice,” he said, “it may be that you will see these again; God grant it! but, as for
me, I never shall behold them any more. I would have laid me down to my long sleep,
this weary turmoil ended, on the same bed and under the same roof which witnessed
the commencement of my pilgrimage—I would have slept it out beside her. Nevertheless,
not my will be done, but Thine,” he added, looking reverentially upward,
“who never chastenest us but for our own good—never forgettest any one, the humblest
of thy flock.”

But Alice could not answer him, nor speak at all, because in truth the very same
thought was passing through her own mind; and when her father echoed it in that prophetic
tone, which is so frequently adopted by the aged—especially, they who have
known many sorrows—she felt that it would be but a species of impiety to attempt
any consolation, much more to feign a disbelief, which he must know she did not entertain.
She looked up, however, with her soft gentle smile into his face, and made an
effort; but it was drowned instantly in an abundant flood of tears, the first to which she
had given way, that burst forth hot and heavy, yet seemed to relieve the overstrained
aching brain of some portion of its anguish.

“It must be so, my child,” resumed the old man, taking her hand in his tremulous
and withered fingers, “but do not weep for that. Sooner or later, it must still be so,
my own sweet Alice; how painful it may be soever for you to contemplate, we must

part, at some time or other, and in the course of nature. I shall set out the first upon
that journey which in His own good time I wait for. The old must pass away, and
leave their places to the young, even as the aged oak makes way for the fresh sapling,
or the old year expires to give birth to the new. Therefore it is, my girl, that while I
feel quite sure that I shall never again look upon these dear scenes, I have good trust
that you may return hither; and pass happy days, where you have given so much happines
to others. Nevertheless if it be ordered otherwise, we have, I trust, been too
well schooled to murmur, or to repine at that which is before us. The world has many
a varied scene, and every scene has its own beauty, every station its own phase of happiness.
It may be we shall find few landscapes in other lands, so lovely to our eyes as
these green fields and quiet trees; it must be that we shall find none so endeared to our
memories—but we shall yet have many joys, and much contentment, and above all, the
cheering confidence that we shall never be forsaken utterly, or burthened beyond our
power to bear. Do not weep, Alice; there may yet be much happiness in store, much
more perhaps, than you have known heretofore. One thing is nearly certain, to which
you must look forward with joyous expectation.

“Oh, say no more!” she exclaimed—“no more on that head, father, for I know but
too well what you mean; and I have no hope at all, no expectation—how should I,
when all is dark and bitter? and that the bitterest of all, to which we might have looked
for comfort. I mean that he, he of all men, should have betrayed us!”

“But that I do not in the least believe,” answered her father instantly, and with
much decision—“not in the least, Alice; it is against all probability—all nature.
Marmaduke Wyvil may be light-minded, trivial, fickle; but he cannot be—nay I am
sure he is not so heedless of the obligations of a most solemn oath: so wantonly base
and dishonest as to betray us without cause or purpose. No! set your mind at ease on
that score, Alice. I am an old man, and not wont to form opinions lightly, or when I
have formed such, to be mistaken; and I am sure, I was sure from the first, that there
is some mistake in this report of Henry's.”

“You make me happy,” answered poor Alice, “her whole face brightening up with
newly-kindled hope and animation. “Oh, father, you make me very, very happy!
And do you think that he is indeed true to us, faithful, and loyal, as we would wish him?
Oh! if you do think so, surely it was most wrong in me to doubt him.”

“Whether he love you as he ought to do, my child,” replied the old man—
“whether his fancy or his heart have ever swerved from you in absence—whether, in
short, he is worthy of such virtues as yours, Alice, I cannot tell. Although I do not
clearly see why he should not, yet I am confident he never wrote to Sir Edmund
Vavasour—to any third party, disclosing what he swore never to reveal! All the rest,
time will make certain; and in the meanwhile, I who am never sanguine, I tell you my
dear child to be hopeful.”

“But how can that be—how can that be?” exclaimed she, relapsing into doubt.
“Oh, no! you are too sanguine, father—for how should they know else where he lay
hid, much more the very trick and mode of his escape, when Henry searched the
house? a trick of which none living, save you, and I, and he, are cognizant? No,
father, no! Marmaduke Wyvil must have written—must have betrayed us! Wo is
me! he must!”

`He must have written, Alice, but not to Vavasour. He must, as you say, have
betrayed us; but it may very well be he wrote to one or the other of us two, and thus,
through very reckless inadvertency, but without any guilt, betrayed us. Nay, but I
am most sure that we shall find it to be thus.”

“I fear me much you are wrong,” answered the poor girl, “for I asked Henry
Chaloner if there had been no letters found on Bartram, addressed to either of us, and
he made answer, `None! none at least that I heard of;' and he went on to say that,
had there been such, he could hardly doubt that the lord general would have named
it in his dispatches.”

“Very like, Alice,” said he, promptly; “but I do not believe that Cromwell himself

had seen the letters. They were, it seems, immediately submitted to the council, and
by them laid before the parliament, and he wrote instantly to Chaloner, so to anticipate
the evil. For the whole world! my child, if I believed it possible that he should be
the traitor this would make him, I would not lead you to form hopes which a few days
would crush for ever; but I say, hope—hope Alice for the best; and sure I am you
will not be deceived. But see, here we have reached the cross-roads inn; and our
relay is waiting.”

The horses were soon changed, and here, as the men who had brought them, came
up to the coach door, cap in hand, to make their last adieus to their young mistress
before returning homeward, a fresh pang was awakened in a bosom that surely needed
no new agonies to rack it. The carriage once again rolled onward, and the blunt
honest faces, shaded by sincere grief, of those domestic friends, were lost to the eyes
of the mournful travellers, and no more words were spoken; father and daughter both
relapsing into gloomy silence. The sun soon set and darkness covered the skies, and
by and by the stars came out on high, and the moon rose, and shed her pure cold light
over the lonely wastes through which they journeyed. All night long they drove on,
slowly and wearily to spare their horses, pausing from time to time to water them at
some lone wayside public house, but hurrying through the marker towns and larger
villages, as if unwilling to awaken the attention of the country. A little while before
sunrise they reached a solitary inn, to which their second relay of horses had been
directed to proceed; and here Henry Chaloner, who up to this time had ridden some
distance in the rear, avoiding to intrude upon the sorrows of his friends, came up to
the carriage-window, and advised them to alight and repose themselves for some hours,
as they were now distant but twenty miles from Bristol, whither there could be no
advantage of arriving before nightfall. To this, Alice, who had at first objected, wishing
to get over the whole journey at once, assented; when Henry pointed out to her
that he wished, for the purpose of avoiding suspicion, to send an avant-courier to the
commandant of the garrison and port, who was well known to him, announcing his
arrival with two friends, who were about to sail for France under the sanction of the
lord general's sign manual.

“By doing this,” he said, “you will escape all disagreeable interference on the part
of town officers, and, it is like enough, some painful and impertinent interrogation.
Besides,” he added, “you cannot go on board before to-morrow night at all events, and
you will, I think, be quieter and therefore more at ease in this little country place, than
in the bustling seaport.”

This was unanswerable; and having once alighted, both Alice and her aged parent
found themselves so fatigued and harassed both in mind and body, that, after all, they
were not sorry to lie down and rest in the neat quiet bed-chambers of the little inn; nor
did either of them make their appearance until late in the afternoon, after Chaloner's
servant had returned from the town bearing the greetings of the commandant, and an
invitation for his brother officer, with his friends, to take up their abode in the castle,
until the ship should sail. Then they were summoned, and after a slight meal, partaken
of in almost total silence, with the exception of a short conversation respecting the
propriety of accepting or declining Colonel Millanke's invitation, which was decided
by a negative, they again set out upon their road; and the night falling shortly afterwards,
they entered the place of their destination before the moon was above the horizon,
and consequently without seeing any of the romantic scenery which surrounds that
prosperous city—a loss which did not seem, however, to be such to the anxious travellers,
and which in truth never so much as occurred to the mind of either. That night
they slept in Bristol, and oh! the anguish of awakening, in a strange place, from the
forgetfulness of happy sleep—of gradually recovering the consciousness of sorrow, of
that half doubtful state, in which the reason seems to waver, unable to believe, and yet
incapable of hope! Yet much has been written to no purpose, if any one, who has thus
far pursued her fortunes, is not aware that Alice Selby had by this time so perfectly
resigned herself to her lot, so far regained her self-possession and tranquility, that she

descended to the breakfast table and met her cousin, after one little struggle, arrayed
in smiles and able to converse on all topics connected with their situation with absolute
composure, and more, almost, than feminine decision. On her devolved all the arrangements
of their voyage; for, the excitement passed which had aroused her father for a
little space, he had fallen back into something even heavier and duller than his usual
abstraction; and it was sometimes not without difficulty that his attention could be
called to the present, strongly enough to give an answer to an immediate question.
Chaloner lent his aid, however; and before evening all their baggage, with the addition
of their carriage and six horses—for these Henry advised her strenuously to take with
her—were safely got on board; passports provided, sea stores laid in, and all things put
in train for their departure at an early hour on the morrow.

Once in France, it had been determined between Alice and her cousin, that they
should remain at Boulogne Sur Mer, writing thence to announce what had befallen
them to all their friends in Paris, among whom was a certain Marquise de Gondi, a
half sister of Alice Selby's mother—born in a second marriage of her grandfather
with a French lady—who had espoused a french nobleman of wealth and distinction,
and, early left a widow, had continued to reside in the metropolis of France, maintaining
always a frequent and most cordial correspondence with her English relatives.

“Were I you, Alice,” said Chaloner, continuing a conversation which had engaged
them for the greater part of the evening, “for I can see that all arrangements will
depend on your suggestions to your father, I would not move from Boulogne for some
time—not certainly until you hear from me, and receive the amount of your father's
autumn rental; the rest of your wardrobe, with the books you mentioned to me, and
whatever else I may deem needful to you, I will remit forthwith; and when I can find
aught to tell you, I will write, Alice, and you will answer me?”

“Surely I will,” said Alice, “and I beseech you to write to me often; for I shall
ever yearn to hear from Woolverton. But why should we not go at once to Paris? I
am sure Madame de Gondi will be anxious to receive us.”

`I am sure she will, Alice, too; yet I advise you strongly not to go as yet. The court is
exiled from the city, living at present, as I learned by the last dispatches at Pontoise—a
furious civil war is raging in all the Isle of France, in many parts of Champagne, in Bries,
and all the country thence to the Flemish frontier. Monsieur Turenne, it is true, beat
the princes in a great battle under the walls of Paris on the second of last month, and
would have crushed their party utterly, but that the factious citizens admitted the rebels,
by the gate of St. Antoine, and played the cannon of the Bastile on the king's forces;
but we hear that the Spaniards have retaken all the strong places they had lost in Flanders
and elsewhere, and that the Archduke of Lorraine has again entered France with five-and-twenty
thousand men, and is in full march on the capital, hoping there to effect a
junction with the Prince of Conde. So you perceive, that were you to reach Paris
now, you would be in the midst of hostile armies; and moreover, Madame de Gondi
being of the royal party, and all the English cavaliers who have escaped since Worcester
being engaged on the king's side, you might be possibly exposed to violence
from the Frondists, who are strong in the metropolis; and, what is worse, news would
be likely to reach England, that your father was bestirring himself in French politics;
and, though we know that to be quite impossible, yet in such times as these, no rumors
are too wild for credence.”

“Oh, Heaven!” said Alice; “and is our lot to be cast once more in the midst of
warring armies? Is there to be no more place upon earth for ever, but civil wars, and
blood, and parricidal slaughters? kings trampling on the liberty of subjects, and subjects
impiously armed against the majesty of kings, and sanguinary selfish soldiers lashing
both on to wilder madness prompted by foul self-interst? Is this to be the history of
the world heaceforth for ever, Henry? for if it be so, I care not how soon I may be
where I shall see no more of it.”

“He only can reply to you,” said Henry, gravely, “to whom all things are known.
It may not be denied, however, that matters do look strangely, the world over. The

people, everywhere, having asserted and regained those rights, which of a certainty were
threatened but a little while ago, seem set at present on pulling down the rights of
others. How it may end I know not; but I confess for one, my confidence is shaken
altogether in the self-governing power of the people: they do not possess equity, honesty,
self knowledge, self-respect, or self-control. I hope and pray, but I doubt, Alice, of the
future. In France, I believe, however, this civil strife is nearly ended; and that soon,
for a season, peace will be established. Turenne has marched against the archauke
and, as a soldier, I have little doubt he will beat him. The Cardinal Mazarin, whose
favor with the queen-mother was the chief cause of disaffection, has withdrawn himself
into voluntary exile; and altogether I am well of opinion, that before two months shall
pass, all will again be quiet and the court firmly settled in the Louvre. By that time
you will, if you adopt my plan of remaining at Boulogne, have secured all your remittances
and wardrobe; you will have gained full information concerning this bad business,
of which as yet we know so little; and then, if no change shall have occurred permitting
you to return home, you can remove to Paris. Should the marquise solicit your immediate
progress to the capital, I think the state of the countries and the vicinity of the
armies will be excuse sufficient.”

“Oh yes, indeed it will,” said Alice: “I would not be again within reach of such
occurrences as followed Worcester, for all the wealth of France. I will persuade my
father to adopt your plans implicitly, and shall hope to hear tidings of all my friends,
both great and humble, at your hands very often.”

“You shall, you shall indeed,” he answered; “and you must not be very much
surprised if you were to see me before very long. There is some talk of sending a fresh
envoy to the Hague, and I have been entreated to accept the duty. As yet I know not
how it will all end. But it is growing late already; and, as you must rise betimes
to-morrow, I will now take my leave. Good rest to you, my gentle cousin.”

The morning followed soon—the cold, gray, melancholy morning; and the sad exiles
bade farewell to their last friend, and went on board the ship, with its foretopsail set,
and sailing signals flying, but waited their arrival to get under weigh. To those who
have parted from their native lands, words are unnecessary to recall the cold dull stunning
agony which paralyzed their very souls, as these beloved shores, never perhaps to
bless any more the straining eyes that watch them to the last, faded in the far distance:
to those who know not that dread trial, no words could paint it; but may they never
know it! The wind, though fair, was fresh; and as the good ship left the harbor it
freshened more and more, and the vessel rolled and pitched; and it was well perhaps
for Alice, that for a time corporeal sufferings effaced the anguish of her spirit; and that
no room was given her for contemplation of the past, or imagination for the future, until,
a boisterous but rapid passage ended they lay in safety at the pier-head of Boulogne—
and then new scenes, new hopes, new fears, and all the keen excitement consequent on
the first sight of a new country!