55. LV.
WHAT THE PACKAGE TORN BY THE BEAR CONTAINED.
A FEW months afterward, Edith Powys had become
my wife:—my father and mother were
both dead:—I was the head of the house,
though I had not reached my majority.”
The Earl paused as he uttered these words, and a deep
sigh issued from the depths of his heart. These memories
evidently agitated him profoundly—but controlling his
emotion, he continued his narrative.
“I shall not pause to speak of the grief I experienced at
the loss of my parents—upon that subject I do not like to
say anything. I shall confine my attention to the events
which I wish to relate. The explanation of my marriage
will not be either difficult or lengthy. From the day on
which I held the angry interview with Sir William Powys,
the relations between himself, and his son and daughter,
had greatly changed. A mutual coldness sprung up. The
father regarded the daughter as a rebel against his authority—an
unworthy scion of the house of Powys. The daughter—with
what justice you must decide—considered her
father harsh and unjust. The insults which he had heaped
upon an unoffending gentleman, aroused her nice sense of
fairness and justice, and his coldness toward herself revolted
her pride and self-respect; in a word, the family at Powys
Court were divided, and marshalled on opposite sides.
Arthur sided with his sister. He was never, in the remotest
degree, discourteous to his father; but a thousand trifling
incidents indicated his opinion of the amount of blame attaching
to each. Under this household discord, the baronet
writhed vainly. There was nothing to find fault with, no
disrespect ever was shown him, much less any disobedience;
his orders and requests were all sedulously complied with,
and no word of complaint was uttered. But the skeleton
was there. In the eyes of the young man and his sister,
the knight read as plainly as in a printed book, changed
feeling, coolness, the revolt against injustice. The baronet
endured it in wrathful silence—but he endured it. It broke
the health of his daughter. She could not preserve her
feeling toward her father without bleeding inwardly—her
cheek became paler and paler—she grew ill. Then she did
not rise from her couch, and the tragedy approached its
catastrophe. The baronet went to see her one morning,
and she threw her arms around his neck, and burst into
tears. She could not go on feeling thus toward him, she
said: it would kill her; she loved him more than her life;
he was her own dear father, and she had been sinful—Then
her voice was choked with sobs. All the tenderness so
long pent up in the heart of the baronet responded. He
took the girl to his heart, gazed with apprehension upon
her white worn cheeks, and groaned aloud. An hour afterward
he had passed through the great struggle between his
affection and his pride. He came to Denton and begged
me to pardon his harsh words. Would I ride back to
Powys Court with him? He set his teeth close as he
spoke, and breathed heavily.
“I need scarcely say that I acceded to the invitation.
The weeks which had elapsed, had nearly killed me—my
health and strength were gone—I was the mere shadow of
myself. The loss of Edith had nearly broken my heart, and
I moped like an octogenarian. Thus I had no pride to oppose
to the baronet. I think my face flushed with delight.
His horse scarcely kept up with my own as we rode toward
Powys Court.
“I did not see Edith, of course, but I saw Arthur. He
dined with us; and I could read in his frank face the happiness
he felt at the event of the morning. The baronet was
sedulously courteous and attentive to me during dinner, and
we sat long at the table, drinking wine and talking on a
variety of topics. We both understood that the whole scene
was a piece of acting—but when two men desire mutually to
carry on a drama, there is no failure in the dialogue or the
gesture. I knew that the obdurate father had relented; that
he intended Arthur to relate everything to Edith; and he
doubtless knew that I rated his sudden courtesy at its just
value, and comprehended its design. When I left the house,
I had promised to return in a few days. When I again
entered the old hall, I was told that Edith awaited me in
the drawing-room. Arthur handed me a paper as he said
this, smiling; and I read the words:
“'I consent that Viscount Fairfax shall proceed in the matter upon
which we had, some months since, a discussion, if it still be the desire
of that gentleman. WILLIAM POWYS.'
“I blushed with delight, and placing the paper in my
bosom, hastened forward toward Edith, who came to meet
me with a faint color in her cheeks. Let me not speak
further of this scene, except to say that when I left Powys
Court, late in the evening, the young lady was affianced to
me. Six months afterward we were married.
“I now speak of a portion of my life, which stands out
clear and distinct from the rest, as one of the great
mountain headlands here, lit by the sunset, raises its
head above the gloomy valleys. For a time I was happy—
wholly, perfectly. The days glided away like hours, and
they were days of unalloyed sunshine: for I loved my wife
with a depth of tenderness which is indescribable. She
bloomed in the great old hall at Denton, like a flower of the
spring; blessing me with her sweet smile, and tender eyes,
and adding a new lustre to my life. Those months are now
my most cherished recollection; I go away from the lonely
present, and live again in the past. I feel her heart beat
against my own, and—I wake from the dream to stretch
out my widowed arms and utter a groan—for she is past
the stars!
“My narrative is nearly ended. I proceed now to relate
events which have been a mystery to me for more than a
quarter of a century—which I came to comprehend but the
other day—on the mountain there, when I retired with the
personage who passes under the name of Powell, but who is
no other than the Sir William Powys, of whom I am speaking.
You start, but do not interrupt me. To continue: Left alone
almost, at his old country house, the baronet became silent
and gloomy. His daughter had been more to him than all
else in the world, and by removing her from his side, I had
added another to the long list of wrongs which he had
scored up in his brooding memory against the name of
Fairfax. Arthur was good company, and had been the
pride of his father; but the young man's espousal of his
sister's cause, had created a coolness toward him on the part
of the baronet; and the old familiar relations between them
were thus interrupted. Another cause of complaint against
the young man was the frequency of his visits to Denton,
whither the baronet himself very seldom went; and thus
the days of the master of Powys Court were lonely and unhappy.
Upon my head, as I now know, all the pent up
storm was secretly discharged. He had been forced by circumstances
to sanction my union with Edith, but his
repugnance to myself remained undiminished; and this feeling
ripened rapidly into a sentiment of actual hatred—
smouldering silently, and only awaiting an opportunity of
striking its object. This opportunity soon came. The
Countess of Fairfax returned, after the English custom, to
the mansion of her parents, to pass through that ordeal of
suffering, which God has imposed upon women as the penalty
of their entrance into the sacred world of maternity.
True, Edith's mother was not living, but at Powys Court,
she might fancy the presence of the dear form at her bedside;
and to Powys Court she accordingly went.
“A month afterward, an heir of my name was born; but
died in twelve hours. My wife was already dead—she
had surrendered her existence in giving life to another
human being. She died with her hand in my own, smiling
sweetly as she always smiled when she looked at me; as
she will smile, I trust, when we are reunited in heaven,
where sorrow and tears come no more.”
The Earl pressed his hand to his forehead, and his weary
eyes moistened as he thus recalled the scenes of the past.
His brows contracted with a weary shadow, and a groan
which issued from the bottom of his heart, revealed the extent
of his suffering. He remained thus silent, and overcome by
emotion for some moments, then his eyes suddenly became
dry again, and a flash darted from them. A cold and menacing
expression came to the quivering lip, and he continued:
“I said that my son died twelve hours after his birth.
In so declaring, I gave the statement of his nurse and Sir
William Powys—a falsehood! Yes, a horrible, base falsehood,
unworthy of a menial, much more of a gentleman!
The truth will serve to display the awful depths of depravity,
to which a man who profoundly hates another will descend,
under the influence of a thirst for vengeance. It was not
my son who died; it was the child of one of the maids,
born almost at the same moment, and substituted, in its
death-throes, in place of my own. The unhappy man confessed
all to me on the Fort Mountain in our interview—
confessed with shame and repentance, and shuddering
humiliation, the means which he had made use of to rob
me of this solace of my widowed heart. By a large bribe he
induced a woman of the household to make the change; the
child of the servant thus died in the chamber where my
dead wife was lying; mine was placed in the arms of the
servant as her own.
“Thus, under the stimulus of a horrible sentiment of
hatred, and thirst for vengeance, did Sir William Powys
commit an action which has made him, he declares, supremely
miserable for more than a score of years. His object was a
double one. He aimed at depriving me of an inexpressible
consolation, and at securing to himself the child of his
daughter. It was almost with burning jealousy, he declares,
that he thought of me, in possession of this memorial of his
child, whom he loved so tenderly, and relinquished to me
only to make her happy. His scheme, he declares, was to
rear the boy carefully, to make him heir to his entire possessions;
and before I died to reveal the whole matter, and
further secure for him the earldom and wealth of the house
of Fairfax. Such was his design—a portion of it woefully
succeeded. But to return.
“I followed the dead bodies of my wife, and my supposed
child, to the Denton churchyard, and saw them placed in
the earth. Then I mounted my horse and returned to my
desolate home, broken-hearted and longing for death to put
an end to my misery. I was destined to be struck again
heavily. A servant handed me a package as I dismounted;
I opened and read it with a quivering lip; then I fell into
a seat, almost prostrated. My guardians had cut off the
entail of Denton, in order to preserve the great Leeds Castle
Manor, derived from my mother, the daughter, as I have
said, of Lord Culpeper: the house of my forefathers was no
longer my own; I was tenant at Denton by sufferance. I
despair of conveying to you any adequate idea of the weight
of the blow which thus struck me. It is true the project
had long been under consideration, in spite of my remonstrances
and protests; but I was now so near my legal majority,
that I had abandoned all fears upon the subject. I
was tottering when the stroke came; it almost prostrated
me. Denton was lost to me! It was no longer my own!
The house which I was born in, which recalled to me every
happy moment of my youth, which my wife had lived in,
and made sacred in my eyes—Denton was the property of
strangers. To my overpowering pain, succeeded a mad,
speechless rage; and I stormed like a child at the men who
had done this. I went to them and told them I would
never forgive them; but it was a pitiful conclusion after all.
I was powerless—finally I yielded, and grew calm. I surrendered
the house and went to London. I lay there for
months tossing with fever—then I rose, an old man at
twenty-one.
“Such were the events of my early years in England.”
