Rookwood, William Harrison Ainsworth [best classic books txt] 📗

she was an Eleanor like to me, Handassah--and ah! even more ill-fated and unhappy--have brought a whole train of melancholy fancies into my mind. I cannot banish them: nay, though painful to me, I recur to these images of dread with a species of fascination, as if in their fate I contemplated mine own. Not one, who hath wedded a Rookwood, but hath rued it."

"Yet you will wed one," said Handassah.

"He is not like the rest," said Eleanor.

"How know you that, lady?" asked Handassah. "His time may not yet be come. See what to-morrow will bring forth."

"You are averse to my marriage with Ranulph, Handassah."

"I was Sybil's handmaid ere I was yours, lady. I bear in mind a solemn compact with the dead, which this marriage will violate. You are plighted by oath to another, if he should demand your hand."

"But he has not demanded it."

"Would you accept him were he to do so?" asked Handassah, suddenly.

"I meant not that," replied Eleanor. "My oath is annulled."

"Say not so, lady," cried Handassah--"'twas not for this that Sybil spared your life. I love you, but I loved Sybil, and I would see her dying behests complied with."

"It may not be, Handassah," replied Eleanor. "Why, from a phantom sense of honor, am I to sacrifice my whole existence to one who neither can love me, nor whom I myself could love? Am I to wed this man because, in her blind idolatry of him, Sybil enforced an oath upon me which I had no power to resist, and which was mentally cancelled while taken? Recall not the horrors of that dreadful cell--urge not the subject more. 'Tis in the hope that I may be freed for ever from this persecution that I have consented thus early to wed with Ranulph. This will set Luke's fancied claims at rest for ever."

Handassah answered not, but bent her head, as if in acquiescence.

Steps were now heard near the door, and a servant ushered in Dr. Small and Mrs. Mowbray.

"I am come to take leave of you for the night, my dear young lady," said the doctor; "but before I start for the Vicarage, I have a word or two to say, in addition to the advice you were so obliging as to receive from me this morning. Suppose you allow your attendant to retire for a few minutes. What I have got to say concerns yourself solely. Your mother will bear us company. There," continued the doctor, as Handassah was dismissed--"I am glad that dark-faced gipsy has taken her departure. I can't say I like her sharp suspicious manner, and the first exercise I should make at my powers, were I to be your husband, should be to discharge the handmaiden. To the point of my visit. We are alone, I think. This is a queer old house, Miss Mowbray; and this is the queerest part of it. Walls have ears, they say; and there are so many holes and corners in this mansion, that one ought never to talk secrets above one's breath."

"I am yet to learn, sir," said Eleanor, "that there is any secret to be communicated."

"Why, not much, I own," replied the doctor; "at least what has occurred is no secret in the house by this time. What do you think has happened?"

"It is impossible for me to conjecture. Nothing to Ranulph, I hope."

"Nothing of consequence, I trust,--though he is part concerned with it."

"What is it?" asked Eleanor.

"Pray satisfy her curiosity, doctor," interposed Mrs. Mowbray.

"Well, then," said Small, rather more gravely, "the fact of the matter stands thus:--Lady Rookwood, who, as you know, was not the meekest wife in the world, now turns out by no means the gentlest mother, and has within this hour found out that she has some objection to your union with her son."

"You alarm me, doctor."

"Don't alarm yourself at all. It will be got over without difficulty, and only requires a little management. Ranulph is with her now, and I doubt not will arrange all to her satisfaction."

"What was her objection?" asked Eleanor; "was it any one founded upon my obligation to Luke--my oath?"

"Tut, tut! dismiss that subject from your mind entirely," said the doctor. "That oath is no more binding on your conscience than would have been the ties of marriage had you been wedded by yon recusant Romish priest, Father Checkley, upon whose guilty head the Lord be merciful! Bestow not a thought upon it. My anxiety, together with that of your mother, is to see you now, as speedily as may be, wedded to Ranulph, and then that idle question is set at rest for ever; and therefore, even if such a thing were to occur as that Lady Rookwood should not yield her consent to your marriage, as that consent is totally unnecessary, we must go through the ceremonial without it."

"The grounds of Lady Rookwood's objections----" said Mrs. Mowbray.

"Ay, the grounds of her ladyship's objections," interposed Small, who, when he had once got the lead, liked nobody to talk but himself, "are simply these, and exactly the sort of objections one would expect her to raise. She cannot bear the idea of abandoning the control of the house and estates to other hands. She cannot, and will not relinquish her station, as head of the establishment, which Ranulph has insisted upon as your right. I thought, when I conversed with her on this subject, that she was changed, but

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.

I beg your pardon. She is, and always will be, the same."

"Why did not Ranulph concede the point to her? I wish not to dwell here. I care not for these domains--for this mansion. They have no charms for me. I could be happy with Ranulph anywhere--happier anywhere than here."

The kind-hearted doctor squeezed her hand in reply, brushing a tear from his eyes.

"Why did he not concede it?" said Mrs. Mowbray, proudly. "Because the choice remained not with him. It was not his to concede. This house--these lands--all--all are yours; and it were poor requital, indeed, if, after they have so long been wrongfully withheld from us, you should be a dependant on Lady Rookwood."

"Without going quite so far as that, madam," said the doctor, "it is but justice to your daughter that she should be put in full possession of her rights; nor should I for one instant advise, or even allow her to inhabit the same house with Lady Rookwood. Her ladyship's peculiarities of temper are such as to preclude all possibility of happiness. At the same time, I trust by management--always by management, madam--that her ladyship's quiet departure may be ensured. I understand that all such legal arrangements in the way of settlements as could be entered into between your daughter and her future husband are completed. I have only to regret the absence of my friend, Mr. Coates, at this momentous conjuncture. It will be a loss to him. But he inherits from his father a taste for thief-taking, which he is at present indulging, to the manifest injury of his legitimate practice. Hark! I hear Ranulph's step in the gallery. He will tell us the result of his final interview. I came to give you advice, my dear," added the doctor in a low tone to Eleanor; "but I find you need it not. 'Whoso humbleth himself, shall be exalted.' I am glad you do not split upon the rock which has stranded half your generation."

At this moment Ranulph Rookwood entered the room, followed by Handassah, who took her station at the back of the room, unperceived by the rest of the party, whose attention was attracted by Ranulph's agitated manner.

"What has happened?" asked Dr. Small and Mrs. Mowbray in the same breath.

Ranulph hesitated for a moment in his answer, during which space he regarded Eleanor with the deepest anxiety, and seemed revolving within himself how he could frame his reply in such way as should be least painful to her feelings; while, with instinctive apprehension of coming misfortune, Miss Mowbray eagerly seconded the inquiries of her friends.

"It is with great pain," said he, at length, in a tone of despondency, not unmingled with displeasure, "that I am obliged to descant upon the infirmities of a parent, and to censure her conduct as severely as I may do now. I feel the impropriety of such a step, and I would willingly avoid it, could I do so in justice to my own feelings--and especially at a moment like the present--when every hope of my life is fixed upon uniting myself to you, dear Eleanor, by ties as near as my own to that parent. But the interview which I have just had with Lady Rookwood--bitter and heart-breaking as it has been--compels me to reprobate her conduct in the strongest terms, as harsh, unjust, and dishonorable; and if I could wholly throw off the son, as she avows she has thrown off the mother, I should unhesitatingly pronounce it as little short of----"

"Dear Ranulph," said Eleanor, palpitating with apprehension, "I never saw you so much moved."

"Nor with so much reason," rejoined Ranulph. "For myself, I could endure anything--but for you ----"

"And does your dispute relate to me ?" asked Eleanor. "Is it for my sake you have braved your mother's displeasure? Is it because Lady Rookwood is unwilling to resign the control of this house and these lands to me , that you have parted in anger with her? Was this the cause of your quarrel?"

"It was the origin of it," replied Ranulph.

"Mother," said Eleanor, firmly, to Mrs. Mowbray, "go with me to Lady Rookwood's chamber."

"Wherefore?" demanded Mrs. Mowbray.

"Question me not, dear mother, or let me go alone."

"Daughter, I guess your meaning," said Mrs. Mowbray, sternly. "You would relinquish your claims in favor of Lady Rookwood. Is it not so?"

"Since you oblige me to answer you, mother," said Eleanor, crimsoning, "I must admit that you have guessed my meaning. To Lady Rookwood, as to yourself, I would be a daughter as far as is consistent with my duty," added she, blushing still more deeply, "but my first consideration shall be my husband. And if Lady Rookwood can be content----But pray question me not further--accompany me to her chamber."

"Eleanor," interposed Ranulph, "dearest Eleanor, the sacrifice you would make is unnecessary--uncalled for. You do not know my mother. She would not, I grieve to say, appreciate the generosity of your motives. She would not give you credit for your feelings. She would only resent your visit as an intrusion."

"My daughter comprehends you, sir," said Mrs. Mowbray, haughtily. "I will take care that, in her own house, Miss Mowbray shall remain free from insult."

"Mother, dear mother," said Eleanor, "do not wilfully misunderstand him."

"You can be little aware, madam," said Ranulph, calmly, yet sadly, "how much I have recently endured--how much of parental anger--how much of parental malediction I have incurred, to save you and your daughter from the indignity you apprehend. As I before said, you do not know my mother; nor could it enter into any well-regulated imagination to conceive the extremities to which the violence of her passion will, when her schemes are thwarted, hurry her. The terms upon which you met together will not escape your recollection; nor shall I need to recall to your mind her haughtiness, her coldness. That coldness has since ripened into distrust; and the