Francesca Carrara/Chapter 75
CHAPTER XVI.
"Fear is true love's cruel nurse."
Coleridge.
Lord Avonleigh pursued his way home uncomfortably enough; but still greatly relieved by Francesca's prompt renouncement of her claims. Rapidly the injustice of permitting such a sacrifice became merged in its expediency. He laid a thousand flattering unctions to his soul, in the way of future plans for her welfare; which all ended in the usual remedy of the weak and worldly—money. He could portion her handsomely, and marry her well; and by the time Lord Avonleigh arrived at his own house, he felt as if he were not only a just, but a very generous individual.
No self-complacency can equal that of the selfish. Not content with its indulgence, they actually idolise it into being praiseworthy. Lord Avonleigh was glad to escape from trouble and vexation, both of which must inevitably have fallen to his share if Francesca had insisted on her right; and he did feel grateful to her for what she had saved him. But he was quite incapable of appreciating the delicacy, the generosity, the high-mindedness, which prompted her conduct; still less could he enter into the bitter and painful sense of degradation which sank into her very soul. From her childhood, the pride of ancestry, in its noblest and most imaginative feeling, had been cultivated by her grandfather's narratives of the heroic deeds and knightly bearing of the noble house of Carrara. The pride which most bestow on the present, he lavished on the past; or, rather, all he could spare from science he gave to history; and his two children were deeply imbued with a sense of what they owed to their illustrious race. Their name was as a bond against meanness or disgrace. The pure and high blood which flowed in their veins was its own and best security.
No one could have felt more keenly than Francesca what she resigned. For the last few weeks, hope, so long dormant—for even hope yields to the impossible—hope had delighted to dwell on a future, from which it had so long turned away. She had imagined herself acknowledged and beloved—seeing Evelyn again with every advantage,—and who that ever loved but pined to bestow every worldly good on the loved one? She had invented all possible circumstances but those under which they were now likely to meet.
The day was cold and clear, yet the atmosphere of the chamber where she sat oppressed her breathing. She drew her cloak round her, and went forth; but the air did not revive her, the sunshine could not cheer her. The reaction of the over-excited spirits aided the moral depression, and she sought the churchyard. With the living she had no ties of sympathy—she had with the dead.
The grass was now long and green upon Guido's grave, and filled with small, pale wild flowers. A heavy cloud rested over the inclosed space, where the black yews waved dismally; while, far away, the sunshine reposed on the distant height. Francesca gazed upon it,—it was the very emblem of her fate. So did the light of youth and hope recede from her horizon, leaving around her but the weight and the shadow.
She took her usual seat beside the grave, and, leaning her head upon her arm, gave way to bitter weeping. The gloomy belief of Richard Arden rose present upon her mind; the melancholy foreboding of her brother, the mournful realities of her own experience,—all pressed heavily upon her.
"I feel it written deep within my heart," exclaimed she, "that we are a doomed race—that to us the common success and enjoyments of life are denied! My mother perished fearfully, desperate with her wasted youth and broken heart. Guido! how soon he took refuge in a tomb, made welcome by disappointed aspirations and outraged affection! And I—how little happiness have I ever known! how friendless, how desolate, has been my existence—how thrown back upon myself! At a time when most of my age and sex are surrounded by care,—idols of the dearest and the fondest home they can ever know, I was left to myself—my sorrows unshared, my joys unthought of, my difficulties unsoothed. How soon has any little gleam of sunshine flung upon my path been overcast! Love, which to so many turns the common earth to paradise—true, deep, ay, and requited as mine has been, yet to what mortification and to what misery has it not condemned me! I seem fated to suffer for the faults of others."
But even as she spoke, her eye rested upon the yet scarcely covered grave of Francis Evelyn, and she involuntarily softened the reproach that had been linked with his memory. He had dearly expiated his faults; all England now rung with rejoicing at that very event which had cost him his life in attempting to forward,—another sacrifice to that cruel and mocking destiny which rules despotic over our lower world.
The recollection of that ghastly scene oppressed Francesca still more. She trembled to think that her feet were on English ground, so much had she suffered since her first arrival. The long anxiety of Guido's illness—his death, severing her only tie of name and kindred—the utter desolation that followed—the brief period of feverish hope now so cruelly dashed to the ground—the mingled mortification and despair with which she looked to the future, might well excuse the many and heavy tears that fell on the wild flowers below.
"I would to God," said she, gazing earnestly upon the green sod, "that I were laid quietly to sleep in this deep and silent home. I desire rest even more than happiness. My heart is wasted, my spirits weary. Let what may come of good, I almost doubt my power, now, to enjoy it. It matters not; earth has her step-children—the neglected and the wretched. I am one of them. Guido, my beloved Guido, oh that I were with thee!"
The sunshine had dispersed the shadows, and faded itself into the dim twilight, before Francesca roused from her gloomy reverie, which perhaps would have continued even longer had it not been broken by Lucy's approach, who, missing her, had sought her out to bring her a letter of Lord Avonleigh's, which ran thus:
"Dearest Francesca,—For, if not avowedly my child, still mine in heart and truth,—I have ordered all necessary preparations to be made for your reception at the Castle, where you will be received as the Signora de Carrara, the daughter of an old Italian friend. Albert alone is aware of our nearer connexion; he is prepared to meet you with a brother's affection, though he knows not what he owes to your generous forbearance. Command me in everything, your affectionate
Avonleigh."
There was a kindness in this letter which somewhat reassured Francesca, though she could not help wondering at the ease with which it was written. To a sensitive temper like hers, keenly alive to the feelings of others, because their knowledge had been taught by her own, nothing is more astonishing than the careless and easy manner in which the many pass over the surface, gloss over the inquiry, and take the exertion and the sacrifice as things to be expected. Not that she in the least exaggerated the merits of her conduct; she acted as her feelings prompted—she could not have done otherwise. The very phrase of "generous forbearance" shocked her as overstrained; but she did marvel that Lord Avonleigh felt neither pained nor embarrassed in a situation where such sensations seemed inevitable.
"The answer, as you were not within," said Lucy, "will be sent for in an hour. But what is this, dear, that the page said of preparations making for your reception at the Castle? Are we going to lose you? Dear, dear Francesca, you do not know how I shall miss you!"
"Mr. Aubyn," answered Francesca, with a faint smile, "will soon console you, and we shall still be near neighbours."
"But do," exclaimed Lucy, "tell me all about it."
"There is very little to tell," replied her companion, with hesitation, for falsehood to her noble and ingenuous temper was as distressing as new; "I am the daughter of an old friend of Lord Avonleigh's, who repays kindness and affection to himself by promised kindness and affection to me."
"And so you will live at the Castle! Ah! how happy you are going to be—it is the most beautiful place in the world!"
"Not quite," replied Francesca, smiling in spite of herself. "But we must make haste home, or what will Charles Aubyn say when he finds your haunted chamber lonely?"
"I wonder what he will do!" replied Lucy, who had a true girl's pleasure in talking of her lover.
And this wonder, together with anticipations for Francesca, in which Francesca could not join, enabled them to reach home without finding the path too long.