No sooner did the unfortunate traveller suspend that rapid motion by which he seemed to wish to annihilate, as far as possible, time and space, in order to reach the place he had now attained, than it seemed to him as if he would have given the world that seas and deserts had lain between him and the house of his fathers, as well as that only sister with whom he was now about to have a decisive interview.
“But the place and the hour are arrived,” he said, biting his lip with anguish; “this explanation must be decisive; and whatever evils may attend it, suspense must be ended now, at once and for ever.”
He entered the Castle, and took the light from the old domestic, who, hearing the clatter of his horse's feet, had opened the door to receive him.
“Is my sister in her parlour?” he asked, but in so hollow a voice, that the old man only answered the question by another, “Was his honour well?”
“Quite well, Patrick—never better in my life,” said Mowbray; and turning his back on the old man, as if to prevent his observing whether his countenance and his words corresponded, he pursued his way to his sister's apartment. The sound of his step upon the passage roused Clara from a reverie, perhaps a sad one; and she had trimmed her lamp, and stirred her fire, so slow did he walk, before he at length entered her apartment.
“You are a good boy, brother,” she said, “to come thus early home; and I have some good news for your reward. The groom has fetched back Trimmer—He was lying by the dead hare, and he had chased him as far as Drumlyford—the shepherd had carried him to the shieling, till some one should claim him.”
“I would he had hanged him, with all my heart!” said Mowbray.
“How!—hang Trimmer?—your favourite Trimmer, that has beat the whole country?—and it was only this morning you were half-crying because he was amissing, and like to murder man and mother's son?”
“The better I like any living thing,” answered Mowbray, “the more reason I have for wishing it dead and at rest; for neither I, nor any thing that I love, will ever be happy more.”
“You cannot frighten me, John, with these flights,” answered Clara, trembling, although she endeavoured to look unconcerned—“You have used me to them too often.”
“It is well for you then; you will be ruined without the shock of surprise.”
“So much the better—We have been,” said Clara,
“‘So constantly in poortith's sight, The thoughts on't gie us little fright.’
So say I with honest Robert Burns.”
“D—n Barns and his trash!” said Mowbray, with the impatience of a man determined to be angry with every thing but himself, who was the real source of the evil.
“And why damn poor Burns?” said Clara, composedly; “it is not his fault if you have not risen a winner, for that, I suppose, is the cause of all this uproar.”
“Would it not make any one lose patience,” said Mowbray, “to hear her quoting the rhapsodies of a hobnail'd peasant, when a man is speaking of the downfall of an ancient house! Your ploughman, I suppose, becoming one degree poorer than he was born to be, would only go without his dinner, or without his usual potation of ale. His comrades would cry ‘poor fellow!’ and let him eat out of their kit, and drink out of their bicker without scruple, till his own was full again. But the poor gentleman—the downfallen man of rank—the degraded man of birth—the disabled and disarmed man of power!—it is he that is to be pitied, who loses not merely drink and dinner, but honour, situation, credit, character, and name itself!”
“You are declaiming in this manner in order to terrify me,” said Clara: “but, friend John, I know you and your ways, and I have made up my mind upon all contingencies that can take place. I will tell you more—I have stood on this tottering pinnacle of rank and fashion, if our situation can be termed such, till my head is dizzy with the instability of my eminence; and I feel that strange desire of tossing myself down, which the devil is said to put into folk's heads when they stand on the top of steeples—at least, I had rather the plunge were over.”
“Be satisfied, then; if that will satisfy you—the plunge
“They may give it to those who will take it,” said Clara; “but I am determined to eat bread of my own buying—I can do twenty things, and I am sure some one or other of them will bring me all the little money I will need. I have been trying, John, for several months, how little I can live upon, and you would laugh if you heard how low I have brought the account.”
“There is a difference, Clara, between fanciful experiments and real poverty—the one is a masquerade, which we can end when we please, the other is wretchedness for life.”
“Methinks, brother,” replied Miss Mowbray, “it would be better for you to set me an example how to carry my good resolutions into effect, than to ridicule them.”
“Why, what would you have me do?” said he, fiercely—“turn postilion, or rough-rider, or whipper-in?—I don't know any thing else that my education, as I have used it, has fitted me for—and then some of my old acquaintances would, I dare say, give me a crown to drink now and then for old acquaintance' sake.”
“This is not the way, John, that men of sense think or speak of serious misfortunes,” answered his sister; “and I do not believe that this is so serious as it is your pleasure to make it.”
“Believe the very worst you can think,” replied he, “and you will not believe bad enough!—You have neither a guinea, nor a house, nor a friend;—pass but a day, and it is a chance that you will not have a brother.”
“My dear John, you have drunk hard—rode hard.”
“Yes—such tidings deserved to be carried express, especially to a young lady who receives them so well,” answered Mowbray, bitterly. “I suppose, now, it will make no impression, if I were to tell you that you have it in your power to stop all this ruin?”
“By consummating my own, I suppose?—Brother, I said you could not make me tremble, but you have found a way to do it.”
“What, you expect I am again to urge you with Lord Etherington's courtship?—That
“I am glad of it, with all my spirit,” said Clara; “may it take with it all that we can quarrel about!—But till this instant I thought it was for this very point that this long voyage was bound, and that you were endeavouring to persuade me of the reality of the danger of the storm, in order to reconcile me to the harbour.”
“You are mad, I think, in earnest,” said Mowbray; “can you really be so absurd as to rejoice that you have no way left to relieve yourself and me from ruin, want, and shame?”
“From shame, brother?” said Clara. “No shame in honest poverty, I hope.”
“That is according as folks have used their prosperity, Clara.—I must speak to the point.—There are strange reports going below—By Heaven! they are enough to disturb the ashes of the dead! Were I to mention them, I should expect our poor mother to enter the room—Clara Mowbray, can you guess what I mean?”
It was with the utmost exertion, yet in a faltering voice, that she was able, after an ineffectual effort, to utter the monosyllable, “
“By Heaven! I am ashamed—I am even
“Stay at home, brother!” said Clara; “stay at home, if you regard our house's honour—murder cannot mend misery—Stay at home, and let them talk of me as they will,—they can scarcely say worse of me than I deserve!”[F]
The passions of Mowbray, at all times ungovernably strong, were at present inflamed by wine, by his rapid journey, and the previously disturbed state of his mind. He set his teeth, clenched his hands, looked on the ground, as one that forms some horrid resolution, and muttered almost unintelligibly, “It were charity to kill her!”
“Oh! no—no—no!” exclaimed the terrified girl, throwing herself at his feet; “Do not kill me, brother! I have wished for death—thought of death—prayed for death—but, oh! it is frightful to think that he is near—Oh! not a bloody death, brother, nor by your hand!”
She held him close by the knees as she spoke, and expressed, in her looks and accents, the utmost terror. It was not, indeed, without reason; for the extreme solitude of the place, the violent and inflamed passions of her
