"If knowledge be power," soliloquized Randal, "ability is certainly good luck, as Miss Edgeworth shows in that story of Murad the Unlucky, which I read at Eton; very clever story it is, too. So nothing comes amiss to me. Violante's escape, which has cost me the count's L10,000, proves to be worth to me, I dare say, ten times as much. No doubt she'll have a hundred thousand pounds at the least. And then, if her father have no other child, after all, or the child he expects die in infancy, why, once reconciled to his Government and restored to his estates, the law must take its usual course, and Violante will be the greatest heiress in Europe. As to the young lady herself, I confess she rather awes me; I know I shall be henpecked. Well, all respectable husbands are. There is something scampish and ruffianly in not being henpecked." Here Randal's smile might have harmonized well with Pluto's "iron tears;" but, iron as the smile was, the serious young man was ashamed of it. "What am I about," said he, half aloud, "chuckling to myself and wasting time, when I ought to be thinking gravely how to explain away my former cavalier courtship? Such a masterpiece as I thought it then! But who could foresee the turn things would take? Let me think; let me think. Plague on it, here she comes."

But Randal had not the fine ear of your more romantic lover; and, to his great relief, the exile entered the room unaccompanied by Violante.

Riccabocca looked somewhat embarra.s.sed.

"My dear Leslie, you must excuse my daughter to-day; she is still suffering from the agitation she has gone through, and cannot see you."

The lover tried not to look too delighted.

"Cruel!" said he; "yet I would not for worlds force myself on her presence. I hope, Duke, that she will not find it too difficult to obey the commands which dispose of her hand, and intrust her happiness to my grateful charge."

"To be plain with you, Randal, she does at present seem to find it more difficult than I foresaw. She even talks of--"

"Another attachment--Oh, heavens!"

"Attachment, pazzie! Whom has she seen? No, a convent! But leave it to me. In a calmer hour she will comprehend that a child must know no lot more enviable and holy than that of redeeming a father's honour. And now, if you are returning to London, may I ask you to convey to young Mr. Hazeldean my a.s.surances of undying grat.i.tude for his share in my daughter's delivery from that poor baffled swindler."

It is noticeable that, now Peschiera was no longer an object of dread to the nervous father, he became but an object of pity to the philosopher, and of contempt to the grandee.

"True," said Randal, "you told me Frank had a share in Lord L'Estrange's very clever and dramatic device. My Lord must be by nature a fine actor,--comic, with a touch of melodrame! Poor Frank! apparently he has lost the woman he adored,--Beatrice di Negra. You say she has accompanied the count. Is the marriage that was to be between her and Frank broken off?"

"I did not know such a marriage was contemplated. I understood her to be attached to another. Not that that is any reason why she would not have married Mr. Hazeldean. Express to him my congratulations on his escape."

"Nay, he must not know that I have inadvertently betrayed his confidence; but you now guess, what perhaps puzzled you before,--namely, how I came to be so well acquainted with the count and his movements. I was so intimate with my relation Frank, and Frank was affianced to the marchesa."

"I am glad you give me that explanation; it suffices. After all, the marchesa is not by nature a bad woman,--that is, not worse than women generally are, so Harley says, and Violante forgives and excuses her."

"Generous Violante! But it is true. So much did the marchesa appear to me possessed of fine, though ill-regulated qualities, that I always considered her disposed to aid in frustrating her brother's criminal designs. So I even said, if I remember right, to Violante."

Dropping this prudent and precautionary sentence, in order to guard against anything Violante might say as to that subtle mention of Beatrice which had predisposed her to confide in the marchesa, Randal then hurried on, "But you want repose. I leave you the happiest, the most grateful of men. I will give your courteous message to Frank."

CHAPTER XII.

Curious to learn what had pa.s.sed between Beatrice and Frank, and deeply interested in all that could oust Frank out of the squire's goodwill, or aught that could injure his own prospects by tending to unite son and father, Randal was not slow in reaching his young kinsman's lodgings. It might be supposed that having, in all probability, just secured so great a fortune as would accompany Violante's hand, Randal might be indifferent to the success of his scheme on the Hazeldean exchequer.

Such a supposition would grievously wrong this profound young man.

For, in the first place, Violante was not yet won, nor her father yet restored to the estates which would defray her dower; and, in the next place, Randal, like Iago, loved villany for the genius it called forth in him. The sole luxury the abstemious aspirer allowed to himself was that which is found in intellectual restlessness. Untempted by wine, dead to love, unamused by pleasure, indifferent to the arts, despising literature save as means to some end of power, Randal Leslie was the incarnation of thought hatched out of the corruption of will.

At twilight we see thin airy spectral insects, all wing and nippers, hovering, as if they could never pause, over some sullen mephitic pool.

Just so, methinks, hover over Acheron such gnat-like, noiseless soarers into gloomy air out of Stygian deeps, as are the thoughts of spirits like Randal Leslie's. Wings have they, but only the better to pounce down,--draw their nutriment from unguarded material cuticles; and just when, maddened, you strike, and exulting exclaim, "Caught, by Jove!"

wh-irr flies the diaphanous, ghostly larva, and your blow falls on your own twice-offended cheek.

The young men who were acquainted with Randal said he had not a vice! The fact being that his whole composition was one epic vice, so elaborately constructed that it had not an episode which a critic could call irrelevant. Grand young man!

"But, my dear fellow," said Randal, as soon as he had learned from Frank all that had pa.s.sed on board the vessel between him and Beatrice, "I cannot believe this. 'Never loved you'? What was her object, then, in deceiving not only you, but myself? I suspect her declaration was but some heroical refinement of generosity. After her brother's dejection and probable ruin, she might feel that she was no match for you. Then, too, the squire's displeasure! I see it all; just like her,--n.o.ble, unhappy woman!"

Frank shook his head. "There are moments," said he, with a wisdom that comes out of those instincts which awake from the depths of youth's first great sorrow,--"moments when a woman cannot feign, and there are tones in the voice of a woman which men cannot misinterpret. She does not love me,--she never did love me; I can see that her heart has been elsewhere. No matter,--all is over. I don't deny that I am suffering an intense grief; it gnaws like a kind of sullen hunger; and I feel so broken, too, as if I had grown old, and there was nothing left worth living for. I don't deny all that."

"My poor, dear friend, if you would but believe--"

"I don't want to believe anything, except that I have been a great fool.

I don't think I can ever commit such follies again. But I'm a man. I shall get the better of this; I should despise myself if I could not.

And now let us talk of my dear father. Has he left town?"

"Left last night by the mail. You can write and tell him you have given up the marchesa, and all will be well again between you."

"Give her up! Fie, Randal! Do you think I should tell such a lie? She gave me up; I can claim no merit out of that."

"Oh, yes! I can make the squire see all to your advantage. Oh, if it were only the marchesa! but, alas! that cursed postobit! How could Levy betray you? Never trust to usurers again; they cannot resist the temptation of a speedy profit.

"They first buy the son, and then sell him to the father. And the squire has such strange notions on matters of this kind."

"He is right to have them. There, just read this letter from my mother.

It came to me this morning. I could hang myself if I were a dog; but I'm a man, and so I must bear it."

Randal took Mrs. Hazeldean's letter from Frank's trembling hand. The poor mother had learned, though but imperfectly, Frank's misdeeds from some hurried lines which the squire had despatched to her; and she wrote as good, indulgent, but sensible, right-minded mothers alone can write.

More lenient to an imprudent love than the squire, she touched with discreet tenderness on Frank's rash engagements with a foreigner, but severely on his own open defiance of his father's wishes. Her anger was, however, reserved for that unholy post-obit. Here the hearty genial wife's love overcame the mother's affection. To count, in cold blood, on that husband's death, and to wound his heart so keenly, just where its jealous, fatherly fondness made it most susceptible!

"O Frank, Frank!" wrote Mrs. Hazeldean, "were it not for this, were it only for your unfortunate attachment to the Italian lady, only for your debts, only for the errors of hasty, extravagant youth, I should be with you now, my arms round your neck, kissing you, chiding you back to your father's heart. But--but the thought that between you and his heart has been the sordid calculation of his death,--that is a wall between us. I cannot come near you. I should not like to look on your face, and think how my William's tears fell over it, when I placed you, new born, in his arms, and bade him welcome his heir. What! you a mere boy still, your father yet in the prime of life, and the heir cannot wait till nature leaves him fatherless. Frank; Frank this is so unlike you. Can London have ruined already a disposition so honest and affectionate?--No; I cannot believe it. There must be some mistake.

Clear it up, I implore you; or, though as a mother I pity you, as a wife I cannot forgive."

Even Randal was affected by the letter; for, as we know, even Randal felt in his own person the strength of family ties. The poor squire's choler and bluffness had disguised the parental heart from an eye that, however acute, had not been willing to search for it; and Randal, ever affected through his intellect, had despised the very weakness on which he had preyed. But the mother's letter, so just and sensible (allowing that the squire's opinions had naturally influenced the wife to take what men of the world would call a very exaggerated view of the every-day occurrence of loans raised by a son, payable only at a father's death),--this letter, I say, if exaggerated according to fashionable notions, so sensible if judged by natural affections, touched the dull heart of the schemer, because approved by the quick tact of his intelligence.

"Frank," said he, with a sincerity that afterwards amazed himself, "go down at once to Hazeldean; see your mother, and explain to her how this transaction really happened. The woman you loved, and wooed as wife, in danger of an arrest, your distraction of mind, Levy's counsels, your hope to pay off the debt, so incurred to the usurer, from the fortune you would shortly receive with the marchesa. Speak to your mother,--she is a woman; women have a common interest in forgiving all faults that arise from the source of their power over us men,--I mean love. Go!"

"No, I cannot go; you see she would not like to look on my face. And I cannot repeat what you say so glibly. Besides, somehow or other, as I am so dependent upon my father,--and he has said as much,--I feel as if it would be mean in me to make any excuses. I did the thing, and must suffer for it. But I'm a in--an--no--I 'm not a man here." Frank burst into tears.

At the sight of those tears, Randal gradually recovered from his strange aberration into vulgar and low humanity. His habitual contempt for his kinsman returned; and with contempt came the natural indifference to the sufferings of the thing to be put to use. It is contempt for the worm that makes the angler fix it on the hook, and observe with complacency that the vivacity of its wriggles will attract the bite. If the worm could but make the angler respect, or even fear it, the barb would find some other bait. Few anglers would impale an estimable silkworm, and still fewer the anglers who would finger into service a formidable hornet.

"Pooh, my--dear Frank," said Randal; "I have given you my advice; you reject it. Well, what then will you do?"

"I shall ask for leave of absence, and run away some where," said Frank, drying his tears. "I can't face London; I can't mix with others. I want to be by myself, and wrestle with all that I feel here--in my heart.

Then I shall write to my mother, say the plain truth, and leave her to judge as kindly of me as she can."

"You are quite right. Yes, leave town! Why not go abroad? You have never been abroad. New scenes will distract your mind. Run over to Paris."

"Not to Paris--I don't want gayeties; but I did intend to go abroad somewhere,--any dull dismal hole of a place. Good-by! Don't think of me any more for the present."

"But let me know where you go; and meanwhile I will see the squire."

"Say as little of me as you can to him. I know you mean most kindly, but oh, how I wish there never had been any third person between me and my father! There: you may well s.n.a.t.c.h away your hand. What an ungrateful wretch to you I am. I do believe I am the wickedest fellow. What! you shake hands with me still! My dear Randal, you have the best heart--G.o.d bless you!" Frank turned away, and disappeared within his dressing-room.

"They must be reconciled now, sooner or later,--squire and son," said Randal to himself, as he left the lodgings. "I don't see how I can prevent that,--the marchesa being withdrawn,--unless Frank does it for me. But it is well he should be abroad,--something maybe made out of that; meanwhile I may yet do all that I could reasonably hope to do,--even if Frank had married Beatrice,--since he was not to be disinherited. Get the squire to advance the money for the Thornhill purchase, complete the affair; this marriage with Violante will help; Levy must know that; secure the borough;--well thought of. I will go to Avenel's. By-the-by, by-the-by, the squire might as well keep me still in the entail after Frank, supposing Frank die childless. This love affair may keep him long from marrying. His hand was very hot,--a hectic colour; those strong-looking fellows often go off in rapid decline, especially if anything preys on their minds,--their minds are so very small.

"Ah, the Hazeldean parson,--and with Avenel! That young man, too, who is he? I have seen him before some where.--My dear Mr. Dale, this is a pleasant surprise. I thought you had returned to Hazeldean with our friend the squire?"

MR. DALE.--"The squire! Has he left town, and without telling me?"