_ BOOK TWELFTH CHAPTER XXXIV
Audely Egerton was alone in his apartment. A heavy sleep had come over him, shortly after Harley and Randal had left the house in the early morning; and that sleep continued till late in the day. All the while the town of Lansmere had been distracted in his cause, all the while so many tumultuous passions had run riot in the contest that was to close or re-open for the statesman's ambition the Janus gates of political war, the object of so many fears and hopes, schemes and counter-schemes, had slumbered quietly as an infant in the cradle. He woke but in time to receive Harley's despatch, announcing the success of his election; and adding, "Before the night you shall embrace your son. Do not join us below when I return. Keep calm,--we will come to you."
In fact, though not aware of the dread nature of Audley's complaint, with its warning symptoms, Lord L'Estrange wished to spare to his friend the scene of Randal's exposure.
On the receipt of that letter Egerton rose. At the prospect of seeing his son--Nora's son--the very memory of his disease vanished. The poor, weary, over-laboured heart indeed beat loud, and with many a jerk and spasm. He heeded it not. The victory, that restored him to the sole life for which he had hitherto cared to live, was clean forgotten. Nature claimed her own,--claimed it in scorn of death, and in oblivion of renown.
There sat the man, dressed with his habitual precision,--the black coat, buttoned across the broad breast; his countenance, so mechanically habituated to self-control, still revealing little of emotion, though the sickly flush came and went on the bronzed cheek, and the eye watched the hand of the clock, and the ear hungered for a foot-tread along the corridor. At length the sound was heard,--steps, many steps. He sprung to his feet, he stood on the hearth. Was the hearth to be solitary no more? Harley entered first. Egerton's eyes rested on him eagerly for a moment, and strained onward across the threshold. Leonard came next,--Leonard Fairfield, whom he had seen as his opponent! He began to suspect, to conjecture, to see the mother's tender eyes in the son's manly face. Involuntarily he opened his arms; but, Leonard remaining still, let them fall with a deep sigh, and fancied himself deceived.
"Friend," said Harley, "I give to you a son proved in adversity, and who has fought his own way to fame. Leonard, in the man to whom I prayed you to sacrifice your own ambition, of whom you have spoken with such worthy praise, whose career of honour you have promoted, and whose life, unsatisfied by those honours, you will soothe with your filial love, behold the husband of Nora Avenel! Kneel to your father! O Audley, embrace your son!"
"Here, here!" exclaimed Egerton, as Leonard bent his knee,--"here to my heart! Look at me with those eyes!--kindly, forgivingly: they are your mother's!" His proud head sunk on his son's shoulder.
"But this is not enough," said Harley, leading Helen, and placing her by Leonard's side. "You must open your heart for more. Take into its folds my sweet ward and daughter. What is a home without the smile of woman? They have loved each other from children. Audley, yours be the hand to join,--yours be the lips to bless."
Leonard started anxiously. "Oh, sir!--oh, my father!--this generous sacrifice may not be; for he--he who has saved me for this surpassing joy--he too loves her!"
"Nay, Leonard," said Harley, smiling, "I am not so neglectful of myself. Another home woos you, Audley. He whom you long so vainly sought to reconcile to life, exchanging mournful dreams for happy duties,--he, too, presents you to his bride. Love her for my sake,--for your own. She it is, not I, who presides over this hallowed reunion. But for her, I should have been a blinded, vindictive, guilty, repentant man; and--" Violante's soft hand was on his lips. "Thus," said the parson, with mild solemnity, "man finds that the Saviour's precepts, 'Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath,' and 'Love one another,' are clews that conduct us through the labyrinth of human life, when the schemes of fraud and hate snap asunder, and leave us lost amidst the maze."
Egerton reared his head, as if to answer; and all present were struck and appalled by the sudden change that had come over his countenance. There was a film upon the eye, a shadow on the aspect; the words failed his lips; he sunk on the seat beside him. The left hand rested droopingly upon the piles of public papers and official documents, and the fingers played with them, as the bedridden dying sufferer plays with the coverlid he will soon exchange for the winding-sheet. But his right hand seemed to feel, as through the dark, for the recovered son; and having touched what it sought, feebly drew Leonard near and nearer. Alas! that blissful PRIVATE LIFE--that close centre round the core of being in the individual man--so long missed and pined for, slipped from him, as it were, the moment it reappeared; hurried away, as the circle on the ocean, which is scarce seen ere it vanishes amidst infinity. Suddenly both hands were still; the head fell back. Joy had burst asunder the last ligaments, so fretted away in unrevealing sorrow. Afar, their sound borne into that room, the joy-bells were pealing triumph; mobs roaring out huzzas; the weak cry of John Avenel might be blent in those shouts, as the drunken zealots reeled by his cottage door, and startled the screaming ravens that wheeled round the hollow oak. The boom which is sent from the waves on the surface of life, while the deeps are so noiseless in their march, was wafted on the wintry air into the chamber of the statesman it honoured, and over the grass sighing low upon Nora's grave. But there was one in the chamber, as in the grave, for whom the boom on the wave had no sound, and the march of the deep had no tide. Amidst promises of home, and union, and peace, and fame, Death strode into the household ring, and, seating itself, calm and still, looked life-like,--warm hearts throbbing round it; lofty hopes fluttering upward; Love kneeling at its feet; Religion, with lifted finger, standing by its side. _