LITMIR.BIZ

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– scarce a letter formed, scarce a word that seemed finished – and yet strangely legible withal, as the handwriting of a bold man almost always is. I opened the note listlessly, and read —

      "I have watched for you all the morning. I saw her go. Well! – I did not throw myself under the hoofs of the horses. I write this in a public-house, not far. Will you follow the bearer, and see once again the outcast whom all the rest of the world will shun?"

      Though I did not recognise the hand, there could be no doubt who was the writer.

      "The boy wants to know if there's an answer," said the waiter.

      I nodded, took up my hat, and left the room. A ragged boy was standing in the yard, and scarcely six words passed between us, before I was following him through a narrow lane that faced the inn, and terminated in a turnstile. Here the boy paused, and, making me a sign to go on, went back his way whistling. I passed the turnstile, and found myself in a green field, with a row of stunted willows hanging over a narrow rill. I looked round, and saw Vivian (as I intend still to call him) half kneeling, and seemingly intent upon some object in the grass.

      My eye followed his mechanically. A young unfledged bird, that had left the nest too soon, stood, all still and alone, on the bare short sward – its beak open as for food, its gaze fixed on us with a wistful stare. Methought there was something in the forlorn bird that softened me more to the forlorner youth, of whom it seemed a type.

      "Now," said Vivian, speaking half to himself, half to me, "did the bird fall from the nest, or leave the nest at its own wild whim? The parent does not protect it. Mind, I say not it is the parent's fault – perhaps the fault is all with the wanderer. But, look you, though the parent is not here, the foe is! – yonder, see!"

      And the young man pointed to a large brindled cat, that, kept back from its prey by our unwelcome neighbourhood, still remained watchful, a few paces off, stirring its tail gently backwards and forwards, and with that stealthy look in its round eyes, dulled by the sun – half fierce, half frightened – which belongs to its tribe, when man comes between the devourer and the victim.

      "I do see," said I, "but a passing footstep has saved the bird!"

      "Stop!" said Vivian, laying my hand on his own, and with his old bitter smile on his lip – "stop! do you think it mercy to save the bird? What from? and what for? From a natural enemy – from a short pang and a quick death? Fie! – is not that better than slow starvation? or, if you take more heed of it, than the prison-bars of a cage? You cannot restore the nest, you cannot recall the parent. Be wiser in your mercy: leave the bird to its gentlest fate!"

      I looked hard on Vivian; the lip had lost the bitter smile. He rose and turned away. I sought to take up the poor bird, but it did not know its friends, and ran from me, chirping piteously – ran towards the very jaws of the grim enemy. I was only just in time to scare away the beast, which sprang up a tree, and glared down through the hanging boughs. Then I followed the bird, and, as I followed, I heard, not knowing, at first whence the sound came, a short, quick, tremulous note. Was it near? was it far? – from the earth? in the sky? Poor parent-bird! – like parent-love, it seemed now far and now near; now on earth, now in sky!

      And at last, quick and sudden, as if born of the space, lo! the little wings hovered over me!

      The young bird halted, and I also. "Come," said I, "ye have found each other at last – settle it between you!"

      I went back to the outcast.

CHAPTER LXXXV

      Pisistratus. – How came you to know we had stayed in the town?

      Vivian. – Do you think I could remain where you left me? I wandered out – wandered hither. Passing at dawn through yon streets, I saw the ostlers loitering by the gates of the yard, overheard them talk, and so knew you were all at the inn – all! (He sighed heavily.)

      Pisistratus. – Your poor father is very ill! O cousin, how could you fling from you so much love!

      Vivian. – Love! – his! – my father's!

      Pisistratus. – Do you really not believe, then, that your father loved you?

      Vivian. – If I had believed it, I had never left him! All the gold of the Indies had never bribed me to leave my mother!

      Pisistratus. – This is indeed a strange misconception of yours. If we can remove it, all may be well yet. Need there now be any secrets between us? (persuasively.) Sit down, and tell me all, cousin.

      After some hesitation, Vivian complied; and by the clearing of his brow, and the very tone of his voice, I felt sure that he was no longer seeking to disguise the truth. But, as I afterwards learned the father's tale as well as now the son's, so, instead of repeating Vivian's words, which – not by design, but by the twist of a mind habitually wrong – distorted the facts, I will state what appears to me the real case, as between the parties so unhappily opposed. Reader, pardon me if the recital be tedious. And if thou thinkest that I bear not hard enough on the erring hero of the story, remember that he who recites judges as Austin's son must judge of Roland's.

CHAPTER LXXXVI

      Vivian.

      AT THE ENTRANCE OF LIFE SITS – THE MOTHER.

      It was during the war in Spain that a severe wound, and the fever which ensued, detained Roland at the house of a Spanish widow. His hostess had once been rich; but her fortune had been ruined in the general calamities of the country. She had an only daughter, who assisted to nurse and tend the wounded Englishman; and when the time approached for Roland's departure, the frank grief of the young Ramouna betrayed the impression that the guest had made upon her affections. Much of gratitude, and something, it might be, of an exquisite sense of honour, aided, in Roland's breast, the charm naturally produced by the beauty of his young nurse, and the knightly compassion he felt for her ruined fortunes and desolate condition.

      In one of those hasty impulses common to a generous nature – and which too often fatally vindicate the rank of Prudence amidst the tutelary Powers of Life – Roland committed the error of marriage with a girl of whose connexions he knew nothing, and of whose nature little more than its warm spontaneous susceptibility. In a few days subsequent to these rash nuptials, Roland rejoined the march of the army; nor was he able to return to Spain till after the crowning victory of Waterloo.

      Maimed by the loss of a limb, and with the scars of many a noble wound still fresh, Roland then hastened to a home the dreams of which had soothed the bed of pain, and now replaced the earlier visions of renown. During his absence a son had been born to him – a son whom he might rear to take the place he had left in his country's service; to renew, in some future fields, a career that had failed the romance of his own antique and chivalrous ambition. As soon as that news had reached him, his care had been to provide an English nurse for the infant – so that, with the first sounds of the mother's endearments, the child might yet hear a voice from the father's land. A female relation of Bolt's had settled in Spain, and was induced to undertake this duty. Natural as this appointment was to a man so devotedly English, it displeased his wild and passionate Ramouna. She had that mother's jealousy, strongest in minds uneducated; she had also that peculiar pride which belongs to her country-people, of every rank and condition; the jealousy and the pride were both wounded by the sight of the English nurse at the child's cradle.

      That Roland, on regaining his Spanish hearth, should be disappointed in his expectations of the happiness awaiting him there, was the inevitable condition of such a marriage; since, not the less for his military bluntness, Roland had that refinement of feeling, perhaps over-fastidious, which belongs to all natures essentially poetic; and as the first illusions of love died away, there could have been little indeed congenial to his stately temper in one divided from him by an utter absence of education, and by the strong but nameless distinctions of national views and manners. The disappointment probably, however, went deeper than that which usually attends an ill-assorted union; for, instead of bringing his wife to his old tower, (an expatriation which she would doubtless have resisted to the utmost,) he accepted, maimed as he was, not very long after his return to Spain, the offer of a military post under Ferdinand. The Cavalier doctrines and intense loyalty of Roland attached him, without reflection, to the service of a throne which the English arms

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