as this the hero of a woman’s life might appear in all his shining glory. If she could meet him now, this wonderful unknown being—the Childe Harold, the Lara, of her life! What if it was to be so? what if she was to meet him now, and the story was appointed to begin today,—this very day,—and all her life henceforth was to be changed? The day was like the beginning of a story, somehow, inasmuch as it was unlike the other days of her life. She had thought of the holiday, and dreamt about it even more foolishly than George had done; for there had been some foundation for the young man’s visions, while hers had been altogether baseless. What if Lord Hurstonleigh should happen to be strolling in his grove, and should see her and rescue her from death by drowning, or a mad bull, or something of that sort, and thereupon fall in love with her? Nothing was more life-like or likely, according to Izzie’s experience of three-volume novels. Unhappily she discovered from Mr. Raymond that Lord Hurstonleigh was an elderly married man, and was, moreover, resident in the south of France; so that bright dream was speedily shattered. But there is no point of the compass from which a hero may not come. There was hope yet; there was hope that this bright spring-day might not close as so many days had closed upon the same dull record, the same empty page.
Mr. Raymond was in his highest spirits today. He liked to be with young people, and was younger than the youngest of them in his fresh enjoyment of all that is bright and beautiful upon earth. He devoted himself chiefly to the society of his orphan protégées, and contrived to impart a good deal of information to them in a pleasant easy-going manner, that took the bitterness out of those Pierian waters, for which the orphans had very small affection. They were stupid and unimpressionable; but, then, were they not the children of that unhappy consumptive niece of his, who had acquired, by reason of her many troubles, a kind of divine right to become a burden upon happy people?
“If she had left me such an orphan as that girl Isabel, I would have thanked her kindly for dying,” Mr. Raymond mused “That girl has mental imitation,—the highest and rarest faculty of the human brain,—ideality, and comparison. What could I not make of such a girl as that? And yet—”
Mr. Raymond only finished the sentence with a sigh. He was thinking that, after all, these bright faculties might not be the best gifts for a woman. It would have been better, perhaps, for Isabel to have possessed the organ of pudding-making and stocking-darning, if those useful accomplishments are represented by an organ. The kindly phrenologist was thinking that perhaps the highest fate life held for that pale girl with the yellow tinge in her eyes was to share the home of a simple-hearted country surgeon, and rear his children to be honest men and virtuous women.
“I suppose that is the best,” Mr. Raymond said to himself.
He had dismissed the orphans now, and had sent them on to walk with Sigismund Smith, who kindly related to them the story of “Lilian the Deserted,” with such suppressions and emendations as rendered the romance suitable to their tender years. The philosopher of Conventford had got rid of the orphans, and was strolling by himself in those delicious glades, swinging his stick as he went, and throwing up his head every now and then to scent all the freshness of the warm spring air.
“Poor little orphan child!” he mused, “will anybody ever fathom her fancies or understand her dreams? Will she marry that good, sheepish country surgeon, who has fallen in love with her? He can give her a home and a shelter; and she seems such a poor friendless little creature, just the sort of girl to get into some kind of mischief if she were left to herself. Perhaps it’s about the best thing that could happen to her. I should like to have fancied a brighter fate for her, a life with more colour in it. She’s so pretty—so pretty; and when she talks, and her face lights up, a sort of picture comes into my mind of what she would be in a great saloon, with clusters of lights about her, and masses of shimmering colour, making a gorgeous background for her pale young beauty; and brilliant men and women clustering round her, to hear her talk and see her smile. I can see her like this; and then, when I remember what her life is likely to be, I begin to feel sorry for her, just as if she were some fair young nun, foredoomed to be buried alive by-and-by. Sometimes I have had a fancy that if he were to come home and see her—but that’s an old busybody’s dream. When did a matchmaker ever create anything but matrimonial confusion and misery? I dare say Beatrice kept her word, and did make Benedick wretched. No; Miss Sleaford must marry whom she may, and be happy or miserable, according to the doctrine of averages; and as for him—”
Mr. Raymond stopped; and seeing the rest of the party happily engaged in gathering hyacinths under the low branches of the trees, he seated himself upon a clump of fallen timber, and took a book out of his pocket. It was a book that had been sent by post, for the paper wrapper was still about it. It was a neat little volume, bound in glistening green cloth, with uncut edges, and the gilt-letter title on the back of the volume set forth that the book contained “An Alien’s Dreams.” An alien’s dreams could be nothing but poetry; and as the name of the poet was not printed under the title, it was perhaps only natural that Mr. Raymond should, not open the book immediately, but should sit turning and twisting the volume about in his hands, and looking at it with a contemptuous expression of countenance.
“An alien!” he exclaimed; “why, in the name of all the affectations of the present day, should a young man with fifteen thousand a year, and one of the finest estates in Midlandshire, call himself an alien? ‘An Alien’s Dreams’—and such dreams! I had a look at them this morning, without cutting the leaves. It’s always a mistake to cut the leaves of young people’s poetry. Such dreams! Surely no alien could have been afflicted with anything like them, unless he was perpetually eating heavy suppers of underdone pork, or drinking bad wine, or neglecting the ventilation of his bedroom. Imperfect ventilation has a good deal to do with it, I dare say. To think that Roland Lansdell should write such stuff—such a clever young man as he is, too—such a generous-hearted, high-minded young fellow, who might be-”
Mr. Raymond opened the volume in a very gingerly fashion, almost as if he expected something unpleasant might crawl out of it, and looked in a sideways manner between the leaves, muttering the first line or so of a poem, and then skipping on to another, and giving utterance to every species of contemptuous ejaculation between whiles.
“Imogen!” he exclaimed; “‘To Imogen!’ As if anybody was ever called Imogen out of Shakespeare’s play and Monk Lewis’s ballad! ‘To Imogen:’
‘Do you ever think of me, proud and cruel Imogen,
As I think, ah! sadly think, of thee—
When the shadows darken on the misty lea, Imogen,
And the low light dies behind the sea?’
‘Broken!’ ‘Shattered!’ ‘Blighted!’ Lively titles to tempt the general reader! Here’s a nice sort of thing:
‘Like an actor in a play,
Like a phantom in a dream,
Like a lost boat left to stray
Rudderless adown the stream,—
This is what my life has grown, Ida Lee,
Since thy false heart left me lone, Ida Lee.
And I wonder sometimes when the laugh is loud,
And I wonder at the faces of the crowd,
And the strange fantastic measures that they tread,
Till I think at last I must be dead—
Till I half believe that I am dead.’
And to think that Roland Lansdell should waste his time in writing this sort of thing! And here’s his letter, poor boy!—his long rambling letter,—in which he tells me how he wrote the verses, and how writing them was a kind of consolation to him, a safety-valve for so much passionate anger against a world that doesn’t exactly harmonize with the Utopian fancies of a young man with fifteen thousand a year and nothing to do. If some rightful heir would turn up, in the person of one of Roland’s gamekeepers, now, and denounce my young friend as a wrongful heir, and turn him out of doors bag and baggage, and with very little bag and baggage, after the manner of those delightful melodramas which hold the mirror up to nature so exactly, what a blessing it would be