"All that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eye."
Sybil Berners was at this time about eighteen years of age--a beautiful, black-haired, bright-eyed little brunette, full of fire, spirit, strength, and self-will. She was a law to herself. No one, not even her aged father, had the slightest control over her except through her affections, when they could be gained, or her passions, when they could be aroused; but this last means was seldom tried, for no one cared to raise the storm that none could quell.
Her father was now nearly eighty years old. And fondly, jealously, selfishly as he loved this darling daughter of his age, he wished to see her safely married before he should be called from the earth.
And certainly the beautiful heiress had suitors enough to select from--suitors drawn no less by her personal charms than by her great fortune. But one and all were politely refused by the fastidious maiden, who every one said was so very hard to please.
But even if Sybil Berners had accepted any one among the numerous suitors for her hand, the conditions of her father's consent would have been made rather difficult. The husband of the heiress would have been required to assume the name and arms of Berners in order to perpetuate the family patronymic, and to live with his wife at the old manor house in order not to separate the only child from her aged father. And it was not every proud young Virginian who would have given up his own family name either for a fortune or a beauty. But none of her suitors were put to the test, for Sybil promptly and unconditionally refused all offers of marriage.
And the reason of all this was, that Miss Berners of Black Hall loved a poor, briefless young lawyer, who had nothing but his handsome person, his brilliant mind, and his noble heart to recommend him. When, or where, or how her love for him began, she herself could never have told. Since his return from the university she had seen him every Sunday at church, and had grown to look and to long for his appearance there, until it came to this pass with her soul, that the very house of God seemed empty until his place was filled. And besides this, she often saw him and heard him speak at political and other public meetings, which she always attended only to beam in the sunshine of his presence, only to drink in the music of his voice. She took in all the local papers only to read his leaders and dream over his thoughts.
Moreover, she felt by a sure instinct that he passionately adored her, even while ignorant of her love for him, and silent upon the subject of his own passion.
This state of affairs exasperated the fiery and self-willed little beauty almost to phrensy. She had never in her life been contradicted or opposed. No desire of her heart had ever been left for a moment unsatisfied. She never knew until now the meaning of suspense or disappointment. And now here was a man whom she wildly loved, and who worshipped her, but who, from some delicate pride in his poverty, would not speak, while she, of course, could not.
Yet Sybil Berners was no weak "Viola," who would
"Let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek, and pine in thought."
She was rather a strong "Helena," who would dare all and bear all to gain her lover.
Sybil did all that a young lady of her rank could do in the premises. She made her doting father give dinner parties and invite her lover to them. But the briefless young lawyer in the napless hat and thread-bare coat never accepted one of these invitations, for the very simple reason that he had no evening dress in which to appear.
Under these circumstances, where any other young girl might have grown languid and sorrowful, Sybil became excitable and violent. She had always had the fiery temper of her race, but it had very seldom been kindled by a breath of provocation. Now, however, it frequently broke out without the slightest apparent cause. No one in the house could account for this accession of ill-temper--not her anxious father, nor Miss Tabitha Winterose, the housekeeper, not Joseph Joy, the house steward, nor any of the maids or men-servants under them.
"She's possessed of the devil," said Miss Winterose, to her confidant, the house steward.
"That's nothing new. All the Berners is possessed of that possession. It's entailed family property, and can't be got rid of," grimly responded Joe.
"Something has crossed her; something has crossed her very much," muttered her old father to himself, as he sat alone in his arm-chair in the warm chimney-corner of his favorite sitting-room.
Yes, indeed, everything crossed her. She was unhappy for the first time in her life, and she thought it was clearly the duty of her father or some other one of her slaves to make her happy. She was kept waiting, and it was everybody's fault, and everybody should be made to suffer for it. It was no use to reason with Sybil Berners. One might as well have reasoned with a conflagration.
It was about this time, too, that her aged father began to feel symptoms that warned him of the approach of that sudden death by congestion of the brain, which had terminated the existence of so many of his ancestors.
More than ever he desired to see his motherless daughter well married before he should be called away from her. So, one evening, he sent for Sybil to come into his sitting-room, and when she obeyed his summons, and came and sat down on a low ottoman beside his arm-chair, he said, laying his hand lovingly on her black, curly head:
"My darling, I am very old, and may be taken from you any day, any hour, and I would like to see you well married before I go."
"Dear father, don't talk so. You may live twenty years yet," answered the daughter, with a blending of affectionate solicitude and angry impatience in her tones and looks, for Sybil was very fond of the old man, and also very intolerant of unpleasant subjects.
"Well, well, my dear, since you prefer it, I will live twenty years longer to please you--if I can. But whether I live or die, my daughter, I wish to see you well married."
"Ah, father, why can you not leave me free?"
"Because, my darling, if anything should happen to me, you would be left utterly without protection; your hand would become the aim of every adventurer in the county; you would become the prey of some one among them who would squander your fortune, abuse your person, and break your heart."
"You know very well, father, that I should break such a villain's head first. I a victim--I the prey of a fortune-hunter, or the slave of a brute! I look as if I was likely to be--do I not? Father, you insult your daughter by the thought," exclaimed Sybil, with flushing cheeks and flashing eyes.
"There, there, my dear! don't flame up!" said the old man, laying his hand upon the fiery creature's head; "be quiet as you can, Sybil--I cannot bear excitement now, child."
"Forgive me, dear father, and forbear, if you love me, from such talk as this. I never could become an ill-used, suffering, snivelling wife. I detest the picture as I utterly despise all weak and whimpering women. I have no sympathy whatever for your abused wives--even for your dethroned or beheaded queens. Why should a wife permit herself to be abused, or a queen suffer herself to be dethroned or beheaded, without first having done something to redeem herself from the contemptible role of a victim, even if it was to change it for the awful one of criminal--"
"--Hush, Sybil, hush! You know not what you say. The Saviour of the world--"
"----Was a divine martyr, father," said Sybil, reverently bowing her head--"was a divine martyr, not a victim. All who suffer and die in a great cause are martyrs; but those who suffer and die for nothing but of their own weakness are victims, with whom I have no sympathy. I never could be a victim, father."
"Heaven help you, Sybil!"
"You need not fear for me, father. I can take care of myself as well as if I were a son, instead of a daughter of the House of Berners," said Sybil, haughtily.
"You may be able to protect yourself from all others, but can you always protect yourself from yourself?" sighed the old man.
Sybil did not answer.
"But, to come back to the point from which you started, like the fiery young filly that you are--Sybil, I greatly desire to see you married to some worthy young gentleman whom you can love and I approve."
"Where can you find such an one, father?" murmured Sybil, with a quick, strange, wild hope springing up in her heart.
What if he should speak of the young lawyer? But that was not likely. He spoke of some one else.
"There is Ernest Godfree. No better match for you in the county. And I'm sure he worships the very ground you walk on."
Sybil made an angry gesture, exclaiming:
"Then I wish he would have respect enough for the ground he worships to keep himself off it altogether! I hate that man!"
"Well, well, hate is a poor return for love! But we'll say no more of him. But there's Captain Pendleton, a brave young officer."
"I wish his bravery were better employed in fighting the Indians on the frontier instead of besieging our house. I cannot endure that man!"
"Let him pass then! Next there is Charles Hanbury--"
"Ugh! the ugly little wretch."
"But he is so good, so wise, for so young a man. And he is your devoted slave."
"Then I wish my slave would obey his owner's orders, and keep out of her sight."
"Sybil, you are incorrigible," sighed the old man, but he did not yield his main point.
One after another he proposed for her consideration all the eligible young bachelors of the neighborhood, who, he knew, were ready upon the slightest encouragement to renew their once rejected suits for the hand of the beauty and heiress.
But one after another Sybil, with some sarcastic word, dismissed.
"Sybil, you are a strange, wayward girl! It seems to me that for any man to love you is to take a sure road to your hatred! And yet, oh, my dear! I wish to see you safely married. Is there not one among those whom you might prefer to all the rest?"
"No, my father, not one whom I could endure for an instant as a lover."
"And oh! when I feel this fatal rising of the heart and fulness of the head--this Wave of Death that is sure to bear me off sooner or later to the Ocean of Eternity--Oh, then, my Sybil, how my soul travails for you!" groaned the old man.
"Father! do you so much wish to see me married?"
"I wish it more than anything else in the world, my child."
"Father, you have named every young man in the neighborhood whom you would like as a son-in-law?"
"Every one, my daughter."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure, my love. Why do you ask?"
She slid down from her low ottoman to the floor, and laid her arms upon his knees and her beautiful black ringleted head upon her folded hands, and whispered:
"Because, dear father, there is one whom you have forgotten to name: one who loves me, and is altogether well worthy to be called your son."
"Ah!" cried the old man fiercely, under his breath--"a fortune-hunter, on my life! the danger is nearer than I had even apprehended!"
"No, father, no! He is as far as possible from being what you say!" fervently exclaimed Sybil.
"He is wealthy, then?"
"No, no, no! he is poor in everything but in goodness and wisdom!"
"Oh, no doubt you think him rich in these! But who is he, unhappy child? What is his name?"
Very subdued came the answer. Old Bertram was obliged to bend his gray head to his daughter's lips, and put his shrivelled hand behind his ear to catch the sound of her low voice.
"He is the young lawyer newly settled in Blackville, whose praise is on everybody's lips."
"JOHN LYON HOWE!" exclaimed the old man, throwing up his head in astonishment.
"Yes, father," breathed the girl.
"And he loves you?"
She nodded.
"And you love him?"
She nodded again.
"A briefless young lawyer, with a long list of impoverished brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins! Bad enough; but not as it might have been. She can gain nothing by that connection! But then she need not lose anything either," murmured the old man to himself. After reflecting for a few moments, with his head upon his breast, he suddenly raised his eyes and exclaimed:
"But I have never seen the young man at this house!"
"No, father!"
"Nor at any other house where we visit."
"No, father; for although he receives many invitations to visit his friends, he accepts none. Father, I think he cannot afford to do so."
"Cannot afford to visit! Why?"
"Visiting requires dress, and dress money. And he does so much gratuitous work now in the beginning of his career that he has but little money; and his father will not help him at all, because they differ in politics."
"Yes, I know they do; but the young man is quite right. I agree with his views perfectly. He will make his mark in the world some of these days, and then his father will be proud of him."
Sybil blushed with delight to hear her lover so praised by one in whose hands their happiness rested.
"But, my child, he was wrong and you were wrong to have entered into any engagement without my sanction," said the old man very gravely.
"There is no engagement, father," gently answered Sybil.
"Ah! no engagement? that is well! By my soul, though, it was not right for him even to have wooed you without my consent! Nor can I conceive what opportunity he has ever had to do so. He never comes here."
"He has never wooed me, dear father."
"EH!"
"He has never sought my hand."
"But I thought you gave me to understand that you love each other!"
"So we do, father."
"Then, if he loves you, why don't he come and tell me so like an honorable man?"
"Father, he has never even told me so."
"EH!"
"He has never breathed a word of love to me."
"Then how the deuce do you know that he loves you, girl?"
"Oh, by every glance of his eyes, by every tone of his voice, and by my own heart! Oh, father, do you think I would bear to tell you this, if I were not sure of it."
"Umph, umph! But why don't he speak?--that's what I want to know! Why don't he speak?"
"Dear father, can you not comprehend that he is too proud to do so?"
"Too proud! By my word! It is a new hearing that a Howe should be too proud to seek an alliance with a Berners!" exclaimed old Bertram hotly, rising from his chair.
"Old age ne'er cooled the Douglas blood,"
and it had not cooled his.
Sybil smiled to see how utterly he had misunderstood her, and making him sit down again, she said,
"You dear old darling, it is not that! It is the very opposite to that. It is because he is poor and we are rich, and he is too proud to be called a fortune-hunter."
"Oh, I understand! I understand!
'Among the rest young Edwin bowed,
But never told his love.
Wisdom, and worth were all he had.'"
"Yes, dear father, that is just the truth. You wish me to marry; but, dear, dear father, I can never bring myself to marry any one but him; and he loves me truly, but does not seek me?" she breathed in a low and tremulous tone, half smothered also by the hands with which she covered her blushing face.
"Now what am I to do in this case? I have nothing against the young man whatever, except his poverty and big long line of poor relations, that will be sure to be a burden to him!" grumbled old Bertram to himself.
"But, father, we are so rich! We have enough for so many people," pleaded Sybil.
"Not enough to enrich all the Howes, my dear! But I like the young man, I really do like him, and if he had more money, and less relations, I should prefer him to any young man in the neighborhood for a son-in-law."
"O father, dear father, thank you, thank you for saying that," exclaimed Sybil, fervently kissing his hands.
"And now that you have told me your mind, what do you want me to do, my darling?" he inquired, returning her caresses.
"Oh, dear father! an old man like you must know! I do want you to give Lyon help and encouragement as you know best how to do it, without wounding his pride. You sympathize with his political principles; let him know that you do. You admire his character; let him feel that you do."
"What else?"
"This. Since old Mr. Godwin died you have had no agent for your large estate, and its accounts must be falling into disorder, Lyon is a lawyer, you know. Offer him the agency of your estate, with a liberal salary."
"Upon my word, I never thought of that before. Here for three months I have been thinking whom I could get as an agent, and much as I esteemed that young man I never once thought of applying to him! But the fact is, I never looked upon him in the light of a business man, but only as a brilliant barrister, and eloquent pleader."
"Yet, father, you know he must be a good business man to have collected such great stores of statistics as he has always at command."
"Well, my love, I will go to-day and offer him the agency. Now what next?"
"He was too poor and too proud to come before, but as your agent, father, you must bring him often to the house on business."
"And then?"
"You must leave the rest to me."
Thus it was that the young lawyer became the agent for the great Black Valley Manor. This agency included not only the management of the revenues from several rich farms, but also those from the stone quarries, iron mines, and the water mill at the head of the valley, and also from the real estate in the village at the foot, all of which was included in the Black Valley Manor.
The new agent was frequently called to Black Hall, where he was always received with the utmost courtesy. And as the acquaintance between the proprietor and the agent ripened into intimacy, a deep and strong attachment grew between them.
"Youth never showed itself wiser or better than in this young man," murmured Mr. Berners to himself.
"Age was never so venerable and beautiful as in this old man," thought John Lyon Howe to himself.
The old man loaded the young one with many marks of his esteem and affection. The young man returned these with the warmest gratitude and highest reverence.
When John Lyon Howe, with his heart filled with love for Sybil Berners, first entered Black Hall, it was without the slightest suspicion of her responsive love for him. But when they were thrown so much together, he was not very long in making the discovery so delightful to his soul, and yet--so trying too! for, as a man of good principles, there seemed to be but one course left open to him--the course of self-denial! He loved the great heiress, and had unintentionally won her love! Therefore he must fly from her presence, trying to forget her, hoping that she might forget him.
He summoned up courage for the sacrifice, and went into the study of his employer and in a few words told him that he had come to say good-bye.
The astonished old man looked up for an explanation.
John Lyon Howe gave it to him.
"And so you wish to leave me, never to return to the Hall, because you love my daughter."
The young man bowed in silence; but could not conceal the misery it caused him to make this acknowledgment.
"But why should that oblige you to leave the house?" inquired Mr. Berners.
"Oh, sir! can you ask?" exclaimed Mr. Howe.
"Oh, I see! the little witch has refused you!" exclaimed old Bertram with a twinkle in his eye. "Come, is it not so?"
"Sir, I have never abused your confidence so far as to seek her hand! I could not make so base a return for your kindness to me."
"Oh, you have never asked her to marry you! How in the world, then, can you know whether she will accept you or not? or, consequently, whether it will be necessary for you to leave or not?"
"Oh, sir! what is it that you would say?" exclaimed the young man, in quick, broken tones, while his face turned pale with agitation.
"Nonsense, my boy! When I was young a youth didn't require so much encouragement to woo a maiden. Before you make up your mind to leave me, go and ask Sybil's consent to the step."
"Oh, sir! oh, Mr. Berners! do you mean this?" gasped the young man, catching at the back of the chair for support. He was inured to sorrow, but not to joy. And this joy was so sudden and overwhelming that he reeled under it.
"I mean what I say, Mr. Howe. I esteem and respect you. I sanction your addresses to my daughter," said old Bertram, speaking with more gravity and dignity than he had before displayed.
John Lyon fervently kissed his old friend's hand, and went immediately in search of Sybil. And that same night, old Bertram had the pleasure of joining their hands together in solemn betrothal.
"And now I can die happy," said the old man, earnestly; "for it was not another great fortune, but a good husband that I coveted for my darling child."
Ten days from this night, old Bertram Berners dropped into his last sleep. He was well and happy up to the last hour of his life. The "Wave of Death," found him in his arm-chair, and bore him off without a struggle to the "Ocean of Eternity." So old Bertram Berners was gathered to his fathers.
The year of mourning was permitted to pass, and then John Lyon Howe, having, according to the conditions of the marriage contract, assumed the name and arms of Berners, was united in marriage to the beautiful Sybil. And they set out on their bridal tour as Mr. and Mrs. Lyon Berners.
And now we will again look in upon them as they linger over their tea-table in the old inn at Norfolk, where we first introduced them to our readers.
