# Francesca Carrara/Chapter 48

CHAPTER XXI.
"I feel the awful presence of my fate."
They had been settled about a fortnight at Holmhurst, the name of Lawrence Aylmer's farm; when, one evening, finding Francesca and Guido alone, Arden gave the former a closely-written packet. "This," said he, "is for Lord Avonleigh. It has been, for the last three nights, my wretched task. Its contents are already known to you; for it contains my history, and will explain every thing. Give it to him yourself, Francesca—let him see your mother in your face; and for your sake he may forgive me. I leave this to-morrow."
An exclamation of surprise broke from both his hearers.
"Why should you go?" cried Francesca; "you have not a connexion or a friend in the wide world, save among ourselves. Have we given ​you unconscious offence?—unconscious, indeed, it must have been."
"None, dear child!" said he, taking her hand; "but misery makes me restless. I feel, too, as if the very sight of me must cast a gloom over you! I often hear your voices, and that of my gentle Lucy, mingled together in cheerful converse; and I shrink from the pleasure it gives me—I dread lest it should be punished on you!"
"Nay," interrupted Guido, "this is being too fanciful. We will run the risk," added he, smiling, "of any judgment you may bring down upon us."
"You speak like a boy," replied Arden, almost angrily, "who imagines that doubt is wisdom. My whole past has taught me the mysterious influences which unite our destinies together. Blessings wait on the steps of one, while curses follow in the path of another. To whom have I ever brought good? My sister pined away in the home which I urged her to enter; my first friend, through my act, became a broken-down exile in his old age; the only woman I ever loved I forced to a violent and dreadful death; my eastern master perished as soon as he befriended his fatal slave. I seek to repair my former crimes, and ​now Lord Avonleigh, who has known but one uninterrupted course of prosperity, is carried away into captivity. If I wish your good I must leave you. Why should my shadow be flung upon your path?"
There is something in a deep conviction that forces, for the time, its own belief on others. As the youthful Italians gazed on Arden's pale and haggard face, with its wild and gleaming eyes, seen by the fitful light of the decaying hearth, while the only sound that echoed his slow and hollow accents was the winter wind that went howling drearily past,—they felt as if the evil influence were indeed upon them, and shrunk before that nameless dread of the future, which for the moment subdues the energies, and in whose presence reason trembles. Surely all the more imaginative know this sensation; it is not omen—sound, light, even a cheerful word, have power to destroy its dark dominion; and, unlike most other human emotions, it has no consequence. But who has not shuddered before the indefinite and unknown?
In the ordinary course of daily life, it is wonderful how little we think of the morrow. That sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, is a truth unconsciously, but universally acknowledged. ​Instinct clings to the immediate; but when we do think of the future, uninfluenced by any present hope—by any strong tide of anticipation carrying us along its darkening depths—how terrible does that future ever appear!—what may it not have in store for us! Sickness, sorrow, poverty, age, and even crime—all that we should now indignantly disclaim, but that to which we may yield under some strong and subtle temptation. The guiltiest have had their guileless and innocent hour. Who knows what may await them of degradation and despair? Death, too!—that awful spectre, which stalks over the morrow as his own domain, opens before us his many graves—our own the last!—no rest till we are worn with weeping for the loved and lost! At such times, how we marvel at our usual recklessness, and pause, as it were, shrinking from the busy and inevitable current which is hurrying us on to eternity!
Each, however, felt that their silence was unkind to Arden: both urged him to stay, by every motive that could persuade, and every reason that could induce. But entreaty and argument were alike in vain. Arden had arrived at the last consolation of misfortune—fatality. Strange the unconscious comfort which it is to exaggerate our self-importance, and that crime and sorrow are ​redeemed from the common-place by stamping them with the character of fate!
Arden departed early the next morning. He took no farewell, and left no words of blessing behind him. Some slight noise had awakened Francesca, and opening her casement, she looked through the thick and misty air, and saw him riding slowly over the heath. It was a bleak and desolate scene. In summer it was a wide and beautiful panorama; but now the dreariest hours of the year were paramount, and nature looked rather lifeless than sleeping. The common was brown, and the trees leafless; while a dull and leaden sky oppressed, rather than surrounded, the landscape.
Never tell me of the sterner beauties of winter. Winter may have a mighty beauty of its own, where the mountain rises, white with the snow of a thousand years, hemmed in by black pine forests, eternal in their gloom; where the overhanging avalanche makes terrible even the slightest sound of the human voice; where the pinnacles of ice catch the sunbeams but to mock their power, and wear the genial and rosy tiny of that warmth which they know not; and where waters that never flowed spread the glittering valleys with the frost-work of the measureless past.
​ But the characteristic of English scenery is loveliness. We look for the verdant green of her fields, for the rich foliage of her luxuriant trees, for the colours of her wild and garden flowers, for daisies universal as hope, and for the cheerful hedges, so various in leaf and bud. Winter comes to us with gray mists and drizzling rains: now and then, for a day, the frost creates its own fragile and fairy world of gossamer; but not often. We see the desolate trees, bleak and bare; the dreary meadows, the withered gardens, and close door and window, to exclude the fog and the east wind.
Such a morning was it when Arden wound his way along the cheerless road. Twice or thrice he looked back; but suddenly he clapped spurs to his horse and rode on, as if in the determination of fixed resolve. A turn of the path shewed him once more; but immediately a group of trees intervened, and shut him for ever from Francesca's sight.
None in his native country ever saw Richard Arden again. He left his niece richly dowered; and months afterwards, they had a brief scroll, which told his fate—it was his last communication with his kind,—he had entered the abbey of La Trappe. Penance and vigil soon did the ​work of time on his worn-out frame! Scarcely had he fulfilled his gloomy task, and dug his future grave, ere in that grave he was laid—the fevered brain calm, the beating heart at rest for ever!