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LUCRETIA
by Edward Bulwer Lytton
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.
"Lucretia; or, The Children of Night," was begun simultaneously with "The
Caxtons: a Family Picture." The two fictions were intended as pendants;
both serving, amongst other collateral aims and objects, to show the
influence of home education, of early circumstance and example, upon
after character and conduct. "Lucretia" was completed and published
before "The Caxtons." The moral design of the first was misunderstood
and assailed; that of the last was generally acknowledged and approved:
the moral design in both was nevertheless precisely the same. But in one
it was sought through the darker side of human nature; in the other
through the more sunny and cheerful: one shows the evil, the other the
salutary influences, of early circumstance and training. Necessarily,
therefore, the first resorts to the tragic elements of awe and distress,
--the second to the comic elements of humour and agreeable emotion. These
differences serve to explain the different reception that awaited the
two, and may teach us how little the real conception of an author is
known, and how little it is cared for; we judge, not by the purpose he
conceives, but according as the impressions he effects are pleasurable or
painful. But while I cannot acquiesce in much of the hostile criticism
this fiction produced at its first appearance, I readily allow that as a
mere question of art the story might have been improved in itself, and
rendered more acceptable to the reader, by diminishing the gloom of the
catastrophe. In this edition I have endeavoured to do so; and the victim
whose fate in the former cast of the work most revolted the reader, as a
violation of the trite but amiable law of Poetical Justice, is saved from
the hands of the Children of Night. Perhaps, whatever the faults of this
work, it equals most of its companions in the sustainment of interest,
and in that coincidence between the gradual development of motive or
passion, and the sequences of external events constituting plot, which
mainly distinguish the physical awe of tragedy from the coarse horrors of
melodrama. I trust at least that I shall now find few readers who will
not readily acknowledge that the delineation of crime has only been
employed for the grave and impressive purpose which brings it within the
due province of the poet,--as an element of terror and a warning to the
heart.
LONDON, December 7.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
It is somewhere about four years since I appeared before the public as
the writer of a fiction, which I then intimated would probably be my
last; but bad habits are stronger than good intentions. When Fabricio,
in his hospital, resolved upon abjuring the vocation of the Poet, he was,
in truth, recommencing his desperate career by a Farewell to the Muses,--
I need not apply the allusion.
I must own, however, that there had long been a desire in my mind to
trace, in some work or other, the strange and secret ways through which
that Arch-ruler of Civilization, familiarly called "Money," insinuates
itself into our thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions; affecting
those who undervalue as those who overestimate its importance; ruining
virtues in the spendthrift no less than engendering vices in the miser.
But when I half implied my farewell to the character of a novelist, I had
imagined that this conception might be best worked out upon the stage.
After some unpublished and imperfect attempts towards so realizing my
design, I found either that the subject was too wide for the limits of
the Drama, or that I wanted that faculty of concentration which alone
enables the dramatist to compress multiform varieties into a very limited
compass. With this design, I desired to unite some exhibition of what
seems to me a principal vice in the hot and emulous chase for happiness
or fame, fortune or knowledge, which is almost synonymous with the cant
phrase of "the March of Intellect," in that crisis of society to which we
have arrived. The vice I allude to is Impatience. That eager desire to
press forward, not so much to conquer obstacles as to elude them; that
gambling with the solemn destinies of life, seeking ever to set success
upon the chance of a die; that hastening from the wish conceived to the
end accomplished; that thirst after quick returns to ingenious toil, and
breathless spurrings along short cuts to the goal, which we see
everywhere around us, from the Mechanics' Institute to the Stock Market,-
-beginning in education with the primers of infancy, deluging us with
"Philosophies for the Million" and "Sciences made Easy;" characterizing
the books of our writers, the speeches of our statesmen, no less than the
dealings of our speculators,--seem, I confess, to me to constitute a very
diseased and very general symptom of the times. I hold that the greatest
friend to man is labour; that knowledge without toil, if possible, were
worthless; that toil in pursuit of knowledge is the best knowledge we can
attain; that the continuous effort for fame is nobler than fame itself;
that it is not wealth suddenly acquired which is deserving of homage, but
the virtues which a man exercises in the slow pursuit of wealth,--the
abilities so called forth, the self-denials so imposed; in a word, that
Labour and Patience are the true schoolmasters on earth. While occupied
with these ideas and this belief, whether right or wrong, and slowly
convinced that it was only in that species of composition with which I
was most familiar that I could work out some portion of the plan that I
began to contemplate, I became acquainted with the histories of two
criminals existing in our own age,--so remarkable, whether from the
extent and darkness of the guilt committed, whether from the glittering
accomplishments and lively temper of the one, the profound knowledge and
intellectual capacities of the other, that the examination and analysis
of characters so perverted became a study full of intense, if gloomy,
interest.
In these persons there appear to have been as few redeemable points as
can be found in Human Nature, so far as such points may be traced in the
kindly instincts and generous passions which do sometimes accompany the
perpetration of great crimes, and, without excusing the individual,
vindicate the species. Yet, on the other hand, their sanguinary
wickedness was not the dull ferocity of brutes; it was accompanied with
instruction and culture,--nay, it seemed to me, on studying their lives
and pondering over their own letters, that through their cultivation
itself we could arrive at the secret of the ruthless and atrocious pre-
eminence in evil these Children of Night had attained; that here the
monster vanished into the mortal, and the phenomena that seemed
aberrations from Nature were explained.
I could not resist the temptation of reducing to a tale the materials
which had so engrossed my interest and tasked my inquiries. And in this
attempt, various incidental opportunities have occurred, if not of
completely carrying out, still of incidentally illustrating, my earlier
design,--of showing the influence of Mammon upon our most secret selves,
of reproving the impatience which is engendered by a civilization that,
with much of the good, brings all the evils of competition, and of
tracing throughout, all the influences of early household life upon our
subsequent conduct and career. In such incidental bearings the moral may
doubtless be more obvious than in the delineation of the darker and rarer
crime which forms the staple of my narrative. For in extraordinary guilt
we are slow to recognize ordinary warnings,--we say to the peaceful
conscience, "This concerns thee not!" whereas at each instance of
familiar fault and commonplace error we own a direct and sensible
admonition. Yet in the portraiture of gigantic crime, poets have rightly
found their sphere and fulfilled their destiny of teachers. Those
terrible truths which appall us in the guilt of Macbeth or the villany of
Iago, have their moral uses not less than the popular infirmities of Tom
Jones, or the every-day hypocrisy of Blifil. Incredible as it may seem,
the crimes herein related took place within the last seventeen years.
There has been no exaggeration as to their extent, no great departure
from their details; the means employed, even that which seems most far-
fetched,--the instrument of the poisoned ring,--have their foundation in
literal facts. Nor have I much altered the social position of the
criminals, nor in the least overrated their attainments and intelligence.
In those more salient essentials which will most, perhaps, provoke the
Reader's incredulous wonder, I narrate a history, not invent a fiction
[These criminals were not, however, in actual life, as in the novel,
intimates and accomplices. Their crimes were of similar character,
effected by similar agencies, and committed at dates which embrace their
several careers of guilt within the same period; but I have no authority
to suppose that the one was known to the other.]. All that Romance which
our own time affords is not more the romance than the philosophy of the
time. Tragedy never quits the world,--it surrounds us everywhere. We
have but to look, wakeful and vigilant, abroad, and from the age of
Pelops to that of Borgia, the same crimes, though under different garbs,
will stalk on our paths. Each age comprehends in itself specimens of
every virtue and every vice which has ever inspired our love or mowed our
horror.
LONDON, November 1, 1846.
CONTENTS
PART THE FIRST
PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST
CHAPTER
I A Family Group
II Lucretia
III Conferences
IV Guy's Oak
V Household Treason
VI The Will
VII The Engagement
VIII The Discovery
IX A Soul without Hope
X The Reconciliation between Father and Son
EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST
PART THE SECOND
PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND
I The Coronation
II Love at First Sight
III Early Training for an Upright Gentleman
IV John Ardworth
V The Weavers and the Woof
VI The Lawyer and the Body-snatcher
VII The Rape of the Mattress
VIII Percival visits Lucretia
IX The Rose beneath the Upas
X The Rattle of the Snake
XI Love and Innocence
XII Sudden Celebrity and Patient Hope
XIII The Loss of the Crossing
XIV News from Grabman
XV Varieties
XVI The Invitation to Laughton
XVII The Waking of the Serpent
XVIII Retrospect
XIX Mr. Grabman's Adventures
XX More of Mrs. Joplin
XXI Beck's Discovery
XXII The Tapestry Chamber
XXIII The Shades on the Dial
XXIV Murder, towards his Design, moves like a Ghost
XXV The Messenger speeds
XXVI The Spy flies
XXVII Lucretia regains her Son
XXVIII The Lots vanish within the Urn
EPILOGUE TO PART THE SECOND
LUCRETIA; OR, THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT.
PART THE FIRST.
PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.
In an apartment at Paris, one morning during the Reign of Terror, a man,
whose age might be somewhat under thirty, sat before a table covered with
papers, arranged and labelled with the methodical precision of a mind
fond of order and habituated to business. Behind him rose a tall
bookcase surmounted with a bust of Robespierre, and the shelves were
filled chiefly with works of a scientific character, amongst which the
greater number were on chemistry and medicine. There were to be seen
also many rare books on alchemy, the great Italian historians, some
English philosophical treatises, and a few manuscripts in Arabic. The
absence from this collection of the stormy literature of the day seemed
to denote that the owner was a quiet student, living apart from the
strife and passions of the Revolution. This supposition was, however,
disproved by certain papers on the table, which were formally and
laconically labelled "Reports on Lyons," and by packets of letters in the
handwritings of Robespierre and Couthon. At one of the windows a young
boy was earnestly engaged in some occupation which appeared to excite the
curiosity of the person just described; for this last, after examining
the child's movements for a few moments with a silent scrutiny that
betrayed but little of the half-complacent, half-melancholy affection
with which busy man is apt to regard childhood, rose noiselessly from his
seat, approached the boy, and looked over his shoulder unobserved. In a
crevice of the wood by the window, a huge black spider had formed his
web; the child had just discovered another spider, and placed it in the
meshes: he was watching the result of his operations. The intrusive
spider stood motionless in the midst of the web, as if fascinated. The
rightful possessor was also quiescent; but a very fine ear might have
caught a low, humming sound, which probably augured no hospitable
intentions to the invader. Anon, the stranger insect seemed suddenly to
awake from its amaze; it evinced alarm, and turned to fly; the huge
spider darted forward; the boy uttered a chuckle of delight. The man's
pale lip curled into a sinister sneer, and he glided back to his seat.
There, leaning his face on his hand, he continued to contemplate the
child. That child might have furnished to an artist a fitting subject
for fair and blooming infancy. His light hair, tinged deeply, it is
true, with red, hung in sleek and glittering abundance down his neck and
shoulders. His features, seen in profile, were delicately and almost
femininely proportioned; health glowed on his cheek, and his form, slight
though it was, gave promise of singular activity and vigour. His dress
was fantastic, and betrayed the taste of some fondly foolish mother; but
the fine linen, trimmed with lace, was rumpled and stained, the velvet
jacket unbrushed, the shoes soiled with dust,--slight tokens these of
neglect, but serving to show that the foolish fondness which had invented
the dress had not of late presided over the toilet.
"Child," said the man, first in French; and observing that the boy heeded
him not,--"child," he repeated in English, which he spoke well, though
with a foreign accent, "child!"
The boy turned quickly.
"Has the great spider devoured the small one?"
"No, sir," said the boy, colouring; "the small one has had the best of
it."
The tone and heightened complexion of the child seemed to give meaning to
his words,--at least, so the man thought, for a slight frown passed over
his high, thoughtful brow.
"Spiders, then," he said, after a short pause, "are different from men;
with us, the small do not get the better of the great. Hum! do you still
miss your mother?"
"Oh, yes!" and the boy advanced eagerly to the table.
"Well, you will see her once again."
"When?"
The man looked towards a clock on the mantelpiece,--"Before that clock
strikes. Now, go back to your spiders." The child looked irresolute and
disinclined to obey; but a stern and terrible expression gathered slowly
over the man's face, and the boy, growing pale as he remarked it, crept
back to the window.
The father--for such was the relation the owner of the room bore to the
child--drew paper and ink towards him, and wrote for some minutes
rapidly. Then starting up, he glanced at the clock, took his hat and
cloak, which lay on a chair beside, drew up the collar of the mantle till
it almost concealed his countenance, and said, "Now, boy, come with me; I
have promised to show you an execution: I am going to keep my promise.
Come!"
The boy clapped his hands with joy; and you might see then, child as he
was, that those fair features were capable of a cruel and ferocious
expression. The character of the whole face changed. He caught up his
gay cap and plume, and followed his father into the streets.
Silently the two took their way towards the Barriere du Trone. At a
distance they saw the crowd growing thick and dense as throng after
throng hurried past them, and the dreadful guillotine rose high in the
light blue air. As they came into the skirts of the mob, the father, for
the first time, took his child's hand. "I must get you a good place for
the show," he said, with a quiet smile.
There was something in the grave, staid, courteous, yet haughty bearing
of the man that made the crowd give way as he passed. They got near the
dismal scene, and obtained entrance into a wagon already crowded with
eager spectators.
And now they heard at a distance the harsh and lumbering roll of the
tumbril that bore the victims, and the tramp of the horses which guarded
the procession of death. The boy's whole attention was absorbed in
expectation of the spectacle, and his ear was perhaps less accustomed to
French, though born and reared in France, than to the language of his
mother's lips,--and she was English; thus he did not hear or heed certain
observations of the bystanders, which made his father's pale cheek grow
paler.
"What is the batch to-day?" quoth a butcher in the wagon. "Scarce worth
the baking,--only two; but one, they say, is an aristocrat,--a ci-devant
marquis," answered a carpenter. "Ah, a marquis! Bon! And the other?"
"Only a dancer, but a pretty one, it is true; I could pity her, but she
is English." And as he pronounced the last word, with a tone of
inexpressible contempt, the butcher spat, as if in nausea.
"Mort diable! a spy of Pitt's, no doubt. What did they discover?"
A man, better dressed than the rest, turned round with a smile, and
answered: "Nothing worse than a lover, I believe; but that lover was a
proscrit. The ci-devant marquis was caught disguised in her apartment.
She betrayed for him a good, easy friend of the people who had long loved
her, and revenge is sweet."
The man whom we have accompanied, nervously twitched up the collar of his
cloak, and his compressed lips told that he felt the anguish of the laugh
that circled round him.
"They are coming! There they are!" cried the boy, in ecstatic
excitement.
"That's the way to bring up citizens," said the butcher, patting the
child's shoulder, and opening a still better view for him at the edge of
the wagon.
The crowd now abruptly gave way. The tumbril was in sight. A man, young
and handsome, standing erect and with folded arms in the fatal vehicle,
looked along the mob with an eye of careless scorn. Though he wore the
dress of a workman, the most unpractised glance could detect, in his mien
and bearing, one of the hated noblesse, whose characteristics came out
even more forcibly at the hour of death. On the lip was that smile of
gay and insolent levity, on the brow that gallant if reckless contempt of
physical danger, which had signalized the hero-coxcombs of the old
regime. Even the rude dress was worn with a certain air of foppery, and
the bright hair was carefully adjusted, as if for the holiday of the
headsman. As the eyes of the young noble wandered over the fierce faces
of that horrible assembly, while a roar of hideous triumph answered the
look, in which for the last time the gentilhomme spoke his scorn of the
canaille, the child's father lowered the collar of his cloak, and slowly
raised his hat from his brow. The eye of the marquis rested upon the
countenance thus abruptly shown to him, and which suddenly became
individualized amongst the crowd,--that eye instantly lost its calm
contempt. A shudder passed visibly over his frame, and his cheek grew
blanched with terror. The mob saw the change, but not the cause, and
loud and louder rose their triumphant yell. The sound recalled the pride
of the young noble; he started, lifted his crest erect, and sought again
to meet the look which had appalled him. But he could no longer single
it out among the crowd. Hat and cloak once more hid the face of the foe,
and crowds of eager heads intercepted the view. The young marquis's lips
muttered; he bent down, and then the crowd caught sight of his companion,
who was being lifted up from the bottom of the tumbril, where she had
flung herself in horror and despair. The crowd grew still in a moment as
the pale face of one, familiar to most of them, turned wildly from place
to place in the dreadful scene, vainly and madly through its silence
imploring life and pity. How often had the sight of that face, not then
pale and haggard, but wreathed with rosy smiles, sufficed to draw down
the applause of the crowded theatre; how, then, had those breasts, now
fevered by the thirst of blood, held hearts spellbound by the airy
movements of that exquisite form writhing now in no stage-mime agony!
Plaything of the city, minion to the light amusement of the hour, frail
child of Cytherea and the Graces, what relentless fate has conducted thee
to the shambles? Butterfly of the summer, why should a nation rise to
break thee upon the wheel? A sense of the mockery of such an execution,
of the horrible burlesque that would sacrifice to the necessities of a
mighty people so slight an offering, made itself felt among the crowd.
There was a low murmur of shame and indignation. The dangerous sympathy
of the mob was perceived by the officer in attendance. Hastily he made
the sign to the headsman, and as he did so, a child's cry was heard in
the English tongue,--"Mother! Mother!" The father's hand grasped the
child's arm with an iron pressure; the crowd swam before the boy's eyes;
the air seemed to stifle him, and become blood-red; only through the hum
and the tramp and the roll of the drums he heard a low voice hiss in his
ear "Learn how they perish who betray me!"
As the father said these words, again his face was bare, and the woman,
whose ear amidst the dull insanity of fear had caught the cry of her
child's voice, saw that face, and fell back insensible in the arms of the
headsman.
CHAPTER I.
A FAMILY GROUP.
One July evening, at the commencement of the present century, several
persons were somewhat picturesquely grouped along an old-fashioned
terrace which skirted the garden-side of a manor-house that had
considerable pretensions to baronial dignity. The architecture was of
the most enriched and elaborate style belonging to the reign of James the
First: the porch, opening on the terrace, with its mullion window above,
was encased with pilasters and reliefs at once ornamental and massive;
and the large square tower in which it was placed was surmounted by a
stone falcon, whose talons griped fiercely a scutcheon blazoned with the
five-pointed stars which heralds recognize as the arms of St. John. On
either side this tower extended long wings, the dark brickwork of which
was relieved with noble stone casements and carved pediments; the high
roof was partially concealed by a balustrade perforated not inelegantly
into arabesque designs; and what architects call "the sky line" was
broken with imposing effect by tall chimney-shafts of various form and
fashion. These wings terminated in angular towers similar to the centre,
though kept duly subordinate to it both in size and decoration, and
crowned with stone cupolas. A low balustrade, of later date than that
which adorned the roof, relieved by vases and statues, bordered the
terrace, from which a double flight of steps descended to a smooth lawn,
intersected by broad gravel-walks, shadowed by vast and stately cedars,
and gently and gradually mingling with the wilder scenery of the park,
from which it was only divided by a ha-ha.
Upon the terrace, and under cover of a temporary awning, sat the owner,
Sir Miles St. John of Laughton, a comely old man, dressed with faithful
precision to the costume which he had been taught to consider appropriate
to his rank of gentleman, and which was not yet wholly obsolete and
eccentric. His hair, still thick and luxuriant, was carefully powdered,
and collected into a club behind; his nether man attired in gray breeches
and pearl-coloured silk stockings; his vest of silk, opening wide at the
breast, and showing a profusion of frill, slightly sprinkled with the
pulvilio of his favourite Martinique; his three-cornered hat, placed on a
stool at his side, with a gold-headed crutch-cane (hat made rather to be
carried in the hand than worn on the head), the diamond in his shirt-
breast, the diamond on his finger, the ruffles at his wrist,--all bespoke
the gallant who had chatted with Lord Chesterfield and supped with Mrs.
Clive. On a table before him were placed two or three decanters of wine,
the fruits of the season, an enamelled snuff-box in which was set the
portrait of a female (perhaps the Chloe or Phyllis of his early love-
ditties), a lighted taper, a small china jar containing tobacco, and
three or four pipes of homely clay,--for cherry-sticks and meerschaums
were not then in fashion, and Sir Miles St. John, once a gay and
sparkling beau, now a popular country gentleman, great at county meetings
and sheep-shearing festivals, had taken to smoking, as in harmony with
his bucolic transformation. An old setter lay dozing at his feet; a
small spaniel--old, too--was sauntering lazily in the immediate
neighbourhood, looking gravely out for such stray bits of biscuit as had
been thrown forth to provoke him to exercise, and which hitherto had
escaped his attention. Half seated, half reclined on the balustrade,
apart from the baronet, but within reach of his conversation, lolled a
man in the prime of life, with an air of unmistakable and sovereign
elegance and distinction. Mr. Vernon was a guest from London; and the
London man,--the man of clubs and dinners and routs, of noon loungings
through Bond Street, and nights spent with the Prince of Wales,--seemed
stamped not more upon the careful carelessness of his dress, and upon the
worn expression of his delicate features, than upon the listless ennui,
which, characterizing both his face and attitude, appeared to take pity
on himself for having been entrapped into the country.
Yet we should convey an erroneous impression of Mr. Vernon if we
designed, by the words "listless ennui," to depict the slumberous
insipidity of more modern affectation; it was not the ennui of a man to
whom ennui is habitual, it was rather the indolent prostration that fills
up the intervals of excitement. At that day the word blast was unknown;
men had not enough sentiment for satiety. There was a kind of
Bacchanalian fury in the life led by those leaders of fashion, among whom
Mr. Vernon was not the least distinguished; it was a day of deep
drinking, of high play, of jovial, reckless dissipation, of strong
appetite for fun and riot, of four-in-hand coachmanship, of prize-
fighting, of a strange sort of barbarous manliness that strained every
nerve of the constitution,--a race of life in which three fourths of the
competitors died half-way in the hippodrome. What is now the Dandy was
then the Buck; and something of the Buck, though subdued by a chaster
taste than fell to the ordinary members of his class, was apparent in Mr.
Vernon's costume as well as air. Intricate folds of muslin, arranged in
prodigious bows and ends, formed the cravat, which Brummell had not yet
arisen to reform; his hat, of a very peculiar shape, low at the crown and
broad at the brim, was worn with an air of devil-me-care defiance; his
watch-chain, garnished with a profusion of rings and seals, hung low from
his white waistcoat; and the adaptation of his nankeen inexpressibles to
his well-shaped limbs was a masterpiece of art. His whole dress and air
was not what could properly be called foppish, it was rather what at that
time was called "rakish." Few could so closely approach vulgarity
without being vulgar: of that privileged few, Mr. Vernon was one of the
elect.
Farther on, and near the steps descending into the garden, stood a man in
an attitude of profound abstraction, his arms folded, his eyes bent on
the ground, his brows slightly contracted; his dress was a plain black
surtout, and pantaloons of the same colour. Something both in the
fashion of the dress, and still more in the face of the man, bespoke the
foreigner.
Sir Miles St. John was an accomplished person for that time of day. He
had made the grand tour; he had bought pictures and statues; he spoke and
wrote well in the modern languages; and being rich, hospitable, social,
and not averse from the reputation of a patron, he had opened his house
freely to the host of emigrants whom the French Revolution had driven to
our coasts. Olivier Dalibard, a man of considerable learning and rare
scientific attainments, had been tutor in the house of the Marquis de
G----, a French nobleman known many years before to the old baronet. The
marquis and his family had been among the first emigres at the outbreak
of the Revolution. The tutor had remained behind; for at that time no
danger appeared to threaten those who pretended to no other aristocracy
than that of letters. Contrary, as he said, with repentant modesty, to
his own inclinations, he had been compelled, not only for his own safety,
but for that of his friends, to take some part in the subsequent events
of the Revolution,--a part far from sincere, though so well had he
simulated the patriot that he had won the personal favour and protection
of Robespierre; nor till the fall of that virtuous exterminator had he
withdrawn from the game of politics and effected in disguise his escape
to England. As, whether from kindly or other motives, he had employed
the power of his position in the esteem of Robespierre to save certain
noble heads from the guillotine,--amongst others, the two brothers of the
Marquis de G----, he was received with grateful welcome by his former
patrons, who readily pardoned his career of Jacobinism from their belief
in his excuses and their obligations to the services which that very
career had enabled him to render to their kindred. Olivier Dalibard had
accompanied the marquis and his family in one of the frequent visits they
paid to Laughton; and when the marquis finally quitted England, and fixed
his refuge at Vienna, with some connections of his wife's, he felt a
lively satisfaction at the thought of leaving his friend honourably, if
unambitiously, provided for as secretary and librarian to Sir Miles St.
John. In fact, the scholar, who possessed considerable powers of
fascination, had won no less favour with the English baronet than he had
with the French dictator. He played well both at chess and backgammon;
he was an extraordinary accountant; he had a variety of information upon
all points that rendered him more convenient than any cyclopaedia in Sir
Miles's library; and as he spoke both English and Italian with a
correctness and fluency extremely rare in a Frenchman, he was of
considerable service in teaching languages to, as well as directing the
general literary education of, Sir Miles's favourite niece, whom we shall
take an early opportunity to describe at length.
Nevertheless, there had been one serious obstacle to Dalibard's
acceptance of the appointment offered to him by Sir Miles. Dalibard had
under his charge a young orphan boy of some ten or twelve years old,--a
boy whom Sir Miles was not long in suspecting to be the scholar's son.
This child had come from France with Dalibard, and while the marquis's
family were in London, remained under the eye and care of his guardian or
father, whichever was the true connection between the two. But this
superintendence became impossible if Dalibard settled in Hampshire with
Sir Miles St. John, and the boy remained in London; nor, though the
generous old gentleman offered to pay for the child's schooling, would
Dalibard consent to part with him. At last the matter was arranged: the
boy was invited to Laughton on a visit, and was so lively, yet so well
mannered, that he became a favourite, and was now fairly quartered in the
house with his reputed father; and not to make an unnecessary mystery of
this connection, such was in truth the relationship between Olivier
Dalibard and Honore Gabriel Varney,--a name significant of the double and
illegitimate origin: a French father, an English mother. Dropping,
however, the purely French appellation of Honore, he went familiarly by
that of Gabriel. Half-way down the steps stood the lad, pencil and
tablet in hand, sketching. Let us look over his shoulder: it is his
father's likeness,--a countenance in itself not very remarkable at the
first glance, for the features were small; but when examined, it was one
that most persons, women especially, would have pronounced handsome, and
to which none could deny the higher praise of thought and intellect. A
native of Provence, with some Italian blood in his veins,--for his
grandfather, a merchant of Marseilles, had married into a Florentine
family settled at Leghorn,--the dark complexion common with those in the
South had been subdued, probably by the habits of the student, into a
bronze and steadfast paleness which seemed almost fair by the contrast of
the dark hair which he wore unpowdered, and the still darker brows which
hung thick and prominent over clear gray eyes. Compared with the
features, the skull was disproportionally large, both behind and before;
and a physiognomist would have drawn conclusions more favourable to the
power than the tenderness of the Provencal's character from the compact
closeness of the lips and the breadth and massiveness of the iron jaw.
But the son's sketch exaggerated every feature, and gave to the
expression a malignant and terrible irony not now, at least, apparent in
the quiet and meditative aspect. Gabriel himself, as be stood, would
have been a more tempting study to many an artist. It is true that he was
small for his years; but his frame had a vigour in its light proportions
which came from a premature and almost adolescent symmetry of shape and
muscular development. The countenance, however, had much of effeminate
beauty: the long hair reached the shoulders, but did not curl,--straight,
fine, and glossy as a girl's, and in colour of the pale auburn, tinged
with red, which rarely alters in hue as childhood matures to man; the
complexion was dazzlingly clear and fair. Nevertheless, there was
something so hard in the lip, so bold, though not open, in the brow, that
the girlishness of complexion, and even of outline, could not leave, on
the whole, an impression of effeminacy. All the hereditary keenness and
intelligence were stamped upon his face at that moment; but the
expression had also a large share of the very irony and malice which he
had conveyed to his caricature. The drawing itself was wonderfully
vigorous and distinct; showing great artistic promise, and done with the
rapidity and ease which betrayed practice. Suddenly his father turned,
and with as sudden a quickness the boy concealed his tablet in his vest;
and the sinister expression of his face smoothed into a timorous smile as
his eye encountered Dalibard's. The father beckoned to the boy, who
approached with alacrity. "Gabriel," whispered the Frenchman, in his own
tongue, "where are they at this moment?"
The boy pointed silently towards one of the cedars. Dalibard mused an
instant, and then, slowly descending the steps, took his noiseless way
over the smooth turf towards the tree. Its boughs drooped low and spread
wide; and not till he was within a few paces of the spot could his eye
perceive two forms seated on a bench under the dark green canopy. He
then paused and contemplated them.
The one was a young man whose simple dress and subdued air strongly
contrasted the artificial graces and the modish languor of Mr. Vernon;
but though wholly without that nameless distinction which sometimes
characterizes those conscious of pure race and habituated to the
atmosphere of courts, he had at least Nature's stamp of aristocracy in a
form eminently noble, and features of manly, but surpassing beauty, which
were not rendered less engaging by an expression of modest timidity. He
seemed to be listening with thoughtful respect to his companion, a young
female by his side, who was speaking to him with an earnestness visible
in her gestures and her animated countenance. And though there was much
to notice in the various persons scattered over the scene, not one,
perhaps,--not the graceful Vernon, not the thoughtful scholar, nor his
fair-haired, hard-lipped son, not even the handsome listener she
addressed,--no, not one there would so have arrested the eye, whether of
a physiognomist or a casual observer, as that young girl, Sir Miles St.
John's favourite niece and presumptive heiress.
But as at that moment the expression of her face differed from that
habitual to it, we defer its description.
"Do not," such were her words to her companion,--"do not alarm yourself
by exaggerating the difficulties; do not even contemplate them: those be
my care. Mainwaring, when I loved you; when, seeing that your diffidence
or your pride forbade you to be the first to speak, I overstepped the
modesty or the dissimulation of my sex; when I said, 'Forget that I am
the reputed heiress of Laughton, see in me but the faults and merits of
the human being, of the wild unregulated girl, see in me but Lucretia
Clavering'" (here her cheeks blushed, and her voice sank into a lower and
more tremulous whisper) "'and love her if you can!'--when I went thus
far, do not think I had not measured all the difficulties in the way of
our union, and felt that I could surmount them."
"But," answered Mainwaring, hesitatingly, "can you conceive it possible
that your uncle ever will consent? Is not pride--the pride of family--
almost the leading attribute of his character? Did he not discard your
mother--his own sister--from his house and heart for no other offence but
a second marriage which he deemed beneath her? Has he ever even
consented to see, much less to receive, your half-sister, the child of
that marriage? Is not his very affection for you interwoven with his
pride in you, with his belief in your ambition? Has he not summoned your
cousin, Mr. Vernon, for the obvious purpose of favouring a suit which he
considers worthy of you, and which, if successful, will unite the two
branches of his ancient house? How is it possible that he can ever hear
without a scorn and indignation which would be fatal to your fortunes
that your heart has presumed to choose, in William Mainwaring, a man
without ancestry or career?"
"Not without career," interrupted Lucretia, proudly. "Do you think if
you were master of Laughton that your career would not be more brilliant
than that of yon indolent, luxurious coxcomb? Do you think that I could
have been poor-hearted enough to love you if I had not recognized in you
energies and talents that correspond with my own ambition? For I am
ambitious, as you know, and therefore my mind, as well as my heart, went
with my love for you."
"Ah, Lucretia, but can Sir Miles St. John see my future rise in my
present obscurity?"
"I do not say that he can, or will; but if you love me, we can wait. Do
not fear the rivalry of Mr. Vernon. I shall know how to free myself from
so tame a peril. We can wait,--my uncle is old; his habits preclude the
chance of a much longer life; he has already had severe attacks. We are
young, dear Mainwaring: what is a year or two to those who hope?"
Mainwaring's face fell, and a displeasing chill passed through his veins.
Could this young creature, her uncle's petted and trusted darling, she
who should be the soother of his infirmities, the prop of his age, the
sincerest mourner at his grave, weigh coldly thus the chances of his
death, and point at once to the altar and the tomb?
He was saved from the embarrassment of reply by Dalibard's approach.
"More than half an hour absent," said the scholar, in his own language,
with a smile; and drawing out his watch, he placed it before their eyes.
"Do you not think that all will miss you? Do you suppose, Miss
Clavering, that your uncle has not ere this asked for his fair niece?
Come, and forestall him." He offered his arm to Lucretia as he spoke.
She hesitated a moment, and then, turning to Mainwaring, held out her
hand. He pressed it, though scarcely with a lover's warmth; and as she
walked back to the terrace with Dalibard, the young man struck slowly
into the opposite direction, and passing by a gate over a foot-bridge
that led from the ha-ha into the park, bent his way towards a lake which
gleamed below at some distance, half-concealed by groves of venerable
trees rich with the prodigal boughs of summer. Meanwhile, as they passed
towards the house, Dalibard, still using his native tongue, thus accosted
his pupil:--
"You must pardon me if I think more of your interests than you do; and
pardon me no less if I encroach on your secrets and alarm your pride.
This young man,--can you be guilty of the folly of more than a passing
caprice for his society, of more than the amusement of playing with his
vanity? Even if that be all, beware of entangling yourself in your own
meshes."
"You do in truth offend me," said Lucretia, with calm haughtiness, "and
you have not the right thus to speak to me."
"Not the right," repeated the Provencal, mournfully, "not the right!
Then, indeed, I am mistaken in my pupil. Do you consider that I would
have lowered my pride to remain here as a dependent; that, conscious of
attainments, and perhaps of abilities, that should win their way, even in
exile, to distinction, I would have frittered away my life in these
rustic shades,--if I had not formed in you a deep and absorbing interest?
In that interest I ground my right to warn and counsel you. I saw, or
fancied I saw, in you a mind congenial to my own; a mind above the
frivolities of your sex,--a mind, in short, with the grasp and energy of
a man's. You were then but a child, you are scarcely yet a woman; yet
have I not given to your intellect the strong food on which the statesmen
of Florence fed their pupil-princes, or the noble Jesuits the noble men
who were destined to extend the secret empire of the imperishable
Loyola?"
"You gave me the taste for a knowledge rare in my sex, I own," answered
Lucretia, with a slight tone of regret in her voice: "and in the
knowledge you have communicated I felt a charm that at times seems to me
to be only fatal. You have confounded in my mind evil and good, or
rather, you have left both good and evil as dead ashes, as the dust and
cinder of a crucible. You have made intellect the only conscience. Of
late, I wish that my tutor had been a village priest!"
"Of late, since you have listened to the pastorals of that meek Corydon!"
"Dare you despise him? And for what? That he is good and honest?"
"I despise him, not because he is good and honest, but because he is of
the common herd of men, without aim or character. And it is for this
youth that you will sacrifice your fortunes, your ambition, the station
you were born to fill and have been reared to improve,--this youth in
whom there is nothing but the lap-dog's merit, sleekness and beauty! Ay,
frown,--the frown betrays you; you love him!"
"And if I do?" said Lucretia, raising her tall form to its utmost height,
and haughtily facing her inquisitor,--"and, if I do, what then? Is he
unworthy of me? Converse with him, and you will find that the noble form
conceals as high a spirit. He wants but wealth: I can give it to him.
If his temper is gentle, I can prompt and guide it to fame and power. He
at least has education and eloquence and mind. What has Mr. Vernon?"
"Mr. Vernon? I did not speak of him!"
Lucretia gazed hard upon the Provencal's countenance,--gazed with that
unpitying air of triumph with which a woman who detects a power over the
heart she does not desire to conquer exults in defeating the reasons that
heart appears to her to prompt. "No," she said in a calm voice, to which
the venom of secret irony gave stinging significance,--"no, you spoke not
of Mr. Vernon; you thought that if I looked round, if I looked nearer, I
might have a fairer choice."
"You are cruel, you are unjust," said Dalibard, falteringly. If I once
presumed for a moment, have I repeated my offence? But," he added
hurriedly, "in me,--much as you appear to despise me,--in me, at least,
you would have risked none of the dangers that beset you if you seriously
set your heart on Mainwaring."
"You think my uncle would be proud to give my hand to M. Olivier
Dalibard?"
"I think and I know," answered the Provencal, gravely, and disregarding
the taunt, "that if you had deigned to render me--poor exile that I am!--
the most enviable of men, you had still been the heiress of Laughton."
"So you have said and urged," said Lucretia, with evident curiosity in
her voice; "yet how, and by what art,--wise and subtle as you are,--could
you have won my uncle's consent?"
"That is my secret," returned Dalibard, gloomily; "and since the madness
I indulged is forever over; since I have so schooled my heart that
nothing, despite your sarcasm, save an affectionate interest which I may
call paternal rests there,--let us pass from this painful subject. Oh,
my dear pupil, be warned in time; know love for what it really is, in the
dark and complicated history of actual life,--a brief enchantment, not to
be disdained, but not to be considered the all-in all. Look round the
world; contemplate all those who have married from passion: ten years
afterwards, whither has the passion flown? With a few, indeed, where
there is community of object and character, new excitements, new aims and
hopes, spring up; and having first taken root in passion, the passion
continues to shoot out in their fresh stems and fibres. But deceive
yourself not; there is no such community between you and Mainwaring.
What you call his goodness, you will learn hereafter to despise as
feeble; and what in reality is your mental power he soon, too soon, will
shudder at as unwomanly and hateful."
"Hold!" cried Lucretia, tremulously. "Hold! and if he does, I shall owe
his hate to you,--to your lessons; to your deadly influence!"
"Lucretia, no; the seeds were in you. Can cultivation force from the
soil that which it is against the nature of the soil to bear?"
"I will pluck out the weeds! I will transform myself!"
"Child, I defy you!" said the scholar, with a smile that gave to his face
the expression his son had conveyed to it. "I have warned you, and my
task is done." With that he bowed, and leaving her, was soon by the side
of Sir Miles St. John; and the baronet and his librarian, a few moments
after, entered the house and sat down to chess.
But during the dialogues we have sketched, we must not suppose that Sir
Miles himself had been so wholly absorbed in the sensual gratification
bestowed upon Europe by the immortal Raleigh as to neglect his guest and
kinsman.
"And so, Charley Vernon, it is not the fashion to smoke in Lunnon." Thus
Sir Miles pronounced the word, according to the Euphuism of his youth,
and which, even at that day, still lingered in courtly jargon.
"No, sir. However, to console us, we have most other vices in full
force."
"I don't doubt it; they say the prince's set exhaust life pretty
quickly."
"It certainly requires the fortune of an earl and the constitution of a
prize-fighter to live with him."
"Yet methinks, Master Charley, you have neither the one nor the other."
"And therefore I see before me, and at no very great distance, the Bench
and--a consumption!" answered Vernon, suppressing a slight yawn.
"'T is a pity, for you had a fine estate, properly managed; and in spite
of your faults, you have the heart of a true gentleman. Come, come!" and
the old man spoke with tenderness, "you are young enough yet to reform.
A prudent marriage and a good wife will save both your health and your
acres."
"If you think so highly of marriage, my dear Sir Miles, it is a wonder
you did not add to your precepts the value of your example."
"Jackanapes! I had not your infirmities: I never was a spendthrift, and
I have a constitution of iron!" There was a pause. "Charles," continued
Sir Miles, musingly, "there is many an earl with a less fortune than the
conjoined estates of Vernon Grange and Laughton Hall. You must already
have understood me: it is my intention to leave my estates to Lucretia;
it is my wish, nevertheless, to think you will not be the worse for my
will. Frankly, if you can like my niece, win her; settle here while I
live, put the Grange to nurse, and recruit yourself by fresh air and
field-sports. Zounds, Charles, I love you, and that's the truth! Give
me your hand!"
"And a grateful heart with it, sir," said Vernon, warmly, evidently
affected, as he started from his indolent position and took the hand
extended to him. "Believe me, I do not covet your wealth, nor do I envy
my cousin anything so much as the first place in your regard."
"Prettily said, my boy, and I don't suspect you of insincerity. What
think you, then, of my plan?"
Mr. Vernon seemed embarrassed; but recovering himself with his usual
ease, he replied archly: "Perhaps, sir, it will be of little use to know
what I think of your plan; my fair cousin may have upset it already."
"Ha, sir! let me look at you. So, so! you are not jesting. What the
deuce do you mean? 'Gad, man, speak out!"
"Do you not think that Mr. Monderling--Mandolin--what's his name, eh?--do
you not think that he is a very handsome young fellow?" said Mr. Vernon,
drawing out his snuffbox and offering it to his kinsman.
"Damn your snuff," quoth Sir Miles, in great choler, as he rejected the
proffered courtesy with a vehemence that sent half the contents of the
box upon the joint eyes and noses of the two canine favourites dozing at
his feet. The setter started up in an agony; the spaniel wheezed and
sniffled and ran off, stopping every moment to take his head between his
paws. The old gentleman continued without heeding the sufferings of his
dumb friends,--a symptom of rare discomposure on his part.
"Do you mean to insinuate, Mr. Vernon, that my niece--my elder niece,
Lucretia Clavering--condescends to notice the looks, good or bad, of Mr.
Mainwaring? 'Sdeath, sir, he is the son of a land-agent! Sir, he is
intended for trade! Sir, his highest ambition is to be partner in some
fifth-rate mercantile house!"
"My dear Sir Miles," replied Mr. Vernon, as he continued to brush away,
with his scented handkerchief, such portions of the prince's mixture as
his nankeen inexpressibles had diverted from the sensual organs of Dash
and Ponto--"my dear Sir Miles, ca n'empeche pas le sentiment!"
"Empeche the fiddlestick! You don't know Lucretia. There are many
girls, indeed, who might not be trusted near any handsome flute-playing
spark, with black eyes and white teeth; but Lucretia is not one of those;
she has spirit and ambition that would never stoop to a mesalliance; she
has the mind and will of a queen,--old Queen Bess, I believe."
"That is saying much for her talent, sir; but if so, Heaven help her
intended! I am duly grateful for the blessings you propose me!"
Despite his anger, the old gentleman could not help smiling.
"Why, to confess the truth, she is hard to manage; but we men of the
world know how to govern women, I hope,--much more how to break in a girl
scarce out of her teens. As for this fancy of yours, it is sheer folly:
Lucretia knows my mind. She has seen her mother's fate; she has seen her
sister an exile from my house. Why? For no fault of hers, poor thing,
but because she is the child of disgrace, and the mother's sin is visited
on her daughter's head. I am a good-natured man, I fancy, as men go; but
I am old-fashioned enough to care for my race. If Lucretia demeaned
herself to love, to encourage, that lad, why, I would strike her from my
will, and put your name where I have placed hers."
"Sir," said Vernon, gravely, and throwing aside all affectation of
manner, "this becomes serious; and I have no right even to whisper a
doubt by which it now seems I might benefit. I think it imprudent, if
you wish Miss Clavering to regard me impartially as a suitor to her hand,
to throw her, at her age, in the way of a man far superior to myself, and
to most men, in personal advantages,--a man more of her own years, well
educated, well mannered, with no evidence of his inferior birth in his
appearance or his breeding. I have not the least ground for supposing
that he has made the slightest impression on Miss Clavering, and if he
has, it would be, perhaps, but a girl's innocent and thoughtless fancy,
easily shaken off by time and worldly reflection; but pardon me if I say
bluntly that should that be so, you would be wholly unjustified in
punishing, even in blaming, her,--it is yourself you must blame for your
own carelessness and that forgetful blindness to human nature and
youthful emotions which, I must say, is the less pardonable in one who
has known the world so intimately."
"Charles Vernon," said the old baronet, "give me your hand again! I was
right, at least, when I said you had the heart of a true gentleman. Drop
this subject for the present. Who has just left Lucretia yonder?"
"Your protege, the Frenchman."
"Ah, he, at least, is not blind; go and join Lucretia!"
Vernon bowed, emptied the remains of the Madeira into a tumbler, drank
the contents at a draught, and sauntered towards Lucretia; but she,
perceiving his approach, crossed abruptly into one of the alleys that led
to the other side of the house, and he was either too indifferent or too
well-bred to force upon her the companionship which she so evidently
shunned. He threw himself at length upon one of the benches on the lawn,
and leaning his head upon his hand, fell into reflections which, had he
spoken, would have shaped themselves somewhat thus into words:--
"If I must take that girl as the price of this fair heritage, shall I
gain or lose? I grant that she has the finest neck and shoulders I ever
saw out of marble; but far from being in love with her, she gives me a
feeling like fear and aversion. Add to this that she has evidently no
kinder sentiment for me than I for her; and if she once had a heart, that
young gentleman has long since coaxed it away. Pleasant auspices, these,
for matrimony to a poor invalid who wishes at least to decline and to die
in peace! Moreover, if I were rich enough to marry as I pleased; if I
were what, perhaps, I ought to be, heir to Laughton,--why, there is a
certain sweet Mary in the world, whose eyes are softer than Lucretia
Clavering's. But that is a dream! On the other hand, if I do not win
this girl, and my poor kinsman give her all, or nearly all, his
possessions, Vernon Grange goes to the usurers, and the king will find a
lodging for myself. What does it matter? I cannot live above two or
three years at the most, and can only hope, therefore, that dear stout
old Sir Miles may outlive me. At thirty-three I have worn out fortune
and life; little pleasure could Laughton give me,--brief pain the Bench.
'Fore Gad, the philosophy of the thing is on the whole against sour looks
and the noose!" Thus deciding in the progress of his revery, he smiled,
and changed his position. The sun had set, the twilight was over, the
moon rose in splendour from amidst a thick copse of mingled beech and
oak; the beams fell full on the face of the muser, and the face seemed
yet paler and the exhaustion of premature decay yet more evident, by that
still and melancholy light: all ruins gain dignity by the moon. This was
a ruin nobler than that which painters place on their canvas,--the ruin,
not of stone and brick, but of humanity and spirit; the wreck of man
prematurely old, not stricken by great sorrow, not bowed by great toil,
but fretted and mined away by small pleasures and poor excitements,--
small and poor, but daily, hourly, momently at their gnome-like work.
Something of the gravity and the true lesson of the hour and scene,
perhaps, forced itself upon a mind little given to sentiment, for Vernon
rose languidly and muttered,--
"My poor mother hoped better things from me. It is well, after all, that
it is broken off with Mary. Why should there be any one to weep for me?
I can the better die smiling, as I have lived."
Meanwhile, as it is necessary we should follow each of the principal
characters we have introduced through the course of an evening more or
less eventful in the destiny of all, we return to Mainwaring and
accompany him to the lake at the bottom of the park, which he reached as
its smooth surface glistened in the last beams of the sun. He saw, as he
neared the water, the fish sporting in the pellucid tide; the dragonfly
darted and hovered in the air; the tedded grass beneath his feet gave
forth the fragrance of crushed thyme and clover; the swan paused, as if
slumbering on the wave; the linnet and finch sang still from the
neighbouring copses; and the heavy bees were winging their way home with
a drowsy murmur. All around were images of that unspeakable peace which
Nature whispers to those attuned to her music; all fitted to lull, but
not to deject, the spirit,--images dear to the holiday of the world-worn
man, to the contemplation of serene and retired age, to the boyhood of
poets, to the youth of lovers. But Mainwaring's step was heavy, and his
brow clouded, and Nature that evening was dumb to him. At the margin of
the lake stood a solitary angler who now, his evening's task done, was
employed in leisurely disjointing his rod and whistling with much
sweetness an air from one of Izaak Walton's songs. Mainwaring reached
the angler and laid his hand on his shoulder.
"What sport, Ardworth?"
"A few large roach with the fly, and one pike with a gudgeon,--a noble
fellow! Look at him! He was lying under the reeds yonder; I saw his
green back, and teased him into biting. A heavenly evening! I wonder
you did not follow my example, and escape from a set where neither you
nor I can feel very much at home, to this green banquet of Nature, in
which at least no man sits below the salt-cellar. The birds are an older
family than the St. Johns, but they don't throw their pedigree in our
teeth, Mainwaring."
"Nay, nay, my good friend, you wrong old Sir Miles; proud he is, no
doubt, but neither you nor I have had to complain of his insolence."
"Of his insolence, certainly not; of his condescension, yes! Hang it,
William, it is his very politeness that galls me. Don't you observe that
with Vernon, or Lord A----, or Lord B----, or Mr. C----, he is easy and
off-hand; calls them by their names, pats them on the shoulder, rates
them, and swears at them if they vex him. But with you and me and his
French parasite, it is all stately decorum and punctilious courtesy: 'Mr.
Mainwaring, I am delighted to see you;' 'Mr. Ardworth, as you are so
near, dare I ask you to ring the bell?' 'Monsieur Dalibard, with the
utmost deference, I venture to disagree with you.' However, don't let my
foolish susceptibility ruffle your pride. And you, too, have a worthy
object in view, which might well detain you from roach and jack-fish.
Have you stolen your interview with the superb Lucretia?"
"Yes, stolen, as you say; and, like all thieves not thoroughly hardened,
I am ashamed of my gains."
"Sit down, my boy,--this is a bank in ten thousand; there, that old root
to lean your elbow on, this soft moss for your cushion: sit down and
confess. You have something on your mind that preys on you; we are old
college friends,--out with it!"
"There is no resisting you, Ardworth," said Mainwaring, smiling, and
drawn from his reserve and his gloom by the frank good-humour of his
companion. "I should like, I own, to make a clean breast of it; and
perhaps I may profit by your advice. You know, in the first place, that
after I left college, my father, seeing me indisposed for the Church, to
which he had always destined me in his own heart, and for which, indeed,
he had gone out of his way to maintain me at the University, gave me the
choice of his own business as a surveyor and land-agent, or of entering
into the mercantile profession. I chose the latter, and went to
Southampton, where we have a relation in business, to be initiated into
the elementary mysteries. There I became acquainted with a good
clergyman and his wife, and in that house I passed a great part of my
time."
"With the hope, I trust, on better consideration, of gratifying your
father's ambition and learning how to starve with gentility on a cure."
"Not much of that, I fear."
"Then the clergyman had a daughter?"
"You are nearer the mark now," said Mainwaring, colouring,--"though it
was not his daughter. A young lady lived in his family, not even related
to him; she was placed there with a certain allowance by a rich relation.
In a word, I admired, perhaps I loved, this young person; but she was
without an independence, and I not yet provided even with the substitute
of money,--a profession. I fancied (do not laugh at my vanity) that my
feelings might be returned. I was in alarm for her as well as myself; I
sounded the clergyman as to the chance of obtaining the consent of her
rich relation, and was informed that he thought it hopeless. I felt I
had no right to invite her to poverty and ruin, and still less to
entangle further (if I had chanced to touch at all) her affection. I
made an excuse to my father to leave the town, and returned home."
"Prudent and honourable enough, so far; unlike me,--I should have run off
with the girl, if she loved me, and old Plutus, the rascal, might have
done his worst against Cupid. But I interrupt you."
"I came back when the county was greatly agitated,--public meetings,
speeches, mobs; a sharp election going on. My father had always taken
keen interest in politics; he was of the same party as Sir Miles, who,
you know, is red-hot upon politics. I was easily led--partly by
ambition, partly by the effect of example, partly by the hope to give a
new turn to my thoughts--to make an appearance in public."
"And a devilish creditable one too! Why, man, your speeches have been
quoted with rapture by the London papers. Horribly aristocratic and
Pittish, it is true,--I think differently; but every man to his taste.
Well--"
"My attempts, such as they were, procured me the favour of Sir Miles. He
had long been acquainted with my father, who had helped him in his own
elections years ago. He seemed cordially delighted to patronize the son;
he invited me to visit him at Laughton, and hinted to my father that I
was formed for something better than a counting-house: my poor father was
intoxicated. In a word, here I am; here, often for days, almost weeks,
together, have I been a guest, always welcomed."
"You pause. This is the primordium,--now comes the confession, eh?"
"Why, one half the confession is over. It was my most unmerited fortune
to attract the notice of Miss Clavering. Do not fancy me so self-
conceited as to imagine that I should ever have presumed so high, but
for--"
"But for encouragement,--I understand! Well, she is a magnificent
creature, in her way, and I do not wonder that she drove the poor little
girl at Southampton out of your thoughts."
"Ah! but there is the sore,--I am not sure that she has done so.
Ardworth, I may trust you?"
"With everything but half-a-guinea. I would not promise to be rock
against so great a temptation!" and Ardworth turned his empty pockets
inside out.
"Tush! be serious, or I go."
"Serious! With pockets like these, the devil's in it if I am not
serious. Perge, precor."
"Ardworth, then," said Mainwaring, with great emotion, "I confide to you
the secret trouble of my heart. This girl at Southampton is Lucretia's
sister,--her half-sister; the rich relation on whose allowance she lives
is Sir Miles St. John."
"Whew! my own poor dear little cousin, by the father's side! Mainwaring,
I trust you have not deceived me; you have not amused yourself with
breaking Susan's heart? For a heart, and an honest, simple, English
girl's heart she has."
"Heaven forbid! I tell you I have never even declared my love; and if
love it were, I trust it is over. But when Sir Miles was first kind to
me, first invited me, I own I had the hope to win his esteem; and since
he had always made so strong and cruel a distinction between Lucretia and
Susan, I thought it not impossible that he might consent at last to my
union with the niece he had refused to receive and acknowledge. But even
while the hope was in me, I was drawn on, I was entangled, I was spell-
bound, I know not how or why; but, to close my confidence, while still
doubtful whether my own heart is free from the remembrance of the one
sister, I am pledged to the other."
Ardworth looked down gravely and remained silent. He was a joyous,
careless, reckless youth, with unsteady character and pursuits, and with
something of vague poetry, much of unaccommodating pride about his
nature,--one of those youths little likely to do what is called well in
the world; not persevering enough for an independent career, too blunt
and honest for a servile one. But it was in the very disposition of such
a person to judge somewhat harshly of Mainwaring's disclosure, and not
easily to comprehend what, after all, was very natural,--how a young man,
new to life, timid by character, and of an extreme susceptibility to the
fear of giving pain, had, in the surprise, the gratitude, the emotion, of
an avowed attachment from a girl far above him in worldly position, been
forced, by receiving, to seem, at least, to return her affection. And,
indeed, though not wholly insensible to the brilliant prospects opened to
him in such a connection, yet, to do him justice, Mainwaring would have
been equally entangled by a similar avowal from a girl more his equal in
the world. It was rather from an amiability bordering upon weakness,
than from any more degrading moral imperfections, that he had been
betrayed into a position which neither contented his heart nor satisfied
his conscience.
With far less ability than his friend, Ardworth had more force and
steadiness in his nature, and was wholly free from that morbid delicacy
of temperament to which susceptible and shy persons owe much of their
errors and misfortunes. He said, therefore, after a long pause: "My good
fellow, to be plain with you, I cannot say that your confession has
improved you in my estimation; but that is perhaps because of the
bluntness of my understanding. I could quite comprehend your forgetting
Susan (and, after all, I am left in doubt as to the extent of her
conquest over you) for the very different charms of her sister. On the
other hand, I could still better understand that, having once fancied
Susan, you could not be commanded into love for Lucretia. But I do not
comprehend your feeling love for one, and making love to the other,--
which is the long and short of the business."
"That is not exactly the true statement," answered Mainwaring, with a
powerful effort at composure. "There are moments when, listening to
Lucretia, when, charmed by that softness which, contrasting the rest of
her character, she exhibits to none but me, struck by her great mental
powers, proud of an unsought triumph over such a being, I feel as if I
could love none but her; then suddenly her mood changes,--she utters
sentiments that chill and revolt me; the very beauty seems vanished from
her face. I recall with a sigh the simple sweetness of Susan, and I feel
as if I deceived both my mistress and myself. Perhaps, however, all the
circumstances of this connection tend to increase my doubts. It is
humiliating to me to know that I woo clandestinely and upon sufferance;
that I am stealing, as it were, into a fortune; that I am eating Sir
Miles's bread, and yet counting upon his death; and this shame in myself
may make me unconsciously unjust to Lucretia. But it is useless to
reprove me for what is past; and though I at first imagined you could
advise me for the future, I now see, too clearly, that no advice could
avail."
"I grant that too; for all you require is to make up your mind to be
fairly off with the old love, or fairly on with the new. However, now
you have stated your case thus frankly, if you permit me, I will take
advantage of the strange chance of finding myself here, and watch,
ponder, and counsel, if I can. This Lucretia, I own it, puzzles and
perplexes me; but though no Oedipus, I will not take fright at the
sphinx. I suppose now it is time to return. They expect some of the
neighbours to drink tea, and I must doff my fishing-jacket. Come!"
As they strolled towards the house, Ardworth broke a silence which had
lasted for some moments.
"And how is that dear good Fielden? I ought to have guessed him at once,
when you spoke of your clergyman and his young charge; but I did not know
he was at Southampton."
"He has exchanged his living for a year, on account of his wife's health,
and rather, I think also, with the wish to bring poor Susan nearer to
Laughton, in the chance of her uncle seeing her. But you are, then,
acquainted with Fielden?"
"Acquainted!--my best friend. He was my tutor, and prepared me for Caius
College. I owe him, not only the little learning I have, but the little
good that is left in me. I owe to him apparently, also, whatever chance
of bettering my prospects may arise from my visit to Laughton."
"Notwithstanding our intimacy, we have, like most young men not related,
spoken so little of our family matters that I do not now understand how
you are cousin to Susan, nor what, to my surprise and delight, brought
you hither three days ago."
"Faith, my story is easier to explain than your own, William. Here
goes!"
But as Ardworth's recital partially involves references to family matters
not yet sufficiently known to the reader, we must be pardoned if we
assume to ourselves his task of narrator, and necessarily enlarge on his
details.
The branch of the illustrious family of St. John represented by Sir
Miles, diverged from the parent stem of the Lords of Bletshoe. With them
it placed at the summit of its pedigree the name of William de St. John,
the Conqueror's favourite and trusted warrior, and Oliva de Filgiers.
With them it blazoned the latter alliance, which gave to Sir Oliver St.
John the lands of Bletshoe by the hand of Margaret Beauchamp (by her
second marriage with the Duke of Somerset), grandmother to Henry VII. In
the following generation, the younger son of a younger son had founded,
partly by offices of state, partly by marriage with a wealthy heiress, a
house of his own; and in the reign of James the First, the St. Johns of
Laughton ranked amongst the chief gentlemen of Hampshire. From that time
till the accession of George III the family, though it remained untitled,
had added to its consequence by intermarriages of considerable dignity,--
chosen, indeed, with a disregard for money uncommon amongst the English
aristocracy; so that the estate was but little enlarged since the reign
of James, though profiting, of course, by improved cultivation and the
different value of money. On the other hand, perhaps there were scarcely
ten families in the country who could boast of a similar directness of
descent on all sides from the proudest and noblest aristocracy of the
soil; and Sir Miles St. John, by blood, was, almost at the distance of
eight centuries, as pure a Norman as his ancestral William. His
grandfather, nevertheless, had deviated from the usual disinterested
practice of the family, and had married an heiress who brought the
quarterings of Vernon to the crowded escutcheon, and with these
quarterings an estate of some 4,000 pounds a year popularly known by the
name of Vernon Grange. This rare occurrence did not add to the domestic
happiness of the contracting parties, nor did it lead to the ultimate
increase of the Laughton possessions. Two sons were born. To the elder
was destined the father's inheritance,--to the younger the maternal
property. One house is not large enough for two heirs. Nothing could
exceed the pride of the father as a St. John, except the pride of the
mother as a Vernon. Jealousies between the two sons began early and
rankled deep; nor was there peace at Laughton till the younger had
carried away from its rental the lands of Vernon Grange; and the elder
remained just where his predecessors stood in point of possessions,--sole
lord of Laughton sole. The elder son, Sir Miles's father, had been,
indeed, so chafed by the rivalry with his brother that in disgust he had
run away and thrown himself, at the age of fourteen, into the navy. By
accident or by merit he rose high in that profession, acquired name and
fame, and lost an eye and an arm,--for which he was gazetted, at the same
time, an admiral and a baronet.
Thus mutilated and dignified, Sir George St. John retired from the
profession; and finding himself unmarried, and haunted by the
apprehension that if he died childless, Laughton would pass to his
brother's heirs, he resolved upon consigning his remains to the nuptial
couch, previous to the surer peace of the family vault. At the age of
fifty-nine, the grim veteran succeeded in finding a young lady of
unblemished descent and much marked with the small-pox, who consented to
accept the only hand which Sir George had to offer. From this marriage
sprang a numerous family; but all died in early childhood, frightened to
death, said the neighbours, by their tender parents (considered the
ugliest couple in the county), except one boy (the present Sir Miles) and
one daughter, many years younger, destined to become Lucretia's mother.
Sir Miles came early into his property; and although the softening
advance of civilization, with the liberal effects of travel and a long
residence in cities, took from him that provincial austerity of pride
which is only seen in stanch perfection amongst the lords of a village,
he was yet little less susceptible to the duties of maintaining his
lineage pure as its representation had descended to him than the most
superb of his predecessors. But owing, it was said, to an early
disappointment, he led, during youth and manhood, a roving and desultory
life, and so put off from year to year the grand experiment matrimonial,
until he arrived at old age, with the philosophical determination to
select from the other branches of his house the successor to the heritage
of St. John. In thus arrogating to himself a right to neglect his proper
duties as head of a family, he found his excuse in adopting his niece
Lucretia. His sister had chosen for her first husband a friend and
neighbour of his own, a younger son, of unexceptionable birth and of very
agreeable manners in society. But this gentleman contrived to render her
life so miserable that, though he died fifteen months after their
marriage, his widow could scarcely be expected to mourn long for him. A
year after Mr. Clavering's death, Mrs. Clavering married again, under the
mistaken notion that she had the right to choose for herself. She
married Dr. Mivers, the provincial physician who had attended her husband
in his last illness,--a gentleman by education, manners, and profession,
but unhappily the son of a silk-mercer. Sir Miles never forgave this
connection. By her first marriage, Sir Miles's sister had one daughter,
Lucretia; by her second marriage, another daughter, named Susan. She
survived somewhat more than a year the birth of the latter. On her
death, Sir Miles formally (through his agent) applied to Dr. Mivers for
his eldest niece, Lucretia Clavering, and the physician did not think
himself justified in withholding from her the probable advantages of a
transfer from his own roof to that of her wealthy uncle. He himself had
been no worldly gainer by his connection; his practice had suffered
materially from the sympathy which was felt by the county families for
the supposed wrongs of Sir Miles St. John, who was personally not only
popular, but esteemed, nor less so on account of his pride,--too
dignified to refer even to his domestic annoyances, except to his most
familiar associates; to them, indeed, Sir Miles had said, briefly, that
he considered a physician who abused his entrance into a noble family by
stealing into its alliance was a character in whose punishment all
society had an interest. The words were repeated; they were thought just.
Those who ventured to suggest that Mrs. Clavering, as a widow, was a free
agent, were regarded with suspicion. It was the time when French
principles were just beginning to be held in horror, especially in the
provinces, and when everything that encroached upon the rights and
prejudices of the high born was called "a French principle." Dr. Mivers
was as much scouted as if he had been a sans-culotte. Obliged to quit
the county, he settled at a distance; but he had a career to commence
again; his wife's death enfeebled his spirits and damped his exertions.
He did little more than earn a bare subsistence, and died at last, when
his only daughter was fourteen, poor and embarrassed On his death-bed he
wrote a letter to Sir Miles reminding him that, after all, Susan was his
sister's child, gently vindicating himself from the unmerited charge of
treachery, which had blasted his fortunes and left his orphan penniless,
and closing with a touching yet a manly appeal to the sole relative left
to befriend her. The clergyman who had attended him in his dying moments
took charge of this letter; he brought it in person to Laughton, and
delivered it to Sir Miles. Whatever his errors, the old baronet was no
common man. He was not vindictive, though he could not be called
forgiving. He had considered his conduct to his sister a duty owed to
his name and ancestors; she had placed herself and her youngest child out
of the pale of his family. He would not receive as his niece the grand-
daughter of a silk-mercer. The relationship was extinct, as, in certain
countries, nobility is forfeited by a union with an inferior class. But,
niece or not, here was a claim to humanity and benevolence, and never yet
had appeal been made by suffering to his heart and purse in vain.
He bowed his head over the letter as his eye came to the last line, and
remained silent so long that the clergyman at last, moved and hopeful,
approached and took his hand. It was the impulse of a good man and a
good priest. Sir Miles looked up in surprise; but the calm, pitying face
bent on him repelled all return of pride.
"Sir," he said tremulously, and he pressed the hand that grasped his own,
"I thank you. I am not fit at this moment to decide what to do; to-
morrow you shall know. And the man died poor,--not in want, not in
want?"
"Comfort yourself, worthy sir; he had at the last all that sickness and
death require, except one assurance, which I ventured to whisper to him,-
-I trust not too rashly,--that his daughter would not be left
unprotected. And I pray you to reflect, my dear sir, that--"
Sir Miles did not wait for the conclusion of the sentence; he rose
abruptly, and left the room. Mr. Fielden (so the good priest was named)
felt confident of the success of his mission; but to win it the more
support, he sought Lucretia. She was then seventeen: it is an age when
the heart is peculiarly open to the household ties,--to the memory of a
mother, to the sweet name of sister. He sought this girl, he told his
tale, and pleaded the sister's cause. Lucretia heard in silence: neither
eye nor lip betrayed emotion; but her colour went and came. This was the
only sign that she was moved: moved, but how? Fielden's experience in
the human heart could not guess. When he had done, she went quietly to
her desk (it was in her own room that the conference took place), she
unlocked it with a deliberate hand, she took from it a pocketbook and a
case of jewels which Sir Miles had given her on her last birthday. "Let
my sister have these; while I live she shall not want!"
"My dear young lady, it is not these things that she asks from you,--it
is your affection, your sisterly heart, your intercession with her
natural protector; these, in her name, I ask for,--'non gemmis, neque
purpura venale, nec auro!'"
Lucretia then, still without apparent emotion, raised to the good man's
face deep, penetrating, but unrevealing eyes, and said slowly,--
"Is my sister like my mother, who, they say, was handsome?"
Much startled by this question, Fielden answered: "I never saw your
mother, my dear; but your sister gives promise of more than common
comeliness."
Lucretia's brows grew slightly compressed. "And her education has been,
of course, neglected?"
"Certainly, in some points,--mathematics, for instance, and theology; but
she knows what ladies generally know,--French and Italian, and such like.
Dr. Mivers was not unlearned in the polite letters. Oh, trust me, my
dear young lady, she will not disgrace your family; she will justify your
uncle's favour. Plead for her!" And the good man clasped his hands.
Lucretia's eyes fell musingly on the ground; but she resumed, after a
short pause,--
"What does my uncle himself say?"
"Only that he will decide to-morrow."
"I will see him;" and Lucretia left the room as for that object. But
when she had gained the stairs, she paused at the large embayed casement,
which formed a niche in the landing-place, and gazed over the broad
domains beyond; a stern smile settled, then, upon her lips,--the smile
seemed to say, "In this inheritance I will have no rival."
Lucretia's influence with Sir Miles was great, but here it was not
needed. Before she saw him he had decided on his course. Her precocious
and apparently intuitive knowledge of character detected at a glance the
safety with which she might intercede. She did so, and was chid into
silence.
The next morning, Sir Miles took the priest's arm and walked with him
into the gardens.
"Mr. Fielden," he said, with the air of a man who has chosen his course,
and deprecates all attempt to make him swerve from it, "if I followed my
own selfish wishes, I should take home this poor child. Stay, sir, and
hear me,--I am no hypocrite, and I speak honestly. I like young faces; I
have no family of my own. I love Lucretia, and I am proud of her; but a
girl brought up in adversity might be a better nurse and a more docile
companion,--let that pass. I have reflected, and I feel that I cannot
set to Lucretia--set to children unborn--the example of indifference to a
name degraded and a race adulterated; you may call this pride or
prejudice,--I view it differently. There are duties due from an
individual, duties due from a nation, duties due from a family; as my
ancestors thought, so think I. They left me the charge of their name, as
the fief-rent by which I hold their lands. 'Sdeath, sir!--Pardon me the
expletive; I was about to say that if I am now a childless old man, it
is because I have myself known temptation and resisted. I loved, and
denied myself what I believed my best chance of happiness, because the
object of my attachment was not my equal. That was a bitter struggle,--I
triumphed, and I rejoice at it, though the result was to leave all
thoughts of wedlock elsewhere odious and repugnant. These principles of
action have made a part of my creed as gentleman, if not as Christian.
Now to the point. I beseech you to find a fitting and reputable home for
Miss--Miss Mivers," the lip slightly curled as the name was said; "I
shall provide suitably for her maintenance. When she marries, I will
dower her, provided only and always that her choice fall upon one who
will not still further degrade her lineage on her mother's side,--in a
word, if she select a gentleman. Mr. Fielden, on this subject I have no
more to say."
In vain the good clergyman, whose very conscience, as well as reason, was
shocked by the deliberate and argumentative manner with which the baronet
had treated the abandonment of his sister's child as an absolutely moral,
almost religious, duty,--in vain he exerted himself to repel such
sophisms and put the matter in its true light. It was easy for him to
move Sir Miles's heart,--that was ever gentle; that was moved already:
but the crotchet in his head was impregnable. The more touchingly he
painted poor Susan's unfriended youth, her sweet character, and promising
virtues, the more Sir Miles St. John considered himself a martyr to his
principles, and the more obstinate in the martyrdom he became. "Poor
thing! poor child!" he said often, and brushed a tear from his eyes;
"a thousand pities! Well, well, I hope she will be happy! Mind, money
shall never stand in the way if she have a suitable offer!"
This was all the worthy clergyman, after an hour's eloquence, could
extract from him. Out of breath and out of patience, he gave in at last;
and the baronet, still holding his reluctant arm, led him back towards
the house. After a prolonged pause, Sir Miles said abruptly: "I have
been thinking that I may have unwittingly injured this man,--this
Mivers,--while I deemed only that he injured me. As to reparation to his
daughter, that is settled; and after all, though I do not publicly
acknowledge her, she is half my own niece."
"Half?"
"Half,--the father's side doesn't count, of course; and, rigidly
speaking, the relationship is perhaps forfeited on the other. However,
that half of it I grant. Zooks, sir, I say I grant it! I beg you ten
thousand pardons for my vehemence. To return,--perhaps I can show at
least that I bear no malice to this poor doctor. He has relations of his
own,--silk mercers; trade has reverses. How are they off?"
Perfectly perplexed by this very contradictory and paradoxical, yet, to
one better acquainted with Sir Miles, very characteristic, benevolence,
Fielden was some time before he answered. "Those members of Dr. Mivers's
family who are in trade are sufficiently prosperous; they have paid his
debts,--they, Sir Miles, will receive his daughter."
"By no means!" cried Sir Miles, quickly; then, recovering himself, he
added, "or, if you think that advisable, of course all interference on my
part is withdrawn."
"Festina lente!--not so quick, Sir Miles. I do not yet say that it is
advisable,--not because they are silk-mercers, the which, I humbly
conceive, is no sin to exclude them from gratitude for their proffered
kindness, but because Susan, poor child, having been brought up in
different habits, may feel a little strange, at least at first, with--"
"Strange, yes; I should hope so!" interrupted Sir Miles, taking snuff
with much energy. "And, by the way, I am thinking that it would be well
if you and Mrs. Fielden--you are married, sir? That is right; clergymen
all marry!--if you and Mrs. Fielden would take charge of her yourselves,
it would be a great comfort to me to think her so well placed. We
differ, sir, but I respect you. Think of this. Well, then, the doctor
has left no relations that I can aid in any way?"
"Strange man!" muttered Fielden. "Yes; I must not let one poor youth
lose the opportunity offered by your--your--"
"Never mind what; proceed. One poor youth,--in the shop, of course?"
"No; and by his father's side (since you so esteem such vanities) of an
ancient family,--a sister of Dr. Mivers married Captain Ardworth."
"Ardworth,--a goodish name; Ardworth of Yorkshire?"
"Yes, of that family. It was, of course, an imprudent marriage,
contracted while he was only an ensign. His family did not reject him,
Sir Miles."
"Sir, Ardworth is a good squire's family, but the name is Saxon; there is
no difference in race between the head of the Ardworths, if he were a
duke, and my gardener, John Hodge,--Saxon and Saxon, both. His family
did not reject him; go on."
"But he was a younger son in a large family; both himself and his wife
have known all the distresses common, they tell me, to the poverty of a
soldier who has no resource but his pay. They have a son. Dr. Mivers,
though so poor himself, took this boy, for he loved his sister dearly,
and meant to bring him up to his own profession. Death frustrated this
intention. The boy is high-spirited and deserving."
"Let his education be completed; send him to the University; and I will
see that he is put into some career of which his father's family would
approve. You need not mention to any one my intentions in this respect,
not even to the lad. And now, Mr. Fielden, I have done my duty,--at
least, I think so. The longer you honour my house, the more I shall be
pleased and grateful; but this topic, allow me most respectfully to say,
needs and bears no further comment. Have you seen the last news from the
army?"
"The army! Oh, fie, Sir Miles, I must speak one word more. May not my
poor Susan have at least the comfort to embrace her sister?"
Sir Miles paused a moment, and struck his crutch-stick thrice firmly on
the ground.
"I see no great objection to that; but by the address of this letter,
the poor girl is too far from Laughton to send Lucretia to her."
"I can obviate that objection, Sir Miles. It is my wish to continue to
Susan her present home amongst my own children. My wife loves her
dearly; and had you consented to give her the shelter of your own roof,
I am sure I should not have seen a smile in the house for a month after.
If you permit this plan, as indeed you honoured me by suggesting it, I
can pass through Southampton on my way to my own living in Devonshire,
and Miss Clavering can visit her sister there."
"Let it be so," said Sir Miles, briefly; and so the conversation closed.
Some weeks afterwards, Lucretia went in her uncle's carriage, with four
post-horses, with her maid and her footman,--went in the state and pomp
of heiress to Laughton,--to the small lodging-house in which the kind
pastor crowded his children and his young guest. She stayed there some
days. She did not weep when she embraced Susan, she did not weep when
she took leave of her; but she showed no want of actual kindness, though
the kindness was formal and stately. On her return, Sir Miles forbore to
question; but he looked as if he expected, and would willingly permit,
her to speak on what might naturally be uppermost at her heart.
Lucretia, however, remained silent, till at last the baronet, colouring,
as if ashamed of his curiosity, said,--
"Is your sister like your mother?"
"You forget, sir, I can have no recollection of my mother."
"Your mother had a strong family likeness to myself."
"She is not like you; they say she is like Dr. Mivers."
"Oh!" said the baronet, and he asked no more.
The sisters did not meet again; a few letters passed between them, but
the correspondence gradually ceased.
Young Ardworth went to college, prepared by Mr. Fielden, who was no
ordinary scholar, and an accurate and profound mathematician,--a more
important requisite than classical learning in a tutor for Cambridge.
But Ardworth was idle, and perhaps even dissipated. He took a common
degree, and made some debts, which were paid by Sir Miles without a
murmur. A few letters then passed between the baronet and the clergyman
as to Ardworth's future destiny; the latter owned that his pupil was not
persevering enough for the Bar, nor steady enough for the Church. These
were no great faults in Sir Miles's eyes. He resolved, after an effort,
to judge himself of the capacities of the young man, and so came the
invitation to Laughton. Ardworth was greatly surprised when Fielden
communicated to him this invitation, for hitherto he had not conceived
the slightest suspicion of his benefactor; he had rather, and naturally,
supposed that some relation of his father's had paid for his maintenance
at the University, and he knew enough of the family history to look upon
Sir Miles as the proudest of men. How was it, then, that he, who would
not receive the daughter of Dr. Mivers, his own niece, would invite the
nephew of Dr. Mivers, who was no relation to him? However, his curiosity
was excited, and Fielden was urgent that he should go; to Laughton,
therefore, had he gone.
We have now brought down to the opening of our narrative the general
records of the family it concerns; we have reserved our account of the
rearing and the character of the personage most important, perhaps, in
the development of its events,--Lucretia Clavering,--in order to place
singly before the reader the portrait of her dark, misguided, and ill-
boding youth.
CHAPTER II.
LUCRETIA.
When Lucretia first came to the house of Sir Miles St. John she was an
infant about four years old. The baronet then lived principally in
London, with occasional visits rather to the Continent or a watering-
place than to his own family mansion. He did not pay any minute
attention to his little ward, satisfied that her nurse was sedulous, and
her nursery airy and commodious. When, at the age of seven, she began to
interest him, and he himself, approaching old age, began seriously to
consider whether he should select her as his heiress, for hitherto he had
not formed any decided or definite notions on the matter, he was startled
by a temper so vehement, so self-willed and sternly imperious, so
obstinately bent upon attaining its object, so indifferently contemptuous
of warning, reproof, coaxing, or punishment, that her governess honestly
came to him in despair.
The management of this unmanageable child interested Sir Miles. It
caused him to think of Lucretia seriously; it caused him to have her much
in his society, and always in his thoughts. The result was, that by
amusing and occupying him, she forced a stronger hold on his affections
than she might have done had she been more like the ordinary run of
commonplace children. Of all dogs, there is no dog that so attaches a
master as a dog that snarls at everybody else,--that no other hand can
venture to pat with impunity; of all horses, there is none which so
flatters the rider, from Alexander downwards, as a horse that nobody else
can ride. Extend this principle to the human species, and you may
understand why Lucretia became so dear to Sir Miles St. John,--she got at
his heart through his vanity. For though, at times, her brow darkened
and her eye flashed even at his remonstrance, she was yet no sooner in
his society than she made a marked distinction between him and the
subordinates who had hitherto sought to control her. Was this affection?
He thought so. Alas! what parent can trace the workings of a child's
mind,--springs moved by an idle word from a nurse; a whispered conference
between hirelings. Was it possible that Lucretia had not often been
menaced, as the direst evil that could befall her, with her uncle's
displeasure; that long before she could be sensible of mere worldly loss
or profit, she was not impressed with a vague sense of Sir Miles's power
over her fate,--nay, when trampling, in childish wrath and scorn, upon
some menial's irritable feelings, was it possible that she had not been
told that, but for Sir Miles, she would be little better than a servant
herself? Be this as it may, all weakness is prone to dissimulate; and
rare and happy is the child whose feelings are as pure and transparent as
the fond parent deems them. There is something in children, too, which
seems like an instinctive deference to the aristocratic appearances which
sway the world. Sir Miles's stately person, his imposing dress, the
respect with which he was surrounded, all tended to beget notions of
superiority and power, to which it was no shame to succumb, as it was to
Miss Black, the governess, whom the maids answered pertly, or Martha, the
nurse, whom Miss Black snubbed if Lucretia tore her frock.
Sir Miles's affection once won, his penetration not, perhaps, blinded to
her more evident faults, but his self-love soothed towards regarding them
leniently, there was much in Lucretia's external gifts which justified
the predilection of the haughty man. As a child she was beautiful, and,
perhaps from her very imperfections of temper, her beauty had that air of
distinction which the love of command is apt to confer. If Sir Miles was
with his friends when Lucretia swept into the room, he was pleased to
hear them call her their little "princess," and was pleased yet more at a
certain dignified tranquillity with which she received their caresses or
their toys, and which he regarded as the sign of a superior mind; nor was
it long, indeed, before what we call "a superior mind" developed itself
in the young Lucretia. All children are quick till they are set
methodically to study; but Lucretia's quickness defied even that numbing
ordeal, by which half of us are rendered dunces. Rapidity and precision
in all the tasks set to her, in the comprehension of all the explanations
given to her questions, evinced singular powers of readiness and
reasoning.
As she grew older, she became more reserved and thoughtful. Seeing but
few children of her own age, and mixing intimately with none, her mind
was debarred from the usual objects which distract the vivacity, the
restless and wondrous observation, of childhood. She came in and out of
Sir Miles's library of a morning, or his drawing-room of an evening, till
her hour for rest, with unquestioned and sometimes unnoticed freedom; she
listened to the conversation around her, and formed her own conclusions
unchecked. It has a great influence upon a child, whether for good or
for evil, to mix early and habitually with those grown up,--for good to
the mere intellect always; the evil depends upon the character and
discretion of those the child sees and hears. "Reverence the greatest is
due to the children," exclaims the wisest of the Romans [Cicero. The
sentiment is borrowed by Juvenal.],--that is to say, that we must revere
the candour and inexperience and innocence of their minds.
Now, Sir Miles's habitual associates were persons of the world,--well-
bred and decorous, indeed, before children, as the best of the old school
were, avoiding all anecdotes; all allusions, for which the prudent matron
would send her girls out of the room; but with that reserve speaking of
the world as the world goes: if talking of young A----, calculating
carelessly what he would have when old A----, his father, died; naturally
giving to wealth and station and ability their fixed importance in life;
not over-apt to single out for eulogium some quiet goodness; rather
inclined to speak with irony of pretensions to virtue; rarely speaking
but with respect of the worldly seemings which rule mankind. All these
had their inevitable effect upon that keen, quick, yet moody and
reflective intellect.
Sir Miles removed at last to Laughton. He gave up London,--why, he
acknowledged not to himself; but it was because he had outlived his age.
Most of his old set were gone; new hours, new habits, had stolen in. He
had ceased to be of importance as a marrying man, as a personage of
fashion; his health was impaired; he shrank from the fatigues of a
contested election; he resigned his seat in parliament for his native
county; and once settled at Laughton, the life there soothed and
flattered him,--there all his former claims to distinction were still
fresh. He amused himself by collecting, in his old halls and chambers,
his statues and pictures, and felt that, without fatigue or trouble, he
was a greater man at Laughton in his old age than he had been in London
during his youth.
Lucretia was then thirteen. Three years afterwards, Olivier Dalibard was
established in the house; and from that time a great change became
noticeable in her. The irregular vehemence of her temper gradually
subsided, and was replaced by an habitual self-command which rendered the
rare deviations from it more effective and imposing. Her pride changed
its character wholly and permanently; no word, no look of scorn to the
low-born and the poor escaped her. The masculine studies which her
erudite tutor opened to a grasping and inquisitive mind, elevated her
very errors above the petty distinctions of class. She imbibed earnestly
what Dalibard assumed or felt,--the more dangerous pride of the fallen
angel,--and set up the intellect as a deity. All belonging to the mere
study of mind charmed and enchained her; but active and practical in her
very reveries, if she brooded, it was to scheme, to plot, to weave, web,
and mesh, and to smile in haughty triumph at her own ingenuity and
daring. The first lesson of mere worldly wisdom teaches us to command
temper; it was worldly wisdom that made the once impetuous girl calm,
tranquil, and serene. Sir Miles was pleased by a change that removed
from Lucretia's outward character its chief blot,--perhaps, as his frame
declined, he sighed sometimes to think that with so much majesty there
appeared but little tenderness; he took, however, the merits with the
faults, and was content upon the whole.
If the Provencal had taken more than common pains with his young pupil,
the pains were not solely disinterested. In plunging her mind amidst
that profound corruption which belongs only to intellect cultivated in
scorn of good and in suppression of heart, he had his own views to serve.
He watched the age when the passions ripen, and he grasped at the fruit
which his training sought to mature. In the human heart ill regulated
there is a dark desire for the forbidden. This Lucretia felt; this her
studies cherished, and her thoughts brooded over. She detected, with the
quickness of her sex, the preceptor's stealthy aim. She started not at
the danger. Proud of her mastery over herself, she rather triumphed in
luring on into weakness this master-intelligence which had lighted up her
own,--to see her slave in her teacher; to despise or to pity him whom she
had first contemplated with awe. And with this mere pride of the
understanding might be connected that of the sex; she had attained the
years when woman is curious to know and to sound her power. To inflame
Dalibard's cupidity or ambition was easy; but to touch his heart,--that
marble heart!--this had its dignity and its charm. Strange to say, she
succeeded; the passion, as well as interests, of this dangerous and able
man became enlisted in his hopes. And now the game played between them
had a terror in its suspense; for if Dalibard penetrated not into the
recesses of his pupil's complicated nature, she was far from having yet
sounded the hell that lay, black and devouring, beneath his own. Not
through her affections,--those he scarce hoped for,--but through her
inexperience, her vanity, her passions, he contemplated the path to his
victory over her soul and her fate. And so resolute, so wily, so
unscrupulous was this person, who had played upon all the subtlest keys
and chords in the scale of turbulent life, that, despite the lofty smile
with which Lucretia at length heard and repelled his suit, he had no fear
of the ultimate issue, when all his projects were traversed, all his
mines and stratagems abruptly brought to a close, by an event which he
had wholly unforeseen,--the appearance of a rival; the ardent and almost
purifying love, which, escaping a while from all the demons he had
evoked, she had, with a girl's frank heart and impulse, conceived for
Mainwaring. And here, indeed, was the great crisis in Lucretia's life
and destiny. So interwoven with her nature had become the hard
calculations of the understanding; so habitual to her now was the zest
for scheming, which revels in the play and vivacity of intrigue and plot,
and which Shakspeare has perhaps intended chiefly to depict in the
villany of Iago,--that it is probable Lucretia could never become a
character thoroughly amiable and honest. But with a happy and well-placed
love, her ambition might have had legitimate vents; her restless
energies, the woman's natural field in sympathies for another. The
heart, once opened, softens by use; gradually and unconsciously the
interchange of affection, the companionship with an upright and ingenuous
mind (for virtue is not only beautiful, it is contagious), might have had
their redeeming and hallowing influence. Happier, indeed, had it been,
if her choice had fallen upon a more commanding and lofty nature! But
perhaps it was the very meekness and susceptibility of Mainwaring's
temper, relieved from feebleness by his talents, which, once in play,
were undeniably great, that pleased her by contrast with her own hardness
of spirit and despotism of will.
That Sir Miles should have been blind to the position of the lovers is
less disparaging to his penetration than it may appear; for the very
imprudence with which Lucretia abandoned herself to the society of
Mainwaring during his visits at Laughton took a resemblance to candour.
Sir Miles knew his niece to be more than commonly clever and well
informed; that she, like him, should feel that the conversation of a
superior young man was a relief to the ordinary babble of their country
neighbours, was natural enough; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, had
crossed his mind and rendered him more touched than he liked to own by
Vernon's remarks, it had vanished upon perceiving that Lucretia never
seemed a shade more pensive in Mainwaring's absence. The listlessness
and the melancholy which are apt to accompany love, especially where
unpropitiously placed, were not visible on the surface of this strong
nature. In truth, once assured that Mainwaring returned her affection,
Lucretia reposed on the future with a calm and resolute confidence; and
her customary dissimulation closed like an unruffled sea over all the
undercurrents that met and played below. Still, Sir Miles's attention
once, however slightly, aroused to the recollection that Lucretia was at
the age when woman naturally meditates upon love and marriage, had
suggested, afresh and more vividly, a project which had before been
indistinctly conceived,--namely, the union of the divided branches of his
house, by the marriage of the last male of the Vernons with the heiress
of the St. Johns. Sir Miles had seen much of Vernon himself at various
intervals; he had been present at his christening, though he had refused
to be his godfather, for fear of raising undue expectations; he had
visited and munificently "tipped" him at Eton; he had accompanied him to
his quarters when he joined the prince's regiment; he had come often in
contact with him when, at the death of his father, Vernon retired from
the army and blazed in the front ranks of metropolitan fashion; he had
given him counsel and had even lent him money. Vernon's spendthrift
habits and dissipated if not dissolute life had certainly confirmed the
old baronet in his intentions to trust the lands of Laughton to the
lesser risk which property incurs in the hands of a female, if tightly
settled on her, than in the more colossal and multiform luxuries of an
expensive man; and to do him justice, during the flush of Vernon's
riotous career he had shrunk from the thought of confiding the happiness
of his niece to so unstable a partner. But of late, whether from his
impaired health or his broken fortunes, Vernon's follies had been less
glaring. He had now arrived at the mature age of thirty-three, when wild
oats may reasonably be sown. The composed and steadfast character of
Lucretia might serve to guide and direct him; and Sir Miles was one of
those who hold the doctrine that a reformed rake makes the best husband.
Add to this, there was nothing in Vernon's reputation--once allowing that
his thirst for pleasure was slaked--which could excite serious
apprehensions. Through all his difficulties, he had maintained his
honour unblemished; a thousand traits of amiability and kindness of heart
made him popular and beloved. He was nobody's enemy but his own. His
very distresses--the prospect of his ruin, if left unassisted by Sir
Miles's testamentary dispositions--were arguments in his favour. And,
after all, though Lucretia was a nearer relation, Vernon was in truth the
direct male heir, and according to the usual prejudices of family,
therefore, the fitter representative of the ancient line. With these
feelings and views, he had invited Vernon to his house, and we have seen
already that his favourable impressions had been confirmed by the visit.
And here we must say that Vernon himself had been brought up in boyhood
and youth to regard himself the presumptive inheritor of Laughton. It
had been, from time immemorial, the custom of the St. Johns to pass by
the claims of females in the settlement of the entails; from male to male
the estate had gone, furnishing warriors to the army, and senators to the
State. And if when Lucretia first came to Sir Miles's house the bright
prospect seemed somewhat obscure, still the mesalliance of the mother,
and Sir Miles's obstinate resentment thereat, seemed to warrant the
supposition that he would probably only leave to the orphan the usual
portion of a daughter of the house, and that the lands would go in their
ordinary destination. This belief, adopted passively, and as a thing of
course, had had a very prejudicial effect upon Vernon's career. What
mattered that he overenjoyed his youth, that the subordinate property of
the Vernons, a paltry four or five thousand pounds a year, went a little
too fast,--the splendid estates of Laughton would recover all. From this
dream he had only been awakened, two or three years before, by an
attachment he had formed to the portionless daughter of an earl; and the
Grange being too far encumbered to allow him the proper settlements which
the lady's family required, it became a matter of importance to ascertain
Sir Miles's intentions. Too delicate himself to sound them, he had
prevailed upon the earl, who was well acquainted with Sir Miles, to take
Laughton in his way to his own seat in Dorsetshire, and, without
betraying the grounds of his interest in the question, learn carelessly,
as it were, the views of the wealthy man. The result had been a severe
and terrible disappointment. Sir Miles had then fully determined upon
constituting Lucretia his heiress; and with the usual openness of his
character, he had plainly said so upon the very first covert and polished
allusion to the subject which the earl slyly made. This discovery, in
breaking off all hopes of a union with Lady Mary Stanville, had crushed
more than mercenary expectations. It affected, through his heart,
Vernon's health and spirits; it rankled deep, and was resented at first
as a fatal injury. But Vernon's native nobility of disposition gradually
softened an indignation which his reason convinced him was groundless and
unjust. Sir Miles had never encouraged the expectations which Vernon's
family and himself had unthinkingly formed. The baronet was master of
his own fortune, and after all, was it not more natural that he should
prefer the child he had brought up and reared, to a distant relation,
little more than an acquaintance, simply because man succeeded to man in
the mouldy pedigree of the St. Johns? And, Mary fairly lost to him, his
constitutional indifference to money, a certain French levity of temper,
a persuasion that his life was nearing its wasted close, had left him
without regret, as without resentment, at his kinsman's decision. His
boyish affection for the hearty, generous old gentleman returned, and
though he abhorred the country, he had, without a single interested
thought or calculation, cordially accepted the baronet's hospitable
overtures, and deserted, for the wilds of Hampshire, "the sweet shady
side of Pall-Mall."
We may now enter the drawing-room at Laughton, in which were already
assembled several of the families residing in the more immediate
neighbourhood, and who sociably dropped in to chat around the national
tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or
three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for in
that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in the
houses of our rural Thanes. Our country seats became bustling and
animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families
resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates. The Continent was
closed to us; the fastidious exclusiveness which comes from habitual
residence in cities had not made that demarcation, in castes and in talk,
between neighbour and neighbour, which exists now. Our squires were less
educated, less refined, but more hospitable and unassuming. In a word,
there was what does not exist now, except in some districts remote from
London,--a rural society for those who sought it.
The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus. But first we must cast
a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to be the first object
to attract a stranger's notice. It was a long, and not particularly
well-proportioned apartment,--according, at least, to modern notions,--
for it had rather the appearance of two rooms thrown into one. At the
distance of about thirty-five feet, the walls, before somewhat narrow,
were met by an arch, supported by carved pilasters, which opened into a
space nearly double the width of the previous part of the room, with a
domed ceiling and an embayed window of such depth that the recess almost
formed a chamber in itself. But both these divisions of the apartment
corresponded exactly in point of decoration,--they had the same small
panelling, painted a very light green, which seemed almost white by
candlelight, each compartment wrought with an arabesque; the same
enriched frieze and cornice; they had the same high mantelpieces,
ascending to the ceiling, with the arms of St. John in bold relief. They
had, too, the same old-fashioned and venerable furniture, draperies of
thick figured velvet, with immense chairs and sofas to correspond,--
interspersed, it is true, with more modern and commodious inventions of
the upholsterer's art, in grave stuffed leather or lively chintz. Two
windows, nearly as deep as that in the farther division, broke the
outline of the former one, and helped to give that irregular and nooky
appearance to the apartment which took all discomfort from its extent,
and furnished all convenience for solitary study or detached flirtation.
With little respect for the carved work of the panels, the walls were
covered with pictures brought by Sir Miles from Italy; here and there
marble busts and statues gave lightness to the character of the room, and
harmonized well with that half-Italian mode of decoration which belongs
to the period of James the First. The shape of the chamber, in its
divisions, lent itself admirably to that friendly and sociable
intermixture of amusements which reconciles the tastes of young and old.
In the first division, near the fireplace, Sir Miles, seated in his easy-
chair, and sheltered from the opening door by a seven-fold tapestry
screen, was still at chess with his librarian. At a little distance a
middle-aged gentleman and three turbaned matrons were cutting in at
whist, shilling points, with a half-crown bet optional, and not much
ventured on. On tables, drawn into the recesses of the windows, were the
day's newspapers, Gilray's caricatures, the last new publications, and
such other ingenious suggestions to chit-chat. And round these tables
grouped those who had not yet found elsewhere their evening's amusement,-
-two or three shy young clergymen, the parish doctor, four or five
squires who felt great interest in politics, but never dreamed of the
extravagance of taking in a daily paper, and who now, monopolizing all
the journals they could find, began fairly with the heroic resolution to
skip nothing, from the first advertisement to the printer's name. Amidst
one of these groups Mainwaring had bashfully ensconced himself. In the
farther division, the chandelier, suspended from the domed ceiling, threw
its cheerful light over a large circular table below, on which gleamed
the ponderous tea-urn of massive silver, with its usual accompaniments.
Nor were wanting there, in addition to those airy nothings, sliced
infinitesimally, from a French roll, the more substantial and now exiled
cheer of cakes,--plum and seed, Yorkshire and saffron,--attesting the
light hand of the housekeeper and the strong digestion of the guests.
Round this table were seated, in full gossip, the maids and the matrons,
with a slight sprinkling of the bolder young gentlemen who had been
taught to please the fair. The warmth of the evening allowed the upper
casement to be opened and the curtains drawn aside, and the July
moonlight feebly struggled against the blaze of the lights within. At
this table it was Miss Clavering's obvious duty to preside; but that was
a complaisance to which she rarely condescended. Nevertheless, she had
her own way of doing the honour of her uncle's house, which was not
without courtesy and grace; to glide from one to the other, exchange a
few friendly words, see that each set had its well-known amusements, and,
finally, sit quietly down to converse with some who, from gravity or age,
appeared most to neglect or be neglected by the rest, was her ordinary,
and not unpopular mode of welcoming the guests at Laughton,--not
unpopular; for she thus avoided all interference with the flirtations and
conquests of humbler damsels, whom her station and her endowments might
otherwise have crossed or humbled, while she insured the good word of the
old, to whom the young are seldom so attentive. But if a stranger of
more than provincial repute chanced to be present; if some stray member
of parliament, or barrister on the circuit, or wandering artist,
accompanied any of the neighbours,--to him Lucretia gave more earnest and
undivided attention. Him she sought to draw into a conversation deeper
than the usual babble, and with her calm, searching eyes, bent on him
while he spoke, seemed to fathom the intellect she set in play. But as
yet, this evening, she had not made her appearance,--a sin against
etiquette very unusual in her. Perhaps her recent conversation with
Dalibard had absorbed her thoughts to forgetfulness of the less important
demands on her attention. Her absence had not interfered with the gayety
at the tea-table, which was frank even to noisiness as it centred round
the laughing face of Ardworth, who, though unknown to most or all of the
ladies present, beyond a brief introduction to one or two of the first
comers from Sir Miles (as the host had risen from his chess to bid them
welcome), had already contrived to make himself perfectly at home and
outrageously popular. Niched between two bouncing lasses, he had
commenced acquaintance with them in a strain of familiar drollery and
fun, which had soon broadened its circle, and now embraced the whole
group in the happy contagion of good-humour and young animal spirits.
Gabriel, allowed to sit up later than his usual hour, had not, as might
have been expected, attached himself to this circle, nor indeed to any;
he might be seen moving quietly about,--now contemplating the pictures on
the wall with a curious eye; now pausing at the whist-table, and noting
the game with the interest of an embryo gamester; now throwing himself on
an ottoman, and trying to coax towards him Dash or Ponto,--trying in
vain, for both the dogs abhorred him; yet still, through all this general
movement, had any one taken the pains to observe him closely, it might
have been sufficiently apparent that his keen, bright, restless eye, from
the corner of its long, sly lids, roved chiefly towards the three persons
whom he approached the least,--his father, Mainwaring, and Mr. Vernon.
This last had ensconced himself apart from all, in the angle formed by
one of the pilasters of the arch that divided the room, so that he was in
command, as it were, of both sections. Reclined, with the careless grace
that seemed inseparable from every attitude and motion of his person, in
one of the great velvet chairs, with a book in his hand, which, to say
truth, was turned upside down, but in the lecture of which he seemed
absorbed, he heard at one hand the mirthful laughter that circled round
young Ardworth, or, in its pauses, caught, on the other side, muttered
exclamations from the grave whist-players: "If you had but trumped that
diamond, ma'am!" "Bless me, sir, it was the best heart!" And somehow or
other, both the laughter and the exclamations affected him alike with
what then was called "the spleen,"--for the one reminded him of his own
young days of joyless, careless mirth, of which his mechanical gayety now
was but a mocking ghost; and the other seemed a satire, a parody, on the
fierce but noiseless rapture of gaming, through which his passions had
passed, when thousands had slipped away with a bland smile, provoking not
one of those natural ebullitions of emotion which there accompanied the
loss of a shilling point. And besides this, Vernon had been so
accustomed to the success of the drawing-room, to be a somebody and a
something in the company of wits and princes, that he felt, for the first
time, a sense of insignificance in this provincial circle. Those fat
squires had heard nothing of Mr. Vernon, except that he would not have
Laughton,--he had no acres, no vote in their county; he was a nobody to
them. Those ruddy maidens, though now and then, indeed, one or two might
steal an admiring glance at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him
not with the female interest he had been accustomed to inspire. They
felt instinctively that he could be nothing to them, nor they to him,
--a mere London fop, and not half so handsome as Squires Bluff and Chuff.
Rousing himself from this little vexation to his vanity with a conscious
smile at his own weakness, Vernon turned his looks towards the door,
waiting for Lucretia's entrance, and since her uncle's address to him,
feeling that new and indescribable interest in her appearance which is
apt to steal into every breast when what was before but an indifferent
acquaintance, is suddenly enhaloed with the light of a possible wife.
At length the door opened, and Lucretia entered. Mr. Vernon lowered his
book, and gazed with an earnestness that partook both of doubt and
admiration.
Lucretia Clavering was tall,--tall beyond what is admitted to be tall in
woman; but in her height there was nothing either awkward or masculine,--
a figure more perfect never served for model to a sculptor. The dress at
that day, unbecoming as we now deem it, was not to her--at least, on the
whole disadvantageous. The short waist gave greater sweep to her
majestic length of limb, while the classic thinness of the drapery
betrayed the exact proportion and the exquisite contour. The arms then
were worn bare almost to the shoulder, and Lucretia's arms were not more
faultless in shape than dazzling in their snowy colour; the stately neck,
the falling shoulders, the firm, slight, yet rounded bust,--all would
have charmed equally the artist and the sensualist. Fortunately, the sole
defect of her form was not apparent at a distance: that defect was in the
hand; it had not the usual faults of female youthfulness,--the
superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness of colour,--on the
contrary, it was small and thin; but it was, nevertheless, more the hand
of a man than a woman: the shape had a man's nervous distinctness, the
veins swelled like sinews, the joints of the fingers were marked and
prominent. In that hand it almost seemed as if the iron force of the
character betrayed itself. But, as we have said, this slight defect,
which few, if seen, would hypercritically notice, could not, of course,
be perceptible as she moved slowly up the room; and Vernon's eye,
glancing over the noble figure, rested upon the face. Was it handsome?
Was it repelling? Strange that in feature it had pretensions to the
highest order of beauty, and yet even that experienced connoisseur in
female charms was almost as puzzled what sentence to pronounce. The
hair, as was the fashion of the day, clustered in profuse curls over the
forehead, but could not conceal a slight line or wrinkle between the
brows; and this line, rare in women at any age, rare even in men at hers,
gave an expression at once of thought and sternness to the whole face.
The eyebrows themselves were straight, and not strongly marked, a shade
or two perhaps too light,--a fault still more apparent in the lashes; the
eyes were large, full, and though bright, astonishingly calm and deep,--
at least in ordinary moments; yet withal they wanted the charm of that
steadfast and open look which goes at once to the heart and invites its
trust,--their expression was rather vague and abstracted. She usually
looked aslant while she spoke, and this, which with some appears but
shyness, in one so self-collected had an air of falsehood. But when, at
times, if earnest, and bent rather on examining those she addressed than
guarding herself from penetration, she fixed those eyes upon you with
sudden and direct scrutiny, the gaze impressed you powerfully, and
haunted you with a strange spell. The eye itself was of a peculiar and
displeasing colour,--not blue, nor gray, nor black, nor hazel, but rather
of that cat-like green which is drowsy in the light, and vivid in the
shade. The profile was purely Greek, and so seen, Lucretia's beauty
seemed incontestable; but in front face, and still more when inclined
between the two, all the features took a sharpness that, however regular,
had something chilling and severe: the mouth was small, but the lips were
thin and pale, and had an expression of effort and contraction which
added to the distrust that her sidelong glance was calculated to inspire.
The teeth were dazzlingly white, but sharp and thin, and the eye-teeth
were much longer than the rest. The complexion was pale, but without much
delicacy,--the paleness seemed not natural to it, but rather that hue
which study and late vigils give to men; so that she wanted the freshness
and bloom of youth, and looked older than she was,--an effect confirmed
by an absence of roundness in the cheek not noticeable in the profile,
but rendering the front face somewhat harsh as well as sharp. In a word,
the face and the figure were not in harmony: the figure prevented you
from pronouncing her to be masculine; the face took from the figure the
charm of feminacy. It was the head of the young Augustus upon the form
of Agrippina. One touch more, and we close a description which already
perhaps the reader may consider frivolously minute. If you had placed
before the mouth and lower part of the face a mask or bandage, the whole
character of the upper face would have changed at once,--the eye lost its
glittering falseness, the brow its sinister contraction; you would have
pronounced the face not only beautiful, but sweet and womanly. Take that
bandage suddenly away and the change would have startled you, and
startled you the more because you could detect no sufficient defect or
disproportion in the lower part of the countenance to explain it. It was
as if the mouth was the key to the whole: the key nothing without the
text, the text uncomprehended without the key.
Such, then, was Lucretia Clavering in outward appearance at the age of
twenty,--striking to the most careless eye; interesting and perplexing
the student in that dark language never yet deciphered,--the human
countenance. The reader must have observed that the effect every face
that he remarks for the first time produces is different from the
impression it leaves upon him when habitually seen. Perhaps no two
persons differ more from each other than does the same countenance in our
earliest recollection of it from the countenance regarded in the
familiarity of repeated intercourse. And this was especially the case
with Lucretia Clavering's: the first impulse of nearly all who beheld it
was distrust that partook of fear; it almost inspired you with a sense of
danger. The judgment rose up against it; the heart set itself on its
guard. But this uneasy sentiment soon died away, with most observers, in
admiration at the chiselled outline, which, like the Grecian sculpture,
gained the more the more it was examined, in respect for the intellectual
power of the expression, and in fascinated pleasure at the charm of a
smile, rarely employed, it is true, but the more attractive both for that
reason and for its sudden effect in giving brightness and persuasion to
an aspect that needed them so much. It was literally like the abrupt
breaking out of a sunbeam; and the repellent impression of the face thus
familiarized away, the matchless form took its natural influence; so that
while one who but saw Lucretia for a moment might have pronounced her
almost plain, and certainly not prepossessing in appearance, those with
whom she lived, those whom she sought to please, those who saw her daily,
united in acknowledgment of her beauty; and if they still felt awe,
attributed it only to the force of her understanding.
As she now came midway up the room, Gabriel started from his seat and ran
to her caressingly. Lucretia bent down, and placed her hand upon his
fair locks. As she did so, he whispered,--
"Mr. Vernon has been watching for you."
"Hush! Where is your father?"
"Behind the screen, at chess with Sir Miles."
"With Sir Miles!" and Lucretia's eye fell, with the direct gaze we have
before referred to, upon the boy's face.
"I have been looking over them pretty often," said he, meaningly: "they
have talked of nothing but the game." Lucretia lifted her head, and
glanced round with her furtive eye; the boy divined the search, and with
a scarce perceptible gesture pointed her attention to Mainwaring's
retreat. Her vivid smile passed over her lips as she bowed slightly to
her lover, and then, withdrawing the hand which Gabriel had taken in his
own, she moved on, passed Vernon with a commonplace word or two, and was
soon exchanging greetings with the gay merry-makers in the farther part
of the room. A few minutes afterwards, the servants entered, the tea-
table was removed, chairs were thrust back, a single lady of a certain
age volunteered her services at the piano, and dancing began within the
ample space which the arch fenced off from the whist-players. Vernon had
watched his opportunity, and at the first sound of the piano had gained
Lucretia's side, and with grave politeness pre-engaged her hand for the
opening dance.
At that day, though it is not so very long ago, gentlemen were not
ashamed to dance, and to dance well; it was no languid saunter through a
quadrille; it was fair, deliberate, skilful dancing amongst the courtly,
--free, bounding movement amongst the gay.
Vernon, as might be expected, was the most admired performer of the
evening; but he was thinking very little of the notice he at last
excited, he was employing such ingenuity as his experience of life
supplied to the deficiencies of a very imperfect education, limited to
the little flogged into him at Eton, in deciphering the character and
getting at the heart of his fair partner.
"I wonder you do not make Sir Miles take you to London, my cousin, if you
will allow me to call you so. You ought to have been presented."
"I have no wish to go to London yet."
"Yet!" said Mr. Vernon, with the somewhat fade gallantry of his day;
"beauty even like yours has little time to spare."
"Hands across, hands across!" cried Mr. Ardworth.
"And," continued Mr. Vernon, as soon as a pause was permitted to him,
"there is a song which the prince sings, written by some sensible old-
fashioned fellow, which says,--
"'Gather your rosebuds while you may, For time is still a
flying."'
"You have obeyed the moral of the song yourself, I believe, Mr. Vernon."
"Call me cousin, or Charles,--Charley, if you like, as most of my friends
do; nobody ever calls me Mr. Vernon,--I don't know myself by that name."
"Down the middle; we are all waiting for you," shouted Ardworth.
And down the middle, with wondrous grace, glided the exquisite nankeens
of Charley Vernon.
The dance now, thanks to Ardworth, became too animated and riotous to
allow more than a few broken monosyllables till Vernon and his partner
gained the end of the set, and then, flirting his partner's fan, he
recommenced,--
"Seriously, my cousin, you must sometimes feel very much moped here."
"Never!" answered Lucretia. Not once yet had her eye rested on Mr.
Vernon. She felt that she was sounded.
"Yet I am sure you have a taste for the pomps and vanities. Aha! there
is ambition under those careless curls," said Mr. Vernon, with his easy,
adorable impertinence.
Lucretia winced.
"But if I were ambitious, what field for ambition could I find in
London?"
"The same as Alexander,--empire, my cousin."
"You forget that I am not a man. Man, indeed, may hope for an empire.
It is something to be a Pitt, or even a Warren Hastings."
Mr. Vernon stared. Was this stupidity, or what?
"A woman has an empire more undisputed than Mr. Pitt's, and more pitiless
than that of Governor Hastings."
"Oh, pardon me, Mr. Vernon--"
"Charles, if you please."
Lucretia's brow darkened.
"Pardon me," she repeated; "but these compliments, if such they are meant
to be, meet a very ungrateful return. A woman's empire over gauzes and
ribbons, over tea-tables and drums, over fops and coquettes, is not worth
a journey from Laughton to London."
"You think you can despise admiration?"
"What you mean by admiration,--yes."
"And love too?" said Vernon, in a whisper.
Now Lucretia at once and abruptly raised her eyes to her partner. Was he
aiming at her secret? Was he hinting at intentions of his own? The look
chilled Vernon, and he turned away his head.
Suddenly, then, in pursuance of a new train of ideas, Lucretia altered
her manner to him. She had detected what before she had surmised. This
sudden familiarity on his part arose from notions her uncle had
instilled,--the visitor had been incited to become the suitor. Her
penetration into character, which from childhood had been her passionate
study, told her that on that light, polished, fearless nature scorn would
have slight effect; to meet the familiarity would be the best means to
secure a friend, to disarm a wooer. She changed then her manner; she
summoned up her extraordinary craft; she accepted the intimacy held out
to her, not to unguard herself, but to lay open her opponent. It became
necessary to her to know this man, to have such power as the knowledge
might give her. Insensibly and gradually she led her companion away from
his design of approaching her own secrets or character, into frank talk
about himself. All unconsciously he began to lay bare to his listener
the infirmities of his erring, open heart. Silently she looked down, and
plumbed them all,--the frivolity, the recklessness, the half gay, half
mournful sense of waste and ruin. There, blooming amongst the wrecks,
she saw the fairest flowers of noble manhood profuse and fragrant still,
--generosity and courage and disregard for self. Spendthrift and gambler
on one side the medal; gentleman and soldier on the other. Beside this
maimed and imperfect nature she measured her own prepared and profound
intellect, and as she listened, her smile became more bland and frequent.
She could afford to be gracious; she felt superiority, scorn, and safety.
As this seeming intimacy had matured, Vernon and his partner had quitted
the dance, and were conversing apart in the recess of one of the windows,
which the newspaper readers had deserted, in the part of the room where
Sir Miles and Dalibard, still seated, were about to commence their third
game at chess. The baronet's hand ceased from the task of arranging his
pawns; his eye was upon the pair; and then, after a long and complacent
gaze, it looked round without discovering the object it sought.
"I am about to task your kindness most improperly, Monsieur Dalibard,"
said Sir Miles, with that politeness so displeasing to Ardworth, "but
will you do me the favour to move aside that fold of the screen? I wish
for a better view of our young people. Thank you very much."
Sir Miles now discovered Mainwaring, and observed that, far from
regarding with self-betraying jealousy the apparent flirtation going on
between Lucretia and her kinsman, he was engaged in animated conversation
with the chairman of the quarter sessions. Sir Miles was satisfied, and
ranged his pawns. All this time, and indeed ever since they had sat down
to play, the Provencal had been waiting, with the patience that belonged
to his character, for some observation from Sir Miles on the subject
which, his sagacity perceived, was engrossing his thoughts. There had
been about the old gentleman a fidgety restlessness which showed that
something was on his mind. His eyes had been frequently turned towards
his niece since her entrance; once or twice he had cleared his throat and
hemmed,--his usual prelude to some more important communication; and
Dalibard had heard him muttering to himself, and fancied he caught the
name of "Mainwaring." And indeed the baronet had been repeatedly on the
verge of sounding his secretary, and as often had been checked both by
pride in himself and pride for Lucretia. It seemed to him beneath his
own dignity and hers even to hint to an inferior a fear, a doubt, of the
heiress of Laughton. Olivier Dalibard could easily have led on his
patron, he could easily, if he pleased it, have dropped words to instil
suspicion and prompt question; but that was not his object,--he rather
shunned than courted any reference to himself upon the matter; for he
knew that Lucretia, if she could suppose that he, however indirectly, had
betrayed her to her uncle, would at once declare his own suit to her, and
so procure his immediate dismissal; while, aware of her powers of
dissimulation and her influence over her uncle, he feared that a single
word from her would suffice to remove all suspicion in Sir Miles, however
ingeniously implanted, and however truthfully grounded. But all the
while, under his apparent calm, his mind was busy and his passions
burning.
"Pshaw! your old play,--the bishop again," said Sir Miles, laughing, as
he moved a knight to frustrate his adversary's supposed plan; and then,
turning back, he once more contemplated the growing familiarity between
Vernon and his niece. This time he could not contain his pleasure.
"Dalibard, my dear sir," he said, rubbing his hands, "look yonder: they
would make a handsome couple!"
"Who, sir?" said the Provencal, looking another way, with dogged
stupidity.
"Who? Damn it, man! Nay, pray forgive my ill manners, but I felt glad,
sir, and proud, sir. Who? Charley Vernon and Lucretia Clavering."
"Assuredly, yes. Do you think that there is a chance of so happy an
event?"
"Why, it depends only on Lucretia; I shall never force her." Here Sir
Miles stopped, for Gabriel, unperceived before, picked up his patron's
pocket-handkerchief.
Olivier Dalibard's gray eyes rested coldly on his son. "You are not
dancing to-night, my boy. Go; I like to see you amused."
The boy obeyed at once, as he always did, the paternal commands. He
found a partner, and joined a dance just begun; and in the midst of the
dance, Honore Gabriel Varney seemed a new being,--not Ardworth himself so
thoroughly entered into the enjoyment of the exercise, the lights, the
music. With brilliant eyes and dilated nostrils, he seemed prematurely
to feel all that is exciting and voluptuous in that exhilaration which to
childhood is usually so innocent. His glances followed the fairest form;
his clasp lingered in the softest hand; his voice trembled as the warm
breath of his partner came on his cheeks.
Meanwhile the conversation between the chess-players continued.
"Yes," said the baronet, "it depends only on Lucretia. And she seems
pleased with Vernon: who would not be?"
"Your penetration rarely deceives you, sir. I own I think with you.
Does Mr. Vernon know that you would permit the alliance?"
"Yes; but--" the baronet stopped short.
"You were saying, but-- But what, Sir Miles?"
"Why, the dog affected diffidence; he had some fear lest he should not
win her affections. But luckily, at least, they are disengaged."
Dalibard looked grave, and his eye, as if involuntarily, glanced towards
Mainwaring. As ill-luck would have it, the young man had then ceased his
conversation with the chairman of the quarter sessions, and with arms
folded, brow contracted, and looks, earnest, anxious, and intent, was
contemplating the whispered conference between Lucretia and Vernon.
Sir Miles's eye had followed his secretary's, and his face changed. His
hand fell on the chess board and upset half the men; he uttered a very
audible "Zounds!"
"I think, Sir Miles," said the Provencal, rising, as if conscious that
Sir Miles wished to play no more,--"I think that if you spoke soon to
Miss Clavering as to your views with regard to Mr. Vernon, it might ripen
matters; for I have heard it said by French mothers--and our Frenchwomen
understand the female heart, sir--that a girl having no other affection
is often prepossessed at once in favour of a man whom she knows
beforehand is prepared to woo and to win her, whereas without that
knowledge he would have seemed but an ordinary acquaintance."
"It is shrewdly said, my dear Monsieur Dalibard; and for more reasons
than one, the sooner I speak to her the better. Lend me your arm. It is
time for supper; I see the dance is over."
Passing by the place where Mainwaring still leaned, the baronet looked at
him fixedly. The young man did not notice the gaze. Sir Miles touched
him gently. He started as from a revery.
"You have not danced, Mr. Mainwaring."
"I dance so seldom, Sir Miles," said Mainwaring, colouring.
"Ah! you employ your head more than your heels, young gentleman,--very
right; I must speak to you to-morrow. Well, ladies, I hope you have
enjoyed yourselves? My dear Mrs. Vesey, you and I are old friends, you
know; many a minuet we have danced together, eh? We can't dance now, but
we can walk arm-in-arm together still. Honour me. And your little
grandson--vaccinated, eh? Wonderful invention! To supper, ladies, to
supper!"
The company were gone. The lights were out,--all save the lights of
heaven; and they came bright and still through the casements. Moonbeam
and Starbeam, they seemed now to have the old house to themselves. In
came the rays, brighter and longer and bolder, like fairies that march,
rank upon rank, into their kingdom of solitude. Down the oak stairs,
from the casements, blazoned with heraldry, moved the rays, creepingly,
fearfully. On the armour in the hall clustered the rays boldly and
brightly, till the steel shone out like a mirror. In the library, long
and low, they just entered, stopped short: it was no place for their
play. In the drawing-room, now deserted, they were more curious and
adventurous. Through the large window, still open, they came in freely
and archly, as if to spy what had caused such disorder; the stiff chairs
out of place, the smooth floor despoiled of its carpet, that flower
dropped on the ground, that scarf forgotten on the table,--the rays
lingered upon them all. Up and down through the house, from the base to
the roof, roved the children of the air, and found but two spirits awake
amidst the slumber of the rest.
In that tower to the east, in the tapestry chamber with the large gilded
bed in the recess, came the rays, tamed and wan, as if scared by the
grosser light on the table. By that table sat a girl, her brow leaning
on one hand; in the other she held a rose,--it is a love-token: exchanged
with its sister rose, by stealth, in mute sign of reproach for doubt
excited,--an assurance and a reconciliation. A love-token!--shrink not,
ye rays; there is something akin to you in love. But see,--the hand
closes convulsively on the flower; it hides it not in the breast; it
lifts it not to the lip: it throws it passionately aside. "How long!"
muttered the girl, impetuously,--"how long! And to think that will here
cannot shorten an hour!" Then she rose, and walked to and fro, and each
time she gained a certain niche in the chamber she paused, and then
irresolutely passed on again. What is in that niche? Only books. What
can books teach thee, pale girl? The step treads firmer; this time it
halts more resolved. The hand that clasped the flower takes down a
volume. The girl sits again before the light. See, O rays! what is the
volume? Moon and Starbeam, ye love what lovers read by the lamp in the
loneliness. No love-ditty this; no yet holier lesson to patience, and
moral to hope. What hast thou, young girl, strong in health and rich in
years, with the lore of the leech,--with prognostics and symptoms and
diseases? She is tracing with hard eyes the signs that precede the grim
enemy in his most sudden approach,--the habits that invite him, the
warnings that he gives. He whose wealth shall make her free has twice
had the visiting shock; he starves not, he lives frae! She closes the
volume, and, musing, metes him out the hours and days he has to live.
Shrink back, ye rays! The love is disenhallowed; while the hand was on
the rose, the thought was on the charnel.
Yonder, in the opposite tower, in the small casement near the roof, came
the rays. Childhood is asleep. Moon and Starbeam, ye love the slumbers
of the child! The door opens, a dark figure steals noiselessly in. The
father comes to look on the sleep of his son. Holy tenderness, if this
be all! "Gabriel, wake!" said a low, stern voice, and a rough hand shook
the sleeper.
The sharpest test of those nerves upon which depends the mere animal
courage is to be roused suddenly, in the depth of night, by a violent
hand. The impulse of Gabriel, thus startled, was neither of timidity nor
surprise. It was that of some Spartan boy not new to danger; with a
slight cry and a fierce spring, the son's hand clutched at the father's
throat. Dalibard shook him off with an effort, and a smile, half in
approval, half in irony, played by the moonlight over his lips.
"Blood will out, young tiger," said he. "Hush, and hear me!"
"Is it you, Father?" said Gabriel. "I thought, I dreamed--"
"No matter; think, dream always that man should be prepared for defence
from peril!"
"Gabriel," and the pale scholar seated himself on the bed, "turn your
face to mine,--nearer; let the moon fall on it; lift your eyes; look at
me--so! Are you not playing false to me? Are you not Lucretia's spy,
while you are pretending to be mine? It is so; your eye betrays you.
Now, heed me; you have a mind beyond your years. Do you love best the
miserable garret in London, the hard fare and squalid dress, or your
lodgment here, the sense of luxury, the sight of splendour, the
atmosphere of wealth? You have the choice before you."
"I choose, as you would have me, then," said the boy, "the last."
"I believe you. Attend! You do not love me,--that is natural; you are
the son of Clara Varney! You have supposed that in loving Lucretia
Clavering you might vex or thwart me, you scarce knew how; and Lucretia
Clavering has gold and gifts and soft words and promises to bribe withal.
I now tell you openly my plan with regard to this girl: it is my aim to
marry her; to be master of this house and these lands. If I succeed, you
share them with me. By betraying me, word or look, to Lucretia, you
frustrate this aim; you plot against our rise and to our ruin. Deem not
that you could escape my fall; if I am driven hence,--as you might drive
me,--you share my fate; and mark me, you are delivered up to my revenge!
You cease to be my son,--you are my foe. Child! you know me."
The boy, bold as he was, shuddered; but after a pause so brief that a
breath scarce passed between his silence and his words, he replied with
emphasis,--
"Father, you have read my heart. I have been persuaded by Lucretia (for
she bewitches me) to watch you,--at least, when you are with Sir Miles.
I knew that this was mixed up with Mr. Mainwaring. Now that you have
made me understand your own views, I will be true to you,--true without
threats."
The father looked hard on him, and seemed satisfied with the gaze.
"Remember, at least, that your future rests upon your truth; that is no
threat,--that is a thought of hope. Now sleep or muse on it." He dropped
the curtain which his hand had drawn aside, and stole from the room as
noiselessly as he had entered. The boy slept no more. Deceit and
cupidity and corrupt ambition were at work in his brain. Shrink back,
Moon and Starbeam! On that child's brow play the demons who had followed
the father's step to his bed of sleep.
Back to his own room, close at hand, crept Olivier Dalibard. The walls
were lined with books,--many in language and deep in lore. Moon and
Starbeam, ye love the midnight solitude of the scholar! The Provencal
stole to the casement, and looked forth. All was serene,--breathless
trees and gleaming sculpture and whitened sward, girdled by the mass of
shadow. Of what thought the man? Not of the present loveliness which
the scene gave to his eye, nor of the future mysteries which the stars
should whisper to the soul. Gloomily over a stormy and a hideous past
roved the memory, stored with fraud and foul with crime,--plan upon plan,
schemed with ruthless wisdom, followed up by remorseless daring, and yet
all now a ruin and a blank; an intellect at war with good, and the good
had conquered! But the conviction neither touched the conscience nor
enlightened the reason; he felt, it is true, a moody sense of impotence,
but it brought rage, not despondency. It was not that he submitted to
Good as too powerful to oppose, but that he deemed he had not yet gained
all the mastery over the arsenal of Evil. And evil he called it not.
Good and evil to him were but subordinate genii at the command of Mind;
they were the slaves of the lamp. But had he got at the true secret of
the lamp itself? "How is it," he thought, as he turned impatiently from
the casement, "that I am baffled here where my fortunes seemed most
assured? Here the mind has been of my own training, and prepared by
nature to my hand; here all opportunity has smiled. And suddenly the
merest commonplace in the vulgar lives of mortals,--an unlooked-for
rival; rival, too, of the mould I had taught her to despise; one of the
stock gallants of a comedy, no character but youth and fair looks,--yea,
the lover of the stage starts up, and the fabric of years is overthrown."
As he thus mused, he placed his hand upon a small box on one of the
tables. "Yet within this," resumed his soliloquy, and he struck the lid,
that gave back a dull sound,--"within this I hold the keys of life and
death! Fool! the power does not reach to the heart, except to still it.
Verily and indeed were the old heathens mistaken? Are there no philters
to change the current of desire? But touch one chord in a girl's
affection, and all the rest is mine, all, all, lands, station, power, all
the rest are in the opening of this lid!"
Hide in the cloud, O Moon! shrink back, ye Stars! send not your holy,
pure, and trouble-lulling light to the countenance blanched and livid
with the thoughts of murder.
CHAPTER III.
CONFERENCES.
The next day Sir Miles did not appear at breakfast,--not that he was
unwell, but that he meditated holding certain audiences, and on such
occasions the good old gentleman liked to prepare himself. He belonged
to a school in which, amidst much that was hearty and convivial, there
was much also that nowadays would seem stiff and formal, contrasting the
other school immediately succeeding him, which Mr. Vernon represented,
and of which the Charles Surface of Sheridan is a faithful and admirable
type. The room that Sir Miles appropriated to himself was, properly
speaking, the state apartment, called, in the old inventories, "King
James's chamber;" it was on the first floor, communicating with the
picture-gallery, which at the farther end opened upon a corridor
admitting to the principal bedrooms. As Sir Miles cared nothing for
holiday state, he had unscrupulously taken his cubiculum in this chamber,
which was really the handsomest in the house, except the banquet-hall,
placed his bed in one angle with a huge screen before it, filled up the
space with his Italian antiquities and curiosities; and fixed his
favourite pictures on the faded gilt leather panelled on the walls. His
main motive in this was the communication with the adjoining gallery,
which, when the weather was unfavourable, furnished ample room for his
habitual walk. He knew how many strides by the help of his crutch made a
mile, and this was convenient. Moreover, he liked to look, when alone,
on those old portraits of his ancestors, which he had religiously
conserved in their places, preferring to thrust his Florentine and
Venetian masterpieces into bedrooms and parlours, rather than to dislodge
from the gallery the stiff ruffs, doublets, and farthingales of his
predecessors. It was whispered in the house that the baronet, whenever
he had to reprove a tenant or lecture a dependant, took care to have him
brought to his sanctum, through the full length of this gallery, so that
the victim might be duly prepared and awed by the imposing effect of so
stately a journey, and the grave faces of all the generations of St.
John, which could not fail to impress him with the dignity of the family,
and alarm him at the prospect of the injured frown of its representative.
Across this gallery now, following the steps of the powdered valet,
strode young Ardworth, staring now and then at some portrait more than
usually grim, more often wondering why his boots, that never creaked
before, should creak on those particular boards, and feeling a quiet
curiosity, without the least mixture of fear or awe as to what old
Squaretoes intended to say to him. But all feeling of irreverence ceased
when, shown into the baronet's room, and the door closed, Sir Miles rose
with a smile, and cordially shaking his hand, said, dropping the
punctilious courtesy of Mister: "Ardworth, sir, if I had a little
prejudice against you before you came, you have conquered it. You are a
fine, manly, spirited fellow, sir; and you have an old man's good
wishes,--which are no bad beginning to a young man's good fortune."
The colour rushed over Ardworth's forehead, and a tear sprang to his
eyes. He felt a rising at his throat as he stammered out some not very
audible reply.
"I wished to see you, young gentleman, that I might judge myself what you
would like best, and what would best fit you. Your father is in the
army: what say you to a pair of colours?"
"Oh, Sir Miles, that is my utmost ambition! Anything but law, except the
Church; anything but the Church, except the desk and a counter!"
The baronet, much pleased, gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder. "Ha,
ha! we gentlemen, you see (for the Ardworths are very well born, very),
we gentlemen understand each other! Between you and me, I never liked
the law, never thought a man of birth should belong to it. Take money
for lying,--shabby, shocking! Don't let that go any farther! The
Church-Mother Church--I honour her! Church and State go together! But
one ought to be very good to preach to others,--better than you and I
are, eh? ha, ha! Well, then, you like the army,--there's a letter for
you to the Horse Guards. Go up to town; your business is done. And, as
for your outfit,--read this little book at your leisure." And Sir Miles
thrust a pocketbook into Ardworth's hand.
"But pardon me," said the young man, much bewildered. "What claim have
I, Sir Miles, to such generosity? I know that my uncle offended you."
"Sir, that's the claim!" said Sir Miles, gravely. "I cannot live long,"
he added, with a touch of melancholy in his voice; "let me die in peace
with all! Perhaps I injured your uncle,--who knows but, if so, he hears
and pardons me now?"
"Oh, Sir Miles!" exclaimed the thoughtless, generous-hearted young man;
"and my little playfellow, Susan, your own niece!"
Sir Miles drew back haughtily; but the burst that offended him rose so
evidently from the heart, was so excusable from its motive and the
youth's ignorance of the world, that his frown soon vanished as he said,
calmly and gravely,--
"No man, my good sir, can allow to others the right to touch on his
family affairs; I trust I shall be just to the poor young lady. And so,
if we never meet again, let us think well of each other. Go, my boy;
serve your king and your country!"
"I will do my best, Sir Miles, if only to merit your kindness."
"Stay a moment: you are intimate, I find, with young Mainwaring?"
"An old college friendship, Sir Miles."
"The army will not do for him, eh?"
"He is too clever for it, sir."
"Ah, he'd make a lawyer, I suppose,--glib tongue enough, and can talk
well; and lie, if he's paid for it?"
"I don't know how lawyers regard those matters, Sir Miles; but if you
don't make him a lawyer, I am sure you must leave him an honest man."
"Really and truly--"
"Upon my honour I think so."
"Good-day to you, and good luck. You must catch the coach at the lodge;
for I see by the papers that, in spite of all the talk about peace, they
are raising regiments like wildfire."
With very different feelings from those with which he had entered the
room, Ardworth quitted it. He hurried into his own chamber to thrust his
clothes into his portmanteau, and while thus employed, Mainwaring
entered.
"Joy, my dear fellow, wish me joy! I am going to town,--into the army;
abroad; to be shot at, thank Heaven! That dear old gentleman! Just
throw me that coat, will you?"
A very few more words sufficed to explain what had passed to Mainwaring.
He sighed when his friend had finished: "I wish I were going with you!"
"Do you? Sir Miles has only got to write another letter to the Horse
Guards. But no, you are meant to be something better than food for
powder; and, besides, your Lucretia! Hang it, I am sorry I cannot stay
to examine her as I had promised; but I have seen enough to know that she
certainly loves you. Ah, when she changed flowers with you, you did not
think I saw you,--sly, was not I? Pshaw! She was only playing with
Vernon. But still, do you know, Will, now that Sir Miles has spoken to
me so, that I could have sobbed, 'God bless you, my old boy!' 'pon my
life, I could! Now, do you know that I feel enraged with you for
abetting that girl to deceive him?"
"I am enraged with myself; and--"
Here a servant entered, and informed Mainwaring that he had been
searching for him; Sir Miles requested to see him in his room.
Mainwaring started like a culprit.
"Never fear," whispered Ardworth; "he has no suspicion of you, I'm sure.
Shake hands. When shall we meet again? Is it not odd, I, who am a
republican by theory, taking King George's pay to fight against the
French? No use stopping now to moralize on such contradictions. John,
Tom,--what's your name?--here, my man, here, throw that portmanteau on
your shoulder and come to the lodge." And so, full of health, hope,
vivacity, and spirit, John Walter Ardworth departed on his career.
Meanwhile Mainwaring slowly took his way to Sir Miles. As he approached
the gallery, he met Lucretia, who was coming from her own room. "Sir
Miles has sent for me," he said meaningly. He had time for no more, for
the valet was at the door of the gallery, waiting to usher him to his
host. "Ha! you will say not a word that can betray us; guard your looks
too!" whispered Lucretia, hurriedly; "afterwards, join me by the cedars."
She passed on towards the staircase, and glanced at the large clock that
was placed there. "Past eleven! Vernon is never up before twelve. I
must see him before my uncle sends for me, as he will send if he
suspects--" She paused, went back to her room, rang for her maid,
dressed as for walking, and said carelessly, "If Sir Miles wants me, I am
gone to the rectory, and shall probably return by the village, so that I
shall be back about one." Towards the rectory, indeed, Lucretia bent her
way; but half-way there, turned back, and passing through the plantation
at the rear of the house, awaited Mainwaring on the bench beneath the
cedars. He was not long before he joined her. His face was sad and
thoughtful; and when he seated himself by her side, it was with a
weariness of spirit that alarmed her.
"Well," said she, fearfully, and she placed her hand on his.
"Oh, Lucretia," he exclaimed, as he pressed that hand with an emotion
that came from other passions than love, "we, or rather I, have done
great wrong. I have been leading you to betray your uncle's trust, to
convert your gratitude to him into hypocrisy. I have been unworthy of
myself. I am poor, I am humbly born, but till I came here, I was rich
and proud in honour. I am not so now. Lucretia, pardon me, pardon me!
Let the dream be over; we must not sin thus; for it is sin, and the worst
of sin,--treachery. We must part: forget me!"
"Forget you! Never, never, never!" cried Lucretia, with suppressed but
most earnest vehemence, her breast heaving, her hands, as he dropped the
one he held, clasped together, her eyes full of tears,--transformed at
once into softness, meekness, even while racked by passion and despair.
"Oh, William, say anything,--reproach, chide, despise me, for mine is all
the fault; say anything but that word 'part.' I have chosen you, I have
sought you out, I have wooed you, if you will; be it so. I cling to you,
you are my all,--all that saves me from--from myself," she added
falteringly, and in a hollow voice. "Your love--you know not what it is
to me! I scarcely knew it myself before. I feel what it is now, when
you say 'part.'"
Agitated and tortured, Mainwaring writhed at these burning words, bent
his face low, and covered it with his hands.
He felt her clasp struggling to withdraw them, yielded, and saw her
kneeling at his feet. His manhood and his gratitude and his heart all
moved by that sight in one so haughty, he opened his arms, and she fell
on his breast. "You will never say 'part' again, William!" she gasped
convulsively.
"But what are we to do?"
"Say, first, what has passed between you and my uncle."
"Little to relate; for I can repeat words, not tones and looks. Sir
Miles spoke to me, at first kindly and encouragingly, about my prospects,
said it was time that I should fix myself, added a few words, with
menacing emphasis, against what he called 'idle dreams and desultory
ambition,' and observing that I changed countenance,--for I felt that I
did,--his manner became more cold and severe. Lucretia, if he has not
detected our secret, he more than suspects my--my presumption. Finally,
he said dryly, that I had better return home, consult with my father, and
that if I preferred entering into the service of the Government to any
mercantile profession, he thought he had sufficient interest to promote
my views. But, clearly and distinctly, he left on my mind one
impression,--that my visits here are over."
"Did he allude to me--to Mr. Vernon?"
"Ah, Lucretia! do you know him so little,--his delicacy, his pride?"
Lucretia was silent, and Mainwaring continued:--
"I felt that I was dismissed. I took my leave of your uncle; I came
hither with the intention to say farewell forever."
"Hush! hush! that thought is over. And you return to your father's,--
perhaps better so: it is but hope deferred; and in your absence I can the
more easily allay all suspicion, if suspicion exist. But I must write to
you; we must correspond. William, dear William, write often,--write
kindly; tell me, in every letter, that you love me,--that you love only
me; that you will be patient, and confide."
"Dear Lucretia," said Mainwaring, tenderly, and moved by the pathos of
her earnest and imploring voice, "but you forget: the bag is always
brought first to Sir Miles; he will recognize my hand. And to whom can
you trust your own letters?"
"True," replied Lucretia, despondingly; and there was a pause. Suddenly
she lifted her head, and cried: "But your father's house is not far from
this,--not ten miles; we can find a spot at the remote end of the park,
near the path through the great wood: there I can leave my letters; there
I can find yours."
"But it must be seldom. If any of Sir Miles's servants see me, if--"
"Oh, William, William, this is not the language of love!"
"Forgive me,--I think of you!"
"Love thinks of nothing but itself; it is tyrannical, absorbing,--it
forgets even the object loved; it feeds on danger; it strengthens by
obstacles," said Lucretia, tossing her hair from her forehead, and with
an expression of dark and wild power on her brow and in her eyes. "Fear
not for me; I am sufficient guard upon myself. Even while I speak, I
think,--yes, I have thought of the very spot. You remember that hollow
oak at the bottom of the dell, in which Guy St. John, the Cavalier, is
said to have hid himself from Fairfax's soldiers? Every Monday I will
leave a letter in that hollow; every Tuesday you can search for it, and
leave your own. This is but once a week; there is no risk here."
Mainwaring's conscience still smote him, but he had not the strength to
resist the energy of Lucretia. The force of her character seized upon
the weak part of his own,--its gentleness, its fear of inflicting pain,
its reluctance to say "No,"--that simple cause of misery to the over-
timid. A few sentences more, full of courage, confidence, and passion,
on the part of the woman, of constraint and yet of soothed and grateful
affection on that of the man, and the affianced parted.
Mainwaring had already given orders to have his trunks sent to him at his
father's; and, a hardy pedestrian by habit, he now struck across the
park, passed the dell and the hollow tree, commonly called "Guy's Oak,"
and across woodland and fields golden with ripening corn, took his way to
the town, in the centre of which, square, solid, and imposing, stood the
respectable residence of his bustling, active, electioneering father.
Lucretia's eye followed a form as fair as ever captivated maiden's
glance, till it was out of sight; and then, as she emerged from the shade
of the cedars into the more open space of the garden, her usual
thoughtful composure was restored to her steadfast countenance. On the
terrace, she caught sight of Vernon, who had just quitted his own room,
where he always breakfasted alone, and who was now languidly stretched on
a bench, and basking in the sun. Like all who have abused life, Vernon
was not the same man in the early part of the day. The spirits that rose
to temperate heat the third hour after noon, and expanded into glow when
the lights shone over gay carousers, at morning were flat and exhausted.
With hollow eyes and that weary fall of the muscles of the cheeks which
betrays the votary of Bacchus,--the convivial three-bottle man,--Charley
Vernon forced a smile, meant to be airy and impertinent, to his pale
lips, as he rose with effort, and extended three fingers to his cousin.
"Where have you been hiding? Catching bloom from the roses? You have
the prettiest shade of colour,--just enough; not a hue too much. And
there is Sir Miles's valet gone to the rectory, and the fat footman
puffing away towards the village, and I, like a faithful warden, from my
post at the castle, all looking out for the truant."
"But who wants me, cousin?" said Lucretia, with the full blaze of her
rare and captivating smile.
"The knight of Laughton confessedly wants thee, O damsel! The knight of
the Bleeding Heart may want thee more,--dare he own it?"
And with a hand that trembled a little, not with love, at least, it
trembled always a little before the Madeira at luncheon,--he lifted hers
to his lips.
"Compliments again,--words, idle words!" said Lucretia, looking down
bashfully.
"How can I convince thee of my sincerity, unless thou takest my life as
its pledge, maid of Laughton?"
And very much tired of standing, Charley Vernon drew her gently to the
bench and seated himself by her side. Lucretia's eyes were still
downcast, and she remained silent; Vernon, suppressing a yawn, felt that
he was bound to continue. There was nothing very formidable in
Lucretia's manner.
"'Fore Gad!" thought he, "I suppose I must take the heiress after all;
the sooner 't is over, the sooner I can get back to Brook Street."
"It is premature, my fair cousin," said he, aloud,--"premature, after
less than a week's visit, and only some fourteen or fifteen hours'
permitted friendship and intimacy, to say what is uppermost in my
thoughts; but we spendthrifts are provokingly handsome! Sir Miles, your
good uncle, is pleased to forgive all my follies and faults upon one
condition,--that you will take on yourself the task to reform me. Will
you, my fair cousin? Such as I am, you behold me. I am no sinner in the
disguise of a saint. My fortune is spent, my health is not strong; but a
young widow's is no mournful position. I am gay when I am well, good-
tempered when ailing. I never betrayed a trust,--can you trust me with
yourself?"
This was a long speech, and Charley Vernon felt pleased that it was over.
There was much in it that would have touched a heart even closed to him,
and a little genuine emotion had given light to his eyes, and color to
his cheek. Amidst all the ravages of dissipation, there was something
interesting in his countenance, and manly in his tone and his gesture.
But Lucretia was only sensible to one part of his confession,--her uncle
consented to his suit. This was all of which she desired to be assured,
and against this she now sought to screen herself.
"Your candour, Mr. Vernon," she said, avoiding his eye, "deserves candour
in me; I cannot affect to misunderstand you. But you take me by
surprise; I was so unprepared for this. Give me time,--I must reflect."
"Reflection is dull work in the country; you can reflect more amusingly
in town, my fair cousin."
"I will wait, then, till I find myself in town."
"Ah, you make me the happiest, the most grateful of men," cried Mr.
Vernon, rising, with a semi-genuflection which seemed to imply, "Consider
yourself knelt to,"--just as a courteous assailer, with a motion of the
hand, implies, "Consider yourself horsewhipped."
Lucretia, who, with all her intellect, had no capacity for humour,
recoiled, and looked up in positive surprise.
"I do not understand you, Mr. Vernon," she said, with austere gravity.
"Allow me the bliss of flattering myself that you, at least, are
understood," replied Charley Vernon, with imperturbable assurance. "You
will wait to reflect till you are in town,--that is to say, the day after
our honeymoon, when you awake in Mayfair."
Before Lucretia could reply, she saw the indefatigable valet formally
approaching, with the anticipated message that Sir Miles requested to see
her. She replied hurriedly to this last, that she would be with her
uncle immediately; and when he had again disappeared within the porch,
she said, with a constrained effort at frankness,--
"Mr. Vernon, if I have misunderstood your words, I think I do not mistake
your character. You cannot wish to take advantage of my affection for my
uncle, and the passive obedience I owe to him, to force me into a step of
which--of which--I have not yet sufficiently considered the results. If
you really desire that my feelings should be consulted, that I should
not--pardon me--consider myself sacrificed to the family pride of my
guardian and the interests of my suitor--"
"Madam!" exclaimed Vernon, reddening.
Pleased with the irritating effect her words had produced, Lucretia
continued calmly, "If, in a word, I am to be a free agent in a choice on
which my happiness depends, forbear to urge Sir Miles further at present;
forbear to press your suit upon me. Give me the delay of a few months; I
shall know how to appreciate your delicacy."
"Miss Clavering," answered Vernon, with a touch of the St. John
haughtiness, "I am in despair that you should even think so grave an
appeal to my honour necessary. I am well aware of your expectations and
my poverty. And, believe me, I would rather rot in a prison than enrich
myself by forcing your inclinations. You have but to say the word, and I
will (as becomes me as a man and gentleman) screen you from all chance of
Sir Miles's displeasure, by taking it on myself to decline an honour of
which I feel, indeed, very undeserving."
"But I have offended you," said Lucretia, softly, while she turned aside
to conceal the glad light of her eyes,--"pardon me; and to prove that you
do so, give me your arm to my uncle's room."
Vernon, with rather more of Sir Miles's antiquated stiffness than his own
rakish ease, offered his arm, with a profound reverence, to his cousin,
and they took their way to the house. Not till they had passed up the
stairs, and were even in the gallery, did further words pass between
them. Then Vernon said,--
"But what is your wish, Miss Clavering? On what footing shall I remain
here?"
"Will you suffer me to dictate?" replied Lucretia, stopping short with
well-feigned confusion, as if suddenly aware that the right to dictate
gives the right to hope.
"Ah, consider me at least your slave!" whispered Vernon, as, his eye
resting on the contour of that matchless neck, partially and
advantageously turned from him, he began, with his constitutional
admiration of the sex, to feel interested in a pursuit that now seemed,
after piquing, to flatter his self-love.
"Then I will use the privilege when we meet again," answered Lucretia;
and drawing her arm gently from his, she passed on to her uncle, leaving
Vernon midway in the gallery.
Those faded portraits looked down on her with that melancholy gloom which
the effigies of our dead ancestors seem mysteriously to acquire. To
noble and aspiring spirits, no homily to truth and honour and fair
ambition is more eloquent than the mute and melancholy canvas from which
our fathers, made, by death, our household gods, contemplate us still.
They appear to confide to us the charge of their unblemished names. They
speak to us from the grave, and heard aright, the pride of family is the
guardian angel of its heirs. But Lucretia, with her hard and scholastic
mind, despised as the veriest weakness all the poetry that belongs to the
sense of a pure descent. It was because she was proud as the proudest in
herself that she had nothing but contempt for the virtue, the valour, or
the wisdom of those that had gone before. So, with a brain busy with
guile and stratagem, she trod on, beneath the eyes of the simple and
spotless Dead.
Vernon, thus left alone, mused a few moments on what had passed between
himself and the heiress; and then, slowly retracing his steps, his eye
roved along the stately series of his line. "Faith!" he muttered, "if my
boyhood had been passed in this old gallery, his Royal Highness would
have lost a good fellow and hard drinker, and his Majesty would have had
perhaps a more distinguished soldier,--certainly a worthier subject. If
I marry this lady, and we are blessed with a son, he shall walk through
this gallery once a day before he is flogged into Latin!"
Lucretia's interview with her uncle was a masterpiece of art. What pity
that such craft and subtlety were wasted in our little day, and on such
petty objects; under the Medici, that spirit had gone far to the shaping
of history. Sure, from her uncle's openness, that he would plunge at
once into the subject for which she deemed she was summoned, she evinced
no repugnance when, tenderly kissing her, he asked if Charles Vernon had
a chance of winning favour in her eyes. She knew that she was safe in
saying "No;" that her uncle would never force her inclinations,--safe so
far as Vernon was concerned; but she desired more: she desired thoroughly
to quench all suspicion that her heart was pre-occupied; entirely to
remove from Sir Miles's thoughts the image of Mainwaring; and a denial of
one suitor might quicken the baronet's eyes to the concealment of the
other. Nor was this all; if Sir Miles was seriously bent upon seeing her
settled in marriage before his death, the dismissal of Vernon might only
expose her to the importunity of new candidates more difficult to deal
with. Vernon himself she could use as the shield against the arrows of a
host. Therefore, when Sir Miles repeated his question, she answered, with
much gentleness and seeming modest sense, that Mr. Vernon had much that
must prepossess in his favour; that in addition to his own advantages he
had one, the highest in her eyes,--her uncle's sanction and approval.
But--and she hesitated with becoming and natural diffidence--were not his
habits unfixed and roving? So it was said; she knew not herself,--she
would trust her happiness to her uncle. But if so, and if Mr. Vernon
were really disposed to change, would it not be prudent to try him,--try
him where there was temptation, not in the repose of Laughton, but amidst
his own haunts of London? Sir Miles had friends who would honestly
inform him of the result. She did but suggest this; she was too ready to
leave all to her dear guardian's acuteness and experience.
Melted by her docility, and in high approval of the prudence which
betokened a more rational judgment than he himself had evinced, the good
old man clasped her to his breast and shed tears as he praised and
thanked her. She had decided, as she always did, for the best; Heaven
forbid that she should be wasted on an incorrigible man of pleasure!
"And," said the frank-hearted gentleman, unable long to keep any thought
concealed,--"and to think that I could have wronged you for a moment, my
own noble child; that I could have been dolt enough to suppose that the
good looks of that boy Mainwaring might have caused you to forget what--
But you change colour!"--for, with all her dissimulation, Lucretia loved
too ardently not to shrink at that name thus suddenly pronounced. "Oh,"
continued the baronet, drawing her still nearer towards him, while with
one hand he put back her face, that he might read its expression the more
closely,--"oh, if it had been so,--if it be so, I will pity, not blame
you, for my neglect was the fault: pity you, for I have known a similar
struggle; admire you in pity, for you have the spirit of your ancestors,
and you will conquer the weakness. Speak! have I touched on the truth?
Speak without fear, child,--you have no mother; but in age a man
sometimes gets a mother's heart."
Startled and alarmed as the lark when the step nears its nest, Lucretia
summoned all the dark wile of her nature to mislead the intruder. "No,
uncle, no; I am not so unworthy. You misconceived my emotion."
"Ah, you know that he has had the presumption to love you,--the puppy!--
and you feel the compassion you women always feel for such offenders? Is
that it?"
Rapidly Lucretia considered if it would be wise to leave that impression
on his mind. On one hand, it might account for a moment's agitation; and
if Mainwaring were detected hovering near the domain, in the exchange of
their correspondence, it might appear but the idle, if hopeless, romance
of youth, which haunts the mere home of its object,--but no; on the other
hand, it left his banishment absolute and confirmed. Her resolution was
taken with a promptitude that made her pause not perceptible.
"No, my dear uncle," she said, so cheerfully that it removed all doubt
from the mind of her listener; "but M. Dalibard has rallied me on the
subject, and I was so angry with him that when you touched on it, I
thought more of my quarrel with him than of poor timid Mr. Mainwaring
himself. Come, now, own it, dear sir! M. Dalibard has instilled this
strange fancy into your head?"
"No, 'S life; if he had taken such a liberty, I should have lost my
librarian. No, I assure you, it was rather Vernon; you know true love is
jealous."
"Vernon!" thought Lucretia; "he must go, and at once." Sliding from her
uncle's arms to the stool at his feet, she then led the conversation more
familiarly back into the channel it had lost; and when at last she
escaped, it was with the understanding that, without promise or
compromise, Mr. Vernon should return to London at once, and be put upon
the ordeal through which she felt assured it was little likely he should
pass with success.
CHAPTER IV.
GUY'S OAK.
Three weeks afterwards, the life at Laughton seemed restored to the
cheerful and somewhat monotonous tranquillity of its course, before
chafed and disturbed by the recent interruptions to the stream. Vernon
had departed, satisfied with the justice of the trial imposed on him, and
far too high-spirited to seek to extort from niece or uncle any
engagement beyond that which, to a nice sense of honour, the trial itself
imposed. His memory and his heart were still faithful to Mary; but his
senses, his fancy, his vanity, were a little involved in his success with
the heiress. Though so free from all mercenary meanness, Mr. Vernon was
still enough man of the world to be sensible of the advantages of the
alliance which had first been pressed on him by Sir Miles, and from which
Lucretia herself appeared not to be averse. The season of London was
over, but there was always a set, and that set the one in which Charley
Vernon principally moved, who found town fuller than the country.
Besides, he went occasionally to Brighton, which was then to England what
Baiae was to Rome. The prince was holding gay court at the Pavilion, and
that was the atmosphere which Vernon was habituated to breathe. He was
no parasite of royalty; he had that strong personal affection to the
prince which it is often the good fortune of royalty to attract. Nothing
is less founded than the complaint which poets put into the lips of
princes, that they have no friends,--it is, at least, their own perverse
fault if that be the case; a little amiability, a little of frank
kindness, goes so far when it emanates from the rays of a crown. But
Vernon was stronger than Lucretia deemed him; once contemplating the
prospect of a union which was to consign to his charge the happiness of
another, and feeling all that he should owe in such a marriage to the
confidence both of niece and uncle, he evinced steadier principles than
he had ever made manifest when he had only his own fortune to mar, and
his own happiness to trifle with. He joined his old companions, but he
kept aloof from their more dissipated pursuits. Beyond what was then
thought the venial error of too devout libations to Bacchus, Charley
Vernon seemed reformed.
Ardworth had joined a regiment which had departed for the field of
action. Mainwaring was still with his father, and had not yet announced
to Sir Miles any wish or project for the future.
Olivier Dalibard, as before, passed his mornings alone in his chamber,--
his noons and his evenings with Sir Miles. He avoided all private
conferences with Lucretia. She did not provoke them. Young Gabriel
amused himself in copying Sir Miles's pictures, sketching from Nature,
scribbling in his room prose or verse, no matter which (he never showed
his lucubrations), pinching the dogs when he could catch them alone,
shooting the cats, if they appeared in the plantation, on pretence of
love for the young pheasants, sauntering into the cottages, where he was
a favourite because of his good looks, but where he always contrived to
leave the trace of his visits in disorder and mischief, upsetting the
tea-kettle and scalding the children, or, what he loved dearly, setting
two gossips by the ears. But these occupations were over by the hour
Lucretia left her apartment. From that time he never left her out of
view; and when encouraged to join her at his usual privileged times,
whether in the gardens at sunset or in her evening niche in the drawing-
room, he was sleek, silken, and caressing as Cupid, after plaguing the
Nymphs, at the feet of Psyche. These two strange persons had indeed
apparently that sort of sentimental familiarity which is sometimes seen
between a fair boy and a girl much older than himself; but the attraction
that drew them together was an indefinable instinct of their similarity
in many traits of their several characters,--the whelp leopard sported
fearlessly around the she-panther. Before Olivier's midnight conference
with his son, Gabriel had drawn close and closer to Lucretia, as an ally
against his father; for that father he cherished feelings which, beneath
the most docile obedience, concealed horror and hate, and something of
the ferocity of revenge. And if young Varney loved any one on earth
except himself, it was Lucretia Clavering. She had administered to his
ruling passions, which were for effect and display; she had devised the
dress which set off to the utmost his exterior, and gave it that
picturesque and artistic appearance which he had sighed for in his study
of the portraits of Titian and Vandyke. She supplied him (for in money
she was generous) with enough to gratify and forestall every boyish
caprice; and this liberality now turned against her, for it had increased
into a settled vice his natural taste for extravagance, and made all
other considerations subordinate to that of feeding his cupidity. She
praised his drawings, which, though self-taught, were indeed
extraordinary, predicted his fame as an artist, lifted him into
consequence amongst the guests by her notice and eulogies, and what,
perhaps, won him more than all, he felt that it was to her--to Dalibard's
desire to conceal before her his more cruel propensities--that he owed
his father's change from the most refined severity to the most paternal
gentleness.
And thus he had repaid her, as she expected, by a devotion which she
trusted to employ against her tutor himself, should the baffled aspirant
become the scheming rival and the secret foe. But now,--thoroughly aware
of the gravity of his father's objects, seeing before him the chance of a
settled establishment at Laughton, a positive and influential connection
with Lucretia; and on the other hand a return to the poverty he recalled
with disgust, and the terrors of his father's solitary malice and
revenge,--he entered fully into Dalibard's sombre plans, and without
scruple or remorse, would have abetted any harm to his benefactress.
Thus craft, doomed to have accomplices in craft, resembles the spider,
whose web, spread indeed for the fly, attracts the fellow-spider that
shall thrust it forth, and profit by the meshes it has woven for a
victim, to surrender to a master.
Already young Varney, set quietly and ceaselessly to spy every movement
of Lucretia's, had reported to his father two visits to the most retired
part of the park; but he had not yet ventured near enough to discover the
exact spot, and his very watch on Lucretia had prevented the detection of
Mainwaring himself in his stealthy exchange of correspondence. Dalibard
bade him continue his watch, without hinting at his ulterior intentions,
for, indeed, in these he was not decided. Even should he discover any
communication between Lucretia and Mainwaring, how reveal it to Sir Miles
without forever precluding himself from the chance of profiting by the
betrayal? Could Lucretia ever forgive the injury, and could she fail to
detect the hand that inflicted it? His only hope was in the removal of
Mainwaring from his path by other agencies than his own, and (by an
appearance of generosity and self-abandonment, in keeping her secret and
submitting to his fate) he trusted to regain the confidence she now
withheld from him, and use it to his advantage when the time came to
defend himself from Vernon. For he had learned from Sir Miles the
passive understanding with respect to that candidate for her hand; and he
felt assured that had Mainwaring never existed, could he cease to exist
for her hopes, Lucretia, despite her dissimulation, would succumb to one
she feared but respected, rather than one she evidently trifled with and
despised.
"But the course to be taken must be adopted after the evidence is
collected," thought the subtle schemer, and he tranquilly continued his
chess with the baronet.
Before, however, Gabriel could make any further discoveries, an event
occurred which excited very different emotions amongst those it more
immediately interested.
Sir Miles had, during the last twelve months, been visited by two
seizures, seemingly of an apoplectic character. Whether they were
apoplexy, or the less alarming attacks that arise from some more gentle
congestion, occasioned by free living and indolent habits, was matter of
doubt with his physician,--not a very skilful, though a very formal, man.
Country doctors were not then the same able, educated, and scientific
class that they are now rapidly becoming. Sir Miles himself so stoutly
and so eagerly repudiated the least hint of the more unfavourable
interpretation that the doctor, if not convinced by his patient, was awed
from expressing plainly a contrary opinion. There are certain persons
who will dismiss their physician if he tells them the truth: Sir Miles
was one of them.
In his character there was a weakness not uncommon to the proud. He did
not fear death, but he shrank from the thought that others should
calculate on his dying. He was fond of his power, though he exercised it
gently: he knew that the power of wealth and station is enfeebled in
proportion as its dependants can foresee the date of its transfer. He
dreaded, too, the comments which are always made on those visited by his
peculiar disease: "Poor Sir Miles! an apoplectic fit. His intellect must
be very much shaken; he revoked at whist last night,--memory sadly
impaired!" This may be a pitiable foible; but heroes and statesmen have
had it most: pardon it in the proud old man! He enjoined the physician
to state throughout the house and the neighbourhood that the attacks were
wholly innocent and unimportant. The physician did so, and was generally
believed; for Sir Miles seemed as lively and as vigorous after them as
before. Two persons alone were not deceived,--Dalibard and Lucretia.
The first, at an earlier part of his life, had studied pathology with the
profound research and ingenious application which he brought to bear upon
all he undertook. He whispered from the first to Lucretia,--
"Unless your uncle changes his habits, takes exercise, and forbears wine
and the table, his days are numbered."
And when this intelligence was first conveyed to her, before she had
become acquainted with Mainwaring, Lucretia felt the shock of a grief
sudden and sincere. We have seen how these better sentiments changed as
human life became an obstacle in her way. In her character, what
phrenologists call "destructiveness," in the comprehensive sense of the
word, was superlatively developed. She had not actual cruelty; she was
not bloodthirsty: those vices belong to a different cast of character.
She was rather deliberately and intellectually unsparing. A goal was
before her; she must march to it: all in the way were but hostile
impediments. At first, however, Sir Miles was not in the way, except to
fortune, and for that, as avarice was not her leading vice, she could
well wait; therefore, at this hint of the Provencal's she ventured to
urge her uncle to abstinence and exercise. But Sir Miles was touchy on
the subject; he feared the interpretations which great change of habits
might suggest. The memory of the fearful warning died away, and he felt
as well as before; for, save an old rheumatic gout (which had long since
left him with no other apparent evil but a lameness in the joints that
rendered exercise unwelcome and painful), he possessed one of those
comfortable, and often treacherous, constitutions which evince no
displeasure at irregularities, and bear all liberties with philosophical
composure. Accordingly, he would have his own way; and he contrived to
coax or to force his doctor into an authority on his side: wine was
necessary to his constitution; much exercise was a dangerous fatigue.
The second attack, following four months after the first, was less
alarming, and Sir Miles fancied it concealed even from his niece; but
three nights after his recovery, the old baronet sat musing alone for
some time in his own room before he retired to rest. Then he rose, opened
his desk, and read his will attentively, locked it up with a slight sigh,
and took down his Bible. The next morning he despatched the letters
which summoned Ardworth and Vernon to his house; and as he quitted his
room, his look lingered with melancholy fondness upon the portraits in
the gallery. No one was by the old man to interpret these slight signs,
in which lay a world of meaning.
A few weeks after Vernon had left the house, and in the midst of the
restored tranquillity we have described, it so happened that Sir Miles's
physician, after dining at the Hall, had been summoned to attend one of
the children at the neighbouring rectory; and there he spent the night.
A little before daybreak his slumbers were disturbed; he was recalled in
all haste to Laughton Hall. For the third time, he found Sir Miles
speechless. Dalibard was by his bedside. Lucretia had not been made
aware of the seizure; for Sir Miles had previously told his valet (who of
late slept in the same room) never to alarm Miss Clavering if he was
taken ill. The doctor was about to apply his usual remedies; but when he
drew forth his lancet, Dalibard placed his hand on the physician's arm.
"Not this time," he said slowly, and with emphasis; "it will be his
death."
"Pooh, sir!" said the doctor, disdainfully.
"Do so, then; bleed him, and take the responsibility. I have studied
medicine,--I know these symptoms. In this case the apoplexy may spare,--
the lancet kills."
The physician drew back dismayed and doubtful.
"What would you do, then?"
"Wait three minutes longer the effect of the cataplasms I have applied.
If they fail--"
"Ay, then?"
"A chill bath and vigorous friction."
"Sir, I will never permit it."
"Then murder your patient your own way."
All this while Sir Miles lay senseless, his eyes wide open, his teeth
locked. The doctor drew near, looked at the lancet, and said
irresolutely,--
"Your practice is new to me; but if you have studied medicine, that's
another matter. Will you guarantee the success of your plan?"
"Yes."
"Mind, I wash my hands of it; I take Mr. Jones to witness;" and he
appealed to the valet.
"Call up the footman and lift your master," said Dalibard; and the
doctor, glancing round, saw that a bath, filled some seven or eight
inches deep with water, stood already prepared in the room. Perplexed
and irresolute, he offered no obstacle to Dalibard's movements. The
body, seemingly lifeless, was placed in the bath; and the servants, under
Dalibard's directions, applied vigorous and incessant friction. Several
minutes elapsed before any favourable symptom took place. At length Sir
Miles heaved a deep sigh, and the eyes moved; a minute or two more, and
the teeth chattered; the blood, set in motion, appeared on the surface of
the skin; life ebbed back. The danger was passed, the dark foe driven
from the citadel. Sir Miles spoke audibly, though incoherently, as he
was taken back to his bed, warmly covered up, the lights removed, noise
forbidden, and Dalibard and the doctor remained in silence by the
bedside.
"Rich man," thought Dalibard, "thine hour is not yet come; thy wealth
must not pass to the boy Mainwaring." Sir Miles's recovery, under the
care of Dalibard, who now had his own way, was as rapid and complete as
before. Lucretia when she heard, the next morning, of the attack, felt,
we dare not say a guilty joy, but a terrible and feverish agitation. Sir
Miles himself, informed by his valet of Dalibard's wrestle with the
doctor, felt a profound gratitude and reverent wonder for the simple
means to which he probably owed his restoration; and he listened, with a
docility which Dalibard was not prepared to expect, to his learned
secretary's urgent admonitions as to the life he must lead if he desired
to live at all. Convinced, at last, that wine and good cheer had not
blockaded out the enemy, and having to do, in Olivier Dalibard, with a
very different temper from the doctor's, he assented with a tolerable
grace to the trial of a strict regimen and to daily exercise in the open
air. Dalibard now became constantly with him; the increase of his
influence was as natural as it was apparent. Lucretia trembled; she
divined a danger in his power, now separate from her own, and which
threatened to be independent of it. She became abstracted and uneasy;
jealousy of the Provencal possessed her. She began to meditate schemes
for his downfall. At this time, Sir Miles received the following letter
from Mr. Fielden:--
SOUTHAMPTON, Aug. 20, 1801.
DEAR SIR MILES,--You will remember that I informed you when I arrived at
Southampton with my dear young charge; and Susan has twice written to her
sister, implying the request which she lacked the courage, seeing that
she is timid, expressly to urge, that Miss Clavering might again be
permitted to visit her. Miss Clavering has answered as might be expected
from the propinquity of the relationship; but she has perhaps the same
fears of offending you that actuate her sister. But now, since the
worthy clergyman who had undertaken my parochial duties has found the air
insalubrious, and prays me not to enforce the engagement by which we had
exchanged our several charges for the space of a calendar year, I am
reluctantly compelled to return home,--my dear wife, thank Heaven, being
already restored to health, which is an unspeakable mercy; and I am sure
I cannot be sufficiently grateful to Providence, which has not only
provided me with a liberal independence of more than 200 pounds a year,
but the best of wives and the most dutiful of children,--possessions that
I venture to call "the riches of the heart." Now, I pray you, my dear
Sir Miles, to gratify these two deserving young persons, and to suffer
Miss Lucretia incontinently to visit her sister. Counting on your
consent, thus boldly demanded, I have already prepared an apartment for
Miss Clavering; and Susan is busy in what, though I do not know much of
such feminine matters, the whole house declares to be a most beautiful
and fanciful toilet-cover, with roses and forget-me-nots cut out of
muslin, and two large silk tassels, which cost her three shillings and
fourpence. I cannot conclude without thanking you from my heart for your
noble kindness to young Ardworth. He is so full of ardour and spirit
that I remember, poor lad, when I left him, as I thought, hard at work on
that well-known problem of Euclid vulgarly called the Asses' Bridge,--I
found him describing a figure of 8 on the village pond, which was only
just frozen over! Poor lad! Heaven will take care of him, I know, as it
does of all who take no care of themselves. Ah, Sir Miles, if you could
but see Susan,--such a nurse, too, in illness! I have the honour to be,
Sir Miles,
Your most humble, poor servant, to command,
MATTHEW FIELDEN.
Sir Miles put this letter in his niece's hand, and said kindly, "Why not
have gone to see your sister before? I should not have been angry. Go,
my child, as soon as you like. To-morrow is Sunday,--no travelling that
day; but the next, the carriage shall be at your order."
Lucretia hesitated a moment. To leave Dalibard in sole possession of the
field, even for a few days, was a thought of alarm; but what evil could
he do in that time? And her pulse beat quickly: Mainwaring could come to
Southampton; she should see him again, after more than six weeks'
absence! She had so much to relate and to hear; she fancied his last
letter had been colder and shorter; she yearned to hear him say, with his
own lips, that he loved her still. This idea banished or prevailed over
all others. She thanked her uncle cheerfully and gayly, and the journey
was settled.
"Be at watch early on Monday," said Olivier to his son.
Monday came; the baronet had ordered the carriage to be at the door at
ten. A little before eight, Lucretia stole out, and took her way to
Guy's Oak. Gabriel had placed himself in readiness; he had climbed a
tree at the bottom of the park (near the place where hitherto he had lost
sight of her); she passed under it,--on through a dark grove of pollard
oaks. When she was at a sufficient distance, the boy dropped from his
perch; with the stealth of an Indian he crept on her trace, following
from tree to tree, always sheltered, always watchful. He saw her pause
at the dell and look round; she descended into the hollow; he slunk
through the fern; he gained the marge of the dell, and looked down,--she
was lost to his sight. At length, to his surprise, he saw the gleam of
her robe emerge from the hollow of a tree,--her head stooped as she came
through the aperture; he had time to shrink back amongst the fern; she
passed on hurriedly, the same way she had taken, back to the house; then
into the dell crept the boy. Guy's Oak, vast and venerable, with gnarled
green boughs below, and sere branches above, that told that its day of
fall was decreed at last, rose high from the abyss of the hollow, high
and far-seen amidst the trees that stood on the vantage-ground above,--
even as a great name soars the loftier when it springs from the grave. A
dark and irregular fissure gave entrance to the heart of the oak. The
boy glided in and looked round; he saw nothing, yet something there must
be. The rays of the early sun did not penetrate into the hollow, it was
as dim as a cave. He felt slowly in every crevice, and a startled moth
or two flew out. It was not for moths that the girl had come to Guy's
Oak! He drew back, at last, in despair; as he did so, he heard a low
sound close at hand,--a low, murmuring, angry sound, like a hiss; he
looked round, and through the dark, two burning eyes fixed his own: he
had startled a snake from its bed. He drew out in time, as the reptile
sprang; but now his task, search, and object were forgotten. With the
versatility of a child, his thoughts were all on the enemy he had
provoked. That zest of prey which is inherent in man's breast, which
makes him love the sport and the chase, and maddens boyhood and age with
the passion for slaughter, leaped up within him; anything of danger and
contest and excitement gave Gabriel Varney a strange fever of pleasure.
He sprang up the sides of the dell, climbed the park pales on which it
bordered, was in the wood where the young shoots rose green and strong
from the underwood. To cut a staff for the strife, to descend again into
the dell, creep again through the fissure, look round for those vengeful
eyes, was quick done as the joyous play of the impulse. The poor snake
had slid down in content and fancied security; its young, perhaps, were
not far off; its wrath had been the instinct Nature gives to the mother.
It hath done thee no harm yet, boy; leave it in peace! The young hunter
had no ear to such whisper of prudence or mercy. Dim and blind in the
fissure, he struck the ground and the tree with his stick, shouted out,
bade the eyes gleam, and defied them. Whether or not the reptile had
spent its ire in the first fruitless spring, and this unlooked-for return
of the intruder rather daunted than exasperated, we leave those better
versed in natural history to conjecture; but instead of obeying the
challenge and courting the contest, it glided by the sides of the oak,
close to the very feet of its foe, and emerging into the light, dragged
its gray coils through the grass; but its hiss still betrayed it.
Gabriel sprang through the fissure and struck at the craven, insulting it
with a laugh of scorn as he struck. Suddenly it halted, suddenly reared
its crest; the throat swelled with venom, the tongue darted out, and
again, green as emeralds, glared the spite of its eyes. No fear felt
Gabriel Varney; his arm was averted; he gazed, spelled and admiringly,
with the eye of an artist. Had he had pencil and tablet at that moment,
he would have dropped his weapon for the sketch, though the snake had
been as deadly as the viper of Sumatra. The sight sank into his memory,
to be reproduced often by the wild, morbid fancies of his hand. Scarce a
moment, however, had he for the gaze; the reptile sprang, and fell,
baffled and bruised by the involuntary blow of its enemy. As it writhed
on the grass, how its colours came out; how graceful were the movements
of its pain! And still the boy gazed, till the eye was sated and the
cruelty returned. A blow, a second, a third,--all the beauty is gone;
shapeless, and clotted with gore, that elegant head; mangled and
dissevered the airy spires of that delicate shape, which had glanced in
its circling involutions, free and winding as a poet's thought through
his verse. The boy trampled the quivering relics into the sod, with a
fierce animal joy of conquest, and turned once more towards the hollow,
for a last almost hopeless survey. Lo, his object was found! In his
search for the snake, either his staff or his foot had disturbed a layer
of moss in the corner; the faint ray, ere he entered the hollow, gleamed
upon something white. He emerged from the cavity with a letter in his
hand; he read the address, thrust it into his bosom, and as stealthily,
but more rapidly, than he had come, took his way to his father.
CHAPTER V.
HOUSEHOLD TREASON.
The Provencal took the letter from his son's hand, and looked at him with
an approbation half-complacent, half-ironical. "Mon fils!" said he,
patting the boy's head gently, "why should we not be friends? We want
each other; we have the strong world to fight against."
"Not if you are master of this place."
"Well answered,--no; then we shall have the strong world on our side, and
shall have only rogues and the poor to make war upon." Then, with a
quiet gesture, he dismissed his son, and gazed slowly on the letter. His
pulse, which was usually low, quickened, and his lips were tightly
compressed; he shrank from the contents with a jealous pang; as a light
quivers strugglingly in a noxious vault, love descended into that hideous
breast, gleamed upon dreary horrors, and warred with the noxious
atmosphere: but it shone still. To this dangerous man, every art that
gives power to the household traitor was familiar: he had no fear that
the violated seals should betray the fraud which gave the contents to the
eye that, at length, steadily fell upon the following lines:--
DEAREST, AND EVER DEAREST,--Where art thou at this moment? What are thy
thoughts,--are they upon me? I write this at the dead of night. I
picture you to myself as my hand glides over the paper. I think I see
you, as you look on these words, and envy them the gaze of those dark
eyes. Press your lips to the paper. Do you feel the kiss that I leave
there? Well, well! it will not be for long now that we shall be divided.
Oh, what joy, when I think that I am about to see you! Two days more, at
most three, and we shall meet, shall we not? I am going to see my
sister. I subjoin my address. Come, come, come; I thirst to see you
once more. And I did well to say, "Wait, and be patient;" we shall not
wait long: before the year is out I shall be free. My uncle has had
another and more deadly attack. I see its trace in his face, in his
step, in his whole form and bearing. The only obstacle between us is
fading away. Can I grieve when I think it,--grieve when life with you
spreads smiling beyond the old man's grave? And why should age, that has
survived all passion, stand with its chilling frown, and the miserable
prejudices the world has not conquered, but strengthened into a creed,--
why should age stand between youth and youth? I feel your mild eyes
rebuke me as I write. But chide me not that on earth I see only you.
And it will be mine to give you wealth and rank! Mine to see the homage
of my own heart reflected from the crowd who bow, not to the statue, but
the pedestal. Oh, how I shall enjoy your revenge upon the proud! For I
have drawn no pastoral scenes in my picture of the future. No; I see you
leading senates, and duping fools. I shall be by your side, your
partner, step after step, as you mount the height, for I am ambitious,
you know, William; and not less because I love,--rather ten thousand
times more so. I would not have you born great and noble, for what then
could we look to,--what use all my schemes, and my plans, and aspirings?
Fortune, accident, would have taken from us the great zest of life, which
is desire.
When I see you, I shall tell you that I have some fears of Olivier
Dalibard; he has evidently some wily project in view. He, who never
interfered before with the blundering physician, now thrusts him aside,
affects to have saved the old man, attends him always. Dares he think to
win an influence, to turn against me,--against us? Happily, when I shall
come back, my uncle will probably be restored to the false strength which
deceives him; he will have less need of Dalibard; and then--then let the
Frenchman beware! I have already a plot to turn his schemes to his own
banishment. Come to Southampton, then, as soon as you can,--perhaps the
day you receive this; on Wednesday, at farthest. Your last letter implies
blame of my policy with respect to Vernon. Again I say, it is necessary
to amuse my uncle to the last. Before Vernon can advance a claim, there
will be weeping at Laughton. I shall weep, too, perhaps; but there will
be joy in those tears, as well as sorrow,--for then, when I clasp thy
hand, I can murmur, "It is mine at last, and forever!"
Adieu! No, not adieu,--to our meeting, my lover, my beloved! Thy
LUCRETIA.
An hour after Miss Clavering had departed on her visit, Dalibard returned
the letter to his son, the seal seemingly unbroken, and bade him replace
it in the hollow of the tree, but sufficiently in sight to betray itself
to the first that entered. He then communicated the plan he had formed
for its detection,--a plan which would prevent Lucretia ever suspecting
the agency of his son or himself; and this done, he joined Sir Miles in
the gallery. Hitherto, in addition to his other apprehensions in
revealing to the baronet Lucretia's clandestine intimacy with Mainwaring,
Dalibard had shrunk from the thought that the disclosure would lose her
the heritage which had first tempted his avarice or ambition; but now his
jealous and his vindictive passions were aroused, and his whole plan of
strategy was changed. He must crush Lucretia, or she would crush him, as
her threats declared. To ruin her in Sir Miles's eyes, to expel her from
his house, might not, after all, weaken his own position, even with
regard to power over herself. If he remained firmly established at
Laughton, he could affect intercession,--he could delay, at least, any
precipitate union with Mainwaring, by practising on the ambition which he
still saw at work beneath her love; he might become a necessary ally; and
then--why, then, his ironical smile glanced across his lips. But beyond
this, his quick eye saw fair prospects to self-interest: Lucretia
banished; the heritage not hers; the will to be altered; Dalibard
esteemed indispensable to the life of the baronet. Come, there was hope
here,--not for the heritage, indeed, but at least for a munificent
bequest.
At noon, some visitors, bringing strangers from London whom Sir Miles had
invited to see the house (which was one of the lions of the
neighbourhood, though not professedly a show-place), were expected.
Aware of this, Dalibard prayed the baronet to rest quiet till his company
arrived, and then he said carelessly,--
"It will be a healthful diversion to your spirits to accompany them a
little in the park; you can go in your garden-chair; you will have new
companions to talk with by the way; and it is always warm and sunny at
the slope of the hill, towards the bottom of the park."
Sir Miles assented cheerfully; the guests came, strolled over the house,
admired the pictures and the armour and the hall and the staircase, paid
due respect to the substantial old-fashioned luncheon, and then,
refreshed, and in great good-humour, acquiesced in Sir Miles's
proposition to saunter through the park.
The poor baronet was more lively than usual. The younger people
clustered gayly round his chair (which was wheeled by his valet), smiling
at his jests and charmed with his courteous high-breeding. A little in
the rear walked Gabriel, paying special attention to the prettiest and
merriest girl of the company, who was a great favourite with Sir Miles,--
perhaps for those reasons.
"What a delightful old gentleman!" said the young lady. "How I envy Miss
Clavering such an uncle!"
"Ah, but you are a little out of favour to-day, I can tell you," said
Gabriel, laughingly; "you were close by Sir Miles when we went through
the picture-gallery, and you never asked him the history of the old
knight in the buff doublet and blue sash."
"Dear me, what of that?"
"Why, that was brave Colonel Guy St. John, the Cavalier, the pride and
boast of Sir Miles; you know his weakness. He looked so displeased when
you said, 'What a droll-looking figure!' I was on thorns for you!"
"What a pity! I would not offend dear Sir Miles for the world."
"Well, it's easy to make it up with him. Go and tell him that he must
take you to see Guy's Oak, in the dell; that you have heard so much about
it; and when you get him on his hobby, it is hard if you can't make your
peace."
"Oh, I'll certainly do it, Master Varney;" and the young lady lost no
time in obeying the hint. Gabriel had set other tongues on the same cry,
so that there was a general exclamation when the girl named the subject,-
-"Oh, Guy's Oak, by all means!"
Much pleased with the enthusiasm this memorial of his pet ancestor
produced, Sir Miles led the way to the dell, and pausing as he reached
the verge, said,--
"I fear I cannot do you the honours; it is too steep for my chair to
descend safely."
Gabriel whispered the fair companion whose side he still kept to.
"Now, my dear Sir Miles," cried the girl, "I positively won't stir
without you; I am sure we could get down the chair without a jolt. Look
there, how nicely the ground slopes! Jane, Lucy, my dears, let us take
charge of Sir Miles. Now, then."
The gallant old gentleman would have marched to the breach in such
guidance; he kissed the fair hands that lay so temptingly on his chair,
and then, rising with some difficulty, said,--
"No, my dears, you have made me so young again that I think I can walk
down the steep with the best of you."
So, leaning partly on his valet, and by the help of the hands extended to
him, step after step, Sir Miles, with well-disguised effort, reached the
huge roots of the oak.
"The hollow then was much smaller," said he, "so he was not so easily
detected as a man would be now, the damned crop-ears--I beg pardon, my
dears; the rascally rebels--poked their swords through the fissure, and
two went, one through his jerkin, one through his arm; but he took care
not to swear at the liberty, and they went away, not suspecting him."
While thus speaking, the young people were already playfully struggling
which should first enter the oak. Two got precedence, and went in and
out, one after the other. Gabriel breathed hard. "The blind owlets!"
thought he; "and I put the letter where a mole would have seen it!"
"You know the spell when you enter an oak-tree where the fairies have
been," he whispered to the fair object of his notice. "You must turn
round three times, look carefully on the ground, and you will see the
face you love best. If I was but a little older, how I should pray--"
"Nonsense!" said the girl, blushing, as she now slid through the crowd,
and went timidly in; presently she uttered a little exclamation.
The gallant Sir Miles stooped down to see what was the matter, and
offering his hand as she came out, was startled to see her holding a
letter.
"Only think what I have found!" said the girl. "What a strange place for
a post-office! Bless me! It is directed to Mr. Mainwaring!"
"Mr. Mainwaring!" cried three or four voices; but the baronet's was mute.
His eye recognized Lucretia's hand; his tongue clove to the roof of his
mouth; the blood surged, like a sea, in his temples; his face became
purple. Suddenly Gabriel, peeping over the girl's shoulder, snatched
away the letter.
"It is my letter,--it is mine! What a shame in Mainwaring not to have
come for it as he promised!"
Sir Miles looked round and breathed more freely.
"Yours, Master Varney!" said the young lady, astonished. "What can make
your letters to Mr. Mainwaring such a secret?"
"Oh! you'll laugh at me; but--but--I wrote a poem on Guy's Oak, and Mr.
Mainwaring promised to get it into the county paper for me; and as he was
to pass close by the park pales, through the wood yonder, on his way to
D---- last Saturday, we agreed that I should leave it here; but he has
forgotten his promise, I see."
Sir Miles grasped the boy's arm with a convulsive pressure of gratitude.
There was a general cry for Gabriel to read his poem on the spot; but the
boy looked sheepish, and hung down his head, and seemed rather more
disposed to cry than to recite. Sir Miles, with an effort at simulation
that all his long practice of the world never could have nerved him to,
unexcited by a motive less strong than the honour of his blood and house,
came to the relief of the young wit that had just come to his own.
"Nay," he said, almost calmly, "I know our young poet is too shy to
oblige you. I will take charge of your verses, Master Gabriel;" and with
a grave air of command, he took the letter from the boy and placed it in
his pocket.
The return to the house was less gay than the visit to the oak. The
baronet himself made a feverish effort to appear blithe and debonair as
before; but it was not successful. Fortunately, the carriages were all
at the door as they reached the house, and luncheon being over, nothing
delayed the parting compliments of the guests. As the last carriage
drove away, Sir Miles beckoned to Gabriel, and bade him follow him into
his room.
When there, he dismissed his valet and said,--
"You know, then, who wrote this letter. Have you been in the secret of
the correspondence? Speak the truth, my dear boy; it shall cost you
nothing."
"Oh, Sir Miles!" cried Gabriel, earnestly, "I know nothing whatever
beyond this,--that I saw the hand of my dear, kind Miss Lucretia; that I
felt, I hardly knew why, that both you and she would not have those
people discover it, which they would if the letter had been circulated
from one to the other, for some one would have known the hand as well as
myself, and therefore I spoke, without thinking, the first thing that
came into my head."
"You--you have obliged me and my niece, sir," said the baronet,
tremulously; and then, with a forced and sickly smile, he added: "Some
foolish vagary of Lucretia, I suppose; I must scold her for it. Say
nothing about it, however, to any one."
"Oh, no, sir!"
"Good-by, my dear Gabriel!"
"And that boy saved the honour of my niece's name,--my mother's
grandchild! O God! this is bitter,--in my old age too!"
He bowed his head over his hands, and tears forced themselves through his
fingers. He was long before he had courage to read the letter, though he
little foreboded all the shock that it would give him. It was the first
letter, not destined to himself, of which he had ever broken the seal.
Even that recollection made the honourable old man pause; but his duty
was plain and evident, as head of the house and guardian to his niece.
Thrice he wiped his spectacles; still they were dim, still the tears
would come. He rose tremblingly, walked to the window, and saw the
stately deer grouped in the distance, saw the church spire that rose
above the burial vault of his ancestors, and his heart sank deeper and
deeper as he muttered: "Vain pride! pride!" Then he crept to the door
and locked it, and at last, seating himself firmly, as a wounded man to
some terrible operation, he read the letter.
Heaven support thee, old man! thou hast to pass through the bitterest
trial which honour and affection can undergo,--household treason. When
the wife lifts high the blushless front and brazens out her guilt; when
the child, with loud voice, throws off all control and makes boast of
disobedience,--man revolts at the audacity; his spirit arms against his
wrong: its face, at least, is bare; the blow, if sacrilegious, is direct.
But when mild words and soft kisses conceal the worst foe Fate can arm;
when amidst the confidence of the heart starts up the form of Perfidy;
when out from the reptile swells the fiend in its terror; when the breast
on which man leaned for comfort has taken counsel to deceive him; when he
learns that, day after day, the life entwined with his own has been a lie
and a stage-mime,--he feels not the softness of grief, nor the absorption
of rage; it is mightier than grief, and more withering than rage,--it is
a horror that appalls. The heart does not bleed, the tears do not flow,
as in woes to which humanity is commonly subjected; it is as if something
that violates the course of nature had taken place,--something monstrous
and out of all thought and forewarning; for the domestic traitor is a
being apart from the orbit of criminals: the felon has no fear of his
innocent children; with a price on his head, he lays it in safety on the
bosom of his wife. In his home, the ablest man, the most subtle and
suspecting, can be as much a dupe as the simplest. Were it not so as the
rule, and the exceptions most rare, this world were the riot of a hell!
And therefore it is that to the household perfidy, in all lands, in all
ages, God's curse seems to cleave, and to God's curse man abandons it; he
does not honour it by hate, still less will he lighten and share the
guilt by descending to revenge. He turns aside with a sickness and
loathing, and leaves Nature to purify from the earth the ghastly
phenomenon she abhors.
Old man, that she wilfully deceived thee, that she abused thy belief and
denied to thy question and profaned maidenhood to stealth,--all this
might have galled thee; but to these wrongs old men are subjected,--they
give mirth to our farces; maid and lover are privileged impostors. But
to have counted the sands in thine hour-glass, to have sat by thy side,
marvelling when the worms should have thee, and looked smiling on thy
face for the signs of the death-writ--Die quick, old man; the executioner
hungers for the fee!
There were no tears in those eyes when they came to the close; the letter
fell noiselessly to the floor, and the head sank on the breast, and the
hands drooped upon the poor crippled limbs, whose crawl in the sunshine
hard youth had grudged. He felt humbled, stunned, crushed; the pride was
clean gone from him; the cruel words struck home. Worse than a cipher,
did he then but cumber the earth? At that moment old Ponto, the setter,
shook himself, looked up, and laid his head in his master's lap; and
Dash, jealous, rose also, and sprang, not actively, for Dash was old,
too, upon his knees, and licked the numbed, drooping hands. Now, people
praise the fidelity of dogs till the theme is worn out; but nobody knows
what a dog is, unless he has been deceived by men,--then, that honest
face; then, that sincere caress; then, that coaxing whine that never
lied! Well, then,--what then? A dog is long-lived if he live to ten
years,--small career this to truth and friendship! Now, when Sir Miles
felt that he was not deserted, and his look met those four fond eyes,
fixed with that strange wistfulness which in our hours of trouble the
eyes of a dog sympathizingly assume, an odd thought for a sensible man
passed into him, showing, more than pages of sombre elegy, how deep was
the sudden misanthropy that blackened the world around. "When I am
dead," ran that thought, "is there one human being whom I can trust to
take charge of the old man's dogs?"
So, let the scene close!
CHAPTER VI.
THE WILL.
The next day, or rather the next evening, Sir Miles St. John was seated
before his unshared chicken,--seated alone, and vaguely surprised at
himself, in a large, comfortable room in his old hotel, Hanover Square.
Yes, he had escaped. Hast thou, O Reader, tasted the luxury of escape
from a home where the charm is broken,--where Distrust looks askant from
the Lares? In vain had Dalibard remonstrated, conjured up dangers, and
asked at least to accompany him. Excepting his dogs and his old valet,
who was too like a dog in his fond fidelity to rank amongst bipeds, Sir
Miles did not wish to have about him a single face familiar at Laughton,
Dalibard especially. Lucretia's letter had hinted at plans and designs
in Dalibard. It might be unjust, it might be ungrateful; but he grew
sick at the thought that he was the centre-stone of stratagems and plots.
The smooth face of the Provencal took a wily expression in his eyes; nay,
he thought his very footmen watched his steps as if to count how long
before they followed his bier. So, breaking from all roughly, with a
shake of his head and a laconic assertion of business in London, he got
into his carriage,--his own old bachelor's lumbering travelling-
carriage,--and bade the post-boys drive fast, fast! Then, when he felt
alone,--quite alone,--and the gates of the lodge swung behind him, he
rubbed his hands with a schoolboy's glee, and chuckled aloud, as if he
enjoyed, not only the sense, but the fun of his safety; as if he had done
something prodigiously cunning and clever.
So when he saw himself snug in his old, well-remembered hotel, in the
same room as of yore, when returned, brisk and gay, from the breezes of
Weymouth or the brouillards of Paris, he thought he shook hands again
with his youth. Age and lameness, apoplexy and treason, all were
forgotten for the moment. And when, as the excitement died, those grim
spectres came back again to his thoughts, they found their victim braced
and prepared, standing erect on that hearth for whose hospitality he paid
his guinea a day,--his front proud and defying. He felt yet that he had
fortune and power, that a movement of his hand could raise and strike
down, that at the verge of the tomb he was armed, to punish or reward,
with the balance and the sword. Tripped in the smug waiter, and
announced "Mr. Parchmount."
"Set a chair, and show him in." The lawyer entered.
"My dear Sir Miles, this is indeed a surprise! What has brought you to
town?"
"The common whim of the old, sir. I would alter my will."
Three days did lawyer and client devote to the task; for Sir Miles was
minute, and Mr. Parchmount was precise, and little difficulties arose,
and changes in the first outline were made, and Sir Miles, from the very
depth of his disgust, desired not to act only from passion. In that last
deed of his life, the old man was sublime. He sought to rise out of the
mortal, fix his eyes on the Great Judge, weigh circumstances and excuses,
and keep justice even and serene.
Meanwhile, unconscious of the train laid afar, Lucretia reposed on the
mine,--reposed, indeed, is not the word; for she was agitated and
restless that Mainwaring had not obeyed her summons. She wrote to him
again from Southampton the third day of her arrival; but before his
answer came she received this short epistle from London:--
"Mr. Parchmount presents his compliments to Miss Clavering, and, by
desire of Sir Miles St. John, requests her not to return to Laughton.
Miss Clavering will hear further in a few days, when Sir Miles has
concluded the business that has brought him to London."
This letter, if it excited much curiosity, did not produce alarm. It was
natural that Sir Miles should be busy in winding up his affairs; his
journey to London for that purpose was no ill omen to her prospects, and
her thoughts flew back to the one subject that tyrannized over them.
Mainwaring's reply, which came two days afterwards, disquieted her much
more. He had not found the letter she had left for him in the tree. He
was full of apprehensions; he condemned the imprudence of calling on her
at Mr. Fielden's; he begged her to renounce the idea of such a risk. He
would return again to Guy's Oak and search more narrowly: had she changed
the spot where the former letters were placed? Yet now, not even the
non-receipt of her letter, which she ascribed to the care with which she
had concealed it amidst the dry leaves and moss, disturbed her so much as
the evident constraint with which Mainwaring wrote,--the cautious and
lukewarm remonstrance which answered her passionate appeal. It may be
that her very doubts, at times, of Mainwaring's affection had increased
the ardour of her own attachment; for in some natures the excitement of
fear deepens love more than the calmness of trust. Now with the doubt for
the first time flashed the resentment, and her answer to Mainwaring was
vehement and imperious. But the next day came a messenger express from
London, with a letter from Mr. Parchmount that arrested for the moment
even the fierce current of love.
When the task had been completed,--the will signed, sealed, and
delivered,--the old man had felt a load lifted from his heart. Three or
four of his old friends, bons vivants like himself, had seen his arrival
duly proclaimed in the newspapers, and had hastened to welcome him.
Warmed by the genial sight of faces associated with the frank joys of his
youth, Sir Miles, if he did not forget the prudent counsels of Dalibard,
conceived a proud bitterness of joy in despising them. Why take such
care of the worn-out carcass? His will was made. What was left to life
so peculiarly attractive? He invited his friends to a feast worthy of
old. Seasoned revellers were they, with a free gout for a vent to all
indulgence. So they came; and they drank, and they laughed, and they
talked back their young days. They saw not the nervous irritation, the
strain on the spirits, the heated membrane of the brain, which made Sir
Miles the most jovial of all. It was a night of nights; the old fellows
were lifted back into their chariots or sedans. Sir Miles alone seemed
as steady and sober as if he had supped with Diogenes. His servant,
whose respectful admonitions had been awed into silence, lent him his arm
to bed, but Sir Miles scarcely touched it. The next morning, when the
servant (who slept in the same room) awoke, to his surprise the glare of
a candle streamed on his eyes. He rubbed them: could he see right? Sir
Miles was seated at the table; he must have got up and lighted a candle
to write,--noiselessly, indeed. The servant looked and looked, and the
stillness of Sir Miles awed him: he was seated on an armchair, leaning
back. As awe succeeded to suspicion, he sprang up, approached his
master, took his hand: it was cold, and fell heavily from his clasp. Sir
Miles must have been dead for hours.
The pen lay on the ground, where it had dropped from the hand; the letter
on the table was scarcely commenced: the words ran thus,--
"LUCRETIA,--You will return no more to my house. You are free as if I
were dead; but I shall be just. Would that I had been so to your mother,
to your sister! But I am old now, as you say, and--"
To one who could have seen into that poor proud heart at the moment the
hand paused forever, what remained unwritten would have been clear.
There was, first, the sharp struggle to conquer loathing repugnance, and
address at all the false and degraded one; then came the sharp sting of
ingratitude; then the idea of the life grudged and the grave desired;
then the stout victory over scorn, the resolution to be just; then the
reproach of the conscience that for so far less an offence the sister had
been thrown aside, the comfort, perhaps, found in her gentle and
neglected child obstinately repelled; then the conviction of all earthly
vanity and nothingness,--the look on into life, with the chilling
sentiment that affection was gone, that he could never trust again, that
he was too old to open his arms to new ties; and then, before felt
singly, all these thoughts united, and snapped the cord.
In announcing his mournful intelligence, with more feeling than might
have been expected from a lawyer (but even his lawyer loved Sir Miles),
Mr. Parchmount observed that "as the deceased lay at a hotel, and as Miss
Clavering's presence would not be needed in the performance of the last
rites, she would probably forbear the journey to town. Nevertheless, as
it was Sir Miles's wish that the will should be opened as soon as
possible after his death, and it would doubtless contain instructions as
to his funeral, it would be well that Miss Clavering and her sister
should immediately depute some one to attend the reading of the testament
on their behalf. Perhaps Mr. Fielden would kindly undertake that
melancholy office."
To do justice to Lucretia, it must be said that her first emotions, on
the receipt of this letter, were those of a poignant and remorseful
grief, for which she was unprepared. But how different it is to count on
what shall follow death, and to know that death has come! Susan's
sobbing sympathy availed not, nor Mr. Fielden's pious and tearful
exhortations; her own sinful thoughts and hopes came back to her,
haunting and stern as furies. She insisted at first upon going to
London, gazing once more on the clay,--nay, the carriage was at the door,
for all yielded to her vehemence; but then her heart misgave her: she did
not dare to face the dead. Conscience waved her back from the solemn
offices of nature; she hid her face with her hands, shrank again into her
room; and Mr. Fielden, assuming unbidden the responsibility, went alone.
Only Vernon (summoned from Brighton), the good clergyman, and the lawyer,
to whom, as sole executor, the will was addressed, and in whose custody
it had been left, were present when the seal of the testament was broken.
The will was long, as is common when the dust that it disposes of covers
some fourteen or fifteen thousand acres. But out of the mass of
technicalities and repetitions these points of interest rose salient: To
Charles Vernon, of Vernon Grange, Esq., and his heirs by him lawfully
begotten, were left all the lands and woods and manors that covered that
space in the Hampshire map known by the name of the "Laughton property,"
on condition that he and his heirs assumed the name and arms of St. John;
and on the failure of Mr. Vernon's issue, the estate passed, first (with
the same conditions) to the issue of Susan Mivers; next to that of
Lucretia Clavering. There the entail ceased; and the contingency fell to
the rival ingenuity of lawyers in hunting out, amongst the remote and
forgotten descendants of some ancient St. John, the heir-at-law. To
Lucretia Clavering, without a word of endearment, was bequeathed 10,000
pounds,--the usual portion which the house of St. John had allotted to
its daughters; to Susan Mivers the same sum, but with the addition of
these words, withheld from her sister: "and my blessing!" To Olivier
Dalibard an annuity of 200 pounds a year; to Honore Gabriel Varney, 3,000
pounds; to the Rev. Matthew Fielden, 4,000 pounds; and the same sum to
John Walter Ardworth. To his favourite servant, Henry Jones, an ample
provision, and the charge of his dogs Dash and Ponto, with an allowance
therefor, to be paid weekly, and cease at their deaths. Poor old man! he
made it the interest of their guardian not to grudge their lease of life.
To his other attendants, suitable and munificent bequests, proportioned
to the length of their services. For his body, he desired it to be
buried in the vault of his ancestors without pomp, but without a pretence
to a humility which he had not manifested in life; and he requested that
a small miniature in his writing-desk should be placed in his coffin.
That last injunction was more than a sentiment,--it bespoke the moral
conviction of the happiness the original might have conferred on his
life. Of that happiness his pride had deprived him; nor did he repent,
for he had deemed pride a duty. But the mute likeness, buried in his
grave,--that told the might of the sacrifice he had made! Death removes
all distinctions, and in the coffin the Lord of Laughton might choose his
partner.
When the will had been read, Mr. Parchmount produced two letters, one
addressed, in the hand of the deceased, to Mr. Vernon, the other in the
lawyer's own hand to Miss Clavering. The last enclosed the fragment
found on Sir Miles's table, and her own letter to Mainwaring, redirected
to her in Sir Miles's boldest and stateliest autograph. He had, no
doubt, meant to return it in the letter left uncompleted.
The letter to Vernon contained a copy of Lucretia's fatal epistle, and
the following lines to Vernon himself:--
MY DEAR CHARLES,--With much deliberation, and with natural reluctance to
reveal to you my niece's shame, I feel it my duty to transmit to you the
accompanying enclosure, copied from the original with my own hand, which
the task sullied.
I do so first, because otherwise you might, as I should have done in your
place, feel bound in honour to persist in the offer of your hand,--feel
bound the more, because Miss Clavering is not my heiress; secondly,
because had her attachment been stronger than her interest, and she had
refused your offer, you might still have deemed her hardly and
capriciously dealt with by me, and not only sought to augment her
portion, but have profaned the house of my ancestors by receiving her
there as an honoured and welcome relative and guest. Now, Charles Vernon,
I believe, to the utmost of my poor judgment, I have done what is right
and just. I have taken into consideration that this young person has been
brought up as a daughter of my house, and what the daughters of my house
have received, I bequeath her. I put aside, as far as I can, all
resentment of mere family pride; I show that I do so, when I repair my
harshness to my poor sister, and leave both her children the same
provision. And if you exceed what I have done for Lucretia, unless, on
more dispassionate consideration than I can give, you conscientiously
think me wrong, you insult my memory--and impugn my justice. Be it in
this as your conscience dictates; but I entreat, I adjure, I command, at
least that you never knowingly admit by a hearth, hitherto sacred to
unblemished truth and honour, a person who has desecrated it with
treason. As gentleman to gentleman, I impose on you this solemn
injunction. I could have wished to leave that young woman's children
barred from the entail; but our old tree has so few branches! You are
unwedded; Susan too. I must take my chance that Miss Clavering's
children, if ever they inherit, do not imitate the mother. I conclude
she will wed that Mainwaring; her children will have a low-born father.
Well, her race at least is pure,--Clavering and St. John are names to
guarantee faith and honour; yet you see what she is! Charles Vernon, if
her issue inherit the soul of gentlemen, it must come, after all, not
from the well-born mother! I have lived to say this,--I who-- But
perhaps if we had looked more closely into the pedigree of those
Claverings--.
Marry yourself,--marry soon, Charles Vernon, my dear kinsman; keep the
old house in the old line, and true to its old fame. Be kind and good to
my poor; don't strain on the tenants. By the way, Farmer Strongbow owes
three years' rent,--I forgive him. Pension him off; he can do no good to
the land, but he was born on it, and must not fall on the parish. But to
be kind and good to the poor, not to strain the tenants, you must learn
not to waste, my dear Charles. A needy man can never be generous without
being unjust. How give, if you are in debt? You will think of this now,-
-now,--while your good heart is soft, while your feelings are moved.
Charley Vernon, I think you will shed a tear when you see my armchair
still and empty. And I would have left you the care of my dogs, but you
are thoughtless, and will go much to London, and they are used to the
country now. Old Jones will have a cottage in the village,--he has
promised to live there; drop in now and then, and see poor Ponto and
Dash. It is late, and old friends come to dine here. So, if anything
happens to me, and we don't meet again, good-by, and God bless you.
Your affectionate kinsman, MILES ST. JOHN.
CHAPTER VII.
THE ENGAGEMENT.
It is somewhat less than three months after the death of Sir Miles St.
John; November reigns in London. And "reigns" seems scarcely a
metaphorical expression as applied to the sullen, absolute sway which
that dreary month (first in the dynasty of Winter) spreads over the
passive, dejected city.
Elsewhere in England, November is no such gloomy, grim fellow as he is
described. Over the brown glebes and changed woods in the country, his
still face looks contemplative and mild; and he has soft smiles, too, at
times,--lighting up his taxed vassals the groves; gleaming where the
leaves still cling to the boughs, and reflected in dimples from the waves
which still glide free from his chains. But as a conqueror who makes his
home in the capital, weighs down with hard policy the mutinous citizens
long ere his iron influence is felt in the province, so the first tyrant
of Winter has only rigour and frowns for London. The very aspect of the
wayfarers has the look of men newly enslaved: cloaked and muffled, they
steal to and fro through the dismal fogs. Even the children creep
timidly through the streets; the carriages go cautious and hearse-like
along; daylight is dim and obscure; the town is not filled, nor the brisk
mirth of Christmas commenced; the unsocial shadows flit amidst the mist,
like men on the eve of a fatal conspiracy. Each other month in London
has its charms for the experienced. Even from August to October, when
The Season lies dormant, and Fashion forbids her sons to be seen within
hearing of Bow, the true lover of London finds pleasure still at hand, if
he search for her duly. There are the early walks through the parks and
green Kensington Gardens, which now change their character of resort, and
seem rural and countrylike, but yet with more life than the country; for
on the benches beneath the trees, and along the sward, and up the malls,
are living beings enough to interest the eye and divert the thoughts, if
you are a guesser into character, and amateur of the human face,--fresh
nursery-maid and playful children; and the old shabby-genteel, buttoned-
up officer, musing on half-pay, as he sits alone in some alcove of Kenna,
or leans pensive over the rail of the vacant Ring; and early tradesman,
or clerk from the suburban lodging, trudging brisk to his business,--for
business never ceases in London. Then at noon, what delight to escape to
the banks at Putney or Richmond,--the row up the river; the fishing punt;
the ease at your inn till dark! or if this tempt not, still Autumn shines
clear and calm over the roofs, where the smoke has a holiday; and how
clean gleam the vistas through the tranquillized thoroughfares; and as
you saunter along, you have all London to yourself, Andrew Selkirk, but
with the mart of the world for your desert. And when October comes on,
it has one characteristic of spring,--life busily returns to the city;
you see the shops bustling up, trade flowing back. As birds scent the
April, so the children of commerce plume their wings and prepare for the
first slack returns of the season. But November! Strange the taste,
stout the lungs, grief-defying the heart, of the visitor who finds charms
and joy in a London November.
In a small lodging-house in Bulstrode Street, Manchester Square, grouped
a family in mourning who had had the temerity to come to town in
November, for the purpose, no doubt, of raising their spirits. In the
dull, small drawing-room of the dull, small house we introduce to you,
first, a middle-aged gentleman whose dress showed what dress now fails to
show,--his profession. Nobody could mistake the cut of the cloth and the
shape of the hat, for he had just come in from a walk, and not from
discourtesy, but abstraction, the broad brim still shadowed his pleasant,
placid face. Parson spoke out in him, from beaver to buckle. By the
coal fire, where, through volumes of smoke, fussed and flickered a
pretension to flame, sat a middle-aged lady, whom, without being a
conjurer, you would pronounce at once to be wife to the parson; and
sundry children sat on stools all about her, with one book between them,
and a low whispered murmur from their two or three pursed-up lips,
announcing that that book was superfluous. By the last of three dim-
looking windows, made dimmer by brown moreen draperies, edged genteelly
with black cotton velvet, stood a girl of very soft and pensive
expression of features,--pretty unquestionably, excessively pretty; but
there was something so delicate and elegant about her,--the bend of her
head, the shape of her slight figure, the little fair hands crossed one
on each other, as the face mournfully and listlessly turned to the
window, that "pretty" would have seemed a word of praise too often
proffered to milliner and serving-maid. Nevertheless, it was perhaps the
right one: "handsome" would have implied something statelier and more
commanding; "beautiful," greater regularity of feature, or richness of
colouring. The parson, who since his entrance had been walking up and
down the small room with his hands behind him, glanced now and then at
the young lady, but not speaking, at length paused from that monotonous
exercise by the chair of his wife, and touched her shoulder. She stopped
from her work, which, more engrossing than elegant, was nothing less than
what is technically called "the taking in" of a certain blue jacket,
which was about to pass from Matthew, the eldest born, to David, the
second, and looked up at her husband affectionately. Her husband,
however, spoke not; he only made a sign, partly with his eyebrow, partly
with a jerk of his thumb over his right shoulder, in the direction of the
young lady we have described, and then completed the pantomime with a
melancholy shake of the head. The wife turned round and looked hard, the
scissors horizontally raised in one hand, while the other reposed on the
cuff of the jacket. At this moment a low knock was heard at the street-
door. The worthy pair saw the girl shrink back, with a kind of tremulous
movement; presently there came the sound of a footstep below, the creak
of a hinge on the ground-floor, and again all was silent.
"That is Mr. Mainwaring's knock," said one of the children.
The girl left the room abruptly, and, light as was her step, they heard
her steal up the stairs.
"My dears," said the parson, "it wants an hour yet to dark; you may go
and walk in the square."
"'T is so dull in that ugly square, and they won't let us into the green.
I am sure we'd rather stay here," said one of the children, as spokesman
for the rest; and they all nestled closer round the hearth.
"But, my dears," said the parson, simply, "I want to talk alone with your
mother. However, if you like best to go and keep quiet in your own room,
you may do so."
"Or we can go into Susan's?"
"No," said the parson; "you must not disturb Susan."
"She never used to care about being disturbed. I wonder what's come to
her?"
The parson made no rejoinder to this half-petulant question. The
children consulted together a moment, and resolved that the square,
though so dull, was less dull than their own little attic. That being
decided, it was the mother's turn to address them. And though Mr.
Fielden was as anxious and fond as most fathers, he grew a little
impatient before comforters, kerchiefs, and muffettees were arranged, and
minute exordiums as to the danger of crossing the street, and the risk of
patting strange dogs, etc., were half-way concluded; with a shrug and a
smile, he at length fairly pushed out the children, shut the door, and
drew his chair close to his wife's.
"My dear," he began at once, "I am extremely uneasy about that poor
girl."
"What, Miss Clavering? Indeed, she eats almost nothing at all, and sits
so moping alone; but she sees Mr. Mainwaring every day. What can we do?
She is so proud, I'm afraid of her."
"My dear, I was not thinking of Miss Clavering, though I did not
interrupt you, for it is very true that she is much to be pitied."
"And I am sure it was for her sake alone that you agreed to Susan's
request, and got Blackman to do duty for you at the vicarage, while we
all came up here, in hopes London town would divert her. We left all at
sixes and sevens; and I should not at all wonder if John made away with
the apples."
"But, I say," resumed the parson, without heeding that mournful
foreboding,--"I say, I was then only thinking of Susan. You see how pale
and sad she is grown."
"Why, she is so very soft-hearted, and she must feel for her sister."
"But her sister, though she thinks much, and keeps aloof from us, is not
sad herself, only reserved. On the contrary. I believe she has now got
over even poor Sir Miles's death." "And the loss of the great property!"
"Fie, Mary!" said Mr. Fielden, almost austerely.
Mary looked down, rebuked, for she was not one of the high-spirited wives
who despise their husbands for goodness.
"I beg pardon, my dear," she said meekly; "it was very wrong in me; but I
cannot--do what I will--I cannot like that Miss Clavering."
"The more need to judge her with charity. And if what I fear is the
case, I'm sure we can't feel too much compassion for the poor blinded
young lady."
"Bless my heart, Mr. Fielden, what is it you mean?"
The parson looked round, to be sure the door was quite closed, and
replied, in a whisper: "I mean, that I fear William Mainwaring loves, not
Lucretia, but Susan."
The scissors fell from the hand of Mrs. Fielden; and though one point
stuck in the ground, and the other point threatened war upon flounces and
toes, strange to say, she did not even stoop to remove the chevaux-de-
frise.
"Why, then, he's a most false-hearted young man!"
"To blame, certainly," said Fielden; "I don't say to the contrary,--
though I like the young man, and am sure that he's more timid than false.
I may now tell you--for I want your advice, Mary--what I kept secret
before. When Mainwaring visited us, many months ago, at Southampton, he
confessed to me that he felt warmly for Susan, and asked if I thought Sir
Miles would consent. I knew too well how proud the poor old gentleman
was, to give him any such hopes. So he left, very honourably. You
remember, after he went, that Susan's spirits were low,--you remarked
it."
"Yes, indeed, I remember. But when the first shock of Sir Miles's death
was over, she got back her sweet colour, and looked cheerful enough."
"Because, perhaps, then she felt that she had a fortune to bestow on Mr.
Mainwaring, and thought all obstacle was over."
"Why, how clever you are! How did you get at her thoughts?"
"My own folly,--my own rash folly," almost groaned Mr. Fielden. "For not
guessing that Mr. Mainwaring could have got engaged meanwhile to
Lucretia, and suspecting how it was with Susan's poor little heart, I let
out, in a jest--Heaven forgive me!--what William had said; and the dear
child blushed, and kissed me, and--why, a day or two after, when it was
fixed that we should come up to London, Lucretia informed me, with her
freezing politeness, that she was to marry Mainwaring herself as soon as
her first mourning was over."
"Poor, dear, dear Susan!"
"Susan behaved like an angel; and when I broached it to her, I thought
she was calm; and I am sure she prayed with her whole heart that both
might be happy."
"I'm sure she did. What is to be done? I understand it all now. Dear
me, dear me! a sad piece of work indeed." And Mrs. Fielden abstractedly
picked up the scissors.
"It was not till our coming to town, and Mr. Mainwaring's visits to
Lucretia, that her strength gave way."
"A hard sight to bear,--I never could have borne it, my love. If I had
seen you paying court to another, I should have--I don't know what I
should have done! But what an artful wretch this young Mainwaring must
be."
"Not very artful; for you see that he looks even sadder than Susan. He
got entangled somehow, to be sure. Perhaps he had given up Susan in
despair; and Miss Clavering, if haughty, is no doubt a very superior
young lady; and, I dare say, it is only now in seeing them both together,
and comparing the two, that he feels what a treasure he has lost. Well,
what do you advise, Mary? Mainwaring, no doubt, is bound in honour to
Miss Clavering; but she will be sure to discover, sooner or later, the
state of his feelings, and then I tremble for both. I'm sure she will
never be happy, while he will be wretched; and Susan--I dare not think
upon Susan; she has a cough that goes to my heart."
"So she has; that cough--you don't know the money I spend on black-
currant jelly! What's my advice? Why, I'd speak to Miss Clavering at
once, if I dared. I'm sure love will never break her heart; and she's so
proud, she'd throw him off without a sigh, if she knew how things stood."
"I believe you are right," said Mr. Fielden; "for truth is the best
policy, after all. Still, it's scarce my business to meddle; and if it
were not for Susan-- Well, well, I must think of it, and pray Heaven to
direct me."
This conference suffices to explain to the reader the stage to which the
history of Lucretia had arrived. Willingly we pass over what it were
scarcely possible to describe,--her first shock at the fall from the
expectations of her life; fortune, rank, and what she valued more than
either, power, crushed at a blow. From the dark and sullen despair into
which she was first plunged, she was roused into hope, into something
like joy, by Mainwaring's letters. Never had they been so warm and so
tender; for the young man felt not only poignant remorse that he had been
the cause of her downfall (though she broke it to him with more delicacy
than might have been expected from the state of her feelings and the
hardness of her character), but he felt also imperiously the obligations
which her loss rendered more binding than ever. He persuaded, he urged,
he forced himself into affection; and probably without a murmur of his
heart, he would have gone with her to the altar, and, once wedded, custom
and duty would have strengthened the chain imposed on himself, had it not
been for Lucretia's fatal eagerness to see him, to come up to London,
where she induced him to meet her,--for with her came Susan; and in
Susan's averted face and trembling hand and mute avoidance of his eye, he
read all which the poor dissembler fancied she concealed. But the die
was cast, the union announced, the time fixed, and day by day he came to
the house, to leave it in anguish and despair. A feeling they shared in
common caused these two unhappy persons to shun each other. Mainwaring
rarely came into the usual sitting-room of the family; and when be did
so, chiefly in the evening, Susan usually took refuge in her own room.
If they met, it was by accident, on the stairs, or at the sudden opening
of a door; then not only no word, but scarcely even a look was exchanged:
neither had the courage to face the other. Perhaps, of the two, this
reserve weighed most on Susan; perhaps she most yearned to break the
silence,--for she thought she divined the cause of Mainwaring's gloomy
and mute constraint in the upbraidings of his conscience, which might
doubtless recall, if no positive pledge to Susan, at least those words
and tones which betray the one heart, and seek to allure the other; and
the profound melancholy stamped on his whole person, apparent even to her
hurried glance, touched her with a compassion free from all the
bitterness of selfish reproach. She fancied she could die happy if she
could remove that cloud from his brow, that shadow from his conscience.
Die; for she thought not of life. She loved gently, quietly,--not with
the vehement passion that belongs to stronger natures; but it was the
love of which the young and the pure have died. The face of the Genius
was calm and soft; and only by the lowering of the hand do you see that
the torch burns out, and that the image too serene for earthly love is
the genius of loving Death.
Absorbed in the egotism of her passion (increased, as is ever the case
with women, even the worst, by the sacrifices it had cost her), and if
that passion paused, by the energy of her ambition, which already began
to scheme and reconstruct new scaffolds to repair the ruined walls of the
past,--Lucretia as yet had not detected what was so apparent to the
simple sense of Mr. Fielden. That Mainwaring was grave and thoughtful
and abstracted, she ascribed only to his grief at the thought of her
loss, and his anxieties for her altered future; and in her efforts to
console him, her attempts to convince him that greatness in England did
not consist only in lands and manors,--that in the higher walks of life
which conduct to the Temple of Renown, the leaders of the procession are
the aristocracy of knowledge and of intellect,--she so betrayed, not
generous emulation and high-souled aspiring, but the dark, unscrupulous,
tortuous ambition of cunning, stratagem, and intrigue, that instead of
feeling grateful and encouraged, he shuddered and revolted. How,
accompanied and led by a spirit which he felt to be stronger and more
commanding than his own,--how preserve the whiteness of his soul, the
uprightness of his honour? Already he felt himself debased. But in the
still trial of domestic intercourse, with the daily, hourly dripping on
the stone, in the many struggles between truth and falsehood, guile and
candour, which men--and, above all, ambitious men--must wage, what darker
angel would whisper him in his monitor? Still, he was bound,--bound with
an iron band; he writhed, but dreamed not of escape.
The day after that of Fielden's conference with his wife, an unexpected
visitor came to the house. Olivier Dalibard called. He had not seen
Lucretia since she had left Laughton, nor had any correspondence passed
between them. He came at dusk, just after Mainwaring's daily visit was
over, and Lucretia was still in the parlour, which she had appropriated
to herself. Her brow contracted as his name was announced, and the maid-
servant lighted the candle on the table, stirred the fire, and gave a tug
at the curtains. Her eye, glancing from his, round the mean room, with
its dingy horsehair furniture, involuntarily implied the contrast between
the past state and the present, which his sight could scarcely help to
impress on her. But she welcomed him with her usual stately composure,
and without reference to what had been. Dalibard was secretly anxious to
discover if she suspected himself of any agency in the detection of the
eventful letter; and assured by her manner that no such thought was yet
harboured, he thought it best to imitate her own reserve. He assumed,
however, a manner that, far more respectful than he ever before observed
to his pupil, was nevertheless sufficiently kind and familiar to restore
them gradually to their old footing; and that he succeeded was apparent,
when, after a pause, Lucretia said abruptly: "How did Sir Miles St. John
discover my correspondence with Mr. Mainwaring?"
"Is it possible that you are ignorant? Ah, how--how should you know it?"
And Dalibard so simply explained the occurrence, in which, indeed, it was
impossible to trace the hand that had moved springs which seemed so
entirely set at work by an accident, that despite the extreme
suspiciousness of her nature, Lucretia did not see a pretence for
accusing him. Indeed, when he related the little subterfuge of Gabriel,
his attempt to save her by taking the letter on himself, she felt
thankful to the boy, and deemed Gabriel's conduct quite in keeping with
his attachment to herself. And this accounted satisfactorily for the
only circumstance that had ever troubled her with a doubt,--namely, the
legacy left to Gabriel. She knew enough of Sir Miles to be aware that he
would be grateful to any one who had saved the name of his niece, even
while most embittered against her, from the shame attached to clandestine
correspondence.
"It is strange, nevertheless," said she, thoughtfully, after a pause,
"that the girl should have detected the letter, concealed as it was by
the leaves that covered it."
"But," answered Dalibard, readily, "you see two or three persons had
entered before, and their feet must have displaced the leaves."
"Possibly; the evil is now past recall."
"And Mr. Mainwaring? Do you still adhere to one who has cost you so
much, poor child?"
"In three months more I shall be his wife."
Dalibard sighed deeply, but offered no remonstrance.
"Well," he said, taking her hand with mingled reverence and affection,--
"well, I oppose your inclinations no more, for now there is nothing to
risk; you are mistress of your own fortune; and since Mainwaring has
talents, that fortune will suffice for a career. Are you at length
convinced that I have conquered my folly; that I was disinterested when I
incurred your displeasure? If so, can you restore to me your friendship?
You will have some struggle with the world, and, with my long experience
of men and life, even I, the poor exile, may assist you."
And so thought Lucretia; for with some dread of Dalibard's craft, she yet
credited his attachment to herself, and she felt profound admiration for
an intelligence more consummate and accomplished than any ever yet
submitted to her comprehension. From that time, Dalibard became an
habitual visitor at the house; he never interfered with Lucretia's
interviews with Mainwaring; he took the union for granted, and conversed
with her cheerfully on the prospects before her; he ingratiated himself
with the Fieldens, played with the children, made himself at home, and in
the evenings when Mainwaring, as often as he could find the excuse,
absented himself from the family circle, he contrived to draw Lucretia
into more social intercourse with her homely companions than she had
before condescended to admit. Good Mr. Fielden rejoiced; here was the
very person,--the old friend of Sir Miles, the preceptor of Lucretia
herself, evidently most attached to her, having influence over her,--the
very person to whom to confide his embarrassment. One day, therefore,
when Dalibard had touched his heart by noticing the paleness of Susan, he
took him aside and told him all. "And now," concluded the pastor, hoping
he had found one to relieve him of his dreaded and ungracious task,
"don't you think that I--or rather you--as so old a friend, should speak
frankly to Miss Clavering herself?"
"No, indeed," said the Provencal, quickly; "if we spoke to her, she would
disbelieve us. She would no doubt appeal to Mainwaring, and Mainwaring
would have no choice but to contradict us. Once put on his guard, he
would control his very sadness. Lucretia, offended, might leave your
house, and certainly she would regard her sister as having influenced
your confession,--a position unworthy Miss Mivers. But do not fear: if
the evil be so, it carries with it its inevitable remedy. Let Lucretia
discover it herself; but, pardon me, she must have seen, at your first
reception of Mainwaring, that he had before been acquainted with you?"
"She was not in the room when we first received Mainwaring; and I have
always been distant to him, as you may suppose, for I felt disappointed
and displeased. Of course, however, she is aware that we knew him before
she did. What of that?"
"Why, do you think, then, he told her at Laughton of this acquaintance,--
that he spoke of Susan? I suspect not."
"I cannot say, I am sure," said Mr. Fielden.
"Ask her that question accidentally; and for the rest, be discreet, my
dear sir. I thank you for your confidence. I will watch well over my
poor young pupil. She must not, indeed, be sacrificed to a man whose
affections are engaged elsewhere."
Dalibard trod on air as he left the house; his very countenance had
changed; he seemed ten years younger. It was evening; and suddenly, as
he came into Oxford Street, he encountered a knot of young men--noisy and
laughing loud--obstructing the pavement, breaking jests on the more sober
passengers, and attracting the especial and admiring attention of sundry
ladies in plumed hats and scarlet pelisses; for the streets then enjoyed
a gay liberty which has vanished from London with the lanterns of the
watchmen. Noisiest and most conspicuous of these descendants of the
Mohawks, the sleek and orderly scholar beheld the childish figure of his
son. Nor did Gabriel shrink from his father's eye, stern and scornful as
it was, but rather braved the glance with an impudent leer.
Right, however, in the midst of the group, strode the Provencal, and
laying his hand very gently on the boy's shoulder, he said: "My son, come
with me."
Gabriel looked irresolute, and glanced at his companions. Delighted at
the prospect of a scene, they now gathered round, with countenances and
gestures that seemed little disposed to acknowledge the parental
authority.
"Gentlemen," said Dalibard, turning a shade more pale, for though morally
most resolute, physically he was not brave,--"gentlemen, I must beg you
to excuse me; this child is my son!"
"But Art is his mother," replied a tall, raw-boned young man, with long
tawny hair streaming down from a hat very much battered. "At the
juvenile age, the child is consigned to the mother! Have I said it?" and
he turned round theatrically to his comrades.
"Bravo!" cried the rest, clapping their hands.
"Down with all tyrants and fathers! hip, hip, Hurrah!" and the hideous
diapason nearly split the drum of the ears into which it resounded.
"Gabriel," whispered the father, "you had better follow me, had you not?
Reflect!" So saying, he bowed low to the unpropitious assembly, and as
if yielding the victory, stepped aside and crossed over towards Bond
Street.
Before the din of derision and triumph died away, Dalibard looked back,
and saw Gabriel behind him.
"Approach, sir," he said; and as the boy stood still, he added, "I
promise peace if you will accept it."
"Peace, then," answered Gabriel, and he joined his father's side.
"So," said Dalibard, "when I consented to your studying Art, as you call
it, under your mother's most respectable brother, I ought to have
contemplated what would be the natural and becoming companions of the
rising Raphael I have given to the world."
"I own, sir," replied Gabriel, demurely, "that they are riotous fellows;
but some of them are clever, and--"
"And excessively drunk," interrupted Dalibard, examining the gait of his
son. "Do you learn that accomplishment also, by way of steadying your
hand for the easel?"
"No, sir; I like wine well enough, but I would not be drunk for the
world. I see people when they are drunk are mere fools,--let out their
secrets, and show themselves up."
"Well said," replied the father, almost admiringly. "But a truce with
this bantering, Gabriel. Can you imagine that I will permit you any
longer to remain with that vagabond Varney and yon crew of vauriens? You
will come home with me; and if you must be a painter, I will look out for
a more trustworthy master."
"I shall stay where I am," answered Gabriel, firmly, and compressing his
lips with a force that left them bloodless.
"What, boy? Do I hear right? Dare you disobey me? Dare you defy?"
"Not in your house, so I will not enter it again." Dalibard laughed
mockingly.
"Peste! but this is modest! You are not of age yet, Mr. Varney; you are
not free from a father's tyrannical control."
"The law does not own you as my father, I am told, sir. You have said my
name rightly,--it is Varney, not Dalibard. We have no rights over each
other; so at least says Tom Passmore, and his father's a lawyer!"
Dalibard's hand griped his son's arm fiercely. Despite his pain, which
was acute, the child uttered no cry; but he growled beneath his teeth,
"Beware! beware! or my mother's son may avenge her death!"
Dalibard removed his hand, and staggered as if struck. Gliding from his
side, Gabriel seized the occasion to escape; he paused, however, midway
in the dull, lamp-lit kennel when he saw himself out of reach, and then
approaching cautiously, said: "I know. I am a boy, but you have made me
man enough to take care of myself. Mr. Varney, my uncle, will maintain
me; when of age, old Sir Miles has provided for me. Leave me in peace,
treat me as free, and I will visit you, help you when you want me, obey
you still,--yes, follow your instructions; for I know you are," he
paused, "you are wise. But if you seek again to make me your slave, you
will only find your foe. Good-night; and remember that a bastard has no
father!"
With these words he moved on, and hurrying down the street, turned the
corner and vanished.
Dalibard remained motionless for some minutes; at length he muttered:
"Ay, let him go, he is dangerous! What son ever revolted even from the
worst father, and throve in life? Food for the gibbet! What matters?"
When next Dalibard visited Lucretia, his manner was changed; the
cheerfulness he had before assumed gave place to a kind of melancholy
compassion; he no longer entered into her plans for the future, but would
look at her mournfully, start up, and walk away. She would have
attributed the change to some return of his ancient passion, but she
heard him once murmur with unspeakable pity, "Poor child, poor child!" A
vague apprehension seized her,--first, indeed, caught from some remarks
dropped by Mr. Fielden, which were less discreet than Dalibard had
recommended. A day or two afterwards, she asked Mainwaring, carelessly,
why he had never spoken to her at Laughton of his acquaintance with
Fielden.
"You asked me that before," he said, somewhat sullenly.
"Did I? I forget! But how was it? Tell me again."
"I scarcely know," he replied confusedly; "we were always talking of each
other or poor Sir Miles,--our own hopes and fears."
This was true, and a lover's natural excuse. In the present of love all
the past is forgotten.
"Still," said Lucretia, with her sidelong glance,--"still, as you must
have seen much of my own sister--"
Mainwaring, while she spoke, was at work on a button on his gaiter
(gaiters were then worn tight at the ankle); the effort brought the blood
to his forehead.
"But," he said, still stooping at his occupation, "you were so little
intimate with your sister; I feared to offend. Family differences are so
difficult to approach."
Lucretia was satisfied at the moment; for so vast was her stake in
Mainwaring's heart, so did her whole heart and soul grapple to the rock
left serene amidst the deluge, that she habitually and resolutely thrust
from her mind all the doubts that at times invaded it.
"I know," she would often say to herself,--"I know he does not love as I
do; but man never can, never ought to love as woman! Were I a man, I
should scorn myself if I could be so absorbed in one emotion as I am
proud to be now,--I, poor woman! I know," again she would think,--"I
know how suspicious and distrustful I am; I must not distrust him,--I
shall only irritate, I may lose him: I dare not distrust,--it would be
too dreadful."
Thus, as a system vigorously embraced by a determined mind, she had
schooled and forced herself into reliance on her lover. His words now,
we say, satisfied her at the moment; but afterwards, in absence, they
were recalled, in spite of herself,--in the midst of fears, shapeless and
undefined. Involuntarily she began to examine the countenance, the
movements, of her sister,--to court Susan's society more than she had
done; for her previous indifference had now deepened into bitterness.
Susan, the neglected and despised, had become her equal,--nay, more than
her equal: Susan's children would have precedence to her own in the
heritage of Laughton! Hitherto she had never deigned to talk to her in
the sweet familiarity of sisters so placed; never deigned to confide to
her those feelings for her future husband which burned lone and ardent in
the close vault of her guarded heart. Now, however, she began to name
him, wind her arm into Susan's, talk of love and home, and the days to
come; and as she spoke, she read the workings of her sister's face. That
part of the secret grew clear almost at the first glance. Susan loved,--
loved William Mainwaring; but was it not a love hopeless and unreturned?
Might not this be the cause that had made Mainwaring so reserved? He
might have seen, or conjectured, a conquest he had not sought; and hence,
with manly delicacy, he had avoided naming Susan to Lucretia; and now,
perhaps, sought the excuses which at times had chafed and wounded her for
not joining the household circle. If one of those who glance over these
pages chances to be a person more than usually able and acute,--a person
who has loved and been deceived,--he or she, no matter which, will
perhaps recall those first moments when the doubt, long put off, insisted
to be heard. A weak and foolish heart gives way to the doubt at once;
not so the subtler and more powerful,--it rather, on the contrary,
recalls all the little circumstances that justify trust and make head
against suspicion; it will not render the citadel at the mere sound of
the trumpet; it arms all its forces, and bars its gates on the foe.
Hence it is that the persons most easy to dupe in matters of affection
are usually those most astute in the larger affairs of life. Moliere,
reading every riddle in the vast complexities of human character, and
clinging, in self-imposed credulity, to his profligate wife, is a type of
a striking truth. Still, a foreboding, a warning instinct withheld
Lucretia from plumbing farther into the deeps of her own fears. So
horrible was the thought that she had been deceived, that rather than
face it, she would have preferred to deceive herself. This poor, bad
heart shrank from inquiry, it trembled at the idea of condemnation. She
hailed, with a sentiment of release that partook of rapture, Susan's
abrupt announcement one morning that she had accepted an invitation from
some relations of her father to spend some time with them at their villa
near Hampstead; she was to go the end of the week. Lucretia hailed it,
though she saw the cause,--Susan shrank from the name of Mainwaring on
Lucretia's lips; shrank from the familiar intercourse so ruthlessly
forced on her! With a bright eye, that day, Lucretia met her lover; yet
she would not tell him of Susan's intended departure, she had not the
courage.
Dalibard was foiled. This contradiction in Lucretia's temper, so
suspicious, so determined, puzzled even his penetration. He saw that
bolder tactics were required. He waylaid Mainwaring on the young man's
way to his lodgings, and after talking to him on indifferent matters,
asked him carelessly whether he did not think Susan far gone in a
decline. Affecting not to notice the convulsive start with which the
question was received, he went on,--
"There is evidently something on her mind; I observe that her eyes are
often red, as with weeping, poor girl. Perhaps some silly love-affair.
However, we shall not see her again before your marriage; she is going
away in a day or two. The change of air may possibly yet restore her,--I
own, though, I fear the worst. At this time of the year, and in your
climate, such complaints as I take hers to be are rapid. Good-day. We
may meet this evening."
Terror-stricken at these barbarous words, Mainwaring no sooner reached
his lodging than he wrote and despatched a note to Fielden, entreating
him to call.
The vicar obeyed the summons, and found Mainwaring in a state of mind
bordering on distraction. Nor when Susan was named did Fielden's words
take the shape of comfort; for he himself was seriously alarmed for her
health. The sound of her low cough rang in his ears, and he rather
heightened than removed the picture which haunted Mainwaring,--Susan
stricken, dying, broken-hearted!
Tortured both in heart and conscience, Mainwaring felt as if he had but
one wish left in the world,--to see Susan once more. What to say, he
scarce knew; but for her to depart,--depart perhaps to her grave,
believing him coldly indifferent,--for her not to know at least his
struggles, and pronounce his pardon, was a thought beyond endurance.
After such an interview both would have new fortitude,--each would unite
in encouraging the other in the only step left to honour. And this
desire he urged upon Fielden with all the eloquence of passionate grief
as he entreated him to permit and procure one last conference with Susan.
But this, the plain sense and straightforward conscience of the good man
long refused. If Mainwaring had been left in the position to explain his
heart to Lucretia, it would not have been for Fielden to object; but to
have a clandestine interview with one sister while betrothed to the
other, bore in itself a character too equivocal to meet with the simple
vicar's approval.
"What can you apprehend?" exclaimed the young man, almost fiercely; for,
harassed and tortured, his mild nature was driven to bay. "Can you
suppose that I shall encourage my own misery by the guilty pleadings of
unavailing love? All that I ask is the luxury--yes, the luxury, long
unknown to me, of candour--to place fairly and manfully before Susan the
position in which fate has involved me. Can you suppose that we shall
not both take comfort and strength from each other? Our duty is plain
and obvious; but it grows less painful, encouraged by the lips of a
companion in suffering. I tell you fairly that see Susan I will and
must. I will watch round her home, wherever it be, hour after hour; come
what may, I will find my occasion. Is it not better that the interview
should be under your roof, within the same walls which shelter her
sister? There, the place itself imposes restraint on despair. Oh, sir,
this is no time for formal scruples; be merciful, I beseech you, not to
me, but to Susan. I judge of her by myself. I know that I shall go to
the altar more resigned to the future if for once I can give vent to what
weighs upon my heart. She will then see, as I do, that the path before
me is inevitable; she will compose herself to face the fate that compels
us. We shall swear tacitly to each other, not to love, but to conquer
love. Believe me, sir, I am not selfish in this prayer; an instinct, the
intuition which human grief has into the secrets of human grief, assures
me that that which I ask is the best consolation you can afford to Susan.
You own she is ill,--suffering. Are not your fears for her very life--O
Heaven? for her very life--gravely awakened? And yet you see we have
been silent to each other! Can speech be more fatal in its results than
silence? Oh, for her sake, hear me!"
The good man's tears fell fast. His scruples were shaken; there was truth
in what Mainwaring urged. He did not yield, but he promised to reflect,
and inform Mainwaring, by a line, in the evening. Finding this was all
he could effect, the young man at last suffered him to leave the house,
and Fielden hastened to take counsel of Dalibard; that wily persuader
soon reasoned away Mr. Fielden's last faint objection. It now only
remained to procure Susan's assent to the interview, and to arrange that
it should be undisturbed. Mr. Fielden should take out the children the
next morning. Dalibard volunteered to contrive the absence of Lucretia
at the hour appointed. Mrs. Fielden alone should remain within, and
might, if it were judged proper, be present at the interview, which was
fixed for the forenoon in the usual drawing-room. Nothing but Susan's
consent was now necessary, and Mr. Fielden ascended to her room. He
knocked twice,--no sweet voice bade him enter; he opened the door
gently,--Susan was in prayer. At the opposite corner of the room, by the
side of her bed, she knelt, her face buried in her hands, and he heard,
low and indistinct, the murmur broken by the sob. But gradually, as he
stood unperceived, sob and murmur ceased,--prayer had its customary and
blessed effect with the pure and earnest. And when Susan rose, though the
tears yet rolled down her cheeks, the face was serene as an angel's.
The pastor approached and took her hand; a blush then broke over her
countenance,--she trembled, and her eyes fell on the ground. "My child,"
he said solemnly, "God will hear you!" And after those words there was a
long silence. He then drew her passively towards a seat, and sat down by
her, embarrassed how to begin. At length he said, looking somewhat
aside, "Mr. Mainwaring has made me a request,--a prayer which relates to
you, and which I refer to you. He asks you to grant him an interview
before you leave us,--to-morrow, if you will. I refused at first,--I am
in doubt still; for, my dear, I have always found that when the feelings
move us, our duty becomes less clear to the human heart,--corrupt, we
know, but still it is often a safer guide than our reason. I never knew
reason unerring, except in mathematics; we have no Euclid," and the good
man smiled mournfully, "in the problems of real life. I will not urge
you one way or the other; I put the case before you: Would it, as the
young man says, give you comfort and strength to see him once again
while, while--in short, before your sister is--I mean before--that is,
would it soothe you now, to have an unreserved communication with him?
He implores it. What shall I answer?"
"This trial, too!" muttered Susan, almost inaudibly,--"this trial which I
once yearned for; "and the hand clasped in Fielden's was as cold as ice.
Then, turning her eyes to her guardian somewhat wildly, she cried: "But
to what end, what object? Why should he wish to see me?"
"To take greater courage to do his duty; to feel less unhappy at--at--"
"I will see him," interrupted Susan, firmly,--"he is right; it will
strengthen both. I will see him!"
"But human nature is weak, my child; if my heart be so now, what will be
yours?"
"Fear me not," answered Susan, with a sad, wandering smile; and she
repeated vacantly: "I will see him!"
The good man looked at her, threw his arms round her wasted form, and
lifting up his eyes, his lips stirred with such half-syllabled words as
fathers breathe on high.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DISCOVERY.
Dalibard had undertaken to get Lucretia from the house,--in fact, her
approaching marriage rendered necessary a communication with Mr.
Parchmount, as executor to her uncle's will, relative to the transfer of
her portion; and she had asked Dalibard to accompany her thither; for her
pride shrank from receiving the lawyer in the shabby parlour of the
shabby lodging-house; she therefore, that evening, fixed the next day,
before noon, for the visit. A carriage was hired for the occasion, and
when it drove off, Mr. Fielden took his children a walk to Primrose Hill,
and called, as was agreed, on Mainwaring by the way.
The carriage had scarcely rattled fifty yards through the street when
Dalibard fixed his eyes with deep and solemn commiseration on Lucretia.
Hitherto, with masterly art, he had kept aloof from direct explanations
with his pupil; he knew that she would distrust no one like himself. The
plot was now ripened, and it was time for the main agent to conduct the
catastrophe. The look was so expressive that Lucretia felt a chill at
her heart, and could not, help exclaiming, "What has happened? You have
some terrible tidings to communicate!"
"I have indeed to say that which may, perhaps, cause you to hate me
forever; as we hate those who report our afflictions. I must endure
this; I have struggled long between my indignation and my compassion.
Rouse up your strong mind, and hear me. Mainwaring loves your sister!"
Lucretia uttered a cry that seemed scarcely to come from a human voice,--
"No, no!" she gasped out; "do not tell me. I will hear no more; I will
not believe you!"
With an inexpressible pity and softness in his tone, this man, whose
career had given him such profound experience in the frailties of the
human heart, continued: "I do not ask you to believe me, Lucretia; I
would not now speak, if you had not the opportunity to convince yourself.
Even those with whom you live are false to you; at this moment they have
arranged all, for Mainwaring to steal, in your absence, to your sister.
In a few moments more he will be with her; if you yourself would learn
what passes between them, you have the power."
"I have--I have not--not--the courage; drive on--faster--faster."
Dalibard again was foiled. In this strange cowardice there was something
so terrible, yet so touching, that it became sublime,--it was the grasp
of a drowning soul at the last plank.
"You are right perhaps," he said, after a pause; and wisely forbearing
all taunt and resistance, he left the heart to its own workings.
Suddenly, Lucretia caught at the check-string. "Stop," she exclaimed,--
"stop! I will not, I cannot, endure this suspense to last through a
life! I will learn the worst. Bid him drive back."
"We must descend and walk; you forget we must enter unsuspected;" and
Dalibard, as the carriage stopped, opened the door and let down the
steps.
Lucretia recoiled, then pressing one hand to her heart, she descended,
without touching the arm held out to her. Dalibard bade the coachman
wait, and they walked back to the house.
"Yes, he may see her," exclaimed Lucretia, her face brightening. "Ah,
there you have not deceived me; I see your stratagem,--I despise it; I
know she loves him; she has sought this interview. He is so mild and
gentle, so fearful to give pain; he has consented, from pity,--that is
all. Is he not pledged to me? He, so candid, so ingenuous! There must
be truth somewhere in the world. If he is false, where find truth? Dark
man, must I look for it in you,-- you?"
"It is not my truth I require you to test; I pretend not to truth
universal; I can be true to one, as you may yet discover. But I own your
belief is not impossible; my interest in you may have made me rash and
unjust,--what you may overhear, far from destroying, may confirm forever
your happiness. Would that it may be so!"
"It must be so," returned Lucretia, with a fearful gloom on her brow and
in her accent; "I will interpret every word to my own salvation."
Dalibard's countenance changed, despite his usual control over it. He
had set all his chances upon this cast, and it was more hazardous than he
had deemed. He had counted too much upon the jealousy of common natures.
After all, how little to the ear of one resolved to deceive herself might
pass between these two young persons, meeting not to avow attachment, but
to take courage from each other! What restraint might they impose on
their feelings! Still, the game must be played out.
As they now neared the house, Dalibard looked carefully round, lest they
should encounter Mainwaring on his way to it. He had counted on arriving
before the young man could get there.
"But," said Lucretia, breaking silence, with an ironical smile,--"but--
for your tender anxiety for me has, no doubt, provided all means and
contrivance, all necessary aids to baseness and eavesdropping, that can
assure my happiness--how am I to be present at this interview?"
"I have provided, as you say," answered Dalibard, in the tone of a man
deeply hurt, "those means which I, who have found the world one foe and
one traitor, deemed the best to distinguish falsehood from truth. I have
arranged that we shall enter the house unsuspected. Mainwaring and your
sister will be in the drawing-room; the room next to it will be vacant,
as Mr. Fielden is from home: there is but a glass-door between the two
chambers."
"Enough, enough!" and Lucretia turned round and placed her hand lightly
on the Provencal's arm. "The next hour will decide whether the means you
suggest to learn truth and defend safety will be familiar or loathsome to
me for life,--will decide whether trust is a madness; whether you, my
youth's teacher, are the wisest of men, or only the most dangerous."
"Believe me, or not, when I say I would rather the decision should
condemn me; for I, too, have need of confidence in men."
Nothing further was said; the dull street was quiet and desolate as
usual. Dalibard had taken with him the key of the house-door. The door
opened noiselessly; they were in the house. Mainwaring's cloak was in
the hall; he had arrived a few moments before them. Dalibard pointed
silently to that evidence in favour of his tale. Lucretia bowed her
head. but with a look that implied defiance; and (still without a word)
she ascended the stairs, and entered the room appointed for concealment.
But as she entered, at the farther corner of the chamber she saw Mrs.
Fielden seated,--seated, remote and out of hearing. The good-natured
woman had yielded to Mainwaring's prayer, and Susan's silent look that
enforced it, to let their interview be unwitnessed. She did not perceive
Lucretia till the last walked glidingly, but firmly, up to her, placed a
burning hand on her lips, and whispered: "Hush, betray me not; my
happiness for life--Susan's--his--are at stake; I must hear what passes:
it is my fate that is deciding. Hush! I command; for I have the right."
Mrs. Fielden was awed and startled; and before she could recover even
breath, Lucretia had quitted her side and taken her post at the fatal
door. She lifted the corner of the curtain from the glass panel, and
looked in.
Mainwaring was seated at a little distance from Susan, whose face was
turned from her. Mainwaring's countenance was in full view. But it was
Susan's voice that met her ear; and though sweet and low, it was
distinct, and even firm. It was evident from the words that the
conference had but just begun.
"Indeed, Mr. Mainwaring, you have nothing to explain, nothing of which to
accuse yourself. It was not for this, believe me,"--and here Susan
turned her face, and its aspect of heavenly innocence met the dry, lurid
eye of the unseen witness,--"not for this, believe me, that I consented
to see you. If I did so, it was only because I thought, because I feared
from your manner, when we met at times, still more from your evident
avoidance to meet me at all, that you were unhappy (for I know you kind
and honest),--unhappy at the thought that you had wounded me, and my
heart could not bear that, nor, perhaps, my pride either. That you
should have forgotten me--"
"Forgotten you!"
"That you should have been captivated," continued Susan, in a more
hurried tone, "by one so superior to me in all things as Lucretia, is
very natural. I thought, then--thought only--that nothing could cloud
your happiness but some reproach of a conscience too sensitive. For this
I have met you,--met you without a thought which Lucretia would have a
right to blame, could she read my heart; met you," and the voice for the
first time faltered, "that I might say, 'Be at peace; it is your sister
that addresses you. Requite Lucretia's love,--it is deep and strong;
give her, as she gives to you, a whole heart; and in your happiness I,
your sister--sister to both--I shall be blest.'" With a smile
inexpressibly touching and ingenuous, she held out her hand as she
ceased. Mainwaring sprang forward, and despite her struggle, pressed it
to his lips, his heart.
"Oh," he exclaimed, in broken accents, which gradually became more clear
and loud, "what--what have I lost!--lost forever! No, no, I will be
worthy of you! I do not, I dare not, say that I love you still! I feel
what I owe to Lucretia. How I became first ensnared, infatuated; how,
with your image graven so deeply here--"
"Mainwaring--Mr. Mainwaring--I must not hear you. Is this your promise?"
"Yes, you must hear me yet. How I became engaged to your sister,--so
different indeed from you,--I start in amaze and bewilderment when I seek
to conjecture. But so it was. For me she has forfeited fortune, rank,
all which that proud, stern heart so prized and coveted. Heaven is my
witness how I have struggled to repay her affection with my own! If I
cannot succeed, at least all that faith and gratitude can give are hers.
Yes, when I leave you, comforted by your forgiveness, your prayers, I
shall have strength to tear you from my heart; it is my duty, my fate.
With a firm step I will go to these abhorred nuptials. Oh, shudder not,
turn not away. Forgive the word; but I must speak,--my heart will out;
yes, abhorred nuptials! Between my grave and the altar, would--would
that I had a choice!"
From this burst, which in vain from time to time Susan had sought to
check, Mainwaring was startled by an apparition which froze his veins, as
a ghost from the grave. The door was thrown open, and Lucretia stood in
the aperture,--stood, gazing on him, face to face; and her own was so
colourless, so rigid, so locked in its livid and awful solemnity of
aspect that it was, indeed, as one risen from the dead.
Dismayed by the abrupt cry and the changed face of her lover, Susan
turned and beheld her sister. With the impulse of the pierced and loving
heart, which divined all the agony inflicted, she sprang to Lucretia's
side, she fell to the ground and clasped her knees.
"Do not heed, do not believe him; it is but the frenzy of a moment. He
spoke but to deceive me,--me, who loved him once! Mine alone, mine is
the crime. He knows all your worth. Pity--pity--pity on yourself, on
him, on me!"
Lucretia's eyes fell with the glare of a fiend upon the imploring face
lifted to her own. Her lips moved, but no sound was audible. At length
she drew herself from her sister's clasp, and walked steadily up to
Mainwaring. She surveyed him with a calm and cruel gaze, as if she
enjoyed his shame and terror. Before, however, she spoke, Mrs. Fielden,
who had watched, as one spellbound, Lucretia's movements, and, without
hearing what had passed, had the full foreboding of what would ensue, but
had not stirred till Lucretia herself terminated the suspense and broke
the charm of her awe,--before she spoke, Mrs. Fielden rushed in, and
giving vent to her agitation in loud sobs, as she threw her arms round
Susan, who was still kneeling on the floor, brought something of
grotesque to the more tragic and fearful character of the scene.
"My uncle was right; there is neither courage nor honour in the low-born!
He, the schemer, too, is right. All hollow,--all false!" Thus said
Lucretia, with a strange sort of musing accent, at first scornful, at
last only quietly abstracted. "Rise, sir," she then added, with her most
imperious tone; "do you not hear your Susan weep? Do you fear in my
presence to console her? Coward to her, as forsworn to me! Go, sir, you
are free!"
"Hear me," faltered Mainwaring, attempting to seize her hand; "I do not
ask you to forgive; but--"
"Forgive, sir!" interrupted Lucretia, rearing her head, and with a look
of freezing and unspeakable majesty. "There is only one person here who
needs a pardon; but her fault is inexpiable: it is the woman who stooped
beneath her--"
With these words, hurled from her with a scorn which crushed while it
galled, she mechanically drew round her form her black mantle; her eye
glanced on the deep mourning of the garment, and her memory recalled all
that love had cost her; but she added no other reproach. Slowly she
turned away. Passing Susan, who lay senseless in Mrs. Fielden's arms,
she paused, and kissed her forehead.
"When she recovers, madam," she said to Mrs. Fielden, who was moved and
astonished by this softness, "say that Lucretia Clavering uttered a vow
when she kissed the brow of William Mainwaring's future wife!"
Olivier Dalibard was still seated in the parlour below when Lucretia
entered. Her face yet retained its almost unearthly rigidity and calm;
but a sort of darkness had come over its ashen pallor,--that shade so
indescribable, which is seen in the human face, after long illness, a day
or two before death. Dalibard was appalled; for he had too often seen
that hue in the dying not to recognize it now. His emotion was
sufficiently genuine to give more than usual earnestness to his voice and
gesture, as he poured out every word that spoke sympathy and soothing.
For a long time Lucretia did not seem to hear him; at last her face
softened,--the ice broke.
"Motherless, friendless, lone, alone forever, undone, undone!" she
murmured. Her head sank upon the shoulder of her fearful counsellor,
unconscious of its resting-place, and she burst into tears,--tears which
perhaps saved her reason or her life.
CHAPTER IX.
A SOUL WITHOUT HOPE.
When Mr. Fielden returned home, Lucretia had quitted the house. She left
a line for him in her usual bold, clear handwriting, referring him to his
wife for explanation of the reasons that forbade a further residence
beneath his roof. She had removed to an hotel until she had leisure to
arrange her plans for the future. In a few months she should be of age;
and in the meanwhile, who now living claimed authority over her? For the
rest, she added, "I repeat what I told Mr. Mainwaring: all engagement
between us is at an end; he will not insult me either by letter or by
visit. It is natural that I should at present shrink from seeing Susan
Mivers. Hereafter, if permitted, I will visit Mrs. Mainwaring."
Though all had chanced as Mr. Fielden had desired (if, as he once half
meditated, he had spoken to Lucretia herself); though a marriage that
could have brought happiness to none, and would have made the misery of
two, was at an end,--he yet felt a bitter pang, almost of remorse, when
be learned what had occurred. And Lucretia, before secretly disliked (if
any one he could dislike), became dear to him at once, by sorrow and
compassion. Forgetting every other person, he hurried to the hotel
Lucretia had chosen; but her coldness deceived and her pride repelled
him. She listened dryly to all he said, and merely replied: "I feel only
gratitude at my escape. Let this subject now close forever."
Mr. Fielden left her presence with less anxious and commiserating
feelings,--perhaps all had chanced for the best. And on returning home,
his whole mind became absorbed in alarm for Susan. She was delirious,
and in great danger; it was many weeks before she recovered. Meanwhile,
Lucretia had removed into private apartments, of which she withheld the
address. During this time, therefore, they lost sight of her.
If amidst the punishments with which the sombre imagination of poets has
diversified the Realm of the tortured Shadows, it had depicted some soul
condemned to look evermore down into an abyss, all change to its gaze
forbidden, chasm upon chasm yawning deeper and deeper, darker and darker,
endless and infinite, so that, eternally gazing, the soul became, as it
were, a part of the abyss,--such an image would symbol forth the state of
Lucretia's mind.
It was not the mere desolation of one whom love has abandoned and
betrayed. In the abyss were mingled inextricably together the gloom of
the past and of the future,--there, the broken fortunes, the crushed
ambition, the ruin of the worldly expectations long inseparable from her
schemes; and amidst them, the angry shade of the more than father, whose
heart she had wrung, and whose old age she had speeded to the grave.
These sacrifices to love, while love was left to her, might have haunted
her at moments; but a smile, a word, a glance, banished the regret and
the remorse. Now, love being razed out of life, the ruins of all else
loomed dismal amidst the darkness; and a voice rose up, whispering: "Lo,
fool, what thou hast lost because thou didst believe and love!" And this
thought grasped together the two worlds of being,--the what has been, and
the what shall be. All hope seemed stricken from the future, as a man
strikes from the calculations of his income the returns from a property
irrevocably lost. At her age but few of her sex have parted with
religion; but even such mechanical faith as the lessons of her childhood,
and the constrained conformities with Christian ceremonies, had
instilled, had long since melted away in the hard scholastic scepticism
of her fatal tutor,--a scepticism which had won, with little effort, a
reason delighting in the maze of doubt, and easily narrowed into the
cramped and iron logic of disbelief by an intellect that scorned to
submit where it failed to comprehend. Nor had faith given place to those
large moral truths from which philosophy has sought to restore the proud
statue of Pagan Virtue as a substitute for the meek symbol of the
Christian cross. By temperament unsocial, nor readily moved to the
genial and benevolent, that absolute egotism in which Olivier Dalibard
centred his dreary ethics seemed sanctioned to Lucretia by her studies
into the motives of man and the history of the world. She had read the
chronicles of States and the memoirs of statesmen, and seen how craft
carries on the movements of an age. Those Viscontis, Castruccios, and
Medici; those Richelieus and Mazarins and De Retzs; those Loyolas and
Mohammeds and Cromwells; those Monks and Godolphins; those Markboroughs
and Walpoles; those founders of history and dynasties and sects; those
leaders and dupers of men, greater or lesser, corrupters or corrupt, all
standing out prominent and renowned from the guiltless and laurelless
obscure,--seemed to win, by the homage of posterity, the rewards that
attend the deceivers of their time. By a superb arrogance of
generalization, she transferred into private life, and the rule of
commonplace actions, the policy that, to the abasement of honour, has so
often triumphed in the guidance of States. Therefore, betimes, the whole
frame of society was changed to her eye, from the calm aspect it wears to
those who live united with their kind; she viewed all seemings with
suspicion; and before she had entered the world, prepared to live in it
as a conspirator in a city convulsed, spying and espied, schemed against
and scheming,--here the crown for the crafty, there the axe for the
outwitted.
But her love--for love is trust--had led her half way forth from this
maze of the intellect. That fair youth of inexperience and candour which
seemed to bloom out in the face of her betrothed; his very shrinking from
the schemes so natural to her that to her they seemed even innocent; his
apparent reliance on mere masculine ability, with the plain aids of
perseverance and honesty,--all had an attraction that plucked her back
from herself. If she clung to him firmly, blindly, credulously, it was
not as the lover alone. In the lover she beheld the good angel. Had he
only died to her, still the angel smile would have survived and warned.
But the man had not died; the angel itself had deceived; the wings could
uphold her no more,--they had touched the mire, and were sullied with the
soil; with the stain, was forfeited the strength. All was deceit and
hollowness and treachery. Lone again in the universe rose the eternal I.
So down into the abyss she looked, depth upon depth, and the darkness had
no relief, and the deep had no end.
Olivier Dalibard alone, of all she knew, was admitted to her seclusion.
He played his part as might be expected from the singular patience and
penetration which belonged to the genius of his character. He forbore
the most distant allusion to his attachment or his hopes. He evinced
sympathy rather by imitating her silence, than attempts to console. When
he spoke, he sought to interest her mind more than to heal directly the
deep wounds of her heart. There is always, to the afflicted, a certain
charm in the depth and bitterness of eloquent misanthropy. And Dalibard,
who professed not to be a man-hater, but a world-scorner, had powers of
language and of reasoning commensurate with his astute intellect and his
profound research. His society became not only a relief, it grew almost
a want, to that stern sorrower. But whether alarmed or not by the
influence she felt him gradually acquiring, or whether, through some
haughty desire to rise once more aloft from the state of her rival and
her lover, she made one sudden effort to grasp at the rank from which she
had been hurled. The only living person whose connection could re-open
to her the great world, with its splendours and its scope to ambition,
was Charles Vernon. She scarcely admitted to her own mind the idea that
she would now accept, if offered, the suit she had before despised; she
did not even contemplate the renewal of that suit,--though there was
something in the gallant and disinterested character of Vernon which
should have made her believe he would regard their altered fortunes
rather as a claim on his honour than a release to his engagements. But
hitherto no communication had passed between them; and this was strange
if he retained the same intentions which he had announced at Laughton.
Putting aside, we say, however, all such considerations, Vernon had
sought her friendship, called her "cousin," enforced the distant
relationship between them. Not as lover, but as kinsman,--the only
kinsman of her own rank she possessed,--his position in the world, his
connections, his brilliant range of acquaintance, made his counsel for
her future plans, his aid in the re-establishment of her consequence (if
not--as wealthy, still as well-born), and her admission amongst her
equals, of price and value. It was worth sounding the depth of the
friendship he had offered, even if his love had passed away with the
fortune on which doubtless it had been based.
She took a bold step,--she wrote to Vernon: not even to allude to what
had passed between them; her pride forbade such unwomanly vulgarity. The
baseness that was in her took at least a more delicate exterior. She
wrote to him simply and distantly, to state that there were some books
and trifles of hers left at Laughton, which she prized beyond their
trivial value, and to request, as she believed him to be absent from the
Hall, permission to call at her old home, in her way to a visit in a
neighbouring county, and point out to whomsoever he might appoint to meet
her, the effects she deemed herself privileged to claim. The letter was
one merely of business, but it was a sufficient test of the friendly
feelings of her former suitor.
She sent this letter to Vernon's house in London, and the next day came
the answer.
Vernon, we must own, entirely sympathized with Sir Miles in the solemn
injunctions the old man had bequeathed. Immediately after the death of
one to whom we owe gratitude and love, all his desires take a sanctity
irresistible and ineffable; we adopt his affection, his dislikes, his
obligations, and his wrongs. And after he had read the copy of
Lucretia's letter, inclosed to him by Sir Miles, the conquest the poor
baronet had made over resentment and vindictive emotion, the evident
effort at passionless justice with which he had provided becomingly for
his niece, while he cancelled her claims as his heiress, had filled
Vernon with a reverence for his wishes and decisions that silenced all
those inclinations to over-generosity which an unexpected inheritance is
apt to create towards the less fortunate expectants. Nevertheless,
Lucretia's direct application, her formal appeal to his common courtesy
as host and kinsman, perplexed greatly a man ever accustomed to a certain
chivalry towards the sex; the usual frankness of his disposition
suggested, however, plain dealing as the best escape from his dilemma,
and therefore he answered thus:--
MADAM,--Under other circumstances it would have given me no common
pleasure to place the house that you so long inhabited again at your
disposal; and I feel so painfully the position which my refusal of your
request inflicts upon me, that rather than resort to excuses and
pretexts, which, while conveying an impression of my sincerity, would
seem almost like an insult to yourself, I venture frankly to inform you
that it was the dying wish of my lamented kinsman, in consequence of a
letter which came under his eye, that the welcome you had hitherto
received at Laughton should be withdrawn. Pardon me, Madam, if I express
myself thus bluntly; it is somewhat necessary to the vindication of my
character in your eyes, both as regards the honour of your request and my
tacit resignation of hopes fervently but too presumptuously entertained.
In this most painful candour, Heaven forbid that I should add wantonly to
your self-reproaches for the fault of youth and inexperience, which I
should be the last person to judge rigidly, and which, had Sir Miles's
life been spared, you would doubtless have amply repaired. The feelings
which actuated Sir Miles in his latter days might have changed; but the
injunction those feelings prompted I am bound to respect.
For the mere matter of business on which you have done me the honour to
address me, I have only to say that any orders you may give to the
steward, or transmit through any person you may send to the Hall, with
regard to the effects you so naturally desire to claim, shall be
implicitly obeyed.
And believe me, Madam (though I do not presume to add those expressions
which might rather heighten the offence I fear this letter will give
you), that the assurance of your happiness in the choice you have made,
and which now no obstacle can oppose, will considerably--lighten the pain
with which I shall long recall my ungracious reply to your communication.
I have the honour to be, etc., C. VERNON ST. JOHN.
BROOK STREET, Dec. 28, 18--.
The receipt of such a letter could hardly add to the profounder grief
which preyed in the innermost core of Lucretia's heart; but in repelling
the effort she had made to distract that grief by ambition, it blackened
the sullen despondency with which she regarded the future. As the insect
in the hollow snare of the ant-lion, she felt that there was no footing
up the sides of the cave into which she had fallen; the sand gave way to
the step. But despondency in her brought no meekness; the cloud did not
descend in rain; resting over the horizon, its darkness was tinged with
the fires which it fed. The heart, already so embittered, was stung and
mortified into intolerable shame and wrath. From the home that should
have been hers, in which, as acknowledged heiress, she had smiled down on
the ruined Vernon, she was banished by him who had supplanted her, as one
worthless and polluted. Though, from motives of obvious delicacy, Vernon
had not said expressly that he had seen the letter to Mainwaring, the
unfamiliar and formal tone which he assumed indirectly declared it, and
betrayed the impression it had made, in spite of his reserve. A living
man then was in possession of a secret which justified his disdain, and
that man was master of Laughton! The suppressed rage which embraced the
lost lover extended darkly over this witness to that baffled and
miserable love. But what availed rage against either? Abandoned and
despoiled, she was powerless to avenge. It was at this time, when her
prospects seemed most dark, her pride was most crushed, and her despair
of the future at its height, that she turned to Dalibard as the only
friend left to her under the sun. Even the vices she perceived in him
became merits, for they forbade him to despise her. And now, this man
rose suddenly into another and higher aspect of character. Of late,
though equally deferential to her, there had been something more lofty in
his mien, more assured on his brow; gleams of a secret satisfaction, even
of a joy, that he appeared anxious to suppress, as ill in harmony with
her causes for dejection, broke out in his looks and words. At length,
one day, after some preparatory hesitation, he informed her that he was
free to return to France; that even without the peace between England and
France, which (known under the name of the Peace of Amiens) had been just
concluded, he should have crossed the Channel. The advocacy and interest
of friends whom he had left at Paris had already brought him under the
special notice of the wonderful man who then governed France, and who
sought to unite in its service every description and variety of
intellect. He should return to France, and then--why, then, the ladder
was on the walls of Fortune and the foot planted on the step! As he
spoke, confidently and sanguinely, with the verve and assurance of an
able man who sees clear the path to his goal, as he sketched with rapid
precision the nature of his prospects and his hopes, all that subtle
wisdom which had before often seemed but vague and general, took
practical shape and interest, thus applied to the actual circumstances of
men; the spirit of intrigue, which seemed mean when employed on mean
things, swelled into statesmanship and masterly genius to the listener
when she saw it linked with the large objects of masculine ambition.
Insensibly, therefore, her attention became earnest, her mind aroused.
The vision of a field, afar from the scenes of her humiliation and
despair,--a field for energy, stratagem, and contest,--invited her
restless intelligence. As Dalibard had profoundly calculated, there was
no new channel for her affections,--the source was dried up, and the
parched sands heaped over it; but while the heart lay dormant, the mind
rose sleepless, chafed, and perturbed. Through the mind, he indirectly
addressed and subtly wooed her.
"Such," he said, as he rose to take leave, "such is the career to which I
could depart with joy if I did not depart alone!"
"Alone!" that word, more than once that day, Lucretia repeated to
herself--"alone!" And what career was left to her?--she, too, alone!
In certain stages of great grief our natures yearn for excitement. This
has made some men gamblers; it has made even women drunkards,--it had
effect over the serene calm and would-be divinity of the poet-sage. When
his son dies, Goethe does not mourn, he plunges into the absorption of a
study uncultivated before. But in the great contest of life, in the
whirlpool of actual affairs, the stricken heart finds all,--the gambling,
the inebriation, and the study.
We pause here. We have pursued long enough that patient analysis, with
all the food for reflection that it possibly affords, to which we were
insensibly led on by an interest, dark and fascinating, that grew more
and more upon us as we proceeded in our research into the early history
of a person fated to pervert no ordinary powers into no commonplace
guilt.
The charm is concluded, the circle closed round; the self-guided seeker
after knowledge has gained the fiend for the familiar.
CHAPTER X.
THE RECONCILIATION BETWEEN FATHER AND SON.
We pass over an interval of some months.
A painter stood at work at the easel, his human model before him. He was
employed on a nymph,--the Nymph Galatea. The subject had been taken
before by Salvator, whose genius found all its elements in the wild
rocks, gnarled, fantastic trees, and gushing waterfalls of the landscape;
in the huge ugliness of Polyphemus the lover; in the grace and suavity
and unconscious abandonment of the nymph, sleeking her tresses dripping
from the bath. The painter, on a larger canvas (for Salvator's picture,
at least the one we have seen, is among the small sketches of the great
artistic creator of the romantic and grotesque), had transferred the
subject of the master; but he had left subordinate the landscape and the
giant, to concentrate all his art on the person of the nymph. Middle-
aged was the painter, in truth; but he looked old. His hair, though
long, was gray and thin; his face was bloated by intemperance; and his
hand trembled much, though, from habit, no trace of the tremor was
visible in his work.
A boy, near at hand, was also employed on the same subject, with a rough
chalk and a bold freedom of touch. He was sketching his design of a
Galatea and Polyphemus on the wall; for the wall was only whitewashed,
and covered already with the multiform vagaries whether of master or
pupils,--caricatures and demigods, hands and feet, torsos and monsters,
and Venuses. The rude creations, all mutilated, jarring, and mingled,
gave a cynical, mocking, devil-may-care kind of aspect to the sanctum of
art. It was like the dissection-room of the anatomist. The boy's sketch
was more in harmony with the walls of the studio than the canvas of the
master. His nymph, accurately drawn, from the undressed proportions of
the model, down to the waist, terminated in the scales of a fish. The
forked branches of the trees stretched weird and imp-like as the hands of
skeletons. Polyphemus, peering over the rocks, had the leer of a demon;
and in his gross features there was a certain distorted, hideous likeness
of the grave and symmetrical lineaments of Olivier Dalibard.
All around was slovenly, squalid, and poverty-stricken,--rickety, worn-
out, rush-bottom chairs; unsold, unfinished pictures, pell-mell in the
corner, covered with dust; broken casts of plaster; a lay-figure battered
in its basket-work arms, with its doll-like face all smudged and
besmeared. A pot of porter and a noggin of gin on a stained deal table,
accompanied by two or three broken, smoke-blackened pipes, some tattered
song-books, and old numbers of the "Covent Garden Magazine," betrayed the
tastes of the artist, and accounted for the shaking hand and the bloated
form. A jovial, disorderly, vagrant dog of a painter was Tom Varney. A
bachelor, of course; humorous and droll; a boon companion, and a terrible
borrower. Clever enough in his calling; with pains and some method, he
had easily gained subsistence and established a name; but he had one
trick that soon ruined him in the business part of his profession. He
took a fourth of his price in advance; and having once clutched the
money, the poor customer might go hang for his picture. The only things
Tom Varney ever fairly completed were those for which no order had been
given; for in them, somehow or other, his fancy became interested, and on
them he lavished the gusto which he really possessed. But the subjects
were rarely salable. Nymphs and deities undraperied have few worshippers
in England amongst the buyers of "furniture pictures." And, to say
truth, nymph and deity had usually a very equivocal look; and if they
came from the gods, you would swear it was the gods of the galleries of
Drury. When Tom Varney sold a picture, he lived upon clover till the
money was gone. But the poorer and less steady alumni of the rising
school, especially those at war with the Academy, from which Varney was
excluded, pitied, despised, yet liked and courted him withal. In
addition to his good qualities of blithe song-singer, droll story-teller,
and stanch Bacchanalian, Tom Varney was liberally good-natured in
communicating instruction really valuable to those who knew how to avail
themselves of a knowledge he had made almost worthless to himself. He
was a shrewd, though good-natured critic, had many little secrets of
colouring and composition, which an invitation to supper, or the loan of
ten shillings, was sufficient to bribe from him. Ragged, out of elbows,
unshaven, and slipshod, he still had his set amongst the gay and the
young,--a precious master, a profitable set for his nephew, Master Honore
Gabriel! But the poor rapscallion had a heart larger than many honest,
painstaking men. As soon as Gabriel had found him out, and entreated
refuge from his fear of his father, the painter clasped him tight in his
great slovenly arms, sold a Venus half-price to buy him a bed and a
washstand, and swore a tremendous oath that the son of his poor
guillotined sister should share the last shilling in his pocket, the last
drop in his can.
Gabriel, fresh from the cheer of Laughton, and spoiled by the prodigal
gifts of Lucretia, had little gratitude for shillings and porter.
Nevertheless, he condescended to take what he could get, while he sighed,
from the depths of a heart in which cupidity and vanity had become the
predominant rulers, for a destiny more worthy his genius, and more in
keeping with the sphere from which he had descended.
The boy finished his sketch, with an impudent wink at the model, flung
himself back on his chair, folded his arms, cast a discontented glance at
the whitened seams of the sleeves, and soon seemed lost in his own
reflections. The painter worked on in silence. The model, whom
Gabriel's wink had aroused, half-flattered, half-indignant for a moment,
lapsed into a doze. Outside the window, you heard the song of a canary,-
-a dingy, smoke-coloured canary that seemed shedding its plumes, for they
were as ragged as the garments of its master; still, it contrived to
sing, trill-trill-trill-trill-trill, as blithely as if free in its native
woods, or pampered by fair hands in a gilded cage. The bird was the only
true artist there, it sang as the poet sings,--to obey its nature and
vent its heart. Trill-trill-trillela-la-la-trill-trill, went the song,--
louder, gayer than usual; for there was a gleam of April sunshine
struggling over the rooftops. The song at length roused up Gabriel; he
turned his chair round, laid his head on one side, listened, and looked
curiously at the bird.
At length an idea seemed to cross him; he rose, opened the window, drew
in the cage, placed it on the chair, then took up one of his uncle's
pipes, walked to the fireplace, and thrust the shank of the pipe into the
bars. When it was red-hot he took it out by the bowl, having first
protected his hand from the heat by wrapping round it his handkerchief;
this done, he returned to the cage. His movements had wakened up the
dozing model. She eyed them at first with dull curiosity, then with
lively suspicion; and presently starting up with an exclamation such as
no novelist but Fielding dare put into the mouth of a female,--much less
a nymph of such renown as Galatea,--she sprang across the room, wellnigh
upsetting easel and painter, and fastened firm hold on Gabriel's
shoulders.
"The varment!" she cried vehemently; "the good-for-nothing varment! If
it had been a jay, or a nasty raven, well and good; but a poor little
canary!"
"Hoity-toity! what are you about, nephew? What's the matter?" said Tom
Varney, coming up to the strife. And, indeed, it was time; for Gabriel's
teeth were set in his catlike jaws, and the glowing point of the pipe-
shank was within an inch of the cheek of the model.
"What's the matter?" replied Gabriel, suddenly; "why, I was only going to
try a little experiment."
"An experiment? Not on my canary, poor dear little thing! The hours and
hours that creature has strained its throat to say 'Sing and be merry,'
when I had not a rap in my pocket! It would have made a stone feel to
hear it."
"But I think I can make it sing much better than ever,--only just let me
try! They say that if you put out the eyes of a canary, it--"
Gabriel was not allowed to conclude his sentence; for here rose that
clamour of horror and indignation from both painter and model which
usually greets the announcement of every philosophical discovery,--at
least, when about to be practically applied; and in the midst of the
hubbub, the poor little canary, who had been fluttering about the cage to
escape the hand of the benevolent operator, set up no longer the cheerful
trill-trillela-la-trill, but a scared and heart-breaking chirp,--a
shrill, terrified twit-twit-twitter-twit.
"Damn the bird! Hold your tongues!" cried Gabriel Varney, reluctantly
giving way, but still eying the bird with the scientific regret with
which the illustrious Majendie might contemplate a dog which some brute
of a master refused to disembowel for the good of the colics of mankind.
The model seized on the cage, shut the door of the wires, and carried it
off. Tom Varney drained the rest of his porter, and wiped his forehead
with the sleeve of his coat.
"And to use my pipe for such cruelty! Boy, boy, I could not have
believed it! But you were not in earnest; oh, no, impossible! Sukey, my
love--Galatea the divine--calm thy breast; Cupid did but jest.
'Cupid is the God of Laughter,
Quip and jest and joke, sir.'"
"If you don't whip the little wretch within an inch of his life, he'll
have a gallows end on't," replied Galatea.
"Go, Cupid, go and kiss Galatea, and make your peace.
`Oh, leave a kiss within the cup,
And I'll not ask for wine.'
And 't is no use asking for wine, or for gin either,--not a drop in the
noggin!"
All this while Gabriel, disdaining the recommendations held forth to him,
was employed in brushing his jacket with a very mangy-looking brush; and
when he had completed that operation he approached his uncle, and coolly
thrust his hands into that gentleman's waistcoat-pockets.
"Uncle, what have you done with those seven shillings? I am going out to
spend the day."
"If you give them to him, Tom, I'll scratch your eyes out," cried the
model; "and then we'll see how you'll sing. Whip him, I say, whip him!"
But, strange to say, this liberty of the boy quite reopened the heart of
his uncle,--it was a pleasure to him, who put his hands so habitually
into other people's pockets, to be invested with the novel grandeur of
the man sponged upon. "That's right, Cupid, son of Cytherea; all's
common property amongst friends. Seven shillings, I have 'em not. 'They
now are five who once were seven;' but such as they are, we'll share.
'Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown.'"
"Crowns bear no division, my uncle," said Gabriel, dryly; and he pocketed
the five shillings. Then, having first secured his escape by gaining the
threshold, he suddenly seized one of the rickety chairs by its leg, and
regardless of the gallantries due to the sex, sent it right against the
model, who was shaking her fist at him. A scream and a fall and a sharp
twit from the cage, which was hurled nearly into the fireplace, told that
the missive had taken effect. Gabriel did not wait for the probable
reaction; he was in the streets in an instant. "This won't do," he
muttered to himself; "there is no getting on here. Foolish drunken
vagabond! no good to be got from him. My father is terrible, but he will
make his way in the world. Umph! if I were but his match,--and why not?
I am brave, and he is not. There's fun, too, in danger."
Thus musing, he took his way to Dalibard's lodgings. His father was at
home. Now, though they were but lodgings, and the street not in fashion,
Olivier Dalibard's apartments had an air of refinement, and even
elegance, that contrasted both the wretched squalor of the abode Gabriel
had just left and the meanness of Dalibard's former quarters in London,
The change seemed to imply that the Provencal had already made some way
in the world. And, truth to say, at all times, even in the lowest ebb of
his fortunes, there was that indescribable neatness and formality of
precision about all the exterior seemings of the ci-devant friend of the
prim Robespierre which belong to those in whom order and method are
strongly developed,--qualities which give even to neediness a certain
dignity. As the room and its owner met the eye of Gabriel, on whose
senses all externals had considerable influence, the ungrateful young
ruffian recalled the kind, tattered, slovenly uncle, whose purse he had
just emptied, without one feeling milder than disgust. Olivier Dalibard,
always careful, if simple, in his dress, with his brow of grave
intellectual power, and his mien imposing, not only from its calm, but
from that nameless refinement which rarely fails to give to the student
the air of a gentleman,--Olivier Dalibard he might dread, he might even
detest; but he was not ashamed of him.
"I said I would visit you, sir, if you would permit me," said Gabriel, in
a tone of respect, not unmingled with some defiance, as if in doubt of
his reception.
The father's slow full eye, so different from the sidelong, furtive
glance of Lucretia, turned on the son, as if to penetrate his very heart.
"You look pale and haggard, child; you are fast losing your health and
beauty. Good gifts these, not to be wasted before they can be duly
employed. But you have taken your choice. Be an artist,--copy Tom
Varney, and prosper." Gabriel remained silent, with his eyes on the
floor.
"You come in time for my farewell," resumed Dalibard. "It is a comfort,
at least, that I leave your youth so honourably protected. I am about to
return to my country; my career is once more before me!"
"Your country,--to Paris?"
"There are fine pictures in the Louvre,--a good place to inspire an
artist!"
"You go alone, Father!"
"You forget, young gentleman, you disown me as father! Go alone! I
thought I told you in the times of our confidence, that I should marry
Lucretia Clavering. I rarely fail in my plans. She has lost Laughton,
it is true; but 10,000 pounds will make a fair commencement to fortune,
even at Paris. Well, what do you want with me, worthy godson of Honore
Gabriel Mirabeau?"
"Sir, if you will let me, I will go with you."
Dalibard shaded his brow with his hand, and reflected on the filial
proposal. On the one hand, it might be convenient, and would certainly
be economical, to rid himself evermore of the mutinous son who had
already thrown off his authority; on the other hand, there was much in
Gabriel, mutinous and even menacing as he had lately become, that
promised an unscrupulous tool or a sharp-witted accomplice, with
interests that every year the ready youth would more and more discover
were bound up in his plotting father's. This last consideration, joined,
if not to affection, still to habit,--to the link between blood and
blood, which even the hardest find it difficult to sever,--prevailed. He
extended his pale hand to Gabriel, and said gently,--
"I will take you, if we rightly understand each other. Once again in my
power, I might constrain you to my will, it is true. But I rather confer
with you as man to man than as man to boy."
"It is the best way," said Gabriel, firmly.
"I will use no harshness, inflict no punishment,--unless, indeed, amply
merited by stubborn disobedience or wilful deceit. But if I meet with
these, better rot on a dunghill than come with me! I ask implicit
confidence in all my suggestions, prompt submission to all my requests.
Grant me but these, and I promise to consult your fortune as my own, to
gratify your tastes as far as my means will allow, to grudge not your
pleasures, and when the age for ambition comes, to aid your rise if I
rise myself,--nay, if well contented with you, to remove the blot from
your birth, by acknowledging and adopting you formally as my son."
"Agreed! and I thank you," said Gabriel. "And Lucretia is going? Oh, I
so long to see her!"
"See her--not yet; but next week."
"Do not fear that I should let out about the letter. I should betray
myself if I did," said the boy, bluntly betraying his guess at his
father's delay.
The evil scholar smiled.
"You will do well to keep it secret for your own sake; for mine, I should
not fear. Gabriel, go back now to your master,--you do right, like the
rats, to run from the falling house. Next week I will send for you,
Gabriel!"
Not, however, back to the studio went the boy. He sauntered leisurely
through the gayest streets, eyed the shops and the equipages, the fair
women and the well-dressed men,--eyed with envy and longings and visions
of pomps and vanities to come; then, when the day began to close, he
sought out a young painter, the wildest and maddest of the crew to whom
his uncle had presented their future comrade and rival, and went with
this youth, at half-price, to the theatre, not to gaze on the actors or
study the play, but to stroll in the saloon. A supper in the Finish
completed the void in his pockets, and concluded his day's rank
experience of life. By the gray dawn he stole back to his bed, and as he
laid himself down, he thought with avid pleasure of Paris, its gay
gardens and brilliant shops and crowded streets; he thought, too, of his
father's calm confidence of success, of the triumph that already had
attended his wiles,--a confidence and a triumph which, exciting his
reverence and rousing his emulation, had decided his resolution. He
thought, too, of Lucretia with something of affection, recalled her
praises and bribes, her frequent mediation with his father, and felt that
they should have need of each other. Oh, no, he never would tell her of
the snare laid at Guy's Oak,--never, not even if incensed with his
father. An instinct told him that that offence could never be forgiven,
and that, henceforth, Lucretia's was a destiny bound up in his own. He
thought, too, of Dalibard's warning and threat. But with fear itself
came a strange excitement of pleasure,--to grapple, if necessary, he a
mere child, with such a man! His heart swelled at the thought. So at
last he fell asleep, and dreamed that he saw his mother's trunkless face
dripping gore and frowning on him,--dreamed that he heard her say: "Goest
thou to the scene of my execution only to fawn upon my murderer?" Then a
nightmare of horrors, of scaffolds and executioners and grinning mobs and
agonized faces, came on him,--dark, confused, and indistinct. And he
woke, with his hair standing on end, and beard below, in the rising sun,
the merry song of the poor canary,--trill-lill-lill, trill-trill-lill-
lill-la! Did he feel glad that his cruel hand had been stayed?
EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.
It is a year since the November day on which Lucretia Clavering quitted
the roof of Mr. Fielden. And first we must recall the eye of the reader
to the old-fashioned terrace at Laughton,--the jutting porch, the quaint
balustrades, the broad, dark, changeless cedars on the lawn beyond. The
day is calm, clear, and mild, for November in the country is often a
gentle month. On that terrace walked Charles Vernon, now known by his
new name of St. John. Is it the change of name that has so changed the
person? Can the wand of the Herald's Office have filled up the hollows
of the cheek, and replaced by elastic vigour the listless languor of the
tread? No; there is another and a better cause for that healthful
change. Mr. Vernon St. John is not alone,--a fair companion leans on his
arm. See, she pauses to press closer to his side, gaze on his face, and
whisper, "We did well to have hope and faith!"
The husband's faith had not been so unshaken as his Mary's, and a slight
blush passed over his cheek as he thought of his concession to Sir
Miles's wishes, and his overtures to Lucretia Clavering. Still, that
fault had been fairly acknowledged to his wife, and she felt, the moment
she had spoken, that she had committed an indiscretion; nevertheless,
with an arch touch of womanly malice she added softly,--
"And Miss Clavering, you persist in saying, was not really handsome?"
"My love," replied the husband, gravely, "you would oblige me by not
recalling the very painful recollections connected with that name. Let
it never be mentioned in this house."
Lady Mary bowed her graceful head in submission; she understood Charles's
feelings. For though he had not shown her Sir Miles's letter and its
enclosure, he had communicated enough to account for the unexpected
heritage, and to lessen his wife's compassion for the disappointed
heiress. Nevertheless, she comprehended that her husband felt an uneasy
twinge at the idea that he was compelled to act hardly to the one whose
hopes he had supplanted. Lucretia's banishment from Laughton was a just
humiliation, but it humbled a generous heart to inflict the sentence.
Thus, on all accounts, the remembrance of Lucretia was painful and
unwelcome to the successor of Sir Miles. There was a silence; Lady Mary
pressed her husband's hand.
"It is strange," said he, giving vent to his thoughts at that tender sign
of sympathy in his feeling,--"strange that, after all, she did not marry
Mainwaring, but fixed her choice on that subtle Frenchman. But she has
settled abroad now, perhaps for life; a great relief to my mind. Yes,
let us never recur to her."
"Fortunately," said Lady Mary, with some hesitation, "she does not seem
to have created much interest here. The poor seldom name her to me, and
our neighbours only with surprise at her marriage. In another year she
will be forgotten!"
Mr. St. John sighed. Perhaps he felt how much more easily he had been
forgotten, were he the banished one, Lucretia the possessor! His light
nature, however, soon escaped from all thoughts and sources of annoyance,
and he listened with complacent attention to Lady Mary's gentle plans for
the poor, and the children's school, and the cottages that ought to be
repaired, and the labourers that ought to be employed. For though it may
seem singular, Vernon St. John, insensibly influenced by his wife's meek
superiority, and corrected by her pure companionship, had begun to feel
the charm of innocent occupations,--more, perhaps, than if he had been
accustomed to the larger and loftier excitements of life, and missed that
stir of intellect which is the element of those who have warred in the
democracy of letters, or contended for the leadership of States. He had
begun already to think that the country was no such exile after all.
Naturally benevolent, he had taught himself to share the occupations his
Mary had already found in the busy "luxury of doing good," and to
conceive that brotherhood of charity which usually unites the lord of the
village with its poor.
"I think, what with hunting once a week,--I will not venture more till my
pain in the side is quite gone,--and with the help of some old friends at
Christmas, we can get through the winter very well, Mary."
"Ah, those old friends, I dread them more than the hunting!"
"But we'll have your grave father and your dear, precise, excellent
mother to keep us in order. And if I sit more than half an hour after
dinner, the old butler shall pull me out by the ears. Mary, what do you
say to thinning the grove yonder? We shall get a better view of the
landscape beyond. No, hang it! dear old Sir Miles loved his trees better
than the prospect; I won't lop a bough. But that avenue we are planting
will be certainly a noble improvement--"
"Fifty years hence, Charles!"
"It is our duty to think of posterity," answered the ci-devant
spendthrift, with a gravity that was actually pompous. "But hark! is
that two o'clock? Three, by Jove! How time flies! and my new bullocks
that I was to see at two! Come down to the farm, that's my own Mary.
Ah, your fine ladies are not such bad housewives after all!"
"And your fine gentlemen--"
"Capital farmers! I had no idea till last week that a prize ox was so
interesting an animal. One lives to learn. Put me in mind, by the by,
to write to Coke about his sheep."
"This way, dear Charles; we can go round by the village,--and see poor
Ponto and Dash."
The tears rushed to Mr. St. John's eyes. "If poor Sir Miles could have
known you!" he said, with a sigh; and though the gardeners were at work
on the lawn, he bowed his head and kissed the blushing cheek of his wife
as heartily as if he had been really a farmer.
From the terrace at Laughton, turn to the humbler abode of our old friend
the vicar,--the same day, the same hour. Here also the scene is without
doors,--we are in the garden of the vicarage; the children are playing at
hide-and-seek amongst the espaliers which screen the winding gravel-walks
from the esculents more dear to Ceres than to Flora. The vicar is seated
in his little parlour, from which a glazed door admits into the garden.
The door is now open, and the good man has paused from his work (he had
just discovered a new emendation in the first chorus of the "Medea") to
look out at the rosy faces that gleam to and fro across the scene. His
wife, with a basket in her hand, is standing without the door, but a
little aside, not to obstruct the view.
"It does one's heart good to see them," said the vicar, "little dears!"
"Yes, they ought to be dear at this time of the year," observed Mrs.
Fielden, who was absorbed in the contents of the basket.
"And so fresh!"
"Fresh, indeed,--how different from London! In London they were not fit
to be seen,--as old as---I am sure I can't guess how old they were. But
you see here they are new laid every morning!"
"My dear," said Mr. Fielden, opening his eyes,--"new laid every morning!"
"Two dozen and four."
"Two dozen and four! What on earth are you talking about, Mrs. Fielden?"
"Why, the eggs, to be sure, my love!"
"Oh," said the vicar, "two dozen and four! You alarmed me a little; 't
is of no consequence,--only my foolish mistake. Always prudent and
saving, my dear Sarah,--just as if poor Sir Miles had not left us that
munificent fortune, I may call it."
"It will not go very far when we have our young ones to settle. And
David is very extravagant already; he has torn such a hole in his
jacket!"
At this moment up the gravel-walk two young persons came in sight. The
children darted across them, whooping and laughing, and vanished in the
further recess of the garden.
"All is for the best, blind mortals that we are; all is for the best,"
said the vicar, musingly, as his eyes rested upon the approaching pair.
"Certainly, my love; you are always right, and it is wicked to grumble.
Still, if you saw what a hole it was,--past patching, I fear!"
"Look round," said Mr. Fielden, benevolently. "How we grieved for them
both; how wroth we were with William,--how sad for Susan! And now see
them; they will be the better man and wife for their trial."
"Has Susan then consented? I was almost afraid she never would consent.
How often have I been almost angry with her, poor lamb, when I have heard
her accuse herself of causing her sister's unhappiness, and declare with
sobs that she felt it a crime to think of William Mainwaring as a
husband."
"I trust I have reasoned her out of a morbid sensibility which, while it
could not have rendered Lucretia the happier, must have insured the
wretchedness of herself and William. But if Lucretia had not married,
and so forever closed the door on William's repentance (that is,
supposing he did repent), I believe poor Susan would rather have died of
a broken heart than have given her hand to Mainwaring."
"It was an odd marriage of that proud young lady's, after all," said Mrs.
Fielden,--"so much older than she; a foreigner, too!"
"But he is a very pleasant man, and they have known each other so long.
I did not, however, quite like a sort of cunning he showed, when I came
to reflect on it, in bringing Lucretia back to the house; it looks as if
he had laid a trap for her from the first."
"Ten thousand pounds,--a great catch for a foreigner!" observed Mrs.
Fielden, with the shrewd instinct of her sex; and then she added, in the
spirit of a prudent sympathy equally characteristic: "But I think you say
Mr. Parchmount persuaded her to allow half to be settled on herself.
That will be a hold on him."
"A bad hold, if that be all, Sarah. There is a better,--he is a learned
man and a scholar. Scholars are naturally domestic, and make good
husbands."
"But you know he must be a papist!" said Mrs. Fielden.
"Umph!" muttered the vicar, irresolutely.
While the worthy couple were thus conversing, Susan and her lover, not
having finished their conference, had turned back through the winding
walk.
"Indeed," said William, drawing her arm closer to his side, "these
scruples, these fears, are cruel to me as well as to yourself. If you
were no longer existing, I could be nothing to your sister. Nay, even
were she not married, you must know enough of her pride to be assured
that I can retain no place in her affections. What has chanced was not
our crime. Perhaps Heaven designed to save not only us, but herself,
from the certain misery of nuptials so inauspicious!"
"If she would but answer one of my letters!" sighed Susan; "or if I could
but know that she were happy and contented!"
"Your letters must have miscarried,--you are not sure even of her
address. Rely upon it, she is happy. Do you think that she would a
second time have 'stooped beneath her'"--Mainwaring's lip writhed as he
repeated that phrase--"if her feelings had not been involved? I would
not wrong your sister,--I shall ever feel gratitude for the past, and
remorse for my own shameful weakness; still, I must think that the nature
of her attachment to me was more ardent than lasting."
"Ah, William, how can you know her heart?"
"By comparing it with yours. Oh, there indeed I may anchor my faith!
Susan, we were formed for each other! Our natures are alike, save that
yours, despite its surpassing sweetness, has greater strength in its
simple candour. You will be my guide to good. Without you I should have
no aim in life, no courage to front the contests of this world. Ah, this
hand trembles still!"
"William, William, I cannot repress a foreboding, a superstition! At
night I am haunted with that pale face as I saw it last,--pale with
suppressed despair. Oh, if ever Lucretia could have need of us,--need of
our services, our affections,--if we could but repair the grief we have
caused her!"
Susan's head sank on her lover's shoulder. She had said "need of us,"
"need of our services." In those simple monosyllables the union was
pledged, the identity of their lots in the dark urn was implied.
From this scene turn again; the slide shifts in the lantern,--we are at
Paris. In the antechamber at the Tuileries a crowd of expectant
courtiers and adventurers gaze upon a figure who passes with modest and
downcast eyes through the throng; he has just left the closet of the
First Consul.
"Par Dieu!" said B----, "power, like misery, makes us acquainted with
strange bedfellows. I should like to hear what the First Consul can have
to say to Olivier Dalibard."
Fouche, who at that period was scheming for the return to his old
dignities of minister of police, smiled slightly, and answered: "In a
time when the air is filled with daggers, one who was familiar with
Robespierre has his uses. Olivier Dalibard is a remarkable man. He is
one of those children of the Revolution whom that great mother is bound
to save."
"By betraying his brethren?" said B----, dryly.
"I do not allow the inference. The simple fact is that Dalibard has
spent many years in England; he has married an Englishwoman of birth and
connections; he knows well the English language and the English people;
and just now when the First Consul is so anxious to approfondir the
popular feelings of that strange nation, with whose government he is
compelled to go to war, he may naturally have much to say to so acute an
observer as Olivier Dalibard."
"Um!" said B----; "with such patronage, Robespierre's friend should hold
his head somewhat higher!"
Meanwhile, Olivier Dalibard, crossing the gardens of the palace, took his
way to the Faubourg St. Germain. There was no change in the aspect of
this man: the same meditative tranquillity characterized his downward
eyes and bonded brow; the same precise simplicity of dress which had
pleased the prim taste of Robespierre gave decorum to his slender,
stooping form. No expression more cheerful, no footstep more elastic,
bespoke the exile's return to his native land, or the sanguine
expectations of Intellect restored to a career. Yet, to all appearance,
the prospects of Dalibard were bright and promising. The First Consul
was at that stage of his greatness when he sought to employ in his
service all such talent as the Revolution had made manifest, provided
only that it was not stained with notorious bloodshed, or too strongly
associated with the Jacobin clubs. His quick eye seemed to have
discovered already the abilities of Dalibard, and to have appreciated the
sagacity and knowledge of men which had enabled this subtle person to
obtain the friendship of Robespierre, without sharing in his crimes. He
had been frequently closeted with Bonaparte; he was in the declared
favour of Fouche, who, though not at that period at the head of the
police, was too necessary amidst the dangers of the time, deepened as
they were by the rumours of some terrible and profound conspiracy, to be
laid aside, as the First Consul had at one moment designed. One man
alone, of those high in the State, appeared to distrust Olivier
Dalibard,--the celebrated Cambaceres. But with his aid the Provencal
could dispense. What was the secret of Dalibard's power? Was it, in
truth, owing solely to his native talent, and his acquired experience,
especially of England? Was it by honourable means that he had won the
ear of the First Consul? We may be sure of the contrary; for it is a
striking attribute of men once thoroughly tainted by the indulgence of
vicious schemes and stratagems that they become wholly blinded to those
plain paths of ambition which common-sense makes manifest to ordinary
ability. If we regard narrowly the lives of great criminals, we are
often very much startled by the extraordinary acuteness, the profound
calculation, the patient, meditative energy which they have employed upon
the conception and execution of a crime. We feel inclined to think that
such intellectual power would have commanded great distinction, worthily
used and guided; but we never find that these great criminals seem to
have been sensible of the opportunities to real eminence which they have
thrown away. Often we observe that there have been before them vistas
into worldly greatness which, by no uncommon prudence and exertion, would
have conducted honest men half as clever to fame and power; but, with a
strange obliquity of vision, they appear to have looked from these broad
clear avenues into some dark, tangled defile, in which, by the subtlest
ingenuity, and through the most besetting perils, they might attain at
last to the success of a fraud or the enjoyment of a vice. In crime once
indulged there is a wonderful fascination, and the fascination is, not
rarely, great in proportion to the intellect of the criminal. There is
always hope of reform for a dull, uneducated, stolid man, led by accident
or temptation into guilt; but where a man of great ability, and highly
educated, besots himself in the intoxication of dark and terrible
excitements, takes impure delight in tortuous and slimy ways, the good
angel abandons him forever.
Olivier Dalibard walked musingly on, gained a house in one of the most
desolate quarters of the abandoned faubourg, mounted the spacious stairs,
and rang at the door of an attic next the roof. After some moments the
door was slowly and cautiously opened, and two small, fierce eyes,
peering through a mass of black, tangled curls, gleamed through the
aperture. The gaze seemed satisfactory.
"Enter, friend," said the inmate, with a sort of complacent grunt; and as
Dalibard obeyed, the man reclosed and barred the door.
The room was bare to beggary; the ceiling, low and sloping, was blackened
with smoke. A wretched bed, two chairs, a table, a strong chest, a small
cracked looking-glass, completed the inventory. The dress of the
occupier was not in keeping with the chamber; true that it was not such
as was worn by the wealthier classes, but it betokened no sign of
poverty. A blue coat with high collar, and half of military fashion, was
buttoned tight over a chest of vast girth; the nether garments were of
leather, scrupulously clean, and solid, heavy riding-boots came half-way
up the thigh. A more sturdy, stalwart, strong-built knave never excited
the admiration which physical power always has a right to command; and
Dalibard gazed on him with envy. The pale scholar absolutely sighed as
he thought what an auxiliary to his own scheming mind would have been so
tough a frame!
But even less in form than face did the man of thews and sinews contrast
the man of wile and craft. Opposite that high forehead, with its massive
development of organs, scowled the low front of one to whom thought was
unfamiliar,--protuberant, indeed, over the shaggy brows, where
phrenologists place the seats of practical perception, strongly marked in
some of the brutes, as in the dog, but almost literally void of those
higher organs by which we reason and imagine and construct. But in rich
atonement for such deficiency, all the animal reigned triumphant in the
immense mass and width of the skull behind. And as the hair, long
before, curled in close rings to the nape of the bull-like neck, you saw
before you one of those useful instruments to ambition and fraud which
recoil at no danger, comprehend no crime, are not without certain good
qualities, under virtuous guidance,--for they have the fidelity, the
obedience, the stubborn courage of the animal,--but which, under evil
control, turn those very qualities to unsparing evil: bull-dogs to rend
the foe, as bull-dogs to defend the master.
For some moments the two men gazed, silently at each other. At length
Dalibard said, with an air of calm superiority,--
"My friend, it is time that I should be presented to the chiefs of your
party!"
"Chiefs, par tous les diables!" growled the other; "we Chouans are all
chiefs, when it comes to blows. You have seen my credentials; you know
that I am a man to be trusted: what more do you need?"
"For myself nothing; but my friends are more scrupulous. I have sounded,
as I promised, the heads of the old Jacobin party, and they are
favourable. This upstart soldier, who has suddenly seized in his iron
grasp all the fruits of the Revolution, is as hateful to them as to you.
But que voulez vous, mon cher? men are men! It is one thing to destroy
Bonaparte; it is another thing to restore the Bourbons. How can the
Jacobin chiefs depend on your assurance, or my own, that the Bourbons
will forget the old offences and reward the new service? You apprise me-
-so do your credentials--that a prince of the blood is engaged in this
enterprise, that he will appear at the proper season. Put me in direct
communication with this representative of the Bourbons, and I promise in
return, if his assurances are satisfactory, that you shall have an
emeute, to be felt from Paris to Marseilles. If you cannot do this, I am
useless; and I withdraw--"
"Withdraw! Garde a vous, Monsieur le Savant! No man withdraws alive
from a conspiracy like ours."
We have said before that Olivier Dalibard was not physically brave; and
the look of the Chouan, as those words were said, would have frozen the
blood of many a bolder man. But the habitual hypocrisy of Dalibard
enabled him to disguise his fear, and he replied dryly,--
"Monsieur le Chouan, it is not by threats that you will gain adherents to
a desperate cause, which, on the contrary, requires mild words and
flattering inducements. If you commit a violence,--a murder,--mon cher,
Paris is not Bretagne; we have a police: you will be discovered."
"Ha, ha! What then? Do you think I fear the guillotine?"
"For yourself, no; but for your leaders, yes! If you are discovered, and
arrested for crime, do you fancy that the police will not recognize the
right arm of the terrible George Cadoudal; that they will not guess that
Cadoudal is at Paris; that Cadoudal will not accompany you to the
guillotine?"
The Chouan's face fell. Olivier watched him, and pursued his advantage.
"I asked you to introduce to me this shadow of a prince, under which you
would march to a counter-revolution. But I will be more easily
contented. Present me to George Cadoudal, the hero of Morbihan; he is a
man in whom I can trust, and with whom I can deal. What, you hesitate?
How do you suppose enterprises of this nature can be carried on? If,
from fear and distrust of each other, the man you would employ cannot
meet the chief who directs him, there will be delay, confusion, panic,
and you will all perish by the executioner. And for me, Pierre Guillot,
consider my position. I am in some favour with the First Consul; I have
a station of respectability,--a career lies before me. Can you think
that I will hazard these, with my head to boot, like a rash child? Do
you suppose that, in entering into this terrible contest, I would consent
to treat only with subordinates? Do not deceive yourself. Again, I say,
tell your employers that they must confer with me directly, or je m'en
lave les mains."
"I will repeat what you say," answered Guillot, sullenly, "Is this all?"
"All for the present," said Dalibard, slowly drawing on his gloves, and
retreating towards the door. The Chouan watched him with a suspicious
and sinister eye; and as the Provencal's hand was on the latch, he laid
his own rough grasp on Dalibard's shoulder,--
"I know not how it is, Monsieur Dalibard, but I mistrust you."
"Distrust is natural and prudent to all who conspire," replied the
scholar, quietly. "I do not ask you to confide in me. Your employers
bade you seek me: I have mentioned my conditions; let them decide."
"You carry it off well, Monsieur Dalibard, and I am under a solemn oath,
which poor George made me take, knowing me to be a hot-headed, honest
fellow,--mauvaise tete, if you will,--that I will keep my hand off pistol
and knife upon mere suspicion; that nothing less than his word, or than
clear and positive proof of treachery, shall put me out of good humour
and into warm blood. But bear this with you, Monsieur Dalibard: if I
once discover that you use our secrets to betray them; should George see
you, and one hair of his head come to injury through your hands,--I will
wring your neck as a housewife wrings a pullet's."
"I don't doubt your strength or your ferocity, Pierre Guillot; but my
neck will be safe: you have enough to do to take care of your own.
Au revoir."
With a tone and look of calm and fearless irony, the scholar thus spoke,
and left the room; but when he was on the stairs, he paused, and caught
at the balustrade,--the sickness as of terror at some danger past, or to
be, came over him; and this contrast between the self-command, or
simulation, which belongs to moral courage, and the feebleness of natural
and constitutional cowardice, would have been sublime if shown in a noble
cause. In one so corrupt, it but betrayed a nature doubly formidable;
for treachery and murder hatch their brood amidst the folds of a
hypocrite's cowardice.
While thus the interview is going on between Dalibard and the
conspirator, we must bestow a glance upon the Provencal's home.
In an apartment in one of the principal streets between the Boulevards
and the Rue St. Honore, a boy and a woman sat side by side, conversing in
whispers. The boy was Gabriel Varney, the woman Lucretia Dalibard. The
apartment was furnished in the then modern taste, which affected
classical forms; and though not without a certain elegance, had something
meagre and comfortless in its splendid tripods and thin-legged chairs.
There was in the apartment that air which bespeaks the struggle for
appearances,--that struggle familiar to those of limited income and vain
aspirings, who want the taste which smooths all inequalities and gives a
smile to home; that taste which affection seems to prompt, if not to
create, which shows itself in a thousand nameless, costless trifles, each
a grace. No sign was there of the household cares or industry of women.
No flowers, no music, no embroidery-frame, no work-table. Lucretia had
none of the sweet feminine habits which betray so lovelily the whereabout
of women. All was formal and precise, like rooms which we enter and
leave,--not those in which we settle and dwell.
Lucretia herself is changed; her air is more assured, her complexion more
pale, the evil character of her mouth more firm and pronounced.
Gabriel, still a mere boy in years, has a premature look of man. The
down shades his lip. His dress, though showy and theatrical, is no
longer that of boyhood. His rounded cheek has grown thin, as with the
care and thought which beset the anxious step of youth on entering into
life.
Both, as before remarked, spoke in whispers; both from time to time
glanced fearfully at the door; both felt that they belonged to a hearth
round which smile not the jocund graces of trust and love and the heart's
open ease.
"But," said Gabriel,--"but if you would be safe, my father must have no
secrets hid from you."
"I do not know that he has. He speaks to me frankly of his hopes, of the
share he has in the discovery of the plot against the First Consul, of
his interviews with Pierre Guillot, the Breton."
"Ah, because there your courage supports him, and your acuteness assists
his own. Such secrets belong to his public life, his political schemes;
with those he will trust you. It is his private life, his private
projects, you must know."
"But what does he conceal from me? Apart from politics, his whole mind
seems bent on the very natural object of securing intimacy with his rich
cousin, M. Bellanger, from whom he has a right to expect so large an
inheritance."
"Bellanger is rich, but he is not much older than my father."
"He has bad health."
"No," said Gabriel, with a downcast eye and a strange smile, "he has not
bad health; but he may not be long-lived."
"How do you mean?" asked Lucretia, sinking her voice into a still lower
whisper, while a shudder, she scarce knew why, passed over her frame.
"What does my father do," resumed Gabriel, "in that room at the top of
the house? Does he tell you that secret?"
"He makes experiments in chemistry. You know that that was always his
favourite study. You smile again! Gabriel, do not smile so; it appalls
me. Do you think there is some mystery in that chamber?"
"It matters not what we think, belle-mere; it matters much what we know.
If I were you, I would know what is in that chamber. I repeat, to be
safe, you must have all his secrets, or none. Hush, that is his step!"
The door-handle turned noiselessly, and Olivier entered. His look fell
on his son's face, which betrayed only apparent surprise at his
unexpected return. He then glanced at Lucretia's, which was, as usual,
cold and impenetrable.
"Gabriel," said Dalibard, gently, "I have come in for you. I have
promised to take you to spend the day at M. Bellanger's; you are a great
favourite with Madame. Come, my boy. I shall be back soon, Lucretia. I
shall but drop in to leave Gabriel at my cousin's."
Gabriel rose cheerfully, as if only alive to the expectation of the bon-
bons and compliments he received habitually from Madame Bellanger.
"And you can take your drawing implements with you," continued Dalibard.
"This good M. Bellanger has given you permission to copy his Poussin."
"His Poussin! Ah, that is placed in his bedroom [It is scarcely
necessary to observe that bedchambers in Paris, when forming part of the
suite of reception-rooms, are often decorated no less elaborately than
the other apartments], is it not?"
"Yes," answered Dalibard, briefly.
Gabriel lifted his sharp, bright eyes to his father's face. Dalibard
turned away.
"Come!" he said with some impatience; and the boy took up his hat.
In another minute Lucretia was alone.
"Alone," in an English home, is a word implying no dreary solitude to an
accomplished woman; but alone in that foreign land, alone in those half-
furnished, desolate apartments,--few books, no musical instruments, no
companions during the day to drop in,--that loneliness was wearying. And
that mind so morbidly active! In the old Scottish legend, the spirit
that serves the wizard must be kept constantly employed; suspend its work
for a moment, and it rends the enchanter. It is so with minds that crave
for excitement, and live, without relief of heart and affection, on the
hard tasks of the intellect.
Lucretia mused over Gabriel's words and warning: "To be safe, you must
know all his secrets, or none." What was the secret which Dalibard had
not communicated to her?
She rose, stole up the cold, cheerless stairs, and ascended to the attic
which Dalibard had lately hired. It was locked; and she observed that
the lock was small,--so small that the key might be worn in a ring. She
descended, and entered her husband's usual cabinet, which adjoined the
sitting-room. All the books which the house contained were there,--a few
works on metaphysics, Spinoza in especial, the great Italian histories,
some volumes of statistics, many on physical and mechanical philosophy,
and one or two works of biography and memoirs. No light literature,--
that grace and flower of human culture, that best philosophy of all,
humanizing us with gentle art, making us wise through the humours,
elevated through the passions, tender in the affections of our kind. She
took out one of the volumes that seemed less arid than the rest, for she
was weary of her own thoughts, and began to read. To her surprise, the
first passage she opened was singularly interesting, though the title was
nothing more seductive than the "Life of a Physician of Padua in the
Sixteenth Century." It related to that singular epoch of terror in Italy
when some mysterious disease, varying in a thousand symptoms, baffled all
remedy, and long defied all conjecture,--a disease attacking chiefly the
heads of families, father and husband; rarely women. In one city, seven
hundred husbands perished, but not one wife! The disease was poison.
The hero of the memoir was one of the earlier discoverers of the true
cause of this household epidemic. He had been a chief authority in a
commission of inquiry. Startling were the details given in the work,--
the anecdotes, the histories, the astonishing craft brought daily to bear
on the victim, the wondrous perfidy of the subtle means, the variation of
the certain murder,--here swift as epilepsy, there slow and wasting as
long decline. The lecture was absorbing; and absorbed in the book
Lucretia still was, when she heard Dalibard's voice behind: he was
looking over her shoulder.
"A strange selection for so fair a student! En fant, play not with such
weapons."
"But is this all true?"
"True, though scarce a fragment of the truth. The physician was a sorry
chemist and a worse philosopher. He blundered in his analysis of the
means; and if I remember rightly, he whines like a priest at the
motives,--for see you not what was really the cause of this spreading
pestilence? It was the Saturnalia of the Weak,--a burst of mocking
license against the Strong; it was more,--it was the innate force of the
individual waging war against the many."
"I do not understand you."
"No? In that age, husbands were indeed lords of the household; they
married mere children for their lands; they neglected and betrayed them;
they were inexorable if the wife committed the faults set before her for
example. Suddenly the wife found herself armed against her tyrant. His
life was in her hands. So the weak had no mercy on the strong. But man,
too, was then, even more than now, a lonely wrestler in a crowded arena.
Brute force alone gave him distinction in courts; wealth alone brought
him justice in the halls, or gave him safety in his home. Suddenly the
frail puny lean saw that he could reach the mortal part of his giant foe.
The noiseless sling was in his hand,--it smote Goliath from afar.
Suddenly the poor man, ground to the dust, spat upon by contempt, saw
through the crowd of richer kinsmen, who shunned and bade him rot; saw
those whose death made him heir to lordship and gold and palaces and
power and esteem. As a worm through a wardrobe, that man ate through
velvet and ermine, and gnawed out the hearts that beat in his way. No.
A great intellect can comprehend these criminals, and account for the
crime. It is a mighty thing to feel in one's self that one is an army,--
more than an army! What thousands and millions of men, with trumpet and
banner, and under the sanction of glory, strive to do,--destroy a foe,--
that, with little more than an effort of the will,--with a drop, a grain,
for all his arsenal,--one man can do!"
There was a horrible enthusiasm about this reasoning devil as he spoke
thus; his crest rose, his breast expanded. That animation which a noble
thought gives to generous hearts kindled in the face of the apologist for
the darkest and basest of human crimes. Lucretia shuddered; but her
gloomy imagination was spelled; there was an interest mingled with her
terror.
"Hush! you appall me," she said at last, timidly. "But, happily, this
fearful art exists no more to tempt and destroy?"
"As a more philosophical discovery, it might be amusing to a chemist to
learn exactly what were the compounds of those ancient poisons," said
Dalibard, not directly answering the implied question. "Portions of the
art are indeed lost, unless, as I suspect, there is much credulous
exaggeration in the accounts transmitted to us. To kill by a flower, a
pair of gloves, a soap-ball,--kill by means which elude all possible
suspicion,--is it credible? What say you? An amusing research, indeed,
if one had leisure! But enough of this now; it grows late. We dine with
M. de----; he wishes to let his hotel. Why, Lucretia, if we knew a
little of this old art, par Dieu! we could soon hire the hotel! Well,
well; perhaps we may survive my cousin Jean Bellanger!"
Three days afterwards, Lucretia stood by her husband's side in the secret
chamber. From the hour when she left it, a change was perceptible in her
countenance, which gradually removed from it the character of youth.
Paler the cheek could scarce become, nor more cold the discontented,
restless eye. But it was as if some great care had settled on her brow,
and contracted yet more the stern outline of the lips. Gabriel noted the
alteration, but he did not attempt to win her confidence. He was
occupied rather in considering, first, if it were well for him to sound
deeper into the mystery he suspected; and, secondly, to what extent, and
on what terms, it became his interest to aid the designs in which, by
Dalibard's hints and kindly treatment, he foresaw that he was meant to
participate.
A word now on the rich kinsman of the Dalibards. Jean Bellanger had been
one of those prudent Republicans who had put the Revolution to profit.
By birth a Marseillais, he had settled in Paris, as an epicier, about the
year 1785, and had distinguished himself by the adaptability and finesse
which become those who fish in such troubled waters. He had sided with
Mirabeau, next with Vergniaud and the Girondins. These he forsook in
time for Danton, whose facile corruptibility made him a seductive patron.
He was a large purchaser in the sale of the emigrant property; he
obtained a contract for the supply of the army in the Netherlands; he
abandoned Danton as he had abandoned the Girondins, but without taking
any active part in the after-proceedings of the Jacobins. His next
connection was with Tallien and Barras, and he enriched himself yet more
under the Directory than he had done in the earlier stages of the
Revolution. Under cover of an appearance of bonhomie and good humour, a
frank laugh and an open countenance, Jean Bellanger had always retained
general popularity and good-will, and was one of those whom the policy of
the First Consul led him to conciliate. He had long since retired from
the more vulgar departments of trade, but continued to flourish as an
army contractor. He had a large hotel and a splendid establishment; he
was one of the great capitalists of Paris. The relationship between
Dalibard and Bellanger was not very close,--it was that of cousins twice
removed; and during Dalibard's previous residence at Paris, each
embracing different parties, and each eager in his career, the blood-tie
between them had not been much thought of, though they were good friends,
and each respected the other for the discretion with which he had kept
aloof from the more sanguinary excesses of the time. As Bellanger was
not many years older than Dalibard; as the former had but just married in
the year 1791, and had naturally before him the prospect of a family; as
his fortunes at that time, though rising, were unconfirmed; and as some
nearer relations stood between them, in the shape of two promising,
sturdy nephews,--Dalibard had not then calculated on any inheritance from
his cousin. On his return, circumstances were widely altered: Bellanger
had been married some years, and no issue had blessed his nuptials. His
nephews, draughted into the conscription, had perished in Egypt.
Dalibard apparently became his nearest relative.
To avarice or to worldly ambition there was undoubtedly something very
dazzling in the prospect thus opened to the eyes of Olivier Dalibard.
The contractor's splendid mode of living, vying with that of the fermier-
general of old, the colossal masses of capital by which he backed and
supported speculations that varied with an ingenuity rendered practical
and profound by experience, inflamed into fever the morbid restlessness
of fancy and intellect which characterized the evil scholar; for that
restlessness seemed to supply to his nature vices not constitutional to
it. Dalibard had not the avarice that belongs either to a miser or a
spendthrift. In his youth, his books and the simple desires of an
abstract student sufficed to his wants, and a habit of method and order,
a mechanical calculation which accompanied all his acts, from the least
to the greatest, preserved him, even when most poor, from neediness and
want. Nor was he by nature vain and ostentatious,--those infirmities
accompany a larger and more luxurious nature. His philosophy rather
despised, than inclined to, show. Yet since to plot and to scheme made
his sole amusement, his absorbing excitement, so a man wrapped in
himself, and with no generous ends in view, has little to plot or to
scheme for but objects of worldly aggrandizement. In this Dalibard
resembled one whom the intoxication of gambling has mastered, who neither
wants nor greatly prizes the stake, but who has grown wedded to the
venture for it. It was a madness like that of a certain rich nobleman in
our own country who, with more money than he could spend, and with a
skill in all games where skill enters that would have secured him success
of itself, having learned the art of cheating, could not resist its
indulgence. No hazard, no warning, could restrain him,--cheat he must;
the propensity became iron-strong as a Greek destiny.
That the possible chance of an inheritance so magnificent should dazzle
Lucretia and Gabriel, was yet more natural; for in them it appealed to
more direct and eloquent, though not more powerful, propensities.
Gabriel had every vice which the greed of gain most irritates and
excites. Intense covetousness lay at the core of his heart; he had the
sensual temperament, which yearns for every enjoyment, and takes pleasure
in every pomp and show of life. Lucretia, with a hardness of mind that
disdained luxury, and a certain grandeur (if such a word may be applied
to one so perverted) that was incompatible with the sordid infirmities of
the miser, had a determined and insatiable ambition, to which gold was a
necessary instrument. Wedded to one she loved, like Mainwaring, the
ambition, as we have said in a former chapter, could have lived in
another, and become devoted to intellectual efforts, in the nobler desire
for power based on fame and genius. But now she had the gloomy cravings
of one fallen, and the uneasy desire to restore herself to a lost
position; she fed as an aliment upon scorn to bitterness of all beings
and all things around her. She was gnawed by that false fever which
riots in those who seek by outward seemings and distinctions to console
themselves for the want of their own self-esteem, or who, despising the
world with which they are brought in contact, sigh for those worldly
advantages which alone justify to the world itself their contempt.
To these diseased infirmities of vanity or pride, whether exhibited in
Gabriel or Lucretia, Dalibard administered without apparent effort, not
only by his conversation, but his habits of life. He mixed with those
much wealthier than himself, but not better born; those who, in the hot
and fierce ferment of that new society, were rising fast into new
aristocracy,--the fortunate soldiers, daring speculators, plunderers of
many an argosy that had been wrecked in the Great Storm. Every one about
them was actuated by the keen desire "to make a fortune;" the desire was
contagious. They were not absolutely poor in the proper sense of the
word "poverty," with Dalibard's annuity and the interest of Lucretia's
fortune; but they were poor compared to those with whom they associated,-
-poor enough for discontent. Thus, the image of the mighty wealth from
which, perhaps, but a single life divided them, became horribly haunting.
To Gabriel's sensual vision the image presented itself in the shape of
unlimited pleasure and prodigal riot; to Lucretia it wore the solemn
majesty of power; to Dalibard himself it was but the Eureka of a
calculation,--the palpable reward of wile and scheme and dexterous
combinations. The devil had temptations suited to each.
Meanwhile, the Dalibards were more and more with the Bellangers. Olivier
glided in to talk of the chances and changes of the State and the market.
Lucretia sat for hours listening mutely to the contractor's boasts of
past frauds, or submitting to the martyrdom of his victorious games at
tric-trac. Gabriel, a spoiled darling, copied the pictures on the walls,
complimented Madame, flattered Monsieur, and fawned on both for trinkets
and crowns. Like three birds of night and omen, these three evil natures
settled on the rich man's roof.
Was the rich man himself blind to the motives which budded forth into
such attentive affection? His penetration was too acute, his ill opinion
of mankind too strong, perhaps, for such amiable self-delusions. But he
took all in good part; availed himself of Dalibard's hints and
suggestions as to the employment of his capital; was polite to Lucretia,
and readily condemned her to be beaten at tric-trac; while he accepted
with bonhomie Gabriel's spirited copies of his pictures. But at times
there was a gleam of satire and malice in his round gray eyes, and an
inward chuckle at the caresses and flatteries he received, which
perplexed Dalibard and humbled Lucretia. Had his wealth been wholly at
his own disposal, these signs would have been inauspicious; but the new
law was strict, and the bulk of Bellanger's property could not be
alienated from his nearest kin. Was not Dalibard the nearest?
These hopes and speculations did not, as we have seen, absorb the
restless and rank energies of Dalibard's crooked, but capacious and
grasping intellect. Patiently and ingeniously he pursued his main
political object,--the detection of that audacious and complicated
conspiracy against the First Consul, which ended in the tragic deaths of
Pichegru, the Duc d'Enghien, and the erring but illustrious hero of La
Vendee, George Cadoudal. In the midst of these dark plots for personal
aggrandizement and political fortune, we leave, for the moment, the
sombre, sullen soul of Olivier Dalibard.
Time has passed on, and spring is over the world. The seeds buried in
the earth burst to flower; but man's breast knoweth not the sweet
division of the seasons. In winter or summer, autumn or spring alike,
his thoughts sow the germs of his actions, and day after day his destiny
gathers in her harvests.
The joy-bells ring clear through the groves of Laughton,--an heir is born
to the old name and fair lands of St. John. And, as usual, the present
race welcomes merrily in that which shall succeed and replace it,--that
which shall thrust the enjoyers down into the black graves, and wrest
from them the pleasant goods of the world. The joy-bell of birth is a
note of warning to the knell for the dead; it wakes the worms beneath the
mould: the new-born, every year that it grows and flourishes, speeds the
parent to their feast. Yet who can predict that the infant shall become
the heir? Who can tell that Death sits not side by side with the nurse
at the cradle? Can the mother's hand measure out the woof of the Parcae,
or the father's eye detect through the darkness of the morrow the gleam
of the fatal shears?
It is market-day at a town in the midland districts of England. There
Trade takes its healthiest and most animated form. You see not the
stunted form and hollow eye of the mechanic,--poor slave of the
capitalist, poor agent and victim of the arch disequalizer, Civilization.
There strides the burly form of the farmer; there waits the ruddy hind
with his flock; there, patient, sits the miller with his samples of corn;
there, in the booths, gleam the humble wares which form the luxuries of
cottage and farm. The thronging of men, and the clacking of whips, and
the dull sound of wagon or dray, that parts the crowd as it passes, and
the lowing of herds and the bleating of sheep,--all are sounds of
movement and bustle, yet blend with the pastoral associations of the
primitive commerce, when the link between market and farm was visible and
direct.
Towards one large house in the centre of the brisk life ebbing on, you
might see stream after stream pour its way. The large doors swinging
light on their hinges, the gilt letters that shine above the threshold,
the windows, with their shutters outside cased in iron and studded with
nails, announce that that house is the bank of the town. Come in with
that yeoman whose broad face tells its tale, sheepish and down-eyed,--he
has come, not to invest, but to borrow. What matters? War is breaking
out anew, to bring the time of high prices and paper money and credit.
Honest yeoman, you will not be refused. He scratches his rough head,
pulls a leg, as he calls it, when the clerk leans over the counter, and
asks to see "Muster Mawnering hisself." The clerk points to the little
office-room of the new junior partner, who has brought 10,000 pounds and
a clear head to the firm. And the yeoman's great boots creak heavily in.
I told you so, honest yeoman; you come out with a smile on your brown
face, and your hand, that might fell an ox, buttons up your huge breeches
pocket. You will ride home with a light heart; go and dine, and be
merry.
The yeoman tramps to the ordinary; plates clatter, tongues wag, and the
borrower's full heart finds vent in a good word for that kind "Muster
Mawnering." For a wonder, all join in the praise. "He's an honour to
the town; he's a pride to the country. Thof he's such a friend at a
pinch, he's a rale mon of business. He'll make the baunk worth a
million! And how well he spoke at the great county meeting about the
war, and the laund, and them bloodthirsty Mounseers! If their members
were loike him, Muster Fox would look small!"
The day declines; the town empties; whiskeys, horses, and carts are
giving life to the roads and the lanes; and the market is deserted, and
the bank is shut up, and William Mainwaring walks back to his home at the
skirts of the town. Not villa nor cottage, that plain English house,
with its cheerful face of red brick, and its solid squareness of shape,--
a symbol of substance in the fortunes of the owner! Yet as he passes, he
sees through the distant trees the hall of the member for the town. He
pauses a moment, and sighs unquietly. That pause and that sigh betray
the germ of ambition and discontent. Why should not he, who can speak so
well, be member for the town, instead of that stammering squire? But his
reason has soon silenced the querulous murmur. He hastens his step,--he
is at home! And there, in the neat-furnished drawing-room, which looks
on the garden behind, hisses the welcoming tea-urn; and the piano is
open, and there is a packet of new books on the table; and, best of all,
there is the glad face of the sweet English wife. The happy scene was
characteristic of the time, just when the simpler and more innocent
luxuries of the higher class spread, not to spoil, but refine the middle.
The dress, air, mien, movements of the young couple; the unassuming,
suppressed, sober elegance of the house; the flower-garden, the books,
and the music, evidences of cultivated taste, not signals of display,--
all bespoke the gentle fusion of ranks before rude and uneducated wealth,
made in looms and lucky hits, rushed in to separate forever the gentleman
from the parvenu.
Spring smiles over Paris, over the spires of Notre Dame and the crowded
alleys of the Tuileries, over thousands and thousands eager, joyous,
aspiring, reckless,--the New Race of France, bound to one man's destiny,
children of glory and of carnage, whose blood the wolf and the vulture
scent, hungry, from afar!
The conspiracy against the life of the First Consul has been detected and
defeated. Pichegru is in prison, George Cadoudal awaits his trial, the
Duc d'Enghien sleeps in his bloody grave; the imperial crown is prepared
for the great soldier, and the great soldier's creatures bask in the
noonday sun. Olivier Dalibard is in high and lucrative employment; his
rise is ascribed to his talents, his opinions. No service connected with
the detection of the conspiracy is traced or traceable by the public eye.
If such exist, it is known but to those who have no desire to reveal it.
The old apartments are retained, but they are no longer dreary and
comfortless and deserted. They are gay with draperies and ormolu and
mirrors; and Madame Dalibard has her nights of reception, and Monsieur
Dalibard has already his troops of clients. In that gigantic
concentration of egotism which under Napoleon is called the State,
Dalibard has found his place. He has served to swell the power of the
unit, and the cipher gains importance by its position in the sum.
Jean Bellanger is no more. He died, not suddenly, and yet of some quick
disease,--nervous exhaustion; his schemes, they said, had worn him out.
But the state of Dalibard, though prosperous, is not that of the heir to
the dead millionnaire. What mistake is this? The bulk of that wealth
must go to the nearest kin,--so runs the law. But the will is read; and,
for the first time, Olivier Dalibard learns that the dead man had a son,-
-a son by a former marriage,--the marriage undeclared, unknown, amidst
the riot of the Revolution; for the wife was the daughter of a proscrit.
The son had been reared at a distance, put to school at Lyons, and
unavowed to the second wife, who had brought an ample dower, and whom
that discovery might have deterred from the altar. Unacknowledged
through life, in death at least the son's rights are proclaimed; and
Olivier Dalibard feels that Jean Bellanger has died in vain! For days
has the pale Provencal been closeted with lawyers; but there is no hope
in litigation. The proofs of the marriage, the birth, the identity, come
out clear and clearer; and the beardless schoolboy at Lyons reaps all the
profit of those nameless schemes and that mysterious death. Olivier
Dalibard desires the friendship, the intimacy of the heir; but the heir
is consigned to the guardianship of a merchant at Lyons, near of kin to
his mother, and the guardian responds but coldly to Olivier's letters.
Suddenly the defeated aspirant seems reconciled to his loss. The widow
Bellanger has her own separate fortune, and it is large beyond
expectation. In addition to the wealth she brought the deceased, his
affection had led him to invest vast sums in her name. The widow then is
rich,--rich as the heir himself. She is still fair. Poor woman, she
needs consolation! But, meanwhile, the nights of Olivier Dalibard are
disturbed and broken. His eye in the daytime is haggard and anxious; he
is seldom seen on foot in the streets. Fear is his companion by day, and
sits at night on his pillow. The Chouan, Pierre Guillot, who looked to
George Cadoudal as a god, knows that George Cadoudal has been betrayed,
and suspects Olivier Dalibard; and the Chouan has an arm of iron, and a
heart steeled against all mercy. Oh, how the pale scholar thirsted for
that Chouan's blood! With what relentless pertinacity, with what
ingenious research, he had set all the hounds of the police upon the
track of that single man! How notably he had failed! An avenger lived;
and Olivier Dalibard started at his own shadow on the wall. But he did
not the less continue to plot and to intrigue--nay, such occupation
became more necessary, as an escape from himself.
And in the mean while, Olivier Dalibard sought to take courage from the
recollection that the Chouan had taken an oath (and he knew that oaths
are held sacred with the Bretons) that he would keep his hand from his
knife unless he had clear evidence of treachery; such evidence existed,
but only in Dalibard's desk or the archives of Fouche. Tush, he was
safe! And so, when from dreams of fear he started at the depth of night,
so his bolder wife would whisper to him with firm, uncaressing lips:
"Olivier Dalibard, thou fearest the living: dost thou never fear the
dead? Thy dreams are haunted with a spectre. Why takes it not the
accusing shape of thy mouldering kinsman?" and Dalibard would answer, for
he was a philosopher in his cowardice: "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne
reviennent pas."
It is the notable convenience of us narrators to represent, by what is
called "soliloquy," the thoughts, the interior of the personages we
describe. And this is almost the master-work of the tale-teller,--that
is, if the soliloquy be really in words, what self-commune is in the dim
and tangled recesses of the human heart! But to this privilege we are
rarely admitted in the case of Olivier Dalibard, for he rarely communed
with himself. A sort of mental calculation, it is true, eternally went
on within him, like the wheels of a destiny; but it had become a
mechanical operation, seldom disturbed by that consciousness of thought,
with its struggles of fear and doubt, conscience and crime, which gives
its appalling interest to the soliloquy of tragedy. Amidst the
tremendous secrecy of that profound intellect, as at the bottom of a sea,
only monstrous images of terror, things of prey, stirred in cold-blooded
and devouring life; but into these deeps Olivier himself did not dive.
He did not face his own soul; his outer life and his inner life seemed
separate individualities, just as, in some complicated State, the social
machine goes on through all its numberless cycles of vice and dread,
whatever the acts of the government, which is the representative of the
State, and stands for the State in the shallow judgment of history.
Before this time Olivier Dalibard's manner to his son had greatly changed
from the indifference it betrayed in England,--it was kind and
affectionate, almost caressing; while, on the other hand, Gabriel, as if
in possession of some secret which gave him power over his father, took a
more careless and independent tone, often absented himself from the house
for days together, joined the revels of young profligates older than
himself, with whom he had formed acquaintance, indulged in spendthrift
expenses, and plunged prematurely into the stream of vicious pleasure
that oozed through the mud of Paris.
One morning Dalibard, returning from a visit to Madame Bellanger, found
Gabriel alone in the salon, contemplating his fair face and gay dress in
one of the mirrors, and smoothing down the hair, which he wore long and
sleek, as in the portraits of Raphael. Dalibard's lip curled at the
boy's coxcombry,--though such tastes he himself had fostered, according
to his ruling principles, that to govern, you must find a foible, or
instil it; but the sneer changed into a smile.
"Are you satisfied with yourself, joli garcon?" he said, with saturnine
playfulness.
"At least, sir, I hope that you will not be ashamed of me when you
formally legitimatize me as your son. The time has come, you know, to
keep your promise."
"And it shall be kept, do not fear. But first I have an employment for
you,--a mission; your first embassy, Gabriel."
"I listen, sir."
"I have to send to England a communication of the utmost importance--
public importance--to the secret agent of the French government. We are
on the eve of a descent on England. We are in correspondence with some
in London on whom we count for support. A man might be suspected and
searched,--mind, searched. You, a boy, with English name and speech,
will be my safest envoy. Bonaparte approves my selection. On your
return, he permits me to present you to him. He loves the rising
generation. In a few days you will be prepared to start."
Despite the calm tone of the father, so had the son, from the instinct of
fear and self-preservation, studied every accent, every glance of
Olivier,--so had he constituted himself a spy upon the heart whose
perfidy was ever armed, that he detected at once in the proposal some
scheme hostile to his interests. He made, however, no opposition to the
plan suggested; and seemingly satisfied with his obedience, the father
dismissed him.
As soon as he was in the streets, Gabriel went straight to the house of
Madame Bellanger. The hotel had been purchased in her name, and she
therefore retained it. Since her husband's death he had avoided that
house, before so familiar to him; and now he grew pale and breathed hard
as he passed by the porter's lodge up the lofty stairs.
He knew of his father's recent and constant visits at the house; and
without conjecturing precisely what were Olivier's designs, he connected
them, in the natural and acquired shrewdness he possessed, with the
wealthy widow. He resolved to watch, observe, and draw his own
conclusions. As he entered Madame Bellanger's room rather abruptly, he
observed her push aside amongst her papers something she had been gazing
on,--something which sparkled to his eyes. He sat himself down close to
her with the caressing manner he usually adopted towards women; and in
the midst of the babbling talk with which ladies generally honour boys,
he suddenly, as if by accident, displaced the papers, and saw his
father's miniature set in brilliants. The start of the widow, her blush,
and her exclamation strengthened the light that flashed upon his mind.
"Oh, ho! I see now," he said laughing, "why my father is always praising
black hair; and--nay, nay--gentlemen may admire ladies in Paris, surely?"
"Pooh, my dear child, your father is an old friend of my poor husband,
and a near relation too! But, Gabriel, mon petit ange, you had better
not say at home that you have seen this picture; Madame Dalibard might be
foolish enough to be angry."
"To be sure not. I have kept a secret before now!" and again the boy's
cheek grew pale, and he looked hurriedly round.
"And you are very fond of Madame Dalibard too; so you must not vex her."
"Who says I'm fond of Madame Dalibard? A stepmother!"
"Why, your father, of course,--il est si bon, ce pauvre Dalibard; and all
men like cheerful faces. But then, poor lady,--an Englishwoman, so
strange here; very natural she should fret, and with bad health, too."
"Bad health! Ah, I remember! She, also, does not seem likely to live
long!"
"So your poor father apprehends. Well, well; how uncertain life is! Who
would have thought dear Bellanger would have--"
Gabriel rose hastily, and interrupted the widow's pathetic reflections.
"I only ran in to say Bon jour. I must leave you now."
"Adieu, my dear boy,--not a word on the miniature! By the by, here's a
shirt-pin for you,--tu es joli comme un amour."
All was clear now to Gabriel; it was necessary to get rid of him, and
forever. Dalibard might dread his attachment to Lucretia,--he would
dread still more his closer intimacy with the widow of Bellanger, should
that widow wed again, and Dalibard, freed like her (by what means?), be
her choice! Into that abyss of wickedness, fathomless to the innocent,
the young villanous eye plunged, and surveyed the ground; a terror seized
on him,--a terror of life and death. Would Dalibard spare even his own
son, if that son had the power to injure? This mission, was it exile
only,--only a fall back to the old squalor of his uncle's studio; only
the laying aside of a useless tool? Or was it a snare to the grave?
Demon as Dalibard was, doubtless the boy wronged him. But guilt
construes guilt for the worst.
Gabriel had formerly enjoyed the thought to match himself, should danger
come, with Dalibard; the hour had come, and he felt his impotence. Brave
his father, and refuse to leave France! From that, even his reckless
hardihood shrank, as from inevitable destruction. But to depart,--be the
poor victim and dupe; after having been let loose amongst the riot of
pleasure, to return to labour and privation,--from that option his vanity
and his senses vindictively revolted. And Lucretia, the only being who
seemed to have a human kindness to him! Through all the vicious egotism
of his nature, he had some grateful sentiments for her; and even the
egotism assisted that unwonted amiability, for he felt that, Lucretia
gone, he had no hold on his father's house, that the home of her
successor never would be his. While thus brooding, he lifted his eyes,
and saw Dalibard pass in his carriage towards the Tuileries. The house,
then, was clear; he could see Lucretia alone. He formed his resolution
at once, and turned homewards. As he did so, he observed a man at the
angle of the street, whose eyes followed Dalibard's carriage with an
expression of unmistakable hate and revenge; but scarcely had he marked
the countenance, before the man, looking hurriedly round, darted away,
and was lost amongst the crowd.
Now, that countenance was not quite unfamiliar to Gabriel. He had seen
it before, as he saw it now,--hastily, and, as it were, by fearful
snatches. Once he had marked, on returning home at twilight, a figure
lurking by the house; and something, in the quickness with which it
turned from his gaze, joined to his knowledge of Dalibard's
apprehensions, made him mention the circumstance to his father when he
entered. Dalibard bade him hasten with a note, written hurriedly, to an
agent of the police, whom he kept lodged near at hand. The man was still
on the threshold when the boy went out on this errand, and he caught a
glimpse of his face; but before the police-agent reached the spot, the
ill-omened apparition had vanished. Gabriel now, as his eye rested full
upon that threatening brow and those burning eyes, was convinced that be
saw before him the terrible Pierre Guillot, whose very name blenched his
father's cheek. When the figure retreated, he resolved at once to
pursue. He hurried through the crowd amidst which the man had
disappeared, and looked eagerly into the faces of those he jostled;
sometimes at the distance he caught sight of a figure which appeared to
resemble the one which he pursued, but the likeness faded on approach.
The chase, however, vague and desultory as it was, led him on till his
way was lost amongst labyrinths of narrow and unfamiliar streets. Heated
and thirsty, he paused, at last, before a small cafe, entered to ask for
a draught of lemonade, and behold, chance had favoured him! The man he
sought was seated there before a bottle of wine, and intently reading the
newspaper. Gabriel sat himself down at the adjoining table. In a few
moments the man was joined by a newcomer; the two conversed, but in
whispers so low that Gabriel was unable to hear their conversation,
though he caught more than once the name of "George." Both the men were
violently excited, and the expression of their countenances was menacing
and sinister. The first comer pointed often to the newspaper, and read
passages from it to his companion. This suggested to Gabriel the demand
for another journal. When the waiter brought it to him, his eye rested
upon a long paragraph, in which the name of George Cadoudal frequently
occurred. In fact, all the journals of the day were filled with
speculations on the conspiracy and trial of that fiery martyr to an
erring adaptation of a noble principle. Gabriel knew that his father had
had a principal share in the detection of the defeated enterprise; and
his previous persuasions were confirmed.
His sense of hearing grew sharper by continued effort, and at length he
heard the first comer say distinctly, "If I were but sure that I had
brought this fate upon George by introducing to him that accursed
Dalibard; if my oath did but justify me, I would--" The concluding
sentence was lost. A few moments after, the two men rose, and from the
familiar words that passed between them and the master of the cafe, who
approached, himself, to receive the reckoning, the shrewd boy perceived
that the place was no unaccustomed haunt. He crept nearer and nearer;
and as the landlord shook hands with his customer, he heard distinctly
the former address him by the name of "Guillot." When the men withdrew,
Gabriel followed them at a distance (taking care first to impress on his
memory the name of the cafe, and the street in which it was placed) and,
as he thought, unobserved; he was mistaken. Suddenly, in one street more
solitary than the rest, the man whom he was mainly bent on tracking
turned round, advanced to Gabriel, who was on the other side of the
street, and laid his hand upon him so abruptly that the boy was fairly
taken by surprise.
"Who bade you follow us?" said he, with so dark and fell an expression of
countenance that even Gabriel's courage failed him. "No evasion, no
lies; speak out, and at once;" and the grasp tightened on the boy's
throat.
Gabriel's readiness of resource and presence of mind did not long forsake
him.
"Loose your hold, and I will tell you--you stifle me." The man slightly
relaxed his grasp, and Gabriel said quickly "My mother perished on the
guillotine in the Reign of Terror; I am for the Bourbons. I thought I
overheard words which showed sympathy for poor George, the brave Chouan.
I followed you; for I thought I was following friends."
The man smiled as he fixed his steady eye upon the unflinching child.
"My poor lad," he said gently, "I believe you,--pardon me; but follow us
no more,--we are dangerous!" He waved his hand, and strode away and
rejoined his companion, and Gabriel reluctantly abandoned the pursuit and
went homeward. It was long before he reached his father's house, for he
had strayed into a strange quarter of Paris, and had frequently to
inquire the way. At length he reached home, and ascended the stairs to a
small room in which Lucretia usually sat, and which was divided by a
narrow corridor from the sleeping-chamber of herself and Dalibard. His
stepmother, leaning her cheek upon her hand, was seated by the window, so
absorbed in some gloomy thoughts, which cast over her rigid face a shade,
intense and solemn as despair, that she did not perceive the approach of
the boy till he threw his arms round her neck, and then she started as in
alarm.
"You! only you," she said, with a constrained smile; "see, my nerves are
not so strong as they were."
"You are disturbed, belle-mere,--has he been vexing you?"
"He--Dalibard? No, indeed; we were only this morning discussing matters
of business."
"Business,--that means money."
"Truly," said Lucretia, "money does make the staple of life's business.
In spite of his new appointment, your father needs some sums in hand,--
favours are to be bought, opportunities for speculation occur, and--"
"And my father," interrupted Gabriel, "wishes your consent to raise the
rest of your portion?"
Lucretia looked surprised, but answered quietly: "He had my consent long
since; but the trustees to the marriage-settlement--mere men of business,
my uncle's bankers; for I had lost all claim on my kindred--refuse, or at
least interpose such difficulties as amount to refusal."
"But that reply came some days since," said Gabriel, musingly.
"How did you know,--did your father tell you?"
"Poor belle-mere!" said Gabriel, almost with pity; "can you live in this
house and not watch all that passes,--every stranger, every message,
every letter? But what, then, does he wish with you?"
"He has suggested my returning to England and seeing the trustees myself.
His interest can obtain my passport."
"And you have refused?"
"I have not consented."
"Consent!--hush!--your maid; Marie is not waiting without;" and Gabriel
rose and looked forth. "No, confound these doors! none close as they
ought in this house. Is it not a clause in your settlement that the half
of your fortune now invested goes to the survivor?"
"It is," replied Lucretia, struck and thrilled at the question. "How,
again, did you know this?"
"I saw my father reading the copy. If you die first, then, he has all.
If he merely wanted the money, he would not send you away."
There was a terrible pause. Gabriel resumed: "I trust you, it may be,
with my life; but I will speak out. My father goes much to Bellanger's
widow; she is rich and weak. Come to England! Yes, come; for he is
about to dismiss me. He fears that I shall be in the way, to warn you,
perhaps, or to--to-- In short, both of us are in his way. He gives you
an escape. Once in England, the war which is breaking out will prevent
your return. He will twist the laws of divorce to his favour; he will
marry again! What then? He spares you what remains of your fortune; he
spares your life. Remain here,--cross his schemes, and-- No, no; come to
England,--safer anywhere than here!"
As he spoke, great changes had passed over Lucretia's countenance. At
first it was the flash of conviction, then the stunned shock of horror;
now she rose, rose to her full height, and there was a livid and deadly
light in her eyes,--the light of conscious courage and power and revenge.
"Fool," she muttered, "with all his craft! Fool, fool! As if, in the
war of household perfidy, the woman did not always conquer! Man's only
chance is to be mailed in honour."
"But," said Gabriel, overhearing her, "but you do not remember what it
is. There is nothing you can see and guard against. It is not like an
enemy face to face; it is death in the food, in the air, in the touch.
You stretch out your arms in the dark, you feel nothing, and you die!
Oh, do not fancy that I have not thought well (for I am almost a man now)
if there were no means to resist,--there are none! As well make head
against the plague,--it is in the atmosphere. Come to England, and
return. Live poorly, if you must, but live--but live!"
"Return to England poor and despised, and bound still to him, or a
disgraced and divorced wife,--disgraced by the low-born dependant on my
kinsman's house,--and fawn perhaps upon my sister and her husband for
bread! Never! I am at my post, and I will not fly."
"Brave, brave!" said the boy, clapping his hands, and sincerely moved by
a daring superior to his own; "I wish I could help you!"
Lucretia's eye rested on him with the full gaze, so rare in its looks.
She drew him to her and kissed his brow. "Boy, through life, whatever
our guilt and its doom, we are bound to each other. I may yet live to
have wealth; if so, it is yours as a son's. I may be iron to others,--
never to you. Enough of this; I must reflect!" She passed her hands
over her eyes a moment, and resumed: "You would help me in my self-
defence; I think you can. You have been more alert in your watch than I
have. You must have means I have not secured. Your father guards well
all his papers."
"I have keys to every desk. My foot passed the threshold of that room
under the roof before yours. But no; his powers can never be yours! He
has never confided to you half his secrets. He has antidotes for every--
every--"
"Hist! what noise is that? Only the shower on the casements. No, no,
child, that is not my object. Cadoudal's conspiracy! Your father has
letters from Fouche which show how he has betrayed others who are
stronger to avenge than a woman and a boy."
"Well?"
"I would have those letters. Give me the keys. But hold! Gabriel,
Gabriel, you may yet misjudge him. This woman--wife to the dead man--his
wife! Horror! Have you no proofs of what you imply?"
"Proofs!" echoed Gabriel, in a tone of wonder; "I can but see and
conjecture. You are warned, watch and decide for yourself. But again I
say, come to England; I shall go!"
Without reply, Lucretia took the keys from Gabriel's half-reluctant hand,
and passed into her husband's writing-room. When she had entered, she
locked the door. She passed at once to a huge secretary, of which the
key was small as a fairy's work. She opened it with ease by one of the
counterfeits. No love-correspondence--the first object of her search,
for she was woman--met her eye. What need of letters, when interviews
were so facile? But she soon found a document that told all which love-
letters could tell,--it was an account of the moneys and possessions of
Madame Bellanger; and there were pencil notes on the margin: "Vautran
will give four hundred thousand francs for the lands in Auvergne,--to be
accepted. Consult on the power of sale granted to a second husband.
Query, if there is no chance of the heir-at-law disputing the moneys
invested in Madame B.'s name,"--and such memoranda as a man notes down in
the schedule of properties about to be his own. In these inscriptions
there was a hideous mockery of all love; like the blue lights of
corruption, they showed the black vault of the heart. The pale reader
saw what her own attractions had been, and, fallen as she was, she smiled
superior in her bitterness of scorn. Arranged methodically with the
precision of business, she found the letters she next looked for; one
recognizing Dalibard's services in the detection of the conspiracy, and
authorizing him to employ the police in the search of Pierre Guillot,
sufficed for her purpose. She withdrew, and secreted it. She was about
to lock up the secretary, when her eye fell on the title of a small
manuscript volume in a corner; and as shet read, she pressed one hand
convulsively to her heart, while twice with the other she grasped the
volume, and twice withdrew the grasp. The title ran harmlessly thus:
"Philosophical and Chemical Inquiries into the Nature and Materials of
the Poisons in Use between the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Centuries."
Hurriedly, and at last as if doubtful of herself, she left the
manuscript, closed the secretary, and returned to Gabriel.
"You have got the paper you seek?" he said.
"Yes."
"Then whatever you do, you must be quick; he will soon discover the
loss."
"I will be quick."
"It is I whom he will suspect," said Gabriel, in alarm, as that thought
struck him. "No, for my sake do not take the letter till I am gone. Do
not fear in the mean time; he will do nothing against you while I am
here."
"I will replace the letter till then," said Lucretia, meekly. "You have
a right to my first thoughts." So she went back, and Gabriel (suspicious
perhaps) crept after her.
As she replaced the document, he pointed to the manuscript which had
tempted her. "I have seen that before; how I longed for it! If anything
ever happens to him, I claim that as my legacy."
Their hands met as he said this, and grasped each other convulsively;
Lucretia relocked the secretary, and when she gained the next room, she
tottered to a chair. Her strong nerves gave way for the moment; she
uttered no cry, but by the whiteness of her face, Gabriel saw that she
was senseless,--senseless for a minute or so; scarcely more. But the
return to consciousness with a clenched hand, and a brow of defiance, and
a stare of mingled desperation and dismay, seemed rather the awaking from
some frightful dream of violence and struggle than the slow, languid
recovery from the faintness of a swoon. Yes, henceforth, to sleep was to
couch by a serpent,--to breathe was to listen for the avalanche! Thou
who didst trifle so wantonly with Treason, now gravely front the grim
comrade thou hast won; thou scheming desecrator of the Household Gods,
now learn, to the last page of dark knowledge, what the hearth is without
them!
Gabriel was strangely moved as he beheld that proud and solitary despair.
An instinct of nature had hitherto checked him from actively aiding
Lucretia in that struggle with his father which could but end in the
destruction of one or the other. He had contented himself with
forewarnings, with hints, with indirect suggestions; but now all his
sympathy was so strongly roused on her behalf that the last faint scruple
of filial conscience vanished into the abyss of blood over which stood
that lonely Titaness. He drew near, and clasping her hand, said, in a
quick and broken voice,--
"Listen! You know where to find proof of my fa--that is, of Dalibard's
treason to the conspirators, you know the name of the man he dreads as an
avenger, and you know that he waits but the proof to strike; but you do
not know where to find that man, if his revenge is wanting for yourself.
The police have not hunted him out: how can you? Accident has made me
acquainted with one of his haunts. Give me a single promise, and I will
put you at least upon that clew,--weak, perhaps, but as yet the sole one
to be followed. Promise me that, only in defence of your own life, not
for mere jealousy, you will avail yourself of the knowledge, and you
shall know all I do!"
"Do you think," said Lucretia, in a calm, cold voice, "that it is for
jealousy, which is love, that I would murder all hope, all peace? For we
have here"--and she smote her breast--"here, if not elsewhere, a heaven
and a hell! Son, I will not harm your father, except in self-defence.
But tell me nothing that may make the son a party in the father's doom."
"The father slew the mother," muttered Gabriel, between his clenched
teeth; "and to me, you have wellnigh supplied her place. Strike, if need
be, in her name! If you are driven to want the arm of Pierre Guillot,
seek news of him at the Cafe Dufour, Rue S----, Boulevard du Temple. Be
calm now; I hear your husband's step."
A few days more, and Gabriel is gone! Wife and husband are alone with
each other. Lucretia has refused to depart. Then that mute coma of
horror, that suspense of two foes in the conflict of death; for the
subtle, prying eye of Olivier Dalibard sees that he himself is
suspected,--further he shuns from sifting! Glance fastens on glance, and
then hurries smilingly away. From the cup grins a skeleton, at the board
warns a spectre. But how kind still the words, and how gentle the tone;
and they lie down side by side in the marriage-bed,--brain plotting
against brain, heart loathing heart. It is a duel of life and death
between those sworn through life and beyond death at the altar. But it
is carried on with all the forms and courtesies of duel in the age of
chivalry. No conjugal wrangling, no slip of the tongue; the oil is on
the surface of the wave,--the monsters in the hell of the abyss war
invisibly below. At length, a dull torpor creeps over the woman; she
feels the taint in her veins,--the slow victory is begun. What mattered
all her vigilance and caution? Vainly glide from the fangs of the
serpent,--his very breath suffices to destroy! Pure seems the draught
and wholesome the viand,--that master of the science of murder needs not
the means of the bungler! Then, keen and strong from the creeping
lethargy started the fierce instinct of self and the ruthless impulse of
revenge. Not too late yet to escape; for those subtle banes, that are to
defy all detection, work but slowly to their end.
One evening a woman, closely mantled, stood at watch by the angle of a
wall. The light came dim and muffled from the window of a cafe hard at
hand; the reflection slept amidst the shadows on the dark pavement, and
save a solitary lamp swung at distance in the vista over the centre of
the narrow street, no ray broke the gloom. The night was clouded and
starless, the wind moaned in gusts, and the rain fell heavily; but the
gloom and the loneliness did not appall the eye, and the wind did not
chill the heart, and the rain fell unheeded on the head of the woman at
her post. At times she paused in her slow, sentry-like pace to and fro,
to look through the window of the cafe, and her gaze fell always on one
figure seated apart from the rest. At length her pulse beat more quickly,
and the patient lips smiled sternly. The figure had risen to depart. A
man came out and walked quickly up the street; the woman approached, and
when the man was under the single lamp swung aloft, he felt his arm
touched: the woman was at his side, and looking steadily into his face--
"You are Pierre Guillot, the Breton, the friend of George Cadoudal. Will
you be his avenger?"
The Chouan's first impulse had been to place his hand in his vest, and
something shone bright in the lamp-light, clasped in those iron fingers.
The voice and the manner reassured him, and he answered readily,--
"I am he whom you seek, and I only live to avenge."
"Read, then, and act," answered the woman, as she placed a paper in his
hands.
At Laughton the babe is on the breast of the fair mother, and the father
sits beside the bed; and mother and father dispute almost angrily whether
mother or father those soft, rounded features of slumbering infancy
resemble most. At the red house, near the market-town, there is a
hospitable bustle. William is home earlier than usual. Within the last
hour, Susan has been thrice into every room. Husband and wife are now
watching at the window. The good Fieldens, with a coach full of
children, are expected, every moment, on a week's visit at least.
In the cafe in the Boulevard du Temple sit Pierre Guillot, the Chouan,
and another of the old band of brigands whom George Cadoudal had mustered
in Paris. There is an expression of content on Guillot's countenance,--
it seems more open than usual, and there is a complacent smile on his
lips. He is whispering low to his friend in the intervals of eating,--an
employment pursued with the hearty gusto of a hungry man. But his friend
does not seem to sympathize with the cheerful feelings of his comrade; he
is pale, and there is terror on his face; and you may see that the
journal in his hand trembles like a leaf.
In the gardens of the Tuileries some score or so of gossips group
together.
"And no news of the murderer?" asked one.
"No; but the man who had been friend to Robespierre must have made secret
enemies enough."
"Ce pauvre Dalibard! He was not mixed up with the Terrorists,
nevertheless."
"Ah, but the more deadly for that, perhaps; a sly man was Olivier
Dalibard!"
"What's the matter?" said an employee, lounging up to the group. "Are
you talking of Olivier Dalibard? It is but the other day he had Marsan's
appointment. He is now to have Pleyel's. I heard it two days ago; a
capital thing! Peste! il ira loin. We shall have him a senator soon."
"Speak for yourself," quoth a ci-devant abbe, with a laugh; "I should be
sorry to see him again soon, wherever he be."
"Plait-il? I don't understand you!"
"Don't you know that Olivier Dalibard is murdered, found stabbed,--in his
own house, too!"
"Ciel! Pray tell me all you know. His place, then, is vacant!"
"Why, it seems that Dalibard, who had been brought up to medicine, was
still fond of chemical experiments. He hired a room at the top of the
house for such scientific amusements. He was accustomed to spend part of
his nights there. They found him at morning bathed in his blood, with
three ghastly wounds in his side, and his fingers cut to the bone. He
had struggled hard with the knife that butchered him."
"In his own house!" said a lawyer. "Some servant or spendthrift heir."
"He has no heir but young Bellanger, who will be riche a millions, and is
now but a schoolboy at Lyons. No; it seems that the window was left
open, and that it communicates with the rooftops. There the murderer had
entered, and by that way escaped; for they found the leads of the gutter
dabbled with blood. The next house was uninhabited,--easy enough to get
in there, and lie perdu till night."
"Hum!" said the lawyer. "But the assassin could only have learned
Dalibard's habits from some one in the house. Was the deceased married?"
"Oh, yes,--to an Englishwoman."
"She had lovers, perhaps?"
"Pooh, lovers! The happiest couple ever known; you should have seen them
together! I dined there last week."
"It is strange," said the lawyer.
"And he was getting on so well," muttered a hungry-looking man.
"And his place is vacant!" repeated the employee, as he quitted the crowd
abstractedly.
In the house of Olivier Dalibard sits Lucretia alone, and in her own
usual morning-room. The officer appointed to such tasks by the French
law has performed his visit, and made his notes, and expressed
condolence with the widow, and promised justice and retribution, and
placed his seal on the locks till the representatives of the heir-at-law
shall arrive; and the heir-at-law is the very boy who had succeeded so
unexpectedly to the wealth of Jean Bellanger the contractor! But
Lucretia has obtained beforehand all she wishes to save from the rest. An
open box is on the floor, into which her hand drops noiselessly a volume
in manuscript. On the forefinger of that hand is a ring, larger and more
massive than those usually worn by women,--by Lucretia never worn before.
Why should that ring have been selected with such care from the dead
man's hoards? Why so precious the dull opal in that cumbrous setting?
From the hand the volume drops without sound into the box, as those whom
the secrets of the volume instruct you to destroy may drop without noise
into the grave. The trace of some illness, recent and deep, nor
conquered yet, has ploughed lines in that young countenance, and dimmed
the light of those searching eyes. Yet courage! the poison is arrested,
the poisoner is no more. Minds like thine, stern woman, are cased in
coffers of steel, and the rust as yet has gnawed no deeper than the
surface. So over that face, stamped with bodily suffering, plays a calm
smile of triumph. The schemer has baffled the schemer! Turn now to the
right, pass by that narrow corridor: you are in the marriage-chamber; the
windows are closed; tall tapers burn at the foot of the bed. Now go back
to that narrow corridor. Disregarded, thrown aside, are a cloth and a
besom: the cloth is wet still; but here and there the red stains are dry,
and clotted as with bloody glue; and the hairs of the besom start up,
torn and ragged, as if the bristles had a sense of some horror, as if
things inanimate still partook of men's dread at men's deeds. If you
passed through the corridor and saw in the shadow of the wall that
homeliest of instruments cast away and forgotten, you would smile at the
slatternly housework. But if you knew that a corpse had been borne down
those stairs to the left,--borne along those floors to that marriage-
bed,--with the blood oozing and gushing and plashing below as the bearers
passed with their burden, then straight that dead thing would take the
awe of the dead being; it told its own tale of violence and murder; it
had dabbled in the gore of the violated clay; it had become an evidence
of the crime. No wonder that its hairs bristled up, sharp and ragged, in
the shadow of the wall.
The first part of the tragedy ends; let fall the curtain. When next it
rises, years will have passed away, graves uncounted will have wrought
fresh hollows in our merry sepulchre,--sweet earth! Take a sand from the
shore, take a drop from the ocean,--less than sand-grain and drop in
man's planet one Death and one Crime! On the map, trace all oceans, and
search out every shore,--more than seas, more than lands, in God's
balance shall weigh one Death and one Crime!
PART THE SECOND.
PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND.
The century has advanced. The rush of the deluge has ebbed back; the old
landmarks have reappeared; the dynasties Napoleon willed into life have
crumbled to the dust; the plough has passed over Waterloo; autumn after
autumn the harvests have glittered on that grave of an empire. Through
the immense ocean of universal change we look back on the single track
which our frail boat has cut through the waste. As a star shines
impartially over the measureless expanse, though it seems to gild but one
broken line into each eye, so, as our memory gazes on the past, the light
spreads not over all the breadth of the waste where nations have battled
and argosies gone down,--it falls narrow and confined along the single
course we have taken; we lean over the small raft on which we float, and
see the sparkles but reflected from the waves that it divides.
On the terrace at Laughton but one step paces slowly. The bride clings
not now to the bridegroom's arm. Though pale and worn, it is still the
same gentle face; but the blush of woman's love has gone from it
evermore.
Charles Vernon (to call him still by the name in which he is best known
to us) sleeps in the vault of the St. Johns. He had lived longer than he
himself had expected, than his physician had hoped,--lived, cheerful and
happy, amidst quiet pursuits and innocent excitements. Three sons had
blessed his hearth, to mourn over his grave. But the two elder were
delicate and sickly. They did not long survive him, and died within a
few months of each other. The third seemed formed of a different mould
and constitution from his brethren. To him descended the ancient
heritage of Laughton, and he promised to enjoy it long.
It is Vernon's widow who walks alone in the stately terrace; sad still,
for she loved well the choice of her youth, and she misses yet the
children in the grave. From the date of Vernon's death, she wore
mourning without and within; and the sorrows that came later broke more
the bruised reed,--sad still, but resigned. One son survives, and earth
yet has the troubled hopes and the holy fears of affection. Though that
son be afar, in sport or in earnest, in pleasure or in toil, working out
his destiny as man, still that step is less solitary than it seems. When
does the son's image not walk beside the mother? Though she lives in
seclusion, though the gay world tempts no more, the gay world is yet
linked to her thoughts. From the distance she hears its murmurs in
music. Her fancy still mingles with the crowd, and follows on, to her
eye, outshining all the rest. Never vain in herself, she is vain now of
another; and the small triumphs of the young and well-born seem trophies
of renown to the eyes so tenderly deceived.
In the old-fashioned market-town still the business goes on, still the
doors of the bank open and close every moment on the great day of the
week; but the names over the threshold are partially changed. The junior
partner is busy no more at the desk; not wholly forgotten, if his name
still is spoken, it is not with thankfulness and praise. A something
rests on the name,--that something which dims and attaints; not proven,
not certain, but suspected and dubious. The head shakes, the voice
whispers; and the attorney now lives in the solid red house at the verge
of the town.
In the vicarage, Time, the old scythe-bearer, has not paused from his
work. Still employed on Greek texts, little changed, save that his hair
is gray and that some lines in his kindly face tell of sorrows as of
years, the vicar sits in his parlour; but the children no longer, blithe-
voiced and rose-cheeked, dart through the rustling espaliers. Those
children, grave men or staid matrons (save one whom Death chose, and
therefore now of all best beloved!) are at their posts in the world. The
young ones are flown from the nest, and, with anxious wings, here and
there, search food in their turn for their young. But the blithe voice
and rose-cheek of the child make not that loss which the hearth misses
the most. From childhood to manhood, and from manhood to departure, the
natural changes are gradual and prepared. The absence most missed is
that household life which presided, which kept things in order, and must
be coaxed if a chair were displaced. That providence in trifles, that
clasp of small links, that dear, bustling agency,--now pleased, now
complaining,--dear alike in each change of its humour; that active life
which has no self of its own; like the mind of a poet, though its prose
be the humblest, transferring self into others, with its right to be
cross, and its charter to scold; for the motive is clear,--it takes what
it loves too anxiously to heart. The door of the parlour is open, the
garden-path still passes before the threshold; but no step now has full
right to halt at the door and interrupt the grave thought on Greek texts;
no small talk on details and wise sayings chimes in with the wrath of
"Medea." The Prudent Genius is gone from the household; and perhaps as
the good scholar now wearily pauses, and looks out on the silent garden,
he would have given with joy all that Athens produced, from Aeschylus to
Plato, to hear again from the old familiar lips the lament on torn
jackets, or the statistical economy of eggs.
But see, though the wife is no more, though the children have departed,
the vicar's home is not utterly desolate. See, along the same walk on
which William soothed Susan's fears and won her consent,--see, what fairy
advances? Is it Susan returned to youth? How like! Yet look again, and
how unlike! The same, the pure, candid regard; the same, the clear,
limpid blue of the eye; the same, that fair hue of the hair,--light, but
not auburn; more subdued, more harmonious than that equivocal colour
which too nearly approaches to red. But how much more blooming and
joyous than Susan's is that exquisite face in which all Hebe smiles
forth; how much airier the tread, light with health; how much rounder, if
slighter still, the wave of that undulating form! She smiles, her lips
move, she is conversing with herself; she cannot be all silent, even when
alone, for the sunny gladness of her nature must have vent like a bird's.
But do not fancy that that gladness speaks the levity which comes from
the absence of thought; it is rather from the depth of thought that it
springs, as from the depth of a sea comes its music. See, while she
pauses and listens, with her finger half-raised to her lip, as amidst
that careless jubilee of birds she hears a note more grave and
sustained,--the nightingale singing by day (as sometimes, though rarely,
he is heard,--perhaps because he misses his mate; perhaps because he sees
from his bower the creeping form of some foe to his race),--see, as she
listens now to that plaintive, low-chanted warble, how quickly the smile
is sobered, how the shade, soft and pensive, steals over the brow. It is
but the mystic sympathy with Nature that bestows the smile or the shade.
In that heart lightly moved beats the fine sense of the poet. It is the
exquisite sensibility of the nerves that sends its blithe play to those
spirits, and from the clearness of the atmosphere comes, warm and
ethereal, the ray of that light.
And does the roof of the pastor give shelter to Helen Mainwaring's youth?
Has Death taken from her the natural protectors? Those forms which we
saw so full of youth and youth's heart in that very spot, has the grave
closed on them yet? Yet! How few attain to the age of the Psalmist!
Twenty-seven years have passed since that date: how often, in those
years, have the dark doors opened for the young as for the old! William
Mainwaring died first, careworn and shamebowed; the blot on his name had
cankered into his heart. Susan's life, always precarious, had struggled
on, while he lived, by the strong power of affection and will; she would
not die, for who then could console him? But at his death the power gave
way. She lingered, but lingered dyingly, for three years; and then, for
the first time since William's death, she smiled: that smile remained on
the lips of the corpse. They had had many trials, that young couple whom
we left so prosperous and happy. Not till many years after their
marriage had one sweet consoler been born to them. In the season of
poverty and shame and grief it came; and there was no pride on
Mainwaring's brow when they placed his first-born in his arms. By her
will, the widow consigned Helen to the joint guardianship of Mr. Fielden
and her sister; but the latter was abroad, her address unknown, so the
vicar for two years had had sole charge of the orphan. She was not
unprovided for. The sum that Susan brought to her husband had been long
since gone, it is true,--lost in the calamity which had wrecked William
Mainwaring's name and blighted his prospects; but Helen's grandfather,
the landagent, had died some time subsequent to that event, and, indeed,
just before William's death. He had never forgiven his son the stain on
his name,--never assisted, never even seen him since that fatal day; but
he left to Helen a sum of about 8,000 pounds; for she, at least, was
innocent. In Mr. Fielden's eyes, Helen was therefore an heiress. And
who amongst his small range of acquaintance was good enough for her?--not
only so richly portioned, but so lovely,--accomplished, too; for her
parents had of late years lived chiefly in France, and languages there
are easily learned, and masters cheap. Mr. Fielden knew but one, whom
Providence had also consigned to his charge,--the supposed son of his old
pupil Ardworth; but though a tender affection existed between the two
young persons, it seemed too like that of brother and sister to afford
much ground for Mr. Fielden's anxiety or hope.
From his window the vicar observed the still attitude of the young orphan
for a few moments; then he pushed aside his books, rose, and approached
her. At the sound of his tread she woke from her revery and bounded
lightly towards him.
"Ah, you would not see me before!" she said, in a voice in which there
was the slightest possible foreign accent, which betrayed the country in
which her childhood had been passed; "I peeped in twice at the window. I
wanted you so much to walk to the village. But you will come now, will
you not?" added the girl, coaxingly, as she looked up at him under the
shade of her straw hat.
"And what do you want in the village, my pretty Helen?"
"Why, you know it is fair day, and you promised Bessie that you would buy
her a fairing,--to say nothing of me."
"Very true, and I ought to look in; it will help to keep the poor people
from drinking. A clergyman should mix with his parishioners in their
holidays. We must not associate our office only with grief and sickness
and preaching. We will go. And what fairing are you to have?"
"Oh, something very brilliant, I promise you! I have formed grand
notions of a fair. I am sure it must be like the bazaars we read of last
night in that charming 'Tour in the East.'"
The vicar smiled, half benignly, half anxiously. "My dear child, it is
so like you to suppose a village fair must be an Eastern bazaar. If you
always thus judge of things by your fancy, how this sober world will
deceive you, poor Helen!"
"It is not my fault; ne me grondez pas, mechant," answered Helen, hanging
her head. "But come, sir, allow, at least, that if I let my romance, as
you call it, run away with me now and then, I can still content myself
with the reality. What, you shake your head still? Don't you remember
the sparrow?"
"Ha! ha! yes,--the sparrow that the pedlar sold you for a goldfinch; and
you were so proud of your purchase, and wondered so much why you could
not coax the goldfinch to sing, till at last the paint wore away, and it
was only a poor little sparrow!"
"Go on! Confess: did I fret then? Was I not as pleased with my dear
sparrow as I should have been with the prettiest goldfinch that ever
sang? Does not the sparrow follow me about and nestle on my shoulder,
dear little thing? And I was right after all; for if I had not fancied
it a goldfinch, I should not have bought it, perhaps. But now I would
not change it for a goldfinch,--no, not even for that nightingale I heard
just now. So let me still fancy the poor fair a bazaar; it is a double
pleasure, first to fancy the bazaar, and then to be surprised at the
fair."
"You argue well," said the vicar, as they now entered the village; "I
really think, in spite of all your turn for poetry and Goldsmith and
Cowper, that you would take as kindly to mathematics as your cousin John
Ardworth, poor lad!
"Not if mathematics have made him so grave, and so churlish, I was going
to say; but that word does him wrong, dear cousin, so kind and so rough!"
"It is not mathematics that are to blame if he is grave and absorbed,"
said the vicar, with a sigh; "it is the two cares that gnaw most,--
poverty and ambition."
"Nay, do not sigh; it must be such a pleasure to feel, as he does, that
one must triumph at last!"
"Umph! John must have nearly reached London by this time," said Mr.
Fielden, "for he is a stout walker, and this is the third day since he
left us. Well, now that he is about fairly to be called to the Bar, I
hope that his fever will cool, and he will settle calmly to work. I have
felt great pain for him during this last visit."
"Pain! But why?"
"My dear, do you remember what I read to you both from Sir William Temple
the night before John left us?"
Helen put her hand to her brow, and with a readiness which showed a
memory equally quick and retentive, replied, "Yes; was it not to this
effect? I am not sure of the exact words: 'To have something we have
not, and be something we are not, is the root of all evil.'"
"Well remembered, my darling!"
"Ah, but," said Helen, archly, "I remember too what my cousin replied:
'If Sir William Temple had practised his theory, he would not have been
ambassador at the Hague, or--"
"Pshaw! the boy's always ready enough with his answers," interrupted Mr.
Fielden, rather petulantly. "There's the fair, my dear,--more in your
way, I see, than Sir William Temple's philosophy."
And Helen was right; the fair was no Eastern bazaar, but how delighted
that young, impressionable mind was, notwithstanding,--delighted with the
swings and the roundabouts, the shows, the booths, even down to the gilt
gingerbread kings and queens! All minds genuinely poetical are
peculiarly susceptible to movement,--that is, to the excitement of
numbers. If the movement is sincerely joyous, as in the mirth of a
village holiday, such a nature shares insensibly in the joy; but if the
movement is a false and spurious gayety, as in a state ball, where the
impassive face and languid step are out of harmony with the evident
object of the scene, then the nature we speak of feels chilled and
dejected. Hence it really is that the more delicate and ideal order of
minds soon grow inexpressibly weary of the hack routine of what are
called fashionable pleasures. Hence the same person most alive to a
dance on the green, would be without enjoyment at Almack's. It was not
because one scene is a village green, and the other a room in King
Street, nor is it because the actors in the one are of the humble, in the
others of the noble class; but simply because the enjoyment in the first
is visible and hearty, because in the other it is a listless and
melancholy pretence. Helen fancied it was the swings and the booths that
gave her that innocent exhilaration,--it was not so; it was the
unconscious sympathy with the crowd around her. When the poetical nature
quits its own dreams for the actual world, it enters and transfuses
itself into the hearts and humours of others. The two wings of that
spirit which we call Genius are revery and sympathy. But poor little
Helen had no idea that she had genius. Whether chasing the butterfly or
talking fond fancies to her birds, or whether with earnest, musing eyes
watching the stars come forth, and the dark pine-trees gleam into silver;
whether with airy daydreams and credulous wonder poring over the magic
tales of Mirglip or Aladdin, or whether spellbound to awe by the solemn
woes of Lear, or following the blind great bard into "the heaven of
heavens, an earthly guest, to draw empyreal air,"--she obeyed but the
honest and varying impulse in each change of her pliant mood, and would
have ascribed with genuine humility to the vagaries of childhood that
prompt gathering of pleasure, that quick-shifting sport of the fancy by
which Nature binds to itself, in chains undulating as melody, the lively
senses of genius.
While Helen, leaning on the vicar's arm, thus surrendered herself to the
innocent excitement of the moment, the vicar himself smiled and nodded to
his parishioners, or paused to exchange a friendly word or two with the
youngest or the eldest loiterers (those two extremes of mortality which
the Church so tenderly unites) whom the scene drew to its tempting
vortex, when a rough-haired lad, with a leather bag strapped across his
waist, turned from one of the gingerbread booths, and touching his hat,
said, "Please you, sir, I was a coming to your house with a letter."
The vicar's correspondence was confined and rare, despite his distant
children, for letters but a few years ago were costly luxuries to persons
of narrow income, and therefore the juvenile letter-carrier who plied
between the post-town and the village failed to excite in his breast that
indignation for being an hour or more behind his time which would have
animated one to whom the post brings the usual event of the day. He took
the letter from the boy's hand, and paid for it with a thrifty sigh as he
glanced at a handwriting unfamiliar to him,--perhaps from some clergyman
poorer than himself. However, that was not the place to read letters, so
he put the epistle into his pocket, until Helen, who watched his
countenance to see when he grew tired of the scene, kindly proposed to
return home. As they gained a stile half-way, Mr. Fielden remembered his
letter, took it forth, and put on his spectacles. Helen stooped over the
bank to gather violets; the vicar seated himself on the stile. As he
again looked at the address, the handwriting, before unfamiliar, seemed
to grow indistinctly on his recollection. That bold, firm hand--thin and
fine as woman's, but large and regular as man's--was too peculiar to be
forgotten. He uttered a brief exclamation of surprise and recognition,
and hastily broke the seal. The contents ran thus:--
DEAR SIR,--So many years have passed since any communication has taken
place between us that the name of Lucretia Dalibard will seem more
strange to you than that of Lucretia Clavering. I have recently returned
to England after long residence abroad. I perceive by my deceased
sister's will that she has confided her only daughter to my guardianship,
conjointly with yourself. I am anxious to participate in that tender
charge. I am alone in the world,--an habitual sufferer; afflicted with a
partial paralysis that deprives me of the use of my limbs. In such
circumstances, it is the more natural that I should turn to the only
relative left me. My journey to England has so exhausted my strength,
and all movement is so painful, that I must request you to excuse me for
not coming in person for my niece. Your benevolence, however, will, I am
sure, prompt you to afford me the comfort of her society, and as soon as
you can, contrive some suitable arrangement for her journey. Begging you
to express to Helen, in my name, the assurance of such a welcome as is
due from me to my sister's child, and waiting with great anxiety your
reply, I am, dear Sir, Your very faithful servant,
LUCRETIA DALIBARD.
P. S. I can scarcely venture to ask you to bring Helen yourself to town,
but I should be glad if other inducements to take the journey afforded me
the pleasure of seeing you once again. I am anxious, in addition to such
details of my late sister as you may be enabled to give me, to learn
something of the history of her connection with Mr. Ardworth, in whom I
felt much interested years ago, and who, I am recently informed, left an
infant, his supposed son, under your care. So long absent from England,
how much have I to learn, and how little the mere gravestones tell us of
the dead!
While the vicar is absorbed in this letter, equally unwelcome and
unexpected; while, unconscious as the daughter of Ceres, gathering
flowers when the Hell King drew near, of the change that awaited her and
the grim presence that approached on her fate, Helen bends still over the
bank odorous with shrinking violets,--we turn where the new generation
equally invites our gaze, and make our first acquaintance with two
persons connected with the progress of our tale.
The britzska stopped. The servant, who had been gradually accumulating
present dust and future rheumatisms on the "bad eminence" of a rumble-
tumble, exposed to the nipping airs of an English sky, leaped to the
ground and opened the carriage-door.
"This is the best place for the view, sir,--a little to the right."
Percival St. John threw aside his book (a volume of Voyages), whistled to
a spaniel dozing by his side, and descended lightly. Light was the step
of the young man, and merry was the bark of the dog, as it chased from
the road the startled sparrow, rising high into the clear air,--
favourites of Nature both, man and dog. You had but to glance at
Percival St. John to know at once that he was of the race that toils not;
the assured step spoke confidence in the world's fair smile. No care for
the morrow dimmed the bold eye and the radiant bloom.
About the middle height,--his slight figure, yet undeveloped, seemed not
to have attained to its full growth,--the darkening down only just shaded
a cheek somewhat sunburned, though naturally fair, round which locks
black as jet played sportively in the fresh air; about him altogether
there was the inexpressible charm of happy youth. He scarcely looked
sixteen, though above four years older; but for his firm though careless
step, and the open fearlessness of his frank eye, you might have almost
taken him for a girl in men's clothes,--not from effeminacy of feature,
but from the sparkling bloom of his youth, and from his unmistakable
newness to the cares and sins of man. A more delightful vision of
ingenuous boyhood opening into life under happy auspices never inspired
with pleased yet melancholy interest the eye of half-envious, half-
pitying age.
"And that," mused Percival St. John,--"that is London! Oh for the Diable
Boiteux to unroof me those distant houses, and show me the pleasures that
lurk within! Ah, what long letters I shall have to write home! How the
dear old captain will laugh over them, and how my dear good mother will
put down her work and sigh! Home!--um, I miss it already. How strange
and grim, after all, the huge city seems!"
His glove fell to the ground, and his spaniel mumbled it into shreds.
The young man laughed, and throwing himself on the grass, played gayly
with the dog.
"Fie, Beau, sir, fie! gloves are indigestible. Restrain your appetite,
and we'll lunch together at the Clarendon."
At this moment there arrived at the same patch of greensward a pedestrian
some years older than Percival St. John,--a tall, muscular, raw-boned,
dust-covered, travel-stained pedestrian; one of your pedestrians in good
earnest,--no amateur in neat gambroon manufactured by Inkson, who leaves
his carriage behind him and walks on with his fishing-rod by choice, but
a sturdy wanderer, with thick shoes and strapless trousers, a threadbare
coat and a knapsack at his back. Yet, withal, the young man had the air
of a gentleman,--not gentleman as the word is understood in St. James's,
the gentleman of the noble and idle class, but the gentleman as the title
is accorded, by courtesy, to all to whom both education and the habit of
mixing with educated persons gives a claim to the distinction and imparts
an air of refinement. The new-comer was strongly built, at once lean and
large,--far more strongly built than Percival St. John, but without his
look of cheerful and comely health. His complexion had not the florid
hues that should have accompanied that strength of body; it was pale,
though not sickly; the expression grave, the lines deep, the face
strongly marked. By his side trotted painfully a wiry, yellowish,
footsore Scotch terrier. Beau sprang from his master's caress, cocked
his handsome head on one side, and suspended in silent halt his right
fore-paw. Percival cast over his left shoulder a careless glance at the
intruder. The last heeded neither Beau nor Percival. He slipped his
knapsack to the ground, and the Scotch terrier sank upon it, and curled
himself up into a ball. The wayfarer folded his arms tightly upon his
breast, heaved a short, unquiet sigh, and cast over the giant city, from
under deep-pent, lowering brows, a look so earnest, so searching, so full
of inexpressible, dogged, determined power, that Percival, roused out of
his gay indifference, rose and regarded him with curious interest.
In the mean while Beau had very leisurely approached the bilious-looking
terrier; and after walking three times round him, with a stare and a
small sniff of superb impertinence, halted with great composure, and
lifting his hind leg-- O Beau, Beau, Beau! your historian blushes for
your breeding, and, like Sterne's recording angel, drops a tear upon the
stain which washes it from the register--but not, alas, from the back of
the bilious terrier! The space around was wide, Beau; you had all the
world to choose: why select so specially for insult the single spot on
which reposed the wornout and unoffending? O dainty Beau! O dainty
world! Own the truth, both of ye. There is something irresistibly
provocative of insult in the back of a shabby-looking dog! The poor
terrier, used to affronts, raised its heavy eyelids, and shot the gleam
of just indignation from its dark eyes. But it neither stirred nor
growled, and Beau, extremely pleased with his achievement, wagged his
tail in triumph and returned to his master,--perhaps, in parliamentary
phrase, to "report proceedings and ask leave to sit again."
"I wonder," soliloquized Percival St. John, "what that poor fellow is
thinking of? Perhaps he is poor; indeed, no doubt of it, now I look
again. And I so rich! I should like to-- Hem! let's see what he's made
of."
Herewith Percival approached, and with all a boy's half-bashful, half-
saucy frankness, said: "A fine prospect, sir." The pedestrian started,
and threw a rapid glance over the brilliant figure that accosted him.
Percival St. John was not to be abashed by stern looks; but that glance
might have abashed many a more experienced man. The glance of a squire
upon a corn-law missionary, of a Crockford dandy upon a Regent Street
tiger, could not have been more disdainful.
"Tush!" said the pedestrian, rudely, and turned upon his heel.
Percival coloured, and--shall we own it?--was boy enough to double his
fist. Little would he have been deterred by the brawn of those great arms
and the girth of that Herculean chest, if he had been quite sure that it
was a proper thing to resent pugilistically so discourteous a
monosyllable. The "tush!" stuck greatly in his throat. But the man, now
removed to the farther verge of the hill, looked so tranquil and so lost
in thought that the short-lived anger died.
"And after all, if I were as poor as he looks, I dare say I should be
just as proud," muttered Percival. "However, it's his own fault if he
goes to London on foot, when I might at least have given him a lift.
Come, Beau, sir."
With his face still a little flushed, and his hat unconsciously cocked
fiercely on one side, Percival sauntered back to his britzska.
As in a whirl of dust the light carriage was borne by the four posters
down the hill, the pedestrian turned for an instant from the view before
to the cloud behind, and muttered: "Ay, a fine prospect for the rich,--a
noble field for the poor!" The tone in which those words were said told
volumes; there spoke the pride, the hope, the energy, the ambition which
make youth laborious, manhood prosperous, age renowned.
The stranger then threw himself on the sward, and continued his silent
and intent contemplation till the clouds grew red in the west. When,
then, he rose, his eye was bright, his mien erect, and a smile, playing
round his firm, full lips, stole the moody sternness from his hard face.
Throwing his knapsack once more on his back, John Ardworth went
resolutely on to the great vortex.
CHAPTER I.
THE CORONATION.
The 8th of September, 1831, was a holiday in London. William the Fourth
received the crown of his ancestors in that mighty church in which the
most impressive monitors to human pomp are the monuments of the dead.
The dust of conquerors and statesmen, of the wise heads and the bold
hands that had guarded the thrones of departed kings, slept around; and
the great men of the Modern time were assembled in homage to the monarch
to whom the prowess and the liberty of generations had bequeathed an
empire in which the sun never sets. In the Abbey--thinking little of the
past, caring little for the future--the immense audience gazed eagerly on
the pageant that occurs but once in that division of history,--the
lifetime of a king. The assemblage was brilliant and imposing. The
galleries sparkled with the gems of women who still upheld the celebrity
for f |
