CHAPTER IV.

THE SOLUTION OF MANY MYSTERIES.--A DARK VIEW OF THE LIFE AND NATURE OF

MAN.

POWERFUL, though not clearly developed in my own mind, was the motive

which made me so strongly desire to preserve the /incognito/ during my

interview with the Hermit. I have before said that I could not resist a

vague but intense belief that he was a person whom I had long believed

in the grave; and I had more than once struggled against a dark but

passing suspicion that that person was in some measure--mediately,

though not directly--connected with the mysteries of my former life. If

both these conjectures were true, I thought it possible that the

communication the Hermit wished to make might be made yet more willingly

to me as a stranger than if he knew who was in reality his confidant.

And, at all events, if I could curb the impetuous gushings of my own

heart, which yearned for immediate disclosure, I might by hint and

prelude ascertain the advantages and disadvantages of revealing myself.

I arrived at the well: the Hermit was already at the place of

rendezvous, seated in the same posture in which I had before seen him.

I made my reverence and accosted him.

"I have not failed you, Father."

"That is rarely a true boast with men," said the Hermit, smiling

mournfully, but without sarcasm; "and were the promise of greater avail,

it might not have been so rigidly kept."

"The promise, Father, seemed to me of greater weight than you would

intimate," answered I.

"How mean you?" said the Hermit, hastily.

"Why, that we may perhaps serve each other by our meeting: you, Father,

may comfort me by your counsels; I you by my readiness to obey your

request."

The Hermit looked at me for some moments, and, as well as I could, I

turned away my face from his gaze. I might have spared myself the

effort. He seemed to recognize nothing familiar in my countenance;

perhaps his mental malady assisted my own alteration.

"I have inquired respecting you," he said, after a pause, "and I hear

that you are a learned and wise man, who has seen much of the world, and

played the part both of soldier and of scholar in its various theatres:

is my information true?"

"Not true with the respect to the learning, Father, but true with regard

to the experience. I have been a pilgrim in many countries of Europe."

"Indeed!" said the Hermit, eagerly. "Come with me to my home, and tell

me of the wonders you have seen."

I assisted the Hermit to rise, and he walked slowly towards the cavern,

leaning upon my arm. Ob, how that light touch thrilled through my

frame! How I longed to cry, "Are you not the one whom I have loved, and

mourned, and believed buried in the tomb?" But I checked myself. We

moved on in silence. The Hermit's hand was on the door of the cavern,

when he said, in a calm tone, but with evident effort, and turning his

face from me while he spoke:--

"And did your wanderings ever carry you into the farther regions of the

north? Did the fame of the great Czar ever lead you to the city he has

founded?"

"I am right! I am right! " thought I, as I answered, "In truth, holy

Father, I spent not a long time at Petersburg; but I am not a stranger

either to its wonders or its inhabitants."

"Possibly, then, you may have met with the English favourite of the Czar

of whom I hear in my retreat that men have lately spoken somewhat

largely?" The Hermit paused again. We were now in a long, low passage,

almost in darkness. I scarcely saw him, yet I heard a convulsed

movement in his throat before he uttered the remainder of the sentence.

"He is called the Count Devereux."

"Father," said I, calmly, "I have both seen and known the man."

"Ha!" said the Hermit, and he leaned for a moment against the wall;

"known him--and--how--how--I mean, where is he at this present time?"

"That, Father, is a difficult question respecting one who has led so

active a life. He was ambassador at the court of ------ just before I

left it."

We had now passed the passage and gained a room of tolerable size; an

iron lamp burned within, and afforded a sufficient but somewhat dim

light. The Hermit, as I concluded my reply, sank down on a long stone

bench, beside a table of the same substance, and leaning his face on his

hand, so that the long, large sleeve he wore perfectly concealed his

features, said, "Pardon me; my breath is short, and my frame weak; I am

quite exhausted, but will speak to you more anon."

I uttered a short answer, and drew a small wooden stool within a few

feet of the Hermit's seat. After a brief silence he rose, placed wine,

bread, and preserved fruits before me and bade me eat. I seemed to

comply with his request, and the apparent diversion of my attention from

himself somewhat relieved the embarrassment under which he evidently

laboured.

"May I hope," he said, "that were my commission to this--to the Count

Devereux--you would execute it faithfully and with speed? Yet stay: you

have a high mien, as of one above fortune, but your garb is rude and

poor; and if aught of gold could compensate your trouble, the Hermit has

other treasuries besides this cell."

"I will do your bidding, Father, without robbing the poor. You wish,

then, that I should seek Morton Devereux; you wish that I should summon

him hither; you wish to see and to confer with him?"

"God of mercy forbid!" cried the Hermit, and with such a vehemence that

I was startled from the design of revealing myself, which I was on the

point of executing. "I would rather that these walls would crush me

into dust, or that this solid stone would crumble beneath my feet,--ay,

even into a bottomless pit, than meet the glance of Morton Devereux!"

"Is it even so?" said I, stooping over the wine-cup; "ye have been foes

then, I suspect. Well, it matters not: tell me your errand, and it

shall be done."

"Done!" cried the Hermit, and a new and certainly a most natural

suspicion darted within him, "done! and--fool that I am!--who or what

are you that I should believe you take so keen an interest in the wishes

of a man utterly unknown to you? I tell you that my wish is that you

should cross seas and traverse lands until you find the man I have named

to you. Will a stranger do this, and without hire? No--no--I was a

fool, and will trust the monks, and give gold, and then my errand will

be sped."

"Father, or rather brother," said I, with a slow and firm voice, "for

you are of mine own age, and you have the passion and the infirmity

which make brethren of all mankind, I am one to whom all places are

alike: it matters not whether I visit a northern or a southern clime; I

have wealth, which is sufficient to smooth toil; I have leisure, which

makes occupation an enjoyment. More than this, I am one who in his

gayest and wildest moments has ever loved mankind, and would have

renounced at any time his own pleasure for the advantage of another.

But at this time, above all others, I am most disposed to forget myself,

and there is a passion in your words which leads me to hope that it may

be a great benefit which I can confer upon you."

"You speak well," said the Hermit, musingly, "and I may trust you; I

will consider yet a little longer, and to-morrow at this hour you shall

have my final answer. If you execute the charge I entrust to you, may

the blessing of a dying and most wretched man cleave to you forever!

But hush; the clock strikes: it is my hour of prayer."

And, pointing to a huge black clock that hung opposite the door, and

indicated the hour of nine (according to our English mode of numbering

the hours), the Hermit fell on his knees, and, clasping his hands

tightly, bent his face over them in the attitude of humiliation and

devotion. I followed his example. After a few minutes he rose: "Once

in every three hours," said he, with a ghastly expression, "for the last

twelve years have I bowed my soul in anguish before God, and risen to

feel that it was in vain: I am cursed without and within!"

"My Father, my Father, is this your faith in the mercies of the Redeemer

who died for man?"

"Talk not to me of faith!" cried the Hermit, wildly. "Ye laymen and

worldlings know nothing of its mysteries and its powers. But begone!

the dread hour is upon me, when my tongue is loosed and my brain

darkened, and I know not my words and shudder at my own thoughts.

Begone! no human being shall witness those moments: they are only for

Heaven and my own soul."

So saying, this unhappy and strange being seized me by the arm and

dragged me towards the passage we had entered. I was in doubt whether

to yield to or contend with him; but there was a glare in his eye and a

flush upon his brow, which, while it betrayed the dreadful disease of

his mind, made me fear that resistance to his wishes might operate

dangerously upon a frame so feeble and reduced. I therefore

mechanically obeyed him. He opened again the entrance to his rugged

home, and the moonlight streamed wanly over his dark robes and spectral

figure.

"Go," said he, more mildly than before, "go, and forgive the vehemence

of one whose mind and heart alike are broken within him. Go, but return

to-morrow at sunset. Your air disposes me to trust you."

So saying, he closed the door upon me, and I stood without the cavern

alone.

But did I return home? Did I hasten to press my couch in sleep and

sweet forgetfulness, while he was in that gloomy sepulture of the

living, a prey to anguish, and torn by the fangs of madness and a fierce

disease? No: on the damp grass, beneath the silent skies, I passed a

night which could scarcely have been less wretched than his own. My

conjecture was now and in full confirmed. Heavens! how I loved that

man! how, from my youngest years, had my soul's fondest affections

interlaced themselves with him! with what anguish had I wept his

imagined death! and now to know that he lay within those walls, smitten

from brain to heart with so fearful and mysterious a curse,--to know,

too, that he dreaded the sight of me,--of me who would have laid down my

life for his! the grave, which I imagined his home, had been a mercy to

a doom like this.

"He fears," I murmured, and I wept as I said it, "to look on one who

would watch over, and soothe, and bear with him, with more than a

woman's love! By what awful fate has this calamity fallen on one so

holy and so pure? or by what preordered destiny did I come to these

solitudes, to find at the same time a new charm for the earth and a

spell to change it again into a desert and a place of woe?"

All night I kept vigil by the cave, and listened if I could catch moan

or sound; but everything was silent: the thick walls of the rock kept

even the voice of despair from my ear. The day dawned, and I retired

among the trees, lest the Hermit might come out unawares and see me. At

sunrise I saw him appear for a few moments and again retire, and I then

hastened home, exhausted and wearied by the internal conflicts of the

night, to gather coolness and composure for the ensuing interview, which

I contemplated at once with eagerness and dread.

At the appointed hour I repaired to the cavern: the door was partially

closed; I opened it, hearing no answer to my knock, and walked gently

along the passage; but I now heard shrieks and groans and wild laughter

as I neared the rude chamber. I paused for a moment, and then in terror

and dismay entered the apartment. It was empty, but I saw near the

clock a small door, from within which the sounds that alarmed me

proceeded. I had no scruple in opening it, and found myself in the

Hermit's sleeping chamber,--a small dark room, where, upon a straw

pallet, lay the wretched occupant in a state of frantic delirium. I

stood mute and horror-struck, while his exclamations of frenzy burst

upon my ear.

"There--there!" he cried, "I have struck thee to the heart, and now

I will kneel, and kiss those white lips, and bathe my hands in that

blood! Ha!--do I hate thee?--hate--ay--hate,--abhor, detest! Have

you the beads there?--let me tell them. Yes, I will go to the

confessional--confess?--No, no--all the priests in the world could

not lift up a soul so heavy with guilt. Help--help--help! I am

falling--falling--there is the pit, and the fire, and the devils!

Do you hear them laugh?--I can laugh too!--ha! ha! ha! Hush, I have

written it all out, in a fair hand; he shall read it; and then, O God!

what curses he will heap upon my head! Blessed Saint Francis, hear me!

Lazarus, Lazarus, speak for me!"

Thus did the Hermit rave, while my flesh crept to hear him. I stood by

his bedside, and called on him, but he neither heard nor saw me. Upon

the ground, by the bed's head, as if it had dropped from under the

pillow, was a packet seated and directed to myself. I knew the

handwriting at a glance, even though the letters were blotted and

irregular, and possibly traced in the first moment that his present

curse fell upon the writer. I placed the packet in my bosom; the Hermit

saw not the motion; he lay back on the bed, seemingly in utter

exhaustion. I turned away, and hastened to the monastery for

assistance. As I hurried through the passage, the Hermit's shrieks

again broke upon me, with a fiercer vehemence than before. I flew from

them, as if they were sounds from the abyss of Hades. I flew till,

breathless, and half-senseless myself, I fell down exhausted by the gate

of the monastery.

The two most skilled in physic of the brethren were immediately

summoned, and they lost not a moment in accompanying me to the cavern.

All that evening, until midnight, the frenzy of the maniac seemed rather

to increase than abate. But at that hour, exactly indeed as the clock

struck twelve, he fell all at once into a deep sleep.

Then for the first time, but not till the weary brethren had at this

favourable symptom permitted themselves to return for a brief interval

to the monastery, to seek refreshment for themselves and to bring down

new medicines for the patient,--then, for the first time, I rose from

the Hermit's couch by which I had hitherto kept watch, and repairing to

the outer chamber, took forth the packet superscribed with my name.

There, alone in that gray vault, and by the sepulchral light of the

single lamp, I read what follows:--

THE HERMIT'S MANUSCRIPT.

Morton Devereux, if ever this reach you, read it, shudder, and, whatever

your afflictions, bless God that you are not as I am. Do you remember

my prevailing characteristic as a boy? No, you do not. You will say

"devotion!" It was not! "Gentleness." It was not: it was JEALOUSY!

Now does the truth flash on you? Yes, that was the disease that was in

my blood, and in my heart, and through whose ghastly medium every living

object was beheld. Did I love you? Yes, I loved you,--ay, almost with

a love equal to your own. I loved my mother; I loved Gerald; I loved

Montreuil. It was a part of my nature to love, and I did not resist the

impulse. You I loved better than all; but I was jealous of each. If my

mother caressed you or Gerald, if you opened your heart to either, it

stung me to the quick. I it was who said to my mother, "Caress him not,

or I shall think you love him better than me." I it was who widened,

from my veriest childhood, the breach between Gerald and yourself. I it

was who gave to the childish reproach a venom, and to the childish

quarrel a barb. Was this love? Yes, it was love; but I could not

endure that ye should love one another as ye loved me. It delighted me

when one confided to my ear a complaint against the other, and said,

"Aubrey, this blow could not have come from thee!"

Montreuil early perceived my bias of temper: he might have corrected it

and with ease. I was not evil in disposition; I was insensible of my

own vice. Had its malignity been revealed to me, I should have recoiled

in horror. Montreuil had a vast power over me; he could mould me at his

will. Montreuil, I repeat, might have saved me, and thyself, and a

third being, better and purer than either of us was, even in our

cradles. Montreuil did not: he had an object to serve, and he

sacrificed our whole house to it. He found me one day weeping over a

dog that I had killed. "Why did you destroy it?" he said; and I

answered, "Because it loved Morton better than me!" And the priest

said, "Thou didst right, Aubrey!" Yes, from that time he took advantage

of my infirmity, and could rouse or calm all my passions in proportion

as he irritated or soothed it.

You know this man's object during the latter period of his residence

with us: it was the restoration of the House of Stuart. He was

alternately the spy and the agitator in that cause. Among more

comprehensive plans for effecting this object, was that of securing the

heirs to the great wealth and popular name of Sir William Devereux.

This was only a minor mesh in the intricate web of his schemes; but it

is the character of the man to take exactly the same pains, and pursue

the same laborious intrigues, for a small object as for a great one.

His first impression, on entering our house, was in favour of Gerald;

and I believe he really likes him to this day better than either of us.

Partly your sarcasms, partly Gerald's disputes with you, partly my

representations,--for I was jealous even of the love of

Montreuil,--prepossessed him against you. He thought, too, that Gerald

had more talent to serve his purposes than yourself and more facility in

being moulded to them; and he believed our uncle's partiality to you far

from being unalienable. I have said that, at the latter period of his

residence with us, he was an agent of the exiled cause. At the time I

/now/ speak of, he had not entered into the great political scheme which

engrossed him afterwards. He was merely a restless and aspiring priest,

whose whole hope, object, ambition, was the advancement of his order.

He knew that whoever inherited, or whoever shared, my uncle's wealth,

could, under legitimate regulation, promote /any/ end which the heads of

that order might select; and he wished therefore to gain the mastery

over us all. Intrigue was essentially woven with his genius, and by

intrigue only did he ever seek to arrive at /any/ end he had in view.*

He soon obtained a mysterious and pervading power over Gerald and

myself. Your temper at once irritated him, and made him despair of

obtaining an ascendant over one who, though he testified in childhood

none of the talents for which he has since been noted, testified,

nevertheless, a shrewd, penetrating, and sarcastic power of observation

and detection. You, therefore, he resolved to leave to the

irregularities of your own nature, confident that they would yield him

the opportunity of detaching your uncle from you and ultimately securing

to Gerald his estates.

* It will be observed that Aubrey frequently repeats former assertions;

this is one of the most customary traits of insanity.--ED.

The trial at school first altered his intentions. He imagined that he

then saw in you powers which might be rendered availing to him: he

conquered his pride--a great feature in his character--and he resolved

to seek your affection. Your subsequent regularity of habits and

success in study confirmed him in his resolution; and when he learned

from my uncle's own lips that the Devereux estates would devolve on you,

he thought that it would be easier to secure your affection to him than

to divert that affection which my uncle had conceived for you. At this

time, I repeat, he had no particular object in view; none, at least,

beyond that of obtaining for the interest of his order the direction of

great wealth and some political influence. Some time after--I know not

exactly when, but before we returned to take our permanent abode at

Devereux Court--a share in the grand political intrigue which was then

in so many branches carried on throughout England, and even Europe, was

confided to Montreuil.

In this I believe he was the servant of his order, rather than

immediately of the exiled House; and I have since heard that even at

that day he had acquired a great reputation among the professors of the

former. You, Morton, he decoyed not into this scheme before he left

England: he had not acquired a sufficient influence over you to trust

you with the disclosure. To Gerald and myself he was more confidential.

Gerald eagerly embraced his projects through a spirit of enterprise; I

through a spirit of awe and of religion. RELIGION! Yes,--then,--long

after,--now,--when my heart was and is the home of all withering and

evil passions, Religion reigned,--reigns, over me a despot and a tyrant.

Its terrors haunt me at this hour; they people the earth and the air

with shapes of ghastly menace! They--Heaven pardon me! what would my

madness utter? Madness?--madness? Ay, /that/ is the real scourge, the

real fire, the real torture, the real hell, of this fair earth!

Montreuil, then, by different pleas, won over Gerald and myself. He

left us, but engaged us in constant correspondence. "Aubrey," he said,

before he departed, and when he saw that I was wounded by his apparent

cordiality towards you and Gerald--"Aubrey," he said, soothing me on

this point, "think not that I trust Gerald or the arrogant Morton as I

trust you. /You/ have my real heart and my real trust. It is necessary

to the execution of this project, so important to the interests of

religion and so agreeable to the will of Heaven, that we should secure

all co-operators: but they, your brothers, Aubrey, are the tools of that

mighty design; you are its friend." Thus it was that, at all times when

he irritated too sorely the vice of my nature, he flattered it into

seconding his views; and thus, instead of conquering my evil passions,

he conquered by them. Curses--No, no, no!--I /will/ be calm.

We returned to Devereux Court, and we grew from boyhood into youth. I

loved you then, Morton. Ah! what would I not give now for one pure

feeling, such as I felt in your love? Do you remember the day on which

you had extorted from my uncle his consent to your leaving us for the

pleasures and pomps of London? Do you remember the evening of that day,

when I came to seek you, and we sat down on a little mound, and talked

over your projects, and you spoke then to me of my devotion and my purer

and colder feelings? Morton, at that very moment my veins burned with

passion!--at that very moment my heart was feeding the vulture fated to

live and prey within it forever! Thrice did I resolve to confide in

you, as we then sat together, and thrice did my evil genius forbid it.

You seemed, even in your affection to me, so wholly engrossed with your

own hopes; you seemed so little to regret leaving me; you stung, so

often and so deeply, in our short conference, that feeling which made me

desire to monopolize all things in those I loved, that I said

inly,--"Why should I bare my heart to one who can so little understand

it?" And so we turned home, and you dreamed not of that which was then

within me, and which was destined to be your curse and mine.

Not many weeks previous to that night, I had seen one whom to see was to

love! Love!--I tell you, Morton, that /that/ word is expressive of soft

and fond emotion, and there should be another expressive of all that is

fierce and dark and unrelenting m the human heart!--all that seems most

like the deadliest and the blackest hate, and yet is not hate! I saw

this being, and from that moment my real nature, which had slept

hitherto, awoke! I remember well it was one evening in the beginning of

summer that I first saw her. She sat alore in the little garden beside

the cottage door, and I paused, and, unseen, looked over the slight

fence that separated us, and fed my eyes with a loveliness that I

thought till then only twilight or the stars could wear! From that

evening I came, night after night, to watch her from the same spot; and

every time I beheld her the poison entered deeper and deeper into my

system. At length I had an opportunity of being known to her, of

speaking to her, of hearing her speak, of touching the ground she had

hallowed, of entering the home where she dwelt!

I must explain: I said that both Gerald and myself corresponded

privately with Montreuil; we were both bound over to secrecy with regard

to you; and this, my temper and Gerald's coolness with you rendered an

easy obligation to both;--I say my temper, for I loved to think I had a

secret not known to another; and I carried this reserve even to the

degree of concealing from Gerald himself the greater part of the

correspondence between me and the Abbe. In his correspondence with each

of us, Montreuil acted with his usual skill; to Gerald, as the elder in

years, the more prone to enterprise, and the manlier in aspect and in

character, was allotted whatever object was of real trust or importance.

Gerald it was who, under pretence of pursuing his accustomed sports,

conferred with the various agents of intrigue who from time to time

visited our coast; and to me the Abbe gave words of endearment and

affected the language of more entire trust. "Whatever," he would say,

"in our present half mellowed projects, is exposed to danger, but does

not promise reward, I entrust to Gerald; hereafter, far higher

employment, under far safer and surer auspices, will be yours. We are

the heads: be ours the nobler occupation to plan; and let us leave to

inferior natures the vain and perilous triumph to execute what we

design."

All this I readily assented to; for, despite my acquiescence in

Montreuil's wishes, I loved not enterprise, or rather I hated whatever

roused me from the dreamy and abstracted indolence which was most dear

to my temperament. Sometimes, however, with a great show of confidence,

Montreuil would request me to execute some quiet and unimportant

commission; and of this nature was one I received while I was thus,

unknown even to the object, steeping my soul in the first intoxication

of love. The plots then carried on by certain ecclesiastics I need not

say extended, in one linked chain, over the greater part of the

Continent. Spain, in especial, was the theatre of these intrigues; and

among the tools employed in executing them were some who, though

banished from that country, still, by the rank they had held in it,

carried a certain importance in their very names. Foremost of these was

the father of the woman I loved; and foremost, in whatever promised

occupation to a restless mind, he was always certain to be.

Montreuil now commissioned me to seek out a certain Barnard (an

underling in those secret practices or services, for which he afterwards

suffered, and who was then in that part of the country), and to

communicate to him some messages of which he was to be the bearer to

this Spaniard. A thought flashed upon me--Montreuil's letter mentioned,

accidentally, that the Spaniard had never hitherto seen Barnard: could I

not personate the latter, deliver the messages myself, and thus win that

introduction to the daughter which I so burningly desired, and which,

from the close reserve of the father's habits, I might not otherwise

effect? The plan was open to two objections: one, that I was known

personally in the town in the environs of which the Spaniard lived, and

he might therefore very soon discover who I really was; the other that I

was not in possession of all the information which Barnard might

possess, and which the Spaniard might wish to learn; but these

objections had not much weight with me. To the first, I said inly, "I

will oppose the most constant caution; I will go always on foot and

alone; I will never be seen in the town itself; and even should the

Spaniard, who seems rarely to stir abroad, and who, possibly, does not

speak our language,--even should he learn by accident that Barnard is

only another name for Aubrey Devereux, it will not be before I have

gained my object; nor, perhaps, before the time when I myself may wish

to acknowledge my identity." To the second objection I saw a yet more

ready answer. "I will acquaint Montreuil at once," I said, "with my

intention; I will claim his connivance as a proof of his confidence, and

as an essay of my own genius of intrigue." I did so; the priest,

perhaps delighted to involve me so deeply, and to find me so ardent in

his project, consented. Fortunately, as I before said, Barnard was an

underling,--young, unknown, and obscure. My youth, therefore, was not

so great a foe to my assumed disguise as it might otherwise have been.

Montreuil supplied all requisite information. I tried (for the first

time, with a beating heart and a tremulous voice) the imposition! it

succeeded; I continued it. Yes, Morton, yes!--pour forth upon me your

bitterest execration, in me, in your brother, in the brother so dear to

you,--in the brother whom you imagined so passionless, so pure; so

sinless,--behold that Barnard, the lover, the idolatrous lover--the foe,

the deadly foe,--of Isora d'Alvarez!

Here the manuscript was defaced for some pages by incoherent and

meaningless ravings. It seemed as if one of his dark fits of frenzy had

at that time come over the writer. At length, in a more firm and clear

character than that immediately preceding it, the manuscript continued

as follows:--

I loved her, but even then it was with a fierce and ominous love

(ominous of what it became). Often in the still evenings, when we stood

together watching the sun set; when my tongue trembled, but did not dare

to speak; when all soft and sweet thoughts filled the heart and

glistened in the eye of that most sensitive and fairy being; when my own

brow perhaps seemed to reflect the same emotions,--feelings which I even

shuddered to conceive raged within me. Had we stood together in those

moments upon the brink of a precipice, I could have wound my arms around

her and leaped with her into the abyss. Everything but one nursed my

passion; nature, solitude, early dreams, all kindled and fed that fire:

Religion only combated it; I knew it was a crime to love any of earth's

creatures as I loved. I used the scourge and the fast;* I wept hot,

burning tears; I prayed, and the intensity of my prayer appalled even

myself, as it rose from my maddened heart, in the depth and stillness of

the lone night: but the flame burned higher and more scorchingly from

the opposition; nay, it was the very knowledge that my love was criminal

that made it assume so fearful and dark a shape. "Thou art the cause of

my downfall from Heaven!" I muttered, when I looked upon Isora's calm

face: "thou feelest it not, and I could destroy thee and myself,--myself

the criminal, thee the cause of the crime!"

* I need not point out to the novel-reader how completely the character

of Aubrey has been stolen in a certain celebrated French romance. But

the writer I allude to is not so unmerciful as M. de Balzac, who has

pillaged scenes in "The Disowned" with a most gratifying politeness.

It must have been that my eyes betrayed my feelings that Isora loved me

not, that she shrank from me even at the first: why else should I not

have called forth the same sentiments which she gave to you? Was not my

form cast in a mould as fair as yours? did not my voice whisper in as

sweet a tone? did I not love her with as wild a love? Why should she

not have loved me? I was the first whom she behold: she would--ay,

perhaps she would have loved me, if you had not come and marred all.

Curse yourself, then, that you were my rival! curse yourself that you

made my heart as a furnace, and smote my brain with frenzy; curse--O

sweet Virgin, forgive me!--I know not,--I know not what my tongue utters

or my hand traces!

You came, then, Morton, you came; you knew her; you loved her; she loved

you. I learned that you had gained admittance to the cottage, and the

moment I learned it, I looked on Isora, and felt my fate, as by

intuition: I saw at once that she was prepared to love you; I saw the

very moment when that love kindled from conception into form; I saw--and

at that moment my eyes reeled and my ears rang as with the sound of a

rushing sea, and I thought I felt a cord snap within my brain, which has

never been united again.

Once only, after your introduction to the cottage, did I think of

confiding to you my love and rivalship; you remember one night when we

met by the castle cave, and when your kindness touched and softened me

despite of myself. The day after that night I sought you, with the

intention of communicating to you all; and while I was yet struggling

with my embarrassment and the suffocating tide of my emotions, you

premeditated me by giving me /your/ confidence. Engrossed by your own

feelings, you were not observant of mine; and as you dwelt and dilated

upon your love for Isora, all emotions, save those of agony and of fury,

vanished from my breast. I did not answer you then at any length, for I

was too agitated to trust to prolix speech; but by the next day I had

recovered myself, and I resolved, as far as I was able, to play the

hypocrite. "he cannot love her as I do!" I said; "perhaps I may,

without disclosure of my rivalship and without sin in the attempt,

detach him from her by reason." Fraught with this idea, I collected

myself, sought you, remonstrated with you, represented the worldly folly

of your love, and uttered all that prudence preaches--in vain, when it

preaches against passion!

Let me be brief. I saw that I made no impression on you; I stifled my

wrath; I continued to visit and watch Isora. I timed my opportunities

well: my constant knowledge of your motions allowed me to do that;

besides, I represented to the Spaniard the necessity, through political

motives, of concealing myself from you; hence, we never encountered each

other. One evening, Alvarez had gone out to meet one of his countrymen

and confederates. I found Isora alone, in the most sequestered part of

the garden; her loveliness, and her exceeding gentleness of manner,

melted me. For the first time audibly my heart spoke out, and I told

her of my idolatry. Idolatry! ay, /that/ is the only word, since it

signifies both worship and guilt! She heard me timidly, gently, coldly.

She spoke; and I found confirmed from her own lips what my reason had

before told me,--that there was no hope for me. The iron that entered

also roused my heart. "Enough!" I cried fiercely, "you love this

Morton Devereux, and for him I am scorned." Isora blushed and trembled,

and all my senses fled from me. I scarcely know in what words my rage

and my despair clothed themselves: but I know that I divulged myself to

her; I know that I told bur I was the brother, the rival, the enemy of

the man she loved,--I know that I uttered the fiercest and the wildest

menaces and execrations,--I know that my vehemence so overpowered and

terrified her that her mind was scarcely less clouded--less lost,

rather--than my own. At that moment the sound of your horse's hoofs was

heard. Isora's eyes brightened and her mien grew firm. "He comes," she

said, "and he will protect me!" "Hark!" I said, sinking my voice, and,

as my drawn sword flashed in one hand, the other grasped her arm with a

savage force,--"hark, woman!" I said,--and an oath of the blackest fury

accompanied my threats,--"swear that you will never divulge to Morton

Devereux who is his real rival, that you will never declare to him nor

to any one else that the false Barnard and the true Aubrey Devereux are

the same,--swear this, or I swear [and I repeated, with a solemn

vehemence, that dread oath] that I will stay here; that I will confront

my rival; that, the moment he beholds me, I will plunge this sword in

his bosom; and that, before I perish myself, I will hasten to the town,

and will utter there a secret which will send your father to the

gallows: now, your choice?"

Morton, you have often praised, my uncle has often jested at, the

womanish softness of my face. There have been moments when I have seen

that face in the glass, and known it not, but started in wild affright,

and fancied that I beheld a demon; perhaps in that moment this change

was over it. Slowly Isora gazed upon me; slowly blanched into the hues

of death grew her cheek and lip; slowly that lip uttered the oath I

enjoined. I released my gripe, and she fell to the earth suddenly, and

stunned as if struck by lightning. I stayed not to look on what I had

done; I heard your step advance; I fled by a path that led from the

garden to the beach; and I reached my home without retaining a single

recollection of the space I had traversed to attain it.

Despite the night I passed--a night which I will leave you to imagine--I

rose the next morning with a burning interest to learn from you what had

passed after my flight, and with a power, peculiar to the stormiest

passions, of an outward composure while I listened to the recital. I

saw that I was safe; and I heard, with a joy so rapturous that I

question whether even Isora's assent to my love would have given me an

equal transport, that she had rejected you. I uttered some advice to

you commonplace enough: it displeased you, and we separated.

That evening, to my surprise, I was privately visited by Montreuil. He

had some designs in hand which brought him from France into the

neighbourhood, but which made him desirous of concealment. He soon drew

from me my secret; it is marvellous, indeed, what power he had of

penetrating, ruling, moulding, my feelings and my thoughts. He wished,

at that time, a communication to be made and a letter to be given to

Alvarez. I could not execute this commission personally; for you had

informed me of your intention of watching if you could not discover or

meet with Barnard, and I knew you were absent from home on that very

purpose. Nor was Montreuil himself desirous of incurring the risk of

being seen by you,--you over whom, sooner or later, he then trusted to

obtain a power equal to that which he held over your brothers. Gerald

then was chosen to execute the commission. He did so; he met Alvarez

for the first and only time on the beach, by the town of ------. You

saw him, and imagined you beheld the real Barnard.

But I anticipate; for you did not inform me of that occurrence, nor the

inference you drew from it, till afterwards. You returned, however,

after witnessing that meeting, and for two days your passions (passions

which, intense and fierce as mine, show that, under similar

circumstances, you might have been equally guilty) terminated in fever.

You were confined to your bed for three or four days; meanwhile I took

advantage of the event. Montreuil suggested a plan which I readily

embraced. I sought the Spaniard, and told him in confidence that you

were a suitor--but a suitor upon the most dishonourable terms--to his

daughter. I told him, moreover, that you had detected his schemes, and,

in order to deprive Isora of protection and abate any obstacles arising

from her pride, meant to betray him to the Government. I told him that

his best and most prudent, nay, his only chance of safety for Isora and

himself was to leave his present home and take refuge in the vast mazes

of the metropolis. I told him not to betray to you his knowledge of

your criminal intentions, lest it might needlessly exasperate you. I

furnished him wherewithal to repay you the sum which you had lent him,

and by which you had commenced his acquaintance; and I dictated to him

the very terms of the note in which the sum was to be inclosed. After

this I felt happy. You were separated from Isora: she might forget you;

you might forget her. I was possessed of the secret of her father's

present retreat: I might seek it at my pleasure, and ultimately--so hope

whispered--prosper in my love.

Some time afterwards you mentioned your suspicions of Gerald; I did not

corroborate, but I did not seek to destroy them. "They already hate

each other," I said; "can the hate be greater? meanwhile, let it divert

suspicion from me!" Gerald knew of the agency of the real Barnard,

though he did not know that I had assumed the name of that person. When

you taxed him with his knowledge of the man, he was naturally confused.

You interpreted that confusion into the fact of being your rival, while

in truth it arose from his belief that you had possessed yourself of his

political schemes. Montreuil, who had lurked chiefly in the islet

opposite "the Castle Cave," had returned to France on the same day that

Alvarez repaired to London. Previous to this, we had held some

conferences together upon my love. At first he had opposed and reasoned

with it; but, startled and astonished by the intensity with which it

possessed me, he gave way to my vehemence at last.

I have said that I had adopted his advice in one instance. The fact of

having received his advice,--the advice of one so pious, so free from

human passion, so devoted to one object, which appeared to him the cause

of Religion; advice, too, in a love so fiery and overwhelming, that fact

made me think myself less criminal than I had done before. He advised

me yet further. "Do not seek Isora," he said, "till some time has

elapsed; till her new-born love for your brother has died away; till the

impression of fear you have caused in her is somewhat effaced; till time

and absence, too, have done their work in the mind of Morton, and you

will no longer have for your rival one who is not only a brother, but a

man of a fierce, resolute, and unrelenting temper."

I yielded to this advice: partly because it promised so fair; partly

because I was not systematically vicious, and I wished, if possible, to

do away with our rivalship; and principally, because I knew, in the

meanwhile, that if I was deprived of her presence, so also were you; and

jealousy with me was a far more intolerable and engrossing passion than

the very love from which it sprang. So time passed on: you affected to

have conquered your attachment; you affected to take pleasure in levity

and the idlest pursuits of worldly men. I saw deeper into your heart;

for the moment I entertained the passion of love in my own breast, my

eyes became gifted with a second vision to penetrate the most mysterious

and hoarded secrets in the love of others.

Two circumstances of importance happened before you left Devereux Court

for London; the one was the introduction to your service of Jean

Desmarais, the second was your breach with Montreuil. I speak now of

the first. A very early friend did the priest possess, born in the same

village as himself and in the same rank of life; he had received a good

education and possessed natural genius. At a time when, from some fraud

in a situation of trust which he had held in a French nobleman's family,

he was in destitute and desperate circumstances, it occurred to

Montreuil to provide for him by placing him in our family. Some

accidental and frivolous remark of yours which I had repeated in my

correspondence with Montreuil as illustrative of your manner, and your

affected pursuits at that time, presented an opportunity to a plan

before conceived. Desmarais came to England in a smuggler's vessel,

presented himself to you as a servant, and was accepted. In this plan

Montreuil had two views: first, that of securing Desmarais a place in

England, tolerably profitable to himself and convenient for any plot or

scheme which Montreuil might require of him in this country; secondly,

that of setting a perpetual and most adroit spy upon all your motions.

As to the second occurrence to which I have referred; namely, your

breach with Montreuil--"

Here Aubrey, with the same terrible distinctness which had characterized

his previous details and which shed a double horror over the contrast of

the darker and more frantic passages in the manuscript, related what the

reader will remember Oswald had narrated before, respecting the letter

he had brought from Madame de Balzac. It seems that Montreuil's abrupt

appearance in the hall had been caused by Desmarais, who had recognized

Oswald, on his dismounting at the gate, and had previously known that he

was in the employment of the Jansenistical /intriguante/ Madame de

Balzac.

Aubrey proceeded then to say that Montreuil, invested with far more

direct authority and power than he had been hitherto in the projects of

that wise order whose doctrines he had so darkly perverted, repaired to

London; and that, soon after my departure for the same place, Gerald and

Aubrey left Devereux Court in company with each other; but Gerald, whom

very trifling things diverted from any project, however important,

returned to Devereux Court to accomplish the prosecution of some rustic

/amour/, without even reaching London. Aubrey, on the contrary, had

proceeded to the metropolis, sought the suburb in which Alvarez lived,

procured, in order to avoid any probable chance of meeting me, a lodging

in the same obscure quarter, and had renewed his suit to Isora. The

reader is already in possession of the ill success which attended it.

Aubrey had at last confessed his real name to the father. The Spaniard

was dazzled by the prospect of so honourable an alliance for his

daughter. From both came Isora's persecution, but in both was it

resisted. Passing over passages in the manuscript of the most stormy

incoherence and the most gloomy passion, I come to what follows--

I learned then from Desmarais that you had taken away her and the dying

father, that you had placed them in a safe and honourable home. That

man, so implicitly the creature of Montreuil, or rather of his own

interest, with which Montreuil was identified, was easily induced to

betray you also to me,--me whom he imagined, moreover, utterly the tool

of the priest, and of whose torturing interest in this peculiar

disclosure he was not at that time aware. I visited Isora in her new

abode, and again and again she trembled beneath my rage. Then, for the

second time, I attempted force. Ha! ha! Morton, I think I see you

now!--I think I hear your muttered curse! Curse on! When you read this

I shall be beyond your vengeance, beyond human power. And yet I think

if I were mere clay; if I were the mere senseless heap of ashes that the

grave covers; if I were not the thing that must live forever and

forever, far away in unimagined worlds, where nought that has earth's

life can come,--I should tremble beneath the sod as your foot pressed

and your execration rang over it. A second time I attempted force; a

second time I was repulsed by the same means,--by a woman's hand and a

woman's dagger. But I knew that I had one hold over Isora from which,

while she loved you, I could never be driven: I knew that by threatening

your /life/, I could command her will and terrify her into compliance

with my own. I made her reiterate her vow of concealment; and I

discovered, by some words dropping from her fear, that she believed you

already suspected me, and had been withheld by her entreaties from

seeking me out. I questioned her more, and soon perceived that it was

(as indeed I knew before) Gerald whom you suspected, not me; but I did

not tell this to Isora. I suffered her to cherish a mistake profitable

to my disguise; but I saw at once that it might betray me, if you ever

met and conferred at length with Gerald upon this point, and I exacted

from Isora a pledge that she would effectually and forever bind you not

to breathe a single suspicion to him. When I had left the room, I

returned once more to warn her against uniting herself with you.

Wretch, selfish, accursed wretch that you were, why did you suffer her

to transgress that warning?

I fled from the house, as a fiend flies from a being whom he has

possessed. I returned at night to look up at the window, and linger by

the door, and keep watch beside the home which held Isora. Such, in her

former abode, had been my nightly wont. I had no evil thought nor foul

intent in this customary vigil,--no, not one! Strangely enough, with

the tempestuous and overwhelming emotions which constituted the greater

part of my love was mingled--though subdued and latent--a stream of the

softest, yea, I might add almost of the holiest tenderness. Often after

one of those outpourings of rage and menace and despair, I would fly to

some quiet spot and weep till all the hardness of my heart was wept

away. And often in those nightly vigils I would pause by the door and

murmur, "This shelter, denied not to the beggar and the beggar's child,

this would you deny to me if you could dream that I was so near you.

And yet, had you loved me, instead of lavishing upon me all your hatred

and your contempt,--had you loved me, I would have served and worshipped

you as man knows not worship or service. You shudder at my vehemence

now: I could not then have breathed a whisper to wound you. You tremble

now at the fierceness of my breast: you would then rather have marvelled

at its softness."

I was already at my old watch when you encountered me: you addressed me;

I answered not; you approached me, and I fled. Fled there--there was

the shame, and the sting of my sentiments towards you. I am not

naturally afraid of danger, though my nerves are sometimes weak and have

sometimes shrunk from it. I have known something of peril in late years

when my frame has been bowed and broken--perils by storms at sea, and

the knives of robbers upon land--and I have looked upon it with a quiet

eye. But you, Morton Devereux, you I always feared. I had seen from

your childhood others whose nature was far stronger than mine yield and

recoil at yours; I had seen the giant and bold strength of Gerald quail

before your bent brow; I had seen even the hardy pride of Montreuil

baffled by your curled lip and the stern sarcasm of your glance; I had

seen you, too, in your wild moments of ungoverned rage, and I knew that

if earth held one whose passions were fiercer than my own it was you.

But your passions were sustained even in their fiercest excess; your

passions were the mere weapons of your mind: my passions were the

torturers and the tyrants of mine. Your passions seconded your will;

mine blinded and overwhelmed it. From my infancy, even while I loved

you most, you awed me; and years, in deepening the impression, had made

it indelible. I could not confront the thought of your knowing all, and

of meeting you after that knowledge. And this fear, while it unnerved

me at some moments, at others only maddened my ferocity the more by the

stings of shame and self-contempt.

I fled from you: you pursued; you gained upon me; you remember how I was

preserved. I dashed through the inebriated revellers who obstructed

your path, and reached my own lodging, which was close at hand; for the

same day on which I learned Isora's change of residence I changed my own

in order to be near it. Did I feel joy for my escape? No: I could have

gnawed the very flesh from my bones in the agony of my shame. "I could

brave," I said, "I could threat, I could offer violence to the woman who

rejected me, and yet I could not face the rival for whom I am scorned!"

At that moment a resolution flashed across my mind, exactly as if a

train of living fire had been driven before it. Morton, I resolved to

murder you, and in that very hour! A pistol lay on my table; I took it,

concealed it about my person, and repaired to the shelter of a large

portico, beside which I knew that you must pass to your own home in the

same street. Scarcely three minutes had elapsed between the reaching my

house and the leaving it on this errand. I knew, for I had heard swords

clash, that you would be detained some time in the street by the

rioters; I thought it probable also that you might still continue the

search for me; and I knew even that, had you hastened at once to your

home, you could scarcely have reached it before I reached my shelter. I

hurried on; I arrived at the spot; I screened myself and awaited your

coming. You came, borne in the arms of two men; others followed in the

rear; I saw your face destitute of the hue and aspect of life, and your

clothes streaming with blood. I was horror-stricken. I joined the

crowd; I learned that you had been stabbed, and it was feared mortally.

I did not return home: no, I went into the fields, and lay out all

night, and lifted up my heart to God, and wept aloud, and peace fell

upon me,--at least, what was peace compared to the tempestuous darkness

which had before reigned in my breast. The sight of you, bleeding and

insensible,--you, against whom I had harboured a fratricide's

purpose,--had stricken, as it were, the weapon from my hand and the

madness from my mind. I shuddered at what I had escaped; I blessed God

for my deliverance; and with the gratitude and the awe came repentance;

and repentance brought a resolution to fly, since I could not wrestle

with my mighty and dread temptation: the moment that resolution was

formed, it was as if an incubus were taken from my breast. Even the

next morning I did not return home: my anxiety for you was such that I

forgot all caution; I went to your house myself; I saw one of your

servants to whom I was personally unknown. I inquired respecting you,

and learned that your wound had not been mortal, and that the servant

had overheard one of the medical attendants say you were not even in

danger.

At this news I felt the serpent stir again within me, but I resolved to

crush it at the first: I would not even expose myself to the temptation

of passing by Isora's house; I went straight in search of my horse; I

mounted, and fled resolutely from the scene of my soul's peril. "I will

go," I said, "to the home of our childhood; I will surround myself by

the mute tokens of the early love which my brother bore me; I will

think,--while penance and prayer cleanse my soul from its black

guilt,--I will think that I am also making a sacrifice to that brother."

I returned then to Devereux Court, and I resolved to forego all

hope--all persecution--of Isora! My brother--my brother, my heart

yearns to you at this moment, even though years and distance, and, above

all, my own crimes, place a gulf between us which I may never pass; it

yearns to you when I think of those quiet shades, and the scenes where,

pure and unsullied, we wandered together, when life was all verdure and

freshness, and we dreamed not of what was to come! If even now my heart

yearns to you, Morton, when I think of that home and those days, believe

that it had some softness and some mercy for you then. Yes, I repeat, I

resolved to subdue my own emotions, and interpose no longer between

Isora and yourself. Full of this determination, and utterly melted

towards you, I wrote you a long letter; such as we would have written to

each other in our first youth. Two days after that letter all my new

purposes were swept away, and the whole soil of evil thoughts which they

had covered, not destroyed, rose again as the tide flowed from it, black

and rugged as before.

The very night on which I had writ that letter, came Montreuil secretly

to my chamber. He had been accustomed to visit Gerald by stealth and at

sudden moments; and there was something almost supernatural in the

manner in which he seemed to pass from place to place, unmolested and

unseen. He had now conceived a villanous project; and he had visited

Devereux Court in order to ascertain the likelihood of its success; he

there found that it was necessary to involve me in his scheme. My

uncle's physician had said privately that Sir William could not live

many months longer. Either from Gerald or my mother Montreuil learned

this fact; and he was resolved, if possible, that, the family estates

should not glide from all chance of his influence over them into your

possession. Montreuil was literally as poor as the rigid law of his

order enjoins its disciples to be; all his schemes required the disposal

of large sums, and in no private source could he hope for such pecuniary

power as he was likely to find in the coffers of any member of our

family, yourself only excepted. It was this man's boast to want, and

yet to command, all things; and he was now determined that if any craft,

resolution, or guilt could occasion the transfer of my uncle's wealth

from you to Gerald or to myself, it should not be wanting.

Now, then, he found the advantage of the dissensions with each other

which he had either sown or mellowed in our breasts. He came to turn

those wrathful thoughts which when he last saw me I had expressed

towards you to the favor and success of his design. He found my mind

strangely altered, but he affected to applaud the change. He questioned

me respecting my uncle's health, and I told him what had really

occurred; namely, that my uncle had on the preceding day read over to me

some part of a will which he had just made, and in which the vast bulk

of his property was bequeathed to you. At this news Montreuil must have

perceived at once the necessity of winning my consent to his project;

for, since I had seen the actual testament, no fraudulent transfer of

the property therein bequeathed could take place without my knowledge

that some fraud had been recurred to. Montreuil knew me well; he knew

that avarice, that pleasure, that ambition, were powerless words with

me, producing no effect and affording no temptation: but he knew that

passion, jealousy, spiritual terrors, were the springs that moved every

part and nerve of my moral being. The two former, then, he now put into

action; the last he held back in reserve. He spoke to me no further

upon the subject he had then at heart; not a word further on the

disposition of the estates: he spoke to me only of Isora and of you; he

aroused, by hint and insinuation, the new sleep into which all those

emotions--the furies of the heart--had been for a moment lulled. He

told me he had lately seen Isora; he dwelt glowingly on her beauty; he

commended my heroism in resigning her to a brother whose love for her

was little in comparison to mine, who had, in reality, never loved

/me/,--whose jests and irony had been levelled no less at myself than at

others. He painted your person and your mind, in contrast to my own, in

colors so covertly depreciating as to irritate more and more that vanity

with which jealousy is so woven, and from which, perhaps (a Titan son of

so feeble a parent), it is born. He hung lingeringly over all the

treasure that you would enjoy and that I--I, the first discoverer, had

so nobly and so generously relinquished.

"Relinquished!" I cried, "no, I was driven from it; I left it not while

a hope of possessing it remained." The priest affected astonishment.

"How! was I sure of that? I had, it is true, wooed Isora; but would

she, even if she had felt no preference for Morton, would she have

surrendered the heir to a princely wealth for the humble love of the

younger son? I did not know women: with them all love was either

wantonness, custom, or pride; it was the last principle that swayed

Isora. Had I sought to enlist it on my side? Not at all. Again, I had

only striven to detach Isora from Morton; had I ever attempted the much

easier task of detaching Morton from Isora? No, never;" and Montreuil

repeated his panegyric on my generous surrender of my rights. I

interrupted him; I had not surrendered: I never would surrender while a

hope remained. But, where was that hope, and how was it to be

realized? After much artful prelude, the priest explained. He

proposed to use every means to array against your union with Isora all

motives of ambition, interest, and aggrandizement. "I know Morton's

character," said he, "to its very depths. His chief virtue is honour;

his chief principle is ambition. He will not attempt to win this girl

otherwise than by marriage; for the very reasons that would induce most

men to attempt it, namely, her unfriended state, her poverty, her

confidence in him, and her love, or that semblance of love which he

believes to be the passion itself. This virtue,--I call it so, though

it is none, for there is no virtue out of religion,--this virtue, then,

will place before him only two plans of conduct, either to marry her or

to forsake her. Now, then, if we can bring his ambition, that great

lever of his conduct, in opposition to the first alternative, only the

last remains: I say that we /can/ employ that engine in your behalf;

leave it to me, and I will do so. Then, Aubrey, in the moment of her

pique, her resentment, her outraged vanity, at being thus left, you

shall appear; not as you have hitherto done in menace and terror, but

soft, subdued, with looks all love, with vows all penitence; vindicating

all your past vehemence by the excess of your passion, and promising all

future tenderness by the influence of the same motive, the motive which

to a woman pardons every error and hallows every crime. Then will she

contrast your love with your brother's: then will the scale fall from

her eyes; then will she see what hitherto she has been blinded to, that

your brother, to yourself, is a satyr to Hyperion; then will she blush

and falter, and hide her cheek in your bosom." "Hold, hold!" I cried

"do with me what you will; counsel, and I will act!"

Here again the manuscript was defaced by a sudden burst of execration

upon Montreuil, followed by ravings that gradually blackened into the

most gloomy and incoherent outpourings of madness; at length the history

proceeded.

"You wrote to ask me to sound our uncle on the subject of your intended

marriage. Montreuil drew up my answer; and I constrained myself,

despite my revived hatred to you, to transcribe its expressions of

affection. My uncle wrote to you also; and we strengthened his dislike

to the step you had proposed, by hints from myself disrespectful to

Isora, and an anonymous communication dated from London and to the same

purport. All this while I knew not that Isora had been in your house;

your answer to my letter seemed to imply that you would not disobey my

uncle. Montreuil, who was still lurking in the neighbourhood and who at

night privately met or sought me, affected exultation at the incipient

success of his advice. He pretended to receive perpetual intelligence

of your motions and conduct, and he informed me now that Isora had come

to your house on hearing of your wound; that you had not (agreeably,

Montreuil added to his view of your character) taken advantage of her

indiscretion; that immediately on receiving your uncle's and my own

letters, you had separated yourself from her; and, that though you still

visited her, it was apparently with a view of breaking off all

connection by gradual and gentle steps; at all events, you had taken no

measures towards marriage. "Now, then," said Montreuil, "for one

finishing stroke, and the prize is yours. Your uncle cannot, you find,

live long: could he but be persuaded to leave his property to Gerald or

to you, with only a trifling legacy (comparatively speaking) to Morton,

that worldly-minded and enterprising person would be utterly prevented

from marrying a penniless and unknown foreigner. Nothing but his own

high prospects, so utterly above the necessity of fortune in a wife, can

excuse such a measure now, even to his own mind; if therefore, we can

effect this transfer of property, and in the meanwhile prevent Morton

from marrying, your rival is gone forever, and with his brilliant

advantages of wealth will also vanish his merits in the eyes of Isora.

Do not be startled at this thought: there is no crime in it; I, your

confessor, your tutor, the servant of the Church, am the last person to

counsel, to hint even, at what is criminal; but the end sanctifies all

means. By transferring this vast property, you do not only insure your

object, but you advance the great cause of Kings, the Church, and of the

Religion which presides over both. Wealth, in Morton's possession, will

be useless to this cause, perhaps pernicious: in your hands or in

Gerald's, it will be of inestimable service. Wealth produced from the

public should be applied to the uses of the public, yea, even though a

petty injury to one individual be the price."

Thus, and in this manner, did Montreuil prepare my mind for the step he

meditated; but I was not yet ripe for it. So inconsistent is guilt,

that I could commit murder, wrong, almost all villany that passion

dictated, but I was struck aghast by the thought of fraud. Montreuil

perceived that I was not yet wholly his, and his next plan was to remove

me from a spot where I might check his measures. He persuaded me to

travel for a few weeks. "On your return," said he, "consider Isora

yours; meanwhile, let change of scene beguile suspense." I was passive

in his hands, and I went whither he directed.

Let me be brief here on the black fraud that ensued. Among the other

arts of Jean Desmarais, was that of copying exactly any handwriting. He

was then in London, in your service. Montrenil sent for him to come to

the neighbourhood of Devereux Court. Meanwhile, the priest had procured

from the notary who had drawn up, and who now possessed, the will of my

unsuspecting uncle, that document. The notary had been long known to,

and sometimes politically employed by, Montreuil, for he was

half-brother to that Oswald, whom I have before mentioned as the early

comrade of the priest and Desmarais. This circumstance, it is probable,

first induced Montreuil to contemplate the plan of a substituted will.

Before Desmarais arrived, in order to copy those parts of the will which

my uncle's humour had led him to write in his own hand, you, alarmed by

a letter from my uncle, came to the Court, and on the same day Sir

William (taken ill the preceding evening) died. Between that day and

the one on which the funeral occurred the will was copied by Desmarais;

only Gerald's name was substituted for yours, and the forty thousand

pounds left to him--a sum equal to that bestowed on myself--was cut down

into a legacy of twenty thousand pounds to you. Less than this

Montreuil dared not insert as the bequest to you: and it is possible

that the same regard to probabilities prevented all mention of himself

in the substituted will. This was all the alteration made. My uncle's

writing was copied exactly; and, save the departure from his apparent

intentions in your favour, I believe not a particle in the effected

fraud was calculated to excite suspicion. Immediately on the reading of

the will, Montreuil repaired to me and confessed what had taken place.

"Aubrey," he said, "I have done this for your sake partly; but I have

had a much higher end in view than even your happiness or my

affectionate wishes to promote it. I live solely for one object,--the

aggrandizement of that holy order to which I belong; the schemes of that

order are devoted only to the interests of Heaven, and by serving them I

serve Heaven itself. Aubrey, child of my adoption and of my earthly

hopes, those schemes require carnal instruments, and work, even through

Mammon, unto the goal of righteousness. What I have done is just before

God and man. I have wrested a weapon from the hand of an enemy, and

placed it in the hand of an ally. I have not touched one atom of this

wealth, though, with the same ease with which I have transferred it from

Morton to Gerald, I might have made my own private fortune. I have not

touched one atom of it; nor for you, whom I love more than any living

being, have I done what my heart dictated. I might have caused the

inheritance to pass to you. I have not done so. Why? Because then I

should have consulted a selfish desire at the expense of the interests

of mankind. Gerald is fitter to be the tool those interests require

than you are. Gerald I have made that tool. You, too, I have spared

the pangs which your conscience, so peculiarly, so morbidly acute, might

suffer at being selected as the instrument of a seeming wrong to Morton.

All required of you is silence. If your wants ever ask more than your

legacy, you have, as I have, a claim to that wealth which your pleasure

allows Gerald to possess. Meanwhile, let us secure to you that treasure

dearer to you than gold."

If Montreuil did not quite blind me by speeches of this nature, my

engrossing, absorbing passion required little to make it cling to any

hope of its fruition. I assented, therefore, though not without many

previous struggles, to Montreuil's project, or rather to its

concealment; nay, I wrote some time after, at his desire and his

dictation, a letter to you, stating feigned reasons for my uncle's

alteration of former intentions, and exonerating Gerald from all

connivance in that alteration, or abetment in the fraud you professed

that it was your open belief had been committed. This was due to

Gerald; for at that time, and for aught I know, at the present, he was

perfectly unconscious by what means he had attained his fortune: he

believed that your love for Isora had given my uncle offence, and hence

your disinheritance; and Montreuil took effectual care to exasperate him

against you, by dwelling on the malice which your suspicions and your

proceedings against him so glaringly testified. Whether Montreuil

really thought you would give over all intention of marrying Isora upon

your reverse of fortune, which is likely enough from his estimate of

your character; or whether he only wished by any means to obtain my

acquiescence in a measure important to his views, I know not, but he

never left me, nor ever ceased to sustain my fevered and unhallowed

hopes, from the hour in which he first communicated to me the fraudulent

substitution of the will till we repaired together to London. This we

did not do so long as he could detain me in the country by assurances

that I should ruin all by appearing before Isora until you had entirely

deserted her.

Morton, hitherto I have written as if my veins were filled with water,

instead of the raging fire that flows through them until it reaches my

brain, and there it stops, and eats away all things,--even memory, that

once seemed eternal! Now I feel as I approach the consummation

of--ha--of what--ay, of what? Brother, did you ever, when you thought

yourself quite alone, at night, not a breath stirring,--did you ever

raise your eyes, and see exactly opposite to you a devil?--a dread

thing, that moves not, speaks not, but glares upon you with a fixed,

dead, unrelenting eye?--that thing is before me now and witnesses every

word I write. But it deters me not! no, nor terrifies me. I have said

that I would fulfil this task, and I have nearly done it; though at

times the gray cavern yawned, and I saw its rugged walls

stretch--stretch away, on either side, until they reached hell; and

there I beheld--but I will not tell you till we meet there! Now I am

calm again: read on.

We could not discover Isora nor her home: perhaps the priest took care

that it should be so; for, at that time, what with his devilish whispers

and my own heart, I often scarcely knew what I was or what I desired;

and I sat for hours and gazed upon the air, and it seemed so soft and

still that I longed to make an opening in my forehead that it might

enter there, and so cool and quiet the dull, throbbing, scorching

anguish that lay like molten lead in my brain; at length we found the

house. "To-morrow," said the Abbe, and he shed tears over me,--for

there were times when that hard man did feel,--"to-morrow, my child,

thou shalt see her; but be soft and calm." To-morrow came; but

Montreuil was pale, paler than I had ever seen him, and he gazed upon me

and said, "Not to-day, Son, not to-day; she has gone out, and will not

return till nightfall." My brother, the evening came, and with it came

Desmarais; he came in terror and alarm. "The villain Oswald," he said,

"has betrayed all; he drew me aside and told me so. 'Hark ye, Jean,' he

whispered, 'hark ye: your master has my brother's written confession and

the real will; but I have provided for your safety, and if he pleases

it, for Montreuil's. The packet is not to be opened till the seventh

day; fly before then. But I know," added Desmarais, "where the packet

is placed;" and he took Montreuil aside, and for a while I heard not

what they said; but I did overhear Desmarais at last, and I learned that

it was your /bridal night/.

What felt I then? The same tempestuous fury,--the same whirlwind and

storm of heart that I had felt before, at the mere anticipation of such

an event? No; I felt a bright ray of joy flash through me. Yes, joy;

but it was that joy which a conqueror feels when he knows his mortal foe

is in his power and when he dooms that enemy to death. "They shall

perish, and on this night," I said inly. "I have sworn it; I swore to

Isora that the bridal couch should be stained with blood, and I will

keep the oath!" I approached the pair; they were discussing the means

for obtaining the packet. Montreuil urged Desmarais to purloin it from

the place where you had deposited it, and then to abscond; but to this

plan Desmarais was vehemently opposed. He insisted that there would be

no possible chance of his escape from a search so scrutinizing as that

which would necessarily ensue, and he evidently resolved not /alone/ to

incur the danger of the theft. "The Count," said he, "saw that I was

present when he put away the packet. Suspicion will fall solely on me.

Whither should I fly? No: I will serve you with my talents, but not

with my life." "Wretch," said Montreuil, "if that packet is opened, thy

life is already gone." "Yes," said Desmarais; "but we may yet purloin

the papers, and throw the guilt upon some other quarter. What if I

admit you when the Count is abroad? What if you steal the packet, and

carry away other articles of more seeming value? What, too, if you

wound me in the arm or the breast, and I coin some terrible tale of

robbers, and of my resistance, could we not manage then to throw

suspicion upon common housebreakers,--nay, could we not throw it upon

Oswald himself? Let us silence that traitor by death, and who shall

contradict our tale? No danger shall attend this plan. I will give you

the key of the escritoire: the theft will not be the work of a moment."

Montreuil at first demurred to this proposal, but Desmarais was, I

repeat, resolved not to incur the danger of the theft alone; the stake

was great, and it was not in Montreuil's nature to shrink from peril,

when once it became necessary to confront it. "Be it so," he said, at

last, "though the scheme is full of difficulty and of danger: be it so.

We have not a day to lose. To-morrow the Count will place the document

in some place of greater safety, and unknown to us: the deed shall be

done to-night. Procure the key of the escritoire; admit me this night;

I will steal disguised into the chamber; I will commit the act from

which you, who alone could commit it with safety, shrink. Instruct me

exactly as to the place where the articles you speak of are placed. I

will abstract them also. See that if the Count wake, he has no weapon

at hand. Wound yourself, as you say, in some place not dangerous to

life, and to-morrow, or within an hour after my escape, tell what tale

you will. I will go, meanwhile, at once to Oswald; I will either bribe

his silence--ay, and his immediate absence from England--or he shall

die. A death that secures our own self-preservation is excusable in the

reading of all law, divine or human." I heard, but they deemed me

insensible: they had already begun to grow unheeding of my presence.

Montreuil saw me, and his countenance grew soft. "I know all," I said,

as I caught his eye which looked on me in pity, "I know all: they are

married. Enough!--with my hope ceases my love: care not for me."

Montreuil embraced and spoke to me in kindness and in praise. He

assured me that you had kept your wedding so close a secret that he knew

it not, nor did even Desmarais, till the evening before,--till after he

had proposed that I should visit Isora that very day. I know not, I

care not, whether he was sincere in this. In whatever way one line in

the dread scroll of his conduct be read, the scroll was written in

guile, and in blood was it sealed. I appeared not to notice Montreuil

or his accomplice any more. The latter left the house first. Montreuil

stole forth, as he thought, unobserved; he was masked, and in complete

disguise. I, too, went forth. I hastened to a shop where such things

were procured; I purchased a mask and cloak similar to the priest's. I

had heard Montreuil agree with Desmarais that the door of the house

should be left ajar, in order to give greater facility to the escape of

the former; I repaired to the house in time to see Montreuil enter it.

A strange, sharp sort of cunning, which I had never known before, ran

through the dark confusion of my mind. I waited for a minute, till it

was likely that Montreuil had gained your chamber; I then pushed open

the door, and ascended the stairs. I met no one; the moonlight fell

around me, and its rays seemed to me like ghosts, pale and shrouded, and

gazing upon me with wan and lustreless eyes. I know not how I found

your chamber, but it was the only one I entered. I stood in the same

room with Isora and yourself: ye lay in sleep; Isora's face--O God! I

know no more--no more of that night of horror--save that I fled from the

house reeking with blood,--a murderer,--and the murderer of Isora!

Then came a long, long dream. I was in a sea of blood,--blood-red was

the sky, and one still, solitary star that gleamed far away with a

sickly and wan light was the only spot, above and around, which was not

of the same intolerable dye. And I thought my eyelids were cut off, as

those of the Roman consul are said to have been, and I had nothing to

shield my eyes from that crimson light, and the rolling waters of that

unnatural sea. And the red air burned through my eyes into my brain,

and then that also, methought, became blood; and all memory,--all images

of memory,--all idea,--wore a material shape and a material colour, and

were blood too. Everything was unutterably silent, except when my own

shrieks rang over the shoreless ocean, as I drifted on. At last I fixed

my eyes--the eyes which I might never close--upon that pale and single

star; and after I had gazed a little while, the star seemed to change

slowly--slowly--until it grew like the pale face of that murdered girl,

and then it vanished utterly, and /all/ was blood!

This vision was sometimes broken, sometimes varied by others, but it

always returned; and when at last I completely woke from it, I was in

Italy, in a convent. Montreuil had lost no time in removing me from

England. But once, shortly after my recovery, for I was mad for many

months, he visited me, and he saw what a wreck I had become. He pitied

me; and when I told him I longed above all things for liberty--for the

green earth and the fresh air, and a removal from that gloomy abode--he

opened the convent gates and blessed me, and bade me go forth. "All I

require of you," said he, "is a promise. If it be understood that you

live, you will be persecuted by inquiries and questions which will

terminate in a conviction of your crime: let it therefore be reported in

England that you are dead. Consent to the report, and promise never to

quit Italy nor to see Morton Devereux."

I promised; and that promise I have kept: but I promised not that I

would never reveal to you, in writing, the black tale which I have now

recorded. May it reach you! There is one in this vicinity who has

undertaken to bear it to you: he says he has known misery; and when he

said so, his voice sounded in my ear like yours; and I looked upon him,

and thought his features were cast somewhat in the same mould as your

own; so I have trusted him. I have now told all. I have wrenched the

secret from my heart in agony and with fear. I have told all: though

things which I believe are fiends have started forth from the grim walls

around to forbid it; though dark wings have swept by me, and talons, as

of a bird, have attempted to tear away the paper on which I write;

though eyes, whose light was never drunk from earth, have glared on me;

and mocking voices and horrible laughter have made my flesh creep, and

thrilled through the marrow of my bones,--I have told all; I have

finished my last labour in this world, and I will now lie down and die.

AUBREY DEVEREUX.

The paper dropped from my hands. Whatever I had felt in reading it, I

had not flinched once from the task. From the first word even to the

last, I had gone through the dreadful tale, nor uttered a syllable, nor

moved a limb. And now as I rose, though I had found the being who to me

had withered this world into one impassable desert; though I had found

the unrelenting foe and the escaped murderer of Isora, the object of the

execration and vindictiveness of years,--not one single throb of wrath,

not one single sentiment of vengeance, was in my breast. I passed at

once to the bedside of my brother: he was awake, but still and

calm,--the calm and stillness of exhausted nature. I knelt down quietly

beside him. I took his hand, and I shrank not from the touch, though by

that hand the only woman I ever loved had perished.

"Look up, Aubrey!" said I, struggling with tears which, despite of my

most earnest effort, came over me; "look up: all is forgiven. Who on

earth shall withhold pardon from a crime which on earth has been so

awfully punished? Look up, Aubrey; I am your brother, and I forgive

you. You are right: my childhood was harsh and fierce; and had you

feared me less you might have confided in me, and you would not have

sinned and suffered as you have done now. Fear me no longer. Look up,

Aubrey, it is Morton who calls you. Why do you not speak? My brother,

my brother,--a word, a single word, I implore you."

For one moment did Aubrey raise his eyes, one moment did he meet mine.

His lips quivered wildly: I heard the death-rattle; he sank back, and

his hand dropped from my clasp. My words had snapped asunder the last

chord of life. Merciful Heaven! I thank Thee that those words were the

words of pardon!