ARABELLA CRANE VERSUS GUY DARRELL; OR, WOMAN VERSUS LAWYER. IN THE
COURTS, LAWYER WOULD WIN; BUT IN A PRIVATE PARLOUR, FOOT TO FOOT,
AND TONGUE TO TONGUE, LAWYER HAS NOT A CHANCE.
Arabella Crane entered the room: Darrell hesitated--the remembrances
attached to her were so painful and repugnant. But did he not now owe to
her perhaps his very life? He passed his hand rapidly over his brow, as
if to sweep away all earlier recollections, and, advancing quickly,
extended that hand to her. The stern woman shook her head, and rejected
the proffered greeting.
"You owe me no thanks," she said, in her harsh, ungracious accents; "I
sought to save not you, but him."
"How!" said Darrell, startled; "you feel no resentment against the man
who injured and betrayed you?"
"What my feelings may be towards him are not for you to conjecture; man
could not conjecture them; I am woman. What they once were I might blush
for; what they are now, I could own without shame. But you, Mr.
Darrell,--you, in the hour of my uttermost anguish, when all my future
was laid desolate, and the world lay crushed at my feet--you--man,
chivalrous man!--you had for me no human compassion--you thrust me in
scorn from your doors--you saw in my woe nothing but my error--you sent
me forth, stripped of reputation, branded by your contempt, to famine or
to suicide. And you wonder that I feel less resentment against him who
wronged me than against you, who, knowing me wronged, only disdained my
grief. The answer is plain--the scorn of the man she only reverenced
leaves to a woman no memory to mitigate its bitterness and gall. The
wrongs inflicted by the man she loved may leave, what they have left to
me, an undying sense of a past existence--radiant, joyous, hopeful; of a
time when the earth seemed covered with blossoms, just ready to burst
into bloom; when the skies through their haze took the rose-hues as the
sun seemed about to rise. The memory that I once was happy, at least
then, I owe to him who injured and betrayed me. To you, when happiness
was lost to me forever, what do I owe? Tell me."
Struck by her words, more by her impressive manner, though not
recognising the plea by which the defendant thus raised herself into the
accuser, Darrell answered gently "Pardon me; this is no moment to revive
recollections of anger on my part; but reflect, I entreat you, and you
will feel that I was not too harsh. In the same position any other man
would not have been less severe."
"Any other man!" she exclaimed; "ay, possibly! but would the scorn of
any other man so have crushed self-esteem? The injuries of the wicked
do not sour us against the good; but the scoff of the good leaves us
malignant against virtue itself. Any other man! Tut! Genius is bound
to be indulgent. It should know human errors so well--has, with its
large luminous forces, such errors itself when it deigns to be human,
that, where others may scorn, genius should only pity." She paused a
moment, and then slowly resumed. "And pity was my due. Had you, or had
any one lofty as yourself in reputed honour, but said to me, 'Thou hast
sinned, thou must suffer; but sin itself needs compassion, and compassion
forbids thee to despair,' why, then, I might have been gentler to the
things of earth, and less steeled against the influences of Heaven than
I have been. That is all no matter now. Mr. Darrell, I would not part
from you with angry and bitter sentiments. Colonel Morley tells me that
you have not only let the man, whom we need not name, go free, but that
you have guarded the secret of his designs. For this I thank you.
I thank you, because what is left of that blasted and deformed existence
I have taken into mine. And I would save that man from his own devices
as I would save my soul from its own temptations. Are you large-hearted
enough to comprehend me? Look in my face--you have seen his; all earthly
love is erased and blotted out of both."
Guy Darrell bowed his head in respect that partook of awe.
"You, too," said the grim woman, after a pause, and approaching him
nearer--"you, too, have loved, I am told, and you, too, were forsaken."
He recoiled and--shuddered.
"What is left to your heart of its ancient folly? I should like to know!
I am curious to learn if there be a man who can feel as woman! Have you
only resentment? have you only disdain? have you only vengeance? have you
pity? or have you the jealous absorbing desire, surviving the affection
from which it sprang, that still the life wrenched from you shall owe,
despite itself, a melancholy allegiance to your own?"
Darrell impatiently waved his hand to forbid further questions; and it
needed all his sense of the service this woman had just rendered him to
repress his haughty displeasure at so close an approach to his torturing
secrets.
Arabella's dark bright eyes rested on his knitted brow, for a moment,
wistfully, musingly. Then she said: "I see! man's inflexible pride--
no pardon there! But own, at least, that you have suffered."
"Suffered!" groaned Darrell involuntarily, and pressing his hand to his
heart.
"You have!--and you own it! Fellow-sufferer, I have no more anger
against you. Neither should pity, but let each respect the other. A few
words more,--this child!"
"Ay--ay--this child! you will be truthful. You will not seek to deceive
me--you know that she--she--claimed by that assassin, reared by his
convict father--she is no daughter of my line!"
"What! would it then be no joy to know that your line did not close with
yourself--that your child might--"
"Cease, madam, cease--it matters not to a man nor to a race when it
perish, so that it perish at last with honour. Who would have either
himself or his lineage live on into a day when the escutcheon is blotted
and the name disgraced? No; if that be Matilda's child, tell me, and I
will bear, as man may do, the last calamity which the will of Heaven may
inflict. If, as I have all reason to think, the tale be an imposture,
speak and give me the sole comfort to which I would cling amidst the ruin
of all other hopes."
"Verily," said Arabella, with a kind of musing wonder in the tone of her
softened voice; "verily, has a man's heart the same throb and fibre as a
woman's? Had I a child like that blue-eyed wanderer with the frail form
needing protection, and the brave spirit that ennobles softness, what
would be my pride! my bliss! Talk of shame--disgrace! Fie--fie--the
more the evil of others darkened one so innocent, the more cause to love
and shelter her. But--I--am childless! Shall I tell you that the
offence which lies heaviest on my conscience has been my cruelty to that
girl? She was given an infant to my care. I saw in her the daughter of
that false, false, mean, deceiving friend, who had taken my confidence,
and bought, with her supposed heritage, the man sworn by all oaths to me.
I saw in her, too, your descendant, your rightful heiress. I rejoiced in
a revenge on your daughter and yourself. Think not I would have foisted
her on your notice! No. I would have kept her without culture, without
consciousness of a higher lot; and when I gave her up to her grandsire,
the convict, it was a triumph to think that Matilda's child would be an
outcast. Terrible thought! but I was mad then. But that poor convict
whom you, in your worldly arrogance, so loftily despise--he took to his
breast what was flung away as a worthless weed. And if the flower
keep the promise of the bud, never flower so fair bloomed from your
vaunted stem! And yet you would bless me if I said, 'Pass on, childless
man; she is nothing to you!'"
"Madam, let us not argue. As you yourself justly imply, man's heart and
woman's must each know throbs that never are, and never should be,
familiar to the other. I repeat my question, and again I implore your
answer."
"I cannot answer for certain; and I am fearful of answering at all, lest
on a point so important I should mislead you. Matilda's child? Jasper
affirmed it to me. His father believed him--I believed him. I never had
the shadow of a doubt till--"
"Till what? For Heaven's sake speak."
"Till about five years ago, or somewhat more, I saw a letter from
Gabrielle Desmarets, and--"
"Ah! which made you suspect, as I do, that the child is Gabrielle
Desmaret's daughter."
Arabella reared her crest as a serpent before it strikes. "Gabrielle's
daughter! You think so. Her child that I sheltered! Her child for whom
I have just pleaded to you! Hers!" She suddenly became silent.
Evidently that idea had never before struck her; evidently it now shocked
her; evidently something was passing through her mind which did not allow
that idea to be dismissed. As Darrell was about to address her, she
exclaimed abruptly: "No! say no more now. You may hear from me again
should I learn what may decide at least this doubt one way or the other.
Farewell, sir."
"Not yet. Permit me to remind you that you have saved the life of a man
whose wealth is immense."
"Mr. Darrell, my wealth in relation to my wants is perhaps immense as
yours, for I do not spend what I possess."
"But this unhappy outlaw, whom you would save from himself, can
henceforth be to you but a burthen and a charge. After what has passed
to-night, I do tremble to think that penury may whisper other houses to
rob, other lives to menace. Let me, then, place at your disposal, to be
employed in such mode as you deem the best, a sum that may suffice to
secure an object which we have in common."
"No, Mr. Darrell," said Arabella, fiercely; "whatever he be, never with
my consent shall Jasper Losely be beholden to you for alms. If money can
save him from shame and a dreadful death, that money shall be mine. I
have said it. And, hark you, Mr. Darrell, what is repentance without
atonement? I say not that I repent; but I do know that I seek to atone."
The iron-grey robe fluttered an instant, and then vanished from the room.
When Alban Morley returned to the library, he saw Darrell at the farther
corner of the room, on his knees. Well might Guy Darrell thank Heaven
for the mercies vouchsafed to him that night. Life preserved? Is that
all? Might life yet be bettered and gladdened? Was there aught in the
grim woman's words that might bequeath thoughts which reflection would
ripen into influences over action?--aught that might suggest the cases in
which, not ignobly, Pity might subjugate Scorn? In the royal abode of
that Soul, does Pride only fortify Honour?--is it but the mild king, not
the imperial despot? Would it blind, as its rival, the Reason? Would it
chain, as a rebel, the Heart? Would it man the dominions, that might be
serene, by the treasures it wastes-by the wars it provokes? Self-
knowledge! self-knowledge! From Heaven, indeed, descends the precept,
"KNOW THYSELF." That truth was told to us by the old heathen oracle.
But what old heathen oracle has told us how to know?