"I, alas!
Have lived but on this earth a few sad years;
And so my lot was ordered, that a father
First turned the moments of awakening life
To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope."
"/Cenci/."
FROM accompanying Maltravers along the noiseless progress of mental
education, we are now called awhile to cast our glances back at the
ruder and harsher ordeal which Alice Darvil was ordained to pass. Along
her path poetry shed no flowers, nor were her lonely steps towards the
distant shrine at which her pilgrimage found its rest lighted by the
mystic lamp of science, or guided by the thousand stars which are never
dim in the heavens for those favoured eyes from which genius and fancy
have removed many of the films of clay. Not along the aerial and
exalted ways that wind far above the homes and business of common
men--the solitary Alps of Spiritual Philosophy--wandered the desolate
steps of the child of poverty and sorrow. On the beaten and rugged
highways of common life, with a weary heart, and with bleeding feet, she
went her melancholy course. But the goal which is the great secret of
life, the /summum arcanum/ of all philosophy, whether the Practical or
the Ideal, was, perhaps, no less attainable for that humble girl than
for the elastic step and aspiring heart of him who thirsted after the
Great, and almost believed in the Impossible.
We return to that dismal night in which Alice was torn from the roof of
her lover. It was long before she recovered her consciousness of what
had passed, and gained a full perception of the fearful revolution which
had taken place in her destinies. It was then a grey and dreary morning
twilight; and the rude but covered vehicle which bore her was rolling
along the deep ruts of an unfrequented road, winding among the
uninclosed and mountainous wastes that, in England, usually betoken the
neighbourhood of the sea. With a shudder Alice looked round: Walters,
her father's accomplice, lay extended at her feet, and his heavy
breathing showed that he was fast asleep. Darvil himself was urging on
the jaded and sorry horse, and his broad back was turned towards Alice;
the rain, from which, in his position, he was but ill protected by the
awning, dripped dismally from his slouched hat; and now, as he turned
round, and his sinister and gloomy gaze rested upon the face of Alice,
his bad countenance, rendered more haggard by the cold raw light of the
cheerless dawn, completed the hideous picture of unveiled and ruffianly
wretchedness.
"Ho, ho! Alley, so you are come to your senses," said he, with a kind of
joyless grin. "I am glad of it, for I can have no fainting fine ladies
with me. You have had a long holiday, Alley; you must now learn once
more to work for your poor father. Ah, you have been d----d sly; but
never mind the past--I forgive it. You must not run away again without
my leave; if you are fond of sweethearts, I won't balk you--but your old
father must go shares, Alley."
Alice could hear no more: she covered her face with the cloak that had
been thrown about her, and though she did not faint, her senses seemed
to be locked and paralysed. By and by Walters woke, and the two men,
heedless of her presence, conversed upon their plans. By degrees she
recovered sufficient self-possession to listen, in the instinctive hope
that some plan of escape might be suggested to her. But from what she
could gather of the incoherent and various projects they discussed, one
after another--disputing upon each with frightful oaths and scarce
intelligible slang, she could only learn that it was resolved at all
events to leave the district in which they were--but whither seemed yet
all undecided. The cart halted at last at a miserable-looking hut,
which the signpost announced to be an inn that afforded good
accommodation to travellers; to which announcement was annexed the
following epigrammatic distich:
"Old Tom, he is the best of gin;
Drink him once, and you'll drink him /agin/!"
The hovel stood so remote from all other habitations, and the waste
around was so bare of trees, and even shrubs, that Alice saw with
despair that all hope of flight in such a place would be indeed a
chimera. But to make assurance doubly sure, Darvil himself, lifting her
from the cart, conducted her up a broken and unlighted staircase, into a
sort of loft rather than a room, and, rudely pushing her in, turned the
key upon her, and descended. The weather was cold, the livid damps hung
upon the distained walls, and there was neither fire nor hearth; but
thinly clad as she was--her cloak and shawl her principal covering--she
did not feel the cold, for her heart was more chilly than the airs of
heaven. At noon an old woman brought her some food, which, consisting
of fish and poached game, was better than might have been expected in
such a place, and what would have been deemed a feast under her father's
roof. With an inviting leer, the crone pointed to a pewter measure of
raw spirits that accompanied the viands, and assured her, in a cracked
and maudlin voice, that "'Old Tom' was a kinder friend than any of the
young fellers!" This intrusion ended, Alice was again left alone till
dusk, when Darvil entered with a bundle of clothes, such as are worn by
the peasants of that primitive district of England.
"There, Alley," said he, "put on this warm toggery; finery won't do now.
We must leave no scent in the track; the hounds are after us, my little
blowen. Here's a nice stuff gown for you, and a red cloak that would
frighten a turkey-cock. As to the other cloak and shawl, don't be
afraid; they sha'n't go to the pop-shop, but we'll take care of them
against we get to some large town where there are young fellows with
blunt in their pockets; for you seem to have already found out that your
face is your fortune, Alley. Come, make haste, we must be starting. I
shall come up for you in ten minutes. Pish! don't be faint hearted;
here, take 'Old Tom'--take it, I say. What, you won't? Well, here's to
your health, and a better taste to you!"
And now, as the door once more closed upon Darvil, tears for the first
time came to the relief of Alice. It was a woman's weakness that
procured for her that woman's luxury. Those garments--they were
Ernest's gift--Ernest's taste; they were like the last relic of that
delicious life which now seemed to have fled for ever. All traces of
that life--of him, the loving, the protecting, the adored; all trace of
herself, as she had been re-created by love, was to be lost to her for
ever. It was (as she had read somewhere, in the little elementary
volumes that bounded her historic lore) like that last fatal ceremony in
which those condemned for life to the mines of Siberia are clothed with
the slave's livery, their past name and record eternally blotted out,
and thrust into the vast wastes, from which even the mercy of despotism,
should it ever re-awaken, cannot recall them; for all evidence of
them--all individuality--all mark to distinguish them from the universal
herd, is expunged from the world's calendar. She was still sobbing in
vehement and unrestrained passion, when Darvil re-entered. "What, not
dressed yet?" he exclaimed, in a voice of impatient rage; "hark ye,
this won't do. If in two minutes you are not ready, I'll send up John
Walters to help you; and he is a rough hand, I can tell you."
This threat recalled Alice, to herself. "I will do as you wish," said
she meekly.
"Well, then, be quick," said Darvil; "they are now putting the horse to.
And mark me, girl, your father is running away from the gallows, and
that thought does not make a man stand upon scruples. If you once
attempt to give me the slip, or do or say anything that can bring the
bulkies upon us--by the devil in hell!--if, indeed, there be hell or
devil--my knife shall become better acquainted with that throat--so look
to it!"
And this was the father--this the condition--of her whose ear had for
months drunk no other sound than the whispers of flattering love--the
murmurs of Passion from the lips of Poetry.
They continued their journey till midnight; they then arrived at an inn,
little different from the last; but here Alice was no longer consigned
to solitude. In a long room, reeking with smoke, sat from twenty to
thirty ruffians before a table on which mugs and vessels of strong
potations were formidably interspersed with sabres and pistols. They
received Walters and Darvil with a shout of welcome, and would have
crowded somewhat unceremoniously round Alice, if her father, whose
well-known desperate and brutal ferocity made him a man to be respected
in such an assembly, had not said, sternly, "Hands off, messmates, and
make way by the fire for my little girl--she is meat for your masters."
So saying, he pushed Alice down into a huge chair in the chimney-nook,
and, seating himself near her, at the end of the table, hastened to turn
the conversation.
"Well, Captain," said he, addressing a small thin man at the head of the
table, "I and Walters have fairly cut and run--the land has a bad air
for us, and we now want the sea-breeze to cure the rope fever. So,
knowing this was your night, we have crowded sail, and here we are. You
must give the girl there a lift, though I know you don't like such
lumber, and we'll run ashore as soon as we can."
"She seems a quiet little body," replied the captain; "and we would do
more than that to oblige an old friend like you. In half an hour
Oliver* puts on his nightcap, and we must then be off."
* The moon.
"The sooner the better."
The men now appeared to forget the presence of Alice, who sat faint with
fatigue and exhaustion, for she had been too sick at heart to touch the
food brought to her at their previous halting-place, gazing abstractedly
upon the fire. Her father, before their departure, made her swallow
some morsels of sea-biscuit, though each seemed to choke her; and then,
wrapped in a thick boat-cloak, she was placed in a small well-built
cutter; and as the sea-winds whistled round her, the present cold and
the past fatigues lulled her miserable heart into the arms of the
charitable Sleep.