THE FEET OF CLAY.
IT is a terrible thing to be left alone with one’s dead, and this might
in some sort be said to have been Margaret’s case when Mrs. Jordan had
departed. Her Willie had become as dead to her; all that was left of
him was the shameful record that lay upon the table before her. Never
more—save once—was she to see his face again in this life, nor did
she desire to do so. She would have shrunk from his hand had he offered
it to her, and the touch of his lips would have been contamination.
He had obtained her kisses as it were under false pretences, and she
flushed with shame when she thought of them. She did not conceal from
herself that his behaviour up to the very last had been in keeping with
his whole career. He should have come in person, whatever it had cost
him, and confessed his guilt, and not have left her a prey to unfounded
terrors. It was cowardly and base and selfish. Miserable as she had
been on his account an hour ago, she was now infinitely more wretched.
It was better to have thought him dead—and honest, than to know he
was alive and a cheat. ‘He is only seventeen, remember,’ had been Mrs.
Jordan’s words in appeal to her charity and pity, but they found no
response in Margaret’s bosom. ‘One can forgive anything at seventeen,’
was her reflection, ‘save hypocrisy and deceit.’ She forgave him as a
very charitable person might forgive a cardsharper; there was no malice
nor hatred in her heart against him, but she could never take him to
her heart again.
Was it possible, she wondered, that he could have been always base?
When he had made that passionate protestation in Anne Hathaway’s
garden, for example, and besought her only to keep her heart free for
him for a little time, to give him a chance of proving himself worthy
of her; had he had this hateful plan of fraud and falsehood in his mind
even then? If he was not to be believed _then_, if what he said then
was not the utterance of genuine love and honesty, what word of man was
to be credited? And if he was honest then, when did he begin to lie?
It had been her intention not to read this hateful paper; to commit it
to the flames; but a sort of terrible curiosity now urged her to peruse
it. She had no expectation of finding in it any mitigation of her lost
lover’s conduct; any plea for pardon or even for pity. She had no wish
to hear what he had to say for himself; only a certain morbid interest
in it.
Yet as she opened the manuscript and her eyes fell on the well-known
handwriting, they filled with unbidden tears. Great heavens! how
she had believed in him, how she had loved him! Nay, how she had
sympathised unwittingly with his very frauds, and longed and prayed
for their success. _Prayed_ for it—the thought of this especially
appalled her. She found herself, for the first time, face to face
with the mystery of life; with the difficulties of spiritual things.
It is strange enough (what happens often enough), that we should fall
on our knees and implore the divine assistance to avert misfortunes
from our dear ones that (if we did but know) have already happened; but
that we should implore it (if we did but know) on behalf of falsehood,
fraud—with the intent to prosper wickedness! This man, among his other
villanies, almost made her doubt of the goodness of God!
The manuscript was voluminous. It was written in the form of a diary,
but interspersed with reflections and protestations.
‘I protest,’ it began, ‘that I had no premeditated design or the
idea of any continued course of duplicity when my first error—the
production of the Hemynge note of hand—was committed.’
‘He calls it “an error,”’ thought Margaret with a moan, and indeed the
opening remark was the keynote of the whole composition, significant
of all that was to come. He had been weak, it avowed, but never
wicked; the victim not so much of temptation, but of overwhelming
circumstances. ‘You know, Margaret——’
This unexpected personal appeal came upon her like a thunderclap; it
was as though in that solitary room and in that solemn hour when night
and morning were about to meet, his very voice had addressed her. ‘You
know, Margaret, what sort of relations existed at that time between Mr.
Erin and myself: how, though he permitted me to pass as his son, he
was far from having any paternal feelings towards me; that he had no
sympathy with my tastes, no interest in my doings, and that he grudged
me the cost of my very maintenance. Was it so very reprehensible that,
having attempted in vain to gain his affection by the usual road to a
father’s heart, by diligence and duty, that I looked about me for some
other way? Knowing his passion for any reliques of Shakespeare, it
struck me that I might conciliate him by affecting to discover that of
which he was always in search. I do not seek to justify what I did, but
there was surely some extenuation for it.
‘To show you how little of settled purpose there was in the matter,
I took that note of hand, before presentation to your uncle, to Mr.
Lavine, the bookseller, in New Inn Passage, and showed him the document
for his opinion. He said it seemed to him to have been written a good
many years ago (taking for granted that it was an imitation), but that
the ink was not what it should be. He told me that he could give me
a mixture much more like old ink if it was my humour to produce the
semblance of antiquity, and immediately mixed together in a bottle
three different liquids used by book-binders in marbling covers, and
this I always henceforth used. I have applied to him again and again
for more ink: a circumstance I mention not only to show the simplicity
of the means employed in these so-called forgeries of mine, but also
the everyday risks I ran of discovery. Do you think I could have
endured such a position, had I been merely actuated by the motive I
have mentioned? Could human nature have borne it? No, Margaret, I was
sustained by a far higher ambition, for a man may strive for a reward
unworthily, and even though he is aware that he does not deserve it.’
The calmness of this reasoning appalled Margaret even more by its
speciousness than by its falseness. Her instinct, though she knew
nothing of these abstract matters, told her that such philosophy was
rotten at the core.
‘The imitation of that note of hand was a false step I admit,’
continued the writer, ‘but it succeeded beyond my most sanguine
expectations. It altered my relations with Mr. Erin entirely, which of
itself encouraged me to new deceptions; but above all it became a basis
on which to build my hopes of your becoming my wife. Hitherto I had
loved you, Margaret, passionately, devotedly indeed, but with little
hopes of ever winning you. When I obtained that promise from your dear
lips in the garden at Shottery, it was not merely with the selfish
intention of excluding for a few months from your heart the rival whom
I feared; I believed, as I still believe, that my talents were of a
high order, and I thought that at no distant date they would meet
with public recognition; that some of that praise, in short, which I
have gained under false pretences would have been accorded to my own
legitimate efforts. The time during which you promised to keep yourself
free for me, however, was now drawing to a close, and I felt that I had
not advanced a single step on the road to either fame or fortune. I was
madly in love with you. I felt that you were slipping out of the reach
of my arms, and the terrible temptation suggested itself to secure you
by the means that had already gained me so much in so unlooked-for
a manner. If I could only make myself necessary to your uncle by
ministering to his ruling passion, perhaps he would give his consent
(which otherwise I well knew could never be obtained) to our immediate
union. Not greed, I swear it, no, nor even the desire of recognition
(though only as it were by proxy) for my genius, were my inducements to
persevere in my course—
Love only was my call,
And if I lost thy love, I lost my all.’
It was terrible to Margaret to read such words; they almost made her
feel as though she had been a confederate in the delinquencies of
this unhappy boy. Terrible, too, was the appearance, under dates, of
his particular acts of forgery, each set down in a matter-of-fact and
methodical manner, and concerning which the total absence of penitence
and self-reprobation was less painful to her than the fallacious
self-justification in which he had indulged elsewhere.
‘Nov. 2nd.—Love-letter and verses to Anne Hathaway. Five stanzas and
a braid of hair. Hair a _gage d’amour_ from a young playmate; the silk
that bound it had attached the seals to some old deed. It was thickly
woven and twisted in some peculiar manner, which I judged would suggest
antiquity.
‘Nov. 7th.—Playhouse receipts. String for them, some worsted thread
taken out of some old tapestry in the waiting-room of the House of
Lords, where I went to hear his Majesty’s speech with Mr. Erin.
‘Dec. 2nd.—The Profession of Faith. My most ambitious performance
(except the play). I solemnly affirm that but for the praises bestowed
upon my good fortune (as it was held) on the previous occasions, I
should have hesitated to compose this document. On the other hand,
you know, Margaret, how earnestly desirous Mr. Erin always was that
Shakespeare should be proved to have been a Protestant; if I could
please him in this I thought that my way to his heart would be made
easy indeed. Moreover, I had myself the most rooted objection to
anything like bigotry or superstition. In penning the Profession I
formed the twelve letters contained in the Christian and surname of
Shakespeare as much as possible to resemble those in his original
autographs, but as for the rest I was only careful to produce as many
doubleyous and esses as possible. It was a most simple performance,
and executed with so little prudence that (as you remember) the word
“leffee“ was introduced instead of “leafless.” Nor did I take much
more trouble with the composition itself. When, therefore, I heard Dr.
Warton pronounce such an eulogium upon it—”Sir, we have many fine
things in our Church Service, and our Litany abounds with beauties;
but here, sir, is a man who has distanced us all”—it is hardly to be
wondered at that I was intoxicated with so unexpected a success. It
corroborated very strongly the high estimation in which I had always
held my talents, and I resolved, since the world would not recognise
them in my proper person, to compel it to acknowledge them under
another name. If I was not so great as Shakespeare—and indeed I have
sometimes believed myself to be so—I had at all events a soul akin to
him.’
The inordinate and monstrous vanity of this remark did not escape
Margaret’s notice, but it did not give her the pain that his other
reflections had done; it even afforded some palliation of his
deplorable conduct. The approbation of so many learned men, deceived
by a great name, had been evidently taken by him as an involuntary
recognition of his own genius, and in a manner turned his head. She
tried to persuade herself that he henceforth at least became in some
degree irresponsible for his own actions.
‘It was about this time,’ the confession continued, ‘that I was almost
ruined by the treachery and malignity of Reginald Talbot, for it was
he, you remember, who induced Mr. Albany Wallis to confront me with
a genuine signature of John Hemynge. I look upon that as the most
dangerous peril I had yet encountered, and, at the same time, the
cause of my greatest triumph. It seemed incredible, and no wonder,
that I should have produced within the space of one hour and a quarter
(including the time spent in going and coming, as was supposed, to the
Temple, but in reality to my own rooms at the New Inn), a facsimile
of the other John Hemynge’s handwriting, unless it had been a genuine
document. By that time I had become an adept in imitation, and could
also retain in my recollection the form of letters in any autograph
which I had once beheld. I brought back a deed sufficiently similar
to the original to set all Mr. Wallis’s doubts at rest. It did not,
however, satisfy my own mind, and that very evening I executed another
deed more carefully, which I substituted for the former one, and which
stood the test of all future examinations. From that moment indeed,
save those who had been my enemies from the first, and who probably
never would have believed in the Shakespeare manuscripts, even though
they had been really genuine, I had no serious opponent, with one
exception, and for some reason or another of his own, he has never
shown himself antagonistic to me.’
There was much more of it; the whole composition of the ‘Vortigern’
was described, with Talbot’s connection with it, just as it had been
narrated by Mrs. Jordan. But what chiefly engaged Margaret’s thoughts,
and caused her to refer to it again and again, was that allusion of
William Henry’s to that one person who, not belonging to the Malone
faction, had all along discredited his statements, though, ‘for some
reason or another of his own, he had not shown himself antagonistic.’
This was certainly not Talbot, who had shown himself antagonistic
enough, nor was it evidently any confidant of the unhappy boy’s.
It could, therefore, only have been Frank Dennis; he had, she well
remembered, always kept silence when the question of the manuscripts
was mentioned, and had even incurred Mr. Erin’s indignation by doing
so. But his nature was so frank and open that she could not understand
how he could have tacitly countenanced such a fraud had he been really
convinced that it was being enacted. It was curious, considering
the great distress and perturbation of her mind, that a matter so
comparatively small should have thus intruded itself; but it did so.
Otherwise, as may well be imagined, her thoughts had bitter food
enough provided for them. That whole night long Margaret never sought
her couch. The revelation of the worthlessness of her lover, made by
his own hand, and, what was worse, made in no spirit of penitence
or remorse, put sleep far from her eyes, and filled her soul with
wretchedness. If the thought that things might have been worse can
afford consolation, that indeed she had, for William Henry might have
married her. If the play had been successful, and if Reginald Talbot
had held his tongue, and indeed if he had not held it—for she would
never have disbelieved in her Willie had he not torn the mask from his
face with his own hand—she might have become William Henry’s wife! The
very idea of it chilled her blood. Bound to a liar, a cheat, a forger,
by an indissoluble bond for life! Vowed to love, revere, and honour a
man the baseness of whose nature she would have been certain to have
discovered sooner or later, but in any case too late! She had been
saved from that at least; and yet how terrible was the blow that had
been inflicted upon her!
Sad it is to be left alone with our dead, how much sadder to be left
alone, after they have died, with the revelation of their baseness,
to find our love has been wasted on an unworthy object, our reverence
paid to a false god. In Margaret’s case matters were still worse, for
she could not even keep the revelation to herself; she had not the
miserable satisfaction that some bereaved ones have when they chance
upon the proof of a once loved one’s shame, of concealing it. It was
necessary that she should tell Mr. Erin, and in revealing the fraud of
which he had been the victim, what misery was she about to inflict upon
him! How the whole fabric of the old man’s pride would be shattered to
the dust, and how triumphantly would his enemies trample upon it.