In the human heart, and, if observation does not err, more particularly
in the heart of man, the passions exert their influence fitfully. With
some analogy to the laws which govern the elements, they now sleep in
calm, and now arise with the violence of furious winds. Falkner had
latterly attained a state of feeling approaching to equanimity. He
displayed more cheerfulness--a readier interest in the daily course of
events--a power to give himself up to any topic discussed in his
presence; but this had now vanished. Gloom sat on his brow--he was
inattentive even to Elizabeth. Sunk back in the carriage--his eyes bent
on vacancy, he was the prey of thoughts, each of which had the power to
wound.
It was a melancholy journey. And when they arrived in London, Falkner
became still more absorbed and wretched. The action of remorse, which
had been for some time suspended, renewed its attacks, and made him look
upon himself as a creature at once hateful and accursed. We are such
weak beings, that the senses have power to impress us with a vividness
which no mere mental operation can produce. Falkner had been at various
times haunted by the probable consequences of his guilt on the child of
his victim. He recollected the selfish and arrogant character of his
father; and conscience had led him to reproach himself with the
conviction, that whatever virtues young Neville derived from his mother,
or had been implanted by her care, must have been rooted out by the
neglect or evil example of his surviving parent. The actual effect of
her loss he had not anticipated. There was something heart-breaking to
see a youth, nobly gifted by nature and fortune, delivered over to a
sullen resentment for unmerited wrongs--to dejection, if not to despair.
An uninterested observer must deeply compassionate him; Elizabeth had
done so, child as she was, with a pity almost painful from its excess;
what, then, must he feel who knew himself to be the cause of all his wo?
Falkner was not a man to sit quietly under these emotions. In their
first onset they had driven him to suicide; preserved as by a miracle,
he had exerted strong self-command, and, by dint of resolution, forced
himself to live. Year after year had passed, and he abided by the
sentence of life he had passed on himself--and, like the galley-slave,
the iron which had eaten into the flesh galled less than when newly
applied. But he was brought back from the patience engendered
by custom at the sight of the unfortunate boy. He felt himself
accursed--God-reprobated--mankind (though they knew it not) abhorred
him. He would no longer live--for he deserved to die. He would not again
raise his hand against himself--but there are many gates to the tomb; he
found no difficulty in selecting one by which to enter. He resolved to
enter upon a scene of desperate warfare in a distant country, and to
seek a deliverance from the pains of life by the bullet or the sword on
the field of battle. Above all, he resolved that Elizabeth's innocence
should no longer be associated with his guilt. The catastrophe he
meditated must be sought alone, and she, whom he had lived to protect
and foster, must be guarded from the hardships and perils to which he
was about to deliver himself up.
Meditation on this new course absorbed him for some days. At first he
had been sunk in despondency; as the prospect opened before him of
activity allied to peril, and sought for the sake of the destruction to
which it unavoidably led, his spirits rose; like a war-horse dreaming of
the sound of a trumpet, his heart beat high in the hope of forgetting
the consciousness of remorse in all the turbulence of battle or the last
forgetfulness of the grave. Still it was a difficult task to impart his
plan to the orphan, and to prepare her for a separation. Several times
he had tried to commence the subject, and felt his courage fail him. At
length, being together one day, some weeks after their arrival in
London--when, indeed, many steps had been already taken by him in
furtherance of his project--at twilight, as they sat together near the
window which looked upon one of the London squares--and they had been
comparing this metropolis with many foreign cities--Falkner
abruptly, fearful, if he lost this occasion, of not finding
another so appropriate, said, "I must bid you good-by to-night,
Elizabeth--to-morrow, early, I set out for the north of England."
"You mean to leave me behind?" she asked; "but you will not be away
long?"
"I am going to visit your relations," he replied; "to disclose to them
that you are under my care, and to prepare them to receive you. I hope
soon to return, either to conduct you to them, or to bring one among
them to welcome you here."
Elizabeth was startled. Many years had elapsed since Falkner had alluded
to her alien parentage. She went by his name, she called him father; and
the appellation scarcely seemed a fiction--he had been the kindest,
fondest parent to her--nor had he ever hinted that he meant to forego
the claim his adoption had given him, and to make her over to those who
were worse than strangers in her eyes. If ever they had recurred to her
real situation, he had not been chary of expressions of indignation
against the Raby family. He had described with warm resentment the
selfishness, the hardness of heart, and disdain of the well-being of
those allied to them by blood, which too often subsists in aristocratic
English families when the first bond has been broken by any act of
disobedience. He grew angry as he spoke of the indignity with which her
mother had been treated, and the barbarous proposition of separating her
from her only child; and he had fondly assured her that it was his
dearest pride to render her independent of these unworthy and inhuman
relations. Why were his intentions changed? His voice and look were
ominous. Elizabeth was hurt--she did not like to object; she was
silent--but Falkner deciphered her wounded feelings in her ingenuous
countenance, and he too was pained; he could not bear that she should
think him ungrateful--mindless of her affection, her filial attentions,
and endearing virtues; he felt that he must, to a certain degree,
explain his views--difficult as it was to make a segment of his feelings
in any way take a definite or satisfactory shape.
"Do not think hardly of me, my own dear girl," he began, "for wishing
that we should separate. God knows that it is a blow that will visit me
far more severely than you. You will find relations and friends who will
be proud of you--whose affections you will win; wherever you are, you
will meet with love and admiration--and your sweet disposition and
excellent qualities will make life happy. I depart alone. You are my
only tie--my only friend--I break it and leave you--never can I find
another. Henceforth, alone, I shall wander into distant and uncivilized
countries, enter on a new and perilous career, during which I may perish
miserably. You cannot share these dangers with me."
"But why do you seek them?" exclaimed Elizabeth, alarmed by this sudden
prophecy of ill.
"Do you remember the day when we first met?" replied Falkner; "when my
hand was raised against my own life, because I knew myself unworthy to
exist. It is the same now. It is cowardly to live, feeling that I have
forfeited every right to enjoy the blessings of life. I go that I may
die--not by my own hand--but where I can meet death by the hand of
others."
Strangely and frightfully did these words fall on the ear of his
appalled listener; he went on rapidly--for having once begun, the words
he uttered relieved, in some degree, the misery that burdened his soul.
"This idea cannot astonish you, my love; you have seen too much of the
secret of my heart; you have witnessed my fits of distress and anguish,
and are not now told, for the first time, that grief and remorse weigh
intolerably on me. I can endure the infliction no longer. May God
forgive me in another world--the light of this I will see no more!"
Falkner saw the sort of astonished distress her countenance depicted;
and, angry with himself for being its cause, was going on in a voice
changed to one less expressive of misery, but Elizabeth, seized with
dismay--the unbidden tears pouring from her eyes--her young--her child's
heart bursting with a new sense of horror--cast herself at his feet,
and, embracing his knees as he sat, exclaimed, "My dear, dear
father!--my more than father, and only friend--you break my heart by
speaking thus. If you are miserable, the more need that your child--the
creature you preserved, and taught to love you--should be at your side
to comfort--I had almost said to help you. You must not cast me off!
Were you happy, you might desert me; but if you are miserable, I cannot
leave you--you must not ask me--it kills me to think of it!"
The youthful, who have no experience of the changes of life, regard the
present with far more awe and terror than those who have seen one turn
in the hourglass suffice to change, and change again, the colour of
their lives. To be divided from Falkner was to have the pillars of the
earth shaken under her--and she clung to him, and looked up imploringly
in his face, as if the next word he spoke were to decide all; he kissed
her, and, seating her on his knee, said, "Let us talk of this more
calmly, dearest--I was wrong to agitate you--or to mix the miserable
thoughts forced on me by my wretchedness, with the prudent consideration
of your future destiny. I feel it to be unjust to keep you from your
relations. They are rich. We are ignorant of what changes and losses may
have taken place among them, to soften their hearts--which, after all,
were never shut against you. You may have become of importance in their
eyes. Raby is a proud name, and we must not heedlessly forego the
advantages that may belong to your right to it."
"My dear father," replied Elizabeth, "this talk is not for me. I have no
wish to claim the kindness of those who treated my true parents ill. You
are everything to me. I am little more than a child, and cannot find
words to express all I mean; but my truest meaning is, to show my
gratitude to you till my dying day; to remain with you for ever, while
you love me; and to be the most miserable creature in the world if you
drive me from you. Have we not lived together since I was a little
thing, no higher than your knee? And all the time you have been kinder
than any father. When we have been exposed to storms, you have wrapped
me round in your arms so that no drop could fall on my head. Do you
remember that dreadful evening, when our carriage broke down in the
wide, dark steppe; and you, covering me up, carried me in your arms,
while the wind howled and the freezing rain drove against you? You could
hardly bear up; and when we arrived at the post-house, you, strong man
as you are, fainted from exhaustion; while I, sheltered in your arms,
was as warm and well as if it had been a summer's day. You have earned
me--you have bought me by all this kindness, and you must not cast me
away!"
She clung round his neck--her face bathed in tears, sobbing and speaking
in broken accents. As she saw him soften, she implored him yet more
earnestly, till his heart was quite subdued; and, clasping her to his
heart, he showered kisses on her head and neck; while, to his surprise,
forgotten tears sprung to his own eyes. "For worlds I would not desert
you," he cried. "It is not casting you away that we should separate for
a short time; for where I go, indeed, dearest, you cannot accompany me.
I cannot go on living as I have done. For many years now my life has
been spent in pleasantness and peace--I have no right to this--hardship,
and toil, and death I ought to repay. I abhor myself for a coward, when
I think of what others suffer through my deeds--while I am scathless.
You can scarcely remember the hour when the touch of your little hand
saved my life. My heart is not changed since then--I am unworthy to
exist. Dear Elizabeth, you may one day hate me, when you know the misery
I have caused to those who deserved better at my hands. The cry of my
victim rings in my ears, and I am base to survive my crime. Let me,
dearest, make my own the praise, that nothing graced my life more than
the leaving it. To live a coward and a drone, suits vilely with my
former acts of violence and ill. Let me gain peace of mind by exposing
my life to danger. By advocating a just cause I may bring a blessing
down upon my endeavours. I shall go to Greece. Theirs is a good
cause--that of liberty and Christianity against tyranny and an evil
faith. Let me die for it; and when it is known, as it will one day be,
that the innocent perished through me, it will be added, that I died in
the defence of the suffering and the brave. But you cannot go with me to
Greece, dearest; you must await my return in this country."
"You go to die!" she exclaimed, "and I am to be far away. No, dear
father, I am a little girl, but no harm can happen to me. The Ionian
Isles are under the English government--there, at least, I may go.
Athens too, I dare say, is safe. Dear Athens--we spent a happy winter
there before the revolution began. You forget what a traveller I am--how
accustomed to find my home among strangers in foreign and savage lands.
No, dear father, you will not leave me behind. I am not unreasonable--I
do not ask to follow you to the camp--but you must let me be near--in
the same country as yourself."
"You force me to yield against my better reason," said Falkner. "This is
not right--I feel that it is not so--one of your sex, and so young,
ought not to be exposed to all I am about to encounter; and if I should
die, and leave you there desolate?"
"There are good Christians everywhere to protect the orphan," persisted
Elizabeth. "As if you could die when I am with you! And if you died
while I was far, what would become of me? Am I to be left, like a poor
sailor's wife--to get a shocking, black-sealed letter, to tell me that,
while I was enjoying myself, and hoping that you had long been--It is
wicked to speak of these things--but I shall go with my own dear, dear
father, and he shall not die!"
Falkner yielded to her tears, her caresses, and persuasions. He was not
convinced, but he could not withstand the excess of grief she displayed
at the thought of parting. It was agreed that she should accompany him
to the Ionian Isles, and take up her residence there while he joined the
patriot band in Greece. This point being decided upon, he was anxious
that their departure should not be delayed a single hour, for most
earnest was he to go, to throw off the sense of the present--to forget
his pangs in anticipated danger.
Falkner played no false part with himself. He longed to die; nor did the
tenderness and fidelity of Elizabeth disarm his purpose. He was
convinced that she must be happier and more prosperous when he was
removed. His tortured mind found relief when he thought of sacrificing
his life, and quitting it honourably on the field of battle. It was only
by the prospect of such a fate that he shut his eyes to sterner duties.
In his secret heart, he knew that the course demanded of him by honour
and conscience was to stand forth, declare his crime, and reveal the
mysterious tragedy, of which he was the occasion, to the world; but he
dared not accuse himself, and live. It was this that urged him to the
thoughts of death. "When I am no more," he told himself, "let all be
declared--let my name be loaded with curses--but let it be added, that I
died to expiate my guilt. I cannot be called upon to live with a brand
upon my name; soon it will be all over, and then let them heap obloquy,
pyramid-high, upon my grave! Poor Elizabeth will become a Raby; and,
once cold beneath the sod, no more misery will spring from acts of
mine!"
Actuated by these thoughts, Falkner drew up two narratives--both short.
The tenour of one need not be mentioned in this place. The other stated
how he had found Elizabeth and adopted her. He sealed up with this the
few documents that proved her birth. He also made his will--dividing his
property between his heir at law and adopted child--and smiled proudly
to think, that, dowered thus by him, she would be gladly received into
her father's family.
Every other arrangement for their voyage was quickly made, and it
remained only to determine whether Miss Jervis should accompany them.
Elizabeth's mind was divided. She was averse to parting with an
unoffending and kind companion, and to forego her instructions--though,
in truth, she had got beyond them. But she feared that the governess
might hereafter shackle her conduct. Every word Falkner had let fall
concerning his desire to die, she remembered and pondered upon. To watch
over and to serve him was her aim in going with him. Child as she was, a
thousand combinations of danger presented themselves to her imagination,
when her resolution and fearlessness might bring safety. The narrow
views and timid disposition of Miss Jervis might impede her grievously.
The governess herself was perplexed. She was startled when she heard of
the new scheme. She was pleased to find herself once again in England,
and repugnant to the idea of leaving so soon again for so distant a
region, where a thousand perils of war and pestilence would beset every
step. She was sorry to part with Elizabeth, but some day that time must
come; and others, dearer from ties of relationship, lived in England
from whom she had been too long divided. Weighing these things, she
showed a degree of hesitation that caused Falkner to decide as his heart
inclined, and to determine that she should not accompany him. She went
with them as far as Plymouth, where they embarked. Elizabeth, so long a
wanderer, felt no regret in leaving England. She was to remain with one
who was far more than country--who was indeed her all. Falkner felt a
load taken from his heart when his feet touched the deck of the vessel
that was to bear them away--half his duty was accomplished--the course
begun which would lead to the catastrophe he coveted. The sun shone
brightly on the ocean, the breeze was fresh and favourable. Miss Jervis
saw them push from shore with smiles and happy looks--she saw them on
the deck of the vessel, which, with sails unfurled, had already begun
its course over the sea. Elizabeth waved her handkerchief--all grew
confused; the vessel itself was sinking beneath the horizon, and long
before night no portion of her canvass could be perceived.
"I wonder," thought Miss Jervis, "whether I shall ever see them again!"