Lady Cecil had broken off her tale on their return from their morning
drive. She resumed it in the evening, as she and Elizabeth sat looking
on the summer woods; and the soft but dim twilight better accorded with
her melancholy story.
"Poor Gerard! His young heart was almost broken by struggling passions,
and the want of tenderness in those about him. After this scene with his
father, his life was again in the greatest danger for some days, but at
last health of body returned. He lay on his little couch, pale and
wasted, an altered child--but his heart was the same, and he adhered
tenaciously to one idea. 'Nurse,' he said, one day, to the woman who had
attended him from his birth, 'I wish you would take pen and paper, and
write down what I am going to say. Or, if that is too much trouble, I
wish you would remember every word, and repeat it to my father. I cannot
speak to him. He does not love mamma as he used; he is unjust, and I
cannot speak to him--but I wish to tell every little thing that
happened, that people may see that what I say is true, and be as sure as
I am that mamma never meant to go away.
"'When we met the strange gentleman first, we walked along the lane, and
I ran about gathering flowers--yet I remember I kept thinking, why is
mamma offended with that gentleman?--what right has he to displease her?
and I came back with it in my mind to tell him that he should not say
anything to annoy mamma; but when I took her hand she seemed no longer
angry, but very, very sorry. I remember she said, "I grieve deeply for
you, Rupert"--and then she added, "My good wishes are all I have to
give." I remember the words, for they made me fancy, in a most childish
manner, mamma must have left her purse at home--and I began to think of
my own--but seeing him so well dressed, I felt a few shillings would do
him no good. Mamma talked on very softly, looking up in the stranger's
face; he was tall--taller, younger--and better looking than papa: and I
ran on again, for I did not know what they were talking about. At one
time mamma called me and said she would go back, and I was very glad,
for it was growing late, and I felt hungry--but the stranger said, "Only
a little farther--to the end of the lane only"--so we walked on, and he
talked about her forgetting him, and she said something that was best,
and he ought to forget her. On this he burst forth very angrily, and I
grew angry too--but he changed, and asked her to forgive him--and so we
reached the end of the lane.
"'We stopped there, and mamma held out her hand, and
said--"Farewell!"--and something more--when suddenly we heard the sound
of wheels, and a carriage came at full speed round from a turn in the
road; it stopped close to us--her hand trembled which held mine--and the
stranger said--"You see I said true--I am going--and shall soon be far
distant: I ask but for one half hour--sit in the carriage, it is getting
cold." Mamma said, "No, no--it is late--farewell" but as she spoke the
stranger as it were led her forward, and in a moment lifted her up; he
seemed stronger than any two men--and put her in the carriage--and got
in himself, crying to me to jump after, which I would have done, but the
postillion whipped the horses. I was thrown almost under the wheel by
the sudden motion--I heard mamma scream; but when I got up the carriage
was already a long way off--and though I called as loud as I could--and
ran after it--it never stopped, and the horses were going at full
gallop. I ran on--thinking it would stop or turn back--and I cried out
on mamma--while I ran so fast that I was soon breathless--and she was
out of hearing--and then I shrieked and cried, and threw myself on the
ground--till I thought I heard wheels, and I got up and ran again--but
it was only the thunder--and that pealed and the wind roared, and the
rain came down--and I could keep my feet no longer, but fell on the
ground and forgot everything, except that mamma must come back and I was
watching for her. And this, nurse, is my story--every word is true--and
is it not plain that mamma was carried away by force?'
"'Yes,' said the woman, 'no one doubts that, Master Gerard--but why does
she not come back!--no man could keep her against her will in a
Christian country like this.'
"'Because she is dead or in prison,' cried the boy, bursting into
tears--'but I see you are as wicked as everybody else--and have wicked
thoughts too--and I hate you and everybody--except mamma.'
"From that time Gerard was entirely altered; his boyish spirit was
dashed--he brooded perpetually over the wrong done his mother--and was
irritated to madness, by feeling that by a look and a word he could not
make others share his belief in her spotless innocence. He became
sullen, shy--shut up in himself--above all, he shunned his father.
Months passed away: requisitions, set on foot at first from a desire to
succour, were continued from a resolve to revenge; no pains or expense
were spared to discover the fugitives, and all in vain. The opinion took
root that they had fled to America--and who on that vast continent could
find two beings resolved on concealment? Inquiries were made at New-York
and other principal towns; but all in vain.
"The strangest and most baffling circumstance in this mystery was, that
no guess could be formed as to who the stranger was. Though he seemed to
have dropped from the clouds, he had evidently been known long before to
Mrs. Neville. His name, it appeared, was Rupert--no one knew of any
bearing that name. Had Alithea loved before her marriage? such a
circumstance must have been carefully hidden, for her husband had never
suspected it. Her childhood had been spent with her mother, her father
being mostly at sea. When sixteen, she lost her mother, and after a
short interval resided with her father, then retired from service. He
had assured Sir Boyvill that his daughter had never loved; and the
husband, jealous as he was, had never seen cause to doubt the truth of
this statement. Had she formed any attachment during the first years of
her married life! Was it to escape the temptation so held out that she
secluded herself in the country? Rupert was probably a feigned name; and
Sir Boyvill tried to recollect who her favourites were, so to find a
clew by their actions to her disappearance. It was in vain that he
called to mind every minute circumstance, and pondered over the name of
each visiter: he could remember nothing that helped discovery. Yet the
idea that she had, several years ago, conceived a partiality for some
man, who, as it proved, loved her to distraction, became fixed in Sir
Boyvill's mind. The thought poured venom on the time gone by. It might
have been a virtue in her to banish him she loved and to seclude
herself; but this mystery, where all seemed so frank and open, this
defalcation of the heart, this inward thought which made no sign, yet
ruled every action, was gall and wormwood to her proud, susceptible
husband. That in her secret soul she loved this other, was manifest--for
though it might be admitted that he used art and violence to tear her
from her home, yet in the end she was vanquished; and even maternal
duties and affections sacrificed to irresistible passion.
"Can you wonder that such a man as Sir Boyvill, ever engrossed by the
mighty idea of self--yet fearful that that self should receive the
minutest wound; proud of his wife--because, being so lovely and so
admired, she was all his--grateful to her, for being so glorious and
enviable a possession--can you wonder that this vain but sensitive man
should be wound up to the height of jealous rage by the loss of such a
good, accompanied by circumstances of deception and dishonour? He had
been fond of his wife in return for her affection, while she in reality
loved another; he had respected the perfection of her truth, and there
was falsehood at the core. Had she avowed the traitor passion; declared
her struggles, and, laying bare her heart, confessed that, while she
preferred his honour and happiness, yet in the weakness of her nature
another had stolen a portion of that sentiment which she desired to
consecrate to him--then with what tenderness he had forgiven her--with
what soothing forbearance he had borne her fault--how magnanimous and
merciful he had shown himself! But she had acted the generous part;
thanks had come from him--the shows of obligation from her. He fancied
that he held a flower in his hand, from which the sweetest perfume alone
could be extracted--but the germe was blighted, and the very core turned
to bitter ashes and dust.
"Such a theme is painful; howsoever we view it, it is scarcely possible
to imagine any event in life more desolating. To be happy is to attain
one's wishes, and to look forward to the lastingness of their
possession. Sir Boyvill had long been skeptical and distrusting; but at
last he was brought to believe that he had drawn the fortunate ticket;
that his wife's faith was a pure and perfect chrysolite--and if in his
heart he deemed that she did not regard him with all the reverence that
was his due; if she did not nurture all the pride of place, and disdain
of her fellow-creatures which he thought that his wife ought to
feel--yet her many charms and virtues left him no room for complaint.
Her sensibility, her vivacity, her wit, her accomplishments, her
exceeding loveliness--they were all undeniably his--and all made her a
piece of enchantment. This merit was laid low--deprived of its
crown--her fidelity to him; and the selfish, the heartless, and the cold
whom she reproved and disliked, were lifted to the eminence of virtue,
while she lay fallen, degraded, worthless.
"Sir Boyvill was, in his own conceit, for ever placed on a pedestal; and
he loved to imagine that he could say, 'Look at me, you can see no
defect! I am a wealthy and a well-born man. I have a wife the envy of
all--children who promise to inherit all our virtues. I am
prosperous--no harm can reach me--look at me!' He was still on his
pedestal, but had become a mark for scorn, for pity! Oh, how he loathed
himself--how he abhorred her who had brought him to this pass! He had,
in her best days, often fancied that he loved her too well, yielded too
often his pride--nurtured schemes to her soft persuasions. He had indeed
believed that Providence had created this exquisite and most beautiful
being, that life might be made perfect to him. Besides, his months, and
days, and hours had been replete with her image; her very admirable
qualities, accompanied as they were by the trembling delicacy that
droops at a touch, and then revives at a word; her quickness, not of
temper, but of feeling, which received such sudden and powerful
impression, formed her to be at once admired and cherished with the care
a sweet exotic needs, when transplanted from its sunny, native clime, to
the ungenial temperature of a northern land. It was madness to recollect
all the fears he had wasted on her. _He_ had foregone the dignity of
manhood to wait on her--he had often feared to pursue his projects, lest
they should jar some delicate chord in her frame; to his own
recollection, it seemed that he had become but the lackey to her
behests--and all for the sake of a love which she bestowed on
another--to preserve that honour which she blasted without pity.
"It were in vain to attempt to delineate the full force of jealousy;
natural sorrow at losing a thing so sweet and dear was blended with
anger that he should be thrown off by her; the misery of knowing that he
should never see her more was mingled with a ferocious desire to learn
that every disaster was heaped on one whom, hitherto, he had, as well as
he could, guarded from every ill. To this we may add, commiseration for
his deserted children. His son, late so animated, so free--spirited and
joyous, a more promising child had never blessed a father's hopes, was
changed into a brooding, grief-struck, blighted visionary. His little
girl, the fairy thing he loved best of all, she was taken from him; the
carelessness of a nurse during a childish illness caused her death,
within a year after her mother's flight. Had that mother remained, such
carelessness had been impossible. Sir Boyvill felt that all good fell
from him--the only remaining golden fruit dropped from the
tree--calamity encompassed him; with his whole soul he abhorred and
desired to wreak vengeance on her who caused the ill.
"After two years were passed, and no tidings were received of the
fugitives, it seemed plain that there could be but one solution to the
mystery. No doubt she and her lover concealed themselves in some far
land, under a feigned name. If, indeed, it were--if it be so, it might
move any heart to imagine poor Alithea's misery--the obloquy that
mantles over her remembrance at home, while she broods over the
desolation of the hearth she so long adorned, and the pining, impatient
anguish of her beloved boy. What could or can keep her away, is matter
of fearful conjecture; but this much is certain, that, at that time at
least, and now, if she survives, she must be miserable. Sir Boyvill, if
he deigned to recollect these things, enjoyed the idea of her anguish.
But, without adverting to her state and feelings, he was desirous of
obtaining what reparation he could, and to dispossess her of his name.
Endeavours to find the fugitives in America, and false hopes held out,
had delayed the process. He at last entered on it with eagerness. A
thousand obvious reasons rendered a divorce desirable; and to him, with
all his pride, then only would his pillow be without a thorn, when she
lost his name, and every right or tie that bound them together. Under
the singular circumstances of the case, he could only obtain a divorce
by a bill in parliament, and to this measure he resorted.
"There was nothing reprehensible in this step; self-defence, as well as
revenge, suggested its expediency. Besides this, it may be said, that he
was glad of the publicity that would ensue, that he might be proved
blameless to all the world. He accused his wife of a fault so great as
tarnished irrecoverably her golden name. He accused her of being a false
wife and an unnatural mother, under circumstances of no common
delinquency. But he might be mistaken; he might view his injuries with
the eye of passion, and others, more disinterested, might pronounce that
she was unfortunate, but not guilty. By means of the bill for divorce,
the truth would be investigated and judged by several hundred of the
best born and best educated of his countrymen. The publicity, also,
might induce discovery. It was fair and just; and though his pride
rebelled against becoming the tale of the day, he saw no alternative.
Indeed, it was reported to him by some officious friend that many had
observed that it was strange that he had not sought this remedy before.
Something of wonder, or blame, or both, was attached to his passiveness.
Such hints galled him to the quick, and he pursued his purpose with all
the obstinacy and imperious haste peculiar to him.
"When every other preliminary had been gone through, it was deemed
necessary that Gerard should give his evidence at the bar of the House
of Lords. Sir Boyvill looked upon his lost wife as a criminal, so
steeped in deserved infamy, so odious, and so justly condemned, that
none could hesitate in siding with him to free him from the bondage of
those laws, which, while she bore his name, might be productive of
incalculable injury. His honour, too, was wounded. His honour, which he
would have sacrificed his life to have preserved untainted, he had
intrusted to Alithea, and loved her the more fervently that she regarded
the trust with reverence. She had foully betrayed it; and must not all
who respected the world's customs and the laws of social life; above
all, must not any who loved him be forward to cast her out from any
inheritance of good that could reach her through him?
"Above all, must not their son--his son, share his indignation, and
assist his revenge? Gerard was but a boy; but his mother's tenderness,
his own quick nature and lastly, the sufferings he had endured through
her flight, had early developed a knowledge of the realities of life,
and so keen a sense of right and justice, as made his father regard him
as capable of forming opinions, and acting from such motives, as usually
are little understood by one so young. And true it was that Gerard
fostered sentiments independent of any teaching; and cherished ideas the
more obstinately, because they were confined to his single breast. He
understood the pity with which his father was regarded--the stigma cast
upon his mother--the suppressed voice--the wink of the eye--the covert
hint. He understood it all; and, like the poet, longed for a word, sharp
as a sword, to pierce the falsehood through and through.
"For many months he and his father had seen little of each other. Sir
Boyvill had not a mind that takes pleasure in watching the ingenuous
sallies of childhood, or the development of the youthful mind; the idea
of making a friend of his child, which had been Alithea's fond and
earnest aim, could never occur to his self-engrossed heart. Since his
illness, Gerard had been weakly, or he would have been sent to school.
As it was, a tutor resided in the house. This person was written to by
Sir Boyvill's man of business, and directed to break the matter to his
pupil; to explain the formalities, to sooth and encourage any timidity
he might show, and to incite him, if need were, to a desire to assist in
a measure, whose operation was to render justice to his father.
"The first allusion to his mother made by Mr. Carter caused the blood to
rush from the boy's heart, and to die crimson his cheeks, his temples,
his throat; then he grew deadly pale, and, without uttering a word,
listened to his preceptor, till suddenly taking in the nature of the
task assigned to him, every limb shook, and he answered by a simple
request to be left alone, and he would consider. No more was thought by
the unapprehensive people about, than that he was shy of being spoken to
on the subject--that he would make up his mind in his own way--and Mr.
Carter at once yielded to his request; the reserve which had shrouded
him since he lost his mother had accustomed those about him to habitual
silence. None--no one watchful, attached, intelligent eye marked the
struggles which shook his delicate frame, blanched his cheek, took the
flesh from his bones, and quickened his pulse into fever. None marked
him as he lay in bed the livelong night, with open eyes and beating
heart a prey to contending emotion. He was passed carelessly by as he
lay on the dewy grass from morn to evening, his soul torn by
grief--uttering his mother's name in accents of despair, and shedding
floods of tears.
"I said that these signs of intense feeling were not remarked--and yet
they were, in a vulgar way, by the menials, who said it would be well
when the affair was over, Master Neville took it so to heart, and was
sadly frightened. Frightened! such a coarse undistinguishing name was
given to the sacred terror of doing his still loved mother an injury,
which heaved his breast with convulsive sobs and filled his veins with
fire.
"The thought of what he was called upon to do haunted him day and night
with agony. He, her nursling, her idol, her child--he who could not
think of her name without tears, and dreamed often that she kissed him
in his sleep, and woke to weep over the delusion--he was to accuse her
before an assembled multitude--to give support to the most infamous
falsehoods--to lend his voice to stigmatize her name: and wherever she
was, kept from him by some irresistible power, but innocent as an angel,
and still loving him, she was to hear of him as her enemy, and receive a
last wound from his hand. Such appeared the task assigned to him in his
eyes, for his blunt--witted tutor had spoken of the justice to be
rendered his father, by freeing him from his fugitive wife, without
regarding the inner heart of his pupil, or being aware that his mother
sat throned there, an angel of light and goodness, the victim of ill,
but doing none.
"Soon after Mrs. Neville's flight, the family had abandoned the seat in
Cumberland, and inhabited a house taken near the Thames, in
Buckinghamshire. Here Gerard resided, while his father was in town
watching the progress of the bill. At last the day drew near when
Gerard's presence was required. The peers showed a disposition, either
from curiosity or a love of justice, to sift the affair to the
uttermost, and the boy's testimony was declared absolutely necessary.
Mr. Carter told Gerard that on the following morning they were to
proceed to London, in pursuance of the circumstances which he had
explained to him a few days before.
"'Is it then true,' said the boy, 'that I am to be called upon to give
evidence, as you call it, against my mother?'
"'You are called upon by every feeling of duty,' replied the sapient
preceptor, 'to speak the truth to those whose decision will render
justice to your father. If the truth injure Mrs. Neville, that is her
affair.'
"Again Gerard's cheeks burned with blushes, and his eyes, dimmed as they
were with tears, flashed fire. 'In that case,' he said, 'I beg to see my
father.'
"'You will see him when in town,' replied Mr. Carter. 'Come, Neville,
you must not take the matter in this girlish style; show yourself a man.
Your mother is unworthy--'
"'If you please, sir,' said Gerard, half choked, yet restraining
himself, 'I will speak to my father; I do not like any one else to talk
to me about these things.'
"'As you please, sir,' said Mr. Carter, much offended.
"No more was said--it was evening. The next morning they set out for
London. The poor boy had lain awake the whole night; but no one knew or
cared for his painful vigils."