"On landing in England, I at once set off to the far northern county
where she resided. I arrived at the well-known village; all looked the
same; I recognised the cottages and their flower-gardens, and even some
of the elder inhabitants looking, methought, no older than when I left
them. My heart hailed my return home with rapture, and I quickened my
steps towards the cottage. It was shut up and abandoned. This was the
first check my sanguine spirit had met. Hitherto I had not pronounced
her name or asked a question--I longed to return, as from a walk, and to
find all things as I had left it. Living in a dream, I had not
considered the chances and the storms, or even the mere changes, of the
seasons of life.
"My pen lags in its task--I dilate on things best hurried over, yet they
serve as a screen between me and fate. A few inquiries revealed the
truth. Captain Rivers was dead--his daughter married. I had lived in a
fool's paradise. None of the obstacles existed that I expected to meet
and conquer, but in their stead a fourfold brazen door had risen,
locked, barred, and guarded, and I could not even shake a hinge, or put
back a bolt.
"I hurried from the fatal spot; it became a hell to me. And oh, to think
that I had lived in vain--vainly dreamed of the angel of my idolatry,
vainly hoped--and most vainly loved; called her mine when another held
her, sold myself to perpetual slavery to her shadow, while her living
image enriched the shrine of another's home! The tempest that shook my
soul did not permit me to give form, or, indeed, to dwell consecutively
on such desolating thoughts. As a man who arrives from a pleasant
journey, and turns the corner where he expects to view the dwelling in
which repose his wife, his children--all dear to him--and when he gains
the desired spot, beholds it smouldering in ashes, and is told that all
are consumed, and that their bones lie beneath the ruins; thus was I--my
imagination had created home, and bride, and fair being sprung from her
side, who called me father, and one word defaced my whole future life
and widowed me for ever.
"Now began that chain of incidents that led to a deed I had not thought
of. Incidents or accidents; acts, done I know not why; nothing in
themselves; but meeting, and kindled by the fiery spirit that raged in
my bosom, they gave such direction to its ruinous powers as produced the
tragedy for ever to be deplored.
"Bewildered and overwhelmed by the loss which to me had all the novelty
and keenness of a disaster of yesterday, though I found that many years
had gone by since, in reality, it was completed, I fled from the spot I
had so fondly sought, and hurried up to London on no fixed errand, with
no determined idea, yet vaguely desiring to do something. Scarcely
arrived, I met a man whom I had known in India. He asked me to dine with
him, and I complied; because to refuse would have required explanation,
and the affirmative was more easily given. I did not mean to keep my
engagement; yet when the hour came, so intolerable had I become to
myself--so poignant and loathsome were my thoughts--that I went, so to
lose for a few moments the present sense of ill. It was a bachelor's
dinner, and there were, in addition to myself, three or four other
guests--among them a Mr. Neville. From the moment this man opened his
lips to speak, I took a violent dislike to him. He was, and always must
have been, the man whom among ten thousand I should have marked out to
abhor. He was cold, proud, and sarcastic, withal a decayed dandy, turned
cynic--who, half despising himself, tried wholly to disdain his
fellow-creatures. A man whose bosom never glowed with a generous
emotion, and who took pride in the sagacity which enabled him to detect
worms and corruption in the loveliness of virtue. A poor, mean-spirited
fellow, despite his haughty outside; and then when he spoke of women,
how base a thing he seemed! his disbelief in their excellence, his
contemptuous pity, his insulting love, made my blood boil. To me there
was something sacred in a woman's very shadow. Was she evil, I regarded
her with the pious regret with which I might view a shrine desecrated by
sacrilegious hands--the odour of sanctity still floated around the
rifled altar; I never could regard them as mere fellow-creatures--they
were beings of a better species, sometimes gone astray in the world's
wilderness, but always elevated above the best among us. For Alithea's
sake I respected every woman. How much good I knew of them! Generous,
devoted, delicate--their very faults were but misdirected virtues; and
this animal dared revile beings of whose very nature he could form no
conception. A burden was lifted from my soul when he left us.
"'It is strange,' said our host, 'that Neville should indulge in this
kind of talk; he is married to the most beautiful, and the best woman in
the world. Much younger than himself, she yet performs her duties as a
wife with steadiness and cheerfulness; lovely beyond her sex, she is
without its weakness; to please some jealous freak of his, she has
withdrawn herself from the world, and buried herself alive at his seat
in the North. How she can endure an eternal tête-à-tête with that
empty, conceited, and arrogant husband of hers is beyond any guessing.'
"I made some observation expressive of my abhorrence of Mr. Neville's
character, and my friend continued--'Disagreeable and shallow as he is,
one would have thought that the society of so superior, so perfect a
woman, would reconcile him to her sex, but I verily believe he is
jealous of her surpassing excellence; and that it is not so much a
natural, and I might almost call it generous, fear of losing her
affections, as a dislike of seeing her admired, and knowing that she is
preferred to him, especially now that he absolutely looks an old fellow.
Poor Alithea Rivers--hers is a hard fate!'
"I had a glass of wine in my hand; my convulsive grasp shivered the
brittle thing, but I gave no other outward sign; before, I was
miserable, I had lost all that made life dear; but to know that she was
lost to herself, bound for life to a human brute, curdled my heart's
blood, and spread an unnatural chilliness through my frame.
"What a sacrifice was there; a sacrifice of how much more than life, of
the heart's sweetest feelings, when a spirit, sent to gladden the world,
and cast one drop of celestial nectar into the bitterness of existence,
was made garbage for that detested animal; from that moment, from the
moment I felt assured that I had seen Alithea's husband, something
departed from the world, such as I had once known it, never to return
again. A sense of acquiescence in the decrees of Providence, of
confidence in the benevolence and beauty of the universe, of pride,
despite all my misfortunes, in being man, of pleasure in the loveliness
of nature, all departed! I had lost her--that was nothing; it was my
disaster, but did not injure the order and grace of the creation; she
was, I fondly trusted, married to a better man than I; but, bound to
that grovelling and loathsome type of the world's worst qualities, the
devil usurped at once the throne of God, and life became a hell.
"'You are miserable, Alithea! you must be miserable! For you there is no
sympathy, no mingling of hearts, no generous confidence in another's
esteem and kindness, no indulgence in golden imaginations of the beauty
of life. You are tied to a foul, corrupting corpse. You are cut off from
the dear associations of the social hearth, from the dignified sense of
having exchanged virgin purity for a sweeter and more valuable
possession in another's heart; coldly and listlessly you look on the day
which brings no hope to you, if, indeed, you do not rave and blaspheme
in your despair. Oh! with me, the brother of your soul, your servant,
lover, untiring friend, how differently had your lot been cast!"
"I rushed from my friend's house; I entered no roof that night; my
passions were awake, my fierce volcanic passions! Had I encountered
Neville, I had assuredly murdered him; my soul was chaos, yet a
tempestuous ray gave a dark light amid the storm; a glimmering, yet
permanent irradiation mantled over the ruins among which I stood. I said
to myself, 'I am mad, driven to desperation;' but, beneath this outward
garb of my thought, I knew and recognised an interior form. I knew what
I desired, what I intended, and what, though I tried to cheat myself
into the belief that I wavered, I henceforth steadily pursued. There is,
perhaps, no more dangerous mood of mind than when we doggedly pursue
means, recklessly uncertain of their end.
"Thus was I led to the fatal hour; a life of love, and a sudden
bereavement, with such a thing the instrument of my ruin! A contempt for
the order of the universe, a stern, demoniacal braving of fate, because
I would rule, and put that right which God had let go wrong. Oh, let me
not again blaspheme. God made the stars, and the green earth, within
whose bosom Alithea lies. She also is his, and I will believe, despite
the hellish interference that tainted and deflowered her earthly life,
that now she is with the source of all good, reaping the reward of her
virtues, the compensation for her suffering. Else, why are we created!
To crawl forth, to suffer and die? I cannot believe it. Spirit of the
blessed, omnipotence did not form perfection to shatter and dissipate
the elements like broken glass! But I rave and wander; Alithea still
lives and suffers at the time of which I write, and I erecting myself
into a providence, resolved to put that right which was wrong, and cure
the world's misrule. From that moment I never paused to look back; I set
my soul upon the cast, and I am here. And Alithea! her mysterious grave
you shall now approach.
"Bent upon a dangerous purpose, fate led before me an instrument,
without which I should have found it difficult to execute my plan. I got
a letter from a man in great distress, asking for some small help; he
was on the point of quitting England for America, and working his
passage; slight assistance would be of inestimable benefit in furthering
his plans. The petitioner followed his petition quickly, and was ushered
in before me. I scrutinized his shrewd yet down-looking countenance; I
scanned his supple yet uncertain carriage; I felt that he was a coward,
yet knew he would tamper with roguery, in all safety, for a due reward.
I had known the fellow in India; James Osborne was his name; he dabbled
in various disreputable money transactions, both with natives and
Englishmen, and at last, having excited the suspicion of government, got
thrown into prison. He had then written to me, who was considered a sort
of refuge for the destitute, and I went to see him. There was no great
harm in the man; on the contrary, he was soft-hearted and humane; the
infection of dishonesty, caught in bad company, and fostered in poverty,
was his ruin; and he joined to this a strong desire to be respectable,
if he could only contrive to subsist without double-dealing. I thought,
that by extricating him from his embarrassments, and removing him from
temptation, I might save him from ignominy; so I paid his passage to
England; where he told me that he had friends and resources. But his old
habits pursued him, and even now, though poverty was the alleged motive
for his emigration, I saw that there was secret fear of legal pursuit
for dishonest practices; he had been inveigled, he said, to lend his
name to a transaction which turned out a knavish one. With all this,
Osborne was not a villain, and scarcely a rogue; there was truth in what
he said; he had always an aspiration for a better place in society, but
he saw no way of attaining it except by money, and no way of gaining
money except by cheating.
"I listened to his story. 'You are an incorrigible fellow,' said I. 'How
can I give ear to your promises? Still I am willing to assist you. I am
myself going to America; you shall accompany me.' By degrees I afterward
explained the service I needed; yet I only half disclosed the truth.
Osborne never knew the name or position of the lady who was to be my
companion across the Atlantic. A man's notions of the conduct of others
are always coloured by his own ruling passion. Osborne thought I was
intent on carrying off an heiress.
"With this ally I proceeded to Cumberland--my mind more intent on the
result of my schemes than their intermediate detail. I learned before I
went that Mr. Neville was still in town. This was a golden opportunity,
and I hastened to use it. I reached the spot that Alithea inhabited--I
entered the outer gate of the demesne--I rode up to the avenue that led
to the house--I was ushered into the room where I knew that I should
find her. I summoned every power to calm the throbbing of my heart. I
expected to find her changed; but when I saw her, I discovered no
alteration. It was strange that so much of girlish appearance should
remain. Her figure was light and airy; her rich clustering ringlets
abundant as before; her face--it was Alithea! All herself! That soft,
loving eye--that clear brow--those music-breathing lips--time had not
harmed her--it was herself.
"She did not at once recognise me; the beardless stripling was become a
weather-beaten, thought-worn man; but when I told her who I was--the
name so long forgotten--never heard since last she spoke it, 'Rupert!'
burst from her lips--it united our severed lives; and her look of
rapture, her accent all breathless with joy, told me that her heart was
still the same--ardent, affectionate, and true.
"We sat together, hand linked in hand, looking at each other with
undisguised delight. At first, with satanic cunning, I assumed the
brother's part. I questioned her concerning her fate--her feelings; and
seeing that she was averse to confess the truth of her disappointed,
joyless married state, I led her back to passed days. I spoke of her
dear mother. I said that often had the image of that pale, wise spirit
checked, guided, and whispered sage lessons to me in my banishment. I
recalled a thousand scenes of our childhood, when we wandered
together--hand in hand--heart linked to heart--confiding every
pain--avowing every wild or rebellious thought, or discussing the mighty
secrets of nature and of fate, which to our young hearts were full of
awe and mystery, and yet of beauty and joy. As I spoke, I examined her
more narrowly. At first she had appeared to me the same; now I marked a
difference. Her mouth, the home of smiles, had ever its sweet, benignant
expression; but her eyes, there was a heaviness in the lids, a liquid
melancholy in their gaze, which said that they were acquainted with
tears; her cheeks, once round, peachlike, and downy, were not fallen,
yet they had lost their rich fulness. She was more beautiful; there was
more reflection, more sentiment in her face; but there was far, far less
happiness. Before, smiles sprung up wherever she turned to gaze; now, an
interest akin to pity and tears made the spectator's heart ache as he
watched the turns of a countenance which was the faithful mirror of the
truest heart that ever beat. Worse than this, there ever and anon shot
across her face a look that seemed like fear. Oh, how unlike the
trusting, dreadless Alithea!
"My talk of other days at first soothed, then excited, and threw her off
her guard. By degrees I approached the object of all my talk, and drew
her to speak of her father, and the motives that induced her marriage.
My knowledge and vivid recollections of all that belonged to her made
her unawares speak, as she had not done since we parted, the undisguised
truth; and before she knew what she had said, I had led her to confess
that she had never loved her husband; that she found no sympathy, and
little kindness in him; that her life had been one of endurance of
faults alien to her own temperament. Had I been more cautious, I had
allowed this to pass off at first, and won her entire confidence before
I laid bare my own thoughts; for all she said had never before been
breathed into any living ear but mine. It was her principle to submit,
and to hide her sense of her husband's defective disposition; and had I
not, with a serpent's subtlety, glided on imperceptibly; had I not
brought forward her mother's name, and the memory of childhood's
cloudless years, she had been mute with me. But now I could contain
myself no longer. I told her that I had seen the miserable being to whom
she was linked. I uttered curses on the fate that had joined them
together. She laid her hand on my arm, and looking in my face with
confiding innocence, 'Hush, Rupert,' she said, 'you make me mean more
than I would willingly have you think. He is not unkind; I have no right
to complain; it is not in every man that we can find a brother's or a
friend's heart. Neville does not understand these things; but he is my
husband; as such I honour him.'
"I saw the internal feeling that led her to speak thus; I saw the
delicate forbearance that filled her noble mind. She thought of her
virgin faith plighted--long years spent at his side--her children--her
fidelity, which, if it had ceased to cling to him, had never wandered,
even in thought, to another; duties exemplarily fulfilled--earnest
strivings to forget his worthlessness. All this honour for her own pure
nature, she cheated herself into believing was honour paid to him. I
resolved to tear the veil which her gentleness and sense of right had
drawn before the truth, and I exclaimed, impetuously, 'Wrong yourself
not so much, dear girl! do not fancy that your high soul can really bow
down to baseness. You pay reverence to your own sense of duty; but you
hate--you must hate that man.'
"She started, and her face and neck became died in blushes, proceeding
half from anger at being urged beyond her wish, half from native modesty
at hearing her husband thus spoken of. As for myself, I grew mad as I
looked on her, and felt the sweet, transporting influences that gathered
round; here indeed was the creature whom I had loved through so many
years, who was mine in my dreams, whose faith and true affection I
fancied I held for ever; and she was torn from me, given away, not to
one who, like me, knew and felt her matchless excellence, but to a
base-minded thing, from whom she must shrink as from an animal of
another species. All that her soul contained of elevated thoughts and
celestial aspirations, all of generous, high, and heroic that warmed her
heart, what were they before a blind, creeping worm, who held a
matchless jewel in his hand, and deemed it dross? He even could not
understand, or share the more sober affections--mutual trust and mutual
forbearance; the utterance of love, the caresses of tenderness, what
were these to a wretch who saw baseness and deceit in the most lofty and
pure feelings of a woman's heart?
"I expressed these thoughts, or rather, they burst from me. She
interrupted me. 'I do not deny,' she said, 'for I know not how you have
cheated me of my secret, but that repinings have at times entered my
mind; and I have shed foolish tears, to think that the dreams of my
girlhood were as a bright morning, quickly followed by a dim, cloudy
day. But I have reproved myself for this discontent, and you do very
wrong to revive it; the heart will rebel, but religion, and philosophy,
and the very tears I shed, sooth its ruffled mood, and make me remember
that we do not live to be happy, but to perform our duties; to fulfil
mine is the aim of my life; teach me how to do that more completely,
more entirely to resign myself, and you will be my benefactor. It is
true that my husband does not understand the childish overflowings of my
heart, which is too ready to seek its joys among the clouds; he does not
dwell with rapture on the thoughts and sentiments which give me so much
life and happiness--he is a stronger and sterner nature; a slower one
also, I acknowledge, one less ready to sympathize and feel. But if I
have in my intercourse with him regretted that lively, cheering
interchange of sentiment which I enjoyed with you, you are now here to
bestow it, and my life, hitherto defective, your return may render
complete.'
"I laughed bitterly. 'Poor innocent bird,' I cried; 'think you at once
to be free, and in a cage? at once to feel the fowler's grasp, and fly
away to heaven? Alithea, you miserably deceive yourself; hitherto you
have but half guessed the secrets of a base grovelling spirit--have you
never seen your husband jealous?'
"She shuddered--and I saw a spasm of exquisite pain cloud her features
as she averted her head from me, and the look of trembling fear I had
before remarked crept over her. I was shocked to see so much of the
slave had entered her soul. I told her this; I told her she was being
degraded by the very duties which she was devoting herself, body and
soul, to perform; I told her that she must be free; she looked
wonderingly, but I continued. 'Is not the very name of liberty dear and
exhilarating? does it not draw you irresistibly onward? is not the very
thought of casting your heavy chains from off you full of new and
inexpressible joy? Poor prisoner, do you not yearn to breathe without a
fear? would you not with transport escape from your jailer to a home of
love and freedom?'
"Hitherto she had fancied that I but regretted her sorrows as she did,
and repined as she did over a fate whose real misery she alone could
entirely feel; she repented having spoken so openly--yet she loved me
for my unfeigned sympathy; but now she saw that something more was
meant; she looked earnestly at me, as if to read my heart; she saw its
wishes in my eyes, and shrunk from them as from a snake, as she
exclaimed, 'Never, dear Rupert, speak thus to me again, or we must again
part--I have a son.'
"The radiance of angelic love lighted up her face as she uttered these
words; and then, my error and weakness being her strength, she resumed
the self-possession she had lost during our previous conversation; with
bewitching grace she held out her hand to me, and in a voice modulated
by the soul of persuasion, said, 'Let us be friends, Rupert, such as we
once were, brother and sister; I will not believe that you are returned
only to pain and injure me--I am happy in my children--stay but a
little, and you will see how foolish I have been to complain at all. You
also will love my boy.'
"Would you not think that these words had sufficed to cure my madness
and banish every guilty project? Had you seen her, her inimitable grace
of attitude, the blushing, tender expression of her face, and her
modest, earnest manner, a manner which spoke the maternal nature, such
as Catholics imagine it, without a tincture of the wife, a girlish, yet
enthusiastic rapture at the very thought of her child, you would have
known that every scheme I meditated was riveted faster, every desire to
make her my own for ever more fixed and eager. I went on to urge her,
till I saw every feature give token of distress; and at last she
suddenly left me, as if unable any longer to bear my pertinacity. She
left me without a word, but I saw her face bathed in tears. I was indeed
insane. These tears, which sprung from anguish of soul to think that her
childhood's companion should thus show himself an injurer instead of a
friend, I interpreted into signs of relenting--into a struggle with her
heart."