"I called again the following morning, but she was denied to me; twice
this happened. She feared me, I believed; and still more franticly I was
driven to continue my persecutions. I wrote to her; she did not answer
my letters. I entered the grounds of her house clandestinely; I lay in
wait for her; I resolved to see her again. At length one afternoon I
found her alone, walking and musing in the more solitary part of the
park; I stood suddenly before her, and her first emotion was pleasure,
so true was she to her affections, so constant to her hope that at last
I should be persuaded not to pain her by a renewal of my former
conversation. But I believed that I had a hold on her that I would not
forego. When she offered to renew our childhood's compact of friendship,
I asked her how that could be if she refused me her confidence; I asked
how she could promise me happiness, whose every hope was blighted. I
told her that it was my firm conviction that her mother had intended us
for one another, that she had brought her up for me, given her to me,
and that thus she was indeed mine. Her eyes flashed fire at this. 'My
mother,' she said, 'brought me up for a higher purpose than even
conducing to your happiness. She brought me up to fulfil my duties, to
be a mother in my turn. I do not deny,' she continued, 'that I share in
some sort my mother's fate, and am more maternal than wife-like; and as
I fondly wish to resemble her in all her virtues, I will not repine at
the circumstances that lead me rather to devote my existence to my
children, than to be that most blessed creature, a happy wife--I do not
ask for that happiness; I am contented with my lot; my very girlish,
romantic repinings do not really make me unhappy.'
"'Nor your fears, nor his base jealousy, his selfishness, his narrow
soul, and brutish violence? I know more than you think, Alithea--I read
your heart--you must be miserable; submissive, yet tyrannized over;
wedded to your duty, yet watched, suspected, accused. There are traces
of tears on your cheeks, my poor girl; your neck is bowed by the yoke,
your eyes have no longer the radiance of conscious rectitude, and yet
you are innocent.'
"'God knows I am,' she replied, as a shower of tears fell from her
eyes--but she was ashamed, and brushed them away--'I am, and will be,
Rupert, though you would mislead me. Where, indeed, can I find a
consciousness of rectitude, except in my heart? My husband mistrusts me,
I acknowledge it--by torture you force the truth--he does not
understand, and you would pervert me; in God and my own heart I put my
trust, and I will never do that which my conscience tells me is
wrong--and despite both I shall be happy. A mother is, in my eyes, a
more sacred name than wife. My life is wrapped in my boy; in him I find
blameless joy, though all the rest pierce my heart with poisoned
arrows.'
"'You shall, sweet Alithea,' I cried, 'preserve him, and every other
blessing. You were not born to inherit this maimed, poverty-stricken
life, the widowed mother of an orphan child--such are you now; I will be
a father to him for your sake, and many other joys will be yours, and
the fondest, truest heart that ever warmed man's bosom shall be all your
own. Alithea, you must not offer yourself up a living sacrifice to that
base idol, but belong to one whose love, and honour, and eternal
devotion merit you, though he possess no other claim. Let me save you
from him, I ask no more.'
"I felt a tear, for many long years forgotten, steal down my cheek--my
heart worshipped her excellence, and pity and grief mingled with my deep
regrets; she saw how sincerely I was moved, and tried to comfort me. She
wept also, for, despite her steadier thoughts, she knew the cruelty of
her destiny, and I do believe her heart yearned to taste, once more
before she died, the full joy of complete sympathy. But, if indeed her
tears were partly shed for herself, yet she never wavered; she deplored
my unhappiness, but she reproved my perversion of principle; she tried
to awaken patience, piety, or philosophic fortitude--any of the noble
virtues that might enable me to combat the passion by which I was
enslaved.
"Time was forgotten as we thus talked with the same openness of heart as
in former days, yet those hearts how saddened and wounded since then! I
would not let her go: while the moon rose high, shedding its silvery
light over the forest trees, and casting dark shadows on our path, still
we indulged in what she deemed our last conference. As I must answer my
crimes before God, I swear I could discern no wavering thought, no one
idea that strayed to the forbidden ground, towards which I strove to
lead her. She told me that she had intended not to see me again till her
husband returned; she said that she must implore me not again to seek
her in this way, or I should make her a prisoner in her house. I
listened--I answered, I knew not what--I was more resolved than ever not
to lose her--despite all, I still was mad enough to hope. She left me at
last, hoping to have conquered, yet resolved not to see me again, she
said, till her husband returned. This determination on her part was in
absolute contradiction to what I resolved should be. I had decreed to
see her again; nay, more, I would see her, not within the precincts of
her home, where all spoke against me; but where she should be free,
where, seeing nothing to remind her of the heavy yoke to which she bent
her neck, I fondly dreamed I might induce her wholly to throw it aside.
If it so pleased her, I would detain her but a few short hours, and
restore her to her home in all liberty; but, could I induce her to
assert her freedom, and follow me voluntarily--then--to think that
possible, the earth reeled under me, and my passion gained strength from
its very folly.
"I prepared all things for my plan; I went to Liverpool, and bought two
fleet horses and a light foreign calèche suited to my purpose.
Returning northward towards Dromore, I sought a solitary spot, for the
scene of our last interview, or of the first hour of my lasting bliss.
What more solitary than the wild and drear seashore of the south of
Cumberland? Landward it is screened by a sublime back-ground of
mountains; but in itself presenting to the view a wide extent of
uninhabited sands, intersected by rivers which, when the tide is up,
presents a dreary expanse of shallow water, and at ebb are left, except
in the channels of the rivers, a barren extent of mud and marsh; the
surrounding waste being variegated only by a line of sand-hills thrown
up to the height of thirty or forty feet, shutting in the view from
shore, while seaward no boat appeared ever to spread its sail on that
lonely sea. On these sands, near the mouth of one of the rivers, there
was a small hut deserted, but not in ruins; it was probably occasionally
inhabited by guides who are used in this part of the country to show the
track of the fords when the tide is full, and any deviation from the
right path is attended by peril, the beds of the rivers being full of
ruts and deep holes; that hut I selected as the spot where all should be
determined. If she consented to accompany me, we would proceed rapidly
forward to Liverpool, and embark for America; if she resolved to return,
this spot was but five miles from her home, and I could easily lead her
back without suspicion being excited. I was anxious to put my scheme in
execution, as her husband was shortly expected.
"It seemed a feasible one. In my own heart I did not expect to induce
her to forsake her home; but I might; and the very doubt maddened me.
And if I did not, yet for a few hours to have her near me, not in any
spot that called her detested husband master, but in the wide, free
scenes of nature, the ocean, parent of all liberty, spread at our feet;
the way easy to escape, no eye, no ear, to watch and spy out the
uncontrolled and genuine emotions of her heart, or no hand to check our
progress if she consented to follow. In this plan Osborne, whom I had
left at the miserable town of Ravenglass--and who, indeed, had been the
man to find and point out to me the solitary hut, was necessary. My
explanation and directions to him were few and peremptory: he was to
appear with the calèche, he acting as postillion, at a certain spot;
the moment he saw me arrive, as soon as I had placed the lady who was to
be my companion in the carriage, he was to put spurs to his horses, and
not by any cry of hers, nor command of mine, nor interference of
strangers, to be induced to stop till he reached the hut: there she
should be free; till then I would have her a prisoner even beyond my own
control, lest her entreaties should cheat me out of my resolves. Osborne
looked frightened at some portion of these orders, but I glossed over
any inconsistency; my bribe was high, and he submitted.
"At every step I took in this mad and guilty scheme, I became more
resolved to carry it on. Here is my crime--here the tale of sin, I have
to relate. The rest is disaster and endless remorse. What moved me to
this height of insanity--what blinded me to the senseless as well as the
unpardonable nature of my design, I cannot tell; except that, for years,
I had lived in a dream, and waking in the real world, I refused to
accommodate myself to its necessities, but resolved to bend its laws to
my desires. I loved Alithea--I had loved her through years of absence;
she was the wife of my reveries, my hopes, my heart. I could no more
part with the thought of her as such, than with a consciousness of my
own identity. To see her married and a mother, might be supposed capable
of dissipating these fancies; far from it. Her presence, her beauty, the
witchery of her eye, her heart-subduing voice, her sensibility, the
perfection of her nature, which her inimitable loveliness only half
expressed, but which reached my soul, through a sort of inner sense that
acknowledged it with worship; all this added to my phrensy, and steeped
me to the very lips in intoxication.
"What right had I to call this matchless creature mine? None! That I
acknowledged--but that he, the man without a soul, the incarnate Belial,
should claim her, was not to be endured. Mad as I was, I aver, and He
who reads all hearts be now my testimony, that it was more my wish to
set her free from him than to bind her to myself, that urged me on. I
had in the solitary shades of her park, during the arguments and
struggles of our last interview, sworn, that if she would suffer me to
take her, and her boy too if she chose, away from him, I would place her
in some romantic spot, build a home worthy of her, surrounded with all
the glory of nature, and only see her as a servant and a slave. I
pledged my soul to this, and I would have kept my oath. Those who have
not loved may look on this as the very acme of my hallucination; it
might be--I cannot tell--but so it was.
"All was ready; and I wrote to her to meet me for the last time. In this
also I was, in one sense, sincere; for I had determined, if I should
fail in my persuasions, never to see her more. She came, but several
hours later than I intended, which, to a certain degree, deranged my
plans. The weather had a sultriness about it all day, portending storm,
occasioning a state of atmosphere that operates to render the human
frame uneasy and restless. I paced the lane that bounded the demesnes of
Dromore for hours; I threw myself on a grassy bank. The rack in the
upper sky sped along with fearful impetuosity; it traversed the heavens
from west to east, driven by a furious wind which had not yet descended
to us; for below on earth, no breath of air moved the herbage, or could
be perceived amid the topmost boughs of the trees. Everything in nature,
acted upon by these contrary influences, had a strange and wild
appearance. The sun descended red towards the ocean before Alithea
opened the private gate of the grounds, and stood in all her loveliness
before me.
"She brought her son with her. At first this annoyed me; but at a second
thought it seemed to render my whole design more conclusive. She had
spoken of this child with such rapture that it would have been a
barbarity beyond my acting to separate her from him. By making him her
companion, she completed my purpose; I would take them away together. I
met her, I thought, with self-possession, but she read the conflict of
passion in my face, and, half fearful, asked what disturbed me. I
attributed my agitation to our approaching parting; and drawing her hand
through my arm, walked forward along the lane. At the moment of
executing my project, its wickedness and cruelty became so apparent,
that a thousand times I was about to confess all, solicit her
forgiveness, and leave her for ever: but that hardness, which in the
ancient religions is deemed the immediate work of God, crept over my
heart, turning its human misgiving to stony resolution. I endeavoured to
close every aperture of my soul against the relenting moods that
assailed me; yet they came with greater power each time, and at length
wholly mastering me, I consented to be subdued. I determined to
relinquish my schemes, to bid her an eternal adieu; and, moved by
self-pity at the desolate lot I was about to encounter, I spoke of
separation and absence, and the death of hope with such heartfelt pathos
as moved her to tears.
"Surely there is no greater enemy to virtue and good intentions than
that want of self-command, the exterior of which, though I had acquired,
no portion existed in the inner substance of my mind. Calm, proud, and
stern as I seemed to others, capable of governing the vehemence of my
temper, within I was the same slave of passion I had ever been. I never
could force myself to do the thing I hated; I never could persuade
myself to relinquish the thing I desired. There is the secret of my
crimes; there the vice of my disposition, which produced for her I loved
a miserable death, and for myself endless, unutterable wo. For a moment
I had become virtuous and heroic. We reached the end of the lane--my
emissary appeared with the carriage. I had worked myself up by this time
to determine to restore her to her home; to part with her for ever. She
believed this. The despair written on my brow--my sombre, mute, yet
heart-broken mien--my thoughts which had totally relinquished their
favourite project, and consented to be widowed of her for ever,
expressed in brief, passionate sentences, proved to her, who had never
suspected that I meant otherwise, that I took my last look and spoke my
last words. We reached the end of the lane; Osborne drove up. 'Be not
surprised,' I said. 'Yes, it is there, Alithea; the carriage that is to
convey me far, far away. Gracious God, do I live to see this hour!'
"The carriage stopped; we walked up to it. A devil at that moment
whispered in my ear, a devil, who feeds on human crimes and groans,
prompted my arm. Coward and dolt! to use such words--my own hellish mind
was the sole instigator. In a moment it was done. I lifted her light
figure into the carriage; I jumped in after her; I bade her boy follow.
It was too late. One cry from him, one long, piercing shriek from her,
and we were gone. With the swiftness of the winds we descended the
eminence towards the shore, and left child and all return far behind.
"At that moment the storm burst over us; but the thunder was unheard
amid the rattling of the wheels. Even her cries were lost in the uproar;
but, as the thickening clouds changed twilight into night, the vivid
lightning showed me Alithea at my feet, in convulsions of fear and
anguish. There was no help. I raised her in my arms; and she struggled
in them without meaning, without knowledge. Spasm succeeded to spasm; I
saw them, by the flashes of the frequent lightning, distort her features
with agony, but I could not even hear her groans; the furious haste at
which we went, the thunder from above, the plash of the rain, suspended
only by the howlings of the rising wind, drowned every other sound. I
called to Osborne to stop; he gave no heed to my cries. Methought the
horses had taken fright, and held the bit in their teeth, with such
unimaginable speed we swept along. The roar of ocean, torn up by the
wild west wind, now mingled with the universal uproar--hell had broken
loose upon earth--yet what was every other and more noisy tempest
compared to that which shook my soul, as I pressed Alithea to my heart
in agony, vainly hoping to see the colour revisit her cheeks, and her
dear eyes open! Was she already a corpse! I tried to feel her breath
upon my cheek; but the speed of our course, and the uproar of the
elements, prevented my being able to ascertain whether she was alive or
dead. And thus I bore her--thus I made her my bride, thus I, her
worshipper, emptied the vials of pain on her beloved head!"