On arriving in London from Hastings, Neville had repaired, as usual, to
his father's house; which, as was to be supposed at that season of the
year, he found empty. On the second day, Sir Boyvill presented himself
unexpectedly. He looked cold and stern as ever. The father and son met
as they were wont: the latter anticipating rebuke and angry, unjust
commands; the other assuming the lofty tone of legitimate authority,
indignant at being disputed. "I hear from Sophia," said Sir Boyvill,
"that you are on the point of sailing for America, and this without
deigning to acquaint me with your purpose. Is this fair? Common
acquaintances act with more ceremony towards each other."
"I feared your disapproval, sir," replied Neville.
"And thought it less faulty to act without than against a father's
consent: such is the vulgar notion; but a very erroneous one. It doubles
the injury, both to disobey me, and to keep me in the dark with regard
to my danger."
"But if the danger be only imaginary?" observed his son.
Sir Boyvill replied, "I am not come to argue with you, nor to dissuade,
nor to issue commands. I come with the more humble intention of being
instructed. Sophy, though she evidently regrets your purposed journey,
yet avers that it is not so wild and aimless as your expeditions have
hitherto been; that the letters from Lancaster did lead to some
unlooked-for disclosure. You little know me if you are not aware that I
have the question, which you debate in so rash and boyish a manner, as
deeply and more sorely at heart than you. Let me then hear the tale you
have heard."
Surprised, and even touched to find his father unbend so far as to
listen to him, Neville related the American's story, and the information
that it seemed probable that Osborne could afford. Sir Boyvill listened
attentively, and then observed, "It will be matter of triumph to you,
Gerard, to learn that your strange perseverance has a little overcome
me. You are no longer a mere lad; and though inexperienced and
headstrong, you have shown talents and decision; and I am willing to
believe, though perhaps I am wrong, that you are guided by conviction,
and not by a blind wish to disobey. Your conduct has been consistent
throughout, and so far is entitled to respect. But you are, as I have
said (and forgive a father for saying so), inexperienced--a mere child
in the world's ways. You go straightforward to your object, reckless of
the remark that you excite, and the gall and wormwood that such remark
imparts. Why will you not in some degree be swayed by me? Our views, if
you would deign to inquire into mine, are not so dissimilar."
Neville knew not what to answer, for every reply and explanation were
likely to offend. "Hitherto," continued Sir Boyvill, "in disgust at your
wilfulness, I have only issued disregarded commands. But I am willing to
treat my son as my friend, if he will let me; but it must be on one
condition. I exact one promise."
"I am ready, sir," replied Neville, "to enter into any engagement that
does not defeat my purpose."
"It is simply," said Sir Boyvill, "that you shall do nothing without
consulting me. I, on the other hand, will promise not to interfere by
issuing orders which you will not obey. But if there is any sense in
your pursuit, my counsels may assist. I ask no more than to offer
advice, and to have opportunity afforded me to express my opinion. Will
you not allow that so much is due to me? Will you not engage to
communicate your projects, and to acquaint me unreservedly with every
circumstance that falls to your knowledge? This is the limit of my
exactions."
"Most willingly I make this promise," exclaimed Neville. "It will indeed
be my pride to have your participation in my sacred task."
"How far I can afford that," replied Sir Boyvill, "depends on the
conduct you will pursue. With regard to this Osborne, I consent at once
that his story should be sifted; nay, that you should go to America for
that purpose, while you are ready to engage that you will not act on any
information you may gather, without my knowledge."
"You may depend," said Gerard, "that I will keep to the letter of my
promise; and I pledge my honour, gladly and unreservedly, to tell you
everything, to learn your wishes, and to endeavour throughout to act
with your approbation."
This concession made on both sides, the father and son conversed on more
unreserved and kinder terms than they had ever before done. They passed
the evening together, and though the arrogance, the wounded pride, the
irritated feelings, and unredeemed selfishness of Sir Boyvill betrayed
themselves at every moment, Gerard saw with surprise the weakness masked
by so imposing an exterior. His angry commands and insulting blame had
been used as batteries to defend the accessible part. He still loved and
regretted Alithea; he pined to be assured of her truth; but he despised
himself for these emotions--calling them feebleness and credulity. He
felt assured that his worst suspicions would be proved true. She might
now be dead; he thought it probable, that ere this her faults and
sorrows were hushed in the grave: but had she remained voluntarily one
half hour in the power of the man who had carried her from her home, no
subsequent repentance, no remorse, no suffering could exculpate her.
What he feared, was the revival of a story so full of dishonour--the
dragging a mangled half-formed tale again before the public, which would
jeer his credulity, and make merry over the new gloss of a time-worn
subject. When such a notion occupied his brain, his heart swelled with
uncontrollable emotions of pride and indignation.
Neville cared little for the world. He thought of his mother's wrongs
and sufferings. He conjured up the long years which might have been
spent in wretchedness; he longed, whatever she had done, to feel her
maternal embrace, to show his gratitude for her early care of him. This
was one view, one class of emotions present to his mind, when any
occurrence tended to shake his belief in her unblemished honour and
integrity, which was the religion of his heart. At the same time he, as
much as his father, abhorred that the indifferent and light-hearted, the
levelling and base, should have any food administered to their loathsome
appetite for slander. So far as his father's views were limited to the
guarding Alithea's name from further discussion, Neville honoured them.
He showed Sir Boyvill that he was not so imprudent as he seemed, and
brought him at last to allow that some discovery might ensue from his
voyage. This open-hearted and peaceful interchange of sentiment between
them was very cheering to both; and when Gerard visited Elizabeth the
following day, his spirit was lighter and happier than it had ever been,
and love was there to mingle its roseate visions with the sterner calls
of duty. He entered Falkner's house with much of triumph, and more of
hope gladdening his heart; he left it horror-struck, aghast, and almost
despairing.
He would not return to his father. Elizabeth's supposition that Falkner
spoke under a delusion, produced by sudden insanity; and his reluctance
that while doubt hung over the event, that her dear name should be
needlessly mixed up with the tragedy of his mother's death, restrained
him. He resolved at once to take no final step till the evening, till he
had again seen Elizabeth, and learned what foundation there was for the
tremendous avowal that still rung in his ears. The evening--he had
mentioned the evening--but would it ever come? till then he walked in a
frightful dream. He first went to the docks, withdrew his luggage, and
yet left word that by possibility he might still join the vessel at
Sheerness. He did this, for he was glad to give himself something to do;
and yet, soon after, how gladly would he have exchanged those hours of
suspense for the certainty that too quickly came like a sudden ray of
light, to show that he had long been walking at the edge of a giddy
precipice. He received the packet and letter from the servant; dizzy and
confounded he rode away; by the light of the first lamp he read
Elizabeth's letter; it disordered the current of his blood, it confused
and maddened the functions of reason; putting spurs to his horse, he
galloped furiously on till he reached his father's house.
Sir Boyvill was seated solitarily in his drawing-room, sipping his
coffee, and indulging in various thought. His wedded life with
Alithea--her charms, her admirable qualities, and sweet, endearing
disposition--occupied him as they had never done before since her
flight. For the first time, the veil, woven by anger and vanity, fell
from his eyes, and he saw distinctly the rashness and injustice of his
past actions. He became convinced that deceit could never have had a
part in her; did not her child resemble her, and was he not truth
itself? He had nourished an aversion to his son, as her offspring; now
he looked on his virtues as an inheritance derived from his sweet
mother, and his heart instinctively, unaccountably, warmed towards both.
Gerard opened the door of the room and looked in; Sir Boyvill could
hardly have recognised him, his face whiter than marble, his eyes wild
and wandering, his whole countenance convulsed, his person shrunk up and
writhing. He threw the packet on the table, crying out, "Victory, my
father, victory!" in a voice so shrill and dissonant, so near a shriek,
as to inspire his auditor with fear rather than triumph: "Read! read!"
he continued, "I have not yet--I keep my word, you shall know all, even
before me--and yet, I _do_ know all, I have seen my mother's destroyer!
She is dead!"
Sir Boyvill now, in some degree, comprehended his son's agitation. He
saw that he was too much excited to act with any calmness; he could not
guess how he had discovered the villain on whom both would desire to
heap endless, unsatiable revenge; but he did not wonder, that if he had
really encountered this man, and learned his deeds, that he should be
transported into a sort of phrensy. He took up the packet--he cut the
string that tied it--he turned over the papers, and his brow darkened.
"Here is a long narrative," he said; "there is much of excuse, and much
of explanation here. The story ought to be short that exculpates her; I
do not like these varnishings of the simple truth."
"You will find none," said Neville; "at least, I heard none. His words
were direct--his avowal contained no subterfuge."
"Of whom do you speak?" asked Sir Boyvill.
"Read," said Neville, "and you will know more than I; but half an hour
ago those papers were put into my hands. I have not read them. I give
them to you before I am aware of their contents, that I might fully
acquit myself of my promise. They come from Rupert Falkner, my mother's
destroyer."
"Leave me then to my task," said Sir Boyvill, in an altered and subdued
tone. "You speak of strange things; facts to undo a frightful past, and
to generate a future dedicated to a new revenge. Leave me; let me remain
alone while I read--while I ponder on what credit I may give--what
course I must pursue. Leave me, Gerard. I have long injured you, but at
last you will be repaid. Come back in a few hours; the moment I am
master of the contents of the manuscript I will see you."
Gerard left him. He had scarcely been aware of what he was doing when he
carried the packet, unopened, unexamined, to his father. He had feared
that he might be tempted--to what?--to conceal his mother's vindication?
Never! Yet the responsibility sat heavy on him; and, driven by an
irresistible impulse, he had resolved to deprive himself of all power of
acting basely by giving at once publicity to all that passed. When he
had done this, he felt as if he had applied a match to some fatal rocket
which would carry destruction to the very temple and shrine of his
dearest hopes--to Elizabeth's happiness and life. But the deed was done;
he could but shut his eyes and let the mortal ball proceed towards its
destined prey.
Gerard was young. He aspired to happiness with all the ardour of youth.
While we are young we feel as if happiness were the birthright of
humanity; after a long and cruel apprenticeship, we disengage ourselves
from this illusion--or from (a yet more difficult sacrifice) the
realities that produce felicity--for on earth there are such, though
they are too often linked with adjuncts that make the purchase of them
cost in the end peace of mind and a pure conscience. Thus was it with
Gerard. With Elizabeth, winning her love and making her his own, he felt
assured of a life of happiness; but to sacrifice his mother's name--the
holy task to which he had dedicated himself from childhood--for the sake
of obtaining her--it must not be!
With this thought came destruction to the fresh-sprung hopes that
adorned his existence. Gerard's poetic and tender nature led him to form
sweet dreams of joys derived from a union which would be cemented by
affection, sympathy, and enthusiastic admiration of the virtues of his
companion. In Elizabeth he had beheld the imbodying of all his wishes;
in her eyes he had read their accomplishment. Her love for her father
had first awakened his love. Her wise, simple, upright train of
thinking--the sensibility ennobled by self-command, yet ever ready to
spring forth and comfort the unhappy--her generosity--her total
abnegation of self--her understanding so just and true, yet tempered
with feminine aptitude to adapt itself to the situation and sentiments
of others--all these qualities, discovered one by one, and made dear by
the friendship she displayed towards him, had opened the hitherto closed
gates of the world's only paradise; and now he found that, as the poet
says, evil had entered even there--"and the trail of the serpent" marked
with slimy poison the fairest and purest of Eden's flowers.[1]
Neville had looked forward to a life of blameless but ecstatic
happiness, as her friend, her protector, her husband. Youth, without
being presumptuous, is often sanguine. Prodigal of self, it expects, as
of right, a full return. Ready to assist Elizabeth in her task of
watching over her father's health--who, in his eyes, was wasting
gradually away--he felt that he should be near to soften her regrets,
and fill his place, and sooth her sinking spirits when struck by a loss
which to her would seem so dire.
And now--Falkner! He believed him to be in a state of health that did
not leave him many years to live. He recollected him at Marseilles,
stretched on his couch, feeble as an infant, the hues of death on his
brow. He thought of him as he had seen him that morning--his figure bent
by disease--his face ashy pale and worn. He was the man whom, thirteen
years before, he remembered in upright, proud, and youthful strength; wo
and disease had brought on the ravages of age--he was struck by
premature decay--a few years, by the course of nature, he would be laid
in his grave. But Gerard could not leave him this respite--he must at
once meet him in such encounter as must end in the death of one of the
combatants--whichever that might be, there was no hope for Elizabeth--in
either case she lost her all--in either case Falkner would die, and an
insuperable barrier be raised between her and her only other friend.
Neville's ardent and gentle spirit quivered with agony as he thought of
these things. "Oh ye destructive powers of nature!" he cried; "come all!
Storm, flood, and fire, mingled in one dire whirlwind; or bring the
deadlier tortures tyrants have inflicted and martyrs undergone, and say,
can any agony equal that which convulses the human heart when writhing
under contending passions--torn by contrary purposes! This very morning
Elizabeth was all the universe of hope and joy. I would not for worlds
have injured one hair of her dear head--and now I meditate a deed that
is to consign her to eternal grief."
Athwart this tumult of thought came the recollection that he was still
in ignorance of the truth. He called to mind the narrative which his
father was then reading; would it reveal aught that must alter the line
of conduct which he now considered inevitable? A devouring curiosity was
awakened. Leaving his father, he had rushed into the open air, in
obedience to the instinct that always leads the unquiet mind to seek the
solace of bodily activity. He had hurried into Hyde Park, which then, in
the dimness of night, appeared a wide expanse--a limitless waste. He
hurried to and fro on the turf--he saw nothing, he was aware of nothing,
except the internal war that shook him. Now, as he felt the eager desire
to get quit of doubt, he fancied that several hours must have elapsed,
and that his father must be waiting for him. The clocks of London
struck--he counted--it was but eleven--he had been there scarcely more
than an hour.
[Footnote 1: "Alas, for man! said the pitying spirit,
Dearly you pay for your primal fall!
Some flowers of Eden you still inherit,
But the trail of the serpent is over them all."
_Paradise and the Peri_.]