There are scenes of guilt it would be horrible to paint—there are hours of
agony it is impossible to describe! All sympathy recedes from triumphant
vice and the kindest heart burns with indignation at the bare recital
of unpunished crime. By night, by day, the tortures of remorse pursued
Lady Avondale. In a husband’s presence, she trembled; from a parent’s
tenderness she turned with affected coldness; her children, she durst
not look upon. To the throne of heaven, she no longer offered up one
prayer; upon a sleepless bed, visions of horror distracted her fancy;
and when, at break of day, a deep and heavy slumber fell on her, instead
of relieving a weary spirit, feverish dreams and maddening apprehensions
disturbed her rest. Glenarvon had entirely possessed himself of her
imagination.
Glenarvon had said, there was a horrid secret, which weighed upon his
mind. He would start at times, and gaze on vacancy; then turn to Calantha,
and ask her what she had heard and seen. His gestures, his menaces were
terrific. He would talk to the air; then laugh with convulsive horror;
and gazing wildly around, enquire of her, if there were not blood upon
the earth, and if the ghosts of departed men had not been seen by some.
Calantha thought that madness had fallen upon his mind, and wept to think
that talents such as his were darkened and shrouded over by so heavy a
calamity. But when the fierce moment was passed, tears would force their
way into his eyes, and placing her hand upon his burning head, he would
call her his sole comforter, the only hope that was left him upon earth;
his dearest, his only friend; and he would talk to her of happier times;
of virtues that had been early blighted; of hopes that his own rashness
and errors had destroyed.
It was one day, one dark and fatal day, when passion raging in his
bosom, and time and opportunity at hand, he suddenly approached her,
and seizing her with violence, asked her if she returned his love. “My
friendship is ruin,” he cried; “all alliance with me must cast disgrace
upon the object of my regard. But, Calantha, you must be mine! May I
not even now call you thus? Shall they ever persuade you to abandon me?
Vain is all attempt at disguise,” he continued; “I love you to madness
and to distraction—you know it too well. Why then suffer me to feel the
tortures I endure, when a word—a look from you could relieve me. You are
not indifferent: say then that you are not—thou, who alone canst save
me. Here even, in the presence of heaven, I will open my whole heart
before you—that heart is seared with guilt; it is bleeding with venomed
wounds, incurable and deadly. A few short years, I have perhaps yet
to linger: thou mayest accelerate my fate, and plunge me still lower,
whilst I cling to thee for mercy; but will you do it, because you have
the power?”
Calantha scarce could support herself. After a moment’s pause, he
continued, “You shall hear me.—Never, since the hour of my birth, never—I
make no exception of either the living, or, what is far dearer and
more sacred to me, the dead—never did I love with such mad and frantic
violence as now. O seek not to disguise it; that love is returned. I
read it even now in thine eyes, thy lips; and whilst, with assumed and
barbarous coldness, you would drive me from you, your own heart pleads
for me; and, like myself, you love.”
Faint and trembling, Calantha now leant for support upon that arm which
surrounded her, and from which she, in vain, attempted to shrink. It
was a dreadful moment. Glenarvon, who never yet had sued in vain, marked
every varying turn of her countenance which too well expressed his empire
and her own weakness. “I cannot live without you.—Mine you are—mine you
shall ever be,” he said, “whilst this heart beats with life.” Then with
a smile of exultation, he seized her in his arms.
Starting however with all the terror which the first approach to guilt
must ever cause, “Spare me,” she cried, terrified and trembling: “even
though my heart should break in the struggle, let me not act so basely by
him to whom I am bound.”—“Say only, that you do not hate me—say only,” he
continued, with more gentleness, and pressing her hand to his lips—“say
only, that you share the tortures of agony you have inflicted—say that
which I know and see—that I am loved to adoration—even as I love you.”
With tears she besought him to spare her. “I feel your power too much,”
she said. “All that I ought not—must not say, I think and feel. Be
satisfied; your empire is complete. Spare me—save me; I have not power
to feign.” Her tears fell now unrestrained. “There is no need of this,”
he said, recovering himself; “you have sealed my fate. A moment of
passion beguiled me: I am calm now, as when first I met you—calm and
cold, even as yourself. Since it is your wish, and since my presence
makes your misery, let us part.—I go, as I have often said; but it shall
be alone. My country I leave without regret; for the chain of tyranny
has encompassed it: friends, I have none; and thou, who wert as an angel
of light to me—to whom I knelt for safety and for peace—mayst thou be
blest: this is all I ask of heaven. As for me, nothing can increase
the misery I feel. I wish you not to believe it, or to share it. This
is no lover’s despondency—no sudden and violent paroxysm occasioned by
disappointed passion. It is uttered,” he continued, “in the hopelessness
of despair: it is the confession, not the repining of a heart that was
early blighted and destroyed.”
Calantha now interrupted him. “I alone am guilty,” she replied, “talk
not of leaving me; we may still be friends—we must never be more.” “Oh!
promise that we shall never be less.” Glenarvon looked on her with
kindness. “Let no fears dissuade you until I shew myself unworthy of
the trust. Forsake not him, whose only happiness is in your affection.
I was joyless and without hope, when first I met you; but the return,
to loneliness and misery, is hard to bear. Be virtuous, and, if it
may be so, be happy.” “That I never more can be,” she answered. “You
are young in sin yet,” said Glenarvon; “you know not its dangers, its
pleasures, or its bitterness. All this, ere long, will be forgotten.”
“Never forgotten,” she replied, “oh never!”