GUY'S OAK.
Three weeks afterwards, the life at Laughton seemed restored to the
cheerful and somewhat monotonous tranquillity of its course, before
chafed and disturbed by the recent interruptions to the stream. Vernon
had departed, satisfied with the justice of the trial imposed on him, and
far too high-spirited to seek to extort from niece or uncle any
engagement beyond that which, to a nice sense of honour, the trial itself
imposed. His memory and his heart were still faithful to Mary; but his
senses, his fancy, his vanity, were a little involved in his success with
the heiress. Though so free from all mercenary meanness, Mr. Vernon was
still enough man of the world to be sensible of the advantages of the
alliance which had first been pressed on him by Sir Miles, and from which
Lucretia herself appeared not to be averse. The season of London was
over, but there was always a set, and that set the one in which Charley
Vernon principally moved, who found town fuller than the country.
Besides, he went occasionally to Brighton, which was then to England what
Baiae was to Rome. The prince was holding gay court at the Pavilion, and
that was the atmosphere which Vernon was habituated to breathe. He was
no parasite of royalty; he had that strong personal affection to the
prince which it is often the good fortune of royalty to attract. Nothing
is less founded than the complaint which poets put into the lips of
princes, that they have no friends,--it is, at least, their own perverse
fault if that be the case; a little amiability, a little of frank
kindness, goes so far when it emanates from the rays of a crown. But
Vernon was stronger than Lucretia deemed him; once contemplating the
prospect of a union which was to consign to his charge the happiness of
another, and feeling all that he should owe in such a marriage to the
confidence both of niece and uncle, he evinced steadier principles than
he had ever made manifest when he had only his own fortune to mar, and
his own happiness to trifle with. He joined his old companions, but he
kept aloof from their more dissipated pursuits. Beyond what was then
thought the venial error of too devout libations to Bacchus, Charley
Vernon seemed reformed.
Ardworth had joined a regiment which had departed for the field of
action. Mainwaring was still with his father, and had not yet announced
to Sir Miles any wish or project for the future.
Olivier Dalibard, as before, passed his mornings alone in his chamber,--
his noons and his evenings with Sir Miles. He avoided all private
conferences with Lucretia. She did not provoke them. Young Gabriel
amused himself in copying Sir Miles's pictures, sketching from Nature,
scribbling in his room prose or verse, no matter which (he never showed
his lucubrations), pinching the dogs when he could catch them alone,
shooting the cats, if they appeared in the plantation, on pretence of
love for the young pheasants, sauntering into the cottages, where he was
a favourite because of his good looks, but where he always contrived to
leave the trace of his visits in disorder and mischief, upsetting the
tea-kettle and scalding the children, or, what he loved dearly, setting
two gossips by the ears. But these occupations were over by the hour
Lucretia left her apartment. From that time he never left her out of
view; and when encouraged to join her at his usual privileged times,
whether in the gardens at sunset or in her evening niche in the drawing-
room, he was sleek, silken, and caressing as Cupid, after plaguing the
Nymphs, at the feet of Psyche. These two strange persons had indeed
apparently that sort of sentimental familiarity which is sometimes seen
between a fair boy and a girl much older than himself; but the attraction
that drew them together was an indefinable instinct of their similarity
in many traits of their several characters,--the whelp leopard sported
fearlessly around the she-panther. Before Olivier's midnight conference
with his son, Gabriel had drawn close and closer to Lucretia, as an ally
against his father; for that father he cherished feelings which, beneath
the most docile obedience, concealed horror and hate, and something of
the ferocity of revenge. And if young Varney loved any one on earth
except himself, it was Lucretia Clavering. She had administered to his
ruling passions, which were for effect and display; she had devised the
dress which set off to the utmost his exterior, and gave it that
picturesque and artistic appearance which he had sighed for in his study
of the portraits of Titian and Vandyke. She supplied him (for in money
she was generous) with enough to gratify and forestall every boyish
caprice; and this liberality now turned against her, for it had increased
into a settled vice his natural taste for extravagance, and made all
other considerations subordinate to that of feeding his cupidity. She
praised his drawings, which, though self-taught, were indeed
extraordinary, predicted his fame as an artist, lifted him into
consequence amongst the guests by her notice and eulogies, and what,
perhaps, won him more than all, he felt that it was to her--to Dalibard's
desire to conceal before her his more cruel propensities--that he owed
his father's change from the most refined severity to the most paternal
gentleness.
And thus he had repaid her, as she expected, by a devotion which she
trusted to employ against her tutor himself, should the baffled aspirant
become the scheming rival and the secret foe. But now,--thoroughly aware
of the gravity of his father's objects, seeing before him the chance of a
settled establishment at Laughton, a positive and influential connection
with Lucretia; and on the other hand a return to the poverty he recalled
with disgust, and the terrors of his father's solitary malice and
revenge,--he entered fully into Dalibard's sombre plans, and without
scruple or remorse, would have abetted any harm to his benefactress.
Thus craft, doomed to have accomplices in craft, resembles the spider,
whose web, spread indeed for the fly, attracts the fellow-spider that
shall thrust it forth, and profit by the meshes it has woven for a
victim, to surrender to a master.
Already young Varney, set quietly and ceaselessly to spy every movement
of Lucretia's, had reported to his father two visits to the most retired
part of the park; but he had not yet ventured near enough to discover the
exact spot, and his very watch on Lucretia had prevented the detection of
Mainwaring himself in his stealthy exchange of correspondence. Dalibard
bade him continue his watch, without hinting at his ulterior intentions,
for, indeed, in these he was not decided. Even should he discover any
communication between Lucretia and Mainwaring, how reveal it to Sir Miles
without forever precluding himself from the chance of profiting by the
betrayal? Could Lucretia ever forgive the injury, and could she fail to
detect the hand that inflicted it? His only hope was in the removal of
Mainwaring from his path by other agencies than his own, and (by an
appearance of generosity and self-abandonment, in keeping her secret and
submitting to his fate) he trusted to regain the confidence she now
withheld from him, and use it to his advantage when the time came to
defend himself from Vernon. For he had learned from Sir Miles the
passive understanding with respect to that candidate for her hand; and he
felt assured that had Mainwaring never existed, could he cease to exist
for her hopes, Lucretia, despite her dissimulation, would succumb to one
she feared but respected, rather than one she evidently trifled with and
despised.
"But the course to be taken must be adopted after the evidence is
collected," thought the subtle schemer, and he tranquilly continued his
chess with the baronet.
Before, however, Gabriel could make any further discoveries, an event
occurred which excited very different emotions amongst those it more
immediately interested.
Sir Miles had, during the last twelve months, been visited by two
seizures, seemingly of an apoplectic character. Whether they were
apoplexy, or the less alarming attacks that arise from some more gentle
congestion, occasioned by free living and indolent habits, was matter of
doubt with his physician,--not a very skilful, though a very formal, man.
Country doctors were not then the same able, educated, and scientific
class that they are now rapidly becoming. Sir Miles himself so stoutly
and so eagerly repudiated the least hint of the more unfavourable
interpretation that the doctor, if not convinced by his patient, was awed
from expressing plainly a contrary opinion. There are certain persons
who will dismiss their physician if he tells them the truth: Sir Miles
was one of them.
In his character there was a weakness not uncommon to the proud. He did
not fear death, but he shrank from the thought that others should
calculate on his dying. He was fond of his power, though he exercised it
gently: he knew that the power of wealth and station is enfeebled in
proportion as its dependants can foresee the date of its transfer. He
dreaded, too, the comments which are always made on those visited by his
peculiar disease: "Poor Sir Miles! an apoplectic fit. His intellect must
be very much shaken; he revoked at whist last night,--memory sadly
impaired!" This may be a pitiable foible; but heroes and statesmen have
had it most: pardon it in the proud old man! He enjoined the physician
to state throughout the house and the neighbourhood that the attacks were
wholly innocent and unimportant. The physician did so, and was generally
believed; for Sir Miles seemed as lively and as vigorous after them as
before. Two persons alone were not deceived,--Dalibard and Lucretia.
The first, at an earlier part of his life, had studied pathology with the
profound research and ingenious application which he brought to bear upon
all he undertook. He whispered from the first to Lucretia,--
"Unless your uncle changes his habits, takes exercise, and forbears wine
and the table, his days are numbered."
And when this intelligence was first conveyed to her, before she had
become acquainted with Mainwaring, Lucretia felt the shock of a grief
sudden and sincere. We have seen how these better sentiments changed as
human life became an obstacle in her way. In her character, what
phrenologists call "destructiveness," in the comprehensive sense of the
word, was superlatively developed. She had not actual cruelty; she was
not bloodthirsty: those vices belong to a different cast of character.
She was rather deliberately and intellectually unsparing. A goal was
before her; she must march to it: all in the way were but hostile
impediments. At first, however, Sir Miles was not in the way, except to
fortune, and for that, as avarice was not her leading vice, she could
well wait; therefore, at this hint of the Provencal's she ventured to
urge her uncle to abstinence and exercise. But Sir Miles was touchy on
the subject; he feared the interpretations which great change of habits
might suggest. The memory of the fearful warning died away, and he felt
as well as before; for, save an old rheumatic gout (which had long since
left him with no other apparent evil but a lameness in the joints that
rendered exercise unwelcome and painful), he possessed one of those
comfortable, and often treacherous, constitutions which evince no
displeasure at irregularities, and bear all liberties with philosophical
composure. Accordingly, he would have his own way; and he contrived to
coax or to force his doctor into an authority on his side: wine was
necessary to his constitution; much exercise was a dangerous fatigue.
The second attack, following four months after the first, was less
alarming, and Sir Miles fancied it concealed even from his niece; but
three nights after his recovery, the old baronet sat musing alone for
some time in his own room before he retired to rest. Then he rose, opened
his desk, and read his will attentively, locked it up with a slight sigh,
and took down his Bible. The next morning he despatched the letters
which summoned Ardworth and Vernon to his house; and as he quitted his
room, his look lingered with melancholy fondness upon the portraits in
the gallery. No one was by the old man to interpret these slight signs,
in which lay a world of meaning.
A few weeks after Vernon had left the house, and in the midst of the
restored tranquillity we have described, it so happened that Sir Miles's
physician, after dining at the Hall, had been summoned to attend one of
the children at the neighbouring rectory; and there he spent the night.
A little before daybreak his slumbers were disturbed; he was recalled in
all haste to Laughton Hall. For the third time, he found Sir Miles
speechless. Dalibard was by his bedside. Lucretia had not been made
aware of the seizure; for Sir Miles had previously told his valet (who of
late slept in the same room) never to alarm Miss Clavering if he was
taken ill. The doctor was about to apply his usual remedies; but when he
drew forth his lancet, Dalibard placed his hand on the physician's arm.
"Not this time," he said slowly, and with emphasis; "it will be his
death."
"Pooh, sir!" said the doctor, disdainfully.
"Do so, then; bleed him, and take the responsibility. I have studied
medicine,--I know these symptoms. In this case the apoplexy may spare,--
the lancet kills."
The physician drew back dismayed and doubtful.
"What would you do, then?"
"Wait three minutes longer the effect of the cataplasms I have applied.
If they fail--"
"Ay, then?"
"A chill bath and vigorous friction."
"Sir, I will never permit it."
"Then murder your patient your own way."
All this while Sir Miles lay senseless, his eyes wide open, his teeth
locked. The doctor drew near, looked at the lancet, and said
irresolutely,--
"Your practice is new to me; but if you have studied medicine, that's
another matter. Will you guarantee the success of your plan?"
"Yes."
"Mind, I wash my hands of it; I take Mr. Jones to witness;" and he
appealed to the valet.
"Call up the footman and lift your master," said Dalibard; and the
doctor, glancing round, saw that a bath, filled some seven or eight
inches deep with water, stood already prepared in the room. Perplexed
and irresolute, he offered no obstacle to Dalibard's movements. The
body, seemingly lifeless, was placed in the bath; and the servants, under
Dalibard's directions, applied vigorous and incessant friction. Several
minutes elapsed before any favourable symptom took place. At length Sir
Miles heaved a deep sigh, and the eyes moved; a minute or two more, and
the teeth chattered; the blood, set in motion, appeared on the surface of
the skin; life ebbed back. The danger was passed, the dark foe driven
from the citadel. Sir Miles spoke audibly, though incoherently, as he
was taken back to his bed, warmly covered up, the lights removed, noise
forbidden, and Dalibard and the doctor remained in silence by the
bedside.
"Rich man," thought Dalibard, "thine hour is not yet come; thy wealth
must not pass to the boy Mainwaring." Sir Miles's recovery, under the
care of Dalibard, who now had his own way, was as rapid and complete as
before. Lucretia when she heard, the next morning, of the attack, felt,
we dare not say a guilty joy, but a terrible and feverish agitation. Sir
Miles himself, informed by his valet of Dalibard's wrestle with the
doctor, felt a profound gratitude and reverent wonder for the simple
means to which he probably owed his restoration; and he listened, with a
docility which Dalibard was not prepared to expect, to his learned
secretary's urgent admonitions as to the life he must lead if he desired
to live at all. Convinced, at last, that wine and good cheer had not
blockaded out the enemy, and having to do, in Olivier Dalibard, with a
very different temper from the doctor's, he assented with a tolerable
grace to the trial of a strict regimen and to daily exercise in the open
air. Dalibard now became constantly with him; the increase of his
influence was as natural as it was apparent. Lucretia trembled; she
divined a danger in his power, now separate from her own, and which
threatened to be independent of it. She became abstracted and uneasy;
jealousy of the Provencal possessed her. She began to meditate schemes
for his downfall. At this time, Sir Miles received the following letter
from Mr. Fielden:--
SOUTHAMPTON, Aug. 20, 1801.
DEAR SIR MILES,--You will remember that I informed you when I arrived at
Southampton with my dear young charge; and Susan has twice written to her
sister, implying the request which she lacked the courage, seeing that
she is timid, expressly to urge, that Miss Clavering might again be
permitted to visit her. Miss Clavering has answered as might be expected
from the propinquity of the relationship; but she has perhaps the same
fears of offending you that actuate her sister. But now, since the
worthy clergyman who had undertaken my parochial duties has found the air
insalubrious, and prays me not to enforce the engagement by which we had
exchanged our several charges for the space of a calendar year, I am
reluctantly compelled to return home,--my dear wife, thank Heaven, being
already restored to health, which is an unspeakable mercy; and I am sure
I cannot be sufficiently grateful to Providence, which has not only
provided me with a liberal independence of more than 200 pounds a year,
but the best of wives and the most dutiful of children,--possessions that
I venture to call "the riches of the heart." Now, I pray you, my dear
Sir Miles, to gratify these two deserving young persons, and to suffer
Miss Lucretia incontinently to visit her sister. Counting on your
consent, thus boldly demanded, I have already prepared an apartment for
Miss Clavering; and Susan is busy in what, though I do not know much of
such feminine matters, the whole house declares to be a most beautiful
and fanciful toilet-cover, with roses and forget-me-nots cut out of
muslin, and two large silk tassels, which cost her three shillings and
fourpence. I cannot conclude without thanking you from my heart for your
noble kindness to young Ardworth. He is so full of ardour and spirit
that I remember, poor lad, when I left him, as I thought, hard at work on
that well-known problem of Euclid vulgarly called the Asses' Bridge,--I
found him describing a figure of 8 on the village pond, which was only
just frozen over! Poor lad! Heaven will take care of him, I know, as it
does of all who take no care of themselves. Ah, Sir Miles, if you could
but see Susan,--such a nurse, too, in illness! I have the honour to be,
Sir Miles,
Your most humble, poor servant, to command,
MATTHEW FIELDEN.
Sir Miles put this letter in his niece's hand, and said kindly, "Why not
have gone to see your sister before? I should not have been angry. Go,
my child, as soon as you like. To-morrow is Sunday,--no travelling that
day; but the next, the carriage shall be at your order."
Lucretia hesitated a moment. To leave Dalibard in sole possession of the
field, even for a few days, was a thought of alarm; but what evil could
he do in that time? And her pulse beat quickly: Mainwaring could come to
Southampton; she should see him again, after more than six weeks'
absence! She had so much to relate and to hear; she fancied his last
letter had been colder and shorter; she yearned to hear him say, with his
own lips, that he loved her still. This idea banished or prevailed over
all others. She thanked her uncle cheerfully and gayly, and the journey
was settled.
"Be at watch early on Monday," said Olivier to his son.
Monday came; the baronet had ordered the carriage to be at the door at
ten. A little before eight, Lucretia stole out, and took her way to
Guy's Oak. Gabriel had placed himself in readiness; he had climbed a
tree at the bottom of the park (near the place where hitherto he had lost
sight of her); she passed under it,--on through a dark grove of pollard
oaks. When she was at a sufficient distance, the boy dropped from his
perch; with the stealth of an Indian he crept on her trace, following
from tree to tree, always sheltered, always watchful. He saw her pause
at the dell and look round; she descended into the hollow; he slunk
through the fern; he gained the marge of the dell, and looked down,--she
was lost to his sight. At length, to his surprise, he saw the gleam of
her robe emerge from the hollow of a tree,--her head stooped as she came
through the aperture; he had time to shrink back amongst the fern; she
passed on hurriedly, the same way she had taken, back to the house; then
into the dell crept the boy. Guy's Oak, vast and venerable, with gnarled
green boughs below, and sere branches above, that told that its day of
fall was decreed at last, rose high from the abyss of the hollow, high
and far-seen amidst the trees that stood on the vantage-ground above,--
even as a great name soars the loftier when it springs from the grave. A
dark and irregular fissure gave entrance to the heart of the oak. The
boy glided in and looked round; he saw nothing, yet something there must
be. The rays of the early sun did not penetrate into the hollow, it was
as dim as a cave. He felt slowly in every crevice, and a startled moth
or two flew out. It was not for moths that the girl had come to Guy's
Oak! He drew back, at last, in despair; as he did so, he heard a low
sound close at hand,--a low, murmuring, angry sound, like a hiss; he
looked round, and through the dark, two burning eyes fixed his own: he
had startled a snake from its bed. He drew out in time, as the reptile
sprang; but now his task, search, and object were forgotten. With the
versatility of a child, his thoughts were all on the enemy he had
provoked. That zest of prey which is inherent in man's breast, which
makes him love the sport and the chase, and maddens boyhood and age with
the passion for slaughter, leaped up within him; anything of danger and
contest and excitement gave Gabriel Varney a strange fever of pleasure.
He sprang up the sides of the dell, climbed the park pales on which it
bordered, was in the wood where the young shoots rose green and strong
from the underwood. To cut a staff for the strife, to descend again into
the dell, creep again through the fissure, look round for those vengeful
eyes, was quick done as the joyous play of the impulse. The poor snake
had slid down in content and fancied security; its young, perhaps, were
not far off; its wrath had been the instinct Nature gives to the mother.
It hath done thee no harm yet, boy; leave it in peace! The young hunter
had no ear to such whisper of prudence or mercy. Dim and blind in the
fissure, he struck the ground and the tree with his stick, shouted out,
bade the eyes gleam, and defied them. Whether or not the reptile had
spent its ire in the first fruitless spring, and this unlooked-for return
of the intruder rather daunted than exasperated, we leave those better
versed in natural history to conjecture; but instead of obeying the
challenge and courting the contest, it glided by the sides of the oak,
close to the very feet of its foe, and emerging into the light, dragged
its gray coils through the grass; but its hiss still betrayed it.
Gabriel sprang through the fissure and struck at the craven, insulting it
with a laugh of scorn as he struck. Suddenly it halted, suddenly reared
its crest; the throat swelled with venom, the tongue darted out, and
again, green as emeralds, glared the spite of its eyes. No fear felt
Gabriel Varney; his arm was averted; he gazed, spelled and admiringly,
with the eye of an artist. Had he had pencil and tablet at that moment,
he would have dropped his weapon for the sketch, though the snake had
been as deadly as the viper of Sumatra. The sight sank into his memory,
to be reproduced often by the wild, morbid fancies of his hand. Scarce a
moment, however, had he for the gaze; the reptile sprang, and fell,
baffled and bruised by the involuntary blow of its enemy. As it writhed
on the grass, how its colours came out; how graceful were the movements
of its pain! And still the boy gazed, till the eye was sated and the
cruelty returned. A blow, a second, a third,--all the beauty is gone;
shapeless, and clotted with gore, that elegant head; mangled and
dissevered the airy spires of that delicate shape, which had glanced in
its circling involutions, free and winding as a poet's thought through
his verse. The boy trampled the quivering relics into the sod, with a
fierce animal joy of conquest, and turned once more towards the hollow,
for a last almost hopeless survey. Lo, his object was found! In his
search for the snake, either his staff or his foot had disturbed a layer
of moss in the corner; the faint ray, ere he entered the hollow, gleamed
upon something white. He emerged from the cavity with a letter in his
hand; he read the address, thrust it into his bosom, and as stealthily,
but more rapidly, than he had come, took his way to his father.