There would have been nothing in what had chanced to justify the
suspicions that tortured me, but for my impressions as to the character
of Vivian.
Reader, hast thou not, in the easy, careless sociability of youth,
formed acquaintance with some one, in whose more engaging or brilliant
qualities thou hast--not lost that dislike to defects or vices which
is natural to an age when, even while we err, we adore what is good,
and glow with enthusiasm for the ennobling sentiment and the virtuous
deed--no, happily, not lost dislike to what is bad, nor thy quick sense
of it,--but conceived a keen interest in the struggle between the bad
that revolted, and the good that attracted thee, in thy companion?
Then, perhaps, thou hast lost sight of him for a time--suddenly thou
hearest that he has done something out of the way of ordinary good or
commonplace evil: And, in either--the good or the evil--thy mind runs
rapidly back over its old reminiscences, and of either thou sayest,
"How natural!--only So-and-so could have done this thing!"
Thus I felt respecting Vivian. The most remarkable qualities in his
character were his keen power of calculation, and his unhesitating
audacity--qualities that lead to fame or to infamy, according to the
cultivation of the moral sense and the direction of the passions. Had
I recognised those qualities in some agency apparently of good--and it
seemed yet doubtful if Vivian were the agent--I should have cried, "It
is he! and the better angel has triumphed!" With the same (alas! with
a yet more impulsive) quickness, when the agency was of evil, and the
agent equally dubious, I felt that the qualities revealed the man, and
that the demon had prevailed.
Mile after mile, stage after stage, were passed, on the dreary,
interminable, high north road. I narrated to my companion, more
intelligibly than I had yet done, my causes for apprehension. The
Captain at first listened eagerly, then checked me on the sudden.
"There may be nothing in all this!" he cried. "Sir, we must be men
here--have our heads cool, our reason clear: stop!" And, leaning back
in the chaise, Roland refused further conversation, and, as the night
advanced, seemed to sleep. I took pity on his fatigue, and devoured
my heart in silence. At each stage we heard of the party of which we
were in pursuit. At the first stage or two we were less than an hour
behind; gradually, as we advanced, we lost ground, despite the most
lavish liberality to the postboys. I supposed, at length, that the
mere circumstance of changing, at each relay, the chaise as well as
the horses, was the cause of our comparative slowness; and, on saying
this to Roland, as we were changing horses, somewhere about midnight,
he at once called up the master of the inn, and gave him his own price
for permission to retain the chaise till the journey's end. This was
so unlike Roland's ordinary thrift, whether dealing with my money or
his own--so unjustified by the fortune of either--that I could not help
muttering something in apology.
"Can you guess why I was a miser?" said Roland, calmly.
"A miser!--anything but that! Only prudent--military men often are so."
"I was a miser," repeated the Captain, with emphasis. "I began the
habit first when my son was but a child. I thought him high-spirited,
and with a taste for extravagance. 'Well,' said I to myself, 'I will
save for him; boys will be boys.' Then, afterwards, when he was no
more a child, (at least he began to have the vices of a man!) I said
to myself, 'Patience, he may reform still; if not, I will save money
that I may have power over his self-interest, since I have none over
his heart. I will bribe him into honour!' And then--and then--God
saw that I was very proud, and I was punished. Tell them to drive
faster--faster--why, this is a snail's pace!"
All that night, all the next day, till towards the evening, we pursued
our journey, without pause, or other food than a crust of bread and a
glass of wine. But we now picked up the ground we had lost, and gained
upon the carriage. The night had closed in when we arrived at the stage
at which the route to Lord N----'s branched from the direct north road.
And here, making our usual inquiry, my worst suspicions were confirmed.
The carriage we pursued had changed horses an hour before, but had
not taken the way to Lord N----'s;--continuing the direct road into
Scotland. The people of the inn had not seen the lady in the carriage,
for it was already dark, but the man-servant, (whose livery they
described) had ordered the horses.
The last hope that, in spite of appearances, no treachery had been
designed, here vanished. The Captain, at first, seemed more dismayed
than myself, but he recovered more quickly. "We will continue the
journey on horseback," he said; and hurried to the stables. All
objections vanished at the sight of his gold. In five minutes we were
in the saddle, with a postilion, also mounted, to accompany us. We did
the next stage in little more than two-thirds of the time which we
should have occupied in our former mode of travel--indeed, I found it
hard to keep pace with Roland. We remounted; we were only twenty-five
minutes behind the carriage. We felt confident that we should overtake
it before it could reach the next town--the moon was up--we could see
far before us--we rode at full speed. Milestone after milestone glided
by, the carriage was not visible. We arrived at the post-town, or
rather village; it contained but one posting-house. We were long in
knocking up the ostlers--no carriage had arrived just before us; no
carriage had passed the place since noon.
What mystery was this?
"Back, back, boy!" said Roland, with a soldier's quick wit, and
spurring his jaded horse from the yard. "They will have taken a
cross-road or by-lane. We shall track them by the hoofs of the horses
or the print of the wheels."
Our postilion grumbled, and pointed to the panting sides of our
horses. For answer, Roland opened his hand--full of gold. Away we went
back through the dull sleeping village, back into the broad moonlit
thoroughfare. We came to a cross-road to the right, but the track we
pursued still led us straight on. We had measured back nearly half the
way to the post-town at which we had last changed, when, lo! there
emerged from a by-lane two postilions and their horses.
At that sight our companion, shouting loud, pushed on before us and
hailed his fellows. A few words gave us the information we sought. A
wheel had come off the carriage just by the turn of the road, and the
young lady and her servants had taken refuge in a small inn not many
yards down the lane. The man-servant had dismissed the postboys after
they had baited their horses, saying they were to come again in the
morning, and bring a blacksmith to repair the wheel.
"How came the wheel off?" asked Roland sternly.
"Why, sir, the linchpin was all rotted away, I suppose, and came out."
"Did the servant get off the dickey after you set out, and before the
accident happened?"
"Why, yes. He said the wheels were catching fire, that they had not the
patent axles, and he had forgot to have them oiled."
"And he looked at the wheels, and shortly afterwards the linchpin came
out?--Eh?"
"Anon, sir!" said the postboy, staring; "why, and indeed so it was!"
"Come on, Pisistratus, we are in time; but pray God--pray God--that--"
the Captain dashed his spur into the horse's sides, and the rest of his
words was lost to me.
A few yards back from the causeway, a broad patch of green before it,
stood the inn--a sullen, old-fashioned building of cold gray stone,
looking livid in the moonlight, with black firs at one side, throwing
over half of it a dismal shadow. So solitary! not a house, not a hut
near it. If they who kept the inn were such that villany might reckon
on their connivance, and innocence despair of their aid--there was no
neighbourhood to alarm--no refuge at hand. The spot was well chosen.
The doors of the inn were closed; there was a light in the room below;
but the outside shutters were drawn over the windows on the first
floor. My uncle paused a moment, and said to the postilion--
"Do you know the back way to the premises?"
"No, sir; I doesn't often come by this way, and they be new folks that
have taken the house--and I hear it don't prosper overmuch."
"Knock at the door--we will stand a little aside while you do so.
If any one ask what you want--merely say you would speak to the
servant--that you have found a purse;--here, hold up mine."
Roland and I had dismounted, and my uncle drew me close to the wall by
the door. Observing that my impatience ill submitted to what seemed to
me idle preliminaries,
"Hist!" whispered he; "if there be anything to conceal within, they
will not answer the door till some one has reconnoitred: were they
to see us, they would refuse to open. But seeing only the postboy,
whom they will suppose at first to be one of those who brought the
carriage--they will have no suspicion. Be ready to rush in the moment
the door is unbarred."
My uncle's veteran experience did not deceive him. There was a long
silence before any reply was made to the postboy's summons; the light
passed to and fro rapidly across the window, as if persons were moving
within. Roland made sign to the postboy to knock again; he did so
twice--thrice--and at last, from an attic-window in the roof, a head
obtruded, and a voice cried, "Who are you?--what do you want?"
"I'm the postboy at the Red Lion; I want to see the servant with the
brown carriage; I have found this purse!"
"Oh, that's all--wait a bit."
The head disappeared; we crept along under the projecting eaves of
the house; we heard the bar lifted from the door; the door itself
cautiously opened; one spring and I stood within, and set my back to
the door to admit Roland.
"Ho, help!--thieves!--help!" cried a loud voice, and I felt a hand
gripe at my throat. I struck at random in the dark, and with effect,
for my blow was followed by a groan and a curse.
Roland, meanwhile, had detected a ray through the chinks of a door in
the hall, and, guided by it, found his way into the room at the window
of which we had seen the light pass and go, while without. As he threw
the door open, I bounded after him; and saw in a kind of parlour,
two females--the one a stranger, no doubt the hostess, the other the
treacherous Abigail. Their faces evinced their terror.
"Woman," I said, seizing the last, "where is Miss Trevanion?" Instead
of replying, the woman set up a loud shriek. Another light now gleamed
from the staircase, which immediately faced the door, and I heard a
voice that I recognised as Peacock's, cry out, "Who's there?--what's
the matter?"
I made a rush at the stairs. A burly form (that of the landlord, who
had recovered from my blow) obstructed my way for a moment, to measure
its length on the floor at the next. I was at the top of the stairs,
Peacock recognised me, recoiled, and extinguished the light. Oaths,
cries, and shrieks, now resounded through the dark. Amidst them all,
I suddenly heard a voice exclaim, "Here, here!--help!" It was the
voice of Fanny. I made my way to the right, whence the voice came,
and received a violent blow. Fortunately, it fell on the arm which I
extended, as men do who feel their way through the dark. It was not the
right arm, and I seized and closed on my assailant. Roland now came up,
a candle in his hand; and at that sight my antagonist, who was no other
than Peacock, slipped from me, and made a rush at the stairs. But the
Captain caught him with his grasp of iron. Fearing nothing for Roland
in a contest with any single foe, and all my thoughts bent on the
rescue of her whose voice again broke on my ear, I had already (before
the light of the candle which Roland held went out in the struggle
between himself and Peacock) caught sight of a door at the end of the
passage, and thrown myself against it: it was locked, but it shook and
groaned to my pressure.
"Hold back, whoever you are!" cried a voice from the room within, far
different from that wail of distress which had guided my steps. "Hold
back, at the peril of your life!"
The voice, the threat, redoubled my strength; the door flew from its
fastenings. I stood in the room. I saw Fanny at my feet, clasping my
hands; then, raising herself, she hung on my shoulder and murmured,
"Saved!" Opposite to me, his face deformed by passion, his eyes
literally blazing with savage fire, his nostrils distended, his lips
apart, stood the man I have called Francis Vivian.
"Fanny--Miss Trevanion--what outrage--what villany is this? You have
not met this man at your free choice,--oh speak!" Vivian sprang forward.
"Question no one but me. Unhand that lady,--she is my betrothed--shall
be my wife."
"No, no, no,--don't believe him," cried Fanny; "I have been betrayed by
my own servants--brought here, I know not how! I heard my father was
ill; I was on my way to him: that man met me here, and dared to"--
"Miss Trevanion--yes, I dared to say I loved you."
"Protect me from him!--you will protect me from him!"
"No, madam!" said a voice behind me, in a deep tone, "it is I who claim
the right to protect you from that man; it is I who now draw around
you the arm of one sacred, even to him; it is I who, from this spot,
launch upon his head--a father's curse. Violator of the hearth! Baffled
ravisher!--go thy way to the doom which thou hast chosen for thyself.
God will be merciful to me yet, and give me a grave before thy course
find its close in the hulks--or at the gallows!"
A sickness came over me--a terror froze my veins--I reeled back, and
leant for support against the wall. Roland had passed his arm round
Fanny, and she, frail and trembling, clung to his broad heart, looking
fearfully up to his face. And never in that face, ploughed by deep
emotions, and dark with unutterable sorrows, had I seen an expression
so grand in its wrath, so sublime in its despair. Following the
direction of his eye, stern and fixed as the look of one who prophesies
a destiny, and denounces a doom, I shivered as I gazed upon the son.
His whole frame seemed collapsed and shrinking, as if already withered
by the curse: a ghastly whiteness overspread the cheek, usually glowing
with the dark bloom of Oriental youth; the knees knocked together; and,
at last, with a faint exclamation of pain, like the cry of one who
receives a death-blow, he bowed his face over his clasped hands, and so
remained--still, but cowering.
Instinctively I advanced and placed myself between the father and the
son, murmuring, "Spare him; see, his own heart crushes him down."
Then stealing towards the son, I whispered, "Go, go; the crime was
not committed, the curse can be recalled." But my words touched a
wrong chord in that dark and rebellious nature. The young man withdrew
his hands hastily from his face, and reared his front in passionate
defiance.
Waving me aside, he cried, "Away! I acknowledge no authority over my
actions and my fate; I allow no mediator between this lady and myself.
Sir," he continued, gazing gloomily on his father--"sir, you forget our
compact. Our ties were severed, your power over me annulled; I resigned
the name you bear; to you I was, and am still, as the dead. I deny your
right to step between me and the object dearer to me than life.
"Oh!" (and here he stretched forth his hands towards Fanny)--"oh! Miss
Trevanion, do not refuse me one prayer, however you condemn me. Let me
see you alone but for one moment; let me but prove to you that, guilty
as I may have been, it was not from the base motives you will hear
imputed to me--that it was not the heiress I sought to decoy, it was
the woman I sought to win; oh! hear me"--
"No, no," murmured Fanny, clinging closer to Roland, "do not leave
me. If, as it seems, he is your son, I forgive him; but let him go--I
shudder at his very voice!"
"Would you have me, indeed, annihilate the very memory of the bond
between us?" said Roland, in a hollow voice; "would you have me see in
you only the vile thief, the lawless felon,--deliver you up to justice,
or strike you to my feet. Let the memory still save you, and begone!"
Again I caught hold of the guilty son, and again he broke from my grasp.
"It is," he said, folding his arms deliberately on his breast, "it is
for me to command in this house: all who are within it must submit to
my orders. You, sir, who hold reputation, name, and honour at so high
a price, how can you fail to see that you would rob them from the lady
whom you would protect from the insult of my affection? How would the
world receive the tale of your rescue of Miss Trevanion? how believe
that--Oh pardon me, madam,--Miss Trevanion--Fanny--pardon me--I am mad;
only hear me--alone--alone--and then if you too say 'Begone,' I submit
without a murmur; I allow no arbiter but you."
But Fanny still clung closer, and closer still, to Roland. At that
moment I heard voices and the trampling of feet below, and supposing
that the accomplices in this villany were mustering courage, perhaps,
to mount to the assistance of their employer, I lost all the compassion
that had hitherto softened my horror of the young man's crime, and all
the awe with which that confession had been attended. I therefore, this
time, seized the false Vivian with a gripe that he could no longer
shake off, and said sternly--
"Beware how you aggravate your offence. If strife ensues, it will not
be between father and son, and--"
Fanny sprang forward. "Do not provoke this bad, dangerous man. I fear
him not. Sir, I _will_ hear you, and alone."
"Never!" cried I and Roland simultaneously.
Vivian turned his look fiercely to me, and with a sullen bitterness to
his father, and then, as if resigning his former prayer, he said--"Well
then, be it so; even in the presence of those who judge me so severely,
I will speak at least." He paused, and, throwing into his voice a
passion that, had the repugnance at his guilt been less, would not have
been without pathos, he continued to address Fanny: "I own that, when I
first saw you, I might have thought of love, as the poor and ambitious
think of the way to wealth and power. Those thoughts vanished, and
nothing remained in my heart but love and madness. I was as a man in a
delirium when I planned this snare. I knew but one object--saw but one
heavenly vision. Oh, mine--mine at least in that vision--are you indeed
lost to me for ever!"
There was that in this man's tone and manner which, whether arising
from accomplished hypocrisy or actual if perverted feeling, would, I
thought, find its way at once to the heart of a woman who, however
wronged, had once loved him; and, with a cold misgiving, I fixed my
eyes on Miss Trevanion. Her look, as she turned with a visible tremor,
suddenly met mine, and I believe that she discerned my doubt; for
after suffering her eyes to rest on my own, with something of mournful
reproach, her lips curved as with the pride of her mother, and for the
first time in my life I saw anger on her brow.
"It is well, sir, that you have thus spoken to me in the presence of
others, for in their presence I call upon you to say, by that honour
which the son of this gentleman may for a while forget, but cannot
wholly forfeit,--I call upon you to say, whether by deed, word, or
sign, I, Frances Trevanion, ever gave you cause to believe that I
returned the feeling you say you entertained for me, or encouraged you
to dare this attempt to place me in your power."
"No!" cried Vivian readily, but with a writhing lip--"no; but where I
loved so deeply, periled all my fortune for one fair and free occasion
to tell you so alone, I would not think that such love could meet only
loathing and disdain. What!--has nature shaped me so unkindly, that
where I love no love can reply? What!--has the accident of birth shut
me out from the right to woo and mate with the highborn? For the last,
at least, that gentleman in justice should tell you, since it has been
his care to instil the haughty lesson into me, that my lineage is one
that befits lofty hopes, and warrants fearless ambition. My hopes, my
ambition--they were you! Oh, Miss Trevanion, it is true that to win
you I would have braved the world's laws, defied every foe, save him
who now rises before me. Yet, believe me, believe me, had I won what I
dared to aspire to, you would not have been disgraced by your choice;
and the name, for which I thank not my father, should not have been
despised by the woman who pardoned my presumption,--nor by the man who
now tramples on my anguish, and curses me in my desolation."
Not by a word had Roland sought to interrupt his son--nay, by a
feverish excitement, which my heart understood in its secret sympathy,
he had seemed eagerly to court every syllable that could extenuate the
darkness of the offence, or even imply some less sordid motive for the
baseness of the means. But as the son now closed with the words of
unjust reproach, and the accents of fierce despair;--closed a defence
that showed in its false pride, and its perverted eloquence, so utter a
blindness to every principle of that honour which had been the father's
idol, Roland placed his hand before the eyes that he had previously, as
if spellbound, fixed on the hardened offender, and once more drawing
Fanny towards him, said--
"His breath pollutes the air that innocence and honesty should breath.
He says 'All in this house are at his command,'--why do we stay?--let
us go." He turned towards the door, and Fanny with him.
Meanwhile the louder sounds below had been silenced for some moments,
but I heard a step in the hall. Vivian started, and placed himself
before us.
"No, no, you cannot leave me thus, Miss Trevanion. I resign you--be it
so; I do not even ask for pardon. But to leave this house thus, without
carriage, without attendants, without explanation!--the blame falls on
me--it shall do so. But at least vouchsafe me the right to repair what
I yet can repair of the wrong, to protect all that is left to me--your
name."
As he spoke, he did not perceive (for he was facing us, and with his
back to the door,) that a new actor had noiselessly entered on the
scene, and, pausing by the threshold, heard his last words.
"The name of Miss Trevanion, sir--and from what?" asked the new comer,
as he advanced and surveyed Vivian with a look that, but for its quiet,
would have seemed disdain.
"Lord Castleton!" exclaimed Fanny, lifting up the face she had buried
in her hands.
Vivian recoiled in dismay, and gnashed his teeth.
"Sir," said the marquis, "I await your reply; for not even you, in my
presence, shall imply that one reproach can be attached to the name of
that lady."
"Oh, moderate your tone to me, my Lord Castleton!" cried Vivian: "in
you at least there is one man I am not forbidden to brave and defy. It
was to save that lady from the cold ambition of her parents--it was
to prevent the sacrifice of her youth and beauty, to one whose sole
merits are his wealth and his titles--it was this that impelled me to
the crime I have committed, this that hurried me on to risk all for
one hour, when youth at least could plead its cause to youth; and this
gives me now the power to say that it does rest with me to protect the
name of the lady, whom your very servility to that world which you have
made your idol forbids you to claim from the heartless ambition that
would sacrifice the daughter to the vanity of the parents. Ha! the
future Marchioness of Castleton on her way to Scotland with a penniless
adventurer! Ha! if my lips are sealed, who but I can seal the lips
of those below in my secret? The secret shall be kept, but on this
condition--you shall not triumph where I have failed; I may lose what
I adored, but I do not resign it to another. Ha! have I foiled you, my
Lord Castleton?--ha, ha!"
"No, sir; and I almost forgive you the villany you have _not_ effected,
for informing me, for the first time, that, had I presumed to
address Miss Trevanion, her parents at least would have pardoned the
presumption. Trouble not yourself as to what your accomplices may say.
They have already confessed their infamy and your own. Out of my path,
sir!"
Then, with the benign look of a father, and the lofty grace of a
prince, Lord Castleton advanced to Fanny. Looking round with a
shudder, she hastily placed her hand in his, and, by so doing, perhaps
prevented some violence on the part of Vivian, whose heaving breast,
and eye bloodshot, and still un-quailing, showed how little even shame
had subdued his fiercer passions. But he made no offer to detain them,
and his tongue seemed to cleave to his lips. Now, as Fanny moved to the
door, she passed Roland, who stood motionless and with vacant looks,
like an image of stone; and with a beautiful tenderness, for which
(even at this distant date, recalling it) I say, "God requite thee,
Fanny," she laid her other hand on Roland's arm, and said, "Come too;
_your_ arm still!"
But Roland's limbs trembled, and refused to stir; his head, relaxing,
drooped on his breast, his eyes closed. Even Lord Castleton was so
struck (though unable to guess the true and terrible cause of his
dejection) that he forgot his desire to hasten from the spot, and cried
with all his kindliness of heart, "You are ill--you faint; give him
your arm, Pisistratus."
"It is nothing," said Roland feebly, as he leant heavily on my arm,
while I turned back my head with all the bitterness of that reproach
which filled my heart, speaking in the eyes that sought _him_ whose
place should have been where mine now was. And, oh!--thank heaven,
thank heaven!--the look was not in vain. In the same moment the son was
at the father's knees.
"Oh, pardon--pardon! Wretch, lost wretch though I be, I bow my head
to the curse. Let it fall--but on me, and on me only--not on your own
heart too."
Fanny burst into tears, sobbing out, "Forgive him, as I do."
Roland did not heed her.
"He thinks that the heart was not shattered before the curse could
come," he said, in a voice so weak as to be scarcely audible. Then,
raising his eyes to heaven, his lips moved as if he prayed inly.
Pausing, he stretched his hands over his son's head, and averting his
face, said, "I revoke the curse. Pray to thy God for pardon."
Perhaps not daring to trust himself further, he then made a violent
effort, and hurried from the room.
We followed silently. When we gained the end of the passage, the door
of the room we had left, closed with a sullen jar.
As the sound smote on my ear, with it came so terrible a sense of
the solitude upon which that door had closed--so keen and quick
an apprehension of some fearful impulse, suggested by passions so
fierce, to a condition so forlorn--that instinctively I stopped,
and then hurried back to the chamber. The lock of the door having
been previously forced, there was no barrier to oppose my entrance.
I advanced, and beheld a spectacle of such agony, as can only be
conceived by those who have looked on the grief which takes no
fortitude from reason, no consolation from conscience--the grief which
tells us what would be the earth were man abandoned to his passions,
and the CHANCE of the atheist reigned alone in the merciless heavens.
Pride humbled to the dust; ambition shivered into fragments; love (or
the passion mistaken for it) blasted into ashes; life, at the first
onset, bereaved of its holiest ties, forsaken by its truest guide;
shame that writhed for revenge, and remorse that knew not prayer--all,
all blended, yet distinct, were in that awful spectacle of the guilty
son.
And I had told but twenty years, and my heart had been mellowed in
the tender sunshine of a happy home, and I had loved this boy as a
stranger, and, lo--he was Roland's son! I forgot all else, looking upon
that anguish; and I threw myself on the ground by the form that writhed
there, and, folding my arms round the breast which in vain repelled
me, I whispered, "Comfort--comfort--life is long. You shall redeem the
past, you shall efface the stain, and your father shall bless you yet!"