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LUCRETIA
by Edward Bulwer Lytton
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.
"Lucretia; or, The Children of Night," was begun simultaneously with "The
Caxtons: a Family Picture." The two fictions were intended as pendants;
both serving, amongst other collateral aims and objects, to show the
influence of home education, of early circumstance and example, upon
after character and conduct. "Lucretia" was completed and published
before "The Caxtons." The moral design of the first was misunderstood
and assailed; that of the last was generally acknowledged and approved:
the moral design in both was nevertheless precisely the same. But in one
it was sought through the darker side of human nature; in the other
through the more sunny and cheerful: one shows the evil, the other the
salutary influences, of early circumstance and training. Necessarily,
therefore, the first resorts to the tragic elements of awe and distress,
--the second to the comic elements of humour and agreeable emotion. These
differences serve to explain the different reception that awaited the
two, and may teach us how little the real conception of an author is
known, and how little it is cared for; we judge, not by the purpose he
conceives, but according as the impressions he effects are pleasurable or
painful. But while I cannot acquiesce in much of the hostile criticism
this fiction produced at its first appearance, I readily allow that as a
mere question of art the story might have been improved in itself, and
rendered more acceptable to the reader, by diminishing the gloom of the
catastrophe. In this edition I have endeavoured to do so; and the victim
whose fate in the former cast of the work most revolted the reader, as a
violation of the trite but amiable law of Poetical Justice, is saved from
the hands of the Children of Night. Perhaps, whatever the faults of this
work, it equals most of its companions in the sustainment of interest,
and in that coincidence between the gradual development of motive or
passion, and the sequences of external events constituting plot, which
mainly distinguish the physical awe of tragedy from the coarse horrors of
melodrama. I trust at least that I shall now find few readers who will
not readily acknowledge that the delineation of crime has only been
employed for the grave and impressive purpose which brings it within the
due province of the poet,--as an element of terror and a warning to the
heart.
LONDON, December 7.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
It is somewhere about four years since I appeared before the public as
the writer of a fiction, which I then intimated would probably be my
last; but bad habits are stronger than good intentions. When Fabricio,
in his hospital, resolved upon abjuring the vocation of the Poet, he was,
in truth, recommencing his desperate career by a Farewell to the Muses,--
I need not apply the allusion.
I must own, however, that there had long been a desire in my mind to
trace, in some work or other, the strange and secret ways through which
that Arch-ruler of Civilization, familiarly called "Money," insinuates
itself into our thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions; affecting
those who undervalue as those who overestimate its importance; ruining
virtues in the spendthrift no less than engendering vices in the miser.
But when I half implied my farewell to the character of a novelist, I had
imagined that this conception might be best worked out upon the stage.
After some unpublished and imperfect attempts towards so realizing my
design, I found either that the subject was too wide for the limits of
the Drama, or that I wanted that faculty of concentration which alone
enables the dramatist to compress multiform varieties into a very limited
compass. With this design, I desired to unite some exhibition of what
seems to me a principal vice in the hot and emulous chase for happiness
or fame, fortune or knowledge, which is almost synonymous with the cant
phrase of "the March of Intellect," in that crisis of society to which we
have arrived. The vice I allude to is Impatience. That eager desire to
press forward, not so much to conquer obstacles as to elude them; that
gambling with the solemn destinies of life, seeking ever to set success
upon the chance of a die; that hastening from the wish conceived to the
end accomplished; that thirst after quick returns to ingenious toil, and
breathless spurrings along short cuts to the goal, which we see
everywhere around us, from the Mechanics' Institute to the Stock Market,-
-beginning in education with the primers of infancy, deluging us with
"Philosophies for the Million" and "Sciences made Easy;" characterizing
the books of our writers, the speeches of our statesmen, no less than the
dealings of our speculators,--seem, I confess, to me to constitute a very
diseased and very general symptom of the times. I hold that the greatest
friend to man is labour; that knowledge without toil, if possible, were
worthless; that toil in pursuit of knowledge is the best knowledge we can
attain; that the continuous effort for fame is nobler than fame itself;
that it is not wealth suddenly acquired which is deserving of homage, but
the virtues which a man exercises in the slow pursuit of wealth,--the
abilities so called forth, the self-denials so imposed; in a word, that
Labour and Patience are the true schoolmasters on earth. While occupied
with these ideas and this belief, whether right or wrong, and slowly
convinced that it was only in that species of composition with which I
was most familiar that I could work out some portion of the plan that I
began to contemplate, I became acquainted with the histories of two
criminals existing in our own age,--so remarkable, whether from the
extent and darkness of the guilt committed, whether from the glittering
accomplishments and lively temper of the one, the profound knowledge and
intellectual capacities of the other, that the examination and analysis
of characters so perverted became a study full of intense, if gloomy,
interest.
In these persons there appear to have been as few redeemable points as
can be found in Human Nature, so far as such points may be traced in the
kindly instincts and generous passions which do sometimes accompany the
perpetration of great crimes, and, without excusing the individual,
vindicate the species. Yet, on the other hand, their sanguinary
wickedness was not the dull ferocity of brutes; it was accompanied with
instruction and culture,--nay, it seemed to me, on studying their lives
and pondering over their own letters, that through their cultivation
itself we could arrive at the secret of the ruthless and atrocious pre-
eminence in evil these Children of Night had attained; that here the
monster vanished into the mortal, and the phenomena that seemed
aberrations from Nature were explained.
I could not resist the temptation of reducing to a tale the materials
which had so engrossed my interest and tasked my inquiries. And in this
attempt, various incidental opportunities have occurred, if not of
completely carrying out, still of incidentally illustrating, my earlier
design,--of showing the influence of Mammon upon our most secret selves,
of reproving the impatience which is engendered by a civilization that,
with much of the good, brings all the evils of competition, and of
tracing throughout, all the influences of early household life upon our
subsequent conduct and career. In such incidental bearings the moral may
doubtless be more obvious than in the delineation of the darker and rarer
crime which forms the staple of my narrative. For in extraordinary guilt
we are slow to recognize ordinary warnings,--we say to the peaceful
conscience, "This concerns thee not!" whereas at each instance of
familiar fault and commonplace error we own a direct and sensible
admonition. Yet in the portraiture of gigantic crime, poets have rightly
found their sphere and fulfilled their destiny of teachers. Those
terrible truths which appall us in the guilt of Macbeth or the villany of
Iago, have their moral uses not less than the popular infirmities of Tom
Jones, or the every-day hypocrisy of Blifil. Incredible as it may seem,
the crimes herein related took place within the last seventeen years.
There has been no exaggeration as to their extent, no great departure
from their details; the means employed, even that which seems most far-
fetched,--the instrument of the poisoned ring,--have their foundation in
literal facts. Nor have I much altered the social position of the
criminals, nor in the least overrated their attainments and intelligence.
In those more salient essentials which will most, perhaps, provoke the
Reader's incredulous wonder, I narrate a history, not invent a fiction
[These criminals were not, however, in actual life, as in the novel,
intimates and accomplices. Their crimes were of similar character,
effected by similar agencies, and committed at dates which embrace their
several careers of guilt within the same period; but I have no authority
to suppose that the one was known to the other.]. All that Romance which
our own time affords is not more the romance than the philosophy of the
time. Tragedy never quits the world,--it surrounds us everywhere. We
have but to look, wakeful and vigilant, abroad, and from the age of
Pelops to that of Borgia, the same crimes, though under different garbs,
will stalk on our paths. Each age comprehends in itself specimens of
every virtue and every vice which has ever inspired our love or mowed our
horror.
LONDON, November 1, 1846.
CONTENTS
PART THE FIRST
PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST
CHAPTER
I A Family Group
II Lucretia
III Conferences
IV Guy's Oak
V Household Treason
VI The Will
VII The Engagement
VIII The Discovery
IX A Soul without Hope
X The Reconciliation between Father and Son
EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST
PART THE SECOND
PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND
I The Coronation
II Love at First Sight
III Early Training for an Upright Gentleman
IV John Ardworth
V The Weavers and the Woof
VI The Lawyer and the Body-snatcher
VII The Rape of the Mattress
VIII Percival visits Lucretia
IX The Rose beneath the Upas
X The Rattle of the Snake
XI Love and Innocence
XII Sudden Celebrity and Patient Hope
XIII The Loss of the Crossing
XIV News from Grabman
XV Varieties
XVI The Invitation to Laughton
XVII The Waking of the Serpent
XVIII Retrospect
XIX Mr. Grabman's Adventures
XX More of Mrs. Joplin
XXI Beck's Discovery
XXII The Tapestry Chamber
XXIII The Shades on the Dial
XXIV Murder, towards his Design, moves like a Ghost
XXV The Messenger speeds
XXVI The Spy flies
XXVII Lucretia regains her Son
XXVIII The Lots vanish within the Urn
EPILOGUE TO PART THE SECOND
LUCRETIA; OR, THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT.
PART THE FIRST.
PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.
In an apartment at Paris, one morning during the Reign of Terror, a man,
whose age might be somewhat under thirty, sat before a table covered with
papers, arranged and labelled with the methodical precision of a mind
fond of order and habituated to business. Behind him rose a tall
bookcase surmounted with a bust of Robespierre, and the shelves were
filled chiefly with works of a scientific character, amongst which the
greater number were on chemistry and medicine. There were to be seen
also many rare books on alchemy, the great Italian historians, some
English philosophical treatises, and a few manuscripts in Arabic. The
absence from this collection of the stormy literature of the day seemed
to denote that the owner was a quiet student, living apart from the
strife and passions of the Revolution. This supposition was, however,
disproved by certain papers on the table, which were formally and
laconically labelled "Reports on Lyons," and by packets of letters in the
handwritings of Robespierre and Couthon. At one of the windows a young
boy was earnestly engaged in some occupation which appeared to excite the
curiosity of the person just described; for this last, after examining
the child's movements for a few moments with a silent scrutiny that
betrayed but little of the half-complacent, half-melancholy affection
with which busy man is apt to regard childhood, rose noiselessly from his
seat, approached the boy, and looked over his shoulder unobserved. In a
crevice of the wood by the window, a huge black spider had formed his
web; the child had just discovered another spider, and placed it in the
meshes: he was watching the result of his operations. The intrusive
spider stood motionless in the midst of the web, as if fascinated. The
rightful possessor was also quiescent; but a very fine ear might have
caught a low, humming sound, which probably augured no hospitable
intentions to the invader. Anon, the stranger insect seemed suddenly to
awake from its amaze; it evinced alarm, and turned to fly; the huge
spider darted forward; the boy uttered a chuckle of delight. The man's
pale lip curled into a sinister sneer, and he glided back to his seat.
There, leaning his face on his hand, he continued to contemplate the
child. That child might have furnished to an artist a fitting subject
for fair and blooming infancy. His light hair, tinged deeply, it is
true, with red, hung in sleek and glittering abundance down his neck and
shoulders. His features, seen in profile, were delicately and almost
femininely proportioned; health glowed on his cheek, and his form, slight
though it was, gave promise of singular activity and vigour. His dress
was fantastic, and betrayed the taste of some fondly foolish mother; but
the fine linen, trimmed with lace, was rumpled and stained, the velvet
jacket unbrushed, the shoes soiled with dust,--slight tokens these of
neglect, but serving to show that the foolish fondness which had invented
the dress had not of late presided over the toilet.
"Child," said the man, first in French; and observing that the boy heeded
him not,--"child," he repeated in English, which he spoke well, though
with a foreign accent, "child!"
The boy turned quickly.
"Has the great spider devoured the small one?"
"No, sir," said the boy, colouring; "the small one has had the best of
it."
The tone and heightened complexion of the child seemed to give meaning to
his words,--at least, so the man thought, for a slight frown passed over
his high, thoughtful brow.
"Spiders, then," he said, after a short pause, "are different from men;
with us, the small do not get the better of the great. Hum! do you still
miss your mother?"
"Oh, yes!" and the boy advanced eagerly to the table.
"Well, you will see her once again."
"When?"
The man looked towards a clock on the mantelpiece,--"Before that clock
strikes. Now, go back to your spiders." The child looked irresolute and
disinclined to obey; but a stern and terrible expression gathered slowly
over the man's face, and the boy, growing pale as he remarked it, crept
back to the window.
The father--for such was the relation the owner of the room bore to the
child--drew paper and ink towards him, and wrote for some minutes
rapidly. Then starting up, he glanced at the clock, took his hat and
cloak, which lay on a chair beside, drew up the collar of the mantle till
it almost concealed his countenance, and said, "Now, boy, come with me; I
have promised to show you an execution: I am going to keep my promise.
Come!"
The boy clapped his hands with joy; and you might see then, child as he
was, that those fair features were capable of a cruel and ferocious
expression. The character of the whole face changed. He caught up his
gay cap and plume, and followed his father into the streets.
Silently the two took their way towards the Barriere du Trone. At a
distance they saw the crowd growing thick and dense as throng after
throng hurried past them, and the dreadful guillotine rose high in the
light blue air. As they came into the skirts of the mob, the father, for
the first time, took his child's hand. "I must get you a good place for
the show," he said, with a quiet smile.
There was something in the grave, staid, courteous, yet haughty bearing
of the man that made the crowd give way as he passed. They got near the
dismal scene, and obtained entrance into a wagon already crowded with
eager spectators.
And now they heard at a distance the harsh and lumbering roll of the
tumbril that bore the victims, and the tramp of the horses which guarded
the procession of death. The boy's whole attention was absorbed in
expectation of the spectacle, and his ear was perhaps less accustomed to
French, though born and reared in France, than to the language of his
mother's lips,--and she was English; thus he did not hear or heed certain
observations of the bystanders, which made his father's pale cheek grow
paler.
"What is the batch to-day?" quoth a butcher in the wagon. "Scarce worth
the baking,--only two; but one, they say, is an aristocrat,--a ci-devant
marquis," answered a carpenter. "Ah, a marquis! Bon! And the other?"
"Only a dancer, but a pretty one, it is true; I could pity her, but she
is English." And as he pronounced the last word, with a tone of
inexpressible contempt, the butcher spat, as if in nausea.
"Mort diable! a spy of Pitt's, no doubt. What did they discover?"
A man, better dressed than the rest, turned round with a smile, and
answered: "Nothing worse than a lover, I believe; but that lover was a
proscrit. The ci-devant marquis was caught disguised in her apartment.
She betrayed for him a good, easy friend of the people who had long loved
her, and revenge is sweet."
The man whom we have accompanied, nervously twitched up the collar of his
cloak, and his compressed lips told that he felt the anguish of the laugh
that circled round him.
"They are coming! There they are!" cried the boy, in ecstatic
excitement.
"That's the way to bring up citizens," said the butcher, patting the
child's shoulder, and opening a still better view for him at the edge of
the wagon.
The crowd now abruptly gave way. The tumbril was in sight. A man, young
and handsome, standing erect and with folded arms in the fatal vehicle,
looked along the mob with an eye of careless scorn. Though he wore the
dress of a workman, the most unpractised glance could detect, in his mien
and bearing, one of the hated noblesse, whose characteristics came out
even more forcibly at the hour of death. On the lip was that smile of
gay and insolent levity, on the brow that gallant if reckless contempt of
physical danger, which had signalized the hero-coxcombs of the old
regime. Even the rude dress was worn with a certain air of foppery, and
the bright hair was carefully adjusted, as if for the holiday of the
headsman. As the eyes of the young noble wandered over the fierce faces
of that horrible assembly, while a roar of hideous triumph answered the
look, in which for the last time the gentilhomme spoke his scorn of the
canaille, the child's father lowered the collar of his cloak, and slowly
raised his hat from his brow. The eye of the marquis rested upon the
countenance thus abruptly shown to him, and which suddenly became
individualized amongst the crowd,--that eye instantly lost its calm
contempt. A shudder passed visibly over his frame, and his cheek grew
blanched with terror. The mob saw the change, but not the cause, and
loud and louder rose their triumphant yell. The sound recalled the pride
of the young noble; he started, lifted his crest erect, and sought again
to meet the look which had appalled him. But he could no longer single
it out among the crowd. Hat and cloak once more hid the face of the foe,
and crowds of eager heads intercepted the view. The young marquis's lips
muttered; he bent down, and then the crowd caught sight of his companion,
who was being lifted up from the bottom of the tumbril, where she had
flung herself in horror and despair. The crowd grew still in a moment as
the pale face of one, familiar to most of them, turned wildly from place
to place in the dreadful scene, vainly and madly through its silence
imploring life and pity. How often had the sight of that face, not then
pale and haggard, but wreathed with rosy smiles, sufficed to draw down
the applause of the crowded theatre; how, then, had those breasts, now
fevered by the thirst of blood, held hearts spellbound by the airy
movements of that exquisite form writhing now in no stage-mime agony!
Plaything of the city, minion to the light amusement of the hour, frail
child of Cytherea and the Graces, what relentless fate has conducted thee
to the shambles? Butterfly of the summer, why should a nation rise to
break thee upon the wheel? A sense of the mockery of such an execution,
of the horrible burlesque that would sacrifice to the necessities of a
mighty people so slight an offering, made itself felt among the crowd.
There was a low murmur of shame and indignation. The dangerous sympathy
of the mob was perceived by the officer in attendance. Hastily he made
the sign to the headsman, and as he did so, a child's cry was heard in
the English tongue,--"Mother! Mother!" The father's hand grasped the
child's arm with an iron pressure; the crowd swam before the boy's eyes;
the air seemed to stifle him, and become blood-red; only through the hum
and the tramp and the roll of the drums he heard a low voice hiss in his
ear "Learn how they perish who betray me!"
As the father said these words, again his face was bare, and the woman,
whose ear amidst the dull insanity of fear had caught the cry of her
child's voice, saw that face, and fell back insensible in the arms of the
headsman.
CHAPTER I.
A FAMILY GROUP.
One July evening, at the commencement of the present century, several
persons were somewhat picturesquely grouped along an old-fashioned
terrace which skirted the garden-side of a manor-house that had
considerable pretensions to baronial dignity. The architecture was of
the most enriched and elaborate style belonging to the reign of James the
First: the porch, opening on the terrace, with its mullion window above,
was encased with pilasters and reliefs at once ornamental and massive;
and the large square tower in which it was placed was surmounted by a
stone falcon, whose talons griped fiercely a scutcheon blazoned with the
five-pointed stars which heralds recognize as the arms of St. John. On
either side this tower extended long wings, the dark brickwork of which
was relieved with noble stone casements and carved pediments; the high
roof was partially concealed by a balustrade perforated not inelegantly
into arabesque designs; and what architects call "the sky line" was
broken with imposing effect by tall chimney-shafts of various form and
fashion. These wings terminated in angular towers similar to the centre,
though kept duly subordinate to it both in size and decoration, and
crowned with stone cupolas. A low balustrade, of later date than that
which adorned the roof, relieved by vases and statues, bordered the
terrace, from which a double flight of steps descended to a smooth lawn,
intersected by broad gravel-walks, shadowed by vast and stately cedars,
and gently and gradually mingling with the wilder scenery of the park,
from which it was only divided by a ha-ha.
Upon the terrace, and under cover of a temporary awning, sat the owner,
Sir Miles St. John of Laughton, a comely old man, dressed with faithful
precision to the costume which he had been taught to consider appropriate
to his rank of gentleman, and which was not yet wholly obsolete and
eccentric. His hair, still thick and luxuriant, was carefully powdered,
and collected into a club behind; his nether man attired in gray breeches
and pearl-coloured silk stockings; his vest of silk, opening wide at the
breast, and showing a profusion of frill, slightly sprinkled with the
pulvilio of his favourite Martinique; his three-cornered hat, placed on a
stool at his side, with a gold-headed crutch-cane (hat made rather to be
carried in the hand than worn on the head), the diamond in his shirt-
breast, the diamond on his finger, the ruffles at his wrist,--all bespoke
the gallant who had chatted with Lord Chesterfield and supped with Mrs.
Clive. On a table before him were placed two or three decanters of wine,
the fruits of the season, an enamelled snuff-box in which was set the
portrait of a female (perhaps the Chloe or Phyllis of his early love-
ditties), a lighted taper, a small china jar containing tobacco, and
three or four pipes of homely clay,--for cherry-sticks and meerschaums
were not then in fashion, and Sir Miles St. John, once a gay and
sparkling beau, now a popular country gentleman, great at county meetings
and sheep-shearing festivals, had taken to smoking, as in harmony with
his bucolic transformation. An old setter lay dozing at his feet; a
small spaniel--old, too--was sauntering lazily in the immediate
neighbourhood, looking gravely out for such stray bits of biscuit as had
been thrown forth to provoke him to exercise, and which hitherto had
escaped his attention. Half seated, half reclined on the balustrade,
apart from the baronet, but within reach of his conversation, lolled a
man in the prime of life, with an air of unmistakable and sovereign
elegance and distinction. Mr. Vernon was a guest from London; and the
London man,--the man of clubs and dinners and routs, of noon loungings
through Bond Street, and nights spent with the Prince of Wales,--seemed
stamped not more upon the careful carelessness of his dress, and upon the
worn expression of his delicate features, than upon the listless ennui,
which, characterizing both his face and attitude, appeared to take pity
on himself for having been entrapped into the country.
Yet we should convey an erroneous impression of Mr. Vernon if we
designed, by the words "listless ennui," to depict the slumberous
insipidity of more modern affectation; it was not the ennui of a man to
whom ennui is habitual, it was rather the indolent prostration that fills
up the intervals of excitement. At that day the word blast was unknown;
men had not enough sentiment for satiety. There was a kind of
Bacchanalian fury in the life led by those leaders of fashion, among whom
Mr. Vernon was not the least distinguished; it was a day of deep
drinking, of high play, of jovial, reckless dissipation, of strong
appetite for fun and riot, of four-in-hand coachmanship, of prize-
fighting, of a strange sort of barbarous manliness that strained every
nerve of the constitution,--a race of life in which three fourths of the
competitors died half-way in the hippodrome. What is now the Dandy was
then the Buck; and something of the Buck, though subdued by a chaster
taste than fell to the ordinary members of his class, was apparent in Mr.
Vernon's costume as well as air. Intricate folds of muslin, arranged in
prodigious bows and ends, formed the cravat, which Brummell had not yet
arisen to reform; his hat, of a very peculiar shape, low at the crown and
broad at the brim, was worn with an air of devil-me-care defiance; his
watch-chain, garnished with a profusion of rings and seals, hung low from
his white waistcoat; and the adaptation of his nankeen inexpressibles to
his well-shaped limbs was a masterpiece of art. His whole dress and air
was not what could properly be called foppish, it was rather what at that
time was called "rakish." Few could so closely approach vulgarity
without being vulgar: of that privileged few, Mr. Vernon was one of the
elect.
Farther on, and near the steps descending into the garden, stood a man in
an attitude of profound abstraction, his arms folded, his eyes bent on
the ground, his brows slightly contracted; his dress was a plain black
surtout, and pantaloons of the same colour. Something both in the
fashion of the dress, and still more in the face of the man, bespoke the
foreigner.
Sir Miles St. John was an accomplished person for that time of day. He
had made the grand tour; he had bought pictures and statues; he spoke and
wrote well in the modern languages; and being rich, hospitable, social,
and not averse from the reputation of a patron, he had opened his house
freely to the host of emigrants whom the French Revolution had driven to
our coasts. Olivier Dalibard, a man of considerable learning and rare
scientific attainments, had been tutor in the house of the Marquis de
G----, a French nobleman known many years before to the old baronet. The
marquis and his family had been among the first emigres at the outbreak
of the Revolution. The tutor had remained behind; for at that time no
danger appeared to threaten those who pretended to no other aristocracy
than that of letters. Contrary, as he said, with repentant modesty, to
his own inclinations, he had been compelled, not only for his own safety,
but for that of his friends, to take some part in the subsequent events
of the Revolution,--a part far from sincere, though so well had he
simulated the patriot that he had won the personal favour and protection
of Robespierre; nor till the fall of that virtuous exterminator had he
withdrawn from the game of politics and effected in disguise his escape
to England. As, whether from kindly or other motives, he had employed
the power of his position in the esteem of Robespierre to save certain
noble heads from the guillotine,--amongst others, the two brothers of the
Marquis de G----, he was received with grateful welcome by his former
patrons, who readily pardoned his career of Jacobinism from their belief
in his excuses and their obligations to the services which that very
career had enabled him to render to their kindred. Olivier Dalibard had
accompanied the marquis and his family in one of the frequent visits they
paid to Laughton; and when the marquis finally quitted England, and fixed
his refuge at Vienna, with some connections of his wife's, he felt a
lively satisfaction at the thought of leaving his friend honourably, if
unambitiously, provided for as secretary and librarian to Sir Miles St.
John. In fact, the scholar, who possessed considerable powers of
fascination, had won no less favour with the English baronet than he had
with the French dictator. He played well both at chess and backgammon;
he was an extraordinary accountant; he had a variety of information upon
all points that rendered him more convenient than any cyclopaedia in Sir
Miles's library; and as he spoke both English and Italian with a
correctness and fluency extremely rare in a Frenchman, he was of
considerable service in teaching languages to, as well as directing the
general literary education of, Sir Miles's favourite niece, whom we shall
take an early opportunity to describe at length.
Nevertheless, there had been one serious obstacle to Dalibard's
acceptance of the appointment offered to him by Sir Miles. Dalibard had
under his charge a young orphan boy of some ten or twelve years old,--a
boy whom Sir Miles was not long in suspecting to be the scholar's son.
This child had come from France with Dalibard, and while the marquis's
family were in London, remained under the eye and care of his guardian or
father, whichever was the true connection between the two. But this
superintendence became impossible if Dalibard settled in Hampshire with
Sir Miles St. John, and the boy remained in London; nor, though the
generous old gentleman offered to pay for the child's schooling, would
Dalibard consent to part with him. At last the matter was arranged: the
boy was invited to Laughton on a visit, and was so lively, yet so well
mannered, that he became a favourite, and was now fairly quartered in the
house with his reputed father; and not to make an unnecessary mystery of
this connection, such was in truth the relationship between Olivier
Dalibard and Honore Gabriel Varney,--a name significant of the double and
illegitimate origin: a French father, an English mother. Dropping,
however, the purely French appellation of Honore, he went familiarly by
that of Gabriel. Half-way down the steps stood the lad, pencil and
tablet in hand, sketching. Let us look over his shoulder: it is his
father's likeness,--a countenance in itself not very remarkable at the
first glance, for the features were small; but when examined, it was one
that most persons, women especially, would have pronounced handsome, and
to which none could deny the higher praise of thought and intellect. A
native of Provence, with some Italian blood in his veins,--for his
grandfather, a merchant of Marseilles, had married into a Florentine
family settled at Leghorn,--the dark complexion common with those in the
South had been subdued, probably by the habits of the student, into a
bronze and steadfast paleness which seemed almost fair by the contrast of
the dark hair which he wore unpowdered, and the still darker brows which
hung thick and prominent over clear gray eyes. Compared with the
features, the skull was disproportionally large, both behind and before;
and a physiognomist would have drawn conclusions more favourable to the
power than the tenderness of the Provencal's character from the compact
closeness of the lips and the breadth and massiveness of the iron jaw.
But the son's sketch exaggerated every feature, and gave to the
expression a malignant and terrible irony not now, at least, apparent in
the quiet and meditative aspect. Gabriel himself, as be stood, would
have been a more tempting study to many an artist. It is true that he was
small for his years; but his frame had a vigour in its light proportions
which came from a premature and almost adolescent symmetry of shape and
muscular development. The countenance, however, had much of effeminate
beauty: the long hair reached the shoulders, but did not curl,--straight,
fine, and glossy as a girl's, and in colour of the pale auburn, tinged
with red, which rarely alters in hue as childhood matures to man; the
complexion was dazzlingly clear and fair. Nevertheless, there was
something so hard in the lip, so bold, though not open, in the brow, that
the girlishness of complexion, and even of outline, could not leave, on
the whole, an impression of effeminacy. All the hereditary keenness and
intelligence were stamped upon his face at that moment; but the
expression had also a large share of the very irony and malice which he
had conveyed to his caricature. The drawing itself was wonderfully
vigorous and distinct; showing great artistic promise, and done with the
rapidity and ease which betrayed practice. Suddenly his father turned,
and with as sudden a quickness the boy concealed his tablet in his vest;
and the sinister expression of his face smoothed into a timorous smile as
his eye encountered Dalibard's. The father beckoned to the boy, who
approached with alacrity. "Gabriel," whispered the Frenchman, in his own
tongue, "where are they at this moment?"
The boy pointed silently towards one of the cedars. Dalibard mused an
instant, and then, slowly descending the steps, took his noiseless way
over the smooth turf towards the tree. Its boughs drooped low and spread
wide; and not till he was within a few paces of the spot could his eye
perceive two forms seated on a bench under the dark green canopy. He
then paused and contemplated them.
The one was a young man whose simple dress and subdued air strongly
contrasted the artificial graces and the modish languor of Mr. Vernon;
but though wholly without that nameless distinction which sometimes
characterizes those conscious of pure race and habituated to the
atmosphere of courts, he had at least Nature's stamp of aristocracy in a
form eminently noble, and features of manly, but surpassing beauty, which
were not rendered less engaging by an expression of modest timidity. He
seemed to be listening with thoughtful respect to his companion, a young
female by his side, who was speaking to him with an earnestness visible
in her gestures and her animated countenance. And though there was much
to notice in the various persons scattered over the scene, not one,
perhaps,--not the graceful Vernon, not the thoughtful scholar, nor his
fair-haired, hard-lipped son, not even the handsome listener she
addressed,--no, not one there would so have arrested the eye, whether of
a physiognomist or a casual observer, as that young girl, Sir Miles St.
John's favourite niece and presumptive heiress.
But as at that moment the expression of her face differed from that
habitual to it, we defer its description.
"Do not," such were her words to her companion,--"do not alarm yourself
by exaggerating the difficulties; do not even contemplate them: those be
my care. Mainwaring, when I loved you; when, seeing that your diffidence
or your pride forbade you to be the first to speak, I overstepped the
modesty or the dissimulation of my sex; when I said, 'Forget that I am
the reputed heiress of Laughton, see in me but the faults and merits of
the human being, of the wild unregulated girl, see in me but Lucretia
Clavering'" (here her cheeks blushed, and her voice sank into a lower and
more tremulous whisper) "'and love her if you can!'--when I went thus
far, do not think I had not measured all the difficulties in the way of
our union, and felt that I could surmount them."
"But," answered Mainwaring, hesitatingly, "can you conceive it possible
that your uncle ever will consent? Is not pride--the pride of family--
almost the leading attribute of his character? Did he not discard your
mother--his own sister--from his house and heart for no other offence but
a second marriage which he deemed beneath her? Has he ever even
consented to see, much less to receive, your half-sister, the child of
that marriage? Is not his very affection for you interwoven with his
pride in you, with his belief in your ambition? Has he not summoned your
cousin, Mr. Vernon, for the obvious purpose of favouring a suit which he
considers worthy of you, and which, if successful, will unite the two
branches of his ancient house? How is it possible that he can ever hear
without a scorn and indignation which would be fatal to your fortunes
that your heart has presumed to choose, in William Mainwaring, a man
without ancestry or career?"
"Not without career," interrupted Lucretia, proudly. "Do you think if
you were master of Laughton that your career would not be more brilliant
than that of yon indolent, luxurious coxcomb? Do you think that I could
have been poor-hearted enough to love you if I had not recognized in you
energies and talents that correspond with my own ambition? For I am
ambitious, as you know, and therefore my mind, as well as my heart, went
with my love for you."
"Ah, Lucretia, but can Sir Miles St. John see my future rise in my
present obscurity?"
"I do not say that he can, or will; but if you love me, we can wait. Do
not fear the rivalry of Mr. Vernon. I shall know how to free myself from
so tame a peril. We can wait,--my uncle is old; his habits preclude the
chance of a much longer life; he has already had severe attacks. We are
young, dear Mainwaring: what is a year or two to those who hope?"
Mainwaring's face fell, and a displeasing chill passed through his veins.
Could this young creature, her uncle's petted and trusted darling, she
who should be the soother of his infirmities, the prop of his age, the
sincerest mourner at his grave, weigh coldly thus the chances of his
death, and point at once to the altar and the tomb?
He was saved from the embarrassment of reply by Dalibard's approach.
"More than half an hour absent," said the scholar, in his own language,
with a smile; and drawing out his watch, he placed it before their eyes.
"Do you not think that all will miss you? Do you suppose, Miss
Clavering, that your uncle has not ere this asked for his fair niece?
Come, and forestall him." He offered his arm to Lucretia as he spoke.
She hesitated a moment, and then, turning to Mainwaring, held out her
hand. He pressed it, though scarcely with a lover's warmth; and as she
walked back to the terrace with Dalibard, the young man struck slowly
into the opposite direction, and passing by a gate over a foot-bridge
that led from the ha-ha into the park, bent his way towards a lake which
gleamed below at some distance, half-concealed by groves of venerable
trees rich with the prodigal boughs of summer. Meanwhile, as they passed
towards the house, Dalibard, still using his native tongue, thus accosted
his pupil:--
"You must pardon me if I think more of your interests than you do; and
pardon me no less if I encroach on your secrets and alarm your pride.
This young man,--can you be guilty of the folly of more than a passing
caprice for his society, of more than the amusement of playing with his
vanity? Even if that be all, beware of entangling yourself in your own
meshes."
"You do in truth offend me," said Lucretia, with calm haughtiness, "and
you have not the right thus to speak to me."
"Not the right," repeated the Provencal, mournfully, "not the right!
Then, indeed, I am mistaken in my pupil. Do you consider that I would
have lowered my pride to remain here as a dependent; that, conscious of
attainments, and perhaps of abilities, that should win their way, even in
exile, to distinction, I would have frittered away my life in these
rustic shades,--if I had not formed in you a deep and absorbing interest?
In that interest I ground my right to warn and counsel you. I saw, or
fancied I saw, in you a mind congenial to my own; a mind above the
frivolities of your sex,--a mind, in short, with the grasp and energy of
a man's. You were then but a child, you are scarcely yet a woman; yet
have I not given to your intellect the strong food on which the statesmen
of Florence fed their pupil-princes, or the noble Jesuits the noble men
who were destined to extend the secret empire of the imperishable
Loyola?"
"You gave me the taste for a knowledge rare in my sex, I own," answered
Lucretia, with a slight tone of regret in her voice: "and in the
knowledge you have communicated I felt a charm that at times seems to me
to be only fatal. You have confounded in my mind evil and good, or
rather, you have left both good and evil as dead ashes, as the dust and
cinder of a crucible. You have made intellect the only conscience. Of
late, I wish that my tutor had been a village priest!"
"Of late, since you have listened to the pastorals of that meek Corydon!"
"Dare you despise him? And for what? That he is good and honest?"
"I despise him, not because he is good and honest, but because he is of
the common herd of men, without aim or character. And it is for this
youth that you will sacrifice your fortunes, your ambition, the station
you were born to fill and have been reared to improve,--this youth in
whom there is nothing but the lap-dog's merit, sleekness and beauty! Ay,
frown,--the frown betrays you; you love him!"
"And if I do?" said Lucretia, raising her tall form to its utmost height,
and haughtily facing her inquisitor,--"and, if I do, what then? Is he
unworthy of me? Converse with him, and you will find that the noble form
conceals as high a spirit. He wants but wealth: I can give it to him.
If his temper is gentle, I can prompt and guide it to fame and power. He
at least has education and eloquence and mind. What has Mr. Vernon?"
"Mr. Vernon? I did not speak of him!"
Lucretia gazed hard upon the Provencal's countenance,--gazed with that
unpitying air of triumph with which a woman who detects a power over the
heart she does not desire to conquer exults in defeating the reasons that
heart appears to her to prompt. "No," she said in a calm voice, to which
the venom of secret irony gave stinging significance,--"no, you spoke not
of Mr. Vernon; you thought that if I looked round, if I looked nearer, I
might have a fairer choice."
"You are cruel, you are unjust," said Dalibard, falteringly. If I once
presumed for a moment, have I repeated my offence? But," he added
hurriedly, "in me,--much as you appear to despise me,--in me, at least,
you would have risked none of the dangers that beset you if you seriously
set your heart on Mainwaring."
"You think my uncle would be proud to give my hand to M. Olivier
Dalibard?"
"I think and I know," answered the Provencal, gravely, and disregarding
the taunt, "that if you had deigned to render me--poor exile that I am!--
the most enviable of men, you had still been the heiress of Laughton."
"So you have said and urged," said Lucretia, with evident curiosity in
her voice; "yet how, and by what art,--wise and subtle as you are,--could
you have won my uncle's consent?"
"That is my secret," returned Dalibard, gloomily; "and since the madness
I indulged is forever over; since I have so schooled my heart that
nothing, despite your sarcasm, save an affectionate interest which I may
call paternal rests there,--let us pass from this painful subject. Oh,
my dear pupil, be warned in time; know love for what it really is, in the
dark and complicated history of actual life,--a brief enchantment, not to
be disdained, but not to be considered the all-in all. Look round the
world; contemplate all those who have married from passion: ten years
afterwards, whither has the passion flown? With a few, indeed, where
there is community of object and character, new excitements, new aims and
hopes, spring up; and having first taken root in passion, the passion
continues to shoot out in their fresh stems and fibres. But deceive
yourself not; there is no such community between you and Mainwaring.
What you call his goodness, you will learn hereafter to despise as
feeble; and what in reality is your mental power he soon, too soon, will
shudder at as unwomanly and hateful."
"Hold!" cried Lucretia, tremulously. "Hold! and if he does, I shall owe
his hate to you,--to your lessons; to your deadly influence!"
"Lucretia, no; the seeds were in you. Can cultivation force from the
soil that which it is against the nature of the soil to bear?"
"I will pluck out the weeds! I will transform myself!"
"Child, I defy you!" said the scholar, with a smile that gave to his face
the expression his son had conveyed to it. "I have warned you, and my
task is done." With that he bowed, and leaving her, was soon by the side
of Sir Miles St. John; and the baronet and his librarian, a few moments
after, entered the house and sat down to chess.
But during the dialogues we have sketched, we must not suppose that Sir
Miles himself had been so wholly absorbed in the sensual gratification
bestowed upon Europe by the immortal Raleigh as to neglect his guest and
kinsman.
"And so, Charley Vernon, it is not the fashion to smoke in Lunnon." Thus
Sir Miles pronounced the word, according to the Euphuism of his youth,
and which, even at that day, still lingered in courtly jargon.
"No, sir. However, to console us, we have most other vices in full
force."
"I don't doubt it; they say the prince's set exhaust life pretty
quickly."
"It certainly requires the fortune of an earl and the constitution of a
prize-fighter to live with him."
"Yet methinks, Master Charley, you have neither the one nor the other."
"And therefore I see before me, and at no very great distance, the Bench
and--a consumption!" answered Vernon, suppressing a slight yawn.
"'T is a pity, for you had a fine estate, properly managed; and in spite
of your faults, you have the heart of a true gentleman. Come, come!" and
the old man spoke with tenderness, "you are young enough yet to reform.
A prudent marriage and a good wife will save both your health and your
acres."
"If you think so highly of marriage, my dear Sir Miles, it is a wonder
you did not add to your precepts the value of your example."
"Jackanapes! I had not your infirmities: I never was a spendthrift, and
I have a constitution of iron!" There was a pause. "Charles," continued
Sir Miles, musingly, "there is many an earl with a less fortune than the
conjoined estates of Vernon Grange and Laughton Hall. You must already
have understood me: it is my intention to leave my estates to Lucretia;
it is my wish, nevertheless, to think you will not be the worse for my
will. Frankly, if you can like my niece, win her; settle here while I
live, put the Grange to nurse, and recruit yourself by fresh air and
field-sports. Zounds, Charles, I love you, and that's the truth! Give
me your hand!"