from peril!"
"Gabriel," and the pale scholar seated himself on the bed, "turn your
face to mine,--nearer; let the moon fall on it; lift your eyes; look at
me--so! Are you not playing false to me? Are you not Lucretia's spy,
while you are pretending to be mine? It is so; your eye betrays you.
Now, heed me; you have a mind beyond your years. Do you love best the
miserable garret in London, the hard fare and squalid dress, or your
lodgment here, the sense of luxury, the sight of splendour, the
atmosphere of wealth? You have the choice before you."
"I choose, as you would have me, then," said the boy, "the last."
"I believe you. Attend! You do not love me,--that is natural; you are
the son of Clara Varney! You have supposed that in loving Lucretia
Clavering you might vex or thwart me, you scarce knew how; and Lucretia
Clavering has gold and gifts and soft words and promises to bribe withal.
I now tell you openly my plan with regard to this girl: it is my aim to
marry her; to be master of this house and these lands. If I succeed, you
share them with me. By betraying me, word or look, to Lucretia, you
frustrate this aim; you plot against our rise and to our ruin. Deem not
that you could escape my fall; if I am driven hence,--as you might drive
me,--you share my fate; and mark me, you are delivered up to my revenge!
You cease to be my son,--you are my foe. Child! you know me."
The boy, bold as he was, shuddered; but after a pause so brief that a
breath scarce passed between his silence and his words, he replied with
emphasis,--
"Father, you have read my heart. I have been persuaded by Lucretia (for
she bewitches me) to watch you,--at least, when you are with Sir Miles.
I knew that this was mixed up with Mr. Mainwaring. Now that you have
made me understand your own views, I will be true to you,--true without
threats."
The father looked hard on him, and seemed satisfied with the gaze.
"Remember, at least, that your future rests upon your truth; that is no
threat,--that is a thought of hope. Now sleep or muse on it." He dropped
the curtain which his hand had drawn aside, and stole from the room as
noiselessly as he had entered. The boy slept no more. Deceit and
cupidity and corrupt ambition were at work in his brain. Shrink back,
Moon and Starbeam! On that child's brow play the demons who had followed
the father's step to his bed of sleep.
Back to his own room, close at hand, crept Olivier Dalibard. The walls
were lined with books,--many in language and deep in lore. Moon and
Starbeam, ye love the midnight solitude of the scholar! The Provencal
stole to the casement, and looked forth. All was serene,--breathless
trees and gleaming sculpture and whitened sward, girdled by the mass of
shadow. Of what thought the man? Not of the present loveliness which
the scene gave to his eye, nor of the future mysteries which the stars
should whisper to the soul. Gloomily over a stormy and a hideous past
roved the memory, stored with fraud and foul with crime,--plan upon plan,
schemed with ruthless wisdom, followed up by remorseless daring, and yet
all now a ruin and a blank; an intellect at war with good, and the good
had conquered! But the conviction neither touched the conscience nor
enlightened the reason; he felt, it is true, a moody sense of impotence,
but it brought rage, not despondency. It was not that he submitted to
Good as too powerful to oppose, but that he deemed he had not yet gained
all the mastery over the arsenal of Evil. And evil he called it not.
Good and evil to him were but subordinate genii at the command of Mind;
they were the slaves of the lamp. But had he got at the true secret of
the lamp itself? "How is it," he thought, as he turned impatiently from
the casement, "that I am baffled here where my fortunes seemed most
assured? Here the mind has been of my own training, and prepared by
nature to my hand; here all opportunity has smiled. And suddenly the
merest commonplace in the vulgar lives of mortals,--an unlooked-for
rival; rival, too, of the mould I had taught her to despise; one of the
stock gallants of a comedy, no character but youth and fair looks,--yea,
the lover of the stage starts up, and the fabric of years is overthrown."
As he thus mused, he placed his hand upon a small box on one of the
tables. "Yet within this," resumed his soliloquy, and he struck the lid,
that gave back a dull sound,--"within this I hold the keys of life and
death! Fool! the power does not reach to the heart, except to still it.
Verily and indeed were the old heathens mistaken? Are there no philters
to change the current of desire? But touch one chord in a girl's
affection, and all the rest is mine, all, all, lands, station, power, all
the rest are in the opening of this lid!"
Hide in the cloud, O Moon! shrink back, ye Stars! send not your holy,
pure, and trouble-lulling light to the countenance blanched and livid
with the thoughts of murder.