THE RESULTS--PERVERTED AMBITION--SELFISH PASSION--THE INTELLECT
DISTORTED BY THE CROOKEDNESS OF THE HEART.
Vivian's schemes thus prospered. He had an income that permitted him
the outward appearances of a gentleman--an independence modest indeed,
but independence still. We were all gone from London. One letter to
me, with the postmark of the town near which Colonel Vivian lived,
sufficed to confirm my belief in his parentage, and in his return to
his friends. He then presented himself to Trevanion as the young man
whose pen I had employed in the member's service; and knowing that
I had never mentioned his name to Trevanion--for without Vivian's
permission I should not, considering his apparent trust in me, have
deemed myself authorised to do so--he took that of Gower, which he
selected haphazard from an old Court Guide, as having the advantage in
common with most names borne by the higher nobility of England, viz.,
of not being confined, as the ancient names of untitled gentlemen
usually are, to the members of a single family. And when, with his
usual adaptability and suppleness, he had contrived to lay aside, or
smooth over, whatever in his manners would be calculated to displease
Trevanion, and had succeeded in exciting the interest which that
generous statesman always conceived for ability, he owned candidly, one
day, in the presence of Lady Ellinor--for his experience had taught him
the comparative ease with which the sympathy of woman is enlisted in
anything that appeals to the imagination, or seems out of the ordinary
beat of life--that he had reasons for concealing his connexions for
the present--that he had cause to believe I suspected what they were,
and, from mistaken regard for his welfare, might acquaint his relations
with his whereabouts. He therefore begged Trevanion, if the latter had
occasion to write to me, not to mention him. This promise Trevanion
gave, though reluctantly; for the confidence volunteered to him seemed
to exact the promise; but as he detested mystery of all kinds, the
avowal might have been fatal to any farther acquaintance; and under
auspices so doubtful, there would have been no chance of his obtaining
that intimacy in Trevanion's house which he desired to establish, but
for an accident which at once opened that house to him almost as a home.
Vivian had always treasured a lock of his mother's hair, cut off on her
deathbed; and when he was at his French tutor's, his first pocket-money
had been devoted to the purchase of a locket, on which he had caused to
be inscribed his own name and his mother's. Through all his wanderings
he had worn this relic; and in the direst pangs of want, no hunger had
been keen enough to induce him to part with it. Now, one morning the
ribbon that suspended the locket gave way, and his eye resting on the
names inscribed on the gold, he thought, in his own vague sense of
right, imperfect as it was, that his compact with his father obliged
him to have the names erased. He took it to a jeweller in Piccadilly
for that purpose, and gave the requisite order, not taking notice of
a lady in the further part of the shop. The locket was still on the
counter after Vivian had left, when the lady coming forward observed
it, and saw the names on the surface. She had been struck by the
peculiar tone of the voice, which she had heard before; and that very
day Mr Gower received a note from Lady Ellinor Trevanion, requesting
to see him. Much wondering, he went. Presenting him with the locket,
she said smiling, "There is only one gentleman in the world who calls
himself _De_ Caxton, unless it be his son. Ah! I see now why you wished
to conceal yourself from my friend Pisistratus. But how is this? can
you have any difference with your father? Confide in me, or it is my
duty to write to him."
Even Vivian's powers of dissimulation abandoned him, thus taken by
surprise. He saw no alternative but to trust Lady Ellinor with his
secret, and implore her to respect it. And then he spoke bitterly
of his father's dislike to him, and his own resolution to prove the
injustice of that dislike by the position he would himself establish
in the world. At present, his father believed him dead, and perhaps
was not ill-pleased to think so. He would not dispel that belief till
he could redeem any boyish errors, and force his family to be proud to
acknowledge him.
Though Lady Ellinor was slow to believe that Roland could dislike his
son, she could yet readily believe that he was harsh and choleric, with
a soldier's high notions of discipline; the young man's story moved
her, his determination pleased her own high spirit;--always with a
touch of romance in her, and always sympathising with each desire of
ambition--she entered into Vivian's aspirations with an alacrity that
surprised himself. She was charmed with the idea of ministering to the
son's fortunes, and ultimately reconciling him to the father,--through
her own agency;--it would atone for any fault of which Roland could
accuse herself in the old time.
She undertook to impart the secret to Trevanion, for she would have no
secrets from him, and to secure his acquiescence in its concealment
from all others.
And here I must a little digress from the chronological course of my
explanatory narrative, to inform the reader that, when Lady Ellinor
had her interview with Roland, she had been repelled by the sternness
of his manner from divulging Vivian's secret. But on her first
attempt to sound or conciliate him, she had begun with some eulogies
on Trevanion's new friend and assistant, Mr Gower, and had awakened
Roland's suspicions of that person's identity with his son--suspicions
which had given him a terrible interest in our joint deliverance of
Miss Trevanion. But so heroically had the poor soldier sought to resist
his own fears, that on the way he shrank to put to me the questions
that might paralyse the energies which, whatever the answer, were then
so much needed. "For," said he to my father, "I felt the blood surging
to my temples; and if I had said to Pisistratus, 'Describe this man,'
and by his description I had recognised my son, and dreaded lest I
might be too late to arrest him from so treacherous a crime, my brain
would have given way;--and so I did not dare!"
I return to the thread of my story. From the time that Vivian confided
in Lady Ellinor, the way was cleared to his most ambitious hopes; and
though his acquisitions were not sufficiently scholastic and various to
permit Trevanion to select him as a secretary, yet, short of sleeping
at the house, he was little less intimate there than I had been.
Among Vivian's schemes of advancement, that of winning the hand and
heart of the great heiress had not been one of the least sanguine.
This hope was annulled when, not long after his intimacy at her
father's house, she became engaged to young Lord Castleton. But he
could not see Miss Trevanion with impunity--(alas! who, with a heart
yet free, could be insensible to attractions so winning?) He permitted
the love--such love as his wild, half-educated, half-savage nature
acknowledged--to creep into his soul--to master it; but he felt no
hope, cherished no scheme while the young lord lived. With the death
of her betrothed, Fanny was free; _then_ he began to hope--not yet to
scheme. Accidentally he encountered Peacock. Partly from the levity
that accompanied a false good-nature that was constitutional with
him, partly from a vague idea that the man might be useful, Vivian
established his quondam associate in the service of Trevanion. Peacock
soon gained the secret of Vivian's love for Fanny, and, dazzled by the
advantages that a marriage with Miss Trevanion would confer on his
patron, and might reflect on himself, and delighted at an occasion to
exercise his dramatic accomplishments on the stage of real life, he
soon practised the lesson that the theatres had taught him--viz: to
make a sub-intrigue between maid and valet serve the schemes and insure
the success of the lover. If Vivian had some opportunities to imply his
admiration, Miss Trevanion gave him none to plead his cause. But the
softness of her nature, and that graceful kindness which surrounded
her like an atmosphere, emanating unconsciously from a girl's harmless
desire to please, tended to deceive him. His own personal gifts were
so rare, and, in his wandering life, the effect they had produced
had so increased his reliance on them, that he thought he wanted but
the fair opportunity to woo in order to win. In this state of mental
intoxication, Trevanion, having provided for his Scotch secretary, took
him to Lord N----'s. His hostess was one of those middle-aged ladies of
fashion, who like to patronise and bring forward young men, accepting
gratitude for condescension, as a homage to beauty. She was struck by
Vivian's exterior, and that 'picturesque' in look and in manner which
belonged to him. Naturally garrulous and indiscreet, she was unreserved
to a pupil whom she conceived the whim to make '_au fait_ to society.'
Thus she talked to him, among other topics in fashion, of Miss
Trevanion, and expressed her belief that the present Lord Castleton had
always admired her; but it was only on his accession to the marquisate
that he had made up his mind to marry, or, from his knowledge of Lady
Ellinor's ambition, thought that the Marquis of Castleton might achieve
the prize which would have been refused to Sir Sedley Beaudesert. Then,
to corroborate the predictions she hazarded, she repeated, perhaps
with exaggeration, some passages from Lord Castleton's replies to her
own suggestions on the subject. Vivian's alarm became fatally excited;
unregulated passions easily obscured a reason so long perverted, and a
conscience so habitually dulled. There is an instinct in all intense
affection, (whether it be corrupt or pure,) that usually makes its
jealousy prophetic. Thus, from the first, out of all the brilliant
idlers round Fanny Trevanion, my jealousy had pre-eminently fastened on
Sir Sedley Beaudesert, though, to all seeming, without a cause. From
the same instinct, Vivian had conceived the same vague jealousy--a
jealousy, in his instance, coupled with a deep dislike to his supposed
rival, who had wounded his self-love. For the marquis, though to be
haughty or ill-bred was impossible to the blandness of his nature,
had never shown to Vivian the genial courtesies he had lavished upon
me, and kept politely aloof from his acquaintance--while Vivian's
personal vanity had been wounded by that drawing-room effect, which the
proverbial winner of all hearts produced without an effort--an effect
that threw into the shade the youth, and the beauty (more striking, but
infinitely less prepossessing) of the adventurous rival. Thus animosity
to Lord Castleton conspired with Vivian's passion for Fanny, to rouse
all that was worst by nature and by rearing, in this audacious and
turbulent spirit.
His confidant, Peacock, suggested from his stage experience the
outlines of a plot, to which Vivian's astuter intellect instantly gave
tangibility and colouring. Peacock had already found Miss Trevanion's
waiting-woman ripe for any measure that might secure himself as her
husband, and a provision for life as a reward. Two or three letters
between them settled the preliminary engagements. A friend of the
ex-comedian's had lately taken an inn on the North road, and might be
relied upon. At that inn it was settled that Vivian should meet Miss
Trevanion, whom Peacock, by the aid of the abigail, engaged to lure
there. The sole difficulty that then remained would, to most men, have
seemed the greatest--viz., the consent of Miss Trevanion to a Scotch
marriage. But Vivian hoped all things from his own eloquence, art, and
passion; and by an inconsistency, however strange, still not unnatural
in the twists of so crooked an intellect, he thought that, by insisting
on the intention of her parents to sacrifice her youth to the very man
of whose attractions he was most jealous--by the picture of disparity
of years, by the caricature of his rival's foibles and frivolities,
by the commonplaces of "beauty bartered for ambition," &c., he might
enlist her fears of the alternative on the side of the choice urged
upon her. The plan proceeded, the time came: Peacock pretended the
excuse of a sick relation to leave Trevanion; and Vivian, a day before,
on pretence of visiting the picturesque scenes in the neighbourhood,
obtained leave of absence. Thus the plot went on to its catastrophe.
"And I need not ask," said I, trying in vain to conceal my indignation,
"how Miss Trevanion received your monstrous proposition!"
Vivian's pale cheek grew paler, but he made no reply.
"And if we had not arrived, what would you have done? Oh, dare you look
into the gulf of infamy you have escaped!"
"I cannot, and I will not bear this!" exclaimed Vivian, starting
up. "I have laid my heart bare before you, and it is ungenerous and
unmanly thus to press upon its wounds. You can moralise, you can speak
coldly--but I--I loved!"
"And do you think," I burst forth--"do you think that I did not love
too!--love longer than you have done; better than you have done; gone
through sharper struggles, darker days, more sleepless nights than
you,--and yet--"
Vivian caught hold of me.
"Hush!" he cried; "is this indeed true! I thought you might have had
some faint and fleeting fancy for Miss Trevanion, but that you curbed
and conquered it at once. Oh no; it was impossible to have loved
really, and to have surrendered all chance as you did!--have left the
house, have fled from her presence! No--no, that was not love!"
"It _was_ love! and I pray Heaven to grant that, one day, you may
know how little your affection sprang from those feelings which make
true love sublime as honour, and meek as is religion! Oh cousin,
cousin!--with those rare gifts, what you might have been! what, if
you will pass through repentance, and cling to atonement--what, I
dare hope, you may yet be! Talk not now of your love; I talk not of
mine! Love is a thing gone from the lives of both. Go back to earlier
thoughts, to heavier wrongs!--your father--that noble heart which you
have so wantonly lacerated, that much-enduring love which you have so
little comprehended!"
Then with all the warmth of emotion I hurried on--showed him the true
nature of honour and of Roland (for the names were one!)--showed him
the watch, the hope, the manly anguish I had witnessed, and wept--I,
not his son--to see; showed him the poverty and privation to which
the father, even at the last, had condemned himself, so that the son
might have no excuse for the sins that Want whispers to the weak.
This, and much more, and I suppose with the pathos that belongs to
all earnestness, I enforced, sentence after sentence--yielding to no
interruption, over-mastering all dissent; driving in the truth, nail
after nail, as it were, into the obdurate heart, that I constrained and
grappled to. And at last, the dark, bitter, cynical nature gave way,
and the young man fell sobbing at my feet, and cried aloud, "Spare me,
spare me!--I see it all now! Wretch that I have been!"