With a trembling hand, and apparently in the utmost haste, Willoughby
folded and sealed the letter he had just finished; and without allowing
himself one moment for reflection, rang and ordered the person who
appeared to take it to the post-office immediately.
As the door closed, however, after the servant to whom he had given this
command, a sense of terror at having thus himself rendered his fate
irremediable, overwhelmed him; and, with an instinctive impulse, he
grasped at the bell, but immediately flinging it from him, he assumed a
mock composure, and as though there had been some one present before
whom to act a part, with a ghastly sort of smile, seated himself. He had
for some time been almost expecting, though he would not confess it to
his own thoughts, some such blow as this: he had seen, despite every
effort to avert his mental vision from the view, that all could not be
right; and, weary of secret dread--the true definition of that hope
deferred, which maketh the heart sick--he now fancied, for the moment,
that there was a sort of stern satisfaction in knowing that fate had
done its worst. His brain, however, was already beginning to wander; he
was already contemplating, though vaguely, the fatal step which finally
ended his career. He thought of Alfred, and his soul secretly yearned
for the consolation of pouring out all its sorrows into his affectionate
bosom; but _Pride_, under the form of wounded vanity, with a jealous
soreness, shrank from the salutary exposure; while so irritable was the
state of his mind, that the very pleadings of his own heart, for the
balm it longed for, seemed importunate, and were resisted with something
of his characteristic obstinacy. Nay, the pettiest and most contemptible
considerations from time to time blended themselves indistinctly with
his despair, and became, to a certain degree, governing motives of
conduct.
The story of his former disappointment, and of such recent occurrence
too, he reflected, with a very disproportionate share of uneasiness,
would now be renewed, coupled with the present affair: he should become
a proverb--a byword--an object for the finger of scorn to point at. Then
the wild excitement of the hope with which, despite his fears, he had
with strange inconsistency fed his passion; this was gone, and he could
not endure the void within; while it was upon the brain, the fever
seemed to feed. Whether there was a physical cause for this, such as
Alfred had sometimes feared; or whether the attachment, though violent,
being recently formed, still dwelt more in the imagination than in the
heart, it might be difficult to decide; but the effect on Willoughby was
that some active principle of misery and evil seemed urging him on to a
frantic resistance of his fate; compelling his very pulses to beat at a
maddening pace; causing an alternation of quickened and suspended
breathing, which fatigued him sensibly; and the while presenting to his
imagination, snatches of thoughts, and visions of projects so terrific,
that while they were in fact the effects of incipient insanity, they
became, in their turn, by the fearful excitement they produced, powerful
causes of its future development. There was still an inward struggle,
but it ended fatally. He could not--no, he never would pronounce her
name again! He--in whom else he would have confided every thought--he it
was who was preferred; and, though he could not feel a rival's hatred
towards his kind, his generous, his unoffending brother--no, he did not,
he would not even love him less; but still there was a remembrance that
he was his rival; and with it thoughts, strangely blended, of
littleness, and the wildest, most extravagant generosity. Alfred should
have all--love, wealth, title; and then Lady Palliser could no longer
object; but he must wait--it might be for a few days, perhaps only a few
hours--nay, the sooner the better; why should he live but to cause and
to endure misery? Endure!--did he endure? Can powerlessness to resist
the decrees of fate, while yet the heart and feelings openly and
wilfully rebel against them, be called endurance? Certainly not. But
alas, such rebellion brings with it its own punishment. How often had
Willoughby, while fearing the worst, inwardly vowed that were he indeed
destined to disappointment, he would never survive the blow. Now the
blow had fallen, and though his heart secretly turned towards his
habitual, his earliest, his deepest seated affection, the love he bore
his twin brother, he was pledged, as it were, to resist every gentler
emotion, to embrace despair! and unhappily he did so.
He would carefully conceal every circumstance, every thought; he would
allow it to be believed, that the preparations for his marriage were
still going forward; nay, he would assume the most exuberant spirits,
and to the last moment of existence preserve his fatal secret. When he
was gone, when he had found a resting-place for his weary spirit in the
grave, Alfred should know all! Reflecting thus, he journeyed on.
Lady Palliser at first took no notice of Sir Willoughby's sudden
departure. At a late hour in the evening, however, she received his
note. During its perusal she laughed immoderately, then flinging it
towards Caroline, said, "Silly young man! my only object in marrying you
to him was to chastise you for your improper conduct. It has happened,
however, quite as well; for I was getting amazingly tired of the thing.
Let the intended punishment," she added, with returning severity of
manner, "be a lesson to you, that young women in your station, and with
the fortune you will possess, are not to make choice for themselves.
When I choose you to marry, and have decided to whom I shall marry you,
I shall let you know."
Poor Caroline, how little understood was her position by those, and they
were many, the springs of whose peace were poisoned by envy of her
greatness! Oh _Pride_, bane of human happiness! mingling bitter
mortification in the otherwise palatable cup of humble competency, and
lading with its glittering chains, the slaves on whom it seems to heap
its choicest gifts.
Caroline, who had apprehended a storm of rage and disappointment,
heightened by, perhaps, some suspicion of the truth, was greatly
relieved; and, though habituated to the unaccountable caprices of her
mother's temper, was somewhat surprised, at the perfect indifference
thus shown by Lady Palliser, respecting her ultimate failure on a point,
to carry which, so violent a determination had previously been
manifested.
On Willoughby's arrival at Arden, he strained every power of his mind to
hide from his brother the true state of his feelings; and, to a certain
degree, succeeded; his strange manner inducing in Alfred a belief that
it was the immediate prospect of the fulfilment of his wishes, which had
unsettled his intellect; for, that it was to a certain degree unsettled,
this affectionate brother could not help detecting, in the extravagance,
the sometimes almost terrific wildness, of the gaiety assumed by
Willoughby. It is impossible to describe the wretchedness of Alfred,
while with an aching heart, he watched the flushed cheek and flashing
eye of his brother, and listened to the strange unnatural sound of his
laugh. We may say, without in the slightest degree exaggerating the
disinterestedness of our hero, that every thought of self was forgotten,
in the miserable excess of sympathy which the extraordinary
circumstances of others now called forth. It was not only for his
brother, that brother to whom from infancy he had been so tenderly
attached, that he now felt the cruellest apprehensions; but what was
also to be the fate of Caroline, and what would be the misery of their
mother, the sorrow of the whole family, if, indeed, the awful infliction
he had so long dreaded, had at length fallen upon them?
Or even, were this excitement which now alarmed him so much, to subside
again for the present, how dreadful was the prospect opened by its
having ever assumed so serious a form; and the inconsistency of
Willoughby's conduct and manner, the incoherence of his expressions in
his ill-sustained attempts at conversation, put the fatal truth beyond a
doubt. Yet, were all those symptoms so far to abate, that no eye less
watchful, less practised to watch than his own, could detect the lurking
malady, was it fair, was it honourable, to involve in so frightful a
family affliction, the happiness of a being as yet unconscious of it?
Yet who could, who would, who ought to interfere? Delicacy and all good
feeling for ever forbade that any surmise should proceed from him. Oh
impossible! quite impossible! Fate must roll on, and overwhelm whom it
would, he must be passive! But he was more: instinctively he strove to
conceal from servants, and the few country neighbours whom chance threw
in their way, the hourly increasing infirmity of his brother; treating,
while such were present, his extravagance as hilarity, and every
contradiction and inconsistency as an intended jest; adding thus the
while, by the violent and unnatural contrast to his own secret
sufferings.