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THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK
By Pierce Egan
In Theee Volumes
Volume III
London: W. S. Johnson & Co.
1865
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FLOWER OF THE FLOCK.
CHAPTER I.--HELEN GRAHAME’s DANGER.
She stood a moment as a Pythoness
Stands on her tripod, agonized and full
Of inspiration, gather’d from distress;
When all the heart-strings like wild horses pull
The heart asunder; then as more or less
Their speed abated, or their strength grew dull,
She sank down.
--Byron.
When Mr. Grahame had locked the door, he flung the key upon the table,
and motioned his daughter to a seat. She silently declined to accept it.
He paced the library for a few minutes. His emotions were terrible, but
they were the strugglings of pride, vain, haughty, ambitious pride, not
such as he would have been justified in possessing.
Helen stood motionless and faint. She dreaded the demanded explanation,
which seemed each instant to draw nearer. Her heart throbbed painfully,
so painfully it seemed as though each throb, depriving her of life,
would be the last.
At length Mr. Grahame confronted her.
“Helen!” he exclaimed, “what have you to offer in explanation of the
degraded and scandalous conduct of which you have been guilty in flying
from your home, and the audacious presumption you have exhibited in
presenting yourself here again?”
Her bosom heaved, and her throat swelled, but she spoke not.
“I demand to know,” he continued, fiercely, “why you quitted position,
family, a wealthy home, in a manner so disgracefully clandestine, so
utterly reckless of the honour or the pride of our house; I claim to
know what you have been doing during your absence; and why now, like
some spectre, you suddenly appear among us to bring further shame and
disgrace upon us. Speak!”
Her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. The events of the last few
months raced through her brain. Oh, how was she to acknowledge one
incident, at least, to him?
She remained silent.
He bit his lips and seized her wrist harshly.
“You must, you shall speak,” he cried, hoarsely, “or I will find a way
to make you, that shall bring you upon your bended knees in supplication
to be spared the torture. Tell me, girl, for whom and with whom you fled
from home?”
He committed an error when he, thus acting, sought to terrify her into
an explanation. He only roused her proud nature. By a sudden motion, she
flung his hand from her.
“I acted alone, and without being influenced by any person,” she replied
firmly, even haughtily.
“Your motive?”
“You will learn it some day.”
“Now--now; I insist upon hearing it now.”
“No, it would be premature. Nothing is to be gained by the disclosure
but pain; it is enough that I did what I have done under the promptings
of my own will. I have taken the consequences, and I am prepared to
endure them. I ask nothing of you but to be allowed to depart.”
“What language is this? Am I not your father?--have I no title to
control your actions. Preposterous notion!--you will find your error and
repent it sorely, bitterly.”
“I have done so,” she said, with an earnestness which struck him.
He paused for a moment, and gazed steadfastly at her.
“What means this alteration in you? Why are you so pallid and thin?” he
asked, abruptly.
“I have been ill.”
“Ill?”
“Very ill.”
“Tell me,” he asked with a choking utterance; “with whom have you dwelt
since you left this house?”
“A young girl.”
“A girl,” he echoed, in surprise.
This was a question he had feared to ask, and he anticipated from her a
direct refusal to reply. He was amazed at the readiness with which she
responded.
“Humble, sir,” she continued, in a thoughtful voice, which had
a singular tone of sadness pervading it; “but a model of purity,
innocence, and faithfulness!”
“You have been with her alone, up to the hour you came hither to-night?”
“With her alone.”
“Will you swear this?”
“In the face of Heaven, it is true, sir.”
Mr. Grahame paced the room again.
There was intense relief afforded to him by her replies, for, heartless
and selfish, he cared little what she had suffered during what he
considered to be her madly capricious act, so that she had not disgraced
his name. He would have looked over even her self-degradation, if he had
been sure that the crime was confined alone to her breast and that of
the partner of her sin, and it would not interfere with his new-formed
scheme.
“Helen,” he said, pausing abruptly before her, “you must give me your
promise that you will some day explain the mystery which hangs over the
interval of your flight from home, if I forbear to urge it now?”
“I do, sir,” she replied, in a low tone.
Again he took several turns across the room before he could bring out
his proposition; but at length he stopped, and recommenced speaking.
“Helen,” he said, “you are unmarried.”
Had he struck her a blow upon the temple, it would have had less effect.
She staggered and clung o the table.
“You are ill,” he said, hastily.
“No,” she answered, in a hollow tone, “proceed.”
“So far as I know,” he said, “you have had no offer for your hand--no
suitor, who has distinctly proposed; many intimations, I know, have
been made, but I have always turned a cold face upon them; for I would
elevate you in rank and surround you with wealth. Such a chance offers
itself for your acceptance now.”
She uttered a faint cry, and recoiled from him.
“Helen,” he said, sternly, “it is for you to repair the past, and the
opportunity is within your grasp--beware how you fling it away.”
She tried to speak, but her voice failed her.
“You must not, and shall not now interpose your will between mine and a
most important object I have in view,” he cried, sternly. “Listen--it is
necessary that you should marry----”
“No--oh! no--no--no!” she gasped.
“I say,” continued her father, “that the necessity is imperious.
“I cannot.”
“You shall.”
“I dare not.”
“Dare not! Listen--hear what there is need for you to dare. Helen, I am
a beggar!”
Helen almost shrieked; he uttered those words in a tone so frightful.
“Yes,” he repeated; “I stand on the verge of bankruptcy--beggary--God
knows what horrors! you can save me.”
Helen clasped her hands, and sobbed convulsively.
“You, Helen, can, I swear to you, save me--your mother--the house
itself, from destruction and disgrace. My Lord Elsingham, whom you met
at dinner, is a peer of enormous wealth; he has just expressed himself
greatly prepossessed in your favour. It rests with you to follow up this
favourable impression, and he is your own--the coronet of a peeress
will grace your temples. Your sister will, I trust, win the Duke; and in
these two marriages we may defy fate itself. You, Helen, will prove
my salvation! Do only but this, and the agony of the past will be
compensated by the splendour of the future.”
It is not possible to depict Helen’s intense anguish on hearing this
terrible revelation, or her horror to find that, even if prepared to
sacrifice her heart to save her father’s credit, it would not now be
possible to do so.
She clasped her hands, and fell upon her knees before him.
“Oh, sir! sir!” she moaned, in dire grief; “is there no other way to
save you? None? None?”
“Not one loophole to creep out of,” he cried, hoarsely. “Wilton had
promised to share with me the estates we both claim. He has recalled
that promise, and vast sums are now demanded of me, which I cannot pay.
If, however, it is known that you are about to become the bride of one
of the wealthiest peers in the kingdom, the harpies will wait, and I
shall be rescued.”
“Oh! avenging heaven!” she cried, “and I cannot do this to save them
all!”
“Helen!” cried her father, gripping her wrist hard, and hissing in her
ear, “you must do this, _whatever may have happened!_ You must marry
this peer. I ask you to reveal nothing. Keep your secret, but marry
him you must, or ruin--disgrace--death--stares me in the face. Recover
yourself--be composed, I leave you for a short time, or my absence will
be remarked upon. When I come back, I shall find you cold, and firm, and
calm--resolved, at _any_ price to carry out what I demand of you. Not a
word! not a word!”
As he spoke he put her from him. She would have clung entreatingly
to him, not to exact from her a task so wholly impossible for her to
fulfil.
He hurried out of the room, and locked the door without, leaving her a
prisoner there.
In an agony of tears she reflected on her position.
“It cannot, must not, shall not be,” she moaned, wringing her hands
while she spoke. “No; I will fly to Mr. Wilton. Lotte has spoken of
his tenderness of heart. I will appeal to him, on my knees, to save my
father; he will not resist my tears, my prayers. Yes, yes, I will go
to him--but for this marriage, ugh!” She shuddered violently--“No,
death--death rather than that.”
She tottered to the door and turned the handle, but it was fast. She
pressed against it, but it would not yield.
She made to the window. She remembered the iron staircase which led into
the garden. The window was unfastened, but she, alas, was in full dress.
She cast her eyes to the door wistfully, and thought she perceived
the handle move; she hurried to it, and, kneeling down, tried to peer
through the keyhole.
She heard a soft, low voice breathe her name, and she knew who was
without watching for her.
She whispered in a low voice--
“Eva, darling Eva, not a moment is to be lost; hasten with my bonnet and
my mantle to the slope beneath the library window.”
“Helen, dearest,” murmured the soft, low voice, “oh, you will not leave
us again?”
“Sweet sister Eva, if you love me, do what I ask. I will be more
explicit when we are together below,” she urged, almost frantically. “If
you love me, Eva--oh, if you love me, sweet Eva.”
“I will do what you wish, dear Helen,” replied her sister, softly. “I
will be down on the slope within a few minutes.”
To Helen the very mention of such a time seemed an age. She tied her
handkerchief about her neck, and stole softly to the window, which had
several times admitted Chewkle to her father’s presence secretly.
She opened it gently and looked out. It seemed very dark, and she
instinctively shuddered. She turned, and looked round the library
hastily--all was perfectly silent; yet it seemed to her that the door
would suddenly fly open, and her father, with angry aspect, appear and
pursue her.
She stepped upon the narrow iron staircase, and closed the window after
her; then she swiftly and noiselessly descended the steps, and stood
shivering upon the grass slope.
She looked up at the house: lights blazed in all the windows; but in the
garden, sombre darkness reigned. She listened intensely, for she
fancied she heard a footfall upon the gravel path, but the sound was not
repeated until she heard a light rustling noise; in another moment
after this reached her ear she felt herself encircled in the arms
of Evangeline, who had hastily thrown a large shawl over her head to
protect herself from the cold.
Helen took from her hand the garments for which she had asked, and
hastily attired herself.
“I dare not stay longer with you, my own darling Eva,” she whispered to
her; “I have escaped, as you see now, from the library, in which papa
had locked.”
“But why, Helen?” asked Evangeline.
“Ask me not now, love,” she returned, quickly; “some day you shall be
made acquainted with the reason of my flight, and why I have returned
only to leave you once more.”
“Oh! Helen, it seems so dreadful for you, who were the brightest
ornament of our house, to become suddenly”--
“Its blot, its stain!” interrupted Helen, passionately.
“No, no, no,” interposed Evangeline, hastily. “I meant not that. Oh!
pray, pray, Helen, remain with us now; everything will come bright
again. If all the others look cold upon you at first, they will come
round to regard you as they did ere you left us, and you know, Helen,
that I will ever be fond and loving to you, if you will let me.”
Helen folded her to her heart, and kissed her wildly.
“It is in vain, Eva,” she presently replied, in a low but firm tone,
“it cannot be. If I were to remain, my father would attempt to coerce
me into an act which; weak and erring as I have been, I would die rather
than consent to perform. Farewell! we shall meet again, Eva.”
“May I come to see you, Helen?” she asked, with great earnestness. “I am
very sad and lonely at home here, and if I could only come at times to
see and speak with you, it would make me so happy.”
“I will write to you, darling,” said Helen, hastily; “run back to your
room, Eva, or you will be missed, and you will be suspected of aiding
my departure. I would spare you a terrifying cross-examination, and the
ill-treatment likely to result from it. Besides, dearest, if I remain
longer it may prove the source of the greatest unhappiness to me.”
This latter argument had its full weight with Evangeline: she embraced
her sister with ardent weeping tenderness, and, with many oft-repeated
kisses, tore herself away.
Helen wept too, and convulsively. She stood motionless until after
Evangeline had, with light fleeting step, entered the house, and then
she prepared to hastily leave the garden by the servants’ entrance, with
the impression that she should never more enter that house which had
been her home from childhood.
She glided stealthily for a few paces, until she reached an angle of the
walk, upon which a shadow from the house fell darkly. As she entered
the gloom hastily, she ran into the arms of a man who had been standing
silently there, and whom she had not seen until she found herself
pressed vigorously to his breast.
“My dear Miss Grahame, I have been expecting you, and I must have a few
delicious words with you,” whispered the voice of Lester Vane in her
ear.
“Monster!” she cried, affrightedly; and by a desperate exertion, she
broke from him and fled--she knew not where.
He followed her swiftly, and caught her as she reached the thicket,
in which he had felt convinced, on his first visit, she met a lover,
clandestinely.
He seized her by both wrists, and held her firmly.
“It is useless to struggle with me,” he exclaimed, in an undertone. “You
can scream for help, if you will, and bring hither your proud parents;
I shall not quit my hold of you until I resign you into the custody of
your father, who does not contemplate your departure, as he has just
informed Lord Elsingham that you will join us in the drawing-room, when
he would have the opportunity of further examining those fascinating
attractions which he admired so much at dinner.”
“Unhand me,” she cried, with intense anguish, acutely feeling the
painful position in which she stood, and how much the man whom she now
hated with an intense loathing had become, for the moment, the master of
the situation.
“When you have listened quietly to what I have to propose to you,” he
answered, calmly.
“What can you have to propose to me, but insults?” she replied,
impatiently.
“I do not offer them as such,” he answered, with a slight shrug of the
shoulders; “if you will persist in so considering them, of course I
cannot help it.”
“In mercy let me depart; you do not know how desperate may be the
consequences of detaining me here,” she cried, entreatingly.
“Listen to me, Miss Grahame,” he returned, in a cold tone, and with slow
enunciation. “Listen to what I have to say, and here in this spot, for I
could not have selected one more fitting for my present subject.”
She cast her eyes round her, oh heaven! too well she remembered it. She
struggled madly to get free, but he held her with a cruel grip, and,
half-fainting, she was compelled to pause.
“There is a strange mystery enshrouding your actions at this present
moment,” he continued, between his set teeth, “that I know; further, I
believe that I have penetrated to its inmost recesses. Helen
Gra-hame, before you set eyes upon me, you loved another---you met him
clandestinely in this thicket.”
Again Helen struggled to set herself free, but in vain.
“It was his hand,” continued Vane, sternly, “which felled me to the
earth, when I accidentally encountered him on this very spot. Let
that pass. Helen Gra-hame, you loved that man. Yet you knowingly and
deliberately employed all your stratagems, and turned upon me the full
blaze of your charms, to capture my heart.”
She shuddered and cowered down.
“Your eye it was that sought mine, and when it encountered it, rested
there. Your voice echoed mine--your smile was set playing for me--your
hand rested on my arm, whenever opportunity offered. You were bland and
tender to me, and coy by turns. I was never in your presence but you
made me conscious of it by those peculiar artifices by which women
attract men to their side. Loving another, Helen Grahame, you acted thus
to me.”
“It is unmanly to taunt me thus!” she ejaculated, in hoarse, quivering
accents.
“Unmanly!” he echoed; “was it not unmaidenly in you, with your heart
safely lodged in another’s keeping, to make so desperate a venture for
mine----and for what? To make it a toy, to break it, and cast it aside
as worthless, even as a child does a bauble!”
He paused.
He could hear her hysteric breathing, but no pity was stirred in his
merciless heart.
“Were you not young, beautiful, of proud birth? Ought you to wonder that
you succeeded in your design---that you have won my heart----”
“It is false! it is false! it is basely untrue!” she gasped, vehemently.
“I swear to its truth! or why do I care to see or speak with you again,”
he replied with animation. “I repeat it, Helen Grahame--I love you.
You exerted yourself to accomplish that achievement, and you succeeded,
having no love to give back in return. What atonement have you to offer
to me for having destroyed the brightest hope in my life?”
“In the fullness of an arrogant pride I have erred,” she replied, in a
choking tone; “I am only too deeply conscious of my failings, and would
gladly make reparation for all the wrong I have done, if in my power.”
“It is in your power,” he interrupted, excitedly, “I know you cannot
give me a heart that has gone, or a love which has been won by another;
but I know that, under peculiar circumstances, you are separated from
him, from home, from the enjoyment of the position you once held, and
you cannot be happy as you are now circumstanced. I would make you
happy--I would surround you with all the luxuries of wealth, I would
place in your grasp all the pleasures the world can afford you, and only
ask in return, your society.”
“Oh, man! man! you make most barbarous use of your present advantage, to
grossly and shamefully insult me,” she hissed, indignantly. “If I, in
my wicked pride, have been guilty of the artifices with which you charge
me, those artifices were expended upon a barren rock, upon which no
flower grew. I tell you, man, you had no heart to lure, and your plea is
as false as your present outrage is contemptible. Release me, or I will
dare, by my screams, the very consequences you have pictured.”
Lester Vane suddenly started, as though he heard sounds of some one
approaching.
“Hark!” he said, in a low tone; “if you would not be discovered, be
silent.”
“I am careless now of discovery. Unhand me wretch!”
He still clutched her wrists, and she, exhausted by the scenes she had
that night already gone through, together with her recent efforts to
liberate herself, was now wholly powerless. He knew it, and availed
himself of the advantage it gave him.
Unheeding her words, he listened for further sounds with breathless
attention; but, whatever they might have been, they were not repeated,
and he went on speaking--
“I have resolved not to leave you, Helen,” he said, with determined
emphasis, “until I have your promise to consent to my proposition, and
an earnest that you intend to keep your word.”
She sank upon her knees.
“Have mercy upon me; let me depart, or I shall swoon,” she ejaculated,
in a feeble voice. “Oh! in mercy let me go.”
“Your promise,” he cried. “Let me give you the best reason to fall in
with my arrangements. The name of him you loved was Hugh Riversdale--”
She leaped up.
“If you would not have me fall dead at your feet, let me go!” she
exclaimed, frantically.
“Not till you hear from me,” he answered scornfully, “that knowing the
fellow to be a beggarly clerk to a merchant, I called at the warehouse
to make inquiries respecting him, and in proof of the estimation in
which he was held in his own province, was told abruptly that he was
dead--had died on his voyage out to India, and was thrown into the sea.”
Helen uttered a faint scream, and fell back lifeless.
The firm grip with which Lester Vane yet held her prevented her
receiving injury in her fall.
When she was lifeless upon the green sward, he released her hands,
repenting, at the moment, his precipitation.
He had no time for more.
He was suddenly seized by the throat, and dragged from the shadow into
the open space, where there was light enough for him to distinguish
features he had seen once before.
“Scoundrel!” cried his assailant, “we have met again--once before to
your discomfiture; this time to the defeat of your base villany; beware,
the third time it will be fatal to you!”
These words, forced between clenched teeth, were growled in his ears,
and then it seemed that myriads of flashes of light dashed before his
sight; he was hurled to the ground with tremendous violence, and he
remembered no more.
The stranger bent tenderly over the prostrate form of Helen, raised her
up gently, imprinted a passionate kiss upon her cold lips, and pressed
her to his breast.
“Mine, mine only, my wife, let me see who will dare to take her from me
now!”
As he muttered these words, he lifted her senseless form carefully and
fondly in his arms, just as though she had been a child, and he bore her
to the side of the ornamental water, where lay a boat.
In this he laid her gently down, covered her with a boat cloak, and
rowed swiftly away with his prize.